It's always nice as a historian to see evidence of the historical attention-span of the US, and again today the NY Times & Washington Post fail to carry a story found in the Times of London, that between 1954 and 1973 the US army used 7th Day Adventist conscientious objectors as guinea pigs in biological warfare experiments.

Bush threatens Iraq, which his Right wants to be the next target, if it doesn’t admit UN inspectors.

The patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church (that's its pope) has appeared in an ad for an oil company.

Excuse of the week: Ashcroft's claim that he's keeping the list (and numbers) of detainees secret to protect their privacy rights. It would be bad enough if he had said to protect their privacy, but he actually said their right to privacy. Of course, there's no place more private than a prison where you're being held secretly without charge (remember that next time you're planning to get away from it all).

Safire's column yesterday talked about those 8 Germans tried by Bush-like military tribunal during WW II. It seems one of them actually called the FBI after he was put ashore, but they ignored him, and he called again until they believed him. The secret trial was to prevent this becoming known. FDR planned to resist the Supreme Court if it tried to give them a real trial, but this was the Court that allowed Japanese internment, so not much hope of that. I presume that just because Bush "orders" that there be no appeal from the tribunals to a real court, that isn't anything the courts actually have to take any cognizance of (although Congress could do it), but perhaps someone with a law degree will correct me if I'm wrong?

Here's a story you'd really like to see videotape of: 3 farmers were trying to kill a pig in Hungary. The first one electrocutes himself, whereupon the second has a fatal heart attack (the first one died too), and the third injures himself with the stun gun. The pig survived, and is laughing its ass off.

At the annual Royal Variety Show, which as it sounds is a variety show, the cast of the musical version of the Full Monty performed a bit. Yes, they showed the queen their penises.

After reading that story in the Times, I was a little alarmed when I went to the Daily Telegraph and saw a headline Queen to Exhibit Hidden Royal Treasures.

There's nothing like reading several newspapers to make sure you have no idea what's going on. The New York Times says that Yemen is joining the fight against terrorism; the Times of London says Yemen's going to be one of the next targets, along with Sudan and Somalia.

A South Korean prisoner of war escapes from North Korea after 50 years. Not exactly Steve McQueen, is he?

Pakistan sends planes to evacuate its pro-Taliban forces from Afghanistan. Obviously with US permission.

The British royal family is giving an insight into the weird habits of British education. Prince William avoided (or did he?) a tradition at St Andrew's that involves heavy drinking and a shaving cream fight. Prince Harry played a traditional Eton game called The Wall, whose rules several newspapers devoted what seemed like pages to trying to explain. The game ended this year without a goal being scored. There hasn't been a goal scored in something like 90 years.

A major scandal at the journal Human Immunology, which published an article proving that Jews and Palestinians from the Middle East are genetically pretty much the same, so that the Jews are not a distinct people. The author got fired off the staff and the journal has written to university libraries suggesting they just rip those pages out.

Indeed, I keep seeing these stories about censorship in academia and I'm just so thrilled I can't tell you. By the way, did I mention what a great job George W. Bush is doing? One group compiling a blacklist is called the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, on whose board sits Lynne Cheney.

The NY Times mentioned a couple of days ago that there is a site with a "Rapture Index," where they put a numerical value to the likelihood of the world ending on any given day. Evidently September 24 was a record.

At the Observer.co.uk/comment you can find a page called Sunday Surfer which has links to various websites in which you can find out your pirate name, your Sopranos mob name, your Oz prison bitch name, what Mr T. would call you, and so on.

The tv show Big Brother has reached Russia, where they're too drunk to notice the irony. Also, it has a different name there. So here's the skinny: Margo started fooling around with Olga, including showering with her. Olga was voted off the show, so she went after Alexander (more showering). His girlfriend got upset so he had to leave the show to make up with her. Margo has had sex with Max a couple of times now, and if you wanted confirmed what you always thought about Russian sex: 63 seconds.

I only realized after I sent out the last e-mail how amusing it is that the news that Bush cut refugee quotas was reported (indeed, hidden) in the Thanksgiving newspapers. Now that's irony!

Speaking of irony, Bush gave a speech yesterday saying that women should be involved in any new Afghan government, which he said should be "broadly-based."

This week, Rummy Rumsfeld has said that he wants bin Laden dead rather than alive, that the US troops in Afghanistan have orders to take no prisoners, and that the foreign Islamists in Afghanistan shouldn't be allowed to leave the country. Mark those speeches as exhibits one, two and three at a war crimes trial, if there were any justice in this world, which there is not. I've grown to really really dislike Rumsfeld, so much so that I just split an infinitive and I don't even care. I hate his voice; I hate his smug face; I hate his suits.

If it's good enough for the US, it's good enough for the rest of the world, at least when it comes to destroying human rights. India's Hindu nationalist government, the NY Times says, is implementing anti-terrorism legislation exactly modeled on ours, indefinite detention and all. So, according to the British press, is Zimbabwe's increasingly mad president Mugabe. More to come there.

Before I forget, a congratulations to the Portland police force for resisting FBI requests to hassle foreigners on little if any evidence.

I've been meaning to talk about the religious war this isn't supposed to be for some time. It's not a war against Islam, we hear over and over. Of course it is, it's just less clear who the other side is supposed to be, and that lack of clarity suggests why Islam is bit by bit winning the war. It isn't Christianity against Islam, although for some people it certainly is, including I'd venture to say Ashcroft and Bush. But the anti-Islamic side is too diverse for that, and I'm not talking about Israel (which responded to Powell's toned-down speech on the Middle East by firing shells into a school and simultaneously destroying Palestinian housing in a refugee camp yet while reinforcing the settlements), but China, which took advantage of the excuse for another major crackdown that noone's paying attention to, the Philippines, Russia and the Central Asian republics which are always happy to kick some Islamist ass, and on and on. These countries are defending the nation-state against an Islam which is either separatist or trans-national. The only nation-state really holding its own against militant Islam is Turkey, and it won't last forever, and it accomplishes it largely through coercion, by shutting down cultural forms and by forcing Islamic head-dress off of women by the same force the Taliban used to put it on. The problem is, in the ideological fight between militant Islam and the nation-state, only one seems actually to stand for anything. What did Algeria stand for as a nation when it abolished elections the Islamists were going to win? Or Turkey, stand for anything. What did Algeria stand for as a nation when it abolished elections the Islamists were going to win? Or Turkey, really? What are the values deployed by the Russian state to win over people attracted to a political Islam? And how about America? Bush told us all to stand up to the terrorists by shopping, but forgot to suggest that people stand up to the terrorists by voting in the states and localities that had elections this month. And this is America, which is supposed to be a model. You know how the US is a model, don't you? It's vain and self-centered and has big fake tits. It's the reason we don't have to practice what we preach and don't have to spend much of anything on foreign aid, compared to other industrial countries, and do all the horrible things we do in the world. Because we're a model, dammit, and it's our job to do whatever we want to do while the rest of the world looks on in admiration.

Speaking of big fake tits, enjoy your turkey, and pass me the white meat.

Hatred of refugees continues to increase. John Howard was re-elected as prime minister of Australia on a platform of beating up refugees. The new Danish government's slogan will be Keep Denmark Blonde and Bland. And, oh yes, Bush just cut the refugee quota for this country by another 10,000.

Fuzzy math: stories in the NY Times Wednesday & Washington Post Thursday about the persistence of the number of 5,000 dead for September 11, although the real number is nowhere near that high.

Fuzzier math: what is this "reward of up to $25 million" for bin Laden. Is that like, "You are already a winner, you've either won $25 million or fries"?

Speaking of bait and switch, Bush, who promised that half of that $40 billion would go to NY, decided that the city only deserved $9 billion, now $11 billion after complaints from NY Republican congresscritters.

The great communicationizer

Headline in today's NY Times "Bush Offers Public Defense of Military Tribunals Order." Bush said: "To the critics, I say I made the absolute right decision."

OK, it's terrible grammar, but what an argument, huh?

So does anyone believe that the US bombing of the Al-Jazeera transmitter was an accident? And why is there no one objecting to it?

I forgot to follow up on that congressman John Cooksey of Louisiana, who made the comment about people with diapers on their heads 2 months back. Coming from the state he's coming from, y'all may have thought he was a hick in a pickup truck, and he may well be. But he's also an eye surgeon.

One of the Guardian's columnists, I think one I've forwarded pieces by before on the US and Afghanistan, says she's getting a lot of hate mail from the US and is happy about the quantity of salt water between her and them. And then does it again. She says that the US, subordinating everything else to its efforts re bin Laden and making deals with the unsavory Northern Alliance, is treating the entire country of Afghanistan as collateral damage.

There was a story in the Sunday Times of London about pro-anorexia websites, but I've been unable to find them. They defend anorexia as a lifestyle choice and give advice about how to hide it from your parents. Anyone know about this? One site originates in Stanford and there was some reference to "Goddess Anna." As a movement, they may or may not be called the Starving Annas. I don't know what that means, but a google search suggests an unusual array of celebrities whom some people care to designate as goddesses.

Slapstick will never die as long as there are cats. As pissed as I am at Turquoise for bringing in that mouse 24 days ago and losing it, I'm certainly enjoying watching her try to catch it again. She finally succeeded Friday. And lost it again. Today she actually touched it with her paw. And lost it. The cartoons once again did not lie to us: mice are smarter than cats.

John Mortimer, the author of Rumpole of the Bailey and whatnot, aged 78, has been discovering Tantric sex. His favorite position is The Plumber: you stay in all day but nobody comes.

89 Senators sign a letter telling Bush not to criticize Israel.

Laura Bush gives the weekly radio address today, on the subject of how badly the Taliban treated women. I'm guessing she just found out about it.

Never has the CIA/military lost control of its clients so rapidly as in Afghanistan, where the warlords are already telling us to get lost so they can get on with their looting and score-settling. Funny, they were so courteous to their guests when it was bin Laden et al, but all of a sudden the US and British military are being treated like a flatulent mother-in-law....

The US mysteriously gets its aid workers/missionaries back from Afghanistan, and every newspaper has a different version of how it happened. Mark my words now, because there will be an I told you so later: we paid ransom to someone. No question in my mind.

Radio Sharia has changed its name to Radio Afghanistan and has broadcast the voice of a woman for the first time in 5 years, the slut.

Music can also now be heard, although as the Daily Show pointed out, they are 5 years behind the times and still like the macarena.

Speaking of crap music, Dubya forced Putin to listen to a concert of country music. Shortly after that, for some reason, any chance of a deal on Son of Star Wars disappeared.

Evidently that story about the Arab who wanted to learn to fly a plane but not to take off or land was a complete falsification. Too good a story to check the facts.

If the US does go ahead with that military court thing, the only method of execution open to it is firing squad.

The Dems have changed the rules on primaries, allowing more early
primaries so that candidates with more money will sew up the nomination more quickly. And somehow, California will be screwed again.

So Gore won Florida after all. Bush is so protected from the press, and the press so lapdoggy, that I wouldn't be surprised if we never hear his reaction. (Several good pieces of analysis in Slate)

Speaking of democracy, Israel decided to strip an MP of immunity and prosecute him for speech-crimes. I wish they'd stop pretending to be a democracy. By the way, the deputy is not only an Arab, as the American media seem to be willing to report, but a Christian, which for whatever reason they are not.

Still speaking of democracy, Nicaragua obeyed American instructions and did not return Daniel Ortega to the presidency. You did know that the US had been threatening reprisals if the Nicaraguans made the wrong choice, didn't you? If you didn't, thanks again to the American media, which will also shortly forget that there was ever a country named Afghanistan.

Congratulations, on the other hand, to John Simpson, who marched into Kabul and claimed it for the BBC. Simpson earlier snuck into Afghanistan in a burka. He was also the one in Baghdad 10 years ago who was reporting while outside his window a cruise missile took a left turn at a stoplight, and generally has this incredible deathwish that's made him so interesting to watch. Evidently he started out his career in 1970 by being hit in the stomach by Harold Wilson. The Guardian ran a bio in tomorrow's paper (grammatically incorrect, factually correct, sorry) as well as stories of war reporters past, the ones who went onshore in Normandy, the first reporter into Paris in 1944 (Ernest Hemingway, who liberated the Travellers Club, the Ritz and 50 martinis), and Marguerite Higgins of AP, who liberated Dachau in 1944, literally, she arrived before any troops and got 22 SS to surrender to her.

It seems that Kim Philby was originally recruited by the KGB to
assassinate Franco.

Well, I said that the last thing Bush wanted was what he insisted two months ago was the only thing he wanted, the trial of bin Laden. I was wrong, but only because I was thinking of a trial as something that involved evidence, a jury and rule by law. Silly me. He actually plans military tribunals behind closed doors and preferably in some foreign country, with evidence kept secret (if there is any). Evidently military tribunals have been used before, for example to execute 8 German saboteurs put ashore in 1942, and to execute the alleged accomplices of John Wilkes Booth. The latter is generally considered to have been a travesty of justice, so it's probably about right. By the way, the criterion for somebody having to go before a military rather than a real court is a "finding" by the president that they are a member of a terrorist organization. In other words, they have already been found guilty without a trial, by a process that violates the separation of powers.

Time will tell what really happened in Afghanistan this week. Rout, or strategic retreat? The Northern "Alliance" now occupies too much territory, too many cities, and has nothing to spare to go on the offensive. It has also shattered the international "alliance" which opposes the Taliban but doesn't think much of them. Still, did anyone really think there was going to be a broad coalition in power? About as likely as the plans being floated by the US and Britain for occupation of Kabul by the UN or by Muslim nations only. And the Taliban still have those US missionaries. The one thing Bush has done right is not to talk about them at all. Maybe he learned one thing from his father about not paying off kidnappers.

Burundi is currently detaining a suspected spy--a stork with monitoring device.

As bad as John Aschroft is, when he introduced internment without trial, he at least didn't use the occasion to denounce "air fairy civil liberties" like British Home Secretary David Blunkett.

If you're looking for humor, that'll be the next e-mail.

I must report two deaths, that of Joe "Spud" M, well you'll have to look up the name if you give a shit, or I'll have to learn how to read my own handwriting. He's the inventor of the cheese and onion potato chip. And Ken Kesey, who probably felt the need for munchies on more than one occasion, if you catch my drift.

OK, I warned you: in South Africa, a 9-month old is gang raped because, as we all know, that's a cure for AIDS.

The war continues, and bombing continues, three weeks after the Pentagon said it had bombed everything worth bombing. So are they bombing worthless shit, or did all the first bombs miss? You be the judge, because they aren't talking. The Morons' War is getting more and more moronic, more and more unrelated to its ostensible aims. And the US, which started out self-obsessed, has just gotten more so. Even normally intelligent people, like William Saletan of Slate, are writing that the Taliban is to blame for the US bombing civilians, because they position tanks and anti-aircraft weapons amongst civilians. Under what scenario would anyone make it easy for their weaponry to be targeted? In what sense did the fact that the US decided to bomb a country obligate that country to make it easy? Bush today told the UN that it was everyone else's "duty" to help us in our war, which looks increasingly like our war despite efforts to pretend it was everyone's war. And he also said that other countries can't pick and choose between terrorists. Oh really? Here are ours:

November 11 2001 TERRORISM

THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE'S CRUEL HISTORY: Mujaheddin write their name in blood

Jon Swain, Peshawar
....
In a macabre ritual known as "dead men dancing", victims' heads were chopped off. Petrol was then pumped into their necks and set alight as the blood spurted out and the bodies jerked about in their death throes.

In Afghanistan, rape, mutilation and torture have been rife over the past decade. The skinning alive of victims has been a particular favourite of warring groups, along with the roasting of prisoners in containers left in the desert sun.

The Afghan warlord whose perverted mind dreamt up the "dead man
dancing" routine was Abdul Ali Mazari, a leader of the Hazaras, Afghanistan's Persian-speaking ethnic minority. Mazari headed a group called Hizb-i-Wahdat, which is now a key part of the Northern Alliance, the loose confederation of militias that is the spearhead in Afghanistan of America's and Britain's war on terrorism.

....

Russia has reintroduced the concept of the closed city. Cancel your winter vacation plans to visit Norilsk.

rubberbandguns.com

Health officials say that they may never completely sterilize the Hart Senate Office Building. Nor will they ever get out that old man Strom Thurmond smell.

Bush ended yesterday's speech "My fellow Americans: Let's roll." Oh good, now he thinks he's in a '70s cop show.

Gored by a gnu

I was in the public library today reading microfilm when a gaggle of let's say 10-year olds wandered into the room. One of them asked me what I was doing and I said that I was reading a newspaper from 1872. "That's crazy!" one of them exclaimed.

It hasn't made the American press, but Ariel Sharon says that he wants another 1 million Jewish immigrants to Israel. It's not clear where he thinks he'll find that many. Argentina? The US?

In a Spanish animal park, a keeper is gored to death by a gnu. I don't have anything to say about that, but isn't it a great phrase? Gored by a gnu. Say it out loud. Gored by a gnu. Makes you feel good just to say it.

The Justice Department has decided to listen in on conversations between federal inmates and their lawyers. Terrorism, you know. It is against the lawyers' code of professional responsibility to speak with a client without confidentiality, so these people have been effectively stripped of their right to counsel. Or at least ethical counsel.

Gored by a gnu.

A newspaper ad is now running asking "What do Saddam Hussein and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Have in Common? Neither Man wants America to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

That's like so September 10.

I'm informed that that last phrase is now in among the teenagers.

Palm Beach County is auctioning off its voting machines. I assume the lower bid wins. Ba dum BUM.

That undisclosed location Cheney went off to: he's been shooting
partridges.

Gored by a gnu.

Combover theater

You can tell how much Bush is worried about support dropping off for the Moron's Crusade: he's starting to claim that bin Laden is trying to go nuclear. This is precisely the same claim his father introduced several weeks into the War to Make the World Safe for Feudalism, when public support for going to the rescue of the oil shieks of Kuwait had failed to develop.

Saw Satan, I mean Henry Kissinger, being interviewed on ITN yesterday on how we should bomb the crap out of Afghanistan. You understand this is the man who until recently was employed by Unocal to try to get the US to recognize the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan.

Remember those pictures of baby seals being clubbed to death back in the '70s? If you're like most people, your reaction was "Where can I sign up for that?" The answer may be coming: the Norwegian minister of fisheries has suggested turning the seal hunt into a tourist industry.

I just saw a book ad for "Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset."

The Sunday Washington Post has a couple of worthwhile articles, one analyzing the detainees, and how the government is using detention as a tool, the other on the eroding line between law enforcement and intelligence-gathering, the very thing I was complaining a week or more ago about no one talking about. Better late than never. Also worth leading, the Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker, "King's Ransom," available online, about Saudi Arabia's instability and US policy through the years. One thing it says which I kind of assumed, but it's nice to have confirmed, is that the Saudis asked us to restrain the CIA from operating there and that it complied, with results that should be obvious. Tom Friedman wrote a week or so back that in the 1980s they asked the US to recall an ambassador who was actually speaking to Saudi people. We took the hint and never since have we sent an ambassador who speaks Arabic. Ya know, all Afghanistan ever did to us was give sanctuary to someone we don't like. Saudi has a much higher population of those, and provides most of the money.

It's not just t-shirts that are a problem in the schools. I'm so glad I'm not a parent, I'd be in a constant state of outrage. Evidently it's now quite common to use drug-sniffing dogs on the students, just have the dog go up and down the rows.

Evidently bin Laden's "Afghan Arabs" all expect to die. One preparation they've been making is buying husbands for their sisters and daughters, by which I mean going into an Afghan village one night, asking who wants a wife, and giving him some money for promising to protect her. Like a fairytale romance, isn't it? Some of them are quite young, of course. Good luck with the rest of your lives, girls.

People in New York have been buying canaries lately. To warn of poison gas attacks.

The NY Times says that of the 1,100+ detained by the Justice Department, most were actually arrested and released. Leading to the conclusion that Justice, which has miserably failed in all its terrorism investigations, is so anxious to look like it's doing something that it's willing to imply that it's been setting up gulags packed full of aliens. For the same reason, Ashcroft gratuitously insisted that 3 of the detainees had advance notice of the attacks, which Justice then had to deny.

Bin Laden sent out another videotape today, and you wouldn't know it from CNN, Bush's little lap dog. I saw it on the BBC world news. Evidently this is a holy war between Muslims and Christians. That lets me out then; don't have a dog in that fight.

R's have been lambasting poor hapless Gov. Davis for not sitting on the FBI's warning. It seems like even the FBI is in on it, pretending that its initial warning was more tenuous than it actually was. This is partisanship at its lowest. Presumably if he wasn't supposed to warn people he also wasn't supposed to take any precautions at all to protect the bridges, because such protections would be noticed and commented on and that might make people afraid. Especially deserving of a slap, Bill Jones, who is planning to run against Davis, who hypocritically started out that he certainly wasn't criticizing, BUT that the governor of Washington hadn't felt any need to issue a warning. Yes, a warning about a terrorist threat to bridges, and California only has the Golden Gate Bridge, while Washington has that really famous bridge, you know the one, what's its name again?

Cocked and ready, if you know what I mean

Rumsfeld says that more special forces are "cocked and ready" for action in Afghanistan.

Speaking of cocked and ready, one of the changes in military policy under the Bush administration is the reversal of moves to integrate women into military life. Most of his appointees are of the no-girls-club tendency.

Speaking of cocked, but not so ready, there was a disagreement in the House of Commons today over whether it was the Taliban or the Northern Alliance who cut off the last president's penis and stuck it in his mouth.

Speaking of cocked and ready, Viagra-junkie Bob Dole, discussing vengeance for 9/11 (he was for it), quoted Melville: "Beware the people weeping when they bear the iron hand." I'd beware them a little less if they are able to do more with their iron hand than hold a pencil in it. What an odd metaphor for Dole to be using. Speaking of the handicapped, new British home secretary David Blunkett went on a ride-along with a cop, which is somewhat pointless since he's blind (Blunkett, not the cop).

No one noticed it, but at the Hague Tribunal yesterday, Milosevic claimed that he was fighting Bin Laden in Kosovo.

Bush signed an executive order designed to keep his records secret forever, and those of previous presidents. The Washington Post thinks he's protecting members of his administration who served in the Reagan administration from embarrassment, while evidently forgetting that Bush's father was vice president and involved in Iran-Contra and whatnot.

A French female astronaut has returned from space. She brought a teddy bear with her. Awwww.

I got my notice from the postmaster general today telling me what to do with suspicious mail. I also got a leaflet for the journal Anglo-Saxon England. What would Beowulf have done?

The health & fitness section of the Times today leads with a story "A Career Spent in Study of Training And Exercise, Lap by Grueling Lap." I lost interest when it turned out to be about swimming, not lap dancing.

With "President" Bush at the World Series, the Times says, there were almost as many cops on duty as the time John Rocker returned to play.

Also in today's paper was a piece by Paul Krugman (op-ed) on the alternative minimum corporate income tax the R's are so anxious to repeal retroactively to 1986. It seems that a great percentage of the benefit would go to energy and mining companies. Dick Cheney strikes again, from an undisclosed location.

Speaking of which: Cheney hiding in a bomb shelter, Bush at a ball game. I'm guessing that one of these two is over-reacting and the other under-reacting, and that the appropriate behaviour is somewhere in the middle.

All employees at the Supreme Court were negative for anthrax, but a pubic hair was found in Clarence Thomas's Coke.

Government warns us to be worried that something might happen sometime to someone, they're pretty sure. So we should all be on the lookout for...something. I personally think Ashcroft meant that we're about to be invaded by midget Taliban wearing masks; if I see any I'm planning to hit them with a shovel.

Someone looked at the US government documents relating to the coup that deposed the Afghan king we're trying to put back. It seems we didn't think much of him and, oh yeah, had advanced information of the coup (a year in advance).

One of the places the US military is now fighting Al Qaeda is in the Philippines.

And this week we've started training Nicaraguan military officers at the School of the Americas, or whatever it's calling itself this week (you remember how they solved the problem of the place's reputation for training torturers and death-squad leaders by changing its name? if not, there's an article on it in the www.guardian.co.uk/columnists, which compares it with bin Laden's training camps).

Global warming has claimed its first nation, Tuvalu, known only for its valuable internet domain name (.tv). It has given up and will move to New Zealand.

Some guy who saw that annoying French film The Red Balloon (which my two elementary schools both subjected me to many times) set himself aloft with 600 balloons, cutting himself free and parachuting to earth from 11,000 feet.

So the food packets dropped on Afghanistan are yellow and the unexploded cluster bombs are also yellow. That was clever.

The honeymoon is finally beginning to show signs of strain, and as a post-Clinton "president" should have known, it's the spin, stupid. You'll remember I commented a few days after 9/11 that all the talk about reassuring Americans that it was safe to fly was more about spin than about actually making it safe, and was phrased as such: making Americans feel safe. No one noticed that, but when they tried to do it at the start of the anthrax thing, with absolutely no information, just being reflexively reassuring, it began not to look so good. Now they're evidently lying about Bush's health. He's not getting thinner, he just redistributed it.

I have another quote, or paraphrase actually, that applies well to American foreign policy, although it was originally applied by Sir Oswald Mosley to Mussolini's foreign policy: it triumphs like a drunken driver, not by reason of his own skill but because all sober people had been concerned to get out of his way.

Continuing its failing propaganda war, the US has been dropping wind-up radios on Afghanistan. They are capable of receiving only one frequency. You're probably thinking right now about the irony of sending radios that can only receive American propaganda as a way of pluralism. Or maybe you're thinking about the FCC's decision this week to let Rupert Murdoch own as much of a single market as he wants. But think again about it, and you'll realize that anyone caught with this radio does not have the excuse that he was using it to listen to the Pakistani top ten, so anyone caught with this radio is likely to be killed.

Speaking of unremarked details, I haven't belabored the "anti-terrorism" legislation, with its elimination of any procedural safeguards, privacy, civil rights etc., so I'll just talk about one aspect, which some idiot reporter didn't notice when talking about it on Washington Week in Review yesterday. She said that the CIA has just mounds of data awaiting this bill to pass so that it could share it with law-enforcement officials under the provision allowing for the sharing of info between agencies. OK, first obviously there was nothing stopping the CIA from doing that before, except the fact that the CIA doesn't share information. But what this provision really did was make it possible for evidence collected in, say, grand jury proceedings, to be handed over to intelligence agencies. The criminal justice system was just coopted by the intelligence establishment, and that does not bode well at all.

The Pentagon is plum out of ideas. All it can think of to do is hit the same Red Cross depot for the second time. So it is soliciting the general public to send in suggestions on how to defeat bin Laden. I'm working on mine now, although I hope they don't mind the coffee ring and the powdered sugar from my donut. Ha ha ha, I'm just kidding, I don't even drink coffee. Yes this is definitely the time for them to be encouraging strange mail. This was of course how the Nazis were defeated. Churchill went on the radio and said We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the laundrettes, and if anyone out there has any other suggestions as to where we should fight them, answers please on a postcard, winners to receive some book certificates and a seat at the Yalta conference.

My idea so far involves a giant magnet and a giant rubber band, but I'm still leafing through the Acme catalog.

Hurrah for Russ Feingold, the only Senator with any integrity.

Singapore is to show other democracies how it is done. Can you even call it a general election if 2/3 of the seats are uncontested?

See the Tom Toles cartoon for the 26th, easily available on the web.

September 2004: hello to those looking for Tom Toles's Bush refrigerator magnet cartoon. You can find it by clicking here. And then you might want to come back to my site. If you like Toles, you may well like it too.

January 2006: and if you're looking for the Toles cartoon the Pentagon objected to, click here.

eccentrics / eccentric web sites

There's a mouse in my apartment. It's a good thing I own a cat--no, wait, she's the one who brought it in.

A British prisoner is suing for his right to gay porn. Heterosexuals get their soft core porn, so he wants his. Says it's an abuse of his rights.

For those playing the home game, this is the part where I would normally make a joke. Can you guess what it might be? A little hint: it involves use of the word "abuse."

A steer was stripped of his prize at the Minnesota state fair, for use of drugs. I don't suppose there's a picture of it and the governor together.

The NY Times's Thursday computer section performed its usual function of making me scared of the future, with a story about kitchen appliances being made now with Web access. Your microwave will be able to download recipes and perform them. Watch tv and have videoconferencing on your refrigerator door.

Unnamed administration official in the NY Times: "you can bomb the wrong place in Afghanistan and not take much heat for it. But don't mess up at the post office."

Belgium becomes the second country to legalize euthanasia.

The US claims to have inside information that the Taliban will poison the aid dropped by the US. So if it has come through Taliban control, they say, don't eat it. This is probably the least subtle psyop I've ever heard of, at least since they dropped those bats on the Philippines (don't ask). Oh yeah, we know exactly what the Taliban are thinking about. A 3-year old could see through this, although not the NY Times, which now believes everything its government sources tell it.

Right, I promised web sites:

To get your name if you were a cyborg (that is what your name is an acronym for): www.brunching.com/toys/toy.cyborger.html

Jesusmuseum.com, your site for wacko fundamentalist sites (for example the one that explains how various Hollywood types are working for Satan. Ok, Demi Moore, obviously, but...)

Along the same theme, Jesus.com, a guy who looks like Jesus and wants a date. Click on "Bathe with Jesus," if you dare (I didn't).

And www.jesusdressup.com. Like one of those cut-out books, you can put a hat on Jesus, or a cowboy outfit. Did I mention he's on a cross? Hours of fun.

The pipes, the pipes

The Catholic diocese of Providence says that "Danny Boy" is not
appropriate for funerals. Someone tell the Irish already: Danny Boy is not appropriate for anything, ever. It is not good for children and other living things. I do not want to hear it on a plane, I do not want to hear it on a train.

Congress is working on a $100 billion stimulus package. I mean for God's sake Bill Gates lost $9 billion, something must be done. Fortunately, help is on the way. $2.3 billion goes to all the unemployed. $1.4 billion goes to IBM. Seems fair to me.

Anthrax is found in the White House mail room but Bush says, three times no less, that he doesn't have it, but refuses to say how he knows this: has he taken the test, is he taking antibiotics? Did Uncle Dick tell him he was safe when he tucked him in at night (you laugh, but this is traditional: Al Gore tucked in Bill Clinton, Spiro Agnew tucked in Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller made sure that the guard rails were up so Ford wouldn't fall out of bed.) Anyway, the government tells us that the chance of our getting anthrax is slim. Well, so is Calista Flockhart, and she creeps me out too.

America is returning to normal. For example, Texas just executed someone for a crime committed when he was a juvenile. Let the healing begin!

The spin continues. Congress returns to town, trying to speak in a deeper, more manly voice. In Britain, Parliament debates what should have happened to the bureaucrat who sent out the memo I referred to a while back within an hour of the WTC being hit, that now was a good time to bury news. Curiously enough, while this debate was going on, the government was announcing that there would be peace in Northern Ireland, that it was sending the Marines into Afghanistan, and that cannibas would be decriminalized.

Rumsfeld, who just yesterday was pooh-poohing the possibility that the US could ever accidentally bomb a hospital, also said that it was ok to continue the war over Ramadan because sometimes Muslims do that. He then went on to refer to black people as niggers, because sometimes black people do that.

Before we go to the Times piece on humor and current affairs, let me tell you something really hilarious, no wait I mean horrifying: the actual destination of the 4th plane, that crashed in Pennsylvania. Three Mile Island (or one of two other nuclear power plants in the area).

Even the funny stuff this week is sort of tragic, if only to the people involved. The zookeeper stepped on by an elephant, for example. Or the guy in Pennsylvania who died during the do-it-yourself sex-change operation.

A story in I think the Telegraph tells of the prison in Greenland, where everyone goes out to work during the day, and usually end their prison term with more money than when they went in, plus new clothes, VCRs (they can rent videos in town. In fact, they can do damned well anything, although they do have to have guards with them if they choose to go hunting.) The more serious criminals are sent to prison in Denmark, which is evidently what counts for stern in the "Norwegian countries" as Biden put it.

German prostitutes are to be fully legalized, able to take their johns to court for payment (well, it sounds like there might have to be a written contract, which seems a bit unlikely), and to retire on state pension at 60.

That's my second old-prostitute story in the last couple of months.

Thank god Israel kept its head down and indeed kept its head, and
certainly didn't invade Bethlehem and kill children and assassinate people and make rash comments about the age of Arafat being over. Because that wouldn't be very helpful right now.

Yesterday the Pentagon announced that it had destroyed the camps in Afghanistan, today that it had sent in Rangers. What is this, the war of the Boy Scouts? I picture a lot of people wearing short pants, running around tying knots and rubbing two infidels together to start a fire and ... I think I'll just let this concept die a natural death right here.

I finally figured out what all those comments about bin Laden, Taliban et al not representing "true" Islam reminded me of, and it was the endless, obnoxious, hopelessly smug "Who counts as a Jew" debate that Israel engages in.

What's more worrying, anthrax in the heating ducts or Bruce Willis in the heating ducts?

2 websites:

http://homepage.mac.com/gwchimp/
http://206.67.50.61/assetsFromHumor/comics/dancingbush.swf

Another sign that science must be stopped: phone lie detectors, soon to be used by British insurance companies to deal with claimants. They claim over 90% accuracy rate.

A Guardian columnist, suggesting that the American political elite isn't up to its new task of dealing with foreign stuff, quoted Joe Biden, now chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who suggested that the Norwegian countries could act as intermediaries with Afghanistan. Knowing Joe, he was just reading off the paper of whoever sat next to him (Jesse Helms?)

Colin Powell is busy negotiating the shape of the next Afghan government with Pakistan, Iran, Peru for all I know, anyone, basically, who isn't actually Afghan. He is willing to include "moderate Taliban members." I think we once exchanged arms for hostages with their Iranian cousins.

Funnier than moderate Talibans was the description on ITN of Rehavam Zeevi, the guy assassinated yesterday, as the hardline tourism minister. Or possibly it was the minister of hardline tourism. I think hardline tourism is where you demand that the locals serve you food you're familiar with, speak your language, and you speak very loudly and slowly to them if they don't. No wait, that's American tourism. Zeevi has been advocating a full-scale invasion of the West Bank and Gaza, so I'm guessing he wasn't that good as a tourism minister. Actually, Zeevi was a big ole shit (I was going to call him a pig, but it didn't seem kosher, although Muslims keep calling Bush a dog, probably because they've heard that he can lick his own genitals, but I digress) and when he joined the government I correctly called it an act of war. I haven't heard what the US reaction has been, although it'll be interesting to see if they label this assassination terrorism but not the one by the Israelis that this was in reaction to, and whether Dubya knows that Zeevi once called his father a lying anti-Semite.

The House by a vote of 404 to 0 suggests that public schools use the slogan God Bless America, presumably because America has just sneezed. The pledge of allegiance is also big just now, even in Madison, which reversed its previous decision and will now allow either the pledge or the Star-Spangled Banner, which under the old rule was to be instrumental only, you know, the easy listening version. This is to comply with a state law requiring a daily display of patriotism. I'm assuming that foreign students are also required to sing God Save the Queen or O Canada or Waltzing Matilda, as appropriate. I don't mind them singing the Star-Spangled Banner, as long as they sing all of it, including the "their blood shall wash out their foul footsteps' pollution" line some of us spent too much time at Santa Cruz trying to figure out how to sing.

The 9th Circuit says that a new trial is needed in the case of someone sentenced to death by a judge with a history of major marijuana abuse. They could tell because he kept giggling, I'm guessing.

Imelda Marcos says the new fraud charges against her are a witch hunt. Yup.

Speaking of the free market, the Pentagon has been buying up all the civilian satellite images of Afghanistan. Not because they need them for operational purposes--the Pentagon has 7 satellites including 4 Keyhole satellites over Afghanistan, which are better than the civilian ones. Let me give you a hint: they started this policy last Thursday, when they first bombed a large number of civilians. You're wondering why they didn't just order the satellite company not to sell any photos to news organizations? Yes they have the legal right to do that, but would have been challenged in court under the 1st Amendment by someone (at least I hope they would have been--the news networks were already amazingly supine before they started getting fan mail). It was easier just to buy everything (no I don't know the cost).

The military have also admitted targetting the leaders of Afghanistan's military, which they say is legitimate "decapitation" of command & control. By which definition the plane crashing into the Pentagon no longer counts as a terrorist act.

The US has evidently given a security guarantee to Uzbekistan. Terrific.

The terrorism bill is moving rapidly towards becoming a law. Who knows what it'll turn out to have in it; not the Congress, which is being asked not to bother reading it (this is supported by chairman of the House Rules Cmte, David Dreier, who I've never heard of). This laziness extends to the newspapers. The Post yesterday (or the Times?) said that it was believed that the government could in practice hold foreigners indefinitely without charges, despite the theoretical deletion of that provision. What's the loophole? The paper didn't say. Russ Feingold had 3 amendments. What were they? Who knows? (It's not on his website either). One had to do with the definition of a cyber-terrorist, which is now anyone who accesses a computer without authorization. I assume all the definitions of new crimes are equally vague, since the one about harboring a terrorist doesn't require any proof of knowledge of any actual
terrorism.

There's a piece below from the Sunday Times by John Le Carre. There is also a good long piece about how Arab countries got the way they are by Fareed Zakaria (www.sunday-times.co.uk, the terrorism section).

Has anyone noticed that Bin Laden still hasn't claimed credit. In fact, his son just denied it.

Saturday's Post has a story whose headline is that Afghanistan isn't just being bombed, but they're smart bombs hitting select targets. Guess that got out there before a smart bomb (and it was a smart bomb) missed it's target by, literally, a mile and took out a village in a poor neighborhood.

I saw a tiny bit of the footage of Dubya continuing to read to children on 9/11. It was on MSNBC and I tuned in just at the wrong time to see much. There were a bunch of reporters and they all knew what was going on and, horrifyingly, started asking Bush about it the second he closed the book, in front of all those children.

Medical tampering in God's domain story of the week: It is possible to transplant working wombs into infertile women. You'd transplant it in from a relative or a hysterectomy patient, have a child or two, and then get rid of it (so you wouldn't have to remain on anti-rejection medication).

It's official: Hollywood is all out of ideas. Despite fewer films than ever being green-lighted, one of them is a version of Hawaii Five-0.

The moron / the war

A nauseating editorial in today's NY Times, "Mr Bush's New Gravitas." It follows what Bush has been saying to his staff, which is that nothing the administration was doing before 9/11 counts anymore (except for drilling in Alaska--that's evidently now a national security issue. Oh, and Son of Star Wars). No no, you only get one do-over in life, and then only if you're white and rich, and he got his at age 40. If Clinton was the
Come-back Kid, Bush is the Etch-a-Sketch Kid.

Asked about Saddam Hussein at his press conference, Bush said that he was an evil man because "he gassed his own people." Right, what was it you used in Texas--electric chair, lethal injection? Mr. Humanitarian, all of a sudden.

Evil-doers

NY Times headline: "Stock Market Shrugs Off Airstrikes". Who called in airstrikes on the stock market? I mean it's a great idea, don't get me wrong....

That widow will not be deported as an illegal alien. They still plan to take more of her death benefits so she won't be able to afford her mortgage, but lawyers are donating their services on that one.

According to a driver trying to cash in, or perhaps this is inspired by those frat guys at the CIA, some of those hijackers had hookers in their rooms. And, to answer the question you're all asking: 20 minutes.

Speaking of those fun-loving frat guys, do you think they believed that all the news networks would fall for that line about encoded messages? It actually worked, though. CNN promised not to run any more bin Laden et al tapes without asking permission from the government first, and everyone else pretty much followed.

Still more embarrassing than that America Strikes Back thing is how the news channels switched so completely from covering the war to those anthrax cases.

Finally, a quote from Arnold Toynbee from 1954, from a review of the Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotes, which sounds like it would be a great gift, a great gift for someone to buy for me, if I was being too subtle earlier in this sentence: "America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair."

The US is dropping cluster bombs on Afghanistan. Which means children will die when picking up the brightly colored unexploded ordinance (5-12% of the bombs dropped).

I'd have to say Bush has indeed managed to kill more foreigners than Americans now. Within a couple of days he should reach the next plateau, when he kills the same proportion of the Afghan population as died in the terrorist attacks.

At his press conference today, how many times did he use the phrase "evil-doers"? I think he's channeling Adam West as Batman talking about the Penguin.

Moron's War

Within an hour of 9/11, someone in a British department was sending a memo to the minister suggesting that now was a great time to release embarrassing information. And they did.

Bush says that his act represents the collective will of the world. Odd, I didn't think it was a UN operation. No, the thing about decision-making in the global world is that it's like the 19th century (or at least 19th-century Britain): a tiny electorate, all rich.

So evidently America Strikes Back. This is the title on the graphic at CNN. And MSNBC. And Fox News. And McNeil-Lehrer. There's nothing like unanimous jingoism.

Ashcroft says that we should be alert to our surroundings. For example, Bush just realized that he lives in the White House now. And don't think he wasn't surprised.

According to the bin Laden tape, the world is now divided between believers and infidels. Great, as long as I don't have to be on the side of either Bush or bin Laden. Go infidels! My peeps!

Finally: Rush Limbaugh is a big fat deaf idiot.

Morons' Crusade

The Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan, looking pointedly at Pakistan, said "Afghans are never prepared to compromise their religion and their honor for money." He later corrected the statement, saying "I meant to say `asked,' not `prepared.' What's up with that?"

A Guardian columnist considers the way the CIA & FBI are puffing up the bin Ladinettes to be excessive. Poison gas, germ warfare, nuclear weapons. Sure they've got all that stuff. But they brought down those skyscrapers with a few penknives. But how can you defend upping the CIA budget 9% to defend against that. So they have to turn him into Ernst Stavro Blofeld (I know I used the Blofeld thing last month, but the Guardian got there 3 weeks late. Actually, I used Darth Vader in '98, and I was saving Lex Luthor for whenever it seemed appropriate. Did you notice Congress decided not to investigate the CIA on how they failed so abysmally? Cause the CIA has always done so well when allowed to regulate itself in the past.

The Slate tries to guess what the hell bin Laden was talking about in his video, like what happened 80 years ago that was so bad. Who knows, really, what the hell he thinks. His head is so full of weird ideas you'd think he gets the internet in that cave. A reporter who interviewed him a while back says he thought that some US states might secede because of Washington's support of Israel.

I facetiously asked what was written on the sides of the bombs. As it turns out, "NYPD".

I could go two ways at this point: either a joke about Dennis Franz's ass, or a reference to "Guiliani Time"--extra points if I work in a mention of a plunger.

Morons with missiles

To war, to war, Fredonia's going to war.

Would it have been so hard for Tony Blair not to have participated in the first day, when the reporter Yvonne Ridley had been released but was not yet out of Afghanistan?

A new book is due out trashing Clinton for his actions in his last days, written by Barbara Olson. Terrif.

Yes, I'm sure dropping a few aid packages with big notices that they are gifts from the American people will really win over the Afghan people. What's written on the sides of the bombs?

I remember suggesting a pool for when Bush would have killed more foreigners than he has Americans (actually, a comedian I saw on tv said that he wasn't worried about that--Bush was just executing Texans, right?). Did anyone have this week? New pool: when will he have killed more people than he claims bin Laden has.

The FBI went after the American web-site of the Real IRA
(motto: Really!). It was raising funds.

A piece in the Guardian used the term Western Fundamentalism, which I rather like. Its key characteristics mirror those it complains about from bin Laden: unquestioned belief in its own superiority; assertion of universal applicability of its values; lack of will to understand what is different from it.

The problem there, though, is that the Morons Crusade is a step back from an attempt to impose Western beliefs and values. Well, it is and it isn't. We do hear about the Taliban's treatment of women, which hasn't noticably exercised anyone in the US government the last few years (although not about its tendency to drop walls onto homosexuals), but it's not like we're going to care what the next Afghanistan gov does with its women, any more than we pressured the Saudis to let women drive or Kuwait to let them vote. Western values may be a stick with which to beat the
wogs, but it's not like we care that much about it in principle. See an article in the Village Voice (villagevoice.com) on treatment of homosexuals by our new bestest friends. Similarly, we cared so much about the Taliban's cultivation in poppy, but didn't applaud them when they stopped it, or note that our other new bestest friends the Northern Alliance now produces 90% of it. Think anyone will object to Pakistani president for life Musharaf grabbing more power and jailing his opposition, as he did today? Think anyone will suggest to the Saudi leaders that they'd have less opposition if they were less blatantly corrupt? Oh, whatever, I've lost my train of thought and I need a nap. Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, everyone!

So when they finally identify the bodies of the hijackers, do they give them back? So far, they're trying their damndest not to identify them, but it'll have to happen.

The US (Ashcroft, at least) is pissed at Britain for requiring that anyone it extradites not be executed, as required under European law.

But we are happy to send them back the widow of one of their citizens. The couple had lived in the US I believe 8 years and had 3 sons here. Since they were here on his work visa, the INS told her, two days after he was killed in the World Trade Center because he made sure children and people in wheelchairs got out first, that she would be deported. And they plan to keep 60% of the life insurance too.

On the day Sharon was doing his poor little Czechoslovakia act, he also sent quite a few troops and tanks into Poland. I mean the West Bank.

Has the bipartisan consensus ended yet? Cause I'm getting bored. And because Bush wants to give tens of billions in tax breaks, permanent ones, to the healthiest corporations, just like his airline bailout didn't distinguish between healthy and dying airlines. It's all free money, after all. See the thing is, Bush believes in free money, because it always has been. When he wanted to go into the oil business, his father's friends gave him lots to play with and didn't ask for it back when he lost
it. When he wanted the value of his baseball team to increase
dramatically, the good people of wherever it was decided to raise their sales tax so that he could be a millionaire.

Gregory Hemingway, son of Ernest, has died, in the Miami Women’s Detention Center. That probably requires some explanation. I know he liked dressing in women's clothing, but he was found wandering around naked, so I'm guessing even the Miami police could tell the difference.

Chinese immigrants to Australia don't die. Only 6 out of 55,000 in the last 10 years. It's assumed their identities are being passed on, but where the hell are the bodies?

No need for additional evidence

There must be convincing evidence of bin Laden's guilt. Tony Blair says so.

Although it seems that we're actually beyond the proof phase. This is a technique I have commented on before, adopted from Bush the Elder in relation to Iran-Contra, when he couldn't tell what he knew, couldn't tell what he knew, couldn't tell what he knew, and then, whoops, now it was ancient history and he wouldn't dwell on the past. Yesterday I heard Rumsfeld saying that there was convincing evidence that we should all have been convinced of by now. Rummy: "There is no need for additional evidence." As Alice said to the Mad Hatter, how can I have additional evidence when I haven't had any yet?

The Car Show website has a list of the top 10 gay cars.

The Taliban still want to negotiate with the US over bin Laden. I foresee a Solomonic compromise....

The House intelligence committee calls for a "cultural revolution" at the FBI and CIA. Cool, let's send them into the countryside to learn from the peasants.

For those playing along at home, the last 3 items contain one literary, one religious and one historical reference.

A woman in Britain is suing her (private) school for loss of future earnings because they inadequately taught her Latin. She's going to be a lawyer.

Al Kamen's column in the Post says that the Christian Coalition, under the headline Protect Your Family, says that defending against terrorists isn't enough, you need to give them $23 a month for a porn filter.

Oddly enough, they may be right. An article in the Guardian on the Blair government's proposals, like Bush's, to be able to decrypt any e-mail, it says that actually the bin Ladinistas avoided using decryption, which would just have drawn attention to themselves. Instead, they embedded their messages in porn image files.

What is it with the South African government and bogus AIDS cures? A company owned by the government has been testing one such cure, made from burnt coal, on Tanzanian soldiers. Or were until the Tanzanian government caught them doing it.

I've been reminded that Pakistan's military leader is one of those whose name Bush was unable to come up with when a reporter gave him that pop quiz last year. Remember how some people derided the idea that he'd ever need to know that name, which I seem to recall he guessed as "Mr. General."

Things are beginning to return to normal. Bush was smirking all over the place today, Guiliani has reverted back to being an asshole...

There are now (I haven't seen them) public service announcements by celebrities about how we shouldn't beat up or discriminate against Muslims and Arab-Americans. One (transcript in the Friday NY Times) was by John McCain. You know, the guy who called Vietnamese gooks last year and didn't see anything wrong with that.

I wonder if American foreign policy hasn't become slightly dechristianized in the last 2 weeks. Sanctions have been removed from Sudan, which was on the Fundamentalist hate list because it killed and enslaved Christians, and you haven't heard much about those missionaries imprisoned in Afghanistan, either.

Historian Sean Wilentz suggests that Guiliani, instead of trying to retain his mayoralty by arguing that he is more indispensible than Lincoln in 1864 or FDR in 1944, should be appointed next ruler of Afghanistan.

There is a letter to the NY Times today from someone who announced that they were a member of a support group for people who have lost a loved one to suicide. They are upset by the term suicide bomber, and wish people would stop using it. It just adds to the stigma associated with suicide, she says.

Bush says that we are in "hot pursuit" of bin Laden. It's unclear whether he knows that this was a legal term, one used in the past to violate the borders of other countries, such as the hot pursuit of Pancho Villa into Mexico in 1916 or the invasion of Cambodia in 1970.

Two Air Force fighters were scrambled to help stewardesses force a passenger to put out his cigarette.

A State Dept document says that the Taliban do not represent the Afghan people, who never elected them.

And they say irony is dead.

Attorney General Ashcroft says that the suicide bombers (take that, support group!) don't represent Islam. Mr. Ashcroft, you will remember, thinks that dancing is Satan's handiwork.

Thank you Silvio Berlusconi for making Dubya look good by comparison. It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.

Richard Perle on the Newshour today, but without repeating (or being asked about) something he evidently wrote last week, in which he called people who don't join the Crusade "Vichyites."

John Major admits that the allies did try to assassinate Saddam Hussein by bomb during the Gulf War.

Britain has pretty much lost interest in the crusade, thanks to the scandal that one of the many tv companies that followed Prince William on his first day of college failed to leave afterwards as they promised. And the company is owned by Prince Edward.

So the Bushies almost admit that they lied about threats to Air Force One, which never made any sense to begin with. If America had a 2-party system, the fact that they were spinning just like Clinton from minute one might have consequences. Fortunately for them, we don't.

I understand they also tried to get NBC not to interview Bill Clinton last week.

Bush told the Afghan people to overthrow the Taliban but don't expect any help from us. Ask the Kurds or the Iraqi opposition what that's like. In Bush's words, "We're not into nation building." Just blowing them up. He also made a speech at the CIA today. I only caught about 30 seconds of it on C-SPAN before nausea overcame me and I switched off, but in that 30 seconds he said 3 times that bin Laden is "misunderestimating" the American people.

He really did give Chechnya to Putin, just as a I said he would.

The week before 9/11, Salman Rushdie was pretty much banned from airplanes by the FAA and we don't know why, but the answer is probably quite interesting.

Seen the tape of bin Laden's 10-year old kid reciting anti-American poetry? Talk about your hydras: bin Laden has 17 kids. The event on the tape was the marriage of his 19-year old kid to a 14-year old Egyptian girl. Yick.

Morons' War

Say what you will about Bush, but Clinton would have bombed the shit out of something by now.

The Queen now has a mobile phone. She has not yet customized the ring.

The FAA grounded crop-dusters yesterday for fear that Osama bin Laden was going to try to kill Cary Grant.

Bush, who last month was undercutting efforts to cut down on foreign banking secrecy because his campaign contributors don't like to declare their income, is now trying to force every bank in the world to obey his orders and freeze bank accounts of people he doesn't like. This came a suspiciously late 13 days after the attacks.

If you want a metaphor for the Bush administration's inability to understand how people could see things any other way than exactly the way they do, how about the changing of the offensive-to-Muslims Operation Infinite Justice to Operation Enduring Freedom. Remember: "enduring" is meant as an adjective, not a verb.

Britain's foreign minister, talking to Iran and thus causing Ariel Sharon to throw a hissy fit, offers it a role in deciding Afghanistan's next government.

All the talk about how disciplined the Bush people are, and there they go briefing against each other: we will overthrow the Taliban; the Taliban aren't a target; we will give evidence; no we won't.

The pilots' union wants their members to be allowed to carry guns. But it says that those allowed to would first be given psychological tests and background checks. Oh good, because we'd hate for them to put in charge of something that could be used as a weapon without.... Oops.

Moron's Crusade

Last week I asked just what deals Bush might now be making. We've got some hints with the ending of sanctions on India and Pakistan, the two countries in the world most likely to go nuclear, and one of those a bit fragile at the moment (to say nothing of being ruled by a coup leader). How 'bout the Central Asian republics granting the US the use of airbases? Both have hundreds of (mostly Islamist) dissidents locked up. How about Bush's request for the authority to waive sanctions against Iran, Syria etc if they join the Morons' Crusade? Bush was on the phone with Putin today, doing that thing at which he is most dangerous--talking. What did he give away? Probably nothing on Son of Star Wars, but how about a promise not to criticize any actions in Chechnya? or not allow the Baltic states into NATO? How about the fact that Bush was callling him in the first place to get Russia's permission to use air bases in countries that are not part of Russia anymore?

In today's NY Times Week in Review there is a fake picture evidently making the rounds of the internet, showing Satan's face in the smoke of the World Trade Center. The story it's connected to is about the Nostradamus hoax and so forth. Remember that the next time you see one of those stories about how ignorant the Afghans are with no outside media, thinking (like everyone else in the Muslim world) that it was really the Israelis behind 9/11 (9/11 seems to be the official name now).

Also in the Week of Review, and nowhere else in the paper, and tucked into the middle of a story, it says that this was the week the Times was supposed to have given the results of its recount of Florida, and now it may never.

I don't think I've written this in actual electrons, though I've said it to some of you, but a genuinely oppositional press, well tv, could seriously damage Bush. When he was first told of the plane hitting the WTC, he was reading to children in Florida. We've seen that image, so there were cameras there. He went back to the book. They interrupted again and told him of the 2nd crash. He went back to the book. For 6 minutes, I believe. Imagine seeing the footage of those 6 minutes. To be really cruel (remember what CNN did to Bush the Elder during the Gulf War?) you could run it split screen with pictures of what was happening in NY in those minutes. Or with the black box tape from the Penn. crash. Unfair, you say? It was certainly clear by the 2nd if not the 1st crash that terrorists were using airplanes as weapons. Only 1 man had the authority to authorize shooting down airplanes. And instead of collecting the information he'd need to make that decision, and ordering planes scrambled, he was busy with the hungry caterpillar. (Update. Sorry: pet goat, not hungry caterpillar. My bad.)

75% in a poll say the assassination ban should be lifted. It's in an executive order, so who's to say it hasn't already been? Clinton said this week that the ban only ever applied to heads of state (professional courtesy, I guess), and that he tried to have bin Laden assassinated.

I wondered why that list of banned songs included Sinatra's NY, NY. "Top of the heap". Oh yeah.

The latest brilliant idea re Afghanistan (which by the way has never, so far as I know, sponsored terrorism in the US, unlike, say, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya...) is to restore the monarch. Who is 86.

The problem with Bush's jihad is of course the one Republicans saw in every one of Clinton's military adventures: no end strategy. Asked about that 2 days ago, Rumsfeld hemmed and hawed and then said that the end would be when Americans were persuaded that they were safe. Actually, much of what we've heard about security the last 2 weeks has been entirely about PR. Listen to it the next time someone talks about planes or skyscrapers: the language most of the time is about making people feel they are safe, not actually making people safer, except inasmuch as it is necessary to the goal of altering perception.

See the Salon article "God bless Big Brother" for some of the details of Bush's wish list for tearing down constitutional protections, email, wiretaps, lowered standards of proof, indefinite detention of aliens, use in US courts of information collected by foreign countries in violation of 4th Amendment rights, including info obtained by torture, etc etc.

The Constitution proper is also being edited. Rumsfeld is spending money not appropriated by Congress, under the Food and Forage Act from the Civil War, which I assume had something to do with Union troops needing provisions not having telephones and credit cards. And the "Homeland Security Agency" (what a title), headed by a Cabinet-level official Bush who does not intend to have ratified.

In the World Latest section of the Guardian, see the story about the importance of TM (transcendental meditation, remember that?), Yogic flying and so on in the Mozambican government.

And see the Tom Toles cartoon for the 17th, available on Yahoo or ucomics.com.

Contrary to what someone I spoke with thought, and indeed the NY Times editorial page thought, Bush didn't actually tell Americans to stop beating up anyone wearing a diaper on his head (to coin a phrase). He said "the enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends". The phrasing constructs Muslims as not being part of America, as outsiders, friends of America but not actually capable of being Americans.

The demand that Afghanistan destroy training bases and then let Americans inspect them must be clear to everybody as something not intended to be accepted. The Taliban are still persisting in their demand that some sort of evidence be presented first, which is of course a stalling tactic, but is also something demanded by countries we actually have extradition treaties (and indeed, diplomatic relations) with, such as Canada and France.

The US is using a military base in Saudi Arabia, constructed by the bin Laden family.

If you thought Bush should have used his little speech to mention something about not beating up Muslims, how 'bout Rep. John Cooksey (R-LA), who said that everyone wearing "a diaper on his head" should be stopped and questioned.

By the way, the most disquieting thing about being on campus during a period like this (the flags are back on the fire trucks, by the way) is hearing essentially your own political opinions in the language of 19-year olds. Scary.

God not neutral

I had to check the Web to confirm that I heard a line in Bush's speech correctly. Yes, he did say that God was on our side. Well, that God was not neutral between various things--maybe he was saying God was on the other side, but he was certainly positioning God somewhere. He just does not learn. I'm getting a little tired of God being invoked, of being ordered into church to pray, but probably not as pissed off as the Muslims were who heard Bush declare that the terrorists blaspheme Allah. One victory for the Muslim PC crowd this week, however, was that the code name for the Moron's Crusade, Infinite Justice, had to be changed when it was pointed out that only Allah can provide infinite justice.

Incidentally, what do you think of "Moron's Crusade"? I wanted something that would invoke the Children's Crusade. I'm open to suggestions for improvement, including the question of where to put the apostrophe. I'm leaning towards alternating.

Bush opened by criticizing the terrorists for trying to remake the world (New World Order anyone?) and "impose their... beliefs on people everywhere." He closed by saying "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. Do as I say, not as I do.

Once again, he forgot to ask the good patriots of America to stop beating up Muslims (and the occasional Sihk).

Meanwhile, the mission in Macedonia was quietly extended, but the hardliners are stalling introducing rights for Albanians by demanding a referendum, months down the line. Why are out troops there?

The Russian Duma has legalized the ownership of land.

The Daily Californian
U.S. Flags Removed From Fire Trucks for UC Protests Officials Attempt to Avoid Confrontation, Safety Risks
By STEVE SEXTON and NATE TABAK
Thursday, September 20, 2001

Berkeley fire officials ordered flags to be removed from the city's fire trucks Wednesday, at least temporarily.

The decision was made by top department brass in order to avoid a
confrontation between protesters who might try to steal the flags and the firefighters who would defend them, said Assistant Fire Chief David Orth. Orth said the "operational decision" was made in preparation for a protest today on Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley.

"We are fearing protesters might try to rip the flags off the rigs," Orth said. "I am not concerned about losing a flag; I am concerned about them defending the flags instead of doing what they are supposed to do. They would defend the flag."

Rumsfeld threatens to bomb Afghanistan (or whatever) even if bin Laden is handed over. OK, it is now time to state the obvious: Bush does not want bin Laden turned over to the US alive. As I suggested yesterday, there is that little problem of evidence, but there is also the question of what he could reveal about the CIA aid he received over the years, the problem that there might well be more terrorism and hostage-taking specifically aimed at securing his release. And so on. So comments like Rumsfeld's, or Bush's, may well be deliberate, to make sure we're not ever embarrassed by getting what we say we want.

Not that Afghanistan could turn him over if it wanted to at this point, since he disappeared into the mountains.

I'm told that the Afghan populace really don't like the "Arab Afghans," the Muslim Arab loons who helped them "liberate" the country and stayed for the women. You'll notice there is no suggestion of even one Afghan national involved in any of bin Laden's alleged plots.

Today's announcements were all a little odd, like reading one of those documents released under the Freedom of Information Act with all the important parts blacked out. Bush makes a public plea for Arab states to help us secretly (some secret), while Ashcroft says that the terrorists were helped by some foreign state or states, which he won't name.

The state most likely to go into civil war over all this is Pakistan. Isn't it nice to know that it's a nuclear power?

Well, my friend may lose his job at US Air, but according to the papers there are plenty of businesses thriving right now, and he should clearly get into selling flags, guns, or Nostradamus. The first person who figures out how to combine the three should make out just fine.

For days I've been meaning and forgetting to say this: perhaps the creepiest statement to come out of the administration is not any of Bush's nonsense but a considered remark of Colin Powell that other nations are either with us or against us. This is not a cliche, this is a threat.

The Justice Department has draft legislation allowing Attorney General Palmer, I mean Ashcroft, to detain and deport aliens, including those with green cards, without showing evidence to any court. The "terrorists" he can deport are defined as people who use a weapon, any weapon including a pen knife, for any reason other than "mere personal monetary gain." I love that "mere."

Opposition has come to an end, with those jets evidently having sheared off the balls of the Democrats, shriveled though they were. Ashcroft's nonsense (and I hope you all understood the Palmer reference, although I noticed not one of you noticed what I swear was a typo last week when I gave the wrong year for McKinley's assassination. For shame) and his wiretapping bill will doubtless pass. The ACLU's press officer has all week been telling the press, without a hint of irony, “I'm not at liberty
to say anything”; the Dems dropped a provision in the Pentagon budget stopping missile defense testing that violated the ABM treaty; and the Sierra Club has decided not to criticize Bush on anything whatsoever. Thank god you still have me, eh?

Chihuaha state in Mexico has repealed a new law reducing the minimum sentence for rape to 1 year if it could be proved that the victim had "provoked" it.

In Spain today, the very first attempt to steal euros. Didn't succeed.

British rats have learned how to dive for mussels, shell and eat them. Expect the rat population to explode. Still, not a surprise after the last week that the rats are getting smarter, is it?

There's always that problem when someone's stated rationale is valid, but isn't their real motive. The Taliban are saying that before they hand over bin Laden, they'd like to see some actual evidence that he's guilty of something. Hey, you and me both. Remember we never heard of this guy before 1998 (when long-time readers will remember I expressed my doubt about whether he really was the '90s Blofeld), and have never been presented with anything resembling evidence. What I've heard doesn't even amount to circumstantial evidence. "Well, it's terrorism, right? And he does that kind of thing, right?" Oh sure, it's secret intelligence stuff, so it can't be made public. Then how do you expect to hold a trial? Not that bin Laden could get a fair trial. Maybe we should stop using legal words altogether. Afghanistan isn't refusing to "extradite" him--there is no extradition treaty with Afghanistan, whose government we don't recognize. Any process would be extra-judicial. Which may be acceptable under the circumstances, but let's not pretend it's something other than what it is, an act of pure power politics.

The evidence would presumably come from the same intelligence agencies that last week fucked up fairly dramatically. And what is the standard of evidence applied by the Bushies, anyhow? If they're convinced that bin Laden is responsible, does that mean the evidence is better than that suggesting that arsenic in the drinking water is bad? better than the evidence for global warming? better or worse than the evidence that Star Wars will work?

Sharon says, out loud, that he is refusing talks with Arafat in hopes that Arafat won't join in Bush's little crusade, so Israel can continue its own crusade against Arafat with impunity.

Bush's use of the word crusade is another reason they should never let him speak in public again. He couldn't have said something more disturbing to the Islamic world if he had called bin Laden a sand nigger. And today he said that he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," which provides the perfect excuse for Afghanistan not to give him up (yes I know how ironic a Taliban stance in favor of due process is--though I'm sure they always have a trial before knocking a wall on top of a homosexual--but irony tends to go unnoticed in politics, as seen in the confirmation last week of Negroponte.)

Speaking of choosing the right words, I've got one to replace all the talk of "an act of war." Actually 3 words: crime against humanity.

Catholic churches in England are to replace the traditional confessional with glass screens, to cut down on sexual abuse of children.

Speaking of which, Swaziland bans sex for 5 years for young women. Also shaking hands. Also trousers. And they're supposed to wear a tassel or something to indicate virginity. I'm assuming they'll also wear other clothes. This will of course wipe out the scourge of AIDS. Good luck with that.

Thanks but no thanks: 1,000 prostitutes marched in Calcutta condemning the terrorist attacks and offering to donate blood.

Austria has a program to deal with arrested young neo-Nazis, forcing them to take a course in History and Democracy. It's assuming that they're just young and bored and ignorant rather than assholes. We'll see.

The term terrorist is great, isn't it? If you can use it to describe your enemies, you're automatically one of the good guys. After something in the 1980s, possibly the discoteque bombing, the first one on the phone to offer crocodile sympathy was the South African president, Botha or De Klerk, because of course the poor white South African people were also fighting terrorists. Ditto the Israelis, who seem to be having trouble refraining from rubbing their hands together in glee (and some didn't refrain, including a couple of cabinet ministers and Netanyahu), and of
course Sharon, who is no more in the right today than he was a week ago, and has no less blood on his hands, thinks he can stop negotiating with Arafat.

At my end, my real modem still isn't talking with Windows, possibly for similar reasons to Sharon and Arafat, my front door broke, my VCR broke, and my diverticulitis seems to have flared up again. On the bright side, my landlord fixed the door, I bought a new VCR I think I kind of like (but not its remote), and there's a cat on my shoulders. Nope, there he goes. Oh dear, Opie and Turquoise just reached the food bowl at the same time. Now they're calling each other terrorists (the extra k's are from using an old unfamiliar keyboard with my old 386 computer which still has a working, if very slow, modem). Now Opie is eating my cat's food and my cat is on the back of the chair I'm sitting in. More bulletins as necessary.

Ridding the world of evil

According to Jerry Falwell, several members of this list, one way or another, are responsible for the terrorist attacks. We should probably all apologize at once.

Rep. Don Young of Alaska thinks the real culprits might be the
eco-terrorists.

Bush says that we will now rid the world of evil. I see him travelling the world fighting evil wherever it arises. Like that guy in Kung Fu. And now he has $40 billion in walkin' around money. You can rid the world of an awful lot of evil for that much. Congress gave him everything he wanted (although the wording on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution is a little better than the first draft), basically a blank check. It then abolished itself and declared him king. Princess Jenna is now second in line of
succession.

Ariel Sharon says that every nation has its own Osama bin Laden and that Arafat is his. (He also sent tanks into Jerico today) Isn't it interesting that he wants to universalize some experience and not others? Just last week they were complaining at the use of the phrase "European Holocaust" in some documents at the racism conference, because the Holocaust is a unique event in their view.

Bush is talking about whipping terrorism. I think he should have buttons printed up: Whip Terrorism Now. I knew Gerald Ford...

The Bush administration is no longer isolationist or unilateralist. Oh goody. Remember how much they were willing to give away to try to win international support for Star Wars--Chinese resumption of nuclear tests, no hassling India over its nukes, etc etc? What sort of bargains do you think he's making now?

Fiji reestablished apartheid this week, if anyone cares.

A panel of the 9th Circuit ruled that the kidnapping of a foreign national (a Mexican) to face charges in US courts is unconstitutional. Probably bad timing on that one, but it'll be overturned in any case.

Bush went to Congress with his version of the Tonkin Gulf
Resolution: power to use the military to do anything against anyone, now and in the future, and $20 billion to spend as he sees fit. Other Bushies have their own wish list. I may have already mentioned the unseemly haste with which Rumsfeld brought up his project of an Official Secrets Act. There will be more of this, of course.

The following piece is an analysis of Bush's performance, in more than one sense. I especially liked how he said at the Pentagon, "Coming here makes me sad." The man is a walking emoticon.

Today I saw (in Berkeley, natch) one of the new VW Bugs painted like one of the old VW Bugs, with rainbows and hearts and such.

Speaking of returns to the old ways, the Empire State Building is now once again the tallest building in NY, which is as it should be. Some of us never took too well to the sacrilege of the World Trade Center.

Speaking of which, the Empire State Building was briefly evacuated today after a bomb-sniffing dog made a mistake. Thrown off by the lingering giant-monkey smell, no doubt.

There was a story I heard this morning and then never heard again, which I assume means it was a fake, but feel free to correct me on this: one of the survivors of the World Trade Center was said to have been on the 82nd story when it collapsed, and sort of rode the collapse down.

As incredibly unlikely as that was, the tv people just put it out there, and there's been a lot of that. The thing I said yesterday about the flights to California having been chosen because they would have more explosive fuel, as obvious as that was, nobody on tv said it during all the time I watched. Another thing they were told and just repeated endlessly was how well organized and coordinated this was. Uh huh, once they were all trained and ready, they demonstrated this coordination by buying tickets for flights that took off within a few minutes of each other, and their organization by all showing up on time for their flights. Big freaking deal. And another: the FBI claims to have evidence that the Pennsylvania plane was targetted at the White House--and Air Force One. What was it supposed to do to Air Force One, which was presumably in Florida and is impossible to hit at the same time as the White House, since it rarely parks in the back yard, or even in the garage.

In the future, first class passengers will no longer be given steak knives. I like to picture a bunch of fat white businessmen eating steak with their hands.

While I was on the phone, I could see that Congress was in session at nearly 1 in the morning, and voting on something. It turned out to be a resolution against terrorist attacks on the US. Sorry I missed that debate. If you're wondering, I won't leave you in suspense: nobody voted against it.

Congress is so desperate to act as if it has a role in this that members are talking about declaring war. Against what or whom, they do not know or care.

Some favorite quotes from the front page of this morning's NY Times. From a guy at an Internet firm in the World Trade Center: "I'm a combat veteran. Vietnam, and I never saw anything like this." No shit, I'm guessing that's because there were relatively few 110-story buildings in the rice paddies?

And from Bush's speech: "These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed." Wasn't that Bush's campaign slogan, "Chaos and Retreat."

Personally I think this was all a plot by Gary Condit to get the media off his back. That's the corollary to the theory that Robert Blake killed Chandra Levy to get the media off his back.

The Latin Grammies were cancelled. Damn you terrorists to hell!!!! Now we'll never know what Jennifer Lopez was going to not wear. Also, Texas postponed an execution. No sense of irony, the Texans.

A cartoon, titled, how they get the froth in the cappacino, shows a cross section of the machine, which contains two large bins, below which are converging pipes. One bin is labelled salt, the other is labelled slugs.

A lot of talk about Pearl Harbor, which should do the video rentals of that crappy (so I hear) movie a lot of good. Too bad it didn't happen 4 days ago, the 50th anniversary of the day Bush the Elder *thought* was Pearl Harbor Day. And in general, a lot of talk about war. It's like the old line that if you owe the bank $1,000, they own your ass, but if you owe them $1 billion, you own their ass. A small enough act of terrorism, and it's a crime, big enough and it's an "act of war."

To interrupt, I've remembered the other thing I meant to say. The 2 biggest fuckees of the day are the guy they just caught who hijacked a plane in 1971 and doesn't think it was a big deal, and the guy who killed someone and, at the sentencing phase, the mother of the victim asked the judge for the maximum penalty--and then dropped dead right there in court. Now, that's fucked.

This might all be good news for Al Gore, who headed the commission that called for much greater airline security, that was rejected on the basis of cost by all the airlines. Good call, guys.

Anyway, I was talking about the war/Pearl Harbor analogy, and I tend to think it's not helpful. Terrorism is a way for a group to punch above its weight. Like a lot of people before them, they came to New York with no more than a dream in their hearts, a knife, and some time in playing with the flight simulator. They're happy enough being called terrorists, but they'd just adore being thought of as warriors, which is how they think of themselves. This is not something we should give to them, and they don't particularly deserve it anyway. Call them criminals. Criminals with small penises. There may be something to the conscious and concerted decision of the country in 1900 not to use Czolgosz's name any more than absolutely necessary.

9/11

Well, you have to be impressed. They hijacked 4 planes and didn't get caught even once, and I presume they got the exact planes they were looking for, since all 4 were trans-continental flights, presumably chosen for their full fuel tanks. Where was the Pennsylvania plane going?

I've forgotten who was the first Congresscritter I saw today crass enough to use this as an excuse for supporting Star Wars (yeah, I'd have thought it did the reverse too, but you know that, against all logic, the fight against missile defense just lost.)

One thing to remember is that the US makes well-deserved enemies without noticing. To wit, two stories I had planned to mention the next time I e-mailed, which is now: 1) Remember the banana wars? Over the years I've sent out a couple of humorous Parliamentary sketches from the Times about attempts during PM's Question Time to make Blair say the word banana. Anyway, the US, acting on behalf of either its banana industry (it has none) or just possibly large multinationals like Dole who contribute heavily to candidates of both parties, succeeded by threat of trade war in forcing the EU to stop protecting its former colonies by buying their produce at above-world-market prices. As a result, several small countries the US couldn't give a shit about, except when it's invading them, have gone bankrupt. Well, it didn't make the NY Times, but Libya just offered to buy the entire banana crops of St Vincent, Grenada (remember them?) and Dominica at above-market prices.

2) Remember Bush's first act in office? The global gag rule on
international family planning services. There was a story in the New Statesman about what this actually meant on the ground, detailing clinics that have had to close in Kenya, Ukraine etc and what they did.

And that's what happens when the US isn't paying attention.

When the news reached Dubya, he was reading to children, which is just about within his capabilities. He finished the book.

Oh, speaking of Curious George, the Daily Show reported that the character's owners of same were pissed that Jews for Jesus were ripping them off in their propaganda. They could get millions for copyright infringement, but, as the show said, it was likely that the defendants would try to Jew-for-Jesus them down.

The NY Times Week in Review has excerpts from yet another book on the philosophy of the Simpsons (the D'oh of Homer). This is getting frightening.

SF Chronicle headline: “Fox Stuns Bush With Demand for Pact”. Of course this is Bush we're talking about, so the headline might as easily have been Fox Stuns Bush With Demand for Coffee With Two Sugars.

First, for a picture of Prince Charles with a woman with a pointy bra, click here.

Phil Gramm and Jesse Helms are retiring. The Senate is in some danger of experiencing a relative shortage of major assholes. I don't know if this is really good, since it always helps to have the enemy's position expressed in the stupidest possible terms in the stupidest sounding accent.

I ask again, why is NATO helping the Macedonian government. The interior minister, Slobbo with training wheels, was seen last month in a revenge raid on an Albanian village at which he insisted that the only casualties were terrorists, including a 6 year old terrorist.

Among the latest UN peacekeepers in Kosovo: Zimbabwean police, who lately have come to a certain expertise in the field of ethnic cleansing.

So the US has been developing a super-anthrax, but it's only for defensive purposes, so that's ok then.

A New Statesman competition plays off some radio program in which someone defined an intellectual as "Someone who, alone in a room with a tea cosy, doesn't try it on."

Other definitions: He speaks several European languages, often in the same sentence. An intellectual looks upon football songs and mobile phones as interesting social phenomena. An intellectual knows exactly how things work, but is unable to work them.

One competitor chose the decalogue format, including: Thou shalt have a bad haircut. Thou shalt not take Foucault's name in vain. Thou shalt watch no television, except Bugs Bunny. Matching socks are mere vanity. Alone in a room with a tea cosy, thou mayst try it on, but then thou shalt leave the room still wearing it.

After coming across that competition, I found an example from the real world: An intellectual is someone who, reviewing (trashing) a made-for-tv movie on Catherine the Great for the American Historical Review, fails to mention that she is played by Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Also reviewed in the AHR is a British documentary about the electric chair. Evidently it was part of the rivalry between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, which was also a rivalry over whether DC or AC would dominate. Edison promoted the use of AC and Westinghouse generators for executions to make the point that AC was more dangerous. Westinghouse therefore funded the appeal of the guy who would become the first to be executed by electricity in 1890 in New York, arguing that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

No one has yet explained to me why on earth NATO is in Macedonia disarming Albanians, when the government is conceding Albanians nothing, the interior minister is openly threatening genocide the minute they are disarmed, death squads roam the streets, and arms are being imported by the planeload.

The race to lead the Tory party into its next humiliation is now in its 83rd exciting week. Last week Kenneth Clarke called Iain Duncan Smith a "hanger and a flogger", which is related to his social policy preferences, not his personal life, I think, and said that if Duncan Smith won, there would be an influx of far-right racists into the Tory party. IDS responded that he personally is one-eighth Japanese. So that's all right
then.

In a story that will go ignored, the remains of 15 bodies (so far) have been found buried at an old US base in Honduras, where the Contras used to be trained....