The "spirit of America": trapped in a coal mine with the water rising. That's about right

Congress rejected Iraq’s offer to let them and any experts they wanted investigate any site they wanted in Iraq. Evidently that wasn’t acceptable because it wouldn’t be humiliating enough. Sure, Iraq is being threatened with war, but given that Iraq is already being bombed twice a week (including yesterday), they could be forgiven for thinking that the last war never actually ended. A Guardian piece on this is appended below.

The Guardian also has a story about Palestinian children who hire themselves out as human shields. Specifically, they get paid to get into cars with strangers (where are these kids’ parents?), who drive to Israeli checkpoints, to prove that these cars are not suicide bombs. Israelis shoot at cars with only one occupant--something that would really speed up the Bay Bridge, if you ask me.

WaPo on how the Republican control of the House since 1994 shifted federal funding from D to R districts.

The Financial Times ran a piece, that no one else has picked up, that the State Dept is trying to kill a lawsuit on behalf of Indonesian villagers against Exxon Mobil, which paid the Indonesian security forces to run a campaign of terror on its behalf. State says it would hurt national security in the war on terrorism. You know, the bad kind of terrorism, not the good kind.

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman notes that when he originally run a quote from Bush in which Bush said that he had earlier said that the promise not to run deficits would only be broken if there was war, recession, or national emergency and “Lucky me, I hit the trifecta,” Krugman was accused of making the quote up. The trifecta quote was real, but the thing about war, recession or nat. emergency, no one can find Bush ever having said that during the election campaign. His promise not to run deficits was never qualified. He lied.

Signing an abortion restriction bill, Bush said, "Today, through sonograms and other technology, we can see clearly that unborn children are members of the human family. They reflect our image, and they are created in God's own image." He also signed a bill banning children from tearing the heads off of Barbie and GI Joe dolls, which also reflect our image.

The pope excommunicates several women who were ordained priests. Evidently that’s a bigger sin than male priests who fuck choir boys. Or did I miss those guys being excommunicated?

Bush meets those coal miners and says that they represent the “spirit of America”, a phrase he used 11 times. The Washington Post notes that he spoke 13 minutes to them, and 30 at a fundraiser.

Not drowning, but waving

Someone at the NY Times wasn’t paying attention to its front page today. 2 of the 3 headlines above the fold are: “Wave of Attacks by Palestinians Kills at Least 14” and “Wave of Pupils Lacking English Strains Schools”. Maybe their headline writer went to the beach this weekend.

While the Bushies are complaining about Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons, Donald Rumsfeld used to be Reagan’s middle east envoy, and was literally in Iraq while it was using poison gas in its war with Iran. And helped broker the deals by which Iraq was sold the helicopters it later used to drop poison gas on the Kurds. Rumsfeld never publicly expressed any concern whatsoever about chemical weapons until the Gulf War.

By the way, did you know that Rumsfeld thought about running for president in 1988?

Israel is preparing for a smallpox attack by Iraq in event of war. They are stockpiling vaccine, but not actually vaccinating. Do you think Sharon is capable of withholding vaccine from the Palestinians? I’m not sure, although I tend to think he is, enough that I hope someone is going to put the pressure on him. During the last Gulf War, gas masks filtered down to the Palestinians very slowly, and...let’s see if I can remember this exactly...certain Orthodox males, unwilling to shave their beards, commandeered some of the masks intended for children.

As Israel bans any travel in the northern West Bank, a report comes out that 1/4 of Palestinian children are experiencing malnutrition. The Israeli “Health Minister” says they brought it on themselves.

A new bizarre law in France allows students as young as 13 to be jailed for dissing their teachers.

Seems I gave Bush too much credit. He did not in fact put down his golf club while deprecating Middle East violence.

Bolivia obeyed the US’s orders and elected our candidate (a millionaire, natch) president. Evidently this is not news.

Ah, France. Where else would vineyard owners sue the Transport Ministry for its campaign against drunken driving.

Bush comments on the latest attack in Israel: "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killings." To show his sincerity, he put down his golf club before saying that.

Quickies: Turkey abolishes the death penalty. Taiwan’s president supports a referendum to declare Taiwan independent. The US resumes training Indonesian death squads, I mean the military. Gerhard Schroder says a vote for him is a vote against war in Iraq (unfortunately, he has no chance in hell).

A very attractive idea

A federal district judge rules that the gov must say how many people it has detained without trial since 9/11 and name them. Ashcroft continues to claim that he is only protecting their privacy rights. Which is especially amusing in the week of the executive perp walks.

Heard Dubya yesterday, talking about how evil Saddam Hussein was, and how he poisoned his own people. With arsenic in the drinking water, no doubt.

The rescued coal miners have sold their story to Disney: hi ho hi ho...

OK, I know I shouldn’t be laughing at this, but... a 12-year old in a wheelchair goes to Lourdes hoping for a cure. Instead, a bus belonging to the Catholic group (I won’t use the word “charity” from the newspaper story, if all it does for people is send them to Lourdes) Handicapped Children’s Pilgrimage Trust, ran him over. The mother is suing.

Joseph Biden’s daughter was arrested outside a bar. Man, that Biden family: even the daughter is plagiarizing from the Bush twins. (Or am I hoping for too long a memory with that joke?)

Percy wouldn't have made that mistake

So Katherine Harris, running for Congress against Percy the dog, again demonstrates her ignorance of Florida election law by not resigning as secretary of state when she started running. And she’s gonna win the election anyway.

The FBI, investigating leaks of its intelligence failures, tried to get the 37 Congresscritters and Senators on the two houses’ intelligence committees to take polygraphs. The Post says that most refused, citing separation of powers, but doesn’t say who gave in. I want names.

They are, however, less protective of their powers to consider treaties, voting unfettered fast-track trade negotiating powers to the president for five years. This is clearly unconstitutional, and not just because it is removing power from Congress and putting it into the hands of trade representatives, who are usually wholly owned subsidiaries of big business. No, the major problem is that the current Congress is voting away the power to amend any treaty which is inherent in the Congresses elected in 2002, 2004 and 2006, as if greater sovereignty inheres in this Congress than in those. No Congress may bind its successors, no temporary congressional majority may partially annul the results of the next 3 elections. This is a constitutional issue of the highest order. And yes, I am the only person in America who cares about this.

Iraq has offered to restart negotiations with the UN on inspection. The US says there is nothing to negotiate with except complete surrender. So now the US is also writing the UN’s press releases.

The US is evidently now pressuring other countries to promise not to turn US citizens over to the International Criminal Court. Romania is the first to give in.

If tyranny is to prevail, you must first kill all the lawyers

A federal judge rules that US courts have no jurisdiction over prisoners in Guantanamo. This is fascinating. That means that there are places in the world that are literally beyond any law, in which no courts and no legal code operate. Imagine, a society that has no lawyers: Guantanamo must be heaven itself.

Not only were no non-alarmists called to testify to the Senate on Iraq, but the Bush admin didn’t send anyone either. Evidently it’s “too early.” The one good thing about this Bush is that he doesn’t call Saddam Hussein “Sad-dammm” in that obnoxious sneering way his father had.

Speaking of one-sided, even though Israel barred UN representatives investigating the Jenin Massacre, a report was somehow still issued, derived entirely from secondary sources. In other words, they issued a report under the name of the UN with no better evidence than you or I could get from the internet. This is unconscionable given that the news reports have, predictably, mostly said that “The UN clears Israel of massacre.” (Actually I’m told it never uses the word massacre, but the UN web server is currently not working, like the UN itself). Moreover, it seems to give equal blame to the Palestinian militants, who shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Where they should have been--and not get slaughtered instantly, I mean--the report fails to say. It’s not quite a whitewash, but enough so that it rewards Israel’s refusal to cooperate.

I feel a little sheepish about quoting another UN report after trashing that one, but what the hell: human beings now use up 40% of all plant and marine growth.

Bush says “We must collectively get after those who kill in the name of some kind of false religion." Ari Fleischer says he didn’t mean all Muslims, just the ones who “distort” Islam, which Georgie considers “a religion of peace.” Given that Bush also considers Ariel Sharon a man of peace, you have to wonder how all those people keep getting killed. Well, as another George once wrote, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is George W. Bush.

No more easy money? But I haven't had any yet, as Alice said to the Mad Hatter.

For the second time, a New York Times editor lets a reporter (I presume the same reporter) juxtapose a story about a Bush plan to screw the poor with how much money he was raising (I reported the last one Saturday). This time he wants to punish those on welfare still more, and raised $1 million, including from people who paid $10,000 to have their pictures taken with him. Bush is horrified at the notion that people on welfare might go to college instead of work--he calls it a loophole. “Now that’s not my view of helping people become independent. And it’s certainly not my view of understanding the importance of work and helping people achieve the dignity necessary so they can live a free life, free from government control.” But first, evidently, government has to squash their dreams, aspirations and chances of ever making more than $8 an hour, like a bug.

Yesterday a study came out that welfare reform is increasing the number of children living with neither parent.

Bush signed the corporate fraud bill that he refused to support earlier this month and seems already to be taking credit for. “No more easy money for corporate criminals, just hard time,” he said. What, they’ll be sentenced by the Supreme Court to serve as president or vice president? He also said that auditors will be audited, accountants will be held to account, and executives...

Guandong province, China, has increased the fines for having a second child to 8 times the couple’s annual income. Now, that’s welfare reform.

The State Department clears itself of any impropriety in its support for the failed coup in Venezuela.

The UN suppresses a report on the US air strike on that wedding, the very report that said that the US removed evidence from the scene. Amazingly, the report was submitted to the US and Afghan governments to release or not. UN investigations are beginning to have all the credibility of an Arthur Anderson account book. Also, Mary Robinson has finally openly accused the US of ordering her fired as head of the UN Human Rights Commission (which I said back in March).

So the Israeli government was going to send an exhibition about Albert Einstein to China. But China suggested they remove all references to Einstein being a Jew, so it’s going to Taiwan instead. The story on this mentioned an incident I hadn’t heard of before, but gave no date: pissed that an arms deal had fallen through, China served an Israeli delegation pork and shrimp. Anyone hear of this?

The US has declared victory in the Philippines and our troops are coming home. God knows what they’ve been doing, although they did rack up the highest death count of the year (helicopter crash). The group they went there to fight still possesses its leadership, the hostage rescue was badly fumbled, but by damn isn’t victory great!

The Congressional hearings on Iraq began today, and they were a poor meek thing indeed. Not a single opponent of war was asked to testify, and there seemed to be none in Congress. The thing is, since the Gulf War, containment has worked (not for the people of Iraq, of course, except for the Kurds, but nobody really cares about them, as the ongoing sanctions show). And you know there is no evidence whatsoever of Hussein having serious weapons capability left when they start talking about how easy it is to hide such programs--evidence, we don’ need no stinking evidence. In fact, the desire to bomb alleged underground labs and bunkers is behind the US’s plan to develop new “bunker-buster” nuclear weapons, and break the Test Ban Treaty in order to test them. I don’t want to see biological and nuclear weapons in the hands of the mustached-one either, but US hypocrisy on this begins to look like the laws they used to have in the South outlawing teaching slaves to read.

A draft national walking strategy

Remember the wedding in Afghanistan that the US bombed earlier this month? The Pentagon is kind of hoping you don’t, of course. They sent in “investigators” to find evidence. And remove it, to make sure no one else could see it, according to a preliminary UN report. I always wondered how you could bomb people and then send in more military to question witnesses (after securing the scene and tying up the women, of course) and expect much cooperation. One might also wonder why we haven’t seen any film from the cameras on the wings of the planes that were supposed to have been shot at.

You may remember the Beijing Evening News printed as true a piece from the Onion about Congress threatening to leave DC unless it built them a brand-new capitol with a retractable dome & luxury boxes, and then it refused to accept that it had made a mistake, challenging an LA Times reporter to prove that it was true. Eventually, they did retract, but they never quite got that the Onion is intended to be satirical. The paper said that some American newspapers make up news in order to make money. “According to congressional workers, the Onion is a publication that never ceases making up false reports.”

The British transport minister has become worried about a study saying that British people are walking less than they used to. “A draft national walking strategy is being prepared,” he said. The Sunday Times headline was “Minister of Sensible Walks.”

This week, the first Tory MP ever to announce his own homosexuality, without being, you know, caught at it, does so. Alan Duncan. And to tie this story in with Monty Python as well, it seems that Duncan’s constituency includes the grammar school that Graham Chapman went to. When he announced his own homosexuality:

the Python team received a letter from a woman outraged that he had confessed to being homosexual. She enclosed several prayers for his salvation and a quotation from the Bible. Eric Idle wrote back stating simply that the rest of the team had “taken him outside and killed him”. She did not write back.

Mr. Duncan has received the support of his party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, whose head looks remarkably like a penis. Other Tory MPs quoted were less supportive, including one called Crispin Blunt, whose name gives a decidedly mixed message.

A rather good “This Modern World” cartoon this week (find it at Salon)

Israel assassinates Ollie North

Bush proposes limiting pain & suffering compensation for malpractice to $250,000. By a mathematical coincidence, he was in North Carolina, where he plans to raise $750,000 for the state Republican party & Elizabeth Dole--that’s one amputation of the wrong leg, one blinding and one accidental death.

The censored Homer Simpson.

On this page there is a picture of the Hamas leader assassinated by Israel. Tell me this guy wasn’t Ollie North in a beard. Oh, and read the story, too. Also, it contains another picture which was on the front page of every European newspaper last week, but didn’t make it into any American source I saw.

Good piece in the NY Times magazine on the future of Afghanistan.

The Times also reports that Colin Powell is urging talks between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Note that he is not urging anyone to speak to those most irrelevant of people, the Kashmiris.

Well, almost the most irrelevant, because that would be the Iraqi Kurds (all Kurds, really), which another story points out are currently enjoying a golden age, because the US is keeping the Iraqi government off their backs--at least until we install the next military dictatorship (one of our top choices is being investigated in Denmark for crime crimes, by the by) and turn it loose on them once again.

The pope visits Canada for World Youth Day. Actually, for the Catholic Church, every day is world youth day, if you know what I mean.

Headline in today’s NY Times: “Bishops Select Lay Board on Sexual Abuse Review.” Double entendre heaven, I hardly know where to begin, with the “lay board” or with “sexual abuse review,” which I see as a Siskel-Ebert sort of thing--the thin priest gives “Father Brian Sodomizes Little Jimmy the Choir Boy” a big thumbs up, but the fat priest thinks it was derivative and doesn’t compare to Father Brian’s early, funny sodomies. (OK, maybe not the place for a Woody Allen reference, or maybe the perfect place.)

Actually, the board has no members of victims groups and just one psychiatrist, who is a founder of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and regularly testifies in court that victims are just making it up. Another member is Robert Bennett, last seen as Bill Clinton’s lawyer. I think I preferred his early, funny sex scandals.

Alaska’s Lt. Governor Fran Ulmer, according to a badly written AP sentence, “took a break from her campaign to become the state’s first female governor to shop for a smaller handgun.” They have really specific elections up there.

The old one didn’t fit in her purse, in case you were wondering.

The House votes to ban “partial-birth abortions.” With no exception for the health of the mother. The bill actually states as fact that it is never necessary for the health of the mother. Congress should be prosecuted for practicing both medicine and assholery without a license.

A gay couple got married in Vermont. Their home state, Connecticut, doesn’t recognize the marriage. So they can’t get a divorce, because while Vermont will marry people who don’t live there, it won’t give divorces to them.

A gift to the poor

The Homeland Security Agency debate goes on. I want to point again to the exclusion of the ATF and my suspicion, which no one else has joined in, that this was a sop to the gun lobby. Today’s NY Times notes that when Ashcroft ordered the FBI not to use gun ownership background checks to investigate terrorism after 9/11, and ordered the records destroyed, he was ignoring Justice’s legal advisers, who said it was perfectly legal to use those records, and then lied to Congress about it.

In 1992 Valentine Strasser took power in a coup in Sierra Leone to become the world’s youngest leader at 25. Today he is broke and lives with his mother. Good.

Under Alberto Fujimori, upwards of 230,000 poor rural Peruvians were forcibly sterilized. Betcha we don’t ever hear much more than that.

Ariel Sharon has been forced by world revulsion to reverse himself and say that if he’d known all those civilians would be killed when he ordered a plane to drop a bomb on an apartment building in the middle of a very crowded city at night (a 10th child’s body was found today, by the way) he wouldn’t have ordered it. This would be more credible if he hadn’t crowed about the great success of the operation yesterday, when he already knew of the deaths. It’s almost enough to sully the reputation of assassinations. “Infanticidal tit-for-tat,” the Guardian calls it.

The Guatemalan government is to make payments to members of the old death squads for their glorious service (the death squads have recently been quietly reactivating). This is the government that acts as a figleaf for former dictator and scum Efrian Rios Montt, one of many, well ok, two, scummy leaders forced out on my birthday.

This is the FBI. Back away from the pizza

As I write, I’m listening to the Senate hearings on Priscilla Owen, or St. Priscilla, as Mitch McConnell dubbed her. She doesn’t actually seem to be listening, which some would consider a problem in a judge. The number of times in which she answered a question that wasn’t actually asked, including the softball ones, and had to be herded back towards what was actually asked, suggested she wasn’t paying that much attention but was, perhaps, looking out the window, watching a squirrel frolic, or waiting for recess, or thinking about boys.

So how much information about us is being handed over to the government by companies we do business with? According to the Village Voice, one unnamed supermarket chain (actually a relatively low-level employee on his own) handed over data from those loyalty cards. So they can profile what a terrorist shops for. Hotels, car rental agencies, travel agencies have handed over information. They are trying to figure out what “normal” patterns are, and what marks you as a terrorist (ordering a lot of pizza delivered and paying with a credit card is a major indicator of terrorist activity. And if you want pineapple or anchovies on your pizza, you have no taste. According to the FBI.). The FBI was handed a list of 2 million certified divers. Without a subpoena even, because no one wants to be seen as uncooperative. Nor did the supermarket chain, or the travel companies or anyone, feel obligated to tell anyone what they did.

Today, a court in Florida finds Salvadoran generals responsible for torture and orders them to pay damages (if you pay for pizza the wrong way the FBI will be all over your ass, but don’t look for these thugs to be deported any time soon). Tomorrow, the US plans to block an enforcement protocol for the treaty against torture, because it might involve inspection of US prisons and detention centers, including Guantanamo.

Only Ariel Sharon would think it wise to call his assassination-by-air-strike a “great success” despite the deaths of 9 children.

Bush’s hubris grows. He now intends a “regime change” in Iran.

The new Right-wing Dutch government runs into a little trouble. The minister for emancipation and family affairs (!), a follower of the dead bald gay guy, turns out to have once worn a uniform and toted a gun in the militia on the former Dutch colony of Suriname, back when said militia was merrily murdering opposition activists. Not the sort of emancipation they had in mind. She has had to resign.

Remember the 1980 Iranian embassy siege in London? It was stormed by the SAS, which evidently had orders directly from Thatcher that there be no “problems” left over. In other words: take no prisoners. Or, as it turned out, execute the prisoners. No word on when Thatcher will be arrested.

If God wanted you to have a tattoo...

I find I haven’t previously mentioned Bush’s nominee to the 5th Circuit, Priscilla Owen. She can probably best be destroyed by tarring her with Enron. When she ran for the Texas Supreme Court, she took a few thousand of their money, and then ruled for them in a tax case worth $225,000 for them. The White House defends this behaviour by noting that 7 of the 9 justices took Enron money and that she had to raise millions to run for the court. So it’s the system that’s corrupt, not her. I know I feel better. But the real reason to destroy her is her fierce anti-abortionism. In a case on judicial bypass of parental notification, she wanted pregnant girls to show an awareness of the physiology of what would happen to the fetus, that they would suffer psychologically and that there were religious objections to abortion. The last, of course, is why she is not fit to serve on any bench. But it’s still the piddling Enron thing that could actually get her, so I say go for it.

Israel looks like backing off deporting the families of suicide bombers. Was this because the militant groups threatened to go after the families of Israeli officials? Was it because they finally realized how bad it made them look, like last week’s apartheid plan, like 2000's attempt to pass a law legalizing the taking of hostages by the government? Is it worse that they actually consider these things to be reasonable steps, or that they’re so out of step with the rest of the world that they don’t even realize how morally repulsive these ideas are to, you know, sane people?

A line from a Daily Telegraph story, which I think it would be more fun to present without explanation: A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said: “This is not something we’ve come across before. It’s not a good idea to put parts of your body into a computer scanner, but then kids will be kids.”

From the Times, news that there are some things people do with their bodies that Ken Starr does consider sacred and private:


July 23, 2002
Starr switches from Monica to body art
From Tim Reid in Washington

KENNETH STARR, the Republican lawyer who hounded President
Clinton with his exhaustive investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, has a new case that this time goes to the heart of the Constitution: the right to get a tattoo.

Mr Starr, a solicitor-general when President Bush Sr was in the White House and a man known for his conservative bent, has taken up the fight of Ronald White, a body artist and punk rocker, who has fallen foul of South Carolina’s anti-tattoo law.

Mr White, 33, is taking his crusade to the US Supreme Court, claiming that needling skin with his designs of dragons, gargoyles and angels should be entitled to the same First Amendment free expression rights as other artists enjoy. In 1999, frustrated by the failure of South Carolina’s politicians to repeal their 1966 law - Oklahoma is the only other state to retain a ban - Mr White tattooed a man on television. The South Carolina authorities took a dim view. He was arrested, fined $2,500 (£1,620) and put on five years’ probation. For that time Mr White cannot carry pistols or rifles, get a drink in a bar or leave the state without informing his probation officer. He appealed to the state’s highest court, citing his constitutional rights, but lost.

Now, with the help of Mr Starr, who views his case as a serious First Amendment issue, he is asking the highest court in the land to decide the vexed issue of tattoos. “It’s our personal right as Americans to choose how we will express ourselves - on our bodies especially - and that is of the upmost importance to me,” Mr White said.

Mr Starr told the court, which is deciding whether to hear the case in full, that it was wrong to outlaw Mr White’s art “in a society that protects liquor advertising and pornography”. He told reporters, however, that he does not himself wear a tattoo, and has no intention of getting one.

Mr White’s nemesis thus far has been J. M. “Jake” Knotts, a South Carolina congressman and a former policeman and Vietnam veteran, who reached the House in 1994 on an anti- tattoo ticket, claiming that they are unclean, ungodly and bad for his state’s image.

“If God wanted you to have a tattoo, he’d have put your name on you,” Mr Knotts, known in the tattoo world as “Thou Shalt Knotts”, declares. [Personally, I feel the same thing about pants, but the police don’t agree with me.]

The tattoo ban dates from the 1960s, when a parlour in New York was blamed for a hepatitis outbreak. Most states banned the practice, but have since relented.

With remarkably little discussion, we are soon going to see the start of Operation TIPS, which stands for Tyrannical Informants Program... Oh, the only thing I can think of for S is Stasi, which is highly appropriate, but doesn’t really work. This is the brilliant idea of getting every postal carrier, cable guy, meter reader, truck driver and possibly crack dealer to report “suspicious behavior” to the government. 1 million informers. Which some say means you have the right to keep meter readers the hell off your property unless they have a warrant, since they’ve been deputized (the Post Office backed out of the program). So the next time you see a meter reader looking in your bathroom window, don’t worry, he’s probably just looking for Al Qaeda. And here’s me writing political manifestos on my computer at 5 in the morning; that’s not suspicious, is it?

Speaking of fascism, Israel has been rounding up the families of suicide bombers to deport them into the vast concentration camp that is the Gaza Strip. Speaking of Israeli responses to terrorism, I caught a couple of minutes of the tv movie of the Antebbe raid on cable tonight, looking to spot my great-uncle, who played Scared Jew #3, before I gave up. OK, that has nothing much to do with anything, but it’s these personal touches that distinguish these writings from Mother Jones.

Yet another use for cow shit

Bush predicts--or possibly orders--that the SEC will clear Cheney.

Bush is firing (or kicking sideways) his gay AIDS adviser. It is suggested that this was because he advocated that gay & bisexual men use condoms. Well, that’s what it says in the NY Times. He was also a critic of the ridiculous abstinence-only sex ed. policies this admin loves (chastely of course) so much.

London Times headline: “Horses Mark Bomb Anniversary.” These are horses, Echo and Yetti, who survived an IRA bomb attack 20 years ago.

Americans, many of them, are claiming political asylum in Canada, from persecution for their use of medical marijuana. 800 Canadians have permits to grow or use marijuana. In the 1960s the Flying Burrito Brothers sang of
“heading for the nearest foreign border/ Vancouver may be just my kind of town/ ‘Cos they don’t need the kind of law and order/ That tends to keep a good man underground.”

From the Belfast Sunday Life, a response to the IRA’s apology this week for accidentally killing and wounding a few hundred people:

A statement issued by a spokesman on behalf on the ‘non-combatant’ people of Northern Ireland:

“‘During several years of armed conflict waged on our behalf by a variety of paramilitary groups, there were many incidents during which we civilians severely inconvenienced our tireless freedom fighters and jeopardised their vital operations. These incidents include: people setting off booby traps which were not intended for them, bearing a slight similarity to ‘legitimate targets’, living in the wrong area, obscuring the targets of snipers by walking recklessly across their own streets, and generally being in the wrong place at the wrong time. While it was never our intention to be killed or seriously wounded, the reality is that on a number of occasions, this was the consequence of our actions. We would therefore offer our sincere apologies’.”

A Hindu nationalist group says people can protect themselves against nuclear attack by smearing themselves with cow dung.

And the new Indian president, as predicted, is fake-Doctor A P J Abdul Kalam, nuclear scientist and vegetarian (because it’s bad to kill a pig, but not to kill 30 million Pakistanis). In fact, President Kalam is on tv right now. Oh my god, he’s covered in cow shit, run for the hills everybody, save yourselves, oh the humanity!

A very sensitive part of its geography

The Spanish fight back in the world’s silliest war, over the uninhabited Parsley Island, occupied a couple of days ago by a few (six, I believe) Moroccans with tents. The Spanish actually sent in the special forces, with attack helicopters and gunboats. According to the Spanish defence minister, “Spain was attacked by force in a very sensitive part of its geography.” Well, that can be very painful. The Times, jokingly I think, calls Morocco’s action the first occupation of Western European soil since WW II. The ownership of the island is actually pretty vague, but given Spain’s attitude towards Gibraltar, the Basques and Catalonia, and Morocco’s continuing illegal occupation of the Western Sahara, I’d say the colonialist impulse is still strong in both countries, so fuck ‘em. Or to put it another way, I say it’s parsley, and I say to hell with it.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the air conditioner, and the first day in a while it’s been cool enough not to need it.

The British government blames its failure to cut teenage pregnancies on the public’s “giggly” attitude towards sex. In other words, and explicitly, they are blaming Benny Hill. Benny’s father sold condoms for a living, by the way (there is a large biography just out, if you can imagine wanting to read such a thing).

The Republicans in Congress have loaded up the bill to tighten up the Bermuda loophole with tax breaks to businesses (designed to help them transfer American jobs overseas) worth 10 times as much as the loophole. You can’t make this stuff up.

Click for the Miami Herald’s report on what happened to all of those Bushies who participated in the post-election fight in Florida. Would you believe that at least 50 of them were given government jobs? Of course you would!

A powerful asset

The Israeli cabinet backs off the apartheid plan. For now.

The US is not only training a new central Afghan army, but also little proxy units to go after Al Qaida. These units are connected with local warlords and not under the central government’s control, and are paid more (by the US, I’m assuming), which means that the central army training programs are being deserted (at least 1/3). So the US is not only helping create private armies, but actively undermining its own puppet central government.

Two of the NY Times columnists in the Tuesday paper focus on Bush’s past economic history, Kristof noting that when the Rangers coerced Arlington into seizing private property for their ballpark, they added to the list properties they wanted to re-sell for a profit (after getting them at compulsory knock-down prices). Krugman focuses on the funds of the U of Texas, which Bush effectively privatized and whose dealings he made secret, so that many (unprofitable) deals were made with cronies, one of whom was Bush himself. He also notes that Bush’s fellow-owners of the Rangers gave him $12 million more than his investment entitled him to, out of the goodness of their hearts, and not because he was the son of the presidents. This is all familiar if you read Molly Ivins’s columns, but bears repeating.

Bush, meanwhile, is calling the current economic slump a “hangover” after an “economic binge.” Far be it for me to contradict Dubya on a subject he knows so much about, hangovers, but what’s he suggesting? That the economic growth of the Clinton years was unhealthy? That all stocks are horribly over-valued and need to come down? That the boast that everyone is a stock-holder now suggests that everyone is a drunken rube now? Actually, the truth is that Clinton’s Justice Dept was even less likely to punish corporate crime than the previous admin (or environmental crimes or...). Is he suggesting that Clinton was soft on white collar criminals? It would be amusing to hear him say it aloud. And rare indeed to hear him say “Clinton” out loud.

When Bush sold his Harken stocks, it was 2 months after he’d signed a promise not to for 6 months. This makes his claim that his sale was unrelated to insider knowledge about the company’s crappy performance, and that he’d always intended to sell to finance the Rangers deal, is that much less believable. The Bushies say that the promise was related to a planned public stock offering and that when it fell through the promise no longer needed to be kept.
Which would mean that Bush knew that the company was in trouble, so even their explanation points to insider trading.

Cheney, who did pretty much the same exact thing with Halliburton stock, is being sued, but, according to Ari Fleischer, “The Vice-President continues to be a powerful asset for the country and the President.” Another example of bad accountancy. There may also be a little fuss over the billions a division of Halliburton is now earning providing support services for the military, at much more money than it would cost the Pentagon to do it itself. The company got into this business after Cheney, the Elder Bush’s defense secretary, changed the rules to allow it...

The government gets John Walker Lindh to plead guilty, armed only with an illegal confession, a raftload of false charges they could never have proven in court, the knowledge that he’d be convicted in this environment whether they proved their charges or not, and a judge hand-picked for his willingness to allow in unconstitutional evidence. The system worked. He pleaded guilty to carrying hand grenades in Afghanistan, which I find hard to believe is against American law, and working with the Taliban, which ditto. Also, he’s supposed to cooperate in giving intelligence to the government. If little Johnny Taliban knows anything that the CIA still doesn’t know, you have to be wondering what they’ve been doing the last 10 months.

Bush proposes to set up cells to think like terrorists and plan attacks. And in a couple of years they’ll have skills they can take with them into the private sector.

From the Telegraph: A quadriplegic man is suing the Wildside strip club in West Palm Beach, Florida, for allegedly breaking the law by not providing wheelchair access to the lap-dancing room.

According to SEC documents, Bush did in fact know that Harken was in trouble when he sold his stocks–in fact, it looked likely to go bankrupt. That is insider trading. Rather than the SEC exonerating him, as he claims, an internal memo said the lack of action ‘must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result’. Incidentally, you’ll remember Bush claims (now) that it was the fault of his lawyers that his documents didn’t get filed. So how did he reprimand those lawyers? One of them is now ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Committing public order offenses with his feet

Bush has gotten bored with going after the corporations, and thinks everyone else should be too: “I believe people have taken a step back and asked, ‘What’s important in life?’ You know, the bottom line and this corporate America stuff, is that important? Or is serving your neighbor, loving your neighbor like you’d like to be loved yourself?” Of course George has usually had much richer neighbors than the rest of us.

And his friends can afford their own drugs, which is why he’s opposing Democratic plans for drug coverage for the old. He says the plan, by making existing drugs affordable, would cut back on the incentive for drug companies to come up with new drugs that people can’t afford. Come to think of it, his argument is that the plan would be too expensive, but drugs under it would be too cheap.

New in the South African version of Sesame Street: an HIV-positive Muppet. Maybe the Cookie Monster can provide some marijuana brownies.

Guardian headline: Police Praise IRA for ‘Calming Clashes’. I’m assuming that here “calming” is used as a verb rather than an adjective.

Six Afghan governors are demanding that the US military get their permission before conducting military operations in their states. Good luck, guys. This alliance actually looks like a de facto separatist Pashtun region.

The Congressional hearings on the Heimat Security Agency suggest that the legislative branch has begun to realize what a power grab the proposal was. In the name of flexibility, the Bushies are trying to wrest from Congress the ability to shift funds and personnel at will. In addition to scaling down Congressional oversight, it would also ride rough-shod over civil service rules, or to put it another way, screw some large unions that generally support the D’s.

So the chair of the New Mexican Republican party gets a donation from someone he won’t name and insists he doesn’t really know who the guy was acting for, in order to bribe the Green Party (which refused to play) to run spoiler candidates for the United States Congress. This should be a big deal, but it won’t be, like earlier this year when I was the only one in the state complaining that Gray Davis was running ads to influence the primary of another party.


Speaking of which, the aptly named State Dept under-sec for Latin America, Otto Reich, tells Bolivia which of their candidates for president they will not be allowed to vote for, if they know what’s good for them. The ambassador tried that before the first round, and the guy’s numbers went way up.

I was pleased that the story I sent on the 2nd about the gang-rape ordered by the Pakistani local council got so much press, for a couple of days anyway. But the story goes on. If you’ll recall, the rape was ordered as punishment for another family member, her younger brother, who was accused of dating a member of a higher caste. In fact, he was accused of raping her. He was 11, she 30. In actual fact, it was he who was raped, by 3 men of an upper-caste. To cover that up, the 30-year old made her accusation. So the story just keeps getting scummier.

This week’s Private Eye cover is entitled New Osama Threat to America, with a picture of bin Laden saying, “Forget terrorism, I’m going to become an accountant.”

So police in LA (Inglewood) are caught on videotape beating up a black guy. That’s what I hate about summer: nothing but reruns on tv.

The papers tell me that the US has backed down on its demand for immunity for peacekeepers from the international court. In fact, it changed its demand from immunity in perpetuity to immunity for a year, which would be renewed annually.

Somehow the papers that Bush says would show his innocence in insider trading are in the possession of Harken, not the SEC, and Harken ain’t making them public. Perhaps it’s time to review how Bush the Elder managed never to answer any questions on Iran-Contra.

Another unanswered Harken question is who bought Bush’s stock from him. This is secret. Some experts are quoted saying this is common and it doesn’t matter, but there are two problems with that: 1) someone handed a large profit to the son of the president of the United States, so they might have an ulterior motive, 2) someone lost a lot of money due to Bush’s insider trading.

The European Court of Human Rights says that Britain must give full recognition of the femaleness of a transsexual, including the right to marry. More worryingly, women in Britain can retire at 60 instead of 65, so... do you really really want to retire early...?

Britain will introduce extra maternity pay and paternal leave exactly 9 months from today....

Flirtshirt

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show had the best reaction to Bush’s speech on corporate crime. After each proposal, they cut to Stewart’s stunned face--You mean convicted CEOs could become CEOs again? You mean they don’t have to attest to the accuracy of accounts now? You mean auditors can have conflicts of interest now? You mean if they profit from false accountancy, they can keep the money now? Are there are rules on Wall Street, he asked, can they just kill a guy for lookin’ at them?

Maybe it would be safer not to test that out.

By the way, Chimp Boy, we want to see the SEC case file on your role in Harken.

It’s been, what, 2 days since the Israeli Cabinet voted to institute racial segregation. Notice the wave of indignation from American politicians? Didn’t think so.

On news today, saw an Arthur Anderson promotional video from 1996 in which the company is praised by Dick Cheney. Priceless (although Arthur Anderson would put it in the plus column).

In US planning for war with Iraq, there arises the problem of what to do with Saddam Hussein, if he’s ever captured. Obviously not the international court. Another country-specific war crimes court? Current thinking is to let our Iraqi puppets set up a kangaroo court. Don’t expect the UN Security Council to have much to say about this: evidently the US is already parceling out the contracts to Iraqi oilfields like so many party favors.

London Times headline Thursday: Jordan to Let US Use Bases for War on Iraq. Daily Telegraph headline Thursday: Jordan Rejects Invasion Plan. The fix is only half in, I guess (man, I’m talking in nothing but clichés today). The hope seems to be that US troops will use Jordan, but that the Jordanian people don’t notice.

Mafiosi in prison in Italy are going on hunger strike to protest the prison regime. Joke for fans of The Sopranos: What, no fuckin’ ziti?

Daily Telegraph article:

T-shirts with hidden appeal

A Berlin designer has launched a range of T-shirts impregnated with pheromones, hormone-based scents said to attract the opposite sex. Anna Figoluschka, 26, says her “flirtshirt” gives its wearer an advantage when trying to stand out in a crowd. T-shirts with a blue anchor design contain male pheromones and those with a pink heart have female pheromones. Hannah Cleaver, Berlin

Confidence Game

Bush used the word “confidence” 5 times in his press conference. And many more in today’s speech. Which as I understand it put all the blame for corporate greed on the “late 90s.” I suppose that in the era-bashing department it makes a refreshing change from Republicans bitching about the 1960s.

Here’s a sentence you don’t see everyday, from a Daily Telegraph story:

A passenger who tried to smuggle her pet chameleon into Britain by wearing it as a hat was foiled by customs officers.

At his press conference, Bush was asked why he was not showing up at the NAACP annual meeting. He said, “Let’s see. There I was sitting around the table with foreign leaders looking at Colin Powell and Condi Rice...” before tailing off. Think Colls and Condi will set him right on why that was a stupid response? Me
neither.

The first article following is on Bush’s personal finances, the second compares the same to the standards he claims to be setting for others.

Restoring Confidence

New Yorker cartoon: 2 dogs looking at bowls filled with paper. Oh no, not homework again.

The German Christian Democrats are going after the gay vote, including a proposal I’ve never heard of in this country: giving gay partners spousal immunity from being forced to testify against each other.

The Israeli Cabinet votes 17-2 in favor of banning Palestinians buying houses in Jewish communities.

Hopefully, tonight’s news will juxtapose images of WorldCom executives refusing to testify before Congress with Bush calling questions of his own immoral and indeed illegal dealings with Harken Oil old-style politics. (That they were illegal is undeniable, whatever Bush might say.)

Look at the reporting of the hearings and of Bushs alleged plan to crack down on corporate malfeasance, and you will notice a lot of talk about the need to restore confidence. In fact, let me pause here and use that new-fangled Internet thingy to do a count.

OK, too early for a transcript. The White House site does have this headline, though: President Urges Congress to Support Nation’s Priorities. You’d think in a proper democracy, what the Congress supported would automatically constitute the nations priorities, wouldn’t you? Ah, just kidding.

At least twice, though. The problem is that confidence, for Bush as for the CEOs, is something to be manipulated. Harken, for example, used false accountancy methods (fuzzy math, if you will) to over-inflate its value, and Bush took advantage to sell his stock just before more accurate figures came out and the stock tanked. If he were selling anything other than stocks, that would count as fraud, selling something by pretending it is something else, like when they told me buying a computer would make my life easier. And since Bush was on the audit committee--and try picturing Chimp Boy on the audit committee of anything--this constitutes actual fraud. He doesnt want honesty in business, he wants confidence in business. How hard can that be to create, when the polls suggest that the American people have confidence in the leadership abilities of George W. Doofus? As I wrote this, I was reminded of something I wrote here last September 22:

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.

Indeed, much of Bush activity has been about creating the illusion of activity, given the complete inability to capture bin Laden or the Al Qaida leadership. Although as weve seen with the dirty bomb scare (remember that? just 4 weeks ago today) and vague terror alerts, perception can be altered in the other direction too when it suits the administrations needs.

So remember, when they talk about restoring confidence in the markets, what they mean is what they always mean: You are getting sleepy, sleepy, and when you wake up you will feel secure and confident and that your president isnt a mindless dipstick.

The Observer reports that teenage girls are using webcams to solicit gifts. [Oh good, my new, up to date word processor’s spellcheck has never heard of webcams. Um, or spellcheck, which is a bit worrying.] 14-year olds getting CDs in exchange for pictures of themselves. Also, some of these camgirls sell advertisement to hardcore websites. What a world! And how do you find these sites? Kidding, just kidding.

I mentioned the dog running against Katherine Harris. The website is www.percyforcongress.org. Putting the lick back into Republican.

The US has finally admitted that it killed civilians in Afghanistan, but still seems to be insisting that its planes came under anti-aircraft fire from the wedding party.

Looking at both print and television news sources, I sometimes conclude that a picture is worth zero words. Yesterday or the day before the BBC ran film from that incident a couple of weeks back where Israeli tanks fired on civilians, killing many, including children. The film shows the tank having a clear view of who it was it fired on (of their backs anyway--they were running away at the time) at close range. Nothing in any newspaper since.

The wisdom and the blessing of Divine Providence

I trust everyone saw the July 4 event in which everyone inc Shrub shouted the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. Makes you proud to be a Christian, I mean American. Bush talked about how “the wisdom and the blessing of Divine Providence” have guided the nation. Oh good, I’d hate it to think it was you, George.

Japan’s farm minister says that whales cause (human) starvation by eating a lot of fish.

The US is planning to resume helping Peru and Colombia shoot down drug-smuggling planes, having passed the statute of limitations on fuckups just 14 months after participating in Peru’s little mishap with all the American missionaries. You may remember that the Americans working with the Peruvians at that time a) worked for a private contractor, b) didn’t speak very good Spanish. The contractor was actually a CIA front company, now defunct, which I assume means they were doing an end-run around Congressional undersight [see, I said I’d use that one at some point]. No one’s explaining why it’s a good idea to shoot down planes and kill people over drugs (it’s also against international law), as 38+ planes have been in Peru under this program, much less because they don’t respond to their radios; I mean, if I don’t answer your emails in a timely fashion, please don’t fire a missile at me. The CIA has taken its balls-up and gone home, so the State Department will be in charge of the resumed program and, once again, private contractors, mostly the same ones the CIA used. I don’t actually know which is worse, having the spooks telling foreigners when to shoot down planes, having diplomats do it, or having private contractors do it.

Those poor foreigners: we’re guided by the wisdom and the blessing of Divine Providence, all they get are lowest-bid contractors with bad Spanish-language skills.

I think I deserve some sort of credit for “taken its balls-up and gone home.”

Not knuckling under to Johnny Foreigner’s International Court

I reported some time back that a couple of months before 9/11, John Ashcroft took reports of terrorist threats seriously enough to stop flying commercial flights. I expected some degree of outrage, but instead the story was completely ignored. I think my original source was British, and the only attention its gotten in the American media has been in the Tom Tomorrow cartoon This Modern World.

Speaking of the media, CNN has been caving in to the Israeli government on how it reports on terrorists. This is after the local satellite company introduced Fox News & threatened to kick CNN off the air, and the Israeli gov. threatened reporters. CNN will stop reporting statements by suicide bombers (taped beforehand, obviously) and their families. Israelis have been complaining about moral equivalence in CNN reporting. Fine, let's balance out the terrorists with interviews with Israeli soldiers who bulldozed homes in Jenin with people inside (hey, I wonder how that UN inquiry is going. Oh, yeah.), or fired rockets from helicopters, etc etc. And their proud mothers as well.

Moral equivalency. Sheesh. I remember listening to the BBC in the 1980s, when Thatcher had declared IRA leaders unpersons in the media (following South African precedent), and they got some actor to dub Gerry Addams’s voice.

Since writing that, Ive seen a McNeil-Lehrer debate on the subject, in which a CNN flack talked about moral equivalency & not upsetting the families of Israeli victims of terrorist attacks. Just in case you thought of CNN as being in the news business.

Britain has been experimenting locally with loosening enforcement of marijuana laws. Headline in Daily Telegraph: Blair Under Pressure on Cannabis. And you know what could take the edge off that pressure...?

Bush looks like realizing that threatening to halt the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in order to get his way on the International Court does not look good to the rest of the world. I don’t know, Bosnia occupied by soldiers from a nation which puts its own nationalistic goals ahead of international human rights standards, well at least its what they’re used to over there. Bush’s idea of a compromise would leave the court intact but give the US a permanent veto over its citizens actually having to appear before it, or to use his words, prevent them being drug in front of
it. The Unilateral States of America rides again.

The bridge & groom of that wedding party did survive, if anyone cares (the US media sure didn’t). The US media also, according to one British paper, gave far less time to this than to the one soldier in Afghanistan who got shot in the foot during a fire-fight. Moral equivalency, I guess. The US still hasn’t gotten its story straight on this one, no doubt in part because of the little detail that if the rocket was dropped by a B-52, as the original reports said, well a B-52 flies too high to be under any
threat from the anti-aircraft fire they claim it was under fire from.

Israel dismantles some settlement outposts. Empty ones. Big woop.

Note to Julius Caesar Watts: don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Katherine Harris, known as Cruella, will be running against a border collie named Percy in the Republican primary for Congress in Sarasota. We’ll know there have been more shenanigans if it appears that cats have voted for Percy.

Norway is introducing a scheme whereby anyone stopped by the police and asked for ID or frisked will be issued a receipt. It’s to cut down on racism.

Rumsfeld wants no rush on deciding whether dropping a missile into the middle of a wedding was a good or bad thing. And the Pentagon is refusing to issue an apology. Although to be fair, the newlyweds, assuming they’re still alive, probably won’t be issuing any thank you notes for the gift.

A NY Times columnist seems very sure he knows who was behind the anthrax attacks, and all but names him in an effort to get the FBI (his informant is clearly a Fibbie) off its ass. There really has been amazingly little pressure on the agency to solve this one, compared with, say, the Jon Benet Ramsey case.

Just as historic

Jiang Zemin rebukes the government of Hong Kong for failing to keep it as rich as it was when it was handed over to China five years ago. That’s probably because Zemin had Tung too busy suppressing democracy, such as the protesters who Zemin never saw during his visit. Hong Kong has actually become less open in many ways than China is.

The head of Kabul TV is fired--except that he refuses to go, which has worked for him in the past. He banned women from tv, especially women singing.

Maybe someone should suggest to the Afghans that they stop shooting into the air to celebrate weddings, since sometimes, these days, the air shoots back.

The Telegraph explains why American intelligence agencies can't track Arab terrorists: they have no single standard on how to spell (transliterate) their names. For example in the CIA computers, Muammar Gaddafi’s name is spelled no less than 60 different ways.

The Post reports that in April we reached a milestone I had missed: the 100th innocent person released from death row since the death penalty was reinstated. Hope he got a cake. The article also says that Ashcroft has been on a major death penalty push, which was inevitable but has gone unreported up until now. He overrides his own prosecutors to insist on going for death.

I’m going to give this quote without any comment:

The Supreme Court in 1954 declared that our nation cannot have two education systems, and that was the right decision,” Bush said. “Last week, what’s notable and important is that the court declared that our nation will not accept one education system for those who can afford to send their children to a school of their choice and for those who can’t, and that’s just as historic.”

Leka Zog, the pretender to the throne of Albania and son of the last king, returns home after a life-long exile. At the airport, the police find hand grenades and other weapons, 90 of them, in his luggage.

NY Times headline: “Gore Vows More Spontaneous Campaign.” Of course, he vows this two years in advance.

Washington Post headline: “Bush Resumes Power After Test.” Really easy graders, then.

Bush speaks against the false accountancy used by WorldCom, Xerox, etc. Reached for comment, Al Gore just sighed.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of vouchers for religious schools, saying they were neutral because they went to many types of religious school, ranging from Catholic all the way to Protestant. Evidently, aiding one religion is bad but aiding a bunch of religions is good, on the venerable legal principle that two wrongs don't make a right, but three do.

Bush very very quietly signs a law granting benefits to the gay partners (and/or other survivors named by the deceased) of cops and fire-fighters killed in the line of duty. The law is called the Village People Survivors Act of 2002.

The Supreme Court also ruled in favor of expanded drug testing in schools from athletic to other competitive extracurricular activities like Spanish club, choir, Future Homemakers of America (that can't really still exist, can it?) etc. Clarence Thomas writes that the drug problem is big enough to justify interfering with privacy rights, but that places without drug problems shouldn't have to wait for it to get bad (the Bush Doctrine in practice, a preemptive War on Drugs), and that suspicion isn't required, because to require suspicion would burden unpopular groups. Much of this is premised on the theory that schools act in loco parentis, and I think any theory that treats a part of the government as if they were parents is dangerous, not to mention creepy. My advice to students: destroy this policy by making it prohibitively expensive. Drug tests cost $30-60 each, so if they're drug-testing the chess club, everybody join the chess club.

Possible the stupidest comment on the pledge of allegiance decision, by Governor Gray Davis: “With troops overseas, this is the wrong decision at the worst possible time.”

Kevin asked me, regarding the Israeli security fence, who they'd get to build it. In fact, the contractor for the first stage actually is Palestinian, according to The Times, so there.

Bush supports keeping the pledge of allegiance just as it is because it is a confirmation that we receive our rights from God. Oh good, so it has nothing to do with religion then.

The Palestinians, of course, are much less lucky. They receive their rights, if at all, from George W. Bush. I rather thought yesterday that he might have shot himself in the foot by talking about democracy for the Palestinians, when he actually meant a highly circumscribed version of democracy, where there is freedom of choice only after the really good or popular candidates are eliminated from contention--the American version of democracy (and French, German...). He seemed to have left himself the problem of what to do when the Palestinians democratically reelect Arafat. Today he made it clearer: I’ve got confidence in the Palestinians, when they understand fully what we're saying, that they'll make the right decisions. Georgie, I’ve spent years trying to figure out what the hell you're saying.

That sentence is a variation of one of the most obnoxious Bush verbal traits, describing his own wishes as a necessity for the rest of the world, as in What Saddam Hussein needs to do is...

[Note: the spell-checker on Netscape suggested that for Saddam I actually might mean “sadism” and for Hussein “hussies.”]

The pledge of allegiance decision shouldnt bother anyone much longer, since the Supreme Courts school voucher decision today should ensure that there wont be any functioning public schools in which children might be forced to recite it. Problem solved.

On the way home with my new computer (did I mention I have a new
computer?), the decision was mentioned on NPRs Market Place program, someone saying that it meant the introduction of market economics into public schools. Oh, were already there. The focus on test result numbers, inflated by fair means and foul, means the schools are already fully WorldCom’d.

Add to that the NY Supreme Court decision of this week (note to Kevin: read Bob Herbert’s NY Times column on this) allowing the state to fund schools in a way that seriously screws NYC public schools. The Courts appellate panel ruled that the state is not obligated to provide more than a minimally adequate opportunity to get a decent education. Justice Alfred Lerner wrote: Society needs workers in all levels of jobs, the majority of which may very well be low level.

Michael Moore on Politically Incorrect tonight (last show Friday) said that every day is Roger and Me now, with corporate malfeasance finally right out in the open. Of course the pro-capitalists will say that the other corporations you dont hear about are perfectly fine and upright and honest, but Ive noticed that when we hear about corps for other reasons, like when theyre associated with politicians such as Haliburton, the Carlyle Group, Ross Perots EDS, etc etc, theyre equally problematic. Heres another one: Barrick Mining, a Canadian corp on whose board George Bush Sr sits, or actually a company that Barrick bought up, which mines for gold in Tanzania. Including in a place called Bulyanhulu, where it claimed to have a mining permitactually the permit was for an area 150 miles away and Bulyanhulu was reserved for mining by self-employed local miners. So there was a dispute, and the company used bulldozers to seal the mines to stop them being occupied--with more than 50 men inside.

The Vatican--the country--bans smoking indoors. If you must smoke after diddling a choir boy, go outside.

What, like you weren’t thinking the same thing?

I listened to some of the Senate “debate,” if something can be so called when no one argues the other side, on the pledge of allegiance. I needed something in the background not requiring much attention while I backed up some files, and this certainly fit the bill. Robert Byrd called the judges “stupid,” and the level of eloquence never rose above that. Then C-SPAN’s viewers called in, and they were worse. Worse than whatever Congresscritter that was who would have said that the judges should go back to Russia, but in these days that doesn’t apply and he couldn’t think of anywhere else, so he just said they should leave the country. The amount of emotion on this is incredible, and rather makes the point of how coercive the practice of saying the pledge must be. (Although I will say that no one even commented on my refusal, much less beat me up; I took more crap for my poem in the next year’s HS literary magazine--whose editor is on this list-- satirizing the schmalz of others writing on the death of John Lennon.)

WorldCom looks like going bankrupt because of fraudulent bookkeeping. Bush chastises executives for not looking after stockholders’ interests, completely forgetting to mention the thousands of employees about to lose their jobs.

FAIR has a report about Israel’s partly successful attempts to get news organizations to stop using the word “settlement.” The preferred term is Jewish “neighborhood.” Like Mr Rogers, but with uzis.

A funny correction in the NY Times today. An editorial had said that joining us in executing the retarded were only Japan and Kyrgyzstan. Evidently they were wrong about the latter [don’t make me type that again].

A funny moment as I listened to the news about the 9th circuit banning the pledge of allegiance: I heard them say that the guy who filed the suit lived in sacramental. Turned out to be our state capital, of course. Which might suggest his next lawsuit. Well, I feel vindicated for my principled refusal to recite the thing in the 11th grade.

I was reading about an attempt to get gay marriages in New Jersey (I’m picturing two women with really big hair), and it suddenly occurred to me how deeply offended I was by Catholic marriages. I think those people’s values--su Subject: misc
bjugation of women, enforced multiple pregnancies, ham--should not be given credence by having their so-called marriages endorsed by the state.

A day later, Bush’s speech looks worse than ever, even more of an unleashing of Sharon than I’d realized. Arafat amusingly said that Bush’s words didn’t apply to him, which Bush deserved for not using his name, and that Palestinian leadership was up to the Palestinians to decide. He diplomatically failed to mention Florida or the popular vote. A Guardian writer says that it’s refreshing to hear an American president enunciate so clearly his opinion that it is up to him to pick the leaders of other countries.

Bush is completely isolated in his “Turn yourself into Sweden before giving us a call” policy. Even Tony Blair won’t lapdog for him on this one.

So between 1998 and 2001 background checks for gun purchases prevented 200,000 felons acquiring weaponry. While letting through only 9,000 felons plus 3,000 convicted of domestic violence. By government standards a good job. Why are all those felons even applying?

The Supreme Court rules against judges deciding on death-penalty sentencing, which involves findings of fact rather than law (ie, aggravating factors), which are properly determined by a jury. Can’t disagree with that, although the very next case allowed judges to determine whether someone “brandished” or merely held a gun. Consistency never being a big thing with this Court. It seems that in states with elected judges, the judges are much more likely to fry ‘em than are juries, and the reverse where judges are non-elected. No one evidently is going to question whether there are other ways in which elected judges give different results, just as no one ever asks how many innocent people are convicted of non-death-penalty offenses that we consequently never hear about, how many court-appointed lawyers sleep through trials, etc etc.

In a hilarious opening paragraph, a Washington Post article says
“Fireproofing failures--rather than the impact of the plane
crashes--probably caused the World Trade Center towers to quickly
collapse”. My, what an unfortunately coincidence!

And I won’t even mention the split infinitive.

Germany and Austria seem to be increasingly assertive in favor of the ethnic Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after the war, and now, future German chancellor Edmund Stoiber, whose wife was an expelled Sudeten German, is saying that Poland should also let its German population back in.

Speaking of unwelcome visitors, Israel is about to unleash the dogs of war on Gaza, which is so densely packed that the death count among civilians could be much higher than in the West Bank.

Which didn’t bother Bush when he gave his speech and failed to mention it. There are good analyses by the Washington Post, in the Guardian (guardian.co.uk/worldlatest) and by William Saletan in slate.com. I’m still making up my mind. Noticeably, Bush’s plan for Middle East peace in our time involved as small an American role as possible. In fact, I think this speech was it.

He did call on Israel to stop “settlement activity,” which I assume means a freeze rather than a withdrawal, and for a pull-back of troops. This is all to the good, although the second half was undermined by other statements by him recently and by the rest of the speech. Calling for Arafat to be removed immediately after Israeli troops put him under siege again looks like endorsement of Sharon’s policy. Which it is, of course. Bush probably foresees another loya jirga, where he gets to call for democracy, but only after the US pressures anyone it doesn’t like into not running. Sharon, as the Guardian piece suggests, foresees another Bashir
Gemayel, the man he foisted on Lebanon as its “president” in 1982 after a remarkably similar invasion. Sharon wanted a force to do the dirty work while Israelis looked on, and yes, I’m talking about Sabra and Shatila again.

I could swear I heard Bush say both that Israel would have secure and recognized borders, and that Palestine would be provisional, without actual borders. How those two things are possible at once is beyond me.

Bush also quietly endorsed Sharon’s policy of witholding Palestinian funds from the Palestinian government, effectively using the money to prop up this democratic-but-not-Arafat government that will magically spring up out of nowhere. This violates international law. And Bush has to recognize that there can be no elections while Israeli soldiers are occupying the country. My favorite bit was when he inserted that Palestine has to be based on market economics. Yes, that’s what the Palestinians need, market-based incentives.

Or did he mean the market the Israelis shelled yesterday?

The new, more liberal Iran raises the minimum age for marriage to 13 for girls, 15 for boys (unless court permission is given).

Monday is International UFO Day, which is celebrated by, I’m guessing, anal probes. The highest concentration of UFO sightings in the world occur in Scotland, at .004 per square kilometer and 1 per 17,000 people. Something to do with winning Wimbledon, I believe.

Jesus is back, and boy is she pissed. A sect exists in China called Lightning from the East. One method it uses to convert people is to kidnap them, especially underground Christians and Christian missionaries, 32 of whom were just released. Evidently, Jesus has come back as a Chinese woman, age 30.

Mixed messages out of Israel as to what exactly it plans to do with all that land it says it’s going to occupy until the terrorism stops, that is, whether it will reestablish an occupation government or not. This seems a fairly important detail not to have worked out in advance. They were evidently planning to fudge it, being willing to make sure Arafat’s government can’t govern, but not willing to take responsibility by declaring it dissolved. Hopefully, the Palestinians can make sure the Israelis don’t actually resume taxing them (which was also always done in a way that violated international law), but they should start demanding services from the Israelis.

The Israeli Cabinet has just approved exiling the families of suicide bombers (and blowing up their homes, of course) to Stalag Gaza Strip. This is, of course, against international law and is defined as a war crime.

A statement from Al Qaeda warns the US to “fasten its seat belt,” as there is more terrorism coming. Evidently they’ve spent the last 9 months hiding out in the gay district of Kabul, watching Betty Davis pictures. Which should make them very dangerous indeed.

Speaking of Afghanistan, everything about the new government suggests that the US won the war but lost the peace. As I’ve said, the warlords are back in charge and the modernizers lost. The international community that was willing to blow up every wedding party and banana stand in the country is not willing to help disarm the warlords, so there cannot be a real central government. The new government is called “Islamic”; the new chief justice believes in sharia law. And most Americans will know no more about this than they do about the current governments of Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama....

Thankfully

So now every gas chamber in the country will have to have a picture of George W. Bush and the words “You have to be at least this smart to be executed.” It’s hard to get worked up about the Supreme Court decision that this week it’s unconstitutional to execute the retarded, because it should be self-evident, like the new study showing that fat people like food too much. Although the morally retarded three, Rehnquist, Thomas and Scalia, are actually probably correct that this sort of thing shouldn’t be decided by opinion polls. But then neither should it be done by counting the number of states that ban the practice, like they want, as if what legislators think is reflective of public opinion. As the last 9 months have shown, civil rights should be put beyond the immediate reach of a panicked majority anyway. Which was rather the point of having a Bill of Rights to begin with.

If you haven’t already read the dissent by Fat Tony Scalia, you simply must. It’s Archie Bunker with a law degree, on acid. It’s the tone of moral and intellectual superiority that’s amazing. Even if you believe that there’s some sort of case for executing the retarded, you should at least treat it as a regrettable necessary evil, not be so, well, joyous, at the prospect. He and Rehnquist are especially scornful of the notion of treating world opinion as having any bearing, leading to my favorite sentence in the Scalia dissent: “Equally irrelevant are the practices of the ‘world community,’ whose notions of justice are (thankfully) not always those of our people.” That “(thankfully)” is priceless.

The US just gave up its right to seize the whole of Bermuda and several other places, I think including Newfoundland, in event of an emergency, like the need for a really good tan. It was part of the Lend-Lease deal with Britain. Speaking of which, those deadbeat Brits are expecting to pay off their war debt to us by the end of 2006.

In his ongoing battle to stay to the right of, well, everybody, Tony Blair tried to get the EU to cut off aid to countries that didn’t prevent refugees fleeing to European countries or refused to take them back. The EU didn’t bite, but views on immigration keep moving to the right, and the German conservative leader, who is the only Bavarian who does not drink beer, says that immigration will be the key issue of the next German elections, so this is a wedge issue now.

On the day Israel implemented its new policy of seizing Palestinian land after bombings, Israeli troops fired a “warning shot” into a crowded market, killing 4 people, including 3 children. Therefore Israel will now have to give land back to the Palestinians. “Fair is fair,” says Ariel Sharon. The state of Israel should be the size of a postage stamp by the end of 2003.

The Observer says that the mass funerals Iraq holds for children
supposedly killed by US weapons and sanctions are a fake, although it actually sounds like the bodies in the little coffins are real, but they store them up (contrary to Islamic law and the parents’ wishes) and bring them in to Baghdad periodically for the event.

The Italian supreme court, whose rulings no one reports unless sex is involved, or possibly that is all it ever rules on, says that sexual demands of a sado-masochistic nature are grounds for divorce. Unless someone’s actually *been* a naughty boy who needs to be punished.

Headline: “Bush Declares War on Fat America.” I accept. Where do I go to get an extra-large uniform? I’m planning to do my military service by beating up a super-model. Or, to keep with a theme, by spanking a super-model.

As its part in the war, Southwest Airlines is making fat people buy two seats. One person interviewed, it sounds like they tried to sell her two non-adjacent seats. And in case you’re wondering, no extra air-miles. But I’m assuming two meals.

How many debates do you want?

Bravely marching backwards, Israel is planning to re-occupy Palestine bit by bit as a collective punishment for terrorism. Hey Ariel don’t turn the clock back too far or you may find yourself trying to sing while crossing into Switzerland.

The new Hungarian prime minister turns out to have been a spook. In the spirit of openness, he has threatened to sue any newspaper that discloses any more, because, he says, he is under legal obligation not to talk about it. Should make that lawsuit difficult then, shouldn’t it?

Also threatening to sue is John Gotti Jr. With the interest in his father’s death, Uncle Junior is worried that memorabilia will be sold without him getting a piece of the action. This is what we call a copyright protection racket.

Karzai names his cabinet and sort of submits it to the loya jirga, not for individual vote, or indeed any vote, except by hands, since if votes were actually recorded, he’d have been voted down. Nor did he allow discussion (I’ve been meaning to mention that every time the former king tried to address the nation, the tv transmitter suddenly cut out--three times, and that when the only other candidate for president, a woman, tried to speak to the assembly, Karzai bounced onto the stage and cut her off. Which is an improvement over the old Afghanistan, in which he would have cut off one of her body parts.), saying “There was debate. I told them do you agree? And they said yes. How many debates do you want.” Say what you will, his democratic instincts are at least superior to Dubya’s.

As I understand it, the new cabinet is considered a failure because it doesn’t contain enough warlords with blood on their hands. Really. Karzai asked them all to join, but they refused, preferring their regional fiefs, calculating that Kabul will not have any power worth mentioning.

Headline: “Spam Museum Set to Open in Minnesota.” Hey, I’ve got news for you: the entire state of Minnesota is a spam museum.

Interesting but semi-comprehensible piece in Salon on the recent expansion of the FBI’s phone-tapping capabilities. It seems that as of the end of this month it will have access to more information than before (they’re using the increase in digital over analog technologies to quietly acquire much more data while pretending it’s the same thing as the old pen taps), despite it’s previous attempt having lost in court. This time it did it the old fashioned way, through bribery. Seems Congress appropriated $500 million to help phone companies make changes under the US Patriot Act, but left disbursement up to the FBI, which used it to leverage deals with phone companies giving it information the court had ruled it couldn’t have.

The Hindu nationalist ruling party of India will nominate as the next president (which makes him a certainty) a Muslim. The guy who was in charge of the nuclear bomb program, who has no political experience, but the office doesn’t really require it. Presumably his designing a weapon to kill lots of Muslims makes up for him actually being one, like Werner von Braun (if you don’t get that reference, feel free to call up Kevin, who will be happy to sing you the song).

The NY Times says that Pakistan is holding American citizens, and has US permission not to check their identities too quickly, to give them more time to torture information out of them. I believe I said some time ago that most of the torturing was going to be sub-contracted, and so it has proved.

The Supreme Court rules 6-3 that it’s ok for cops boarding buses to conduct random searches not to tell people that they have a right to refuse. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, entirely from the perspective of non-criminals, who are always happy to cooperate with the police for their own safety and for the safety of others, and so certainly don’t feel coerced. Hell, in San Francisco guys go up to cops all the time and ask to be searched, purely in the interests of public safety, but maybe that’s not what Kennedy had in mind. Now anyone with the brains god gave gravel understands that someone concealing cocaine, as in this case, would only
have allowed a search if he did in fact feel coerced and/or did not know his rights. Since the decision was not about the searches themselves, it was only about whether cops are permitted to conceal the lack of a legal mandate for their actions, to actively deceive people. And now the Supes are in collusion with this deception, because really why should it ever decide against informing people of their rights--if only just to be safe? Why would it ever be a good thing for people not to know their rights?

Condoleezza Rice says the Palestinian government is “corrupt and cavorts with terror.”

Cavorts?

Many Israelis are taking out papers for a backup citizenship in case they want to get out quick. Germany.

Which is in the process of raising the minimum age for gun ownership from 18 to 21.

Bush is talking about “interim” Palestinian statehood. Without actual borders or anything concrete on paper. Talk about declaring peace and going home.

In their respective parliamentary elections today, the Czech Republic moved nicely to the left, but France to the right, although not the far right--Le Pen’s National Front looks like ending up with zero seats. The fear of fascism disappeared awfully quickly in France, and the elections had a very low turnout (though still above American standards, of course), indicating that once the initial threat was over, no one made any attempts to engage the French public with the political system. Once again, apathy is the political elite’s friend, and everybody please go back to sleep again, nothing to see here....

Israel will make it much harder for Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories who are married to Palestinians (or presumably to Jews?) in Israel to get residency permits. For now, they have frozen new family reunifications, and will sextuple the fee. Israelis (and I should say Israeli Jews, or perhaps Israeli fascists, since it’s a bad habit to refer to Israeli Jews as Israelis, as I told my 4th grade teacher during the 1973 war) are worried about demographics for obvious reasons. And for some reason the number of new immigrants under the Law of Return is way down--and the majority of those aren’t even real Jews.

William Webster, former head of both the CIA & the FBI (which means he’s not even supposed to talk to himself) wants Al Qaeda POWs injected with truth serum. This assumes that they aren’t doing that, or worse, now. I trust no one who reads the article in the Sunday NY Times that contained that tidbit really believes that questioning consists solely of good cop-bad cop and mind games. Given--I say again--that the progress and consequences of the hunger strike begun in Guantanamo 2 1/2 months ago have not been reported, nor is there any indication that any reporter or Congresscritter in the whole country gives a shit, much less the people at large, the only thing preventing torture is the goodness and purity of heart of the CIA/FBI interregators and Marine guards. Good luck, guys, hope none of you are innocent. This country manages to execute innocent people after trials, with lawyers and all the trimmings, and appeals and such, as opposed to being swept up by random military patrols--god knows we blew up a lot of convoys and wedding parties and friendly forces and arms dumps that weren’t what we thought they were--so, um, good luck, you’ll need it.

A story that I may have sent a couple of months back, probably in the Stop the Week section of the London Sunday Times that I used to send, before Rupert Murdoch got greedier and started charging for access, was that the Poetry Society had forgotten to renew their website URL and lost it to a Hong Kong company which sells online gambling and impotence cures--and URL’s back to their original owners. The New Statesman ran a competition asking for famous poets on the subject. Here’s one entry:

Cyber-Tiger, virtual blight,
With your online gambling site,
What e-portal, bland or sly,
Could claim domain o’er poetry?

Who, in odists’ dotcom guise,
Peddles cream for flaky thighs?
And, when our manhood’s in retreat,
Flogs us handy Groin-Deep-Heat? .....

Kaliningrad looks like being a problem. A non-contiguous part of Russia, Lithuania and Poland plan to make residents get visas if they want to go to the rest of Russia. It could just be a minor irritant in relations, or it could be the next Danzig Corridor.

The US is screwing with the prosecutors at the war crimes trial of Slobby Milosevic, who want Richard Holbrook to testify and are being held up by endless State Dept negotiations. If they wind up not calling him, Milosevic will, so this isn’t going away.

Speaking of trials, that of Moussaui, or however you spell it--I’d get the newspaper to look it up, but there’s a cat in my lap--will require information in the possession of the Germans. The problem is that they aren’t, like most Europeans, supposed to assist death-penalty cases. Unfortunately, they look like they’re going to fudge it, asking for a statement that their evidence wouldn’t actually contribute to the death penalty.

Speaking of evidence, in my email of last Sept. 19, I asked whether the standard of proof Bush used to link bin Laden and 9/11 was the same really high standard he would require to admit that global warming existed or arsenic in the drinking water was bad, or the low standard under which he was convinced that Star Wars would work. And you’ll note they still haven’t adduced any convincing evidence of bin Laden’s guilt. But my point today is that there has been a recent rash of alarming claims backed up by nothing. Not just dirty bombs and apartment bombing threats, but
the crap Rumsfeld is throwing around every day. Iran is harboring Al Qaeda (by the way, a second unmanned spy plane in as many months just crashed in Iran). Iran is developing missiles. Al Qaeda is operating in Kashmir (his handlers took this one back). All with no evidence. The Guardian calls him a clumsy loudmouth. Yup, but the American press still regard that, inexplicably, as charm.

One sad consequence of the Israeli invasions of Jericho and tighter border controls is the closing of the casino there (you’ll remember I announced its opening a year or two back saying that if the Palestinians were only allowed a reservation, they were entitled to act like it). But the Jews evidently have a real taste for gambling, and will soon do so over Israel in a plane. Oh, and they’re also betting on the location of the next
suicide bombing.

Bob Barr, he of the world’s creepiest mustache, is suing Bill Clinton, James Carville and Larry Flynt, for a conspiracy to expose his adultery during the Clinton impeachment, thus causing him, oh, $30 million worth of emotional distress. Elsewhere, he is sponsoring legislation to cut down on frivolous lawsuits.

Imperial presidency

Look at the list of stories in the nation & politics section of the Wed. Washington Post. Collectively, they show the expanding powers of the presidency: a man held without trial or lawyer for 8 months, treaties abandoned without Congress being consulted, and the decision to stop telling Congress, which I thought was given the power of the purse by the Constitution, anything about Star Wars expenditures, and an attempt to censor a book, in which the theory is argued in court that the executive’s decision to classify information is unreviewable by courts. Chimp Boy thinks he’s king.

Favorite moment of the farce that is the loya jirga: today, Karzai declared himself elected president by the body, and then had to admit that there hadn’t actually been a vote yet. The US has put god knows what sort of pressure on every rival candidate to drop out, so the election will actually be between Karzai and a woman. I don’t honestly know why we’re even pretending, since even less legitimacy could be granted by this body than by Zimbabwe’s last elections. Colin Powell denied that the US had exerted “undue influence,” but didn’t define what influence he considered to be due the US.

A detail I missed in yesterday’s email: the “treatment” program for sex offenders not only required its unwilling participants to confess to crimes for which they had not been taught, but then polygraphed them.

The European Parliament has voted to ban the import (phased in over ten years) of cosmetics which have been tested on animals. Such testing is illegal in most EU countries, but required in the US. We’ll see if the US dares start a trade war over this.

Favorite headline of the day: Senator Helms Moves to Rehabilitation. Presumably at the Betty Ford Center for Recovering Assholes. I believe he received a pig heart, which is too good and fitting a story to ruin by checking the facts, so I won’t.

Oh, driving on I5 I passed an old VW wagon filled with college signs, with a cardboard sign in the rear window saying “Show Us Your Tits.” I thought about it, but in the end failed to comply.

Second favorite headline of the day: Cabbage Machine Crushes Man to Death. And cuts off another guy’s arm. It’s not every day someone dies in the cause of cole slaw.

An even better death (hey, I had to drive 400 miles listening to the radio whitter on about dirty bombs, I deserve a little gruesome entertainment) was that of Peter Mokaba, one of South Africa’s “There is no such thing as AIDS” brigade. I don’t think I have to tell you what he died of.

So what *really* happened at the loya jirga today? The whole thing always seemed like a way to broker deals under the spurious guise of “tradition,” instead of the usual spurious guise of rigged elections. But the self-selected body really wanted the king back, and the Americans stepped in to, what, bribe? threaten? him into refusing any part, thus ensuring (helped along by the occasional assassination and assassination attempt by the CIA) that the US’s puppet government continues another term of puppetry.

The Washington Post Monday caught up with the Bush Doctrine, which I mentioned a few days ago. No longer will we be able to complain about Pearl Harbors and cowardly sneak attacks. Those will be ours. The Bushies are now trying to sell NATO, sort of. The sort of is that they’re claiming preemptive attacks aren’t explicitly ruled out by the NATO charter, so they must already be NATO policy. In the 17th century and beyond, various European countries had sumptuary laws, which said what clothes certain classes were and were not allowed to wear, the idea being that social class should be visible at all times. The Bush Doctrine proclaims the same sort of thing for certain weapons. Especially symbolic of this is that they are trying to develop small nuclear devices to destroy well-protected, dug-in weapons of mass destruction. Rumsfeld has told NATO that the standard of proof need not be very high, either, before an attack is launched.

The UN World Summit on Food is meeting in Rome to discuss world hunger. They are too embarrassed even to vote on whether there is a “right to food.” The delegates were, of course, well fed (the menu may be found in the London Times article on the story), although those from the richer countries didn’t dare show up at the banquet.

The Tuesday Post has a piece that wonders how the US will deal with armies containing conscripted 12-year olds, as so many do.

A guy shot up a Benedictine monastery today, killing two monks. The Church wanted to know if the guy was a priest, because they’re allowed one atrocity or child-rape free under the Two Tykes and You’re Out policy.

The Supreme Court rules 5-4 that prisons can punish convicted sex
offenders who refuse to admit guilt during therapy. I think mandating therapy is already a violation of their 1st Amendment rights, but that issue doesn’t even seem to have come up. Instead the Supes astonishingly saw no violation of the 5th Amendment in a requirement that a prisoner sign an “admission of guilt” form and, oh yes, list all his victims. The punishments involved seem to include going into maximum security and taking away his tv, but you know that some states must be keeping prisoners in jail for more of their terms. So it’s not just “terrorists” who have no rights in the US.

And note that Bush was able to remove all the rights of an American citizen unconvicted of any crime (the dirty nuke guy), including the right to see an attorney, or to any form of trial whatever, simply by signing a piece of paper. Just the way to treat someone who hates liberty, I say!

I haven’t decided whether to take the whole dirty bomb thing seriously or not.

So why wasn’t the ATF included in the Heimat Security Fiefdom, even though it was key in breaking the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and involved in Oklahoma City and other terrorist investigations? Think it’s part of Ashcroft’s campaign to make sure that no information on gun ownership is ever used for law enforcement purposes? Me too.

The Interior Department is buying out, for $235 million, offshore oil & gas leases off the Florida coast but refused to do same for California. Not for political reasons, but because, evidently, California is not opposed to offshore drilling like Florida is. At least that’s what the Interior Dept says.

A website offers pictures of women, excuse me, “homicide mothers”, at abortion clinics.

The Sunday Chronicle has a section on the FBI’s relationship with Reagan when he was governor, and their mutual attempt to wipe out the UC system. Not to be missed. www.sfgate.com/campus

The House has voted to kill the estate tax. Unfortunately, when the estate tax’s will was then read, it turned out that it had willed us all a major increase in the deficit.

The California Supreme Court (finally a California story worth passing on, after a week and a half of reading the LA Times--unless you want to know about Valley secession, which has pit brother against brother, surfer dude against Valley girl, all very Ken Burnsian) grants both paternity and custody to a guy who is not the kid’s biological father or even married to the mother, but acted as the kid’s father. Advocates of gay adoption see this as a great victory, although biology has always been secondary in establishing parenthood under the law. The British are talking about a law to prevent “fathers” DNA-testing their putative children.

Speaking of British parenting, the joke I’ve been meaning to send for a week: at the Royal Jubilee, it had been announced that the Queen would go on stage to sing All You Need is Love with Paul McCartney. This did not happen, presumably because he was unwilling to rewrite the lyrics, like Elton John did with that Diana song, to All You Need is Repressed, Unexpressed, Horribly Awkward Love.

Bush’s solution to the problem of bureaucratic infighting among the intelligence agencies is to create another bureaucracy. Who say’s he’s a Washington outsider?

It wouldn’t even resolve the problem of the infighting, just create a new body for the FBI and CIA to stonewall.

Of course if you over-centralize intelligence, it leaves it open to moles, as we know from John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy.

In 2000 there were only 16 children put up for adoption in Sweden. How?

Ah, rich Republicans. Mitt Romney, candidate for governor in Mass., actually claims that his primary residence is in Utah, in order to save on his taxes. The funny part, for a Republican running in Taxacheussets, is that the taxes are Utah property taxes.

Bush on the EPA’s report acknowledging the existence of global warming: “I read the report put out by the bureaucracy.” My, the contempt just drips from his tongue, doesn’t it? Oh, and he didn’t so much read it as color it in.

There’s a piece in today’s NY Times op-ed section on why the whistle-blowers at the FBI and Enron were women. Basically, it was because women have no insider status and found that they could only change their workplace by going outside it. The author: Anita Hill.