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

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

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

Fiji reestablished apartheid this week, if anyone cares.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9/11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unclear on the concept

The woman who sent a tape of Bush preparing for debates to the Gore campaign is sentenced. The judge tells her that what she did is very serious--"Our whole system of government depends on free elections."

Wasn't paying a lot of attention, was he?

Two stories in yesterday's paper. That woman in the Oklahoma city police lab testified in one guy's trial that his DNA was found in the semen found at a crime scene. There was never any semen. He was executed last year. And a guy in jail for burning down his family's house killing his children--the prosecutor whited out bits of the material they turned over to his lawyer that clearly a) exonerated him, b) put the blame on his
firebug son.

A federal judge for the first time upholds the ban (Florida) on gay adoptions. He says that homosexual unions are not as stable and are more stigmatizing. Like this ruling helps that. But he did turn out the rationale amazingly enough offered by the state of Florida that the law expressed the state's moral disapproval of homosexuality.

The list of side-effects and so forth with my antibiotics say that I should consult my doctor before breast feeding. I don't know if that means giving or receiving breast milk, but I decided not to ask my doctor anyway. If the issue comes up, I'll just risk it.

Some idiot theologian is bringing out a book called The Gospel According to the Simpsons. Evidently, the Simpsons is the most religious tv show there is.

Still, it has to be doing a better job than the Church of England, whose Birmingham bit is bringing out a series of ads designed to bring in the two teenagers who still use the word "hip", while pissing off everyone else. My favorite: "Body piercing? Jesus had his done 2000 years ago."

One of my favorite Doonesbury's from the 1980s features several aides talking to Reagan. They tell him there's a theory going around that his ridiculous insistence that he could cut taxes and raise defense spending at the same time was actually a cunning plan to force cuts in the welfare state. Gee, asked Reagan, am I that smart? That's what we were wondering, sir; try to think back.

Bush last week actually said that the collapse of the always-fictional budget surplus is a good thing because it puts Congress in a fiscal strait-jacket. Trust Bush to find the bright side of recession.

Jamaica is thinking about legalizing marijuana. The US is threatening to impose sanctions. On another country for having its own legal system.

The Interior Department names the Fresno municipal dump a national historic landmark. Plan your vacations accordingly. But don't forget your Visa because they don't take American Express. They do, however, take AOL discs.

The 11th Circuit says that race doesn't count as diversity. So it's not ok to award points to U of Georgia applicants for being black, but it is ok to do so for children of previous students. Like, say, from the time it was all-white.

Well, if they can't get into the U of Georgia, they can get into the newly accredited Astrological Institute, with federal student loans. The accreditation people say that they're not validating astrology, just saying that the school fulfilled its promises to students.

Iranian schools are to reintroduce sex ed. The mind boggles.

Jesse Helms is history, Linda Tripp is broke and all is right with the world.

Zimbabwe's invasions of white-owned farms, beyond destroying this year's harvest and Zimbabwe's economy, is now spreading foot and mouth disease.

Last year Utah's Republicans stopped the legislature passing a bill to ban guns in schools and churches. This year, they've
decided to allow them at the state Republican convention, which Dick Cheney will address.

Well I'm still enjoying the Tory party leadership battle, now going into what seems like its third year. Ian Duncan Smith, it seems, has padded his lack of resume. See, he's been bragging that he has been so disloyal to his party leadership that he turned down offers of government jobs to be able to fight the Major government on Europe. But he was never offered any such job. Kenneth Clarke, on the other hand, has had a day job, as deputy chairman of a tobacco company, BAT (the 2nd biggest in the world), in which capacity he lied to a parliamentary committee about his knowledge of cigarette smuggling operations.

Don't know if anyone else is following Zimbabwe, which gets nastier and nastier. Today it threatened editors and reporters,
including one editor who reprinted a Sunday Times story about Mugabe being haunted by ghosts of his former aides. Anyway, he's now looking to buy 30 riot control vehicles. From Israel.

Recently, I think in the last News of the Weird, there was mention of a St Louis filibuster in which the alderwoman had to use a bucket while a quilt was held around her. She has been charged with public urination.

The LA Times reports that Bush is getting around the Congressional limit on civilian contractors used in Colombia by having the State Department hire foreign pilots, and not reporting the fact to Congress.

Coincidentally, that bill I mentioned some weeks ago in which Colombian military authorities are given supreme authority, and many other nasty provisions, was just enacted.

Prince Edward and Princess Sophie have gone on strike. To quote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Who would that inconvenience?" They have no royal engagements scheduled for
the rest of the year, but evidently still plan to keep the $250,000 or so they are paid by the British public each year.

Headline from a while back, "Canadians Flee in Spanking Dispute." Actually, I never heard more about that. Some cultists left Canada for the US, hoping their belief in rather stern corporal punishment of their children would be protected under the 1st Amendment.

A letter to the LA Times that I clipped as quintessentially SoCal calls for controls on immigration because the guy has to spend 4 hours commuting from Orange County to his job in Culver City, which is much longer than he thinks it should be. The letter doesn't say, but somebody like that has to drive an SUV.

So Israel, pissed with the way Palestine has been policing its terrorists, keeps flattening police stations, presumably pour encourager les autres (which is a French historical reference, translating as "to exercise the Darth Vader School of Management").

Presumably by now little Napoleon Beelzebub, or whatever his name is, has been executed in Texas. Killed the father of a federal judge, who used every contact to have him offed in return. For the first time in history, Supreme Court justices have to recuse themselves from a case, and 3 of them have to, leaving only 3 willing to stop the execution, and evidently ties are resolved in favor of death. Was a minor. Was a black tried by an all-white jury, judge, prosecutor, etc. who had the son looking over their shoulders. [Actually, after I wrote this a stay was issued, but I don’t know on what grounds]

The British suspend the Northern Irish government, in order to reactivate it one day later. The IRA withdraws its disarmament offer from 6 days ago. If you can grab this marble before my hand closes, Grasshopper....

Bush thinks India has suffered long enough for starting that whole nuclear arms race and violating the nuclear test ban,
and lifts sanctions. Also pardoned: the Indonesian military, poised to do who knows what in Acheh.

According to the NY Times of a day or two ago, the drug OxyContin of which so much has been said lately (the high of choice in 2001, for those of you who keep up with those things) could easily have been engineered so that abusing it (snorting or injecting it) would have produced no high at all. The drug company decided not to. I'm sure it was just an oversight.

I'm home again. At two spots on I5, there was only one lane because of what they laughingly called construction. Added an hour to the trip, which I will never get back. After the merger at the second one, we had gotten back up to half-speed when there was a sudden slow-down. Well, not really that sudden, but the truck behind me wasn't paying attention and didn't have time to stop. That’s ten years scared out of me that I’ll never get back.

It would be fun to sheherezade that story and pick it up in an e-mail tomorrow, but I guess I won't, and just tell you that the truck swerved onto the shoulder, avoiding pulverizing me.

So what did you think of Spurious George's stem-cell speech? His very first address to the nation, if you can believe it. Hardly worth interrupting his or my vacation for, if you ask me. It was very Clintonesque, in that it compromised his principles but still undercut the people it was supposed to help, while pissing off both sides. Very gays-in-the-military. My mother pointed out that he was wearing seriously thick makeup to disguise his recent skin cancer procedures. Come to think of it, why is moron-boy outside playing golf every day after that? The New York Times points out that his policy turns out to be more liberal than Clinton's because it dumped all the ethical protections for acquiring stem cells, like not asking permission exactly at the moment they're trying to impregnate a woman, when she is emotionally vulnerable (not least from all the hormones they pump her full of in preparation) to such pressure.

This morning as I was reading the LA Times, a peahen and 4 little peafowl came up to the door, just like Jehovah's Witnesses. I told them I didn't want any.

Germany is looking for a new but really long name for gay
marriages. The new registered homosexual unions (and if you were gay would you be wanting the German government to have your name on a list?) are called Eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft. There's a bad pun in there, but far be it for me...

Bush is torpedoing yet another international agreement, this one on land mines.