The moron / the war

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

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

Evil-doers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moron's War

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

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

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

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

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

Finally: Rush Limbaugh is a big fat deaf idiot.

Morons' Crusade

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

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

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

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

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

Morons with missiles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No need for additional evidence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they say irony is dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Morons' War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moron's Crusade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God not neutral

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

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

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

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

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

The Russian Duma has legalized the ownership of land.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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