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Saturday, October 05, 2002
Site maintenance Updated the American Prospect section, and added the last couple of New Yorker cartoons to the Illustrations & Rarities page. ("Who Watches the Watchers?" is the piece I mentioned a couple of weeks back as being sort of about blogging.) I can't get the blog archives from the last couple weeks to show, however. Blogger's been really glitchy lately; everytime I post an entry I get a 503 error, whatever that is, and it takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour for my post to show up. Anybody else having this problem?
Submitted for your approval The American Sentamentalist has some good posts up on terror cells and fundamentalism. Couldn't decide what to excerpt, so I'm lifting an entire post here (minus the various links). Hey, it beats writing something myself. A cursory review of the day's news cycle throws up a couple of examples of religious fundamentalist types sleeping with the enemy, as if that were news. The Washington Post reports that one of our favorite failed presidential candidates and avuncular hypocrites in the land, Pat Robertson, has found it in his heart to accept federal "faith-based" dollars after previously trashing the program as yet another way for godless communists to suckle at the government teat. Earlier this year, in response to President Bush's 2001 call for federal funding for "religious or spiritual groups" in order to do the work previously the province of professional and governmental agencies, Robertson was particularly concerned that "non-Christian religious minorities he doesn't like will receive public tax dollars under the Bush plan, including Hare Krishnas, the Church of Scientology and followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon." At the time, Pat was simply reiterating his belief that there was a big difference between the work of the 700 Club and, say, any other religion in the world, particularly one that might get federal funding. However, as the Post reports, all of that is out the window now. "Operation Blessing International" can, apparently, "demonstrate God's love" just as easily by cashing government checks. More damning, perhaps, and certainly more subtle, is the troublesome connection between high-tech proselytizing and the radical fundamentalism of, say, an Islamic sort. A Salon piece talks about the Lackawanna Six and their tenous relationship with a purported terrorist document, The Islamic Ruling on the Permissibility of Martyrdom Operations, which is said to detail authorization for terrorist attacks. As pointed out in the article, the "Islamic Ruling" is easily available on the Internet, including versions conveniently converted into .pdf files and even posted on the cheesy web-search site About.com (found under a link helpfully entitled Islamic Faith - What You Need to Know). Ignoring, for the moment, the larger hypocrisy of the government of the United States charging individual suspects based in part on a document easily available in almost every home in America, a small sign appears for us and shines a spotlight on how truly difficult it must be for modern-day-hating, western-world-despising fundamentalists to get their message out using the devil's means. Of the first ten hits for The Ruling on Google, three were sites hosted by Geocities, a free web host which requires banner ads to appear on every page. Diluting somewhat the impact of my introduction to martyrdom permissability, in each of the Geocities links I clicked were ads for Thomas Kinkade Christmas tchotckes and decidedly non-religous dating services. Which just goes to show - sometimes you simply have to turn the other cheek when thinking about your bank balance.
Who knew America's greatest living writer, the legendary Neal Pollack, has started blogging. This space was directed to his site by a reader who notes that Neal--and because we are close personal friends who, um, had a conversation once at some party, I think I can call him Neal--at any rate, that Neal seems to be, well, let's say drawing occasional inspiration from this space. Well, anything that inspires the astonishingly prolific Neal Pollack to bestow even more of his award-winning prose upon an eagerly-waiting world is okay by this space. Afterthought: Like genuises throughout the ages, Neal Pollack is not bound by the petty mores of the society in which he happens to have been born. Which is to say, if you're easily offended by graphic descriptions of the sexual exploits which come easily, nay, inevitably, to man of Neal Pollack's stature, then you should stay far, far away from his site. You have been warned.
Our vigilant guardians From a recent Onion story headlined Al Qaeda Allegedly Engaged in Telemarketing: Last December, during a sweep of caves near the Afghan-Pakistani border, Maj. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, leader of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, unearthed further evidence corroborating the phone-solicitation theory. Inside one cave, McNeill and his troops found a bank of empty cubicles with individual phone lines, a bullhorn, and 10 desktop bells, commonly rung in the event of a "sale." "I couldn't believe what I saw," said McNeill, who also discovered bomb-making instructions and detailed maps of U.S. landmarks in the cave. "On top of all the destruction these people had already unleashed, plans were underway to harass the American people with a merciless assault of offers for everything from discounts on home DSL lines to pre-approved, low-interest credit cards." For all the evidence collected by the CIA, the "smoking gun" in the investigation may turn out to be an alleged Osama bin Laden motivational videotape, currently in the possession of CNN. The controversial tape, which has never aired on the cable network, is rumored to feature bin Laden urging his followers to think positive and believe in the quality of the product they are pitching, closing on the grim slogan "Smile And Dial." Among the victims of al-Qaeda's telemarketing efforts is Coral Gables, FL, retiree Bernice Parks, who last Friday spent nearly 45 minutes trying to say no to a pushy aluminum-siding salesman who identified himself only as "Mohammed," only to give in and order full siding for her home. It is believed that the $3,000 charged to Parks' credit card—an amount she thought to be "a rock-bottom value, especially compared to what big companies like Sears charge"—was funneled through al-Qaeda's extensive siding cartel. Yes, so. Those wacky laff-meisters at the Onion are up to their usual hijinks. What's the news there? Well, police officers in Battle Creek, Michigan took it seriously--and sent out a press release trumpeting their investigation of the Al Qaeda telemarketers. From vunet.com: The release said: "In the course of this investigation, it was learned that this is going on throughout the United States and some of these telemarketing programmes are believed to be operated by Al-Qaeda. "The CIA has announced that it has acquired a videotape showing Al-Qaeda members making phone solicitations for vacation home rentals, long distance telephone services, magazine subscriptions and other products." The Battle Creek Inquirer contacted the detective behind the "investigation" (and who knew that all of us who sit around goofing off and reading the Onion are actually investigating terrorism?), who admitted that he did not realize the Onion was a "humorous publication." Which is fair enough--certainly the people in this country who have ever even heard of the Onion are vastly outnumbered by those who have not. But you'd think that business about the telemarketing setup in the Afghanistan cave might have given him pause. Not to mention Osama's "Smile and Dial" motivational videotape... Complete story here.
As on a darkling plain Ignorance seems to be a guiding principle among the administration's hawks. Dick Cheney supported South African apartheid and voted against a congressional resolution to free Nelson Mandela from prison. According to Frances Fitzgerald in The New York Review of Books, Cheney didn't trust Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and advised President Reagan to keep up Cold War pressure rather than encourage Gorbachev's reforms. Richard Perle, the guru of Bush's "bomb now, think later" brain-trust, once advised former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "make a clean break" with the Oslo peace process. He and others in the Bush administration, including Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, are on record as opposing a Palestinian state. Is this how the Bush administration expects to get Islamic support for its "get Saddam" policy? Rumsfeld's Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, J.D. Crouch, called in 1995 for a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea, an attack that would have brought war to the entire Korean peninsula. I wonder how Saddam feels being a back-up target. Rumsfeld's Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Affairs, John Boston, is an outspoken opponent of the United Nations. Most recently he lied about Cuba having weapons of mass destruction merely to take a cheap shot at former President Jimmy Carter. Thus is the case against Iraq measured and made. Petty and ignorant men are running our foreign policy. Complete column at TomPaine.com.
Credit where due At least one Democrat isn't rolling over and wagging his tail like a submissive puppy. From Robert Byrd's speech on the Senate floor last week: The resolution before us today is not only a product of haste; it is also a product of presidential hubris. This resolution is breathtaking in its scope. It redefines the nature of defense, and reinterprets the Constitution to suit the will of the Executive Branch. It would give the President blanket authority to launch a unilateral preemptive attack on a sovereign nation that is perceived to be a threat to the United States. This is an unprecedented and unfounded interpretation of the President's authority under the Constitution, not to mention the fact that it stands the charter of the United Nations on its head. Representative Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to William H. Herndon, stated: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - - and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.' More here. -------------------- Friday, October 04, 2002
Not in our name A reminder: anti-war events this Sunday in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many other cities nationwide. More information here.
Who said it?--part two "They have corrupted the election system...and are attempting to steal an election they could not otherwise win...we will not stand by while they break the law in an undisguised grab for power they feel slipping away." A blast from the past, right? Democrats whining about Florida? Actually, as I'm sure you've already guessed, it's a Republican complaining about the situation in New Jersey, courtesy of today's Philadelphia Inquirer. (Thanks to reader Bill Nazzaro for the heads up.)
Who said it?--part one "Well, there used to be three branches of government in this country-no longer. Now there are just two: the executive and the judicial. Used to be two political parties. Now there’s just one: the Republican Party. Folks, what we saw today in the Rose Garden was complete abdication of the United States Congress and a complete collapse of the Democratic Party. "Look, there will be no debate on the war in Iraq. The debate is already over. For pure, political purposes, Republicans and Democrats ran down to the White House today and surrendered, gave President Bush everything he wanted. And also, there will be no opposition to the war in Iraq, because again, for pure political purposes, Democratic leaders-Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman and others-simply rolled over and went into tank for President Bush. Tom Daschle is the only one who didn’t. Good for him. You know what the bottom line is, folks? President Bush wants to go to war against Iraq. The Congress will not stop him. The Democrats will not stop him. It looks like now the only force that can stop war in Iraq is us, the American people." So who said it? Ralph Nader? Michael Moore? Nope. It was Bill Press, former chairman of the California Democratic Party, on Wednesday's Buchanan & Press. (Wonder if the Democrats-can-do-no-wrong crowd will go after him now?) -------------------- Thursday, October 03, 2002
Well, this sucks The powers that be at Voice Media and the New Times chain got together and cut themselves a deal, each agreeing to shut down a paper in two markets where they were both bleeding money: Los Angeles and Cleveland. The axe fell yesterday. My strip ran in both of the now-shuttered papers, the New Times LA and the Cleveland Free Times, which means that it is now out of print in both cities. If you live in either, do me a huge favor and drop the editors of the surviving paper a note and let them know that you'd really, really, really, really like to see "This Modern World" in their paper. (I'm not posting any email addresses or links here because I don't want to initiate an astroturf campaign--I'm only asking you to write if you actually live in the Los Angeles or Cleveland areas. I want any feedback they receive to be genuine.) Update: Cleveland Scene has already picked up the strip, to start with their October 16 issue. My thanks go out to editor Pete Kotz for that vote of confidence. -------------------- Wednesday, October 02, 2002
Message in a bottle Haven't had much time to post lately, obviously. And I'll be completely offline next week. In the meantime, whatever you do, don't miss this rundown of the Bush Administration's fantasies of empire, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And if you pay attention to the right-wing blogs--and with a few notable exceptions, I'd rather be locked in a movie theatre and forced to watch the last Star Wars film several times running--but if you're into that sort of thing, Max Sawicky seems to be doing a pretty good job fact checking their asses. And of course, there's always Cursor, Michael Moore's site, Xoverboard, and Tapped, all of which hold permanent positions on this space's recommended reading list. (Even though the latter, despite my status as a regular contributor to their magazine, has no reciprocal link to this space. But when you're already getting the kind of traffic this site gets, you can afford to be magnanimous--if slightly churlish--about these things.) -------------------- Monday, September 30, 2002
A couple from the Chron… …courtesy of my whirlwind weekend trip to California. First, this article about peace activists ensnared by a federal "No Fly" list. The thing to note about this one is that no one will say who's responsible for contributing to or maintaining this list--so what you've got here is a secret blacklist run by unaccountable bureaucrats. "The problem is that this list has no public accountability: People don't know why their names are put on or how to get their names off," said Srikantiah, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. "We have heard complaints from people who triggered the list a first time and then were cleared by security to fly. But when they fly again, their name is triggered again." Several federal agencies -- including the CIA, FBI, INS and State Department -- contribute names to the list. But no one at those agencies could say who is responsible for managing the list or who can remove names of people who have been cleared by authorities. Gosh, that sounds like a bad idea. And here's a little hint for anyone who's interested in why, after eleven years, Saddam has suddenly become an unacceptable threat we simply must deal with immediately, no questions asked, times-a-wastin'. The world's biggest oil bonanza in recent memory may be just around the corner, giving U.S. oil companies huge profits and American consumers cheap gasoline for decades to come. And it all may come courtesy of a war with Iraq. While debate intensifies about the Bush administration's policy, oil analysts and Iraqi exile leaders believe a new, pro-Western government -- assuming it were to replace Saddam Hussein's regime -- would prompt U.S. and multinational petroleum giants to rush into Iraq, dramatically increasing the output of a nation whose oil reserves are second only to that of Saudi Arabia. "There already is a stampede, with the Russians, French and Italians already lined up," said Lawrence Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, a New York think tank funded by large oil companies. Sometimes a banana is just a banana. And sometimes a war to assert control over vast quantities of oil is just a war to assert control over over vast quantities of oil. --------------------
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