Oh my....
NYPress - Culture - Neal Pollack - Vol. 15, Iss. 17

Two days later, I was a correspondent for the People’s Liberation Speak-Out Gazette of Greater Wisconsin, and also several Indymedia websites. Before I left, I received an e-mail from Indymedia’s "truth minister," Subcomandante G. "Always write the truth," she said. "But submit it to us for approval first."

Their per diem sucked, and I had to give half my fee to Food Not Bombs, but I had arrived in Israel, and no one was going to keep me from my story.

"Take me to Ramallah!" I ordered my cab driver.

"No way!" he said.

Goddamn stuckup Israelis, I thought. Fine, then. I’d just walk to the West Bank. It was a nice spring day, and besides, all the other cars seemed to be on fire.

Gads, haven't had a good ol' fashion motorcycle rumble in a long time:

4 Killed in Nevada Casino Shooting

LAUGHLIN, Nev. (AP) -- Four people were shot to death after fighting erupted between motorcycle gangs at a casino early Saturday, authorities said. At least nine other people were shot or stabbed, hospital officials said.

About 100 people were taken into custody and bridges over the Colorado River were temporarily closed to traffic, according to the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

The shooting occurred on the first floor of Harrah's during the 20th annual River Run, a large gathering of motorcycle clubs that brought up to 80,000 people into the gambling resort this weekend, said Larry Tunforss, a spokesman for the Bullhead City, Ariz., Fire Department, who confirmed the deaths.

Of course, this might just as easily be subtitled "Why people still hate motorcycles and motorcyclists, Part 8,533,234."

Makes me want to go for a ride.

First heard of on Electrolite....

A Tax Plan to (and From) Space

To the extent that there has been any public discussion of Michael Williams, a 28-year-old Alabama congressional candidate who wants to fund NASA by taxing works of science fiction, two divergent views have emerged.

The first holds that Williams -- a supermarket bagger by day -- is a visionary, a man of innovation and wisdom who thinks years ahead of his time. The second view is less charitable: He's crazy as a loon. Tax science fiction? What is he thinking?

The Sacramento Bee -- sacbee.com -- Mother charged with helping young couple in suicide pact

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Prosecutors say Kathleen Holey did everything she could to help her son and daughter-in-law commit suicide, including driving them to an abandoned farmhouse, arranging pillows and blankets for their comfort and handing over a powerful narcotic.

The daughter-in-law survived, though, setting off an investigation that led law enforcement authorities to Holey.

Good grief! And somehow it keeps getting more bizarre.

"You can't conceive of wanting to help your child kill themselves," said [prosecutor Charles] Sherman, who filed the assisted suicide charges. "There has to be some reason. I'm just as anxious to know what that reason is myself."

Sherman said Kathleen Holey was resolute in her decision that suicide was the best way out for the teen-agers, who were married last August.

According to prosecutors, she drove the couple to a pharmacy to fill her prescription for fentanyl, a painkiller she used to treat chronic pain from a head injury. She then took them to a McDonald's for their final meal before heading to the abandoned farmhouse where they had chosen to die.

But the capper comes, of course, from the defense attorney:

Kathleen Holey faces up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines if convicted of assisted suicide. She is jailed on $25,000 bail and will undergo a psychiatric evaluation to see if she is competent to stand trial.

Her attorney, Ronald Zawacki, said the woman is shaken by her son's death. He said he was awaiting to see all the evidence before making any further comment. [Emphasis mine.]

This is like the first Menendez trial, where a juror said she couldn't convict because those poor boys would have to live without their mother. Good grief, lady, they killed they mother, and this lady killed her son. Makes you shake your head at the world....

All right. The answers are simplistic agree/disagree, but the Philosophical Health Check is still entertaining. There is no right or wrong way to take the test, but it does point out any "contradictions" that may occur between your answers. A little self-examination is a good thing, because, as the saying goes, a life unexplored.... (Drink the hemlock!)

Heather Havrilesky on another movie "genre" (though I think that's being generous):

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | One ring to rule them all

Call it wedding porn. The popular subset of commercial fiction features romance novels about neutered, neurotic professional girls. Instead of ripped bodices and heaving breasts, wedding porn features broken engagements, squirrelly commitment-phobic men and superembarrassing quarrels in really nice restaurants.

Telling Complex Stories Simply

GOD knows, this is a thin age for storytelling," said the director Barry Levinson, prompted to this melancholy assessment by a midafternoon screening of Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront."

Lovely conversation with an excellent director. Mandatory reading for the numbnuts who sat on their hands when Kazan got his special Oscar a few years back. Bloody hypocrites!

Saudi Tells Bush U.S. Must Temper Backing of Israel

"If Sharon is left to his own devices, he will drag the region over a cliff," Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign policy adviser to the crown prince, said after the meetings between Mr. Bush and the prince. "That does not serve America's interests, and it does not serve Saudi Arabia's interests."

And a reponse might be, "If Arafat is left to his own devices, he will drag the region into fire." Ah well, to each their side.

This is why I say, "Let him talk, let him handle his defense."

Moussaoui's Defense Plan Complicates Terror Trial

While Mr. Moussaoui may have found a way to inveigh against America and the non-Muslim world in a highly public forum, his actions in federal court in Alexandria, Va., on Monday probably also make it more difficult for him to defend himself against the terrorism charges, which carry the death penalty.

For one thing, his 50-minute speech before Judge Leonie M. Brinkema supported the prosecution's portrait of him as a hate-filled terrorist. He told the court that he prayed to Allah for "the destruction of the United States of America" and for the "destruction of the Jewish people and state."

He will have to have US lawyers assisting him, if for no other reason than to guide him through the maze of appeals, objections, etc., and the US legal system. If he's half-smart, he'll listen to them and not let his rhetoric get too out of hand.

But I want to hear this man speak his mind, air what he feels is hit legitimate defense. I am not afraid of anything he might say, and anything he might say is liable to be...educational, shall we say.

Transcript for Monday, April 22, 2002, MSNBC Making Sense

KEYES: Now, one of the things that happened early on and actually led to an intensification of this conflict was the killing of 13 Israeli soldiers.

And apparently involved in that was a tactic where booby trap and suicide bomb approach was used.

I also found in an Egyptian newspaper where folks who referred to them as -- themselves as engineers, are quoted as saying that they had actually -- and I quote the article.

"We had made more than 50 booby-trapped around the camp.

We chose old and empty buildings, and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel, because we knew the soldiers would search for them.

We cut off lengths of main water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four meters apart throughout the houses in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas."

It would seem to me that if the Palestinian fighters were using this kind of tactic, wouldn‘t that also result in a lot of devastation to the buildings?

RAHMAN: That‘s Israel's propaganda. No one will do that to his own family, Mr. Keyes. You know that.

Those people were in the camp. Most of them are police officers. They are with their families.

The Israelis attacked with hundreds of tanks, with Apache helicopters, and bombarded the refugee camp.

You have to be blind not to see those atrocities in the camp.

I have seen footages on American television, on French television, on Arab television. And what I saw is reminiscent of what the Nazis did in Europe in the Second World War.

KEYES: Well, actually, Mr. Rahman, you say that I shouldn't be able to believe that anybody would do this to their own family and all.

But the problem, I think, that exists right now for a lot of us is that, I wouldn‘t believe it if you told me folks were sending, 13-, 15- and 18-year-olds out with bombs strapped to themselves to blow up people in civilian areas and so forth.

I wouldn‘t believe any parent could send their child out to do that, but not only ...

RAHMAN: No one is sending their own children.

Egads, on the one hand you have members of the Palestinian Authority celebrating such people as martyrs, with Arafat's own wife wishing she had a son who could do such a thing, and here is a PA spokesman saying it doesn't happen. Argh! The entire transcript is a fascinating exercise in The Big Lie.

Amazingly, Rahman claimed that the story published in an Egyptian newspaper was Israeli propaganda. And there's Egypt, saying they'll go to war against Israel for a mere $100 billion....

I love my governor, he is so generous to provide such an endless flow of entertainment. Will voters remember this come November?

Sacramento Bee, April 17, 2002: Audit slams Oracle pact

Database software deal could cost state $41 million more.

Naive state officials signed an unprecedented $95 million software contract with Oracle Corp. despite little need for the software and claims of savings that turned out to be wildly overblown, state Auditor Elaine Howle said in a scathing report released Tuesday.

Instead of saving $16 million, the state could spend as much as $41 million more on the database software than it would have without the six-year licensing agreement.

A company that helped sell the state on the deal, Logicon Inc., stands to pocket $28 million -- a fact apparently unknown to the state officials who brokered it, the audit says.

Sacramento Bee, April 23, 2002: Technology agency's days are numbered

A lawmaker pulls a bill's provision that would have kept the department alive.

The state Department of Information Technology, under fire from lawmakers and others for its role in a controversial software contract with the Oracle Corp., will likely take its last breath July 1.

Assemblyman Manny Díaz, D-San Jose, announced Monday that he was withdrawing a provision in a bill that would have allowed the department to continue beyond its sunset this summer.

Díaz had proposed keeping the department alive until the end of 2003 to see if it could be fixed.

But Díaz said Monday that a state audit of the Oracle contract, released last week, convinced him that the department should be allowed to die.

Sacramento Bee, April 25, 2002: Davis aides backed deal

A recent audit ripped the Oracle software pact as a costly error.

An audit released last week said the $95 million, six-year software licensing agreement could cost the state $41 million more than it would have spent without the deal. Despite a survey that showed limited demand in state offices, the agreement called for 270,000 database software licenses -- more than the number of state workers.

Oh, stop, my sides, ROFL! What will be even funnier is tomorrow's story wherein the gov says, "But it's not my fault! Remember, all those aircraft were coming to California!"

All right, this is a little late, but still.... Our friends and allies; didn't we save their bacon (!) in 1991?
Saudi to Warn Bush of Rupture Over Israel Policy

HOUSTON, April 24 -- Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is expected to tell President Bush in stark terms at their meeting on Thursday that the strategic relationship between their two countries will be threatened if Mr. Bush does not moderate his support for Israel's military policies, a person familiar with the Saudi's thinking said today.

In a bleak assessment, he said there was talk within the Saudi royal family and in Arab capitals of using the "oil weapon" against the United States, and demanding that the United States leave strategic military bases in the region.

Such measures, he said, would be a "strategic debacle for the United States."

I wish I could remember who, but I've seen in other blogs and the like that in regards to attacking nations that sponsor terrorism, maybe we're looking at the wrong one. Rather than Iraq, let's hit Saudi Arabia first. Afterall, 15 of 19 hijackers on 9/11 came from there, as does Osama himself. Deposed the tyrants currently in power, start them on the road toward democratic rule, etc. Then, "'Oil weapon' this, buddy!"

A peaceful, principled people:

Bahrain Tribune Daily Newspaper: Egypt ready to go to war for $100 billion

DUBAI: Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Obeid said his country would go to war with Israel if Arab countries stumped up $100 billion to pay for the confrontation, in an interview published yesterday.

"If you want to undertake an action and be ready to face up to challenges, you need at least $100 billion," Obeid told Abu Dhabi daily Al Ittihad when asked why Egypt had taken no measures against Israel's military offensive against the Palestinians.

"I told you we want $100 billion," Obeid repeated in response to a question why Cairo had not expelled Israel's ambassador to Egypt.

Puts me mind of the lawyer who had a client who wanted to file a lawsuit because of the principle of thing matter. The lawyer calmly noted his time, so the client could be properly billed, and said, "Just remember, these are your principles, not mine."

I'm no friend of Sen. Fritz "cash-and-carry" Hollins, referred to with this story as (D-Disney), but it's painful to watch him disassembled like this. Well, painful for Fritz, at least.

There it is again -- the Bush administration is in the pocket of corporate interests. Hollings can see it clearly from Michael Eisner's pocket.

Gore's speech deserves more scrutiny

Al Gore's speech Monday attacking President Bush's environmental policies has received a lot of attention from the press. But while the furor continues over the politics of the speech, little has been said about its substance.

Remember, no media bias....

Anyone got $20 million I can borrow?

African space passenger in orbit

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan, April 25 — South African Internet whiz kid Mark Shuttleworth began his multimillion-dollar trip into space Thursday, seated beside two professional cosmonauts in a cramped space capsule heading for the international space station.

First he says this:

Gates: Complying 'Not Feasible'

"What's required is clearly not feasible for us to do," Gates said. "We'd be in an awful situation, where we would be under a court order with which we couldn't comply and have to pull Windows out of the marketplace."

And now he says....

Did Gates Help States?

But under pressure from Steven Kuney, an attorney for the states, Gates reversed his position, conceding that Windows XP Embedded -- a customizable version of the operating system aimed at automatic teller machines -- could be configured to operate on a desktop and potentially satisfy the requirements of the provision [of Windows XP with IE and such removed]. ...

... Kuney then asked Gates whether Microsoft had even researched the effects of stripping out components from Windows.

"Have you made an effort to count how many operating system functionalities would fail if you eliminated the code from Windows media player?" asked Kuney.

"I can't think of any analysis," Gates replied.

I don't like Microsoft or the way they do business, though for the most part I'm stuck with their products. However, I'm born again and do NOT support government intervention.

Gates proves that all empires fall, if not today than tomorrow. The MS monopoly is doomed. Just because I can't name its replacement doesn't mean there won't be one. And note "replacement"; it may be an example of "better the enemy you know."

Ah, freedom in the Middle East. Bob Arnot recounts, at MSNBC.com, his experience with press freedom in Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabia’s illusory press freedom

A Ministry of Information official said that if he could look at the one tape in my camera, I would be free to leave.

He looked through the footage on my digital video camera and spied pictures I had filmed of a vehement anti-Arab e-mail received by the Arab News newspaper. One contained an animated cartoon of a man relieving himself on the Saudi flag.

"This is a very serious offense," said the official, a "capital offense."

The official then ordered everyone on the flight off the airplane. Some passengers were in tears, others were angry.

They sat for more than five hours as officials bargained with me for my freedom. Each promise they made, they broke. I called the Information Ministry and asked what the problem was.

The response: “This is being handled at a much higher level than mine.”

And this from the government that was going to broker an Israeli-Arab peace plan? "Each promise they made, they broke." A capsule review of Mid-East politics.

Technology Review - Al Qaeda's Anthrax

October 5 may not be as famous as September 11, but it may prove more historic and seminal. On that day last year the United States suffered its first death ever from a biological warfare attack. Over the following two months, 21 additional people were infected with anthrax, and four of them died. We don't know who planned the attack or who perpetrated it, where they obtained the anthrax or why it was done. The delivery weapon was the U.S. mail, although even that isn't certain for all the deaths. The World Trade Center attacks are clear and well-understood, compared to the anthrax mystery. ...

... Judging from such factors as the timing of the anthrax mailings, the delivery method, the quantity of spores used and the information that was publicly available about anthrax's lethality, I think it likely that the anthrax terrorists were working for Osama bin Laden, and intended to murder thousands of people. ...

Makes for chilling reading, in that quiet manner of detached analysis.

Gives an idea why Reno didn't mind armed Federal agents kicking in that door to "rescue" that poor little boy (with the false affidavits, suppressed information, etc., that got her a warrant, of course):

OpinionJournal - Dorothy Rabinowitz's Media Log

District Attorney Scott Harshbarger, who brought the case against the Amirault family of Massachusetts, became the state's attorney general, and now heads Common Cause, a liberal lobby group that aims to reform the political system. Janet Reno, Dade County attorney, came to fame as a child advocate for prosecutions she would win on entirely concocted testimony--among them, the case of Miami police officer Grant Snowden, who spent 11 years in Florida prisons until a federal court finally overturned his conviction. Ms. Reno's later career needs no reporting.

And now she wants to be governor of Florida....

"Giving testimony, perhaps that is all my life is now," Lovelace once said.

Lovelace's own books never won much critical acclaim, but she remained a cultural icon. In her latter-day incarnation as an antiporn feminist, flanked by the likes of Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin, she often said that she wanted more than anything to be remembered as the victim of "Deep Throat" rather than its star. In every profile of her from the '70s and '80s a sort of relentless doe-eyed innocence bizarrely emerges.

She was never proud of her role as a revolutionary. Her ghostwriter recalls her distaste at the loose society around her. "It's everywhere you turn around," she once said. "This one's wife is going out with that one's husband . . . I don't know why something like that happens but I feel sorry for them. Oh, there are so many unhappy people. I just don't understand America."

"Deep Throat" didn't kill her naiveté--only ours.

OpinionJournal - Keeping Ms. Leggett Quiet

There's only one question for Attorney General John Ashcroft: Why are the people responsible for this debacle still working for him?

That's the closing question Glenn Reynolds asks in his opinion piece. More from him can be found at, tada, Instapundit.com.

Makes you want to weep, but not for the "reasons" they give:

Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | Battle for truth in Jenin

Professor Derrick Pounder, a forensic pathologist at Dundee University, visited Jenin hospital on behalf of Amnesty to examine some of the bodies that had been recovered. But what surprised him most was the absence of severely injured patients, since the hospital is less than a kilometre from the camp.

"In a conflict of this type in a densely populated are, where the Israeli army lost a substantial number of men, it is inconceivable that there were not also large numbers of severely injured," he said.

Normally, he would have expected to find three people severely injured for every one killed. Even if one accepts the Israeli claim that "only" 40 Palestinians died, there ought to be another 120 lying badly wounded, in hospital. But they are nowhere to be found.

"We draw the conclusion that they were allowed to die where they were," Professor Pounder said. Turning to the Israeli claim that all those killed were "terrorists", he said that the 21 bodies recovered at the time of his visit were a mixture of Palestinian civilians and fighters. They included three women.

I remember the quiet horror from 9/11, when everyone began to realize that there weren't going to be "thousands" of wounded flooding the hospitals. The ratio of dead to injured was slewed completed toward the dead.

The good professor also discounts disciplined troops exercising fire control. Obviously he believes that all soldiers engage in "spray and pray." Maybe he didn't notice the change when the US Army took the full-auto setting off the M-16. And doesn't Israel buy US-made weapons? I'm pretty sure I've heard some bitching and moaning about that....

Last, how does one tell a terrorist body from a civilian body, and what's the difference if it's a woman? I seem to recall several female suicide-homicide bombers as of late. Does he assume that a fighter will always have a gun in his cold, dead hand? I guess no one is supposed to pick up the weapons of the fallen.

I find myself exceedingly happy that "Professor" Pounder teaches elsewhere, though I'm afraid his standards of "evidence" are finding wide acceptance.

Everywhere but in a courtroom, that is.

Today's history lesson:

The War of Independence, 1948

The Jews were able to secure weapons from one country only: Czechoslovakia. And through one of the greatest miracles of modern times, and a testimony to the will to survive, tiny Israel was not only able to survive intact - she was also able to capture territory from which the Arab aggressors attacked; this is the penalty for waging war (and losing), and it always has been. Unfortunately, both Jordan and Egypt were able to expand their territories; Jordan captured what is now refered to as the "West Bank" (their original Jewish names are Judea and Samaria) including the Jewish eastern half of Jerusalem (now known as "Arab East Jerusalem"), and Egypt captured what is now known as the Gaza Strip - both countries murdered and expelled EVERY Jew who was living there at the time. During the 19 years that Jordan and Egypt occupied those territories (now know collectively as the "Occupied Territories"), neither country thought to create independent states for the remaining Arabs (now known collectively as the "Palestinians") residing in those territories. Instead, those regions were plundered and allowed to rot; Jewish graves were desecrated and the gravestones were used to pave roads and build latrines, the Jewish homes were given to Arabs and mezzuzahs in the doorposts were either ripped out or just painted over (evidence of such can be found even today in "Arab East Jerusalem").

Another Antisemitic reprocussion of Israel's rebirth was that most of the Arab Muslim countries of the Middle East expelled EVERY single Jew living there and confiscated all their assets. Most of these Jewish refugees went to Israel, and in just a few years doubled Israel's population. Incidentally, the number of Jewish refugees and their posessions greatly outnumbers any claims by Arab refugees of the 1948 war. The next great miracle was the speed in which the primarily Ashkenazi Jews of Israel absorbed an equal number of their Arabic-speaking bretheren into society. By comparison, displaced Arabs were forced into refugee camps by their Arab bretheren and most remained there throughout the 19 years of Arab occupation. And contrary to popular belief, there was not a policy of expulsion of Arabs from Israel; if so it was not very successful, as 14% (and climbing) of Israels citizens are Arabs.

This even questions the entire matter of refugees. Why can't the Arabs take care of their own...ever?

Harry Knowles loves "Sum of All Fears"

[Director] Phil Alden Robinson has crafted one of the absolute best spy thrillers ever made. From the way he established the settings, to the way he fills you with dread and hopelessness, to the GODFATHER II moment (you’ll know it) this was cinematically charging. This film is absolutely captivating. Never really doing the expected. Avoid all SPOILER REVIEWS and realize that they do exist, so don’t read the talk backs. The movie was so good I wanted to smoke a pack of cigarettes afterwards, and I don’t smoke.

Clancey's novel is one of my favorites, right after The Hunt for Red October. The first two-thirds of Sum can be tedious, but when It happens in Denver, you realize that the character setups during all that tedious reading were necessary. To me, Sum stands as a Fail-Safe for our time, a cautionary tale that despite the US being the world's only superpower, nuclear war is still a very real possibility.

I was less than happy with the announced changes. Can you think of anything more appropriate today than Arab terrorists? Can you think of a stronger statement than, as in the book, the Arabs themselves try the accused, convict, sentence, and carry out that sentence? In the novel, Ryan stands up to a president who is about to vaporize an entire city to get after a mullah responsible for the entire mess. The moral clarity of that scene stands as one of my favorite literary moments.

Well, maybe it survived the translation to neo-Nazi terrorists, but I doubt it. Nonetheless, it begins to sound like this might be a "must see" film. I'll try and put my disappointments aside.

I find little to agree with Anna Quindlen about, but....

From Coffee Cup To Court

The release of an innocent man, the linking of several crimes, the conviction of the undeniably guilty: the extraordinary uses of DNA testing are all there, in that one case. More reliable than fingerprints or ballistics or the evidence of your lying eyes, the genetic fingerprint we humans leave everywhere in our wake is the best witness the criminal-justice system has ever had. And not just for prosecutors. Roughly one in four of the samples run through a federal databank exonerates a suspect, even when all other evidence suggests he is guilty.

This is the good side of DNA evidence. Unfortunately, she also presents an example of the downside:

Lots of the attention paid to DNA testing so far has been negative, the concerns about privacy rights and the defense high jinks and scientific gobbledygook of the O. J. Simpson case. But those who are worried that their genetic secrets will be used to deny them insurance coverage ought to be more concerned with that urine sample provided at work. Those worried about the rights of the accused should know that DNA testing does more than any other technique to protect the innocent. It’s the anonymity of the guilty to which it poses a threat.

Good example: the case recently in which a rapist was in jail in Wisconsin because of DNA evidence when yet another woman reported an attack. The DNA from the scene matched that of the imprisoned man. Had the DNA lied? No, the woman had. She’d been paid to take a sample of semen that had been smuggled out of jail and stage the rape to make the guilty guy look innocent.

As the required DNA samples get smaller and smaller, the possiblity of fraud and false evidence climbs. The procedures that police use to collect such evidence become more and more important, and too few departments are capable of properly collecting such evidence. (Never mind finding the lab, the technicians, etc.) I agree with her on the promise of DNA evidence; I am less happy about its universal application.

Ethanol scores big Senate win

SENATE MAJORITY Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., is pushing the provision that would require refiners to use 5 billion gallons per year of ethanol in their gasoline by 2012, up from about 1.7 billion gallons this year.

Maybe Daschle should talk to California Governor Gray(out) Davis, who doesn't want ethanol in California, preferring to stick with MBTE as a gasoline additive...at least until 2004, by which time he might not even be governor.

Trouble is, MBTE is a proven carcenogine and stays in ground water for an annoyingly long time. Thus, Davis, a Democrat, and environmentalist, is quietly maintaining a poison in the state's gasoline supply. His preference is to have President Bush grant California a waiver from the EPA's oxygenated gasoline requirement. Bush says, "Use ethanol," a substance Democrats prefer everywhere except in California. Quick overview of everything, except Davis's signed-at-midnight 2004 extension, is right here.

Politics, the art of talking out of both sides of the mouth.

Why isn't this story anywhere else?

The Jerusalem Post Newspaper: Monks escape Palestinians in Bethlehem standoff

Three monks held captive in Bethlehem's Church of The Nativity were rescued earlier today by the army.

The clerics climbed onto a roof inside the compound and waved a sign to soldiers that said, "Save us."

The Sun Newspaper Online: Tears over Laden 'blitz'

PUPILS fled in tears when teachers told them Osama Bin Laden had nuked Britain.

The teenagers were warned the end of the world was minutes away.

And they were even urged to ring home to say goodbye. But the attack was INVENTED by drama staff to get them to act out how they would behave on doomsday.

Families of the 15 and 16-year-olds have now had an apology fromthe school.

But one parent said: "I cannot believe teachers could be so unbelievably stupid. I am utterly disgusted."

Panic broke out when a teacher dashed in to a class at Peterborough’s Bushfield Community College with a whispered message.

Staff feigned tears and told pupils bin Laden had escaped from the Afghan dragnet and fired off a nuclear bomb.

Many youngsters began sobbing -- and some tried to ring their parents on mobiles.

Peterborough City Council admitted the attack story was "probably" out of order. An official said: "The students were informed anything that occured in the lesson would be fictitious.

"It is extremely regrettable the exercise was taken out of context by a few of pupils.

"But in hindsight it was probably a mistake to chose such a scenario."

You think?!?

Yahoo! News - Highway Deaths Fall Slightly in 2001

The data released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also showed a surge in highway traffic as air travel plunged after the Sept. 11 hijack attacks. The effect of the increase on overall fatalities remained unclear.

The safety agency reported 6.3 million crashes, of which 37,299 involved at least one fatality. The total number of people killed on U.S. highways fell slightly to 41,730 in 2001 from 41,821 the previous year, while injuries declined by 200,000 to 3 million.

Drunk-driving deaths again made up about 40 percent of all fatalities.

Most of those killed in crashes were not buckled up, a fact that frustrates safety advocates.

When I was learning to drive, over 55,000 were killed each year in motor vehicle accidents, "more than all US soldiers killed in all the years in Vietnam," or some inane comparison like that.

Motorcycle fatalities increased for the fourth straight year and hit their highest level since 1990 at 3,067.

Oops! But I'd like to see how this compares to the increase in motorcycle sales and, tada, the number of riders. There's been a recent resurgence in motorcycle popularity, which started plunging in 1990--oh, such a coincidence, I'm sure.

"I think there is increased attention to protecting children in crashes that has helped lower the number of deaths," said Joan Claybrook, president of consumer group Public Citizen.

Christ, is this silly no-no still around?!?!? Why does anyone ask her a thing, let alone quote her? Why am I quoting her? I think I'll stop!

Ray bought his Harley

Ray? Oh, sorry. Ray is my oldest and dearest friend in the Known Universe. That's not to say I don't have other close friends, but Ray and I have known each other since we were stroller age...literally. Ups and downs, ins and outs, we know where each other's skeletons are buried. If either of us ever becomes a billionaire, the other is assured a comfortable retirement simply because of the amount of, er, coercive material each has on the other. In a friendly way, of course.

In any event, Ray bought his Harley. I have a BMW. Does this mean we're now friendly adversaries?

Neither of us found much joy in the assortment of Japanese motorcycles out there, for distinct and different reasons. For myself, there's a certain, homogenized sameness to everything that comes out of Japan, which might not be a bad thing but is certainly a dull thing. There are always exceptions. The assorted crotch rockets (rice rockets?) that Yamaha, Honda, Suzuki, and Kawasaki produce are enough sheer "ohmigod" to cause cardiac failure for 90% of the world's population. I doubt if Osama bin Laden himself could handle the strain of seeing 170mph in less time than most cars can cover the standing quarter mile. (Hey! Maybe that's the answer the terrorism. Terrorize 'em via crotch rockets!)

So what did he buy? He found some poor fool who needed out from under his motorcycle loan, and taking advantage of the tearful lad, Ray is now the joyful owner of a Harley-Davidson FLHTCI Electra Glide Classic in two-tone red and black. I'm not sure of the year, either a 2000 or 2001, but it does have the TC88 motor. Fuel-injected. Headers. A few other mods. He hasn't shown it to me yet, though I'm the one who spotted the ad in the Sacramento Bee for him, ungrateful lout. Mine is a 2000 BMW K1200LT Custom in Canyon Red Metallic, equipped with all the bells and whistles you can find in motorcycling, including power window (well, windshield). And I think it may be too much.

There's something rather elemental about a Harley, and that may be a good thing, especially if you believe in Low and Slow. Typically I do not. When I got my Beemer, I preferred, er, Fast. No surprise, considering its country of origin, but the BMW will go hundreds of miles at just about any speed you care to dial in. While the new Honda Gold Wing (the GL1800 model) can stomp it in the quarter mile, most reviews still maintain that the Beemer has the edge for sustained high-speed cruising.

But where in the US of A would you engage in "sustained high-speed cruising"? Well....

Anyway, Ray's Harley hardly qualifies for "low and slow," having a number of mods that sounds like they add up to at least a Stage I tune, if not a full Stage II. Those in the know understand, the rest will have to guess. It means that the stock motor isn't, that the standard horsepower has been augmented, and that Ray's Harley is more than capable of giving my Beemer a run for its money...at least in a straight line. Heaven help him if he needs to hit the brakes! Or turn. Muhaha!

FOXNews.com: Convicted Child-Killer Distributes Fliers to Rebut Public Safety Warnings

SOUTH RIVER, N.J. — A convicted child killer has distributed his own fliers to combat what he says are "misleading" public safety warnings about him. ...

... Barker pleaded guilty to assaulting an 18-year-old girl in Virginia in 1981, and murdered the 12-year-old while on probation. He was not convicted of a sex crime, which would trigger community warnings under Megan's Law.

This raises a slew of hackles and questions, such as:

Why is he out of jail if he murdered a 12-year-old?

Under what legal authority are these "public safety warnings" being distributed?

He's been in the area since 1997. What is going on right now to justify this action today, five years later?

There's more here than meets the eye.

Salon.com Books | The real war on terrorism

The real war on terrorism

Robert Young Pelton, author of "The World's Most Dangerous Places," says the U.S. military has killed "thousands and thousands" of people in Afghanistan, al-Qaida is a myth and the WTC was brought down by a "Mickey Mouse" outfit.

Despite the headline, reads more like an indictment of how the media/press goes about its "business." Makes interesting accusations and statements without a bit of evidence. Still, makes me want to read his book (which pre-dates the war on terror).

Anthony Adragna provides some history re the Middle East. I especially both his rejection of revisionist history directed at recent (last few years) events, as well as his perspective on this being an "ancient" conflict, something I was guilty of assuming. Seems that might not be the case.

ME Revisionism

I recently noted Mr. Barak's emphatic statement on Hannity & Colmes. Just to be clear, after Mr. Barak made the statement, Sean Hannity pursued the point with a "let me get this right" type of question, and Mr. Barak affirmed.

Is Mr. Barak engaging in revisionism?

To answer the question, I decided to review what happened at Camp David in July 2000 (vesus what the press and the pundits reported and commented on).

Does Moussaoui want trial or stage?

In a court appearance Monday, Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French Muslim, pointed his finger skyward to get the judge’s permission to speak, then declared that he would not cooperate with his lawyers. He also read verses from the Quran and said he prayed to Allah for destruction of the United States and Israel.

“What they’ve done is a sophisticated version of the kiss of death,” Moussaoui, speaking in heavily accented English, told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema. He noted that Brinkema, the prosecutors and his court-appointed lawyers all were federal employees.

“The United States will not have a trial without me,” he said. “They only need me for the gas chamber.”

When he finished speaking nearly an hour later, he had lowered the odds for an orderly trial and boosted chances he’d try to use the courtroom for anti-American diatribes.

And I say, "Let him!" Will the trial become a circus? Well, duh! You mean there's been a resurgence in courtroom decorum since OJ?

What's the worst that can happen? A few who are already anti-America/anti-Israel might find more to chew on. More still will see the madness that grips these people, a gain a greater understanding of the threat, its depth and breath. I can't see this as a bad thing.

‘Deep Throat’ star Lovelace, 53, dies

DENVER, April 22 — Linda Boreman, who starred as Linda Lovelace in the 1972 pornographic film “Deep Throat” and later became an anti-porn advocate, died Monday from injuries she suffered in a car crash. She was 53.

No bias in the media

On Sunday, I happened to channel surf onto one of C-Span's book shows, this one featuring Tammy Bruce, talking of her current book The New American Thought Police. It was a recorded affair of her given a speech and taking questions on April 9th, 2002, at UC Davis. I found her to be a persuasive speaker and now her book is on my "buy it soon" list.

That aside, what was incredible to watch was her interaction with an audience that was, for the most part, politely hostile. She was saying things they most definitely did not want to hear. One of Bruce's main assertions is that political correctness is strangling the open and free discussion of ideas, and that the current notion of PC is a purely left-wing phenomena. You can imagine an audience made up of UC Davis law school students would not take this well.

All arguments of that aside, the student "question" I found most fascinating was this young woman who called Bruce a "puppet" of the right-wing. To me this was a precise illustration of what Bruce was saying, that PC dictates you label and marginalize an opponent as quickly as possible. Thus, you slap the label "homophobe" on someone and immediately take anything they are saying off the table. Now they have to defend themselves against the charge of being a homophobe. And here was this student doing--or attempting to do--the same to Bruce. After all, a "puppet" can be ignored because it has no will or thought of its own.

Beyond that, this student asserted that all the major media were slanted to the right, that they were all conservative. She started with FoxNews, but then added "CNN is conservative." Argh! When Bruce wanted the student to name names, the stumbling began, and all that was left were the usual "them" and "they" and "you know who" sort of response.

But last night was an illustration of media bias that was so obvious as to be amazing. I surfed to the CNN show "NewsNight with Aaron Brown," and there was Aaron Brown devoting an entire show to Earth Day 2002. At the moment was a segment on the "superfund." The focus of the segment? That Bush was refusing to reimplement a special corporate tax that provided money for the superfund, that for six years Clinton tried to get that tax reinstated but was foiled by the Republican congress. Person after person slamming Bush and Republicans for allowing this poison to remain in the earth because he wouldn't fund the superfund, tax them evil corporate monsters, etc.

Not one rebuttal statement. None. Nothing. Nada. You get the point? There was precisely nothing balanced about this report. There was not one single hint of a contradiction of the environmental party line. While there are certainly huge pollution sites that need major clean-ups (hence the superfund to begin with), the driving assumption was that you must tax all corporations to get the money so the government can fund the clean-ups. No exploration of why the tax was opposed, no presentation of alternate forms of funding, no discussion of the notion that maybe government shouldn't be the one fountain of money here. Nothing but "Bush and Republicans are evil and want this poison to kill us all," of a message to that effect.

Of course, if they had done any homework they might have found out that polluting corporations pay for and clean up over 70% of the sites. Why? Because if the government comes in and does the clean up it bills those companies for three times the actual cost, plus penalties. To avoid the added expense, the companies do their own clean-ups.

This means the superfund handles the remaining 30%. And the tax is not the only source of funding, contrary to the story segment presented last night.

Again, telling this would have upset the party line. Bummer, eh?

Last, while the story started with the question of who should pay, polluters or the taxpayers, it never answered it or even explored that second half. If it had, it would have reported that Bush, while opposing the tax, is still providing money for superfund via general revenues. Why does he oppose the tax? Because it punishes clean companies along with the dirty ones, and is thus patently unfair.

But that would have contradicted the story's message, that there are no "clean" industries, that Bush is anti-environment on this holy day of Earth Day.

No bias here, no, uh-uh, none. Thank goodness CNN is conservative.

William Safire points a fact or two out:

Democrats vs. Israel

In refusing to take a stand, Gore avoided the ridicule of liberal pundits. From Mary McGrory in The Washington Post to Mark Shields on CNN, a falafel curtain has descended across our continent, transmogrifying the Arab aggressor into the victim. ABC-Disney leads that parade, as the BBC vies with Al Jazeera to inflame the European street. Pro-Palestinian journalists gain cover from Israel's dovish Haaretz, but such dissent is a democracy's strength; if a Ramallah paper criticized Arafat, the editor's body would be dragged through the streets as a "collaborator."

Larry Miller makes the point I've been trying to get at, but in a much more concise and absurdly funny way, hurrah.

Whosoever Blesses Them

The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no "Palestinians" then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians" then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation." So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs From The Same General Area Who Are In Deep Denial About Never Being Able To Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters."

Of copyrights and copywrongs, a small essay:

Eldred and the Copyright Barons

...Disney has managed to use public domain material like Winnie the Pooh and Grimm's fairy tales to generate billions of dollars worth of new, copyrighted material. This is, in fact, exactly the sort of thing the public domain is supposed to facilitate. The irony, of course, is that now that Disney has built an empire based on the public domain, they have spent millions trying to ensure no one follows in their footsteps. Without the public domain, Disney wouldn't have made "Beauty and the Beast", "The Little Mermaid", "Cinderella" or "Tarzan", but now that they have, heaven forbid anyone someday do to them what they've done to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Hans Christian Anderson.

"So," he said, "which rally is this one?"

Steve Twomey and Carol Morello comment on a series of protests this weekend past in Washington DC. My favorite:

Folks rallied against all sorts of alleged corporate injustice on the streets outside the headquarters of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, both at 18th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. They protested Citibank, derided Coca-Cola and held signs that read "Starbucks" with a thick red line through it.

Except, Starbucks had something they needed: bathrooms.

Or, to be more precise, the Starbucks at 18th and H had a bathroom, a women's room, because the men's room was locked and no one had a key. So protesters of both sexes had to wait in 20-minute lines, where they talked about corporate injustice, universal health care and why there were no porta-potties.

Was this a conspiracy?

"This could be a police tactic," said Wellington Lyons, 19, a student from Middlebury College in Vermont.

At least Starbucks had air conditioning. And double mocha lattes. And Al Green on the speakers.

A police tactic! Lovely!

Again, the UN (and others) in action:

The Dirty Politics of Humanitarian Aid

UN agencies, in general, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, in particular, provide poignant examples of this catastrophic situation. In the 52 years of its "temporary" existence, UNRWA has become part of the problem, rather than providing a solution. In addition to the humanitarian aid, including food, health, education, housing, and other services, UNRWA has also become a central component in the Palestinian political structure.

UNRWA is allowed to operate in the camps as long as it cooperates with the political "rules of the road," determined by the gunmen, thugs and terrorists from Fatah, Hamas and other militias. In UNRWA-operated schools, the texts of anti-Israeli incitement and rejectionism are part of the standard curriculum. UNRWA facilities have been routinely used as warehouses for weapons storage and for bomb-making factories. UNRWA director Peter Hansen stumbled through an interview on BBC's Hardtalk with Tim Sebastian, unable to dispute the evidence. Any director who would not have been willing to do Arafat's bidding would have been forced out long ago. As a result, UNRWA cannot be entrusted with the job of providing humanitarian relief under the current circumstances, and the sooner it is closed, the better.

And there I go, thinking I was Tim the Enchanter....





which "monty python and the holy grail" character are you?

this quiz was made by colleen

What a horribly done article:

French uproar over far-right election success

IN A SHOWING that shamed many French, sent shockwaves through Europe and ended the career of third-placed Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, Le Pen came in second to President Jacques Chirac in Sunday’s first round before a May 5 runoff.

"Shamed"? No where in the article does it seek to explain why this great shocking horror of this guy taking second place in the election. The nearest it gets to an "accusation" is that Le Pen once described the Holocaust as a "detail of history." Well, what the hell does that mean?

Meanwhile, paragraph after paragraph of left-leaning people wringing their hands, banging their heads on walls, moaning and wailing. And why? If you take only this article, this horror is caused simply because Le Pen is "far right."

Oh, the horror. He may be Hitler reincarnate, but you'd never learn that from any of the reporting I've heard or seen this morning. NPR's reporting was more of the same (same wire article?). Facts and information would apparently just get in the way.

Sgt. Stryker pointed this story out, along with the comment that on TV we seem to see wailing Palestinians, while on Arab news sites....

Al-Ahram Weekly | Invasion | The 'engineer'

Omar sits restlessly on his chair in the safe-house. He is an "engineer" from Jenin refugee camp: one of the revered bomb-makers from the City of the Bombers. To the Israelis he is the most lethal, and wanted, of terrorists. The poison from the Cobra's head. ...

... Of his group of 30 gunmen, only four escaped from the camp [Jenin] on Wednesday, after the Palestinian arsenal ran dry. Most of the others were shot dead.

"Of all the fighters in the West Bank we were the best prepared," he says. "We started working on our plan: to trap the invading soldiers and blow them up from the moment the Israeli tanks pulled out of Jenin last month."

Omar and other "engineers" made hundreds of explosive devices and carefully chose their locations.

"We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the camp. We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel because we knew the soldiers would search for them," he said.

And babbling brooks continue to ask why the Israelis bulldozed so much of that camp, and UN, er, ah, gentlemen decry the lack of Israeli "search and rescue" operations. Gads, get a grip!

Ann Coulter, the day before the Democrats shot down oil exploration in the ANWR:

WorldNetDaily: 9 out of 10 caribou support drilling

Having wearied of opposing the war on terrorism, Democrats are now trying to sabotage the country's energy policy. A better idea, they think, is to continue sending large amounts of money to countries that nurture homicidal Muslims intent on destroying America. ...

... ABC-NBC-CBS have been accompanying discussions of ANWR with picturesque footage of caribou frolicking in lush, fertile fields – all of which happens to be nowhere near the site of the proposed drilling. ANWR is 19 million acres – larger than Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hawaii, Connecticut and Delaware combined. If oil is found, less than 2,000 acres would be directly affected. The area targeted for drilling looks a little like the moon, but less inviting. ...

When not jetting around the country on his private plane, paid for by the deceased husband of his second wife, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has emerged as a leading opponent of ANWR. Developing new sources of energy, Kerry says, is "old thinking." The Democrats' innovative new idea is for the little people to wear sweaters and drive smaller cars.

That's a bold stroke: We'll delay starvation by eating a little less every day. The illogic of it confounds reason. Everyone is against waste – except Northeastern liberals telling the rest of us to conserve. (How about they practice by conserving our money?) We need more energy. Postponing death is not an energy policy.

Subtle, she is not. Points, her comments are. Yoda, sound like I do. (Catch his closing line in the lates Episode II trailer: "Begun this clone war has.")

Damn, I'm so glad those Macs are so technologically advanced. Think how bad it would be it they weren't....

Why Do New iMacs Surf So Slowly?

Tests conducted by Wired News confirmed reader complaints that a new 800 MHz iMac takes an average of twice as long to render Web pages as a comparable or cheaper PC running Windows XP. Even on broadband networks, the iMac's default Internet Explorer browser took an average of 10 seconds per page to render several popular sites, including CNN.com and the Apple Store homepage.

Slashdot discussion pages and some weblog sites took even longer, despite their lack of fat graphics. The diagnosis: The problem is not a bandwidth issue caused by fat HTML, but an annoying delay in actually drawing the page onscreen after its components have been downloaded.

"I spent $1,800 on a computer that's slower than the $400 eMachine it replaced," one iMac user wrote in an e-mail. ...

... The culprit, it turns out, isn't the new iMac's hardware, but its operating system, which Apple focused on getting to market first and bringing up to speed later. ...

Personally, I've always admired the approach Be took, namely toss out everything and start from scratch. Too bad Apple blocked the BeOS from working Mac hardware, and Microsoft crushed their migration in the generic PC direction.

One can but hope....

Iraq, the Gulf states and the meaning of ‘change’

Notwithstanding the fact that Iraq has not known democracy or multi-party politics since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, let us consider for a moment what some of the consequences of a US-sponsored democratic transformation in Iraq would be:

Iraq would fall within the sphere of American influence, supplanting the role of Saudi Arabia, or at least eroding its regional influence. Baghdad rather than Riyadh would become the political role model Washington seeks to promote throughout the region, by means of a regime tailored to its specifications that also keeps it distance from Syria and Iran.

OPEC would become virtually an “American organization,” were Washington to assume effective control over Iraq‘s oil production, perhaps increasing its output to six million barrels per day. The neighboring states would fear ­-- and this is the key thing --­ being infected themselves by the bug of change in Iraq.

In other words, the Gulf states would be destabilized by democratic change in Iraq unless they change accordingly.

From Tunku Varadarajan:

OpinionJournal - Taste

"Die Jew. Die, die, die, die, die, die. Stop living, die, die, DIE! Do us all a favor and build yourself [an] . . . oven."

These words are an excerpt from the "Personals" column in the Medium, a magazine at Rutgers University published with a grant from a committee that disburses money for student activities.

No, no anti-Semitism in the Land of the Free, especially not on college campuses, where I thought freedom of thought, expression, and even religion were well protected. Oops, must have missed something....

Another "subtle" opinion about the United Nations re the Middle East:

The U.N.'s Refugees

On Monday, France, Belgium and four other European Union members endorsed a U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution condoning "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. Hence, six EU members and the commission now join the 57 nations of the Islamic Conference in legitimizing suicide bombers. By their logic of moral equivalence, terror is justifiable because its root cause is Israel's occupation. That Palestinian terror predates occupation, or that suicide bombings became a tactic of choice only after the initiation of the Oslo process, is too inconvenient to mention.

Unfortunately the U.N. goes beyond giving rhetorical support for terrorism. In a variety of ways, its agencies have been complicit in Middle Eastern terror.

He may be a bit biased, but that doesn't mean he's not right:

The Root Cause of Terrorism

Do not be fooled by the apologists of terror.

These apologists tell us that the root cause of terrorism is the deprivation of national and civic rights, and that the way to stop terror is to redress the supposed grievances that arise from this deprivation.
But the root cause of terrorism, the deliberate targeting of civilians, is not the deprivation of rights. If it were, then in the thousands of conflicts and struggles for national and civil rights in modern times we would see countless instances of terrorism. But we do not.

Mahatma Gandhi fought for the independence of India without resorting to terrorism. So too did the peoples of Eastern Europe in their struggle to bring down the Berlin Wall. And Martin Luther King's campaign for equal rights for all Americans eschewed all violence, much less terrorism.

If the deprivation of rights is indeed the root cause of terrorism, why did all these people pursue their cause without resorting to terror? Put simply, because they were democrats, not terrorists. They believed in the sanctity of each human life, were committed to the ideals of liberty, and championed the values of democracy.

But those who practice terrorism do not believe in these things. In fact, they believe in the very opposite. For them, the cause they espouse is so all-encompassing, so total, that it justifies anything. It allows them to break any law, discard any moral code and trample all human rights in the dust. In their eyes, it permits them to indiscriminately murder and maim innocent men and women, and lets them blow up a bus full of children.

There is a name for the doctrine that produces this evil. It is called totalitarianism.

Excellent and well-written, with an underlying passion that can't be denied. Even in the US, at the height of civil unrest, terrorism was a tactic eschewed by the far-lefties. They might bomb police cars and police stations, seeing them as legit "military" targets, but you never saw them blowing up Macy's.

Wow, talk about a long investigation. I wonder if this trial will get as much air play and hype as OJ's did?

Blake arrested in wife’s slaying

LOS ANGELES, April 19 — Robert Blake, the former child star who went on to major success playing a police detective on the hit 1970s television series “Baretta,” was arrested Thursday night and will likely be charged with the murder of his wife almost a year ago, Los Angeles police said.

James Lileks offers a journalism lesson with a disturbing closing image.

Now, here is some history that Mr. Pino should become aware of:

Baghdad Delenda Est.

Opponents of Israel, like Mr. Said, love to point out that it is a creation of Western imperial powers, an unnatural, inorganic construct imposed by distant exploiters. This Zionist implant, they argue, has aroused the fury of the Arab body politic; anti-Jewish rage is simply a natural immune response to imperialism. Suicide bombers, this theory holds, are antibodies. Remove the foreign matter, and the normally peace-loving Arab and Muslim metabolism will return to normal.

There are some obvious problems with this analysis, the first being the notion that the region has any history of being peace-loving in the way we understand the phrase in the West. Peace in the Middle East has always -- always -- been imposed from above or without, not attained from within. Indeed, that the Islamic Middle East no longer has a ruling empire, caliphate, or dynasty, is one reason it is such a mess. Unable to accept the fact -- and it is a fact -- that the region is ever shrinking in the rearview mirror of the West, it has grown hobbled by rage. As David Pryce-Jones has eloquently argued, the Middle East is what anthropologists call a "shame society." In such societies, Jones argues, "the acquisition of honor and the converse, avoidance of shame, are the keys to motivation."

On and on, more and more. Read!

From the Digital Stater, web version of the Daily Kent Stater newspaper, by "guest columnist" Julio Cesar Pino, certified loon:

digital stater | stories: Singing out a prayer for a youth martyr

You are not a terrorist, Ayat. The real terrorists are those who some 100 years ago hijacked a beautiful religion and transformed it into a real estate venture. Glancing around the world, they saw in Palestine "a land without a people, for a people without a land," as their spokesmen and women chant ad nauseaum. The Zion of the concertina wire, F-16 bomber death planes and tank crews collecting skulls and shedding martyrs' blood. The birthplace of your ancestor, and mine, the Palestinian pacifist Joshua ben Josef, is now a battle zone -- with Christians, Muslims and peace-loving Jews trapped inside Bethlehem.

Your last cry, by gesture rather than the spoken word, was "Stop, thief! This is not your land and we are a people." I can assure you, Ayat, that the whole world stopped to listen. Even the numbskull who parades as president of the United States heard you, and, following the text written for him by his handlers, expressed astonishment at how a teenager could perpetrate such an act. Simply, it is pronounced "justice" and spelled C-O-U-R-A-G-E.

He's an "associate professor history" who doesn't seem to know much history, except of the revisionist kind. He does know the language of hate, and he certainly knows how to encourage insanity in people, just the sort that encourages people to "die" for a cause. Ah well, it's an insane world, after all.

Some people can write excellent responses, however, such as Eric Olsen:

It goes without saying that there is so much crap here that it would require a case of toilet paper to deal with it, but let us put aside the incongruous equating of the Palestinians with Native Americans (who really were here first, but who were no more a “people” than the warring tribes of Afghanistan; at least the Palestinians are an actual “people,” but they have no more right to any particular piece of land than the Israelis do; the history of the Middle East is one of migrating tribes and peoples, conquerors coming and going, redefining boundaries to suit their own needs - like I said, it’s a political question that can only be resolved politically) and get to the heart of the matter. This man Pino thinks like an adolescent because spiritually he actually IS ONE. His romantic, faux-poetic blather about suicide bombers going to heaven and smiling beatifically down and whatnot sounds sincere - unlike the cynical rote manipulations of Osama bin Laden for example - but adolescent, even childish, because they are the ejaculations of a spiritual baby: he just converted to Islam two years ago....

Amen!

Howard Kurtz on media accounts of the Jenin "massacre":

Media Is Drawn Into West Bank Propaganda War (washingtonpost.com)

The Israeli assault on the West Bank town of Jenin has produced dramatically different media accounts.

The British press is playing it as a massacre, while American newspapers say there's no such evidence.

How on earth can journalists visiting the same refugee camp reach such different conclusions?

Thanks to InstaPundit for point out this hillarious bit:

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Breaking into the movie business

We're trapped. It's 10 p.m. on a weeknight and I'm crouched behind a couch in the pitch-black office of James L. Brooks, executive producer of "The Simpsons." The digital camera in my friend Rhys' sweaty hand can't register a thing. It's too dark. Some dedicated Sony Studios employee is playing a "Simpsons" arcade game that's sitting in the hallway, in what would be our escape route.

Technical Difficulties

I like web standards, really I do. My preferred browser is Mozilla (currently v0.9.9+, soon to go, yeeha, 1.0), but an annoying number of sites don't render properly. Surprise, they look perfect in MSIE! And Blogger only supports MSIE for a "front-end" right now, with more general browser support coming "real soon now."

So imagine my annoyance when I pick this Blogger template. I like how it looks. I modify it for my blog/news links, add my wondrous random quote generator, and tada, all posts well.

Almost.

Seems the page comes up looking like trash in Communicator v4.76, what I'm stuck with at the office. My mods made no difference. Page just looks rotten.

Well, tough. If you're using Comm v4.76, bummer for you. Of course, if you are you aren't reading this, now are you? ;-)

James Robbins also debunks Meyssan's book:

James S. Robbins on Thierry Meyssan & Sept. 11 on National Review Online

I was there. I saw it. That is my entire rebuttal.

Snopes.com neatly debunks French theory that Flight 77 never existed, that an airliner did not hit the Pentagon on 9/11:

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Rumors of War (Hunt the Boeing!)

Peace-loving Islamic imams:

MEMRI: Latest News

We are convinced of the [future] victory of Allah; we believe that one of these days, we will enter Jerusalem as conquerors, enter Jaffa as conquerors, enter Haifa as conquerors, enter Ramle and Lod as conquerors, the [villages of] Hirbiya and Dir Jerjis and all of Palestine as conquerors, as Allah has decreed... 'They will enter Al-Aqsa Mosque as they have entered it the first time...'

Anyone who does not attain martyrdom in these days should wake in the middle of the night and say: 'My God, why have you deprived me of martyrdom for your sake? For the martyr lives next to Allah'...

Our enemies suffer now more than we do. Why? Because we are convinced that our dead go to Paradise, while the dead of the Jews go to Hell, to a cruel fate. So we stand firm and steadfast, in obedience to Allah...

This was a "sermon." Again, why do people doubt that the goal of any Palestinian movement is the elimination of Israel?

Peace-loving Palestinians will feel cheated if the Israelis don't attack Gaza:

Fighters in Gaza Set Traps and Wait for Israeli Prey

Israel has said in its recent campaign that it reserved the right to attack in Gaza, where about 6,000 Jewish settlers live among 1 million Palestinians, and where skirmishes have not been uncommon in the last year and a half. But it has refrained from doing so.

Mr. Samhadanah [an Al Aksa commander] now says his biggest worry is not a fight. Rather, he said, he is worried that now that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had met with both sides, there might be a political solution and the Israelis will not begin raids into Gaza.

"If we wasted a lot of money and our time getting ready, and the Israelis do not come, then they did cheat us," he said.

Bummer for him, eh?

It would be very nice if this is true:

What Bush Expects (washingtonpost.com)

On April 4, George Bush gave a lecture to the Middle East in which he (already famously) said that he expected results. Given the results to date, it is tempting to look upon the president's demand as ill conceived and his nascent initiative as a failure. But the results Bush really expected were not exactly those he called for. ...

... On the day that Bush gave his speech, the smart betting in the White House was that (1) Arafat would not suddenly develop honesty and rationality; (2) the Palestinians would probably not throw the old recidivist killer overboard in favor of someone the Israelis could do business with; (3) far from ending the bombings, the new American initiative would almost certainly provoke fresh outrages; (4) the Arab regimes would, again, dis us.

The point of Bush's speech was not to deny these realities but to expose them. This government is doing something large and important that the preceding two administrations failed to do: It is defining the new American position in the new world. This world's essential fact is the revivification of the 19th-century cultural and territorial conflicts previously frozen in the hundred years' war of giants between democracy and totalitarianism. On a running basis, but as a matter of fundamental philosophy, the Bush White House is demonstrating an understanding of this truth, and an understanding of the corollary truth that America must make clear its position in this world.

The position is this: The United States is for democracy and order, not necessarily always in that order. It is against threats to this of any sort. It is against all forms of fascism, including Islamic. It is against those who would seek to destroy democratic nations or to drive the United States from its position in the world as the paramount protector of democracy. It regards those who are friendly to these aims as friends and those who are inimical to them as enemies.

At some point in the next year or so, the United States will go to war against Iraq. It will do so with friends, or alone. It will do so with a clear and cold-eyed knowledge of where it stands and who stands with it, and that understanding will have begun with Bush's speech of April 4 and with his "failed" expectations.

Oh -- and the United States will win.

Also from SFGate.com:

2 oil giants deceived public on MTBE's hazards, jury finds

In a landmark case, a San Francisco jury has found that gasoline with the additive MTBE is a defective product and that two major oil companies were aware of the chemical's dangers but withheld the information when they put it on the market.

All well and good so far. The article further reads:

But MTBE has proved to be a major environmental headache nationwide. Spilling from leaky underground storage tanks, it travels faster in the groundwater than gas and takes longer to break down. The state has set a maximum limit for drinking water because MTBE is a suspected carcinogen.

According to state records, there are 1,189 underground tank sites leaking MTBE within 1,000 feet of public supply wells or on vulnerable drinking water aquifers. An additional 1,729 leaking tank sites farther away from drinking water wells also pose a concern.

But something is missing from this story. Ah, here it is:

[California] Gov. Gray Davis recently delayed the statewide phaseout of MTBE in gasoline until January 2004.

I continue to be amazed at how little press this gets.

Oh, naturally it's because Davis is a Democrat, yet you'd still expect to hear the usual parade of environmentalists screaming to get MTBE out of gasoline now!

From SFGate's Buzz Town columnist, Beth Lisick:

Cheap laughs at 'Spiegelmania'; Oakland's Talk of the Town; plus Chelsea Clinton, Benjamin Bratt, more.

It looks like the Bay Area is going to be rife with Chelsea Clinton sightings now that her main dude, Ian Klaus, is a local. Not only has she been hanging out in the Mission and closing down the Redwood Room at the Clift, but it's looking like a big SF or Napa wedding may be in their future.

While all the press has commended the former first daughter on her classy transition from gawky teen to hip Donatella Versace pal, the real goods on Chels is supposedly the way her name's printed on her credit card: says "Miss C.V. Clinton."

Wow, Chelsea in my old stomping grounds. My heart flutters.

A not-half-bad article regarding the assorted 9/11 conspiracy theories wandering about the Internet:

ABCNEWS.com : Some Ask, Were Aliens or Bush Behind 9-11?

Though at first glance it may seem strange that there should still be people looking for Sept. 11 villains besides bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, people who have studied conspiracy theories over the years say it is perfectly natural, and even a fundamental part of the American character.

Ken Adelman over on FoxNews.com:

Arab Government No Strangers to Fiction

Among the most outrageous distortions, some of which were subsequently broadcast by the Western press:

-- Hassan Asfor, a Palestinian spokesman, told BBC radio that the Israeli Defense Force had broken into Arafat's office and that Arafat’s office was "on the brink of disaster." His office was never broken into.

-- The Italian and French media picked up an April 2, Palestinian television report that the Palestinian leadership announced that a priest, Jacques Amathis, had been killed and dozens of monks wounded in an IDF action in Bethlehem. The announcement in the West created outcries of protests in Europe. Yet the very next day, Father Amathis was interviewed and confirmed that he and the monks in the monastery were safe and well.

-- On April 3, Chairman Arafat told Al Jazeera, the television network watched across the Arab world, that Israel had "burned the mosque" opposite Santa Maria Church in Bethlehem and "destroyed many churches and mosques." He called upon the Christian and Muslim world to take action. None of it happened. All of this was creating truth.

-- In an interview with Abu Dhabi television on March 29, Arafat told of an "incident in Hebron, that insolent and criminal incident; [the IDF] even attacked and killed in the Hebron area three members of the international force: two from Turkey and one of the nurses from Switzerland." The Turkish member of this force said in a later radio interview that the attack had been carried out by a uniformed Palestinian.

The beat, as always, goes on.

Law & Order in the US of A:

Inmate Sues Over NY Son of Sam Law (washingtonpost.com)

NEW YORK –– A black radical convicted in the 1981 killing of a police officer has sued the state over a law that allows the victim's family to collect $15,000 he was awarded in a legal settlement.

And the, er, beat goes on:

Slagging Over Sagging CD Sales

Digital piracy caused a drop in worldwide record sales, according to a report conducted by a trade association that represents the biggest record companies in the world.

But an increasing chorus of industry watchers -- ranging from musicians to consumer rights organizations to a federal judge -- point to other culprits: the record labels themselves.

So the obvious answer is A New Law! Argh, I say, Argh!

Philip Murphy, at The Invisible Hand, is "starting a collection of Freudian slips, dead giveaways, and outright declarations of genocide just so we all know the score", re peace in the Middle East and the true intent of the "Palestinian movement".

P.J. O'Rourke on Israel's decision to keep reporters away from its recent military actions:

OpinionJournal - War, unlike politics, can go on without reporters

Actually, it's a mistake. (Something Israel seems to have realized, since it has partially lifted the ban.) Journalism is the opposite of pancake makeup and boudoir lighting. The farther journalists get away from you, the worse you look. But attempting to control news during a war is too usual to be labeled outrageous. Stalin didn't ban journalists from Stalingrad. He sent them there. They couldn't refuse. I'd rather be banned. And there was censorship in the Soviet press anyway. The International Federation of Journalists is right. Censorship did not bring peace. Not that peace with Germany would have been a good idea.

As always, informative and entertaining.

Pete du Pont weighs on on Earth Day 2002:

OpinionJournal - Outside the Box: PAT Answers

One thing we should not celebrate this Earth Day might be called Ehrlichthink, the doomsday, Armageddon, one-minute-to-midnight mentality that has regularly predicted the end of civilization as we know it, never mind that the facts point in exactly the opposite direction. Paul Ehrlich was the leader of eco-pessimism, but many others encouraged disinformation concerning our environmental challenges.

Recall the famous 1989 explanation of environmental strategy by global-warming crusader Stephen Schneider: to save the world: "We need . . . to capture the public's imagination. That of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we have." And "each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Which explains recent revelations about false reports being made by forest "experts" about spotted owl habitats that never existed.

God bless the United Nations. If not for them, where else might you find such a fountain of amusement?

NATIONAL POST ONLINE | News story: UN backs Palestinian violence

UNITED NATIONS - Six European Union countries yesterday endorsed a United Nations document that condones violence as a way to achieve Palestinian statehood.

They were voting as members of the UN Human Rights Commission on a resolution that accuses Israel of a long list of human rights violations, but makes no mention of suicide bombings of Israeli civilians.

Canada and two EU countries -- Britain and Germany -- opposed the measure, which supports the use of "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. Guatemala and the Czech Republic joined the opposing voices, but with 40 countries of the 53-member commission voting yes and seven abstaining, the resolution is now part of the international record.

I'm really beginning to think I should return to The Old Country (Czech Republic).

Ted Rall disassembles a French 9-11 conspiracy book using the same techniques recently used against him.

Yahoo! News - FRIGHTFUL DECEPTION:

Meyssan asks: "Could such an operation been conceived and directed from an Afghan cave and carried out by a handful of Islamists?" Here's the converse of the standard retort to those who accuse the government of running conspiracies because they're too big and disorganized to pull them off. Neither line of reasoning makes sense, of course. Big things can be carried out by either big or small groups; series of coincidences neither prove nor disprove the existence of conspiracies. 9-11 probably wasn't carried out by Afghan cave dwellers, but that doesn't mean Bush did it either.

Emphasis mine, because a "series of coincidences" is what Rall, Michael Moore, and others are using to construct the notion that Bush used 9-11 as an excuse to bomb Afghanistan in order to build an oil pipeline (see Spinsanity - Return of Rall: Oil conspiracy redux). Maybe he's just jealous of Meyssan having a best seller.....

Paul Krugman says Bush "boo-boo'd" last week:

Losing Latin America

Many people, myself included, would agree that Hugo Chávez is not the president Venezuela needs. He happens, however, to be the president Venezuela elected -- freely, fairly and constitutionally. That's why all the democratic nations of the Western Hemisphere, however much they may dislike Mr. Chávez, denounced last week's attempted coup against him.

All the democratic nations, that is, except one.

To which you could rebute with Tunku Varadarajan's editorial:

OpinionJournal - Citizen of the World

Let us not forget that Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan strongman, was elected by an overwhelming majority. Why? He promised to fight corruption, for one, which in Venezuela means tapping into the resentment that the little guys who rob the system blind have for the big guys who rob the system blinder; but he also promised to safeguard the Venezuelan way of life, by which he meant that no economic reform would come in the way of Venezuelans enjoying the bounty of their land, whatever this might cost future generations. Petro-welfare forever. ¡Viva petroleo, viva!

Makes one think [ouch!]....

This will never happen:

MS Trial: A Call for a New Office

WASHINGTON -- An economist testifying against Microsoft on Monday supported a proposal to create a version of Microsoft Office that runs on alternative operating systems such as Linux.

It will never happen because MS knows perfectly well that within its product line, one product leverages off the other. MS Office for Linux could quickly become the fabled "killer app" for Linux, uncutting Windows.

(And, no, you can't count Office for Mac because Mac's really don't compete for Windows major markets, while Linux could easily, since it can install on the same hardware.)

Nicholas Kristof on the Middle East and double standards:

Behind the Rage

Some 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the latest round of violence erupted in the fall of 2000. In contrast, two million Sudanese have died in the ongoing civil war here, with barely anyone noticing.

Likewise, Syria blithely killed about 20,000 people in crushing an abortive uprising in the city of Hama in 1982. And Saddam Hussein, who has killed more Arabs than Ariel Sharon and all his Israeli predecessors put together, is somehow a hero for much of the Arab world.

What's going on here? After lots of soul-searching conversations with Arabs, I'm inclined toward a couple of conclusions....

Much of this has been previously pointed out. Specifically I remember P.J. O'Rourke writing for the Atlantic Monthy....

The Atlantic | November 2001 | Zion's Vital Signs | O'Rourke

There are worse things than war, if the intifada is indeed a war. As of this writing, 513 Palestinians and 124 Israelis had been killed in what is called the second intifada. About 40,000 people perished in the 1992-1996 civil war in Tajikistan that nobody's heard of. From one and a half to two million are dead in Sudan. There are parts of the world where the situation Dave and I were in is too ordinary to have a name.

Jerry Pournelle fights Bits and Fragments: .NET Weirdness and illustrates why Microsoft's .NET (the horror formerly known as Hailstorm) is more a joke than a threat.

I'll get to what caused the situation later in the column: A few minutes ago one of my XP Pro systems reset itself. When it came back up, I was told that the system had "recovered" from a serious error, and would I like to report that to Microsoft?

Sure, said I, and clicked the appropriate box. ...

Thoms E. Weber weighs in on the entertainment biz's efforts to put a lock on all digital content (in their favor, of course):

Record companies should compete for music fans' loyalty

The entertainment industry would have you -- or Congress, at least -- believe that the situation proves how desperate things have become. That's why Hollywood pushes for misguided legislation to mandate copy-protection technology for PCs. (Visit www.digitalconsumer.org for more information.) There's no other way, entertainment executives argue, to ensure copyright owners get paid.

But they're wrong. Even as songs fly back and forth across the Internet, the current situation actually shows why the entertainment industry needs nothing more than the will to compete. Here's why.

It's all about persuading the average user. ...

From David Brooks at The Weekly Standard:

Media Blackout

IF YOU RELY on the American press, it is simply impossible to figure out what is going on in the West Bank. For example, in Thursday's New York Times there was an inept front page story entitled, Attacks turn Palestinian Dream Into Bent Metal and Piles of Dust. Then inside there was another story, The Assault Is Over, the Casbah Is in Ruins.

Both stories, like most of the rest of the American media, leave the impression that Israeli troops are ransacking civilian areas, destroying homes, and shooting defenseless civilians.

But if that image is true, how is it that dozens of Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat? How is it that after Palestinians surrender, the ground is littered with bombs and guns? It seems as if there are real battles going on, which are not being reported. If there are real battles, what are they like? Are terrorists being killed or captured?

To get answers to these questions, you have to go web surfing.

Perhaps an example that the current US tax system is a bit, er, complex?

IRS Paid $30 Million In Credits For Slavery (washingtonpost.com)

The Internal Revenue Service, handling more than 100,000 tax returns seeking nonexistent slavery tax credits, paid out more than $30 million in erroneous refunds in 2000 and 2001.

One IRS employee is under investigation for allegedly helping process returns that claimed the credit, officials said yesterday. At least 12 current and former IRS employees, all low-level workers in processing centers, applied to receive such a credit.

While it has been known for years that some fraud artists advertised the false credit and offered to help African Americans get it -- for a fee -- this is the first indication that the cost to the government was so high.

Wow, the lack of a personal computer now defines "overly restrictive and oppressive" prison conditions:

CNN.com - Moussaoui files suit over jail conditions - April 12, 2002

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Lawyers for accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui filed a court motion Friday objecting to his "overly restrictive and oppressive" prison conditions, arguing he needs more space in his prison cell, computer equipment and greater access to legal counsel while he prepares for his criminal trial this fall. ...

Specifically, Moussaoui has requested:

-- A larger cell, with a table and chair

-- Laptop computer, printer, and the right to keep legal materials in his cell

-- Greater telephone access to his lawyers

-- Freedom from random prison searches

-- Freedom from having his phone conversations recorded

-- The right to meet with people besides his counsel

Lead defense attorney Frank Dunham confirmed thefiling, but had no further comment.