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"Iraqi prostitutes back on the streets after Saddam"

From "Iraqi prostitutes back on the streets after Saddam":

Media restrictions meant Iraqis heard about the executions [of prostitutes by Iraq in 1999] only by word of mouth, and estimates vary on how many people were killed -- from dozens to hundreds.

Still, most agree on the cause of the crackdown -- foreign pornographic videos of Iraqi prostitutes wrapped in the black, white and red national flag, and, according to many versions, dancing on a portrait of Saddam.

This very good Frontline episode dealt with some of these beheadings.

(I'd also like to see the video, but considering the circumstances, I'll stay away from treating this like a funny story.)

Posted to Iraq at 01:15 PM | Comments (1)

Does Silicon Valley support illegal immigration?

As discussed here yesterday, CA Assemblyman Manny Diaz (D-San Jose) is the author of a bill that would mandate statewide acceptance of Mexico's Matricula Consular ID cards.

This is a horrible idea. The MC cards are only of use to illegal aliens; legal residents and other forms of immigrants have other forms of ID which they can use. Diaz himself admits as much: "This bill will benefit thousands of Mexican nationals." Further, the widespread acceptance of the MC card is part of Mexico's strategy to achieve legalization one way or another. It will enable illegal aliens to get driver's licenses and perhaps even to vote. And, it will just encourage further illegal immigration.

So, it appears that a state representative wants to help foreign nationals evade U.S. laws. And, he is also indirectly or directly helping a foreign government achieve its goals.

If you disagree with Diaz' efforts, perhaps one way to make your voice heard is to look at who supported him in his last election. Here's a table of some contributions made to his campaign in the 2001 / 2002 Election Cycle (sources: this and this):

Pacific Bell-related: $8500
PG & E: $6000
Hewlett Packard: $5000
John and Ann Doerr (combined): $4000
AT&T: $3500
Intuit: $3000
AOL TimeWarner: $3000
Microsoft: $3000
Sun Microsystems: $1500
Intel: $1000

Sure, they're all pretty much small amounts. But, they add up. And, if those companies and individuals knew he was going to propose legislation supporting illegal immigration, maybe they wouldn't have given any money to his campaign at all. Or, maybe the opposite is the case.

So, to clear this matter up, perhaps we should contact those companies and ask them: Does your company support illegal immigration?

(For background, see "Mexico's Northern Strategy", and my standard set of links.)

Posted to Immigration2003 at 11:40 PM | Comments (1)

The L.A. Times, the DREAM Act, and a jolly good Fisking

A recent L.A. Times' editorial on Orrin Hatch's DREAM Act (which would give lower college tuition to illegal aliens than to U.S. citizens*) gets a good Fisking here:

...I have no problem with the idea of liberalizing citizenship laws, in and of itself, though again that is the province of the federal government, not the states. I have a huge problem with rewarding people who flout the law by pretending they are "citizens," particularly when their faux "citizenship" gets them privileges that are not available to immigrants who obey our laws, or even to U.S. citizens who recently moved from another state.

My posts on the DREAM Act and related bills start here.

Posted to Immigration2003 at 11:03 PM | Comments (210)

Robert Scheer: Both dumb and numb

According to Scheer's latest "Are We Dumb or Just Numb?" (alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15773):

The embarrassingly secular nature of the government was summarized in another Los Angeles Times story on the status of women: "For decades, Iraqi women � at least those living in Baghdad and some other big cities � have enjoyed a degree of personal liberty undreamed of by women in neighboring nations such as Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf emirates."

Those freedoms - to drive, study in coeducational colleges and to advance in the professions - are now threatened by the fundamentalist forces unleashed by the invasion. The former U.S. general now governing Iraq has stated that he will not accept a reversal of those freedoms, but our long history of cozy relationships with the oppressive Gulf regimes can't be reassuring to Iraq's women.

"Other than having your fingernails pulled out because you didn't signal your left turn, how did you enjoy your first driving lesson, Amira?"

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

"Mexican ID Card Measure Goes to Senate"

From the LAT:

SACRAMENTO — Identification cards issued by Mexico, already accepted by Los Angeles and 14 other local governments in California, would have to be honored by all cities and counties under a bill that cleared the Assembly on Monday.

Proponents say widespread acceptance of the cards would make it easier for Mexican citizens living in California to open bank accounts, get marriage licenses, use libraries and respond to routine traffic stops by police.

"This bill will benefit thousands of Mexican nationals," said Assemblyman Manny Diaz (D-San Jose), author of AB 522...

Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) urged a no vote, calling the bill "another way of giving amnesty to illegal aliens in California."

But Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia (R-Cathedral City) said: "It doesn't matter how they got here..."

Those who would benefit most from the bill cannot vote today, Garcia told her colleagues, but "in the future they're going to remember whether you let them live with dignity..."

Some Senator's emails are at this page.

Other emails not listed on the preceding page can be found by going to each Senator's page from here. I'd just use 'Senator.NAME@sen.ca.gov', and if it bounced look it up.

[For background, see the list of links here.]

UPDATE: This list of contributions to "Manny Diaz for Assembly" might be useful. It includes companies like PG&E, Intel, and Microsoft. Perhaps we should ask them, "Do you support illegal immigration?"

Posted to California at 11:26 AM | Comments (3)

I haven't written to Dianne Feinstein lately, have I?

Got this via email from Feinstein's office:

     April 29, 2003

Mr. The Lonewacko Blog at lonewacko.com/blog

Dear Mr. Blog at lonewacko.com/blog:

    Thank you so much for contacting me to share your thoughts and concerns. Currently, I receive approximately 30,000 letters and e-mails a week. This is input that I value greatly...

I guess some wacky prankster sent the good Senator a letter on my behalf, no doubt because of this post. Instapundit linked to that post, generating thousands of hits, including one of a very special person. If that very special person sent the Senator a nastygram on my behalf, no doubt the Senator's people will be able to figure that out and will track down their IP address as necessary.

Posted to California at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

"President Clinton And Chinese Tobacco"

An oldie but a goodie.

Posted to Politics at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)

I am a Web Logger

And you are my Web Log Reader. Welcome! The NewsHour just had a piece on Web Logging.

Mentioned command-post, salam pax, instapundit, andrewsullivan

"Might they be just soap boxes for narcisstic prats?" [paraphrased; I need an editor]

An expert from MSNBC gave her imprimatur to the blogging phenomon.

Included example of Trent Lott affair, including interview with Joshua Marshall describing how he did his magic and his surprise at how effective it was once the real media picked up on it.

how Albritton got 10k to go to Iraq and AS got much more.

Are they journalism? Only if they're edited, per MSNBC's expert.

Included: a lawyer reading a letter he wrote to Marshall, his online Web Logging idol.

Someone needs to define the term 'post' to Terence Smith; a 'blog' is not a 'post.'

Posted to Bloggage at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

Do you remember Leftie Smear Attempt #43,232,543?

You know, Bill O'Reilly's hubcap-stealing comment?

Maybe you should check this out:

Interviewed on this weekend's Tim Russert CNBC show, O'Reilly claimed his quip was made in the context that there was a '50s rock-and-roll theme to the benefit, and anyone who's seen the many "juvenile delinquent"-type films (whose stars were white 100% of the time) of that era knows about stealing hubcaps. Indeed, the "Best Men" were going to perform an old Four Tops tune, so this explanation seems to hold up. Looks like O'Reilly got a bum rap here.

[waiting for recognition of said bum rap from the Lefties; cue crickets]

Posted to Politics at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

Martin Sheen is "not talking to anybody right now."

This article checks in with various anti-war celebs to find out what they're doing since they recently disappeared from sight.

It's all pretty good, but:

But Mike Farrell, star of television's "MASH" and organizer of "Artists United to Win Without War," told Reuters that those who joined the loyal opposition in Hollywood had not been silenced and certainly were not backing down.

Instead, he said, the "huge coalition" of those opposed to the war were gathering strength and preparing to fight another day -- over post-war Iraq, domestic issues and future "preemptive strikes" by the Bush administration...

Garofalo, working hard on her upcoming ABC sitcom, did not respond to interview requests for this story. But she told the Washington Post last week that her anti-war stance had been a "positive" experience that had helped her career.

"Before this I was a moderately well-known character actress," she told the paper. "Now, I'm almost famous."

I'd feel a bit better if she'd get on her knees. You know, to apologize to Bush like she said she would.

Posted to Celebrities, ThePeaceMovement at 07:15 PM | Comments (1)

A new way to be boring

What if, instead of just blogging the normal way, you could take the next step towards self-indulgency?

Posted to Bloggage at 04:26 PM | Comments (1)

Oh, so that explains it!

In "I sweet-talked my way into dreaded intelligence HQ," Telegraph UK reporter "Inigo Gilmore describes how he gained access to documents in the complex that most Iraqis under Saddam were desperate to avoid."

So, the "slumbering" guards just let him in, and then let him come right back out without searching his bags?

OK.

Posted to Iraq at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)

"Going It Alone, U.S. Upsets France"

From this:

France is undertaking an active campaign to strengthen multilateral institutions as part of an effort to define the United States' potential for unilateral action as one of the world's great worries. It is, in effect, an attempt to limit American power and to convince other countries that they should work together to contain it.
The French initiative has come into focus over the last three months through statements by President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine. One or the other has asserted that a new American unilateralism has come to life, that it is unacceptable and that France will offer the General Assembly of the United Nations a set of principles for building a new international order ''excluding unilateral temptations and leading to shared management of global risks and threats.''

Oh, by the way, the article is from February of 1999.

Posted to Iraq at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

"Saddam's Cash"

This article discusses European and Arab journalists who might have received bribes from Saddam. It includes mentions of "Baghdad" Bonior and a contribution made to U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott by a supposed Saddam supporter.

Posted to Iraq at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)

"The proof that Saddam worked with bin Laden"

This article discusses a three-page memo showing that Iraq wanted to establish a relationship with bin Laden in March 1998. The memo was found at the bombed-out Mukhabarat headquarters in Baghdad.

See this post and this article for more on the AQ-Iraq connection.

It's awfully convenient how the Telegraph keeps finding these documents that one would think the U.S. would have already picked up. That doesn't mean the memo isn't accurate, it's just something to keep in mind.

Posted to Iraq at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)

Let's have lunch with Nick & Norm!

Here I thought the Nick & Norm anti-drug TV commercials were no more. Yet, I've seen them twice recently.

The latest one attempts to, er, discuss legalization. The smart older guy says something like "make them available everywhere like Cheezios... crack on the schoolyard, heroin in vending machines, etc. etc."

While I'm sure some extreme libertarians think that all drugs should not just be legalized but that they should be available everywhere, I don't think that represents a majority opinion. Personally, I have problems with legalizing things like crack and PCP.

But, I find Nick's (or maybe the smart one's Norm) misrepresentation - deliberately only addressing the most extreme opposition points of view - quite disturbing. Why is our government spending our money to lie to us?

I realize you can only stick so many arguments into a 30-second commercial. So, I think we should take Nick and Norm out to lunch and discuss this issue with them. Now that'd be a good commercial.

Posted to WarOnDrugs at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)

Was the "Moran" guy a prank?

Via a prank-related mailing list (from a liberal I know in meatspace):

Got this by e-mail... no source, can't find it on google. Don't know if it's been posted here before, but I remember the many DU threads on the "Morans" rally in Milwaukee. But the piece is quite convincing. Apparently this pro-war rally was a fake!

Mock Pro-War Rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

With the anti-war movement in Milwaukee lacking a significant and consistent showing, when the Milwaukee police department tickets motorists who drive by anti-war rally's and honk in support of the protesters, in a time when the war is televised like a sporting event, a small group of Milwaukee artists, musicians, and outcasts decided to stage a mock pro-war rally to subvert the right!

The street theater action was committed on April 4th in near blizzard
conditions when 20 "fanatical pro-war" supporters occupied the opposite side of the downtown street to rally in support of the war and oppose of the peace activists who gather every Friday for the weekly peace vigils.

The 20 "pro-war" supporters dressed in suits, waved American Flags, chanted slogans in fierce support of war, death, and killing. Rush hour traffic drove by and honked in approval to the flags and signs that read: "Freedom Is The Enemy", "Get A Brain Morans", "Iraq Out Of Iraq", "Draft My Child", "Send Our Infants", "Soccer Moms For Blood", "War Is Peace", "I'm Pro Life And Pro Death", "Stop Reporting The Facts", "Peace Is For Pussies", "Bush Is The Savior", "This Is No Time For Thinking", "Pro Bush Lesbian", and "Ask Me About My Baby Killing Honor Student" among other slogans.

Before the event the local media were called and told about the "Clear Channel" sponsored pro-war rally. The reporters failed to get an interview from the pro-war fanatics because every time they approached the demonstrators they chanted "Boycott The Liberal Media!". The riot cops were very confused by the heartfelt chants of "We Love The Police State!". And the anti-war protesters were perplexed by the "All We Are Saying Is Give Death A Chance" chorus.

A few on-lookers with their jaws dropped may indeed never visit Milwaukee
again, but all told the "Pro-War" reaction was a smashing success that demonstrates the kind of gung-ho patriotism that would make George W. proud.

UPDATE: As indicated in the first comment, this picture wasn't taken in a blizzard, even if his sign matches one of the ones described above. I also can't find mention of an April 4 peace protest here. The dates are also wrong; the Moran picture is from sometime before March 26. Of the two Moran signs, we know that one was fake, and I'd bet that the other one is as well. If it helps any, I think the "We support our troops when they shoot their officers" sign might have been a fake as well.

UPDATE 2: A reliable source informs me that a) there was no blizzard anywhere near April 4th, and b) that if something like this fake protest had happened, he would have known about it.

Posted to WackyHumor at 08:02 PM | Comments (8)

"Green-Card Soldiers"

Mark Krikorian (of the Center for Immigration Studies) has an interesting editorial in NRO about non-citizen soldiers:

Over the past month, the journalistic hive has cranked out a tidal wave of stories on immigrants in the military, orchestrated in part by the high-immigration advocacy groups. The objective was clear from a Wall Street Journal story earlier this month: "the prominence of immigrants such as Sgt. Gomez among the armed forces is helping to temper the emotional debate over immigration to the U.S. in the wake of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center." In other words, the media is lecturing America's ignorant masses that not all immigrants want to kill us.

Want another example? See the recent pro-illegal-immigration SF Chronical editorial. Krikorian continues:

...Not to put too fine a point on it, we should go to any length to avoid developing a kind of mercenary army, made up of foreigners loyal to their units and commanders but not to the Republic. It didn't work out well for the Romans...

For more on the general illegal immigration issue, see Krikorian's recent testimony before the House of Representatives: "Securing the Homeland Through
Immigration Law Enforcement"

Posted to Immigration2003 at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)

Heywood Jablome. Again!

As previously reported here, a Charleston, SC newspaper printed the name of one of the anti-Burke Masters protesters: Heywood Jablome.

The perpetrator has been found. Those wacky morning shock zoo jocks!

UPDATE: The Charleston Post & Courier have updated their report and removed the name "Heywood Jablome," replacing it with "one man," and a link to this story from the reporter who fell for the gag:

Unfortunately, I never actually heard the protester's name pronounced, just caught him spelling it out for others and jotted it down in my notepad.

I wrote the story for Sunday's paper, tucked the quote down near the bottom, filed it to my editors in Charleston and blithely went about my life, unaware that this one name was about to make my own name known around the country...

However, I presciently took a screenshot of their page.

Posted to WackyHumor at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

"Iranian actress given 74 lashes for kissing man on stage"

Straight from IRNA. She's in her 50s, he's a former student of her late husband, she kissed him on the forehead at an awards ceremony, street protest, she apologized, lashes were suspended, the wheel rolls on.

Posted to Terrorism at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)

"Army Contract Has Ties To Senator Feinstein"

From this:

— A planning and engineering firm co-owned by Senator Dianne Feinstein's husband has won a Pentagon contract that could be worth up to 600 (m) million dollars...

Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, serves on the company's board of directors. He controls about 24 percent of its stock.

The new contract is the latest lucrative defense job to be won by the San Francisco-based company. In February, it was awarded an Army contract that could be worth more than three (b) billion dollars.

And, from this:

California's senior U.S. senator made it clear Tuesday that she will not support any more tax cuts. Speaking to a room full of technology executives and elected officials in San Jose, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from San Francisco, called any further tax cuts irresponsible...

"It's going to take at least five years for the United States to help Iraq recover," she said...

In response to questions from reporters, Ms. Feinstein said she had no knowledge of the contract that was awarded by the Army to a company owned in part by her husband Richard Blum...

"We keep what he does and what I do completely separate," Ms. Feinstein said.

Posted to California at 03:58 PM | Comments (13)

The peace posters that could have won

I didn't enter the recent peace poster contest with a prank poster because I can't draw. But, I've included to the right four entries that I might have entered if I could draw a straight line.

See this, this, this, and this for links to the other prank posters which were entered.

From top to bottom:

1. A bombed out cityscape; caption would be "You call this an improvement?"

2. The triangle is an oil derrick/windmill, with a giant swastika as the sail. The round figures beneath ground are dead Iraqis. The red splotch is a drop of blood. Caption: "No more bodies for oil." (Extra credit: the hand of Uncle Sam or GWB holding out a cup to catch the drop of blood.)

3. The big thing in the center is a bomb which would have "USA" written on it. Below that is a daisy to the right and two bunny rabbits to the left of the daisy. Caption: "Collateral Damage."

4. The two boxes at the bottom of the picture are ballot boxes. The two irregularly shaped objects at the top of the picture are hands, and the hands are dropping ballots into the ballot boxes. The left ballot will say "Saddam" on it, and the right will say "Bush" on it. The left ballot box (with the Saddam ballot) will have "100%" written on it, and the right will have "45%" written on it. (Extra credit: the right hand will be white, and the left will be a Hand of Color.)

Not shown: A large picture of a dog with big eyes. Above him, a bomb is about to hit him. Caption: "Why?"

Posted to WackyHumor at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

[sob, sob] Aww... just let them all in!

The S.F. Chronical has an editorial ("Naturalizing the dead") that attempts to piggyback their pro-illegal-immigration position onto the backs of the legal residents who fought and died in Iraq:

SIX IMMIGRANT soldiers from California have been granted citizenship for their heroic contributions to the U.S. victory in Iraq. Too bad they were in body bags when they received the honor.

The posthumous awards come as small reward to the families of the dead. To many immigrants -- and to us -- the whole idea is an insult...

"There's something terribly wrong with our immigration policies if it takes death on the battlefield in order to earn citizenship," Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles wrote to President Bush this month...

Not everyone is as amazed as the president about the contributions of immigrants, in the military or elsewhere. "The military should not be the only way to prove your worth to your country," said Ben Monterroso, a director of the Service Employees International Union in Los Angeles, which has been campaigning to get an amnesty for undocumented workers in his union.

Only legal residents are allowed to serve in the U.S. military, and those who do are able to immediately apply for citizenship.

Somehow, the Chronical wants to extend this offer made to the 50,000 legal residents in the military to the 10 million or so illegal immigrants not in the military. Hey, whatever. Call it San Francisco Logic.

Those who think this is a good idea should read this article:

"Amselle was referring to the official Mexican government policy of acercamiento ("getting closer" or "establishing a bond") to "Mexican communities abroad," meaning both Mexican citizens living in the United States and Mexican Americans who are U.S. citizens... Hernandez told Nightline that "we are betting" that Mexican-Americans who are American citizens (even after several generations) will "think Mexico First." Hernandez and other Mexican officials continually repeat the refrain that Fox is the leader of 120 million Mexicans, 100 million in Mexico and 20 million in the United States. Since this concept would, by definition, include not only Mexican migrants who sometimes work north of the Rio Grande, but also millions of American citizens of Mexican descent, many of whom were born in the United States — it is clearly in contradiction to traditional American principles of civic assimilation and immigrant loyalty."

Mexico now wants to make dual citizenship permanent.

And, Mexico is even trying to meddle in our military.

[insert standard set of links here]

Posted to Immigration_piipps at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

"Troops were told to guard treasures"

From this:

In a memo sent two weeks before the fall of Baghdad, the Pentagon office charged with rebuilding Iraq urged top commanders of U.S. ground forces to protect the Iraqi National Museum and other cultural sites from looters.

"Coalition forces must secure these facilities in order to prevent looting and the resulting irreparable loss of cultural treasures," says the March 26 memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

The Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), led by retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, sent the five-page memo to senior commanders at the Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC)...

The museum was No. 2 on a list of 16 sites that ORHA deemed crucial to protect. Financial institutions topped the list, including the Iraqi Central Bank, which is now a burned-out shell filled with twisted metal beams from the collapse of the roof and all nine floors under it.

Via Kaus, although I originally saw this at command-post in a report attributed to AFP, for which reason it was discounted.

Posted to Iraq at 12:14 AM | Comments (1)

"Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert"

From this:

A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said.

They said the scientist led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs.

The scientist also told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990's, and that more recently Iraq was cooperating with Al Qaeda, the military officials said...

Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials...

While this reporter could not interview the scientist, she was permitted to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried.

I like Judy Miller (and not just cuz she's purdy), but I'm somewhat skeptical of this story. Let us know when you see the scientist at closer than bigfoot-spotting range.

Posted to Iraq at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

How would you like a free hamburger?

Via Drudge comes the story 'N.J. Schools Testing Eye Recognition':

...it was somewhat of a surprise when the Plumsted district's three schools became the test site for a cutting-edge eye recognition security system designed to keep out strangers.

"We're an appealing test site because we are a small community where everybody knows everybody," said Michael Dean, the schools' technology coordinator. "We're taking a rural town and asking, `What is John Q. Public's perception of this technology? What is people's comfort level - is this easy to use?'"...

Plumsted was among some 400 school districts that applied for a grant from the Justice Department for the iris recognition technology. The federal agency is building a database on school security and is using Plumsted as its first data collection...

More than 300 parents and nearly all the district's teachers and staff volunteered for Plumsted's two-month pilot project that began earlier this month...

Wendy Arzt, whose two daughters attend New Egypt Elementary School, lauded the technology as noninvasive and easy to use.

"We're fortunate to live in a small, safe town. But in this day and age, you can't take safety for granted," said Arzt, a substitute teacher taking part in the study.

But, what if a psycho holds a gun to a scanned person's head and forces them to help him get in? Or - even worse - what if he gouges a scanned person's eye out, and holds it up to the scanner.

Didn't think of that, did you?

No, it's obvious that a more thorough check is needed. Perhaps the next time, Wendy should put her DNA on file instead. When she wants to get in, a simple, quick DNA check would be performed via an anal probe. The probe would also check her various organs and various cardiopulmonary functions, skin galvinometry, adrenalin in her blood, illegal substances in her blood, etc. to determine whether the DNA sample was being taken from a live person or not. That way, we'd be certain to know that this was an actual live person not under duress. Then she could get into her school in this small, safe town. Don't worry, it's for the children.

Since we've already got that DNA on file, no sense letting it gather dust. We could give Wendy some helpful hints based on a quick analysis of it. Like, her various risk factors. All to help her lead a more healthy and safe life. And, if she had been living in the D.C. area some months back, and if we had been able to isolate a sniper gene, think how many lives would have been saved with a quick look through the files to eliminate her and other innocent parties as a suspect in the D.C. sniper case.

Compare the report from a few months back about a school in England which was going to use student's irises so they could be automatically charged for their lunch. See, some students get free lunches, and the wise school headmaster didn't want those students to be stigmatized. They were also going to use the iris-scanning as library cards.

See also the post about a company called Invidious Indivos which wants to replace credit cards with fingerprint scanners. One of their marketeers even came up with the genius idea of giving away a free hamburger to those who signed up for the service. It's working so far: they only had one customer with "'Mark of the Beast' phobia."

These are yet more examples of how public-private cooperation is making society great: note the government links in the New Jersey school story as well as the Invidious story.

Posted to Privacy at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)

Oil is made from people!

From this article about a company which has invented a procedure to turn a wide variety of waste products into oil products (via Drudge):

Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine...

Yet.

Posted to Miscellania at 11:11 AM | Comments (1)

LA River revitalization feedback needed

Via email:

At the April meeting of the Ad Hoc River Committee, representatives from the Chief Accounting Office, Chief Legislative Analyst, and City Attorney, presented communications regarding management and funding strategies for LA River revitalization efforts.

The communications are now available on the Ad Hoc River Committee website.

The communications do not recommend a specific solution at this time, but outline the scope of options that would be considered.

The Ad Hoc Committee has requested comments on these items within the next 30 days (by May 14th 2003). Please address comments to:

Ad Hoc Committee on the LA River
c/o City Clerk
City Hall, Room 395
200 North Spring Street, LA 90012

E-mail comments can be submitted to "lariver@council.lacity.org ".

Posted to Los_Angeles at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

Tuesday's snow level: 4000'

Tuesday or Wednesday I'm going to drive up the 2 and find a slope on which to practice self-arrest. Saturday I went out for a bit of practice and I ended up having to drive 40 miles up the 2 to the currently-closed Kratka Ridge ski resort before I found a suitable slope. That's about 8000'. If anyone can suggest a spot closer in that's also close to the road, I'd appreciate it.

Posted to OutdoorSports at 09:41 PM | Comments (0)

"How to become an obnoxious internet cam whore in five easy steps."

Posted to WackyHumor at 09:08 PM | Comments (1)

Blogger arrested!

I predict we're going to be seeing a lot more stories like this in the future, and not just of Iranians.

Posted to Terrorism at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)

"British Army, Police Assassinated Catholics in Northern Ireland"

"BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Intelligence agents of the British army and police helped Protestant extremists kill Catholics in the late 1980s, including a lawyer well-known for defending IRA suspects, a four-year official investigation concluded Thursday."

Posted to Miscellania at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)

"We laugh, but in a way the hillbilly has a point"

DERBYSHIRE ALERT!
DERBYSHIRE ALERT!

Derb's latest: "Churning: Rethinking the Iraqi National Museum" attempts to explain away the looting at he museum. See, those antiquities didn't really belong to the current Iraqis. And, the Iraqis aren't really in a place to take care of them properly. No, their proper stewardship is with rich non-Iraqi collectors:

In what sense do these ancient artifacts belong to Iraq’s heritage? The nation of Iraq has only existed since 1932. Prior to that, the “land of the two rivers” was a British colony. Before that, it belonged to the Ottoman Empire. Heading backwards through time beyond that, it belonged to the White Sheep Turks, the Black Sheep Turks, the Timurids (another variety of Turk), the Mongols, the Abassids (Arabs), the Seljuks (more Turks), the Buwayhids (Persians), the Abbasids again, the Umayyads (more Arabs), the Sassanids (Persian), the Arsacids (Parthian), the Seleucids (Macedonian-Greek), the Persians again, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Aramaeans, the Elamites, the Kassites, the Amorites, the Akkadians, and the Sumerians.

That’s a considerable amount of churning. The ethnic and linguistic connections between, on the one hand, modern Iraqis, and on the other, the people of Babylon, Nimrod, Nineveh, and Ur, are tenuous, to say the least of it. In the case of the Sumerians, they are probably nonexistent. We know the ancient Sumerian language well — can even sing songs in it. It has no relationship whatever with any other known tongue...

So it will be with the Iraqi collection. Saddam Hussein owned this treasure trove for a while. He was hardly a fit person, though, and the pieces have now been scattered to new owners. I suppose that by the vagaries of fate, some will be lost or destroyed, but I am sure most will surface again in the slow churning of time. Time, after all, is what 5,000-year-old objects have plenty of.

Of course, there's that tiny matter of the interregnum where we should have protected the museum and the libraries, but whatever. Next week: Derb explains the Elgin Marbles.

Posted to Iraq at 07:03 PM | Comments (0)

Are divided loyalties a good thing?

From "Dual citizenship for Mexicans? Fox government wants permanent right for immigrants to divide their loyalties":

The Mexican government is planning to change its constitution to establish a permanent right for those born in Mexico and living in other nations to obtain dual citizenship, a move criticized by some U.S. immigration experts as counterproductive to American interests...

David Ray, communications director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said there could be dire political and cultural implications for the U.S.

"There's a growing number of U.S. citizens whose umbilical cord is attached to the Mexican government," he told WorldNetDaily. "That will have huge political ramifications in upcoming U.S. domestic policy debates, particularly in immigration and trade."

Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, also believes Mexican dual citizenship will have a negative impact on the U.S.

"In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, dual citizenship is a 'self-evident absurdity,'" Krikorian told WND in an interview. "You can no more be a genuine citizen of two countries than you can adhere to two different religions at the same time."

Ray described the dual citizenship concept as "an overall strategy" by Mexico City to "leverage its political clout … through pressure and mobilization of their dual citizens."

"It's really unprecedented in American history the amount of direct lobbying that's going on here by the Mexican government to obtain their political goals," he said. "There's an increased move for dual citizenship. You have [Fox] lobbying [the U.S. government] for an amnesty for illegal immigrants. You have Mexican consulates pushing for recognition of the 'matricula consular' cards, which are issued to illegal immigrants. You have the consulates pushing for in-state tuition for illegal alien Mexican students..."

[Krikorian] sees a Mexican agenda: "This is part of a broader Mexican campaign, not to reconquer lost territories but to establish a kind of shared sovereignty over part of the American population."

Posted to Immigration2003 at 11:14 PM | Comments (1)

Heywood Jablome Howell Raines

This screenshot of a Charleston Post & Courier report on the Masters protest is real. Perhaps he pronounced it "yablohm," and spelled it to the reporter. I guess if you said it "yablohm" enough times, it might stick in the reporter's mind and they wouldn't bother trying to sound it out. Or, maybe the reporter or editor was having a bit of fun. (Yes, I got this from the Jimmy Kimmel Show.)

Posted to WackyHumor at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)

Gloria Allred picks a winner

Gloria Allred has a new case:

LOS ANGELES - A Marine reservist serving in Iraq was wrongly fired from his civilian job at Hyundai Motor America after he was called to duty, his wife and attorney claimed Monday.

But Hyundai Motor America said Sgt. Clifford E. Moffitt, 35, of Irvine, was fired because of numerous instances of "extreme sexual harrassment" that came to light after he left for active duty...

Regardless of any reason that Hyundai may claim to justify the firing, Moffitt "has been denied the fundamental right to give his side of the story," Allred said.

After Hyundai responded to Allred's news conference, she issued a statement saying her position was unchanged. "Giving a pink slip to a Marine who may be in the red zone of war is in our opinion an unforgivable act. Semper fi," she said.

Let's not rush to judgment; he might be completely innocent. And, Allred is correct that this was a bad move, at least from a PR standpoint.

Posted to Los_Angeles at 07:26 PM | Comments (8)

"Rally backs green cards for immigrant students"

This article is yet another in the long line of stories about illegal aliens who want a better deal than even U.S. citizens get.

In the entire article, the word "illegal" only appears once, and it's in the only paragraph that makes any sense:

Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said he opposes the bill because granting permanent residency to undocumented immigrants would encourage more illegal immigration.

Email addresses: ward.bushee@arizonarepublic.com, randy.lovely@arizonarepublic.com, lindsey.collom@arizonarepublic.com, Daniel.Gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com

Here's an editorial about this from the Fresno Bee:

Fortunately, some federal lawmakers from both parties see a problem that must be fixed.

It would be more fortunate if they would solve this problem in a manner consistent with our current laws.

You can reach the editorial's author at jesparza@vidaenelvalle.com staff@fresnobee.com

Posted to Immigration2003 at 03:44 PM | Comments (51)

Reductioed ad absurdum

What/Where/When?
Peace Protest/Hollywood and La Brea, Hollywood, CA/earlier today.

Pictures?
Right here. (These might be a little too dark for PCs and a little light for Macs.)

Numbers?
Much less than previous protests, maybe 2 or 3 city blocks worth. The word about the cheering Iraqis seems to have gotten out. Maybe the threat of rain had something to do with it, or perhaps the movement has been distilled down into its diehard components. Very few "middle-class" dissenters were on display. Only the first Hollywood protest I went to had fewer people, and that was in December 2002. (See this page for links to all of my previous "peace" protest reports and pics.)

What were they fighting for?
Well, now that the war is just about over, it's time to protest the unjust, illegal, immoral etc. etc. occupation. No sense letting a good tableau featuring the Bush administration as Nazis go to waste.

Peaceful?
Pretty much, although I didn't stay around to see if they tried any civil disobediance. Since the crowd was beginning to disperse towards the end, that didn't seem too likely. The gent with the "Bomb Saddam, Liberate Iraq" sign was hassled a bit and, as can be seen, his sign got several holes put into it by the "peace" protesters. He eventually left the front of the protest.

Wacky Slogans?
There wasn't that much chanting this time, but then again I missed the march to the stage location. During Jackie Goldberg's time at the mike, she kept repeating over and over and over "This is about resistance!", having little else to say. Other statements from lesser-known speakers followed: "Shame on NBC, Fox, etc." "whole neighborhoods are being destroyed" "bring our troops back" etc.

A lady from the Asian-Pacific Islanders something-something began listing all the nations represented by her organization: Bangladesh, China, the Philippines, etc. etc. At her brief pause after the voluminous list of nations, the crowd started to applaud such diversity, before she interrupted them and launched into all the religions her organization represented. "We're familiar with U.S. Imperialism, etc."

Someone read his own poem.

Whence followed a brief celebratory speech about how beneficial it was to sing along.

Then an OG got up to the mike and discussed how he was in it for the long-term, seeing as he'd spent prison time for resisting the Korean draft and he had since been arrested in several states which he listed. "The problem is not in Iraq, the problem is not in Syria, [other fine countries deleted], the problem is in the U.S.!" "They still believe in white supremacy and white domination!" He ended his fine speech with an exhortation to disrupt city life in L.A., such as had been done recently up north.

The final speaker was announced as a supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and the spoken program ended with the reading of a letter from Mumia. Due to the time required to get the letter to his supporters, Mumia indicated that the war might have already started before his words were heard.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it actually seemed like they were sweetening the applause with a bit of the recorded version. Maybe a big giant APPLAUSE sign next time?

Police Brutality?
None seen.

Arrests?
None seen.

Evidence of Capitalism/Swapmeetism?
A vendor or two of the non-protester variety were selling T-Shirts; the A.N.S.W.E.R. people passed through the crowd collecting donations.

Sc!ent*l*gists or Sc!ent*l*gy references?
See the pics for a couple.

Christina Gonzalez?
Not seen.

Transvestites/Transsexuals/Hustlers/Hollywood Freaks and Weirdos?
Not seen.

LaRouche adherents?
Not seen.

Can't we all just get along?
Someone yelled to the cops something about feeding people or something.

Nudity?
Not seen.

Deja vu?
None.

Flag Burning?
None.

Other incidents?
Fugly the Klown provided a welcome suggestion writ small that the Washington Monument should be encondomized.

UPDATE: According to this, the draft protester mentioned above was imprisoned for protesting the Korean, not the Vietnam war as I had in the previous version. He's also black and not white. Which makes his quote above perhaps even more disturbing.

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)

"Councilman Proposes Baghdad as Sister City"

From this fine news source:

Now that Saddam Hussein has lost his grip on Baghdad, one Los Angeles city councilman is talking of making the bombed-out metropolis of 5 million a sister city.

Councilman Dennis Zine, who also was the force behind the council's unanimous vote Friday condemning the vanquished Iraqi leader, said he wants Los Angeles-area businesses to be involved in rebuilding the war-torn country.

In all fairness to Zine, he voted against the council's previous pro-Saddam resolution.

Posted to Los_Angeles at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)

"Children haunted by Iraq war"

From this:

Stockholm - They may be thousands of kilometres away from the fighting in Iraq, but children in Sweden are haunted by a war which stokes their worst fears about the world they live in, psychologists fielding calls on a war hotline said.

"The global state of affairs affects children as individuals. If parents in Iraq don't have the ability to protect their children, to stop this violence, then it can come to anybody," Sevil Bremer, psychologist at the Save the Children crisis centre in Stockholm, told AFP...

"How many children have died? What happens to the wounded? Is there enough medicine? What if Saddam is not found? Those are the questions we expect to get now," said Bremer, who added that one child had wanted to know "whether Syria will be next".

Hopefully, Sven, they will be. (I guess Swedish children are better at geography, or the child was from Syria.)

Posted to Iraq at 07:32 PM | Comments (4)

"Anti-War Leaders Fear US Fast Food Threat to Iraq"

From the give-us-any-straw-to-hold-on Department, comes this:

Many Iraqi citizens have taken to the streets in recent days to celebrate their freedom from dictator Saddam Hussein. But that joy could turn to sorrow, anti-war protesters warn, when the Iraqis begin to see their country adopt western cultural values.

Stephanie Schaudel, co-coordinator for Voices in the Wilderness, an anti-war group in Chicago, said the "richness of culture" in Iraq is going to be subjected to Americanization by U.S. corporations during the post-war rebuilding of the war-torn nation. The result, she indicated, would be difficult for Iraqis to swallow.

Blah, blah. They're Special People with a Special Culture, and it would be shame for them to be destroyed by Western culture, etc. etc.

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)

Janeane's in the news again

The LA Weekly article "No Politics, Please, We're American." Here's the money-left-wing-transglobal-progressive bleat:

It hasn't always been this way. Political activism in Hollywood dates back to the 1930s, when many entertainers and writers threw themselves into studio-unionization drives and celebrity-signatured fund-raisers for Republican Spain. The moviegoing public paid little attention to these enthusiasms, but such activities offended some powerful conservatives in government and media — men who quietly bided their time until, after WWII, they had enough clout to lash out with witch-hunts and blacklists. Suddenly people in Hollywood were seen if not as sinister ideologues then as starry-eyed, susceptible dupes whose politics could never be taken seriously.

Conspiracy, paranoia, it's all in the LA Weekly.

Posted to Celebrities at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)

Boy must their faces be red!

Top secret documents obtained by The Telegraph in Baghdad show that Russia provided Saddam Hussein's regime with wide-ranging assistance in the months leading up to the war, including intelligence on private conversations between Tony Blair and other Western leaders.

Moscow also provided Saddam with lists of assassins available for "hits" in the West and details of arms deals to neighbouring countries. The two countries also signed agreements to share intelligence, help each other to "obtain" visas for agents to go to other countries and to exchange information on the activities of Osama bin Laden...

Another document, dated March 12, 2002, appears to confirm that Saddam had developed, or was developing nuclear weapons. The Russians warned Baghdad that if it refused to comply with the United Nations then that would give the United States "a cause to destroy any nuclear weapons..."

Related to this and the preceding message is this quote:

One Russian protester's banner showed a photograph of Bush with the words: "Butcher: Get out of other people's lands."

Posted to Iraq at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)

"Say 2 gazillion Our Fathers and 4 bazillion Hail Marys"

Before clicking this link, try to guess who is Mr. X in this flashback to February 15, 2003:

ASSISI, Italy (Reuters) - While millions demonstrate around the world against war in Iraq, Mr. X has held his own protest by praying silently before the tomb of St Francis, the patron of peace.

Mr. X travelled to this Umbrian hill city of light pink stone far from the rallies.

"The people of Iraq want peace and millions of people around the world are demonstrating for peace, so let us all work for peace and resist the war," he said on Saturday in front of one of the world's most famous religious shrines.

Minutes earlier, Mr. X committed himself to peace in front of the simple grey stone tomb where the 13th century saint whose name is synonymous with peace is buried.

Signing the basilica's guest book on the altar within inches of the tomb, he wrote in English: "May God the almighty grant peace to the people of Iraq and of the whole world. Amen."

Mr. X, wearing a dark overcoat against the chill and damp of the underground tomb, knelt for a few minutes in silent prayer as the city's bishop denounced war, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

"We are convinced that wars have never resolved the problems of humanity," Bishop Sergio Goretti told Mr. X.

"They have always left a frightening wake of suffering. We condemn every form of terrorism, which is the new worrying plague of humanity, as well as building the devastating weapons of destruction," he told Mr. X.

So, who is Mr. X? Why, none other than "President Saddam Hussein's right-hand man... Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, Iraq's most prominent Christian."

According to "European protesters fill cities":

The rallies offered a boost to Iraq's own cause. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, in the Italian city of Assisi to pray at the tomb of St. Francis, said: "This is a day all good women and men in the world will show the protest against the war of George W. Bush," he told Reuters. "Our hearts are with them."

Posted to Iraq at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

We are so not irrelevant!

International A.N.S.W.E.R. is switching gears a bit. Rather than protesting against the war, they're now protesting against the occupation. How long will it be before they call for an intifada?

While they will never admit it, this planned "endless war" is a class war waged by the U.S. government on behalf of corporate and banking elites against all those governments in the formerly colonized world that have dared to maintain nominal independence and control over their natural resources...

...Brute force alone will not reverse the long historical process whose necessary outcome is liberation. The essential element in this struggle is to maintain and build the global movement...

It's all about the oil! Oh, and the class war, don't forget the class war.

See my compilation of "peace" protest links here.

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)

Perky Katie "hopeful" for Saddam's safety?

All this Janeane Garofalo bashing is getting old. Let's bash Perky Katie Couric for a while!

The full exchange went like this:

COURIC: Mik, we only have a few seconds left. But quickly, anymore information about Saddam Hussein's fate?

MIKLASZEWSKI: Not at all. Wild speculation. But U.S. officials insist they still don't know what happened when - after they bombed that site in western Baghdad earlier this week.

COURIC: So, they haven't been able to confirm reports he was taken to Tikrit, and then Mosul, and then hopefully to Syria.

MIKLASZEWSKI: That - that's very unlikely considering the kind of U.S. forces that are arrayed up there.

COURIC: OK, Mik. Thanks.

Posted to Celebrities at 04:27 PM | Comments (1)

"Schwarzenegger and Maybe Rice Weigh California Race"

According to this, Ahnold recently met with Karl Rove.

Posted to California at 02:17 PM | Comments (0)

"Texas Professor Indicted on Charges Stemming From Plague Bacteria Scare"

Remember the Texas Plague Scare of 1-ought-3? The professor's been indicted:

A professor was indicted Thursday on federal charges accusing him of smuggling plague bacteria and lying when he said vials of the dangerous germ had disappeared from a Texas Tech University lab last January.
Thomas C. Butler, 61, triggered a terrorism-alert plan when he said 30 vials of the bacteria were missing. The FBI rushed dozens of agents to this West Texas city.

The professor later told the FBI he made a "misjudgment" by telling school authorities the vials were missing when he had actually destroyed them, according to court document...

Butler's attorney, Floyd Holder, said his client will plead innocent...

The indictment also alleges Butler brought plague bacteria samples on a plane from Tanzania to Lubbock in April 2002 and did not fill out paperwork disclosing the samples.

He was charged with improperly driving samples to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention facility in Fort Collins, Colo., shipping 30 vials to Tanzania via FedEx and sending others aboard an American Airlines flight to a U.S. Army research center in Fort Detrick, Md...

The grand jury also charged Butler with filing a false income-tax return for 2001.

Sounds like a real strong and worthy case to me.

Posted to Miscellania at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

"Bush and Blair trumpet new Iraqi TV"

According to this:

LONDON: America and Britain say they have launched a new TV service into Iraq with special messages from George W. Bush and Tony Blair -- but it was not clear if any Iraqis had actually heard it.

Moving their propaganda strategy into high gear as the war entered its endgame, London and Washington on Thursday said a new Arabic TV network called Nahwa Al-Hurrieh or "Towards Freedom" would begin broadcasting into Iraq during the afternoon there.

London said the station would broadcast for one hour a day from a U.S. Air Force plane flying over the country, providing news and "coalition public service announcements".

But with Iraqi state television off the air since Tuesday and power cut in most of Baghdad, Reuters correspondents on the ground could not find anyone who had heard it.

The Bush-Blair messages were intended to reassure ordinary Iraqis of their intentions and hasten the full collapse of Iraqi president Saddam's power structure.

I've been ranting for a few weeks about our inability to use TV messages. It's good to see that we finally got a clue. But, these messages should include Iraqis, Arab speakers, or at least Arab-Americans. Like Gen. Abizaid and Fouad Ajami (search for 'ajami' here).

Posted to Iraq at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)

"Janeane Garofalo show 'under fire'"

From this:

ABC television is being threatened with a boycott of the network and its advertisers if it airs a show starring outspoken war critic Janeane Garofalo, reports MSNBC columnist Jeannette Walls.

The network is said to be flooded with messages from supporters of the war in Iraq, who are complaining about a sitcom now in development.

Posted to Celebrities at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)

"German Professors Declare War on English Terms"

From this:

A group of German university professors, angered by the U.S.-British war against Iraq, have launched a campaign to replace many popular English-language words used in Germany with French terms... the four professors declared war on borrowed English terms in German such as "okay," "T-shirt" and "party."

From their list, they seem to be replacing words of Germanic origin with words of French/Latin origin. In only one case (mannequin) have they chosen the Germanic word over the Fr/L word:

Key:
E=English
ME=Middle English
G=German
Fr=French
L=Latin
Gr=Greek
Gmc=proto-Germanic

--------
Bassin for Pool
   pool is E/Gmc

Billett for Ticket
   ticket is Fr from Gmc

Bonvivant for Playboy
   play and boy are both E/Gmc (boy might be Fr, or it might be Dutch)

Chanson for Song
   cf. G singen

Chauffeur for Driver
   drive is E/Gmc

Chef for Boss
   boss is Dutch

Communiqué for Briefing
   brief is ME from Fr + E -ing (cf G -ung)

Conférencier for Showmaster (Scheinanglizismus)
    cf G shauen und meister

Formidable for cool
   cf G kuehl

Hautevolee for High Society
    cf G hoch

Klassement for Ranking
   rank is ME from Fr from Gmc

Mannequin for Model
   mannequin is from Dutch mannekijn

Equipe for Team
   team is ME from Gmc

Fête for Party
   both Fr/L

Sofa for Couch
   sofa is Turkish, couch is ME from Fr.

Rendezvous for Date
   date is L

Revue for Show
   see showmaster above

Souterrain for Basement
   base is ME from Fr from L from Gr

Tantieme for Royalty
   royal is Fr

Tournee for Tour
   tour is Fr

Trikot for T-Shirt
   shirt is ME from Gmc

Tristesse for Sadness
   sad is ME from Gmc
--------

Posted to WackyHumor at 07:25 PM | Comments (1)

I will accept her apology on Bush's behalf

From this:

O'REILLY: If you are wrong… and if the United States - and they will, this is going to happen - goes in, liberates Iraq [with] people in the street, American flags, hugging our soldiers… you gonna apologize to George W. Bush?

GARAFALO: I would be so willing to say, "I'm sorry". I hope to God that I can be made a buffoon of, that people will say, "You were wrong. You were a fatalist". And I will go to the White House on my knees on cut glass and say, "Hey, you and Thomas Friedman were right… I shouldn't have doubted you"…

It's actually "Garofalo," by the way.

Posted to Celebrities at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

"Marines hold nuclear site"

This article has more information on a camp belonging to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission. It offers an object lesson on why inspections were doomed to fail: the bad parts of the camp were underground, and the inspectors never visited those parts.

Posted to Iraq at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

I coined "transnational progressivism" too

[Update: the Michael Ratner mentioned below is also trying to use the ICC "as a tool to restrain American military power" as described here and here.]

Several lefties are mad with glee over their discovery of errors in a National Review article ("Liberate the universities") about something called "transnational progressivism."

First, they say there's no such thing as a "transnational progressivism" movement. And, more importantly, they point out that the author mistakenly believes that Princeton University has a law school.

As I pointed out in the comments to the post linked above, some professors and others "[envisage] an international political monolith with which to replace America" as the article states. For an example, see the piece "Could U.N. use military force on U.S.?":

Could the U.N. use military force to prevent the United States and Britain from waging war on Iraq without a Security Council mandate?

Some anti-war groups are urging the world body to invoke a little-known convention that allows the General Assembly to step in when the Security Council is at an impasse in the face of a "threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression."

The willingness by the U.S. and Britain to go to war with Iraq without Security Council authorization is the kind of threat the U.N. had in mind when it passed Resolution 377 in 1950, said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a human-rights group in New York City.

In a position paper, Ratner wrote that by invoking the resolution, called "Uniting for Peace," the "General Assembly can meet within 24 hours to consider such a matter, and can recommend collective measures to U.N. members including the use of armed forces to 'maintain or restore international peace and security.'"...

As far as the statement "Within such a regime the key political unit would not be the individual citizen who voluntarily associates with fellow citizens but the racial, ethnic, or gender group into which one is born," that should ring some bells. Multiculturalism, "corporate pluralism," etc.

Posted to MultiCultiCult at 01:52 PM | Comments (3)

"Stories the Censors Could Not Sink"

The Village Voice does its best to uncover our secret plot to commit genocide against the Arab and Iraqi peoples, and comes up a bit short in this review of unflattering Iraqi war stories.

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)

"The Iraqi 'Quagmire' In Quotes"

Collection of quagmire quotes here.

Posted to Iraq at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

"College an elusive goal for illegal immigrants"

The Philadelphia Inquirer prints a story largely sympathetic to illegal aliens who want college at the same rate as citizens. Previous comments (this and this) apply here.

Letter to editor forthcoming, here are the email addresses: metro@phillynews.com,philly_feedback@knightridder.com,editor@phillynews.com, mpanaritis@phillynews.com,bahadug@phillynews.com

Posted to Immigration2003 at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)

"NY Tour Turns Evil Eye on Surveillance Cameras"

A New Yorker leads a "Video Surveillance Tour of Manhattan" which searches for and documents security cameras, talking back to them as necessary. I might do something like that here in L.A.

Posted to Privacy at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)

"Los Angeles May Rename 'South Central'"

From this:

The City Council is scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to formally rename the historically black area in an effort to sever the region from its longtime image as a gang-ridden, poverty-stricken ghetto. It would instead be known as South Los Angeles on future city documents...

Well, it's good to see the City Council has finally done something about this problem. Thankfully, they weren't distracted by their attempts to set foreign policy.

Posted to Los_Angeles at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)

"Arizona border: Unwatched and unguarded"

Interesting article about Border Patrol officers being deployed away from the "Cochise Strip" in AZ, leaving it largely unguarded. (Some) of the culprits? Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security.

Posted to Immigration_terror at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

No blood for Whitey's racist genocidal war of empire and oil profits!

The la.indymedia.org's front page currently has a section entitled "PEACE: as bullets fly what do we mean?":

OK, Peace Movement! Lots of folks protesting before the war started. People out protesting right now! Before, "No War" simply meant "don't fire the gun, George." What does "No war" mean now? What do we mean when we call for Peace now that Iraqis and Americans are dying?...

What about after the war? What do we want to see happen in the Middle East region if -as is likely- there is "regime change" in Iraq? Are there ways the antiwar movement can expand to deal with a post-Iraq scenario?

In the spirit of healthy self-criticism, here are some recent "left" critiques of the anti-war movement...
--LA Weekly opinion piece that accepts the inevitability of the war, yet suggests ways of stopping the empire's expansion...

See the page for more links. Some of these proposals actually make a bit of sense and might help the "peace" protesters gain a bit more traction than they currently have.

However, most of the commentators end up calling the messengers names (although, out of a sense of propriety, the H-word isn't used):

What's with all of the white liberal backstepping on the IMC these days? ...When did the white liberal CIA operatives infiltrate the site? Did knowledge of the US military's atrocities in killing babies (bombing civilian hospitals, starved infantry men arbitrairily shooting
women, your tax dollars funding satan's army) scare your little white privileged minds and now you cower and lose your principles...

The white liberal doctrine of non-violence and interventionalism keeps us counterproductive... ...Even white communities...

F#$k middle america. If they ain't listening to us, why to we have to listen to them... The rest of the world is still protesting; why do you shills gotta ack like you're the only ones capable of making change. you white privilege has got the best of you... If I gotta see another cynical, patronizing white liberal on the IMC, I'm starting my own site.

Cooper is a shill, a weasel, a racist...

No, I'm pretty sure these aren't COINTELPRO.

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 09:46 AM | Comments (2)

"I am a nurse"

"I am a male nurse, but, I am not gay. Look how bearded and burly I am. But, despite being a male nurse, I'm really not gay."

-- my television

A couple years back, I posted a troll (note the comp.lang.java.advocacy cross-post) to Usenet entitled 'Verizon: Canadians?' in which I wondered whether, based on the funky-but-clean nature of the Verizon commercials of that time, whether they were shot in Canada or something.

Now, I wonder whether Verizon is holding James Earl Jones against his will.

You've got the one slice-of-life commercial Stay where you wanna go blah sugar blah blah and the other screeching hyper melodramatic one. Then, a brief silent pause. Then, JEJ comes in with "Make progress every day." What the hell is that supposed to mean? Has Verizon been taken over by the Moonies? Have they forced JEJ to wear black Nikes?

Posted to WackyHumor at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)

We will grill them on our fingers like the criminal mafia western colonizer dogs that they and their Al Capone gang lackeys are!

"I've got a wild theory about Sahaf. Think COINTELPRO." - me, 2:19PM Pacific here.

Think about it, it makes sense. He's (AFAIK) the most western of all the upper leaders of Iraq. Even the Arab world is realizing his over the top, incredible ramblings for what they are. So, maybe he's working for us. Making Baghdad look bad, discrediting Saddam's regime one mafia reference at a time.

And, according to this rampant speculation, one person on the inside didn't attend what might have been Saddam's last meeting, and might have sold him out...

Posted to Iraq at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)

goose-stepping into Warsaw

This article about Lou Grant/Ed Asner contains this quote: "It's just difficult for me to imagine Hussein goose-stepping into Warsaw."

Someone should explain GW #1 to him.

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE OOOIIILLLL!!!!

Insty points to this Michael Barone article which proposes an Alaskan-oil-revenues type plan for the people of Iraq. Which is great. But, all I could think about as I read it was, "how much could I skim off the top if I were the one in charge of it?" Not that I or those in charge would, just something to tuck away in the far recesses of your mind.

Posted to Iraq at 01:02 PM | Comments (0)

NPR: U.S. Finds Missiles with Chemical Weapons

Just in case you haven't heard:

U.S. forces near Baghdad found a weapons cache of around 20 medium-range missiles equipped with potent chemical weapons, the U.S. news station National Public Radio reported on Monday.

NPR, which attributed the report to a top official with the 1st Marine Division, said the rockets, BM-21 missiles, were equipped with sarin and mustard gas and were "ready to fire." It quoted the source as saying new U.S. intelligence data showed the chemicals were "not just trace elements."

Posted to Iraq at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

Glenn Spencer, taking the high ground?

According to this:

Chris Simcox, founder of the Tombstone-based Civil Homeland Defense group, and Glenn Spencer, who leads the Sierra Vista-based American Border Patrol, have long disagreed over style and approach to deterring illegal entrants.

Spencer said his group aims to document and report illegal immigrants by using video cameras and other surveillance. In contrast, Simcox describes his group as a "militia," and he leads armed volunteers on patrols near the border.

A recent statement by Simcox has served to incite bickering between the two men. Simcox issued this warning as part of a "message to the world": "Do not attempt to cross the border illegally; you will be considered an enemy of the state; if aggressors attempt to forcefully enter our country they will be repelled with force if necessary!"

Spencer told the Arizona Daily Star that with statements like that, Simcox has attracted an "unsavory element." Such rhetoric threatens the credibility of the anti-illegal-immigration movement...

"The purpose is to put pressure on the government, to have governmental institutions that are there to enforce the law, not to go out and threaten people," he said.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, the Border Action Network has gathered 2000 signatures on a petition "asking Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard... to conduct an investigation of the militia groups and it they're breaking the law, they should be arrested and prosecuted."

You can read a horribly written but very informative article on the Border Action Network here. Think A.N.S.W.E.R. In this editorial, BAN's founder is quoted as saying "[illegal aliens] have civil rights and human rights that take precedence over defending the country."

See also the L.A. Times' hit piece on Simcox 'Patriots on the Borderline'. It reads less like a real newspaper article than an Indymedia reject, and it spawned a couple of letters to the Times. Note well the title of the letters page: "'Racist' Border Patrol Has Crossed the Line."

The hit piece's author is Dan Baum, author of a couple of books about the War on Drugs and Joseph Coors. There's an interview with him here, and at this page it says this:

"Bellesiles calls in a fascinating array of sources to bolster his argument," rhapsodized... author Dan Baum in the Chicago Tribune...

Simcox, Spencer, and friends might have problems, some large, but I don't think we're going to get the whole truth from such biased sources.

Posted to Immigration2003 at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)

"Iraq Camp Used to Train Foreign Terrorists, U.S. Says"

According to this:

The U.S. military said on Sunday it had captured or killed fighters from Sudan, Egypt and other countries in Iraq, and some of those captured had led it to a terrorist training camp.

Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told a briefing at Central Command in Qatar that the camp, found at Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad, demonstrated "a linkage between this regime and terrorism." But he said there was nothing to tie the camp to specific organizations.

Someone must be a bit confused, because Salman Pak has been known about for a long time.

Posted to Iraq at 03:18 PM | Comments (0)

'The Saudis: A Missing Diplomat?'

Glenn links to this update of the story of the S.A. diplomat who might be an AQ conspirator. Apparently, the Saudis want to question him, but they don't know where he is.

Posted to TheSaudis at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

Fatwa Watch 2003

From this:

CAIRO, 6 April 2003 — Suicide attacks on the US-led coalition in Iraq are “permitted under (Islamic) religious law,” the sheikh of Al-Azhar, the highest Sunni Muslim spiritual authority, Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, said here yesterday... He also indirectly criticized the Iraqi and the Kuwaiti leaders.

Saddam Hussein should have accepted a call from the United Arab Emirates last month to resign in order to prevent war, he said. “Had this initiative gone through, it would have preserved the blood of many Muslims and we would not be seeing the massacres under way against the Iraqi people.”

On March 27, Syria’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Kaftaro, the country’s top Muslim religious authority, called for suicide bombings against US and British troops in Iraq...

The top Palestinian religious authority yesterday banned Muslims from aiding the US-led war in Iraq. “All Muslim scholars in Palestine declare a fatwa (edict) forbidding any Muslim to participate in that aggressive war, or even to lend the voracious invaders a hand,” said the Al-Fatwa Supreme Council, an assembly of clerics from the West Bank and Gaza Strip...

Lebanon’s top Shiite leader urged Arabs and Muslims yesterday to resist any American governor or US-backed government set up to run Iraq immediately after the war. “We as Arabs and Muslims ... will not give any legitimacy to any government set up in Iraq under an American administration or through efforts by the American administration to project legitimacy on some who will act according to its instructions,” Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah said in Beirut.

India: March 30: Darul Uloom, Deoband, one of the oldest and most prestigious religious schools of Sunni Muslims around the world has re-issued a fatwa asking Indians in general and Indian Muslims in particular to boycott consumer products of American and British companies in protest against the US-led attack on Iraq.

Iraq: March 29: Iraq's top Muslim cleric issued a fatwa or religious decree also calling for jihad

Another article on the Egpytian fatwa: Al-Azhar, Egypt's most prestigious Islamic institution, issued a fatwa (religious decree) this month that it is the duty of all Muslims to defend Iraq against foreign invasion. "If the enemy descends on the land of Muslims, jihad becomes an Islamic obligation ... because our Arab and Islamic community will be facing a new Crusade targeting our land, honor, faith and nation," it declared...

Amman, Jordan: A fatwa calling for the expulsion of American troops from Jordanian soil has been issued by the Islamic Action Front here, as thousands of people continue to protest against the killings of innocent civilians in Iraq.

Iraq: Confusion now shrouds a US claim on Thursday that Iraq's supreme Shi'a Muslim cleric had issued a religious decree calling on the populace not to impede coalition forces.

Pakistan: "Ulema belonging to various schools of thoughts describe Fidayee (suicide) attacks by Iraqis against coalition forces as in line with Sharia and say killed Fidayeen were "martyrs."

Also see 'Analysis: volunteers come to Iraq's aid'

Posted to Terrorism at 04:46 PM | Comments (1)

Pilger Alert: Britain is America's Lethal Appendage

I think a fun project would be to shoot a video with a sequence of wild-eyed "peace" protesters and street people reading this Pilger article.

Money quote #1: "The killing of some 80 villagers near Baghdad last Thursday, of children in markets, of the "chicks who get in the way'' would be in industrial quantities now were it not for the voices of the millions who filled London and other capitals, and the young people who walked out of their schools; they have saved countless lives."

Money quote #2: "... [the] Time magazine [poll asking] "Which country poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003?'' Readers were asked to tick off one of three possibilities: Iraq, North Korea and the United States. Eight per cent viewed Iraq as the most dangerous; North Korea was chosen by 9 per cent. No fewer than 83 per cent voted for the United States, of which, in the eyes of most of humanity, Britain is now but a lethal appendage."

Also see this heretofore secret Bush plan.

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)

FLASH: SADDAM IS ALIVE AND OUTSIDE IRAQ AND THE U.S. KNOWS IT

According to the wacky theory discussed here, "Saddam is alive but no longer in Iraq and our Government knows it."

First of all, consider the source, one of which is a leftie blog I won't name and the other of which is none other than the 100% reliable DebkaFile.

Let's say SH is gone. If we know it, why won't we release that information? Did we help him get out of the country and agreed to keep it a secret? Or, did we not help, but we've decided to keep it a secret for our own goals?

If the former, would we have agreed to such a plan? And, what of the wacky Iraqi leadership still in Iraq? Certainly they would know if SH is gone: there must be some means of communication directly between SH and the upper levels of Baghdad. If they know he's gone, are they holding on expecting to be victorious? Are they fearful of letting news out about SH's disappearnce to maintain control? That's at least somewhat plausible. If they could somehow win the war or keep territory, they could keep SH "alive" indefinitely using the doubles and recycled video. But, they have to realize, even as delusional as they appear to be, that it wouldn't work out. Why haven't they followed SH's lead and fled themselves? If SH is gone, why not, for instance, try to strike a deal with S.A. to get out of the country?

If we didn't help, what reason would we have for not releasing this information? Why don't we just bomb the Syrian resort Debka mentions? Are we intending to do a special operation to kidnap him, and we don't want to tip them off and force him further underground?

While to a certain degree this wacky theory might have some plausibility, and I haven't exhausted all possibilities in the above discussion, I think it's best to just consider the sources.

Posted to Iraq at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)

Stop fucking with my mind, man!

Want to fuck with a "peace" protester's mind? Show them this speech:

Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors...

The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world.

The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people. Bringing change in Baghdad will take time and effort. We will strengthen our engagement with the full range of Iraqi opposition forces and work with them effectively and prudently...

Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors. He will make war on his own people.

And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.

Because we're acting today, it is less likely that we will face these dangers in the future...

-- President Bill Clinton, December 16, 1998

Of course, some Republicans were against it, or questioned the timing, coming as it did the day before they were going to vote on Bubba's impeachment. And, Clinton might have done it for just that reason. And, Clinton only wanted air strikes. But, he did want regime change, he was willing to commit (some) troops, and the Dems weren't opposed. What happened?

Posted to ThePeaceMovement at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

Send him to France

The British government is starting proceedings to strip Abu Hamza of his citizenship and expel him. Earlier in the year, the Finsbury Park mosque was raided and closed. He's since been preaching out front of it.

Posted to Terrorism at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)

The many faces of Ted, Part 1

Posted to Celebrities at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

Bizarre scenes from inside the bunker

When you put the threat of a spectacular attack on the airport together with yesterday's report: "FoxNews noting unconfirmed reports from within Baghdad that announcements are being made inside the city that people should walk toward the airport. Don't ask me . . ." what do you come up with?

Maybe they're going to try herding civilians towards the airport. The Fedayeen could start shooting, forcing us to shoot back... Or, they could release WMD, or have suicide bombers in the crowd, or release a huge torrent of water, or try to blow up the airport using the tunnels under it, or...

Or, it could be a diversion, or just more BS.

UPDATE: The Beeb discusses the human wave and WMD ideas.

Posted to Iraq at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

H.R.M.'s Royal Department of Mimeography

Via Command Post comes 'Blair to make personal appeal to Iraqis': "Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair will make a personal pledge to help rebuild Iraq through a leaflet to be distributed in the country... Blair's spokesperson said thousands of pamphlets, which are currently being printed, will be distributed by British troops."

J$$$$ F#$(*@$ C#$(@!, what the f#(#@ are these people thinking?

Did they get a special deal at Kinko's or something?

Let me 'splain something to you. We live in the TEEVEE age. This is no longer the 1970s. Throw away the g#$($#* mimeograph machine.

Take over the g#($#)# Iraqi TV. Broadcast to the people. Use Iraqi exiles and other Arabic speakers to get the message out. Counter the constantly beamed pictures of the most feared man in Iraq. Of all the miscalculations in this war, whether real or invented, the PR effort was definitely real and defininetly the worst. Fortunately, it's not too late to get a clue.

UPDATE: In response to the first comment, I should make it clear that I'm not against leaflets, I just think that (AFAIK) all we're doing right now is leaflets and radio. I'd suggest we throw some TV into that mix as well. And internet too, if that's possible. Certainly, some people are illiterate, some don't have power, etc. etc. However, I think we should use all available media to get our message out.

I'm not familiar with TV technology, but I'd imagine that Iraqi TVs are able to get several different VHF and UHF frequencies. If we can't replace Iraqi TV, at least we can broadcast on unused frequencies. Perhaps Gen. Abizaid could make an appearance on TV as well.

Posted to Iraq at 12:58 PM | Comments (2)

"Pakistan still a major threat, say experts"

Article here. Was there a point in time that it wasn't a major threat?

"I don't think anybody above the assistant secretary level is paying any attention to this (problem)," Teresita C. Schaffer, director of the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told United Press International.

Since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has portrayed Pakistan as a frontline ally in the war on terrorism, but critics say that the Pakistani government's cooperation has been spotty at best. Thousands of members of al-Qaida -- including Osama bin Laden -- are believed to have taken refuge in Pakistan under a political and military regime with strong ties to fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups. Elements within the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies have connections with al-Qaida and the Taliban, and longstanding ties with numerous other terrorist groups that are working to undermine Indian control of the disputed Kashmir border region...

Posted to Terrorism at 11:38 PM | Comments (1)

"Islamic textbooks scapegoat Jews, Christians"

From SharkBlog comes the story 'Sowing seeds of hatred':

Textbooks widely used in New York's Islamic schools contain passages that are blatantly anti-Semitic, condemning Jews as a people, repeating old canards about the Jews wanting to kill Christ and faking their Holy Scriptures to mock God.

As you might have already guessed, there is something of a Saudi connection: one of the publishers was until recently a recipient of money from a Saudi foundation.

This is somewhat similar to the situation with those "free" Spanish-language textbooks the Mexican government provides to U.S. schools and libraries. Certainly, they don't cost the schools and libraries anything more than postage.

However, the textbooks supposedly have a different interpretation of the Mexican-American war, the rightful ownership of the U.S. Southwest, etc. etc. than the U.S. government's interpretation, making their social cost a bit high.

Posted to Terrorism at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)

More on Salman Pak and the Iraq-AQ connection

Here. I excerpted the complaint from the lawsuit mentioned in the article here.

Posted to Iraq at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)

"U.N. Envoy Warns of War in Korea"

From this.

Posted to Miscellania at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)

"Blair 'delayed US strike on Iraq'"

From this. Some in the Bush administration wanted to attack Iraq right after 9/11; Blair convinced him to go after the Taliban first. This will be discussed in a Frontline documentary tonight.

Posted to Iraq at 01:29 PM |