Moved To MT

Leaving Blogspot.

How About Affirmative Action For Whites?

Congressional Democrats, sensing a political opportunity in an otherwise dry season, have launched a furious assault on Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration over a provision in the just-passed tax cut package that deprives millions of low-income families of a tax break for children.

Shocked, Shocked I Tell You!

T he sympathy expressed by some people in a North Carolina town for accused terrorist Eric Rudolph exposes a perverse strain of American intolerance.

Financial Mismanagement By A College President Is OK.

Lewis & Clark College President Michael Mooney on Wednesday acknowledged he violated university policy in lending $10.5 million in university money to an Idaho energy company that later went bankrupt.

"Mr. Mooney has done an outstanding job for this college other than this one decision," Fields said.
"The man made a mistake," said Greg Goodman, a board member and president of City Center Parking, "but he never tried to hide anything."

A More Accurate Headline Would Be "Greedy Education Establishment Price Higher Education Out Of Reach Of Middle Class.

Many of Oregon's top high school graduates are settling for second-choice colleges next fall because of soaring tuition, shrinking financial aid and a sluggish economy.

Does This Justify The War? Probably Not To Some.

A MASS grave containing the remains of 200 Kurdish children has been discovered in the northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk, the Kurdish newspaper Taakhi reported today.
"Citizens discovered on May 30 a communal grave close to Debs, in Kirkuk. But this is different from other mass graves discovered since the fall of Saddam Hussein's terrorist regime because it contains the remains of 200 child victims of the repression of the Kurdish uprising" in 1991, the paper said.
"Even dolls were buried with the children," it said.
Dozens of mass graves have been uncovered all over Iraq since Saddam's ouster by invading US-led forces on April 9.

Liberal Groups Find Fault With Tax Cuts

Three successive tax cuts pushed by President Bush will leave middle-income taxpayers paying a greater share of all federal taxes by the end of the decade, according to new analyses of the Bush administration's tax policies.
The two studies focused on separate issues. Citizens for Tax Justice examined the percentage changes in total federal taxes that would be paid by different income groups through 2010. The Tax Policy Center, jointly run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, looked at the share of federal taxes that would remain for the various groups once those changes are fully phased in. But the studies reached similar conclusions.

The WaPos World

"Everybody likes us," Spec. Stephen Harris, a 21-year-old from Lafayette, La., said as the patrol moved through streets drenched in sun. He thinks the people want the U.S. troops to stay. "Oh, yeah," he said, taking a slug from his canteen. His assessment of the neighborhood: "I'd say 95 percent friendly."
To Mohammed Abdullah, standing on the sidewalk as the 10-man patrol passed his gated house, their presence is, as he terms it, "despicable."

Haumschild's evaluation: "Maybe 10 percent are hostile. About 50 percent friendly. About 40 percent are indifferent."
Residents gave different numbers -- at best, 50-50, and at worst, a significant majority holding hostile views. Sentiments often broke down along the religious cleavages that mark Iraq.

There were no children around on 4th Street in Yarmuk, where sentiments were distinctly uneasy. Abdullah, standing with his neighbors, insisted he would fight the Americans. "They said they came to liberate us. Liberate us from what? They came and said they would free us. Free us from what?" he asked. "We have traditions, morals and customs. We are Arabs. We're different from the West."

'They Love Us'
At 12:40, the patrol turned a corner a block from their temporary home. "I love it," Harris said of Army life. "Something different every day."
The men passed the two green Bradleys and stepped through the base's concertina wire. A soldier greeted them with cold cans of strawberry and cola soda. They stripped off their helmets, flak jackets and the uniform jackets called "blouses" and set down their weapons. Some eagerly quizzed the reporters about what Iraqis along the route had said about them.
The lieutenant announced that after two hours, they would go back on patrol.
"They love us," concluded Ratledge, the medic.

The French Think We're Being Mean To Them.

This Is Probably All Too True.

Arafat Encourages Children To Be Martyrs.

Israel Television Channel Two News correspondent Ehud Yaari showed a tape this evening of the meeting Yasser Arafat held in Ramallah with children to mark International Children's Day.
Arafat devoted his remarks to encouraging the children to be "shahid" (die for the cause), noting that one shahid who dies for the sake of Jerusalem has the power equal to 40 of the enemy dying.
Yaari noted that Arafat said nothing in his remarks about peace or reconciliation.

British Crank Compares Fox Hunting To Rape.

Hunting is morally equivalent to rape, child abuse and torture, according to one of Britain's leading Christian experts, who is closely connected to Labour's religious establishment....
Supporters of Linzey said he could not be dismissed as a crank.

Mark Steyn Went To Iraq.

Right Thinking From The Left Coast.

Democrat Senators Use Capitol Police To Crush Dissent.

Ranger Training Icky, Say Some Grads.

Ranger training has never been easy. Darby set the standard in 1942 while forging the first U.S. Ranger battalion....About half of Darby’s highly motivated initial volunteers didn’t make it. In the years since, this 50-percent attrition mark has continued to be the norm.
While the rest of the U.S. Army has lowered its standards to the point where seasoned war vets find today’s combat training a joke and the crusty salts who fought at Anzio, Osan and Dak To refer to what passes for most training as “an invitation to get killed,” Rangers have fought lowering the training bar and have consistently turned out hardened studs whom commanders in the field would fight to get.
That is until Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, the guy who runs Fort Benning today, was told by a few recent Ranger graduates that they were turned off by Ranger School because some of their RIs were meanies and actually yelled and cursed at them and even made them do pushups when they goofed up. Others complained in writing that they'd been sleep-deprived and that the training was too difficult.

What Do You Think The ACLU Will Have To Do With This Case?

MURPHY, N.C. - Eric Robert Rudolph, the Olympic Park bombing suspect who became almost a mythic figure during his years on the run in the Appalachian wilderness, was arrested early Saturday as he scavenged for food behind a grocery store.

Bad News For Democrats

Give The Weasel Some Rope.

Bring Back The Colonialists?

Over the past four years, Congo's war has claimed more lives than any other. The International Rescue Committee, an American aid agency, says that by the middle of last year, 2.5m people had died because of the war in eastern Congo alone. Some were shot or hacked to death; many more succumbed to starvation or disease as nine national armies and a shifting throng of rebel groups pillaged their country. By now, the death toll is probably over 3m, although this is the roughest of estimates. As one UN worker puts it: “Congo is so green, you don't even see the graves.”

Twilight Zone

Fred Reed On Women Golfers. (among other things)

Ted Rall - THE FICTIONAL WAR ON TERRORISM

In Afghanistan, we paid off warlords whom we should have dropped bombs upon.

Maybe I Was Wrong About Bush Rolling.

Bush Lashes Out at Europe

President Bush today accused Europeans of perpetuating starvation in Africa by subsidizing agricultural exports and by objecting to the use of bioengineered crops, raising another grievance with Europe at a time of already tense transatlantic relations.

Politicians Prove Resistant To Voters

In a post-election meeting Wednesday morning between legislative leaders and Gov. Ted Kulongoski, Senate President Peter Courtney took the floor and stated: "We will have new revenue. Is everybody on board?"

Why Does The UN Need To Be Involved In Anything?

United Nations officials looked the other way as Saddam Hussein's regime skimmed $2 billion to $3 billion in bribes and kickbacks from the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, said U.N. officials who told ABCNEWS they were powerless to stop the massive graft.

This Is A Failure?

Heh, Been Smokin' Those Left-Handed Cigarettes Again?

Blame George.

A GRIM AND FAMILIAR series of events has played out in the Middle East during the past several weeks. An attempt to restart the Arab-Israeli peace process began with encouraging rhetoric and the tabling of a new plan, only to quickly bog down through the inaction of a weak Palestinian leadership, foot-dragging by a hawkish Israeli government and ineffective diplomacy by the United States.

On cue, the extremists jumped in: Just as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas met for the first time, the Islamic movement Hamas launched a wave of suicide bombings. By late yesterday there had been five attacks in less than 48 hours, killing at least 12 Israelis and wounding scores.

Mr. Sharon indefinitely postponed a much-anticipated trip to Washington, and Israeli-Palestinian dialogue dissolved into mutual recrimination. If the past two years are a guide, the diplomatic process will stop there. Israelis and Palestinians will renew the low-grade war that has consumed the past 31 months, and the Bush administration will direct its attention elsewhere.

Where Are The Human Shields?

Iraqis have begun tracking down and killing former members of the ruling Baath Party, doubtful that the United States intends to adequately punish the mid-level government functionaries who they say tormented them for three decades.

Oh My God, Terrorists Can Use Our Freedoms Againt Us!!!

U.S. gun laws can easily be exploited by international terrorist operatives, who can obtain assault-style firearms or explosives by taking advantage of delays and loopholes in the federal gun control system, according to a Congressional Research Service report to be released today.

Bush Administration Rolls For Axis Of Weasels.

The Bush administration sought to broaden support in the United Nations' Security Council for a resolution lifting sanctions on Iraq, offering concessions today that would ensure the immediate financial survival of the U.N.'s arms inspection agency and extend the U.N.'s authority to honor billions of dollars in contracts for products approved under Saddam Hussein's regime.

Hey Celebrities! Dissent Being Crushed Here!

Armed federal agents slipped silently into place around Byron Calvert Cecchini's Leesburg home. They pounded on the door, rousing the self-described white supremacist from bed. For several hours, the agents scoured the house, loading his computer, Rolodex and files into a Ryder truck.
Agents found no weapons, but they found something they were looking for -- T-shirts with a Nike swoosh logo that substitutes the word "Nazi" for Nike. Cecchini is facing possible charges of trademark violations, said law enforcement sources, who spoke on the condition that they not be named.
"You prosecute what you can prosecute," one law enforcement source said.
Cecchini, a former National Alliance member who broke with the group and created Tightrope, acknowledged that his views are offensive to many. He said, however, that he is not a danger to anyone and is "absolutely not involved in anything illegal."
"I don't mind being called a racist or a Nazi," Cecchini said in an interview. "I'm not offended if people don't like what I think."

Occupation Disaster or Wishful Thinking?

A month before the war began in Iraq, senior Bush administration officials said their plan for winning the peace was built upon the swift provision of basic services that would "immediately" make the Iraqi people feel they were better off than they had been under the government of Saddam Hussein.
Five weeks after the war ended, the administration is still struggling to accomplish that goal. It has failed to establish law and order on the streets and has achieved only mixed results in restoring electricity, water, sanitation and other essential needs.

Women In Combat?

After learning that I was to be the Tribune's only female embedded journalist, I promised myself never to write the woman-on-the-front-lines story.
It just wouldn't be an issue. I would find a way to blend in. I wouldn't be treated differently because I wouldn't let anyone treat me differently.
Wrong.
It was pitch black and we were taking constant mortar fire at a checkpoint just outside Najaf, the holy Shiite city in central Iraq. I had my rucksack, which weighed well over 70 pounds, my computer and satellite phone, my gas mask container, several bottles of water and some food.
I had been bumming rides with military vehicles for a little over a day to get up to the embattled city, and both my computer and phone were out of power, so I had added to my load a battery taken from a blown-out car, hoping that, with some alligator clips and a power inverter, I could charge my equipment.
The soldiers I had met up with said I could accompany them into the city--a 4-mile hike. I didn't know whether I could hike 4 feet with all that gear, let alone 4 miles, but we set out. At about mile 2 1/2, I was about to give out. I was contemplating saying something needlessly melodramatic like, "Go ahead, save yourselves," when a soldier asked, "Ma'am, can I carry that battery for you?"
I had run a marathon not long before the war and worked out almost every day. I grew up on an Iowa farm where manual labor was part of the bargain. But I had been bested by a car battery, and when I handed my load to that soldier, I admitted that I never could have cut it in the infantry.

Jane Garofalo Interview:

Garofalo: There's been such ...democracy here, and the mainstream media is complicit in it. We are living in ...democratic times. ...Millions of people around the world were marching for ...war .... This was historically unprecedented. ...The President has openly said that he doesn't make policy by focus group. ...I ...never care about things anymore. ...I'm frequently depressed, just have a general malaise.....

Bill Whittle

Sleazy Trial Lawyers Now "Victims"

The Justice Department is investigating allegations of improper campaign finance practices involving prominent Mississippi trial lawyers, a major source of support for the state's Democratic Party, according to lawyers involved in the case.
David Baria, president of the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association, would not criticize the U.S. attorney's office. But he contended that a host of groups, including some businesses and the Republican Party, are attacking trial lawyers and creating an atmosphere that is "consistent with this prosecution."

Dowd and Sheen Revealed To Be Closet Conservatives.

"Everyone thinks the Bush diplomacy on Iraq is a wreck. It isn't. It's a success ..."

"These tablets are a noble guide for living... [E]xhibiting the Ten Commandments has... to do with teaching the meaning or the truth or the value of them. "

"Although my opinion is...valuable or relevant ...I am an actor, that fact does ... render it unimportant,"

Way To Go, Frank!!

I Didn't Even Know He Drank.

Thaksin told reporters on Friday with a rye smile on his face.

Oregon Senate Votes To Delay Economic Recovery.

The Senate passed a bill Wednesday that unhooks Oregon from future changes in the federal tax code, enabling the state to avoid losing $90 million to $140 million during the next two years because of pending federal tax cuts.
Proponents say House Bill 2186 is necessary to keep money for state services when slumping tax collections have left legislators with about $2 billion less to craft a two-year budget than they had available in 2001.

"Open" Hearing Would Just Promote Theater From Race Hustlers.

Every death at police hands demands an open, exhaustive public inquiry. The death of an unarmed mother of two is bound to spark more question marks than do most such deaths -- it certainly dramatizes why such an inquiry is needed -- and James has friends and family who will vigorously pursue answers. An inquiry and full airing of a case are just as essential, however, when victims lack any advocates.
A Multnomah County grand jury is hearing testimony in this case this week, and the grand jurors will be asked to determine whether the officer's conduct was criminal. Here, as elsewhere across the country, that is excruciatingly difficult to prove, and it is therefore rare for a grand jury to indict an officer. But the point is that the grand jury hearing, enveloped in secrecy as it is, and focused narrowly on criminal conduct, is no substitute for a full public inquiry.
An officer's conduct can fall short of being criminal and still be completely unacceptable. In addition to finding out whether an officer acted recklessly or with malice, the public needs to know whether the officer followed departmental policy and his own training. And is there a need to change either one? Could this death have been avoided?

Phase One In The "New" Tobacco Lawsuits

Watch The Democrats Howl Now.

The Republican-controlled House will not renew the federal ban on Uzis and other semiautomatic weapons, a key leader said yesterday, dealing a significant blow to the campaign to clamp down on gun sales nationwide.

You'll Have To Pry My Circus Peanuts From My Cold, Dead, Sticky Hand.

Can You Imagine The Harumphing and Squealing If Republicans Did This?

Moving with exceptional stealth and tactical coordination, more than 50 Democratic state lawmakers in Texas packed their bags and quietly slipped out of the state under cover of darkness late Sunday and early today

Bush Leads Effort To "Brand" Democrats.

The White House is leading a party-wide effort today to brand Democrats as obstructionists, on the second anniversary of his initial slate of judicial nominees. Three of the 11, including Estrada and Owen, are still awaiting votes.

The MAPSI's

One of the smartest things I’ve heard anyone say recently was when my friend (the atheist) Sarah Welstead said “As soon as someone starts talking about the Nazis, you know they’ve run out of things to say.”
So true. Today “Nazi,” like “Fascist,” has been gutted of any real meaning. “Nazi” no longer carries any definable reference to the National Socialism movement founded in 1919 and brought to power under Adolf Hitler in 1933 in Germany, and “Fascist” has been divorced of its reference to the authoritarian political movement founded in 1919 by Benito Mussolini, both now are simply used to designate “anyone who criticizes something I like.” “McCarthyism,” “anti-American,” “witch hunt,” many others have been abused beyond recognition and today mean nothing more important or insightful than “You jerk!”
Both words are nothing more than Meaningless All-Purpose Slanderous Insults today, two of the dozens of MAPSIs littering today’s discourse in lieu of thoughtful analysis.

Incredible.

The Keagle and the Smoke Nazi Whine About Bush's Carrier Landing.

Waxman said Fleischer had provided conflicting accounts of the reasons for the president's trip by jet, initially indicating that the carrier would be hundreds of miles offshore, too far from land to be reached by helicopter.

All Together Now, Ein, Zwei, Drei, Vier. You Vill Play! You Vill Enjoy!

Also, kids will be encouraged to plan their recess activities.
"Kids with nothing in mind before recess tend to get in trouble if they don't schedule their recess," (violence prevention coordinator Marcy) Spigler said

And This Is A Bad Thing?

Last interesting observation about Ferrioli: though raised in Portland, he's a born-again logger. Big time.

If Free Speech Is Not For Corporations, Then Is It For Other Organizations?

The question, then, is not just whether Nike's ads are political or commercial speech, but whether corporate speech is ever political or always commercial. The Bill of Rights was created to protect natural persons, not artificial ones. Giving corporations -- with their wealth, perpetual life and limited liability -- political speech protections defeats the purpose of the First Amendment -- debate among citizens.
Doesn't this leave corporations defenseless? Hardly. Corporations can still speak, but on condition that they be accountable for their well-amplified speech. Moreover, corporate owners can come out from behind the veil and speak for their interests personally, with full political speech protections. With 10 percent of Americans owning 90 percent of all stock, owners have no shortage of resources with which to speak; they do not need the corporate shield or the advantage of deducting the costs of speech as a business expense.

Short Day Today

Just In Time For The Summer Oil Company Conspiracy Season

[T]he nation's refiners face daunting challenges - and criticism from all sides. They find themselves blamed for shortages, and for air pollution.
They are accused of price-gouging, while they themselves claim they can't make enough money to build new plants. Meanwhile, summer is also smog season, and as metro areas struggle to meet clean-air laws, refiners must find ways to get 50 gas blends through a maze of pipelines to the right storage tanks without making a mistake that might cause motorists to see red.

Investigators Find Looting Of Artifacts Claim Bogus

The vast majority of antiquities feared stolen or broken have been found inside the National Museum in Baghdad, according to American investigators who compiled an inventory over the weekend of the ransacked galleries.
A total of 38 pieces, not tens of thousands, are now believed to be missing. Among them is a display of Babylonian cuneiform tablets that accounts for nine missing items.
The most valuable missing piece is the Vase of Warka, a white limestone bowl dating from 3000 B.C.
The inventory, compiled by a military and civilian team headed by Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos, rejects reports that Iraq's renowned treasures of civilization--up to 170,000 artifacts--had been lost during the U.S.-led war against Iraq. It also raises questions about why any of the artifacts were reported missing.

Is Six Percent Unemployment Rate A "Grim Number" Or "Natural Rate"

PRESIDENT BUSH used the latest unemployment figures to pitch his tax cut in California last week, but the grim new numbers must have caused palpitations back at the White House. The unemployment rate ticked up two-tenths of a percentage point, to 6 percent.

The best a nation can do is settle for the lowest level of unemployment that will not begin accelerating inflation. [Milton] Friedman called this point the "natural rate of unemployment".
Some controversy exists over what the natural rate is, because it depends partly on what markets expect inflation will be. But in the U.S. today, economists estimate it to be slightly less than 6 percent.

Can Illinois or SCOTUS Be Sued For Wrongful Death?

May 1, 2003 — The plaintiff in a landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a suspect's right to a lawyer has been convicted in a 20-year-old murder case.
A Cook County jury on Wednesday deliberated for about an hour before finding Daniel Escobedo guilty of killing shopkeeper Ki Hwan Kim with an ice pick in 1983. The 65-year-old Escobedo now faces a possible sentence of natural life in prison.
Escobedo was arrested in connection with Kim's murder in Mexico after his nephew told authorities about the crime.
During the three-day trial, Mitsuru Morales testified about how Escobedo recruited him to help rob and murder Kim, a fur and leather dealer. Morales, who was only 16 at the time, has since pleaded guilty to armed robbery.
Escobedo was the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Escobedo v. Illinois, in which the high court threw out Escobedo's conviction in the slaying of his brother-in-law, finding that Chicago police had violated his constitutional rights by denying his repeated requests for a lawyer.
The ruling was later expanded in the case Miranda vs. Arizona, giving rise to the Miranda warning in which police advise those under arrest of their rights, including the right to remain silent.
In the years following the ruling, Escobedo was arrested roughly 25 times for offenses ranging from attempted murder and indecent liberties with a minor to felony possession of firearms. He was released from prison in 1978 after serving 22 years on a drug conviction.

Tommie Can You Hear Me?

Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle - who bitterly accused President Bush of failing "miserably" on Iraq just before the war - has done a total flip-flop and now says Bush deserves "great credit" as war leader.
"In 21 days, we eliminated somebody [Saddam Hussein] who for 20 years has repressed and tortured his own people and posed a serious security risk," Daschle added in a conference call with reporters in his home state of South Dakota.
Sources tell The Post Daschle consultants recently conducted focus groups of rural South Dakota voters and tested their reaction to a video clip of Daschle attacking Bush on the eve of the war and all but blaming him for any deaths.
In that clip, Daschle fumes: "I'm saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war. Saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country."
Polls consistently show that Bush is more popular than Daschle in South Dakota, a tiny state that, Daschle has noted, has a very high percentage of people with military service.

Thank Goodness For The UN Human Rights Council

Lee's crime was that she was hungry. After years of meager rations in North Korea, the 22-year-old woman with curly hair left her peasant family's home and slipped across the border into China in 1997, hoping to find something to eat. She was caught and sent back, handcuffed, to a North Korean prison camp -- a world of cruelty.
She was worked to exhaustion, forced to run in her bare feet as she carried heavy bricks at a construction site. Her food was a bowl of watery soup every day with cabbage and a few rotten corn kernels.
There was no escape. "I didn't feel anything," said Lee, now 28 and safe after an escape that brought her to Seoul four months ago. Beaten, starved and assaulted by horrors, "you just don't think about anything. You really have no fear of death. At that point, you're just a machine with no emotion."
The U.N. Commission on Human Rights condemned North Korea's human rights record for the first time last month, answering years of demands by activists that the world confront the abuses.
The commission expressed "deep concern" about conditions in the country, including torture, public executions, political executions, use of political prison camps and selective provision of food.
The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which meets annually, focuses international attention on human rights violators. The commission can send monitors and investigators, but at its meeting in Geneva it noted that North Korea has not cooperated with U.N. investigators dealing with torture, religious intolerance, arbitrary detention, involuntary disappearances and the right to food. It urged the North Korean government to do so. It also elected to put North Korea on its agenda again next year.

Ellen Goodman Unhappy With Failure Of U.S. To Back World Government.

Spy plane skulks through area

The School Funding Crisis In Oregon Is Over!

However, Urenda worries he won't be able to afford the cost of a four-year university, a necessity before medical school. As an undocumented resident, Urenda isn't eligible for resident tuition, although he's lived in Oregon for five years. He says the obstacle is unfair.

Maybe A UNSC Resolution Would Have Prevented This.

The decision to make the cafeterias into "no pay zones" spread through the 40-acre complex like wildfire. Soon, the hungry patrons came running. "It was chaos, wild, something out of a war scene," said one Aramark executive who was present. "They took everything, even the silverware," she said. Another witness from U.N. security said the cafeteria was "stripped bare." And another told TIME that the cafeteria raid was "unbelievable, crowds of people just taking everything in sight; they stripped the place bare." And yet another astonished witness said that "chickens, turkeys, souffles, casseroles all went out the door (unpaid)."

So-Called "Intellectuals" And Publicity Seeking Actors Praise Imprisonment Of Dissidents.

(Reuters) - More than 160 foreign artists and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, have come out in defense of Cuba even as many of their peers condemn recent repression on the Communist-run island, one of the campaigners said on Thursday.
Latin American Nobel laureates Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel and South African writer Nadine Gordimer, also a Nobel prize winner, have signed a declaration of support, Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez said.
U.S. singer Harry Belafonte and U.S. actor Danny Glover are also among the personalities who have signed the two-paragraph declaration "To the Conscience of the World" so far, Gonzalez announced to a May Day rally in Havana.
"A single power is inflicting grave damage to the norms of understanding, debate and mediation among countries," the declaration says, referring to the United States and the war in Iraq.
"At this very moment, a strong campaign of destabilization against a Latin American nation has been unleashed. The harassment against Cuba could serve as a pretext for an invasion," it continues.
President Fidel Castro's government has come under unprecedented international criticism from friends and foes after sentencing 75 dissidents to long prison terms last month, and executing three men who hijacked a ferry in a failed bid to reach the United States.
Havana has said the crackdown is in response to a U.S. plot to topple the Castro government after more than four decades of failed efforts to do so.
Fierce criticism of Cuba's moves has come not only from Western government's such as the United States, but also from disillusioned foreign writers and artists, apparently sparking the pro-Cuba drive.
Portuguese Nobel Prize winning novelist Jose Saramago, a longtime supporter of Castro, wrote last month that, "from now on, Cuba can follow its own course, and leave me out," saying Cuba had cheated his illusions.
At the Thursday rally Castro told critics, particularly on the left, that their words could be used to justify a U.S. invasion.
The intellectuals who signed the declaration defending Cuba apparently agree, though they did not specifically express support for Castro's policies.
The declaration concludes with a call to governments and others to "uphold the universal principles of national sovereignty, respect for territorial integrity and self-determination, essential to just and peaceful co-existence among nations."
Gonzalez did not say who originated the declaration but said it would continue to be circulated among cultural figures around the world.

Strange Green Object Found in Capitol Sparks Debate

Alarming Companies

I Hope They Realize, What Goes Around, Comes Around.

Senate Democrats said yesterday they will block the judicial nomination of Priscilla R. Owen, marking the second time this year they have employed filibuster tactics to thwart President Bush's efforts to name conservatives to the federal bench.

So Who Is More Credible, U.S Soldiers Or Saddam Supporters?

U.S. forces stationed at an elementary school opened fire on an angry mob protesting the American presence here after several demonstrators began shooting at soldiers guarding the building, U.S. officers said today. Local officials said 13 Iraqis were killed and as many as 75 wounded in the shooting Monday night, making it the bloodiest clash between civilians and U.S. forces in postwar Iraq.
Two injured demonstrators and three men who live across the street and viewed the confrontation said the participants were unarmed and were complaining only about the U.S. occupation of the school. But three other witnesses said several of the protesters were shouting slogans in support of former president Saddam Hussein and firing assault rifles into the air in defiance of U.S. orders.

From The SF Gate? This Is What True Bravery Is.

Basic Rights: New rights not found anywhere in the Constitution that include the right for slackers to get free food, free housing, free medical care and conjugal visits in prison, plus permission to deal drugs, defecate in the streets and aggressively panhandle, as well as get enough welfare money to trade their cars in every three years.

Wherefore The News Media

The attitude of many reporting on the war in Iraq seemed to be, "Daddy, are we there yet?" Day after day the mood in the TV studios was one of impatience and incoherence about what U.S. military leaders now are calling one of the most awesome military campaigns in history. At the same time, in the three weeks it took U.S. forces to topple Saddam Hussein's regime and seize Baghdad, Americans were treated to some of the most professional and thorough war reporting ever - contaminated from the editorial suites and studio directorate by a steady, noxious dripping of ill-informed speculation, whining and defeatism.

A Brief History Of North Korean Non-proliferation Agreements

The Reagan administration solved the North Korean nuclear problem for the first time back in 1985, persuading them to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), with inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, North Korea said its adherence to the agreements was contingent on the removal of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea.
So in 1991, President George H.W. Bush solved the North Korean nuclear problem a second time, announcing that the U.S. would withdraw all tactical nuclear weapons abroad, including 100 or so in Korea. This may have made military sense because of improved conventional weapons, and allowed the two Koreas to ratify that the problem was solved through a bilateral agreement not to test, store or deploy nuclear weapons.
In 1992, North Korea concluded its agreement with the IAEA, declared seven nuclear sites and some plutonium open for inspection. So the problem was solved, except that the IAEA discovered discrepancies in the report and demanded special inspections of two nuclear waste storage sites. In response, the North Koreans announced their intention to withdraw from the NPT.
So in 1993, the Clinton administration solved the problem a third time, persuading the North Koreans to "suspend" their withdrawal and submit to inspections. However, the CIA estimated that North Korea may have produced one or two nuclear weapons. When IAEA inspectors arrived, the North Koreans refused to allow them to inspect the plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon and announced that it was withdrawing from the NPT after all.
So in 1994, former President Jimmy Carter showed up to solve the problem a fourth time, charming the North Koreans into confirming their willingness to freeze nuclear development and hold more talks. Later that year, Clinton administration negotiators solved the problem a fifth time with the "Agreed Framework." North Korea agreed to drop proposed nuclear reactors, in exchange for two "light-water" reactors designed by the U.S. and built by an international consortium. Pending their completion, North Korea would get fuel oil shipments.
In 1999, the Clinton administration solved the problem a sixth time by inspecting the Kumchang-ni site, where the U.S. suspected underground nuclear facilities. In exchange for food aid the Koreans allowed inspections, after five months during which spy satellites showed them moving things away. The inspection found no nuclear activity, so the problem was solved again.
The "Agreed Framework" incorporated the brainstorm of installing cameras to monitor the plutonium stored in North Korea. Last December, the Koreans blandly turned off the cameras.

Not A WMD, Perfectly Acceptable By UN Standards

Around 7 feet tall, three feet across and deep enough to house a grown man, the sarcophagus-shaped device is essentially a large, metal closet with long spikes on the inside door that closes to impale its victim. Its name derives from its mummy shape and the beatific woman's face depicted on its headpiece. The one found in Baghdad was clearly worn from use, its nails having lost some of their sharpness. It lay on its side within view of Uday's first-floor offices in the soccer association. Ironically, the torture device was brought to TIME's attention by a group of looters who had been stripping the compound of anything of value. They had left behind the iron maiden, believing it to be worthless

The Real Dixie Chicks Interview

Even After All The Criticism, America Allows Looting To Continue.

Police were last night hunting a gang of art thieves who raided a Manchester gallery and stole paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso and Gauguin valued at an estimated £1m.

Stupid Arguments.

It Was Better When The Explosives Were In Schools?

A fire that U.S. military officers blamed on an Iraqi guerrilla attack set off a chain of fierce explosions at a U.S.-controlled munitions dump today, sending rockets, missiles and other ordnance shrieking into residential neighborhoods in this southern Baghdad suburb.

the weapons stockpile was started by the Hussein government and built upon by U.S. troops after they conquered Baghdad. He said no demolitions of weapons had occurred since the Army took control of the site from Marines about a week ago.

The most severe damage today appeared to come from old Soviet-made Frog-7 rockets, according to Army officials.

MadBlast - The Real Hussein (Slim Shady Parody)

Those "International Agreements" Sure Work Well, Don't They?

Venezuela refused to sign an internationally brokered agreement Thursday for a referendum on President Hugo Chavez's presidency.
The refusal cast doubt on prospects for any vote on Chavez's six-year term, which ends in 2007. Venezuela's opposition staged a two-month general strike this winter to demand the plebiscite.
Chavez didn't budge, but after five months of negotiations, the Organization of American States announced on April 11 the two sides had agreed on a plan for a referendum.

KFC Will Get You Every Time

Mary Christian lived long enough to see the turn of two centuries. Christian, who was certified as the longest-living American in November, died Sunday at the Creekside Healthcare Center in San Pablo after a bout with pneumonia. She was 113.
Before her diet was restricted to soft foods, Christian was fond of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Twinkies.
"She had a nice, long life," said her niece, Rita Rinna.

I Guess That Whole First Amendment Thing Doesn't Apply Here.

Actor and gay rights supporter Susan Sarandon has added her voice to the campaign to keep radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger off TV

Boycott This!

It's Earth Day; We're All Gonna Die!

What The Hell Are You Talking About?

[T]he Bush administration should at least test whether Pyongyang might choose a path of cooperation
North Korea certainly won't give up its nuclear option, which it sees as its defense against a possible U.S. attack, unless the Bush administration is willing to forgo the option of forcible regime change.
The Clinton administration offered Mr. Kim that assurance, only to be deceived as North Korea froze one nuclear weapons program and secretly began another

Can You Hear The Black Helicopters?

Hollywood Takes Care Of It's Own.

Yankee Go Home, Let Us Install A New Dictator.

BAGHDAD, April 21 -- When Marines helped pull down a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein in downtown Baghdad 12 days ago, Rafeh Mohammed took to the street and cheered the legions of American troops pouring into the city to end Hussein's three-decade rule.
"We were so happy," he said. "We were being liberated from a dictator. We thought life was surely going to get better."
Today, Mohammed is a bitter man. "The Americans," sniffed the 32-year-old trader, "have failed us."

[D]emonstrators have gathered daily in front of a large downtown hotel housing U.S. troops and foreign journalists, calling for Iraqis to be allowed to manage their affairs immediately.

No Shit???

intelligence suggesting that Iraqi insiders have stolen files, electronic data and equipment from nonconventional arms programs under the cover of recent looting.

Saddam Didn't Have Any Chemical Or Bio Weapons. This Guy Must Be Lying.

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.

Sounds Great If You Don't Mind Dead Prisoners.

Go, Fox!

MSNBC's moves have news executives and some liberal critics worried that Fox's success will push TV news too far from a neutral tone.

See? Americans Don't necessarily mean KFC

Basra: Fastfood giants Pizza Hut and Burger King have set up their first franchises inside war-torn Iraq, even as many aid convoys waited on the borders for the war to officially end.

Hmm..They're A Facist Dictatorship That Supports Many Terrorist Groups and Has Chemical Weapons. Why Would They Worry About US?

Where Does This Idiot Think Jobs Come From?

More jobs, not tax cuts, are needed to help Americans struggling in the nation's slumping economy, Rep. Elijah Cummings said Saturday.
Cummings, who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, reproached Republicans "for cutting taxes that disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans."

Wanna Bet This Is Considered Americas Fault?

Hidden from a world whose gaze has been fixed on Iraq, a full-scale reign of terror has been unleashed on opponents of the Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of Zimbabweans were arrested and tortured as Mr Mugabe, apparently taking advantage of the lull in international scrutiny, stepped up his campaign of repression during the three weeks of the United States' war on Saddam Hussein.
In response Michael Ancram, Britain's shadow foreign secretary, called on Tony Blair and Jack Straw to bring a new UN resolution. "The UN cannot turn a blind eye to the abuses of Robert Mugabe," he said, "and nor can South Africa which is beginning to be affected financially and politically by what is happening."
Many Zimbabweans who would not have supported the Iraqi war are talking of a "Bush solution". "Mr Bush, when are you coming to liberate us?" has become a catchphrase among unemployed youths.

Obviously The Parenting Classes Didn't Help Much.

A couple accused of killing and decapitating their three young children could face the death penalty if convicted.
They previously had been referred to the state child protective agency because the children were found to be malnourished and needed medical attention, but the parents weren't accused of physical abuse.
Weeks before the youngest child was born, state investigators closed the case because the couple were living in an apartment and had completed parenting classes and the children were gaining weight.

Tell Me Again Why We Should Trust The UN?

HUMAN RIGHTS FILE was closed forever, and Sudan's innocence declared." So read a newspaper headline in Khartoum this week after the vote by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to remove Sudan from a list of countries requiring special monitoring.

WaPO Friday, April 18, 2003, Impartiality Check

Lifting Of Sanctions Depends On Paying Off UNSC Members

But Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, speaking in Moscow, said economic sanctions cannot be lifted until a number of conditions required by Security Council resolutions -- including proof that Iraq has fully disarmed -- have been met.
Administration officials said they view the upcoming debate over sanctions as a test of whether the council is prepared to do its part to improve the lives of Iraqis or simply rekindle old battles.
"We need not to have everybody go to their corners and talk about theological expressions of what the U.N. has to be, but all unite now and do what is best for the Iraqi people," a senior U.S. official said. "The means when it comes time to lift sanctions, it ought to be done because it will benefit the Iraqi people."

Asked whether there would be opposition from some factions in the Bush administration to the United Nations making such a decision, the French official said such opposition "is not wise," and added, "If they want to have trouble, it's up to them."

Baghdad Power Problems.

At 8 p.m. on April 3, as U.S. tanks rumbled into Baghdad's international airport to prepare for a final attack, the power went out across this sprawling city.

Kosovo is a lucrative post for more than 10,000 exorbitantly overpaid international administrators and perked consultants as well as 40,000 itinerant peacekeepers.
In the wake of NATO's Operation Allied Force in 1999, Kosovo was practically severed from Yugoslavia and rendered a U.N.-protectorate under Resolution 1244 of the Security Council. UNMIK, the U.N. Mission in Kosovo, was formed to serve as the province's interim administrator. It was charged with institution building and producing a transition to self-governance by the now overwhelmingly Albanian populace.
Nor has Kosovo's infrastructure been rehabilitated despite the $5 billion poured into the province hitherto. Electricity, for instance, is intermittent and unpredictable. The roads are potholed and few, the railways derelict. Fixed line penetration is low, though mobile telephony is booming. This sorry state was avoidable.

Clinton Still Running For UN Secretary General.

FORMER US president Bill Clinton today blasted US foreign policy adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, arguing the United States cannot kill, jail or occupy all of its adversaries.

"Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us," said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organized by Conference Board.

"And if they don't, they can go straight to hell."

The Democratic former president, who preceded George W Bush at the White House, said sooner or later the United States had to find a way to cooperate with the world at large.

"We can't run," Clinton pointed out. "If you got an interdependent world, and you cannot kill, jail or occupy all your adversaries, sooner or later you have to make a deal."

He said he believed Washington overreacted to German and French opposition to US plans for military action against Iraq and suggested that the current administration had trouble juggling foreign and domestic issues.

"Since September 11, it looks like we can't hold two guns at the same time," Clinton said. "If you fight terrorism, you can't make America a better place to be."

Clinton said if he were at the White House right now he would scrap a $US726 billion ($1.2 trillion) tax cut proposal made by the president in January to stimulate

The "Peace" Activists Wanted This To Continue.

He describes how soldiers, wearing the khaki uniforms of the Baath party, climbed out of three Toyota pick-up trucks and walked behind the crowd sitting in the dirt. Some were crying, Mr al-Khalidy said, others trying to comfort the eight children he counted.
One child got up and tried to hide behind her mother. Another reached out and held his father's hand. "Then there was shooting," he says. "Lots of shooting, and an earth mover shovelled dirt and sand over the people in the pit without anyone looking to see if they were alive or not. "All the time Ali Hassan al-Majid was walking up and down, three bodyguards following him. I recognised him. I had seen him many times on television.
"Everyone knew al-Majid," he says, his body tensing at the mention of the name. "The whole thing, from the time the buses arrived to filling in the grave took no more than 20 minutes. I was scared they would see me. Soldiers saw my sheep, and some began to search the area, but I shrank down into the ground and hid."

French Tell U.S. Public Not To Retaliate For Opposition.

An American backlash against French products and businesses has started to bite, dashing hopes here that appeals in the United States to punish France economically for opposing the war in Iraq would go unheeded.
"Certain French enterprises are suffering today from the differences that have arisen among states over the Iraqi question," the Movement of French Enterprises (Medef) said. "It is necessary to say to those who are unhappy with the positions of French diplomacy that they are free to criticize, but they must keep products and services of our enterprises outside their quarrel."

See, If Iraq Hadn't Signed That Treaty, There Wouldn't Have Been A Problem.

Mr Rumsfeld repeated accusations yesterday that Syria had tested chemical weapons in the last 12 to 15 months. However, Syria is not a signatory to the chemical weapons convention and would not be breaking international law if it did possess, nor is it suspected of selling chemical weapons to others.

UCLA Faculty Shows Support For Torture Chambers and Childrens Prison.

A groundbreaking but controversial resolution condemning the war in Iraq was passed 180 to 7 by UCLA faculty Monday,

Moose Determined To Cash In On Snipers.

Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose, who has agreed to write a book about October's sniper manhunt, asked yesterday for a judicial review of the county Ethics Commission's decision to bar him from taking part in the project.

Another Sensless Smoking Ban Related Fatality.

NEW YORK - A bouncer at a Manhattan nightclub died Sunday after he was stabbed in a brawl that police said began when he tried to enforce the city's new ban on smoking in bars and restaurants.

Michele Reveals The Truth!

The truth according the far left:
All celebrations in Iraq are staged.
All weapons, suicide vests, etc. found in Iraq were planted by the CIA
The Bush administration planned and carried out 9/11.
No plane ever crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.
Republicans killed Paul Wellstone.
The POWs were all faked/staged to get public sympathy.
Bush is responsible for the anthrax attacks.
Everything is a Zionist conspiracy
Everything is a Right Wing conspiracy
Bush is responsible for the demise of the unicorn, the burning of Rome, the popularity of boy bands, the poor defense of the Mets, the death of everyone on this planet in the past four years, freak snowstorms in April and your failed relationships. Everything else is the fault of the Jews.
Now you know.

Mark Steyn Gives A Size Up Of The Henny-Penny Complaints.

10) America is already losing the peace. MBITRW: In a year's time, Iraq will be, at a bare minimum, the least badly governed state in the Arab world and, at best, pleasant, civilised and thriving. In short: not a bad three weeks' work.

Please Explain To Me Why I Should Believe Anything CNN Reports?

Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.
I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

A Pentagon review has found no evidence to support allegations by CNN and Time magazine that a 1970 military operation in Laos was designed to hunt down American defectors and kill them using sarin nerve gas, Defense Secretary William Cohen said Tuesday.
Cohen presented the findings of the Pentagon report at a news conference that came in response to a now-retracted CNN broadcast, which claimed that U.S. troops used sarin during 1970's Operation Tailwind in Laos.

It's All About OOOIIILLL!!!!

With U.S.-led forces consolidating their hold in Iraq, the leaders of Russia, France and Germany were opening talks Friday and expected to push for the United Nations to lead Iraq's reconstruction.

Damn Fools, These Weren't Started By Looters.

Fires are raging across the Iraqi capital tonight after looters set light to government ministries and banks in full view of US forces.

Insufficient Reason For The Democrats, The UN and The Axis of Weasels

Saddam’s disappearance and the collapse of his regime this week ended 40 years of depraved brutality and crushing oppression which has seen hundreds of thousands of Iraqis murdered – a fair number by his own hand – and a proud and cultured nation of 26 million people cowed into silence.
He started two wars which caused the deaths of more than a million people, slaughtered Iranians and Kurds with chemical weapons, tortured or killed all opponents, sanctioned mass rape as a weapon of oppression, orchestrated a grotesque and all-pervasive personality cult and drove four million Iraqis into exile.
No one since Josef Stalin, whom he much admired, has caused such suffering. And, like Stalin, Saddam Hussein was an example of brutal, peasant power run riot with no restraint. He came from a desperately unhappy, impoverished and abusive background, similar to Stalin’s.

Australia; Home Of The Uber-Lawyer.

A LAWYER who chased and abused two paramedics has been found guilty of offensive behaviour.
But Rosemary Brondolino had charges of reckless conduct endangering life, reckless conduct endangering serious injury and unlawful assault dismissed in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court yesterday. The court heard Ms Brondolino, 54, of Ivanhoe, followed an ambulance to the scene of a drug overdose in Peel St, Collingwood, angry that it had nearly caused her to have an accident.
She then yelled at the paramedics as they tried to treat a patient, demanding their names so she could make a complaint, the court heard.
Paramedic Joanne Selby told the court Ms Brondolino also tried to force open the back door of the ambulance to speak to her.

What Happens Next.

UN Bureaucrats Try To Justify Their Existance.

VIENNA -- United Nations weapons inspectors must be asked to verify any test results indicating the existence of weapons of mass destruction n Iraq, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Tuesday.
Among a number of finds of suspect chemicals by U.S. forces in Iraq were 14 barrels discovered at an Iraqi military training camp on Sunday.
"Any test results would have to be verified by the United Nations weapons inspectors to generate the required credibility," Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Reuters through a spokesman.

Will Allowing The UN To Administer Iraq Win Us Friends?

Documents show Canadian officers on the United Nation's mission to Cambodia physically and verbally abused Cambodians and were accused of running a prostitution and gun-smuggling ring

UNTAC proved incapable of supervising or controlling the "existing administrative structures" of the SOC administration. The SOC retained control of the government at all levels, including the national security apparatus. A campaign to harass and contain opposition political parties resulted in the deaths of more than 100 opposition political activists across the country in 1992-93.

UNITED NATIONS: Rebels clashed with United Nations peacekeepers on Saturday night on the outskirts of the capital of Sierra Leone, as the rebels advanced toward Freetown in an apparent attempt to attack it, UN officials said.
The crisis is becoming the most humiliating episode for the UN, whose troops have surrendered with little resistance, since Bosnian Serbs chained UN peacekeepers to bridges and military posts to deter NATO air strikes.

A report released this week by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees revealed that sexual exploitation of children by aid workers had become rampant in many West African refugee camps. Relief workers routinely demanded sex in return for items such as plastic sheeting, bars of soap or a few biscuits.

The United Nations mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina may face an investigation following charges that it sought to cover up media reports implicating its officials in selling women into prostitution. UN headquarters in Sarajevo has denied the claims but acknowledged that several members of its staff have been sacked for misconduct. Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has demanded an investigation and diplomatic sources have told IWPR that she may get one.

The ousted head of Kosovo's telecom firm has accused the UN administration here of corruption following the signing of a deal to provide the Yugoslav province with a new mobile phone network.
Dida had staunchly opposed the signing of a mobile phone contract with the French firm Alcatel, arguing that a rival offer from German telecoms giant Siemens provided a better financial package.

No Iraqi Links To Terrorists.

US Marines in Iraq have discovered bomb-making facilities at a facility described as a training camp operated by the a faction of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), a military spokesman said Monday.
Bomb-making facilities, chemicals, mortars, gas masks and AK-47s were found inside the 20-building complex to the east of Baghdad, said Public Affairs Officer Corporal John Hoellwarth.
The complex, which was the size of a battalion headquarters, featured pictures of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, PLF faction leader Abu Abbas and the PLF's flag, Hoellwarth added.
Other photos included pictures of Abu Abbas posing with a brigadier general from Saddam's Republican Guard inside the camp.

Truth In Spending.

ArabNews: Truth as Casualty

We should know in the next 24 to 48 hours whether this war is going to last a long time or be over soon, whether US troops are going to be bogged down in an urban guerilla war, fighting for Baghdad street by street or quickly take the city. But if Basra is anything to go by, it will not be a drawn-out affair; the British now appear able to move in and out of the city, albeit with great risk. Iraqi resistance is collapsing in slow motion, more with a whimper than with a bang — and the information minister’s bravura propaganda performances cannot disguise that stark fact.

Puzzling Advice.

Once the regime in Baghdad is destroyed, the central question facing the allies, apart from locating and eliminating weapons of mass destruction, will be whether the welcoming and cooperative spirit seen in some places, or the tenacious and even suicidal resistance encountered elsewhere, will prevail in postwar Iraq. That will depend in part on whether U.S. and British forces on the ground continue acting to minimize harm to innocent civilians, despite such challenges as suicide bombers who, in the most horrific incidents of last week, attacked checkpoints in vehicles loaded with pregnant women or small children.

It will also depend on political decisions now being debated in the administration and among the allies -- particularly the question of whether Iraq's postwar administration will be imposed unilaterally by the U.S. military, or forged through a more open and inclusive process with the participation of the United Nations. President Bush would be wise to embrace the latter course. If the United States comes to be perceived as isolated in its occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, sustaining the incipient goodwill for its mission will be far harder, as will neutralizing those who would destroy that mission with suicide bombs.

"Arab Street" MIA Again.

For Muslims throughout the world, the war in Iraq has set off a wave of anger, sadness, frustration and despair. What it hasn't done, so far at least, is produce a flood of jihadist recruits willing to die for President Saddam Hussein's cause, or a backlash strong enough to topple Arab governments with close ties to the West,

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister Of The Twilight Zone.

The minister also said that coalition forces were throwing booby traps in the form of pens and pencils into Iraqi villages and townships.
"The authority of the civil defense ... issued a warning to the civilian population not to pick up any of those pencils because they are booby traps," he said, adding that the British and American forces were "immoral mercenaries" and "war criminals" for such behavior.
"I am not talking about the American people and the British people," he said. "I am talking about those mercenaries. ... They have started throwing those pencils, but they are not pencils, they are booby traps to kill the children."

Human Shield Fulfills His Purpose.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli troops killed a Palestinian gunman who fired on a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Saturday, the army said, and U.S. peace activist Brian Avery was severely wounded in the face in another incident.
Tobia Karlsson, a colleague from the International Solidarity Movement to Protect the Palestinian People whose supporters act as "human shields" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said he was standing next to Avery at the time.

Bangladeshi Grandpas Coming To Teach Us A Lesson

The Chairman of Bangladesh Muktijoddha Sangsad (BMS) yesterday at an anti-war rally declared that some 10,000 freedom fighters, who participated in the War of Independence of Bangladesh in 1971, have decided go to Iraq to fight guerilla warfare alongside the Iraqis against the US-British forces.

Can Anyone Name A Successful UN Operation?

Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) told Washington's European allies and friends Thursday the United States — not the United Nations (news - web sites) — must have the lead role in Iraq (news - web sites)'s postwar reconstruction.
Powell's comments clashed with the view in European capitals that the reconstruction of Iraq should be guided by the United Nations, not the United States or Britain, which went to war against Iraq on March 20.
We must stabilize Iraq and the region," said French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. "The United Nations is the only international organization that can give legitimacy to this."

Good Info For Active Duty Military.

That's Gotta Be A Big Blow To Saddam.

AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar (Reuters) - U.S. Marines captured a huge ammunition depot in south-central Iraq (news - web sites) that included 40 warehouses, U.S. Central Command said on Tuesday.
The facility compared in size to the ammunition dump at Camp Pendleton in southern California, which is home to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said a Central Command statement from its war headquarters in Qatar.

Isn't That What The "Shields" Are There For?

1100: Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf says several people were wounded when a US jet bombed two Iraqi buses carrying international volunteers, some of them American, who were operating as "human shields". There is no confirmation of this.

We Armed Iraq? What "Everybody" Knows Isn't True.

Sir, I have often heard the claim that “we armed Saddam”. Thankfully A. H. Cordesman, in his 1998 report on the Iraqi military for the Center for Strategic & International Studies, has enlightened me.
In the key period between 1973-91 the US exported a mere $5 million of weapons to Iraq; more reprehensibly the UK sold $330 million-worth of arms. Of much greater interest are the arms export totals to Iraq of the four countries most against military action: Germany with $995 million, China $5,500 million, France $9,240 million, and the Russians a massive $31,800 million. So the claim that we armed Saddam has to be treated with a degree of care, particularly by those who would award the moral high ground in this debate to the leaders of nations such as Germany, France and Russia

Richard Cohen Is Right And He's Wrong.

In about a week, the Bush administration has done in Iraq what the Johnson administration took more than a year to do in Vietnam: opened a credibility gap.

A Brilliant Propaganda Piece In The Washington Post.

Whoever caused the explosion, the residents assigned blame to the United States, insisting that without a war, they would be safe. "Who else could be responsible except the Americans?" asked Mohsin Hattab, a 32-year-old uncle of Daif.
"This war is evil. It's an unjust war," said Imad Hussein, a driver and uncle of Hassan. "They have no right to make war against us. Until now, we were sitting in our homes, comfortable and safe

A Little PC Censorship?

I Guess Moore Can Dish It Out, But He Can't Take It.

Alan Edelstein, a producer of Moore's television show The Awful Truth, was suddenly downsized out of a job, just like those General Motors workers in Flint. So, just like Moore, he decided to stalk the boss for a turning-the-tables documentary on why the television star had put him out on the street.
Moore was not amused. He complained to the NYPD, got Edelstein thrown in jail for a day, and had a restraining order slapped on him. Here's how it read: "The defendant knowingly entered and remained unlawfully in a building with intent to harass, annoy and harm … a course of conduct which alarmed and seriously annoyed another person."

Saddam's War Crimes

A tour of the dictator's latest war crimes might well start in Nasiriyah, where U.S. Marines this week found Iraqi paramilitary fighters headquartered in a hospital. There they had stationed a tank, stored weapons and laid in a supply of 3,000 protective suits for use against chemical or biological weapons. From their hospital base -- war crime No. 1 -- Iraqis disguised in civilian clothes or carrying white flags -- war crime No. 2 -- attacked U.S. positions. They forced Iraqi civilians to act as scouts and human shields -- war crime No. 3 -- before inviting Arab television crews to film the resulting dead and wounded. Their greatest success was the ambush of a wayward U.S. supply convoy, during which they appear to have executed several American prisoners -- war crime No. 4 -- before broadcasting an interrogation of others on state television -- war crime No. 5.

This Is A Setback?

ALLIED commanders believe 1,500 Iraqis who went into battle against US troops in Najaf on Thursday night ALL perished.
And they reckon several thousand have been killed in five days and nights of carnage around the town and Nasiriyah 100 miles to the south.
So far just three Americans have died while four were still missing last night.

From The Guardian! Of All Places.

I've just heard a snippet of the most disgustingly me-me-me anti-war advert by Susan Sarandon, in which she intones, "Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags, and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know - what did Iraq do to us?" Well, if you mean what did Saddam do to America The Beautiful, not an awful lot - but to millions of his own people, torture and murder for a start. Don't they count?
Surely this is the most self-obsessed anti-war protest ever. NOT IN MY NAME! That's the giveaway. Who gives a stuff about their wet, white, western names? See how they write them so solemnly in a list on the bottom of the letters they send to the papers. And the ones that add their brats' names are the worst - a grotesque spin on Baby On Board, except they think that this gives them extra humanity points not just on the motorway, but in the whole wide weeping, striving, yearning world. We don't know the precious names of the countless numbers Saddam has killed. We're talking about a people - lots of them parents - subjected to an endless vista of death and torture, a country in which freedom can never be won without help from outside.

What If We Just Went Without The Oil?

Bill Whittle answers those who say "War Never Settled Anything."

In 1865 the issue of American Slavery, an issue dodged in 1783, an issue compromised in 1850, and an issue that tore us apart as a people was settled once and for all, by force of arms. By War. Secession was settled, too – settled most emphatically.
War settled whether the Mediterranean Sea would be a Carthaginian Lake or a Roman one. War settled whether Jerusalem would be Christian or Muslim. War determined whether a surrender document would be signed aboard the Missouri in Tokyo Bay or on the Yamato just off Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. War determined whether France would be living through four years, or a millennia of darkness under Nazi supermen, and a weird, ghostly war determined whether or not there would be Englishmen and Scots and Americans living and dying in gulags in Siberia.
And four years of unimaginably brutal war determined whether or not the United States of America would in fact be a land where all men are created equal. War determined whether the fatal, poisonous stain of slavery would split the nation into two irreconcilable camps, or whether the blood and sacrifice of men at Little Round Top and The Angle and Cold Harbor would, in part, wash away that stain and put right that which was unable to be put right at the birth of this awesome experiment in self-rule.

Another "War Protester" Tastes Reality.

It was clear now what I should do. I began to talk to the so called `human shields`. Have you asked the people here what they want? Have you talked to regular people, away from your `minder` and asked them what they want?
I was shocked at the response. `We don't need to do that. We know what they want.` was the usual reply before a minder stepped up to check who I was.
With tears streaming down my face in my bed in a tiny house in Baghdad crowded in with 10 other of my own flesh and blood, all exhausted after another day of not living but existing without hope, exhausted in daily struggle simply to not die I had to say to myself `I was wrong`.
How dare I claim to speak for those for whom I had never asked what they wanted!

North Korea Is Not Being Ignored.

The pipeline shutdown, officially ascribed to a technical problem, followed an unusually blunt message delivered by China to its longtime ally in a high-level meeting in Beijing last month, the sources said. Stop your provocations about the possible development of nuclear weapons, China warned its neighbor, or face Chinese support for economic sanctions against the regime.

Looks Like Human Rights Violations; Where's Amnesty International?

Iraq still has not let the International Committee of the Red Cross visit U.S. prisoners of war, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday.
"We would hope that the Iraqi regime would do the honorable and the right thing and allow the International Committee of the Red Cross in to visit these prisoners of war," Myers said on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer."
"That's their obligation. They said they were going to do it, and we just hope they follow through."
The United States has agreed to let the Red Cross visit more than 4,000 Iraqi POWs, Myers said. He said the Red Cross wanted to wait until conditions are more secure. He said he did not know whether the visits had taken place yet.
"I think they have probably been inside," he said.
Before the war started, Iraq said the Red Cross would be allowed to visit any POWs, he said. He said the Red Cross has a long history of visiting POWs in Iraq.

How Many Civilians Are Injured A Day In Peace Time?

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad... Roland Huguenin-Benjamin told CNN: In what is believed to be the first independent, on-the-scene report of Iraqi civilian casualties, ...[that] an average of about 100 civilians are injured daily in Baghdad.

Another "Baby Milk Factory"?

The American peace activists' account was the first confirmation of a report last week that a hospital in Rutbah was bombed Wednesday, with dead and injured. The travelers said they saw no significant Iraqi military presence near the hospital or elsewhere in Rutbah. The doctor did not discuss casualties, the Americans said.

I Suppose The Antiwar Protesters Will Believe This.

Iraq said yesterday that its military had killed hundreds of enemy soldiers in the 10-day-old war and shot down five fighter planes and four helicopter gunships, one of which was captured almost intact.
A military spokesman speaking on television also said six unmanned drones and 143 cruise missiles had been shot down.
Iraqi forces had also destroyed 74 tanks, five tank transporters and 35 armoured personnel carriers, he said, adding that thousands of enemy soldiers had been wounded.

Jim Treacher Exposes The Left's Plan For Dealing With Saddam Nonviolently.

Good idea! First we'll coax Saddam out of his bunker with a trail of delicious candy. Then, once his belly is full and he's all sleepy and happy, we'll calmly explain that we don't approve of what he's been doing and it's not very nice and we wish he'd stop. And he'll be like, "Whoa, I never thought of it that way. You guys are my friends! I like you!" And then everybody will hug and cry, and then get a little embarrassed about crying, and then make some jokes to cover up being embarrassed. And then a beautiful rainbow will appear, and a shy unicorn will walk down it, and Saddam will ride it to the North Pole, and he'll spend the rest of his life helping Santa make wonderful toys for all the good little girls and boys, and there'll be hot chocolate, and, and, and nobody will ever ever die again for any reason ever. THE END

Mark Morford Is Self-Fisking.

They are a reminder. No matter how much we think we know, no matter how many die as a result of Shrub's vicious war, no matter what sort of self-righteous good we think we're ramming down everyone's throat, we are, quite simply, raging deeper into ignorance. We know nothing. And the worst part is, we seem to be learning less with every warhead, every Rummy press conference, every dust-choked reporter and dead soldier. The whales know this. Maybe they're just waving goodbye.

Diplomatic Failure Or French Sabotage?

Under the original Pentagon war plan, a powerful force of Army tanks and tens of thousands of troops now would be bearing down on Baghdad from northern Iraq as other heavily armored troops converged on the capital from the south.
Neither is happening.The reason is that Turkey, a close NATO ally that shares a 218-mile border with Iraq, earlier this month refused a Bush administration request to permit the armored troop deployment from its soil.
One week into the war, the administration's inability to win Turkey's approval has emerged as an important turning point in the U.S. confrontation with Iraq that senior U.S. officials now acknowledge may ultimately prolong the length of the conflict. It is a story of clumsy diplomacy and mutual misunderstanding, U.S. and Turkish officials said. It also illustrates how the administration undercut its own efforts to broaden international support for war by allowing its war plan to dictate the pace of its diplomacy, diplomats and other experts in U.S.-Turkish relations said.

Everybody knows that Turkey did not permit America to stage operations from Turkish bases, but hardly anybody realizes that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the vote was not an Islamic protest against the American-led coalition,but an act of anti-American intimidation by France and Germany.
The leaders insisted on a disciplined "no" vote because of pressure — some would call it blackmail — from France and Germany.
The French and German governments informed the Turkish opposition parties that if they voted to help the Coalition war effort, Turkey would be locked out of Europe for a generation. As one Turkish leader put it, "there were no promises, only threats."

Reader Comment on Instapundit.

On the one hand, the Anti-American Class has been saying all along that Iraq is no threat to anyone; on the other, they are now crowing with trembling, barely-suppressed glee, that Iraq is far more formidable than anyone had supposed.

Oooooh Kay, Whatever You Say

The ambassador, Muhammad Bin Ahmad Rasheed, was found dead on Friday morning in the stairwell of his apartment building in Ivory Coast's commercial capital, Abidjan. The diplomat was found naked, with a head wound, lying in a pool of blood, two floors below his 17th floor flat.
"According to initial information by authorities in Abidjan ... no sign of violence could be found on the victim's body, which makes one think Mohammed bin Ahmed al-Rasheed died of natural causes," said a foreign ministry spokesman, quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency.

Brain Dead Yuppie Scum

SOME things, I guess, are not worth dying for.
As dozens of protesters plopped themselves down in the middle of Fifth Avenue, pretending to be dead, I noticed a small claque of pretty yuppies - each as angular and edgy as a Benetton ad - lying, safely, over on the sidewalk.
The purpose of this exercise in civil obnoxiousness, I thought, was to paint oneself with artificial blood, block traffic, and get arrested in the name of peace. So why aren't you in the street with your comrades? I asked one woman.
"Because I don't have time to get arrested today," the woman, 45, said without embarrassment.
"I have a job."
Oh, brother.

"Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics."

Stop The War! One Of The Grunts Wants To Go Home.

"I feel like the longer I'm out here, the less are my chances of staying alive," said U.S. Marine Lance-Corporal Michael Sanchez, staring with sullen eyes at a vista of withered roadside shrubs. "Right here the odds are against us, we don't know the terrain, we don't know the people, we don't know what they got coming for us," he said, his 21-year-old face a picture of resentment.

Sounds Like They're Ready To Work At The New York Times.

I gave a pop quiz this week in the college journalism class I teach. As a bonus question, I asked: Who is Tommy Franks? Not one student out of 30 could identify the U.S. Army general in command of the war in Iraq. These are average Americans from differing backgrounds, mostly between the ages of 19 and 25.

Nope, No Politics Here.

The borough mayor supports the council’s unanimous vote to outlaw any ribbons or other memorials for the American troops fightingin Iraq, if those ribbons are placed on public property because the government doesn’t want them there.
...
Tyler, a Democrat, has been a colorful, controversial mayor for four non-consecutive terms.
Partisan politics, though, had nothing to do with the governing body’s decision to get rid of the ribbons, Tyler insisted, although he noted that the Johnsons "are Republicans."
All six members of the borough council are solidly Democrat.

Jesse Finds Way To Exploit War.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson called Thursday for a truce to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered to Iraq and asked for permission from both U.S. and Iraq officials to allow religious leaders to visit with prisoners of war.

If It's A "Hate Crime" Let's See Some Arrests.

A group of Vermont teen-agers threw rocks at a uniformed female Vermont National Guard sergeant last week, in the latest example of a service member facing hostility in the United States.
The teens blocked the sergeant as she went into a store and again on the way out, yelling obscenities at her along the way.... The group also threw small stones at her car as she drove away
"There were various profanities directed in her direction, along the line of '[expletive] murderer, [expletive] baby killer,'" [Lt. Col. Scott] Stirewalt said. "It culminated with some of the individuals throwing rocks at her, and as testament to her disciplined professionalism, she got in her car and left the area."
Under Vermont law, assaulting or abusing a soldier because of membership in the military is a hate crime. Conviction could bring up to five years in prison.

The Munchkins Ain't Coming Out Until The Witch Is Dead.

Arab News asked several of the refugees waiting to enter Basra what they thought of regime change. Accompanying Arab News were several international TV crews. What the refugees said on and off camera were very different things.
On camera, the general feeling among the crowd was sorrow at losing Saddam. Off camera, the citizens of Umm Qasr and Basra appeared genuinely exhilarated at the prospect of a brighter future, after Saddam had been removed.

Bring 'em On.

Syria is granting free passage across its border with Iraq to volunteers who wish to join the fight against the U.S. and British forces. Thus far, dozens of volunteers, primarily Palestinians from the refugee camps in Lebanon, have crossed over into Iraq through Syrian-controlled border posts

War Protester's Journalist Son Prevented From Giving Out Sensitive Information.

While Smucker has been writing about the warfare in Iraq, his 75-year-old father has been trying to stop it. John Smucker said he has been arrested twice in recent weeks, once for kneeling on the steps of the Pentagon and again for blocking traffic on King Street in Alexandria.
As for his son, Smucker said: "I'm torn. Someone's decided to take his income possibilities away. But we want him back in the country anyway."

BBC Present Both Sides; Saddam's and Arafat's

No Shit! Anyone Who Ever Thought It Would Be Over In A Week, Is A Fool.

Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months

Thanks For The Tips.

Relying on harassing tactics never exhibited during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi military has inflicted heavy damage this week on two of the U.S. Army's most fearsome weapons, the Abrams tank and the Apache Longbow helicopter gunship.
[T]wo Abrams tanks ...had been shot in their soft spot, a rear grille covering the engine.
On the battlefield, it was not immediately clear what weapon the Iraqis used to knock out the tanks. A senior defense official said yesterday that it was a French-made Coronet antitank missile.
While the Longbow is equipped with a $3 million millimeter-wave radar that can target tanks and air defenses on the battlefield from five miles away, the $25 million aircraft is most vulnerable to troops who pop out from behind an obstruction as the helicopter is flying low overhead and open fire.

Farting In A Whirlwind.

To Mohammed, the relentless sandstorm was foreboding, a portent of divine will.
"The storm is from God," he said, looking out his trembling window. "Until the aggression started, never in my life did I see a storm like this. We all believe in God, we all have faith in God. And God is setting obstacles against the Americans."

Where Are The Protester?

Iraqi troops fired artillery pieces horizontally into crowds of their own people last night after a civilian uprising in Basra, the second city.

Peaceful Protesters?

Rattling tambourines and beating drums, the children, many in school uniform, then ran screaming through the city center chanting "No War -- No War" and carrying banners like: "We are ready to fight, world peace is our right."

Those Racist Protesters

Remember; The French Are Much More Worldly And Sophisticated Than We Are.

Vandals in southwest Bordeaux torched a replica of the Statue of Liberty and cracked the pedestal of a plaque honoring victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Iraqi Diplomat Reveals No Humanitartian Crisis In Iraq.

Iraq (news - web sites)'s ambassador to Russia rejected donations of humanitarian aid Wednesday, saying it's simply not needed.
"There is no emergency situation in Iraq. We are waging a holy war," the Interfax news agency quoted mbassador Abbas Khalaf as saying. "I am authorized to state that we will not receive any humanitarian aid. We have money and all the necessary reserves at our disposal."

Iraq Has No Ties With Terrorists You Know.

U.S. Marines searching Iraqi military headquarters in this southern city that was the site of intensive fighting came across a mural depicting a plane crashing into a building complex resembling New York's twin towers, a news agency photograph showed Wednesday.

Who Are Those "Antiwar" Protesters?

Liberal Democrats are the only ideological or demographic group in which a majority believes the United States made the wrong decision to use military force in Iraq. Most liberal Democrats (54%) think the United States made the wrong decision to attack Iraq, while 42% believe it was the right decision.
...

When you include those who responded fairly well, favorable public opinion on the war's progress increased --from 80.1% Thursday to 85.3% Monday.
Raw Percents for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday:
Very well - 49.9, 70.9, 70.7, 51.6, 38.1
Fairly well - 30.2, 22.8, 22.2, 34.3, 47.2
subtotals - 80.1, 93.7, 92.9, 85.9, 85.3

War Reporting.

Oh, I Guess We Better Go Home Then.

The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.
"The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here on Tuesday evening.

The Emperor Takes No Prisoners.

An Iraqi Speaks About The War.

The bombs have begun to fall on Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers have shot their officers and are giving themselves up to the Americans and the British in droves. Others, as in Nasiriyah and Umm Qasr, are fighting back, and civilians have already come under fire. Yet I find myself dismissing contemptuously all the e-mails and phone calls I get from antiwar friends who think they are commiserating with me because "their" country is bombing "mine." To be sure, I am worried. Like every other Iraqi I know, I have friends and relatives in Baghdad. I am nauseous with anxiety for their safety. But still those bombs are music to my ears. They are like bells tolling for liberation in a country that has been turned into a gigantic concentration camp. One is not supposed to say such things in the kind of liberal, pacifist, and deeply anti-American circles of academia, in which I normally live and work. The truth is jarring even to my own ears.

Enough Of The New York Times.

Has Anyone Told Hans?

EXPERTS are examining suspected Scud missiles discovered by British soldiers searching a chemical plant outside Basra.

More Human Shields Bite The Dust.

Three South African "human shields" will return home from Iraq by tomorrow, while four others have moved to a refugee camp on the Jordan-Iraq border to assist people there, the Iraq Action Committee (IAC) said on Monday.
Speaking from Baghdad, a human shield from the IAC and Durban businessman Mohammed Variawa said: "The seven left with our blessings. We respect that they wanted to leave Baghdad due to family pressures and for personal reasons."

Reporters Not Protected By Geneva Convention.

Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance federal secretary Christopher Warren says media organisations are not respondents to the Geneva Convention and requests to censor material is a denial of press freedom.

I Know These Guys. They're Killers.

their goal is "to build a powerful American Servicemen's Union that will turn the guns against their fascist officers.... If the American Servicemen's Union cuts the windpipe of U.S. imperialism inside the army while at the same time it is mutilated in all parts of the world, U.S. imperialism will surely perish forever.''

Remember, It's Bush's Fault For Ignoring The UN.

The Washington Post first reported Sunday that Bush administration sources reported that a Russian company is helping the Iraqi military deploy global-positioning system jammers to Baghdad. Two other companies have sold anti-tank missiles and thousands of night-vision goggles in violation of U.N. sanctions.

Protester Tantrums Mostly Affect The Poor.

The war protests in San Francisco that have hobbled traffic, kept police on the move, packed jails and left a wake of graffiti and trash have cost city taxpayers about $900,000 a day, according to official estimates.
The mounting costs come as San Francisco struggles with a $350 million budget deficit -- the worst in city history.
The price tag of the unruly protests, Mayor Willie Brown said, probably will force even more layoffs and service cuts than predicted.

One of the organizers of the demonstrations, Patrick Reinsborough of Direct Action to Stop the War, said the group had no qualms about the costs incurred or lost productivity.

The Command Post Has Moved.

He Is Probably Going To Be The New Mumia

The U.S. soldier suspected of the grenade attack on fellow soldiers in Kuwait this weekend has been identified as Army Sgt. Asan Akbar, a military spokesman said on Sunday.

Akbar’s mother, Quran Bilal, reached by phone in Baton Rouge, La., said that she has not been informed by anybody with the military of the accusations against her son. Upon hearing that her son might have been responsible for the attack, she expressed complete disbelief. She said she was concerned her son might have been accused simply because he is a Muslim.

Democrats Change Tune Quickly..

Iraqi Farmers Mistreated By American Troops.

Under an afternoon sky, the 11 farmers sat on the blacktop of the Baghdad Highway. The marines had rounded them up with others taken in the area, and without an Arabic interpreter present, they were not able to ask them any questions.
Instead, they handed them packs of American rations to snack on while they sorted out their fate.
When an Arabic speaker did arrive, it became clear that the 11 were not soldiers at all, but tomato farmers who lived in a nearby village. The young marines in charge tried to assure the Iraqis that they had no desire to hold them.
"We'll sort everything out," First Sgt. Lew Ducett told the men. "Just have some lunch first."
Ali Kathem, one of the farmers, threw down his ration packet in frustration. "I don't want to eat lunch," Mr. Kathem said. "I want to go to my farm."

The Truth Dawns.

I was shocked when I first met a pro-war Iraqi in Baghdad - a taxi driver taking me back to my hotel late at night. I explained that I was American and said, as we shields always did, "Bush bad, war bad, Iraq good". He looked at me with an expression of incredulity.
As he realised I was serious, he slowed down and started to speak in broken English about the evils of Saddam's regime. Until then I had only heard the President spoken of with respect, but now this guy was telling me how all of Iraq's oil money went into Saddam's pocket and that if you opposed him politically he would kill your whole family.

Oops.

Sen. Tom Daschle's criticism of President Bush and his administration dusted up more controversy than the Democratic leader expected, in part because the polling the Democrats had done leading up to Daschle's comments indicated that his language would fly.
"We focus-grouped and tested the idea that Bush had failed miserably as a diplomat and most of our respondents agreed," says a Democratic leadership aide. "It seemed like the perfect approach for us." Apparently it wasn't.
[T]he Bush administration hasn't been polling or focus grouping its Iraqi policy.

Reaction From The San Francisco Protests

Do they actually think that this will suddenly make any of us poor fools who are, through our tax dollars, making their education possible, suddenly hit our foreheads like in one of those old V-8 Juice commercials, realize that we are just slaves of the Capitalist War Machine (and not working to pay our mortgages, feed our children, save for retirement, and, oh, EDUCATE THEM), then suddenly tear our ties off before hopping into the drum circle for a round of head-lice-infected-dreadlock socialist love?

The Futility Of Trying To Discuss War With Peaceniks.

I get to school today, and my friends are all huddled around a book. I hear squealing, comments of "ooh, look at what he says here!" and "Isn't he the greatest!", and assume that Orlando Bloom has published a book. I'm mistaken. It's Stupid White Men.
Then at break, I'm standing around the lockers, and we're discussing the war. My friend Alex was complaining about the necessity of war.
Alex: I mean, I just don't want anyone to die, you know?
Me: People are dying. Saddam is feeding them into plastic shredders and laughing.
Alex: That's not true. You're making that up.
(I pull the Ann Clwyd article out of my pocket)
Me: Am not. Look.
Alex: Whatever. It's just one of your stupid conservative writers, I don't trust them either.
Me: Clwyd is a Labour MP from Wales. It's in the London Times.
Alex: Well then, she had bad sources.
Me: She went there and got the testimony directly from people who'd seen it.
Alex: Well, she misunderstood them, then!
I don't know if it's just easier, but people are willing to believe anything but the truth if it makes them happier.

I'm Not Sure What This Is.

Iraqi ministers said three people had been killed and 207 wounded in Baghdad on Friday night, the fiercest attack so far in the U.S.-led war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein

Chanting anti-American slogans, tens of thousands of Muslims took to the streets of Middle Eastern cities after Friday prayers for a second consecutive day of demonstrations against US military action in Iraq. The biggest protests were in the Yemeni capital, where three demonstrators and a policeman were killed in clashes.

Stupidity Is Its Own Reward.

Missing British TV reporter Terry Lloyd and two of his news crew may have been hit in crossfire from coalition forces in Iraq, it has been reported.

Worldwide Zionist Conspiracy Alert!

After decades of U.S. military aid and defense cooperation, the U.S. military is permeated by technology developed in Israel -- from the Army's Hunter drones to the targeting systems on the U.S. Marines' Harrier jets to the fuel tanks on its F-15 fighters.

A Little Dose Of Reality?

A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."

Portland Protesters Show Faint Grasp Of Reality.

During the blockage of 2nd and Burnside, protestors took the time to burn an American flag. "I don't think we have to gain the support of the President, I think we have to gain the support of the people," said one man, when asked if he thought the protest would get President Bush's attention.

Free Press Crushed By Government.

Police went from house to house on Tuesday, rounding up the reporters and 24 political activists, according to the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. Authorities confiscated the detainees' computer equipment, books and papers, the group said.

Some Americans Show Confusion, Ignorance.

"There are many good reasons to get rid of Saddam," Mr. Randall said. "But when did the events of Sept. 11 get transformed into going to war with Iraq? Why war with this one country, right now? I can't figure out how we got to this point."

They're Dropping Like Flies.

A man protesting the looming U.S. war on Iraq fell to his death from San Francisco's famed Golden Gate Bridge on Wednesday as he was hanging a banner, officials said.

Terrorism Is Serious Stuff.

Here We Go.

The only possibility of stopping this current military action is to engage in strategies and tactics which severely disrupt the war machine, the U.S. economy, and the overall functioning of U.S. society particularly how it relates to consumerism and the economy. Marches, picketing, rallies, parties, benefits, civil disobedience and even property destruction are pointless, and perhaps even counterproductive, unless they serve to severely disrupt the functioning of the political system and its economy. An atmosphere of severe unrest, if manufactured properly, will force the U.S. government to place military resources in the streets of the United States, will threaten the economy (the chief motive behind this military excursion) of the United States, and ultimately create a political atmosphere unfavorable for Bush to continue on with the war.
[...]
Here are some suggestions for the necessary creation of an atmosphere of unrest and disruption in the United States.
1) Attack the financial centers of the country. Using covert or black block techniques, depending on the situation, physically shut down financial centers which regulate and assist the functioning of U.S. economy. This can be done in a variety of ways from massive property destruction, to online sabotage, to physical occupation of buildings. However the latter I would shy away from, especially the open civil disobedience type of activities which purposely involve arrests. This movement needs all the assistance it can get and absolutely NO good will come from going to jail. Allowing yourself to be purposely arrested demonstrates that an individual has at least some faith in the U.S. legal system. This is completely foolish. One primary objective is to engage in serious unrest and disruption and NOT to get caught. Not getting caught means you are able to continue the struggle the next day.
2) Large scale urban rioting. With massive unrest and even state of emergencies declared in major cities across the country, the U.S. government will be forced to send U.S. troops into the domestic arena thereby taking resources and political focus away from the war. Unstable conditions in much of the country also serve as a political embarrassment for the Administration and could assist in forcing them to stop the war to deal with domestic concerns. Rioting should be focused on governmental agencies and corporations – especially those that are profiting from the war or destruction of life.
3) Attack the media centers of the country. It is the corporate media who has and continues to influence and control the minds of the mass body of people in the United States. These new media outlets cannot be utilized by the movement as they are owned by the very corporations one should be opposing. Using any means necessary, shut down the national networks of NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc. Not just occupations but actually engage in strategies and tactics which knock the networks off the air.
4) Spread the battle to the individuals responsible for the war and destruction of life – the very heads of government and U.S. corporations. No longer should these people be able to hide behind their occupations, living their lives in peace while they simultaneously slaughter countless people. Hit them in their personal lives, visit their homes, and make them feel personally responsible for committing massive atrocities.
5) Make it known publicly that this movement DOES NOT support U.S. troops as long as they are serving an unjust and horrifying political regime. Create an atmosphere lacking of support to assist U.S. troops at home and abroad in losing their morale and will to fight. If you are supporting the troops you are supporting this war and the very U.S. government that is the primary terrorist regime in the international arena
6) Actively target U.S. military establishments within the United States. Again, following the above stated goal of NOT getting caught, use any means necessary to slow down the functioning of the murdering body.
7) When engaging in the above six activities, strike hard and fast and retreat in anonymity. Select another location, strike again hard and fast and quickly retreat in anonymity. Engage only in actions where you will be victorious. Do not be concerned with alienating the mainstream sectors of the movement – that mainstream has NEVER stopped a U.S. military activity or war. Do not get caught. DO NOT GET CAUGHT. Do not get sent to jail. Stay alert, keep active, and keep fighting. Remember, an action is only good (especially at this juncture in U.S. society) if it will serve to severely disrupt the political system of the country, its economy, and the corporate interests that drive this society.

You Know The NYT Has To Get "The Children" In There Somehow,

Most Are Concerned About Troops and Iraqis. What Are The Democrats Concerned About?

Democrats and Dixie Chicks.

The Dixie Chicks have teamed with U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, D-SD, on the new single "Ashamed and Saddened." The song, to be released only in parts of Europe, Russia and China, is expected to chart at No. 1 in its first week.
The lyrics are based on a recent comment by the Dixie Chicks and yesterday's remarks by the Senate minority leader.
"I'm saddened," Daschle told a union convention, "Saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war. Saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country. But we will work, and we will do all we can to get through this crisis like we've gotten through so many."
A spokesman for Sen. Daschle said he was too saddened to talk about his part of the song.
"That's just the way the Senator is," said the spokesman. "He doesn't get mad. He doesn't get even. He gets saddened. There's no Senator more saddened than he is. And of course, along with the Dixie Chicks, he's also ashamed. That's what makes him a great American."
by Scott Ott

Everyone Is Against War With Iraq.

What Do Anarchists, White Supremists and PETA Have In Common?

They also began teaching us interrogation tactics (don't talk to the cops/FBI) through practice role cenarios.

Rule number one to remember when confronted by the authorities is that there is NO law requiring you to talk to the Police, the F.B.I., or a representative of any other investigative agency. Even the simplest questions may be loaded and the seemingly harmless bits of information which you volunteer may later become vital links in a chain of circumstantial evidence against you or a friend.

It is dangerous to engage in even the most innocuous-seeming discourse with the FBI/ Homeland Security/ a local detective for, rest assured, if you do, you will become a notation in a federal file!

There's Always Someone Who Doesn't Get The Word.

Congressional Republicans gave unconditional support tonight to President Bush's ultimatum to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Democratic leaders expressed dismay over the failure of diplomatic efforts, but many said that with war imminent, they would mute their criticism and stand behind American troops.

In a speech Monday, Daschle, of South Dakota, said he was "saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war." He spoke shortly after the Bush administration stopped pursuing a new U.N. resolution authorizing a war against Iraq and hours before Bush set a 48-hour deadline for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to leave the country.

No Word On Returning The Billions Collected In Cigarette Taxes.

The Justice Department is demanding that the nation's biggest cigarette makers be ordered to forfeit $289 billion in profits derived from a half-century of "fraudulent" and dangerous marketing practices.

Australia Has No Problems With Priorities.

Even Mexico Doesn't Understand America.

President Bush increased that intensity last week in statements that provoked alarm in Mexico, where they made front-page news. While Bush said he did not expect "significant retribution from the government" against Security Council member nations that didn't line up with the United States, he pointedly left open the possibility of a popular backlash.

Saddam Demonstrates Against The War.

To set an example, members of Saddam's security forces arrested a civil servant in the al-Hurriyya suburb of Baghdad on suspicion of preparing to leave the country. The unfortunate official was then tied to a pole in the street and passers-by were ordered to watch as his tongue was cut out and he was left to bleed to death.

Automotive Supply Chain Set To Lose Business Over Stupid Policy.

Automotive supply chain Pep Boys fired a Tucson store manager because his military Reserve duties took him away from work, according to a federal lawsuit filed here.
It may not be an isolated case. Several other reservists fired from Pep Boys in Tucson and Pennsylvania have contacted a military advocacy group with similar complaints.

The Straight Talker

Alas, last week Rummy's ruminations on rummy nations finally alighted, as they were bound to eventually, on the United Kingdom. The Defence Secretary made some mild remarks to the effect that, if Britain were not able to participate in the war on Iraq, it wouldn't make much difference. Even some of his cheerleaders on the right thought this was a tad inconsiderate to Tony Blair. And at the BBC they fell upon it deliriously as evidence that heartless old Rumsfeld would be happy to have Bush's poodle put down and served up at the South Korean farewell banquet with nary a thought: Secretary Rumsfeld, said the BBC's correspondent, Nick Assinder, had managed to "blow a series of holes in the Prime Minister's armour", he had "pulled the rug out" from beneath Blair's armoured feet, etc, etc.
But the thing is: he's not wrong, is he? Britain is helpful, but not necessary. And it would not be unreasonable if Rumsfeld, with a couple of hundred thousand guys kicking their heels in the sand for six months, felt that America was being perhaps too deferential to the Prime Minister's domestic difficulties. After all, at what point does Britain's helpfulness cease to be helpful? There are no hard and fast rules, but when Baroness Amos is chasing Dominique de Villepin around West Africa because Guinea's presidential witchdoctor is advising against war it is hard not to feel that, even by diplomatic standards, the whole thing has become unmoored from reality.

Another Pretentious Ass.

First question to Suzan-Lori Parks: Why give your new play a title that no mainstream newspaper is ever going to print?

Gulf War "Get Out Of Jail Free" Card. or at least off Death Row

Peace Activists Show Their Respect For The American People.

[J]ettison the heavy rhetoric and make your case in clear language.
"Speak American," she said. "Strip down to the simple, metaphoric Anglo Saxon. Leave out long words, complex explanations, historical analysis or arguments supported by lots of reasons, facts,

A Look At The "Brave" Anti-War Protesters.

Peace movement events can confer righteousness and seriousness on people who are not very righteous or serious. The idea that anyone's career suffers by being seen as unpatriotic is absurd. Anti-war credentials are fine entrees to the cultural and university community in Pittsburgh.
[...]
Mine seems to be a minority opinion in the 14th ward. Civil conversation is becoming a struggle. The better-paid professionals don't demonstrate; they tell duct-tape and Bush-is-so-stupid jokes while finding the whole "evil" thing really uncool. Genteel ladies married to retired professors express disappointment in Colin Powell, who seemed like such a nice man. The only place around here to find three people who support Bush is among Orthodox Jews.
Whatever comes next, I am keeping my head low and many thoughts to myself. Hunkering down at home, I sympathize with the long-suffering Iraqis waiting to see what will happen over their heads. May the suffering end soon.

You May Want To Make Sure You Have A Good Lawyer.

Security forces at Vandenberg Air Force Base are allowed to use "deadly force" in some cases if any anti-war demonstrators infiltrate the military complex, officials said.

Looks Like Jack's Just Trying To Piss Me Off.

My Home Town In "Best of the Web"

Think airplane hijackings, weapons of mass destruction and color-coded terror alerts are nerve-racking? That's not all they have to worry about up in Oregon. From a column in the Albany Democrat-Herald:
Choosing a new hairstyle can be stressful. Should I go shorter? Do I want bangs or maybe layers? How about a perm or possibly highlights? The decision can be agonizing.
Cute hairstyles seen on friends, not to mention in magazines, offer courage, yet the big question remains--how will it look on me? Even with a picture of the perfect style in hand, the salon experience can often result in disappointment, not to mention money and precious hair gone.
These feelings of anxiety can parallel those of hunting for the perfect color combination to paint the house.

Oh My God, They Killed South Park! You Bastards!!

Getting A Head Start.

none of these facts will deter the American and British security agencies from inventing and planting "evidence" of "Saddam's secret weapons" once Anglo-American forces take over Baghdad. When America and Britain crush Iraq, a new phase of their black propaganda will emerge - for which the British public ought to be prepared. This new range of deceptions will be designed to justify attacking a sovereign state and killing innocent people: a crime under international law, with or without a second UN resolution

This Is Great!

This Is Certainly A Shock!

Republican - You believe that the free market will take care of most things, but that the government should be there with moderate taxation to provide for national defense and enforcing morality. Your historical role model is Ronald Reagan

I Think Molly Has Fallen Off The Wagon.

Let me leap to say that containment, which is working to some extent, would not be working at all if President Bush had not been keeping relentless pressure on the Iraqi regime. But it is impossible to avoid the sickening conclusion that the Bush administration decided to invade months ago and has never been willing to consider containment. It is this unmistakable attitude that has poisoned U.S. relations with countries around the world.

Tell Me Again About "Containment">

Thanks Jack.

"Anti-War Protesters Show Their Real Feelings.

Antiwar protesters burned and ripped up flags, flowers and patriotic signs at a Sept. 11 memorial that residents erected on a fence along Whittier Boulevard days after the terrorist attacks in 2001 and have maintained ever since.

Sour Grapes From The New York Times.

After 26 Years Of Diplomancy The UN Admits Failure.

The United Nations announced today that peace talks between the Greek and Turkish leaders of divided Cyprus had ended in failure and there would be no more negotiations.

Anatomy Of An AntiWar Letter

George Bush wants war. Nothing else seems to do for him.

Our "Republic?" Down the tubes! No Congressional voice, just one "Shrub" endangering the lives of everyone, sending our kids to kill others' kids.

Remember, there are mothers and fathers and children who will die in Iraq. And what are we going to do with Iraq? If Saddam Hussein goes, who replaces him, and how, and will they be better or worse off?

Will we go to war every time we don't like what the new leader is doing?

Of course, our hands are clean, right? Well, if you forget slavery, bounties on the heads of American Indians and their further mistreatment, not to mention using our servicemen as guinea pigs in testing atomic weapons.

We've used nuclear weapons on people; babies, moms, grandfathers. Saddam's atrocities pale alongside.

You may get your chance for an up-close-and-personal if Saddam sends nerve gas or anthrax-laden missiles.

Wake up, folks. War is not the only answer.

Marilyn Morais
Corvallis

Free Speech Lessons For Conservative Campus Paper

IMAO: In Frank's World

Democrats Avoiding TV? Isn't That One Of The Signs Of The Apocalypse?

chided Democratic leaders yesterday for avoiding the Sunday talk shows.
"A growing cadre of Democrats is accusing President Bush of botching American foreign policy by threatening force first and failing to give diplomacy sufficient time. They wanted to give chit-chat a chance," Mr. Snow said at the close of his program.
"This is an interesting notion at odds with the whole of human history. Wars end and talk begins only when one side wins," Mr. Snow said.
"The idea is interesting for a second reason, which is that many of the very politicians complaining about the president's reticence have themselves gone silent before the press.
"Check today's Sunday show listings, and you will find precisely zero Democratic leaders. We've called them all, week after week, only to discover that the loyal opposition, with a few exceptions such as Joe Biden, Carl Levin and Harry Reid, have gone AWOL. They're the milk-carton brigade: missing and sorely missed.
"Two key examples: Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, tough in speeches but nowhere to be seen. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, watching this show, I hope.
"Here we are on the cusp of war, and leaders of a key political party are, A, ratcheting up attacks on the commander in chief and, B, hiding from one-on-one national interviews.
"Yesterday Democrats handed responsibility for responding to the president's radio address to a man with the lowest approval ratings in America, California Governor Gray Davis. Twenty-seven percent approval in the most recent L.A. Times poll. The guy didn't talk about war and peace, only his desire for further federal handouts. Yeesh.
"So I close today with an open and heartfelt invitation: Come back, folks, let's talk. It's not the same without you, and it's not a debate unless both sides show up."

Where Is PETA?

Canaries on sale in Baghdad's street markets are in great demand as people see them as low-tech and affordable chemical weapons detectors.

When Saddam Stared, And Clinton Blinked.

"What if [Saddam] fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction? ... Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal."

I Have Never Read Tom Robbins; Guess I Never Will.

Quite probably the worst thing about the inevitable and totally unjustifiable war with Iraq is that there’s no chance the U.S. might lose it. America is a young country, and intellectually, emotionally, and physically, it has been exhibiting all the characteristics of an adolescent bully, a pubescent punk who’s too big for his britches and too strong for his age. Someday, perhaps, we may grow out of our mindless, pimple-faced arrogance, but in the meantime, it might do us a ton of good to have our butts kicked. Unfortunately, like most of the targets we pick on, Iraq is much too weak to give us the thrashing our continuously overbearing behavior deserves, while Saddam is even less deserving of victory than Bush.

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t want American soldiers killed. But I don’t want Iraqis killed, either. I’m just not one of those people who believes that American lives are more valuable than the lives of others.

When Someone Lauds The Education Accomplishments Of Cuba...Show Them This.

Idaima Paz López, 16 years old, was expelled from the school “José Ramón Rodríguez” on February 24th because she demonstrated “a low level of fidelity to the principles of the Revolution.” Members of the board of the student center, located at “calle 13, entre A y B,” in Vedado, told María López, mother of the student, that her daughter had not passed the subject “revolutionary preparedness,” in addition to appearing apathetic and not participating in obligatory activities, such as combat marches and open tribunals. Later, according to the mother of Idaima, the guidance counselor Asela Wilson and the teacher Ángel threatened to send the adolescent to a juvenile retention center . . .

Something For The Hollywood Crowd To Think About.

Sean Penn has been complaining that he’s losing work for his stance on Iraq. The (un-named) producer quoted in this week’s New York Observer makes this response:
“Sean Penn has a constitutional right to speak out about the war. Good for him. But don’t whine about the repercussions. I have a constitutional right not to go bankrupt hiring him. If there’s a black list, it’s not going to be created by the studios; it’s going to be created by the American public.”

Snappy Answers To Liberal Soundbites

Another Service To Humanity By RWN

Should You Become A Democrat?
By John Hawkins
As a service to RWN's readers, I have prepared the following 25 questions to help people determine if they should join the Democratic party. Feel free to share it with friends and family members and if they find themselves answering "yes" to most of the questions below, then the Democrats are the party for them.

Business Consulting? That Won't Benefit The Rich Will It?

March 8, 2003 -- No starting at the bottom for Chelsea Clinton.
The former first daughter has landed a $100,000 a year job at a business consulting firm, Newsweek.com reported yesterday.
Clinton, 23, who this year will receive a master's in international relations from Oxford, took the job at the New York offices of McKinley & Company, a London-based company, after originally rejecting the offer.
The company confirmed Clinton had taken the job, but wouldn't give details.

Ain't It The Truth.

Unfortunately, after 30 years of promoting "diversity" and "dissent" and the "courage" of "artists" who take "bold", "transgressive" "stands", everyone in Hollywood now thinks exactly alike.

Duh!

A top Iraqi official said Sunday he is convinced the United States has decided to go to war

Thomas Sowell: "The Busybody Rich". I Like That.

Maybe The Plan Is To Disengage.

In each area where there are large permanent American troop deployments, we see disengagement. It might take a war in at least one case to get us extricated. We are getting extricated nonetheless.
There is even a bonus prize. The UN is about to self-destruct. Put it all together and project ten years into the future. We see an America with a powerful naval and air force; with relatively few soldiers based outside the nation. An America looking out for its' own interests and finally rid of most of the "entangling alliances" brought about by World War II and its' aftermath.
We're at the start not of Empire, but of the return to Fortress America... with a global reach via naval and air capacity to handle anyone who comes to our shores looking for trouble.
I think I could live with that.

Peaceful Terrorist Leader Killed By Israelis.

With missiles launched from helicopters, Israel killed a top leader of Hamas and his three bodyguards in Gaza City today.
Hamas vowed to avenge the killing, calling the target, Ibrahim al-Makadmah, a purely political leader. But Israeli security officials described him as "one of the central characters in the planning, approval and executing of the terrorist operations of Hamas in the Gaza Strip."
But Hamas insisted that Mr. Makadmah had become a strictly political figure in recent years, and said it would strike back at Israeli politicians. Within hours of his death, Hamas began putting up posters that read in part, "All military choices are open now, and at the top of the list are the Israeli political leaders."

CIA Reports Terrorists That Are Not There Pose Risk To Troops

The C.I.A. has warned that terrorists based in Iraq are planning attacks against American and allied forces inside the country after any invasion, government counterterrorism officials say.

Update On The Status Of SB643, The Bill To Raid The 911 Funds.

Senate Bill 643 Introduced SB 643By Senator DECKERT, MORRISETTE -- Relating to juveniles; appropriating money. 02/25 (S)Introduction and first reading. Referred to President's desk. 03/03 (S)Referred to Judiciary, then Ways and Means.

Judiciary Monday through Thursday – 8:00 AM – Room 343 Senator John Minnis, Chair Senator Ginny Burdick, Vice-Chair Senator Ted Ferrioli Senator Charlie Ringo Senator Charles Starr Senator Vicki Walker

If You Do, Be Prepared To Pay The Price.

They have marched and chanted, hoping to use persuasion to prevent war. If that fails, though, activists are readying a more aggressive strategy of sit-ins and social disruptions, meant to restore peace in Iraq. Protest sit-ins, especially at federal buildings, defense recruiting offices and military bases, have been mapped out for dozens of cities in the first day or two of any war, anti-war organizers say. Some also foresee widespread walkouts at schools and workplaces. A smaller number talk of blocking roads and bridges.

Acidman Channels President Bush.

My Co-Workers Will Love This.

Democrat Funding Priorities.

Cuban Political Shocker; Castro Re-Elected to 6th Term in Cuba

President Fidel Castro was elected a sixth term Thursday...More than 97 percent of Cuba's voters in January elected Castro and the rest of the 609 candidates who ran uncontested for parliament

UN Reaction To GWB Speech.

Frank Has Ferreted Out Rumsfeld's Secrets.

Lawyers Know Best

In sum, it doesn't look good for the judicial branch in our fine state unless the average person gets moved off his or her couch, and soon. If we want democracy here,

we need to
(a) push for better funding for the courts;

(b) reward judicial candidates who take the high road in campaigns, and punish those who run on particular issues; and

(c) fight the ballot measures that will continue to threaten the vitality of the judicial system.

That's What I Like In A Reporter, Consistancy

What To Do?

Guess Who Just Pulled Their Heads Out Of Their Arses?

Nobody thought that living in Iraq while it was bombarded was going to be easy.
But few of the human shields I met had given real thought to the fact they may not survive the coming weeks.
Rumours reached their ears that it was actually the Iraqi Government that was behind their trip and not charity peace campaigners who had acted spontaneously.
They went into a blind panic. Nathan - who looked like he had not slept for days - bought a suit and hired a car, ready to make a break for the border.
He said: "I don't trust these people any more. I don't think we are going to be allowed to do what we want. I was here to meet the children and ordinary Iraqis. I don't want to go to a power plant."
Everyone's fears were flooding to the surface. Everyone wanted to get out.

Hallelujah , The Computers Have Solved Education's Problems.

Just six months after Maine began a controversial program to provide laptop computers to every seventh grader in the state, educators are impressed by how quickly students and teachers have adapted to laptop technology.

A Must Read For Serious Warmongers.

The knee-jerk reaction of many Americans to September 11 is to say, “Let’s get off our dependency on foreign oil, and then we won’t have to deal with those people.” The most naïve assumption underlying that dream is that reducing what little connectivity the Gap[them] has with the Core [us] will render it less dangerous to us over the long haul. Turning the Middle East into Central Africa will not build a better world for my kids. We cannot simply will those people away.

Blog This! Is Back.

New York Times Diplomacy

Fred On Everything

I am informed by the Harvard Crimson* that the boys among the studentry recently fashioned a large penis from snow on the grounds of the university. Grave consequences ensued. A great squealing arose, as if a Victorian spinster had found a man under her bed. There was righteousness enough to gag Jonathan Edwards. Feminists made solemn asses of themselves. It was a splendid show and a good time was had by all.

How I Spend My Time. Now And Then.

Being A "Human Shield" Got Too Expensive

Almost all of the first British "human shields" to go to Iraq were on their way home last night after deciding that their much-heralded task was now too dangerous.

Nine of the original 11 activists decided to pull out after being given an ultimatum by Iraqi officials to station themselves at targets likely to be bombed in a war or leave the country. Among those departing last night was 68-year-old Godfrey Meynell, a former High Sheriff of Derbyshire, who admitted that he was leaving out of "cold fear". He had been summoned, along with 200 other shields from all over the world, to a meeting at a Baghdad hotel yesterday morning.

Abdul Hashimi, the head of the Friendship, Peace and Solidarity organisation that is hosting the protesters, told the shields to choose between nine so-called "strategic sites" by today or quit the country.

The Iraqi warning follows frustration among Saddam Hussein's officials that only about 65 of the shields had so far agreed to take up positions at the oil refineries, power plants and water-purification sites selected by their hosts.

It heightened fears among some peace activists that they could be stationed at non-civilian sites. Mr Meynell and fellow protesters who moved into the power station in south Baghdad last weekend were dismayed to find it stood immediately next to an army base and the strategically crucial main road south to Basra. Iraqi officials said there was little point in guarding what they considered to be low-risk targets.

My Prediction Is Monday 03/03/03

Former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, has predicted the crisis over Iraq could come to a head within days.

U.S. Military The Good Guys? The LA Times Isn't Buying It.

"Profiles From the Front Line," a six-part ABC series that makes war and warriors entertaining TV, while being so worshipful that it could have been created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In a sense it was, for ABC says this six-month look at the U.S. Special Operations Unit in Afghanistan was made with "full cooperation" from the Pentagon and Defense Department. Which may explain why the series creators, who include movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer, appear to have been granted greater access to U.S. military action in Afghanistan in 2002 than were the news media, whose pliability could not be assured. The show's producers say the government did not interfere. It didn't have to. Control is as implicit here as in "Cops," on which Bertram van Munster, another of the creators, was once a senior producer. The rule? Play nice with your "Cops"-style close-ups or no access.

Another Present From Those Who Only Have The Interests Of The Public In Mind.

No victim of lead poisoning will get a dime in compensation from Rhode Island's pending lawsuit

After Years Of Comfort, "Club Fed" Prisoners Really Go To Jail

The Big Apple's white-collar crooks are being booted from homey halfway houses and landing in prison thanks to a new federal crackdown, The Post has learned.
The action, introduced in December by Attorney General John Ashcroft, comes after years of complaints that a two-tier justice system was soft on white-collar miscreants.

Bill Whitttle...Wow!

"Scientists" Questions Value Of NASA In Effort To Profit Off Columbia Disaster.

[I]n the aftermath of the Columbia disaster, many scientists outside the space agency have concluded that the scientific payoff, by itself, is nowhere near enough to justify the program's huge cost and risks

Gotta Hand It To The New York Times.

Those Who Fail To Learn From History.....Blah, Blah, Blah

If we're seeking lessons from the past to help us deal with Saddam Hussein, then the way we dealt with Mussolini's conquest of Abyssinia in 1935 is - as the Prime Minister understands - the place to look.

The Most Underreported Story Of The Month!

"So will all the protest have any effect on your stance on Iraq?" asked a reporter. Bush rolled his eyes. "Yeah, Saddam can gas whomever he wants; the mangy hippies have spoken. I just wish there was a way America could save the world for all the serious people and leave the drooling scummy hippies still vulnerable to terrorists." "So you want the protestors dead?" Bush smiled. "Wouldn't that be cool. All of them in hippy hell, where there are no signs to carry, no tie-dye shirts to wear, everyone has to have short hair and be clean-shaven, everyone has to work a regular job, and no pot smoking. And I could make it happen too. Just one phone call I could have helicopters strafing these protesters, killing them by the thousands. And no idiotic slogan they could chant could stop a bullet." He continued to smile quietly for a moment, but then changed to a more serious expression. "But I don't, because I'm just that tolerant and kind. They do everything they can to make me want to slaughter them, but I leave them unkilled. Do they understand how much will that takes? Do they ever say, 'Hey, thanks for not having me killed, President Bush, even though I'm a filthy scummy worthless hippy deserving of a violent hippy death.’? No, they never give me any credit." Bush stewed in his anger for a few moments. "It makes me want to murder them!"

One Of The Human Shields Has A Blog!

Meet The Protesters

Stupid Bono Tricks.

...There was also a huge gathering of the most important people in the music business.

Bono told the crowd, among other things: "The war against terrorism is bound up in the war on poverty."

At one point he declared: "I don't want to die stupid."

He also announced he was a "fan" of America and wasn't leaving anytime soon.

He said that Clinton was "more of a rock star than any in this room"

Governor's Plan To Help Economy; A New Bureaucracy!

Kulongoski said he would use executive orders to create a state Office of Regulatory Streamlining and increase the amount of industrial land slated for development. The governor said the changes were long overdue and necessary to get Oregon growing again.

"I'm sure it's not his intention to shortchange environmental laws," said Bob Stacy, executive director of 1000 Friends of Oregon, a land use watchdog group. "Making sure we don't sprawl to get jobs will be important."

They Know The Numbers; Don't Confuse Them With Facts.

"Oh my word. Come on, that's ridiculous," said Bill Hackwell, spokesman for International ANSWER, one of the groups that organized Sunday's march and rally.

Leftist Hero Defends Genocide.

A Rwandan pastor and his son were found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide by a U.N. tribunal on Wednesday, and sentenced to 10 and 25 years respectively for helping to massacre ethnic Tutsis
[snip]
Both suspects had pleaded not guilty. At the start of their trial in 2001, defence counsel and former U.S. attorney general Ramsay Clarke said the pastor had "always been involved in saving souls, just as Gerard...was involved in saving lives."

Why The Greens Are AntiCapitalist.

The government says there's an upside to the poor economy and high electricity costs -- lower levels of greenhouse gases.
In 2001, emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases went down for the first time in a decade. The Energy Information Administration says pollution linked to climate change went down by more than one percent that year.

Israelis and Palestinians

Willam O. Douglas Appears To Have Been More Legend Than Life.

Protesters Help Saddam.

President Saddam Hussein's government, apparently emboldened by antiwar sentiment at the U.N. Security Council and in worldwide street protests, has not followed through on its promises of increased cooperation with U.N. arms inspectors, according to inspectors in Iraq.

Is Bob Herbert Being Disingenuous? Or Just Stupid.

Say it ain't so, Mr. President. You might think that with the country gearing up for war this would be the wrong time — absolutely the worst time — to cut federal school aid for the children of men and women in the armed forces. Nobody would do that, right? Right?

Under Mr. Bush's budget proposal, Impact Aid would continue for youngsters whose parents live on a military base, but not for those whose families live off base.

This is a specious distinction that does not take into account the overall deficit in tax revenues and the special needs of military youngsters.

People Making Their Own Decisions. A Nightmare For Progressives.

Democrats Economic Plan: Pork, Payoffs, More Pork, Deficit Spending, and More Pork. For The Children.

SUMMARY OF "THE EMERGENCY ANTI-RECESSION ACT OF 2003"

As Introduced by Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR)

Title I: Assistance to the Unemployed Section 101. Provides an additional 13 weeks of Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation (TEUC) benefits. S. 23 which Congress passed and the President signed into law earlier this year, does not provide additional assistance for the long-term unemployed including the 18,000 Oregonians who, as of December 28, 2002, had already exhausted the TEUC. There are 21,000 Oregonians who are eligible for some remaining part of the 26 weeks of TEUC, but thousands of those individuals will soon exhaust their remaining benefits. Approximately one million individuals nationwide have already exhausted the TEUC benefits.

Extended Benefits (EB) under the Federal-State Extended Benefit Program are available for some who have exhausted their TEUC benefits. However, in Oregon, the Employment Department projects that 350 individuals per week will exhaust EB. Once an individual exhausts EB there are no other unemployment compensation benefits available to that individual.

The unemployment trust fund, which is funded by business tax contributions, has a healthy surplus that can cover the cost of the additional benefits and still maintain a surplus. We should use the funds for the intended purpose by providing assistance for the long-term unemployed.

Title II: Payroll Tax Relief
Section 201. This section exempts the first $10,000 in wages from both the employer and employee share (6.2 percent each, respectively) of the Social Security payroll tax for one year. This will provide a $620 tax cut for each worker and their employer. Subsection (d) directs the Secretary of the Treasury to transfer from general revenue an amount sufficient to ensure that the Social Security trust funds are not reduced by the one- year payroll tax exemption. Subsection (e) ensures that for the purposes of determining an individual's earnings record, and therefore, future benefits, the Social Security Administrator will ignore the reduced contributions that will occur during the one-year payroll tax reduction.

Title III: Fiscal Assistance for State and Local Governments
Section 301. Findings
Section 302. Authorizes $50 billion through Fiscal Year 2004 to be made available to state and local governments. Reserves at least one-third of the money for local governments.

Section 303. Directs the Secretary of the Treasury to establish a revenue sharing formula to determine state and local governmental allocations. The formula shall give priority weight to (1) the state unemployment rate in relation to the national unemployment rate; (2) the duration of the state unemployment rate above the national average; (3) median income; (4) population.

Section 304. Limits the purposes for which state and local government can use the federal funds to: (1) ordinary and necessary maintenance and operating expenses for

(A) primary, secondary, or higher education

(B) worker retraining

(C) public safety

(D) public health

(E) social services for the poor or aged

(F) public transportation

(G) environmental protection

(H) libraries; and

(2) ordinary and necessary capital expenditures authorized by law.

Title IV: Transportation and Water Infrastructure Investment
Subtitle A - Rail Infrastructure Investment
Sections 401-417: Provides for the issuance of $15 billion in tax-credit bonds for high speed rail projects selected by the Secretary of Transportation.

Provides $3 billion for capital investment for Amtrak

Provides $500 million in grants to provide the credit risk premium for $5 billion in loans and loan guarantees for the freight railroad infrastructure projects under the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing Program (RRIF).

Subtitle B - Environmental Infrastructure Investment
Sections 421-426: Provides $6.5 billion to construct, rehabilitate, and restore our nation's wastewater and drinking water infrastructure through existing State Revolving Fund programs.

Provides $1.5 billion for wet weather overflow grants for planning, design, and construction of treatment works to address sewer and sanitary overflows (authorized by P.L. 106-554).

Subtitle C - Highway Infrastructure Investment
Sections 431-432: Provides $5 billion in additional authority for highway capital investments, distributed to states pursuant to the TEA 21 formula. Funds provided from the Highway Trust Fund.

Provides $2.5 billion of carryover authority for loans, loan guarantees, and lines of credit for highway, transit, intermodal, and high speed rail projects under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation program, as authorized by TEA 21.

Subtitle D - Transit Infrastructure Investment Sections 441-443: Provides $3 billion in transit formula grants, distributed to states via the TEA 21 formula. Funds provided by the Highway Trust Fund Transit Accounts and the General Fund.

Increases the maximum tax-free transit/vanpool fringe benefit for federal employees from $65 to $175 per month, equal to the current tax-free benefit for parking.

Subtitle E - Aviation Infrastructure Investment Sections 451-452: Provides $1 billion for Airport Improvement Grants, distributed to states and airport authorities pursuant to AIR 21 formula. Funds provided from the Aviation Trust Fund.

Subtitle F - Maritime Infrastructure Investment
Section 461: Provides $100 million in Title XI loan guarantees to finance $2 billion of construction of U.S.-flagged ships used in the domestic commerce of the United States.

Subtitle G - Economic Development Infrastructure Investment
Sections 471-473: Provides $1.3 billion in grants to economically distressed communities for economic development infrastructure projects through the Economic Development Administration, Delta Regional Authority, and the Appalachian Regional Commission.

Subtitle H - Water Resources Infrastructure Investment
Section 481: Provides $1.2 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers to carry out construction, operation, and maintenance activities for authorized civil functions as identified by the Secretary of the Army.

Subtitle I - Public Buildings Infrastructure Investment
Sections 491-493: Provides $500 million to enhance the security of federal buildings and provide additional funds for the repair and alternation of federal buildings.

Subtitle J - General Provisions
Section 495-499: Provides priority consideration for projects designed to enhance security. Provides for a temporary waiver of the non-federal share of projects. Includes standard Davis-Bacon prevailing wage language as well as standard "Buy America" language.

(Note: The transportation infrastructure title is based on H.R. 3166 from the 107th Congress, which was introduced by Transportation Committee Democrats)

Title V: Elementary and Secondary Education Infrastructure
Section 501. Authorizes $5 billion in grants to states and local education agencies for urgent school renovations. The funds are to be distributed according to Part A, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended.

State entity shall award local funds on a competitive basis that includes consideration of

a) relative percentage of children from low-income families;

b) need for school repairs and renovations;

c) fiscal capacity; and

d) plans to maintain the facilities repaired or renovated under the grant. (This section is modeled on Section 305 of the Senate version of the FY02 LHHS appropriations bill as introduced by Senator Harkin. See Senate Report 107-84).

Title VI: Revenue Offsets
Section 601. Freezes the top individual income tax marginal rate at its 2003 level of 38.6 percent.

Section 602. Reinstates the federal estate tax for estates over $5 million. Freezes the maximum estate tax rate at its 2003 level of 49 percent.

Jesse Jackson Searches Franticly For Someone White Enough To Blame.

Miracle At The New York Times

A New Democrat Fundraising Strategy

Democratic congressional leaders are shifting unprecedented responsibility for party fundraising to rank-and-file lawmakers even as they aggressively pursue corporate contributions for their 2004 campaign.
As part of a multi-faceted effort to narrow what some party strategists view as a huge Republican fundraising advantage, they also plan to rely more heavily on celebrity allies in the entertainment industry to increase their party’s small donor base

That's All For Tonight.

How About Full Disclosure For Politicians

Emperor Misha's Long Journey From The Dark Side

Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction

What Do Iraqis Think About The "Peace" Movement?

Do not continue to punish the Iraqi people because you are "unhappy" with the amount of power the world is at fault for allowing America to wield. Do not use the Iraqi people as a pawn in your game for moral superiority - one loses that right when one allows a monster like Saddam to rule for 30 years without so much as protesting against his rule.

Chirac To E. Europe; "Sit Down and Shut Up!"

French President Jacques Chirac launched a withering attack Monday on eastern European nations who signed letters backing the U.S. position on Iraq, warning it could jeopardize their chances of joining the European Union
"It is not really responsible behavior," he told a news conference. "It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet

"Peaceblogger" Debuts.

1. If you were President of the United States, what would be your policy toward Iraq over the next year? What advantages and disadvantages do you see in your proposed policies versus the current path being pursued by the Bush administration?
If I were president instead of The Smirking Drunkard, I would just GET OVER MYSELF, okay? I hope I would have the brains (not destroyed by my years of being a frat boy drunkard) to realize that the only reason I'm there is because Daddy's lawyers bought it for me and hung the chads until they elected me. This would have the advantage of just getting the whole world to relax because, hello, they wouldn't be dealing with a smirking drunkard with his hand on the nukes, okay?

All Together Now. Awwwwww.

To increase her chances of graduating from college, Lisa Jean, a freshman at St. John's University, meets with a college counselor once a week. Sometimes they discuss her classes. Other times they talk about time management or social issues. Last Thursday, the subject was how she would be affected by Gov. George E. Pataki's proposal to slice New York State's spending on higher education.

Say It Ain't So! Democrats Paid Off In New York.

They gave tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions to Democratic lawmakers from the city, and then, when it seemed that Gov. George E. Pataki might scale back the company's contracts because of a shrinking prison population, they turned their attention to him.

Free Exchange Of Ideas? Not In The Nation.

Many readers of The Nation, a magazine of the political left, seek shelter in its pages from what they consider the news media's conservative bias. So executives at the magazine anticipated some criticism when they accepted a full-page advertisement from the Fox News channel, one of those outlets considered to fall in the enemy camp.

The NYT, WaPo, ABC, NBC, CBS, & CNN Are Not Enough

A group of wealthy Democratic donors is planning to start a liberal radio network to counterbalance the conservative tenor of radio programs like "The Rush Limbaugh Show."

I Thought Only The Rich Supported Republicans.

Republicans also have far more small-check donors, who give, on average, $20 more apiece than their Democratic counterparts. "Twenty dollars per gift, times 30,000 more donors -- pretty soon you're talking real money," Corrado said.

Want To Show How School Choice Harms Public Schools?

Why Hire Staff When You Got The NYT

The Democratic National Committee also puts out oppo research -- such as an 80-page rebuttal to President Bush's State of the Union speech -- but does not regularly pepper journalists with such attacks. The Democratic group, which has no communications director or press secretary at the moment, operates on a smaller budget.
"I don't think that kind of widespread dissemination is terribly effective," says a DNC official who declined to be quoted by name. "We've found it's much more effective to work with individual reporters on stories."

Maybe It Is All About Oil.

As of October 2002, Iraq reportedly had signed several multi-billion dollar deals with foreign oil companies mainly from China, France, and Russia.

Those Who Do Not Learn From History Are Doomed To Repeat It.

Bill Whittle's Back!

Terrorists worry me, but they don’t frighten me. The worse thing they can do is kill me, and despite my best efforts to the contrary, that’s going to happen regardless of what they may scheme and fantasize about.
Terrorism can never, never destroy this nation. They may kill thousands of us, perhaps even take one of our cities – cities they could never build, filled with people they can never be. Perhaps it will be my city. Perhaps it will be me. But if they do, life will go on. Some things are bigger and more important than our own lives. America can survive the loss of a city. America can survive the loss of all her cities. Because our image and idea of America lives in our hearts, and as long as there are Americans alive in the world, America will survive.
But there are people that do scare me – people that scare me very badly indeed, because these people have the power to kill this idea we call America.
We have turned our children’s minds over to certain people who are so bitter and angry, so hateful of the country that gave them birth and safety, that their poison now fills our college campuses and has overrun entire communities. These are not loyal dissenters who rightfully question the policies of our nation, but small and diseased people who cannot understand why their fantasy ideologies are never in vogue, who can see nothing noble or magnificent on their foggy and dim and very close inner horizons. People whose anger and envy have driven them to turn all virtue into an ironic smirk, people who react to strength and morality with the revulsion born of a lifetime of failure and dark plans for revenge on the happy, the confident and the self-reliant.
I fear these people. I hate them. I hate them because they can kill our confidence, corrode our will, poison our history and make us believe we are the base, savage and dismal society they see through their cataracts of failure. These people can kill America. And they are determined to do it if we let them. And the one thing they mock and spit on, the one trait they despise above all others, is the physical and moral courage that they have never known, and that is the leaden nugget of their self-hatred.
There are people – Americans – who would turn this into the Land of the Guilty and the Home of the Terrified. We cannot let them do this. We simply can not.

This Changes Everything!

The existence of the supposed European country of Belgium has been taken as gospel for years by members of the Liberati. It has long been held up as a shining example of Liberal philosophies in action. However, now is the time the truth be known. Belgium doesn't exist.

Earth Calling Bianca

No matter how terrible a nation is, the UN charter forbids just overthrowing the regime. The war against Iraq is unjustified.

Oh, I Like This

Demonstrating The Inanity Of The (insert cause here) Movement

Nothing says "Stop the Madness of Western Imperialism" like a white college student from Winnetka opening a can of whup-ass on some Korean vegetable stand!

Shouldn't Environmentalists Be Happy About This?

Gasoline prices jumped as much as 13 cents per gallon overnight at some Albany stations, a spot survey of stations showed.

Alterman In Esquire

Here's a quote from Eric Alterman in the current Esquire: "The lack of civility he [Limbaugh] demonstrates toward liberal politicians is really dangerous to our political public. I hate to say it, but I wish the guy would have gone deaf. I shouldn't say that, but on behalf of the country, it would be better without Limbaugh and his 20 million listeners."

Michele Eavesdrops On Antiwar Protesters At Hunter College

Yesterday, the great thinkers of the movement took over the office of the President of Hunter College.
They have a list of demands. One of them is that the college president herself publicly denounce the war on Iraq.
Is it just me or does everyone else see the folly behind this? Forcing someone to make a statement does not force them to believe that statement.
My secret moles have come through for me yet again and I have a tape recording of what took place after the students took over the college president's office.
Student 1: Raise the flag! We have occupied this territory!
Student 2: What flag? We don't have a flag.
Student 1: Well, just wave your shirt around.
Student 3: Ok, now we have to write a list of our demands.
Student 2: I'll write it. Here's an old brown paper bag we can write on.
All: Reduce! Resuse! Recycle!
They all sit on the floor as Student 2 writes down their demands.
Student 4: Make her denounce the war. And she has to say it like she really means it.
Student 2: How do you spell denounce?
Student 1: D-E-N ummm...
Student 5: How about "say no to the war?"
Student 2: That's better. Let's stick to small words. I haven't really been to a class in years. My spelling is rusty.
Student 4: Ok, next demand.
Student 3: Lower tuition.
Student 5: Free tuition!
Student 2: Free lunches!
Student 3: Free Mumia!
They stop for a round of high-fives.
Student 1: Should we write a statement for her against the war?
Student 2: You know, we could make her say anything we want if she wants to get us out of her office.
Student 3: Heh, I didn't use deodorant today. Her office is gonna smell really bad if she doesn't meet our demands right away.
Student 5: Ok, so first demand is make her say "no war."
Student 3: Umm..make her say that she thinks I'm cute.
Student 1: Stop being such an idiot. This is serious. This is about war and resistence. We must conquer the minds of capitalist pigs and arrogant Americans who do nothing but spend money foolishly and take over countries for oil! We will occupy this office for as long as necessary!
Student 5: I gotta pee.
Student 2: I'm hungry.
Student 4: Hey, let's go to Starbucks!
Student 1: No! NOOO! Dont' go! Vive le Resistance! Fight the Power! Flick your light switch for peace!!
Student 1 lies on the floor, weeping at the loss of her comrades.
Student 3: Can we send out for pizza?

Does This Sound Like Cooperation To You?

"Iraqi scientists and researchers are under a lot of pressure and influence by the Iraqi authorities," the Iraqi defector told ABCNEWS. "They were scared and threatened in different ways, including threatening to go after their families if they leave Iraq to meet with inspectors and going after their relatives if their families go with them and going after them even if they were in exile.

Not A Rent Increase, A Reduction In Subsidy

The Bush administration is proposing to increase rents charged to thousands of poor people who receive federal housing aid.

OK, Enough Is Enough, Withdraw The Troops.

[A] senior South Korean envoy said that if it had to choose, the incoming government would prefer that North Korea had nuclear weapons to seeing it collapse.

Do You Think It Was A Left Wing Plot?

NASA officials said today that they had identified a two-foot-long piece of wreckage from the space shuttle Columbia as a piece of the left wing, where evidence suggests the doomed craft's troubles began.

Did You Ever Wonder About Movie Reviews?

One site I enjoy visiting is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops - Movie Reviews page. Seeing the ratings placed on the films brings back memories of my youth when I would curiously read the movie reviews in the Long Island Catholic, wondering why a certain movie was rated the way it was. (Boy, that "O" rating must mean that picture is really bad...).

How to write a Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) movie, music or book review: MIM's approach to the superstructure
by Web Minister December, 2002
MIM's movie reviews receive heavy readership relative to other parts of the web page. There is a lot of talk about how MIM comes up with these reviews including the occasional humor involved. In one word, "materialism" is our philosophy guiding production of MIM reviews.
We also receive more than a few letters misunderstanding practices in Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China in these matters. Recently I received two letters based on a misunderstanding of some mainstream journalist anti-communist propaganda both alleging there were a total of 8 approved works of literature in all of Mao's China.* That brings us to the question of "control" and state repression of the arts.

A Great Way To Be Heard, And Use OPM.

The People for the American Way website is prominently featuring a campaign to support a proposed Democratic filibuster of Bush's nominee to the D.C. Circuit, Miguel Estrada. They even have the option of faxing a number of Senators directly from the website, complete with a pre-scripted message in support of the filibuster.
But they allow the option of changing the text, which means the fax function can actually be put to good purposes.

Feminist Concerns Revealed

The difference, she explained, has to do with the conditioned behavior of men and women. "Here's the difference. And it's interesting that you should ask this, and it¹s just now come to me, pretty clearly. It is because, when men get together, denigrating women is often a part of the social interaction. When women get together, denigrating men is rarely done. It's just not even on the radar screen. Even among the so-called strident feminists of the women's movement. We don't have anything to hide in that way, and men seem to."

Clooney Apoligizes For Career.

Clooney said he was concerned about current trends among U.S. television networks. "People's misery becoming entertainment, that's what's dangerous. And that seems to be the place we're going. I worry about television,"

Scott Forbes Has Uncovered The Next UNSC Resolution.

More Awards

The Center for Consumer Freedom has announced the winners of its 2002 "Tarnished Halo" Awards. CCF awards prizes annually to America's most notorious animal-rights zealots, environmental scaremongers, celebrity busybodies, self-anointed "public interest" advocates, trial lawyers, and other food & beverage activists who claim to "know what's best for you."

A Little Local Fisking

Will we help or hurt the war on terrorism by inflaming one billion Muslims around the world? That's what Nancy Pelosi is worried about. Why aren't you?

Our charge against Saddam that he is defying U.N. resolutions carries no weight with the Muslim world because they have watched us, over the years, back Israel in repeated and still ongoing defiance of U.N. resolutions.

We continue to help Israel to the tune of $3 billion a year as it continues to destroy Palestinian homes, villages, infrastructure and killing innocent civilians with impunity. The Muslim world understands very well that Sharon is a mass-murderer, not a "man of peace" that Bush has lionized and defended. That description enrages them.

So we'll destroy much of Iraq while removing Saddam. Will we then rebuild it? Will the world be safer? How? Will we then go on to Iran and N. Korea, both of which are closer to nuclear weapons than Saddam.

What will regime change in Iraq mean to the radical Muslims in Pakistan, who already hate the U.S. and side with Osama? They make up the majority in Pakistan, and have made repeated attempts on the life of their pro-U.S. dictator.

He is afraid to go to Karachi, their biggest city, for that reason. Will he be overthrown in backlash for our attack on Iraq, as many international observers fear? Will Pakistan's nukes then become available for our enemies? We are opening Pandora's box, with no inkling of the consequences for years to come. There is an old saying: Whom the Gods destroy, they first make crazy. We're close.

John Goodwin, Lebanon.

Catching Up On Some Reading

"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion."

Watch Out George! You Done Pissed Off The Emperor.

Shape the FUCK up, Dubya, you limp-wristed linguini-spined fucknugget, or ship the Hell OUT, because you sure as Hell ain't doing anything to uphold your oath with all of this meaningless waffling! What's worse, you're placing 280 million of us in mortal danger with every second you wait and I will hold you PERSONALLY responsible for every American civilian that gets murdered as a result!

Just Upgraded To XP

The "Rush" To War

The Poets vs. The First Lady

A Gun Lawsuit's Smoking Gun?

Cities suing the gun industry for its role in promoting violence got a powerful new weapon of their own this week. A onetime industry leader has come forward to say that his former colleagues have long been aware that some of the dealers they supply turn around and sell guns to criminals. The new testimony provides an important link between gun makers and criminal activity, and should make courts more willing to find the industry liable for damages.
The affidavit from Robert Ricker, former head of the American Shooting Sports Council, the gun industry's leading trade group, comes in a potential landmark California lawsuit. Twelve California cities and counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, have charged gun makers, wholesalers and retail dealers with violating state law by distributing guns in a way that allows many to be bought by criminals and underage users.

No War Unless US Deaths Guaranteed.

A new group has been formed to protest the potential war in Iraq.

"War is sometimes necessary, but this is not one of those times," said group member Jim Lawrence, 63, of Albany.

Lawrence has many questions about why the United States is seriously considering war with Iraq. He wonders:
Why the nation would go to war with Iraq, but not with North Korea, which has acknowledged the existence of its nuclear weapons program?

What gives the nation the right to go to war against a perceived threat when that nation has not taken direct action against us?

What example might this set for other countries who perceive their neighbor to be a threat?

Finally, Something I Can Thank The Green Party For.

Tonight the President promised America a policy of war. War on Iraq. War on minorities. War on the poor. War on regular working people.
See, here’s the problem, right here: you sit down, ready to hear a series of carefully constructed arguments, and you get a big sloshy pail of lukewarm nonsense thrown in your face. (Chemical analysis shows it is actually the spittle of college newspaper editorial writers.) While the speech had a lot to do with confronting Iraq, the idea that it declared war on minorities, war on the poor, war on regular working people is a humid fantasy that only plays well with people who think that a reduction in the rate of budgetary growth is tantamount to genocide. (Racist genocide!) It suggests that Ms. Johnson Lee turned down the volume on Bush's speech and had an aide shout passage from "The Turner Diaries" while the president spoke. She's welcome to believe that the speech was a declaration of war on the parties named above; she’s welcome to believe that you could use individual letters from the speech to spell out the phrase “Someone put the wood to Mumia, ORC STYLE!” Whatever. But when a speech about hydrogen cars, Medicare reform, tort reform and lowering the Federal tax burden for a family of four making 40K to forty-five dollars becomes a declaration of WAR on anyone in the sub-plutocrat class, well, she’s just shot every arrow in her rhetorical quiver.
Everything is a war except, well, war. In the face of real war, she alerts us to the danger of a metaphorical one.

Frank's Rumsfeld Is Better Than Real Life.

Jack Bogdanski's Columbia Omens

So if you're like me, and you have a tendency to behave like a fool and talk about signs, what does this one mean? Does it mean the war will be a spectacular American failure? That there will be seven years of war before America succeeds in its mission? That six times as many Americans will die as will Israelis? Or is it a trick sent by an enemy god, trying to make us feel vulnerable, weak, and uncertain of our chances for success when what we need to do is press ahead?
While I'm in the lunatic mode, I'm also noting all the 16's in the story. Launched on the 16th, 16 days in space, 16 minutes from touchdown. I spent last week at a law school academic competition in Florida, where the shuttle was supposed to land. The winning team on that Saturday afternoon? The Florida team. Number 16, of course.

Lawyer Profit Protection Proposal Opposed By Government

proposal by the American Bar Association that would prohibit anyone but lawyers from giving advice about the law is drawing opposition from the federal government, which says it is intended to stifle competition and could subject real estate agents, income tax preparers, credit counselors and other laypeople to civil and criminal penalties.

Typical

Iraq charged that Secretary of State Colin Powell will present "fabricated" photos to prove that Baghdad is hiding banned weapons when he appears before the U.N. Security Council this week.

The Finger Pointing Starts.

Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former NASA engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed.

Florida Election Fiasco.

Lileks Has The Answer

On a day when seven brave people died while fulfilling their brightest ambitions, this was the wrong day to suggest we all stay tethered to the dirt until the sun grows cold.

Clubbeaux's Theory Of Newspaper Readership

A Little More Information, Please.

One professor teaching a course in Lincoln Hall has even revised his syllabus so that attending some 90 minutes of our event is required.

Now We Know What The Whitney Actually Is.

A Spanish art historian has uncovered what was alleged to be the first use of modern art as a deliberate form of torture, with the discovery that mind-bending prison cells were built by anarchist artists 65 years ago during the country's bloody civil war.

Fred On Everything

Bill Whittle on War

Silly Twits, Again

Dear John,

Preempting the findings of UN weapons inspectors, due to be presented on January 27,.

Recognizing the threat Iraq's noncompliance with council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security,

“unrestricted rights of entry into and out of Iraq, the right to free, unrestricted, and immediate movement to and from inspection sites, and the right to inspect any sites and buildings, including immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access to presidential sites”

[T]he Bush Administration has plans to bomb Baghdad, a city of five million people. This would cause a humanitarian catastrophe equivalent to a heavy air bombardment of Los Angeles.

A report issued by UN planners on December 10, 2002 (http://www.casi.org.uk) estimates that 500,000 people are likely to be injured in a US-led attack.

Unlike the progression of the military intervention in 1991, a future confrontation is expected to develop beyond the preparatory, and relatively short, aerial bombardment of infrastructure, towns, and cities into potentially a large scale and protracted ground offensive, supported by aerial and conventional bombardment.

Many more civilians are likely to die from longer-term effects of a bombing, including environmental damage and the destruction of food supplies, agriculture and critical infrastructure, such as pharmaceutical plants and hospitals. Officials from international aid agencies warn of widespread humanitarian disaster in the event of a bombing.

Consider the effects that a US-led attack would result in:

The destruction of civilian infrastructure: Public health officials fear widespread outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and malaria as a result of water contamination if the US bombs electricity grids that power Iraq's water treatment and sewage plants as it did in 1991.

Twelve years of US-led sanctions have left Iraq's public health sector without basic medicines or supplies to contend with outbreaks of waterborne diseases.

Radioactive weapons: The US arsenal includes radioactive uranium-tipped bombs known to cause cancer and severe birth defects.

Nobel Peace Prize nominee [and anti-nuclear activist] Dr. Helen Caldicott reports that southern Iraq has experienced a six to 12-fold increase in incidences of childhood leukemia and cancer since depleted uranium was dropped on the area in 1991.

Mass hunger: Iraqis are fearful that the US will bomb food facilities as it did in Iraq in 1991 and in Afghanistan in 2001. As a consequence of sanctions, over 60 percent of Iraqis are dependent on monthly food rations from the government. Aid officials warn that food distribution is almost certain to be disrupted by bombing and that more than three million people will face hunger or starvation in the event of a war.

A million Iraqis killed by sanctions: Iraq's civilian population is already extremely vulnerable as a result of US-led economic sanctions and intermittent bombing by US and British forces. According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization, sanctions have resulted in the deaths of more than one million people to date. Nearly 60 percent of the dead are children under the age of seven, most of whom died from starvation and preventable disease, such as dehydration caused by diarrhea.

If you are somebody who would wish this on a people who are in no way a threat to you or your way of life, then you should seriously take a look at the people around you - your family and friends - and imagine the same happening to them. It's simply about having some decent, human values.

The problem with conservatives such as yourself is that you never really have any valid arguments.

You simply lash out with personal, vituperative attacks and name-calling.

We kind of just feel sorry for you, as you are so passive. At least we are attempting to actively express our beliefs. To enact your beliefs, it would mean you would have to enlist to go and fight in the war you desire so much and I'm sure you do not hold convictions strong enough to do that. In short, if you had any balls, you'd pick up a gun and go off to Iraq yourself, wouldn't you?

By the way, if you look closely, we are not trying to sell our art - at no point on our websites is there any option to buy it. Any act of creativity is important in countering the destructive urges of the feeble-minded.

Cheers,
Andrew

You Silly Twits

ATTENTION, PHOTOSHOPPERS! An Australian peacenik group has launched Garage Doors Against The War, which aims to debase garage doors nationwide with various dove symbols and appeasement messages. The few examples they have at present (click around on the site) could stand some photoshop improvement. Or you can create your own photoshopped garage art and send it to them.

There are people dying, hungry and being tortured (I mean real torture, not being forced to talk to a woman.) all over the world by sadistic dictators like Hussein, Mugabe and Kim Jong Il but all you twits want to do is paint silly slogans on your garage doors.
I'm sure you are hoping that this "compassionate" form of protest will lead to greater publicity resulting in increased sales for your "art", but it will not do a damn thing for people already suffering.
I know you don't think that the U.S. and George W. should be taking any action at all, but, of course, you would be equally outraged if the U.S. sat on the sidelines and did nothing. It is, after all, the "progressive" thing to do.
For all the posturing I have seen by self-styled progressives, I have not seen one single proposal to deal with the problems of a nuclear armed Saddam or "Muslim Anger" other than staying home and hoping the next attack doesn't happen to anyone you know.
Have fun!. Hope you make lots of money so you can afford to whine about Capitalism.

Dear John,
Preempting the findings of UN weapons inspectors, due to be presented on January 27, the Bush Administration has plans to bomb Baghdad, a city of five million people. This would cause a humanitarian catastrophe equivalent to a heavy air bombardment of Los Angeles. A report issued by UN planners on December 10, 2002 (http://www.casi.org.uk) estimates that 500,000 people are likely to be injured in a US-led attack. Many more civilians are likely to die from longer-term effects of a bombing, including environmental damage and the destruction of food supplies, agriculture and critical infrastructure, such as pharmaceutical plants and hospitals. Officials from international aid agencies warn of widespread humanitarian disaster in the event of a bombing.
Consider the effects that a US-led attack would result in:
The destruction of civilian infrastructure: Public health officials fear widespread outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and malaria as a result of water contamination if the US bombs electricity grids that power Iraq's water treatment and sewage plants as it did in 1991. Twelve years of US-led sanctions have left Iraq's public health sector without basic medicines or supplies to contend with outbreaks of waterborne diseases.
Radioactive weapons: The US arsenal includes radioactive uranium-tipped bombs known to cause cancer and severe birth defects. Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr. Helen Caldicott reports that southern Iraq has experienced a six to 12-fold increase in incidences of childhood leukemia and cancer since depleted uranium was dropped on the area in 1991.
Mass hunger: Iraqis are fearful that the US will bomb food facilities as it did in Iraq in 1991 and in Afghanistan in 2001. As a consequence of sanctions, over 60 percent of Iraqis are dependent on monthly food rations from the government. Aid officials warn that food distribution is almost certain to be disrupted by bombing and that more than three million people will face hunger or starvation in the event of a war.
A million Iraqis killed by sanctions: Iraq's civilian population is already extremely vulnerable as a result of US-led economic sanctions and intermittent bombing by US and British forces. According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization, sanctions have resulted in the deaths of more than one million people to date. Nearly 60 percent of the dead are children under the age of seven, most of whom died from starvation and preventable disease, such as dehydration caused by diarrhea.
If you are somebody who would wish this on a people who are in no way a threat to you or your way of life, then you should seriously take a look at the people around you - your family and friends - and imagine the same happening to them. It's simply about having some decent, human values.
The problem with conservatives such as yourself is that you never really have any valid arguments. You simply lash out with personal, vituperative attacks and name-calling. We kind of just feel sorry for you, as you are so passive. At least we are attempting to actively express our beliefs. To enact your beliefs, it would mean you would have to enlist to go and fight in the war you desire so much and I'm sure you do not hold convictions strong enough to do that. In short, if you had any balls, you'd pick up a gun and go off to Iraq yourself, wouldn't you?
By the way, if you look closely, we are not trying to sell our art - at no point on our websites is there any option to buy it. Any act of creativity is important in countering the destructive urges of the feeble-minded.
Cheers,
Andrew

Thank you for your prompt reply. I will take the information you provided under advisement. As you may have noticed from my signature, I have a weblog. Do you mind if I post my letter and your response on it?

You can use it if you like, but I would like to see what you actually use from it. Based on what I've seen of your blog, you - like most people of your political persuasion - can only argue ad hominem.

Crowds Protest French Unilateralism

Iberian Notes Wonders What People Will Believe.

What I find amazing are all the educated, intelligent people who are perfectly willing to believe that mobile phones fry their brains, that Monsanto is trying to take over the world, that the CIA or the Mafia or the Teamsters killed Kennedy, that there's a conspiracy between the government, the referees, and some obscure figures with "muchos intereses" to screw FC Barcelona out of the League again this year, that opening the window when it's hot outside is bad for you, that you can catch a cold if the wind blows on you, that crystals have a lot of power and so do pyramids and that everyone has an energy field (and that mine is negative), that feng fuckin' shui is something more than a millenarian superstition, that electric power lines give off radiation, that there are people out there who pay untold sums of money to watch snuff movies, that there are Satanic cults sacrificing babies infiltrating our nursery schools, that it's possible to lose weight without eating less, exercising more, or both, that AIDS is a plot by the federal government to exterminate blacks or gays or both, that the CIA was running drugs from Nicaragua into the USA to fund the contras, that you can learn a foreign language by paying thousands of dollars and sitting at a computer terminal, that the US Army had hit squads to kill deserters in Vietnam, that O.J.'s son was the one who really did it, or that this whole war thing is a devilish plot cooked up between the oil companies, the Pentagon, the arms manufacturers, Dick Cheney, and the Bavarian Fuckin' Illuminati, yet they are unwilling to believe that there are governments and organizations out there that are working together with the goal of destroying everything that we all cherish about our Western society and that maybe we ought to take action against them now while we still can rather than wait until we can't anymore.

Florida Official Criticized Amid Familiar Election Chaos

Just As Everyone Suspected

The Answer!!

Police unveiled their latest tactic in the fight against crime today – a polite letter kindly asking persistent offenders to mend their ways.

Saddam Making Sure That Children Suffer.

They are the Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam's Lion Cubs. These cadres of Iraqi boys, aged between 12 and 17, are trained along the lines of the Hitler Youth, the Nazi movement founded in Germany in the 1920s that remains one of history's most disturbing examples of organized youth indoctrination.

Clubbeaux On:

Who Benefits From The Tobacco Wars?

Belter told the House that committee members were frustrated last week with the testimony from anti-tobacco groups that testified against the tobacco ban, including the North Dakota Medical Association, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, North Dakota Public Health Association and North Dakota Nurses Association.
There's no evidence banning tobacco would prevent and reduce tobacco use because no such approach has been implemented, the groups argued. The ban also could take away certain funding forthese groups for tobacco control programs.

Deep Thoughts

"NO WAR" is like saying "NO CRIME" - It is a self-evident phrase that is beyond idealistic to become ludicrous. Blaming Bush for the war in Iraq is like citizens of a neighborhood blaming the police for crime. "If they didn't actually arrest people, then the crime rate would go down." Talk it over with your kindergartener. She'll understand the apparent logic.

Affirmative Action In Action

EXPECTATIONS: As a victim of affirmative action, I think I know a little bit about just what happens to a Hispanic student at a prestigious university..
I was accepted into an accelerated pre-med program at the University of California. My SATs were very good, as was my GPA. I graduated 4th in my high school class. Both of my parents were college-educated; my mother worked in a nuclear test lab, and my father was the proverbial Rocket Scientist.
[...]
We were supposed to have a special "gifted student" program, and we did indeed have one. It was co-ed PE. The good school had advanced math, languages, physics. We had volleyball..
[...]
When I started the accelerated program I was in deep trouble, and not because of my name. The high school had never had anything higher than elementary geometry for math, and so I was already a year behind. The counselors bluntly told me that the only reason I was in the program at all was because of my "heritage." After two years of that I transferred over to the English department..
[...]
Grad school was surreal. I was soliciting letters of recommendation from my favorite professors. One, a man whose opinions I cherished, was startled to see that I had applied as a minority student. What he said has never left me. He said, "You? I never thought of you as a minority student!".
His comment summed up the attitude towards minorities. Everyone "knows" that we are just being allowed in; everyone "knows" that we are there as window-dressing, not as serious students. How can we be serious? We have to have special departments just for us. We have to have the bar lowered, just for us. We can't really compete on equal footing. If we could, we wouldn't need to fill out minority student forms. If we were really equal, we wouldn't find out that professors expect less of us than they do of everyone else.

Debating The War

My thanks to a listener who sent me this great illustration on how conservatives and liberals might react differently when faced with a threat of deadly violence:
Question: You're walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, a dangerous looking man with a huge knife comes around the corner and is running at you while screaming obscenities. In your hand is a Glock .40 and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?
Liberal Answer:
Well, that's not enough information to answer the question! Does the man look poor or oppressed? Have I ever done anything to him that is inspiring him to attack? Could we run away? What does my wife think? What about the kids? Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand? What does the law say about this situation? Is it possible he'd be happy with just killing me? Does he definitely want to kill me or would he just be content to wound me? If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me? This is all so confusing! I need to debate this with some friends for a few days to try to come to a conclusion.
Conservative Answer:
BANG!
Texan's Answer:
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! click... (sounds of clip being ejected and fresh clip installed)
Wife: "Sweetheart, he looks like he's still moving, what do you kids think?"
Son: "Mom's right Dad, I saw it too..."
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Daughter: "Nice grouping Daddy!