No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Does Israel have a right to exist?

If you read my previous post, you've probably guessed where I'm going. You may say it's unfair to form a negative impression of a country based on one visit. But many things have happened since then to confirm my impression. Which is that Israel is a supremely arrogant country with a serious master-race syndrome.

Political correctness demands that when you criticize Israel, however mildly and deservedly, you must first, last and in between, issue ringing denunciations of the Arabs, beat your breast over "The" Holocaust, ritually intone "Of course, I defend Israel's right to exist", and generally jump through fiery hoops to distance yourself from any perceived hint of anti-semitism. But more and more bloggers (including Billmon, Mitch Stephens, and Barbara O'Brien), and even conservative-media pundits like Richard Cohen, are daring to ask the taboo question: does Israel, in its current form, have the right to exist?

If the question strikes you as outrageous, let's modify it by substituting a country that Israel used to be very pally with: Apartheid South Africa. Did Apartheid South Africa have the right to exist? Today, it doesn't. Instead there is a new, more representative South Africa. The hated relics of Apartheid, such as the Bantustans, the anti-miscegenation laws, the race-based restrictions on residency and land ownership have been rightfully swept away. The ANC, though long denounced as a communist terrorist group, didn't sweep the old South Africa into the sea, nor did they slaughter all the white inhabitants.

Something similar is going to happen in Israel sooner or later, and the only question is how much blood will be shed until then. I'm well aware that the majority of Israelis are secular, and a sizeable portion of them want peace and do not support the violence being done in their name. Unfortunately, a handful of ultra-orthodox and ultra-hawkish fanatics are the tail wagging the dog, and wallowing in tens of billions of US taxpayer dollars a year.

Despite its small size and population, to claim that Israel is in constant danger of sudden annihilation is unjustified hyperbole. Israel has nukes, it has overwhelming military superiority thanks to US largesse, and it has an insufferably smug attitude of exceptionalism, might makes right, and racist disdain for its neighbors. The big mistake it has made is in backing the Palestinians into a corner, and leaving them with nothing to lose.

The Israeli people have a right to live in peace. But I hesitate to say "Israel has a right to exist" since I don't want to give tacit support to the Apartheid state that Israel is currently. I don't want to condone their treatment of their Arab subjects as untermenschen.

Blinkered by its own arrogance and racism, and shielded from reality by its American rubber stamp, bully boy and sugar daddy, Israel has never had to deal realistically with its neighbors. It's never been forced to see them as fellow human beings with legitimate needs and aspirations, people who suffer and bleed just like Jews. It's far easier to say, "they're all pigs who want to destroy us", though the peace treaties signed with Egypt and Jordan surely put the lie to this stereotype. (Funny how only Israel gets credit for those treaties, never Egypt or Jordan.)

History shows in every part of the world that true security only comes when you treat your neighbors with dignity and fairness. The Brits learned this in Northern Ireland, the white South Africans learned it, and Israel is going to have to learn it some day. The sooner, the better.

I was a stranger and you did me in...

When I was an undergraduate, I volunteered to spend a summer on a kibbutz in Israel. I have no Jewish connections, but like many people, I admired Israel. I bought uncritically the myth of Israel as the plucky survivor, making the desert bloom in spite of the overwhelming force surrounding it, eagerly counting the minutes until its destruction.

Through the student union in my college, I made contact with an agency in London which placed non-Jewish volunteers in kibbutzim. I arrived in London and made my way to the agency's office. I was walking into the office when a burly security guard materialized in my path. "Shalom, sir", he said, and gave me some spiel about security measures before patting me down and searching my backpack. It was to become a familiar ritual over the next week.

Eventually I was admitted to the office and picked up a letter, written in Hebrew, which was supposed to be a letter of introduction to another kibbutz agency in Tel Aviv. I was also supposed to be picked up from Tel Aviv airport and given a free night's stay in a volunteer's hostel in Tel Aviv, and given a ride to the Tel Aviv kibbutz agency next morning. I proceeded to Heathrow Airport and checked in four hours in advance, as I had been advised.

Four hours proved to be barely sufficient to get through the security checks. I encountered a whole series of burly security men with their canned "shalom, sir" speeches. I understood the need for security, but did I really have to strip down to my underwear three different times?

Anyway, I had an uneventful flight to Tel Aviv and was admitted to Israel without too much drama. Then I sat in a waiting area along with several US Jews who were going to various different kibbutzim. Their shuttles came and picked them up. I was left waiting - and waiting - and waiting. Finally I was told the airport was closing and I had to leave. I took a taxi downtown and manged to find the youth hostel, where I spent the night in a crowded, muggy and uncomfortable dormitory for an outrageous price.

The next morning I made my way to the other kibbutz agency and handed in my letter of introduction. I was given another introduction letter in Hebrew and told to report to Kibbutz Gvat, near Haifa. (Strangely enough, when I tried just now to locate the kibbutz using Google Maps, the top match was the White House.) I had been lead to believe I would be given transportation to the kibbutz, so I was quite surprised at being left to my own resources in a country where I didn't speak the language and couldn't even read the script. When I asked politely if there had been a misunderstanding, the person I was dealing with suddenly forgot how to speak English, and the standard-issue burly security man hovered threateningly until I left the office.

I managed to get a bus to Haifa, but finding the kibbutz was a lot more difficult, and it was late at night before I arrived. Someone at the office told me that the person who normally dealt with non-Jewish volunteers was away for the weekend and I would have to come back on Monday. I had to walk back to Haifa - the buses had stopped running - and spend the weekend cooling my heels.

On Monday morning bright and early, I reported back to Kibbutz Gvat. The person I was supposed to meet - an American woman - was there, but she had an unpleasant surprise for me. She told me the kibbutz was full and I would have to go back to Tel Aviv and get myself assigned to a different kibbutz.

So I took a bus back to Haifa and another to Tel Aviv, and spent another night in that godawful youth hostel. I hated returning there, but my funds were rapidly dwindling. On Tuesday morning I reported to the kibbutz agency and met the same man I had dealt with previously. He had an even more unpleasant surprise for me - there was "something wrong" with the letter of introduction the London agency had given me, and I would have to go back and get another one. As if I could flit back and forth between London and Tel Aviv like taking a bus!

Disgusted, I went to a travel agency and booked the first cheap flight out of the country I could find. It was an Olympia Airways flight to Athens. Unfortunately it didn't leave until midnight so I had to hang around Tel Aviv all day. I took a bus to the airport about 6pm and checked in, and then things really got ugly.

Apparently the check-in agent was suspicious that I was leaving Israel so soon after arriving, and sent for the by now familiar burly security man who took me to a holding room and questioned me. I told the whole story about the run-around I had been given. He asked me why I had been told to return to London, and not speaking Hebrew, I had to reply that I didn't know. "I think you do know", he insinuated with a sneer.

That was the last straw. I unloaded on him about how I had volunteered to spend my summer in Israel for no pay, and how I had encountered nothing but incompetence, hostility, shoddy treatment and lies. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, the flicker of a smile on the man's face told me I had blown it.

I was taken to another holding room, stripped naked, cavity-searched, then left to sit naked for a couple of hours. Finally they apparently decided that I was too insignificant to go to any trouble over, so without warning, my clothes and passport was thrown into the cell and I was ordered to get dressed. I did so with alacrity, and was frog-marched out of the room and back to the boarding area. I finally got the coveted exit stamp in my passport, but had to undergo another strip-search before I could board the plane. Didn't the left hand know what the right hand was doing?

I have never been so relieved to get out of a country. Greece was a utopia of civilized behavior by comparison. I spent the rest of the summer working my way back across Europe, including an interesting sojourn in Germany, but that's a story in itself.

I started writing these reminiscences as a lead-in to some thoughts on Israel's current behavior, but this post has grown too long so I'll follow up later. Suffice it to say that I did not get a favorable impression of the country while I was there. The only people who showed me any human kindness were the Palestinians - fruit sellers in the market, janitors in the hotels and so on. They were the only ones willing to help me find my way where I needed to go. They had it far worse than I did, but they shared their food and water with me, and in general treated me as a fellow human being rather than as some annoying goy maggot.

Maybe that's why I don't join in the universal chorus of condemnation of the Palestinians and Arabs in general, and don't regard them as subhuman untermenschen who deserve everything Israel dishes out to them. Being Irish, I have a natural tendency to sympathize with the underdog and despise bullies and invaders who think might makes right, and that some ancient scroll gives them the right to someone else's land.

More thoughts to follow.

Lebanon's Holocaust - courtesy of Uncle Sam

This is horrible. Dozens of innocent women and children slaughtered by cowardly Israeli thugs with high-tech weaponry paid for by my tax dollars.

And the bloodthirsty US government will continue to cheerlead for this butchery, shielding Israel from international criticism, sabotaging ceasefire efforts and smearing anyone who objects to this senseless mass killing as an evil, baby-eating Hitler-worshipper.

Condoleeza Rice (left) will continue masquerading as a diplomat while doing everything in her power to keep the violence going, so Israel has more time to kill as many Lebanese as it can, as part of the "birth pangs" of neonazi-con hegemony in the region.

Meanwhile stateside, the Monkeynuts regime shows its contempt for international diplomacy and peacekeeping efforts by foisting the immature, tantrum-throwing and thoroughly despicable John Bolton on the UN. Bolton is up for confirmation in the US Senate, and as usual the cowardly, quisling Democrats are going to roll over and play dead - they're too craven to express strong disagreement, let alone filibuster the explosive loose cannon who has destroyed what was left of the US's influence at the UN.

Israel defends its wholesale slaughter of innocents with the (demonstrably false and racist) claim that Hezbollah guerillas hide among civilians. Hmmm, maybe we should use that argument against George Bush Junior and his neonazi-con puppetmasters? They've hid among civilians all their lives, wimping out when they had a chance to serve their country, but they don't hesitate to bang the drum for war, suffering and destruction, caring nothing about casualties, interested only in how much they can enrich themselves and their cronies. Contemptible swine, the lot of them.

The smirking murderer

Last September, while George Bush Junior was clearing brush in Crawford, sucking his thumb with John McCain at a photo-op in Arizona, and pretending to strum a guitar in California, the corpses of US citizens were being eaten by dogs in New Orleans.

The entire federal government may have been AWOL during the disaster, but many doctors and nurses worked heroically. Trapped in flooded hospitals in 100-degree heat, with no electricity, no working toilets, and no defense against looters, they tried to save those they could, and ease the suffering of those who were going to die anyway.

So guess which ones get charged with murder?

This is the Bush regime and the religious right in a nutshell. They won't lift a finger to help people in desperate need, and actually impede and arrest people who are helping. Then they get all mouth-foamingly vengeful and vindictive on the people who were doing something useful at great personal risk and discomfort.

It's pretty clear to me who should be facing murder charges.

Technical note

This weekend I added a "bandwidth theft" countermeasure to this website. Bandwidth theft is when someone hotlinks your images, i.e. their HTML page has a link directly to an image on your site. The result is that some of your bandwidth quota gets used up to display their pages on their site. Not cool!

Since for technical reasons it's not possible to eliminate bandwidth theft entirely, I programmed in a trick which will at least stymie the lazier and less tech-savvy bandwidth thieves. If they try to hotlink directly to my images, instead of the image they specified, they get an image which advertises my CafePress store. Now I'll just sit back and wait for an angry email from some clueless thief: "How dare you advertise on my site without my permission!"

I know many of you use an RSS reader to read this site, and I think images will still display correctly, but let me know if you find otherwise.

A cluebat for John McCain

An unmistakable sign that John McCain intends to be George Bush Junior's successor is his daily lurching to the right and pandering to the dregs of ignorance, stupidity, superstition and anti-science that are the rethug base. Case in point: his recent foot-in-mouth pronouncement on teaching creationism in the science classroom. (HT: PZ.)

Once again, some bloviating buffoon makes me ashamed to be from Arizona. I'm especially sick and tired of the "why are Darwinists so afraid of creationism" shtick. Here is my reply, not that McCain will ever see it, but I have to vent sometimes.

Listen up, dummy! Whether you like it or not, evolution is scientific fact, and accepted as such by every country with a halfway-decent educational system. It is the central organizing principle of all modern life sciences, and supported by overwhelming evidence from almost every branch of science. Without evolution there would be no modern medicine, and no science of genomics, in which Arizona has invested heavily.

Evolution has withstood 150 years of exhaustive scrutiny, and passed every test with flying colors. It continues to be an amazingly fruitful source of new ideas and research programs in medicine, agriculture and dozens of other areas.

By contrast, creationism aka. "intelligent design" has never produced a single peer-reviewed scientific paper or accredited college course. Its leaders are religious partisans who spend all their time fundraising, lobbying and filing lawsuits, not doing scientific research!

Evolution has nothing to fear from creationism. First give children a solid grounding in what science is, how it differs from pseudo-science, and why a scientific theory isn't "just a theory". Then by all means let's critically compare evolution and creationism. There's no doubt which one will be laughed out of the science classroom.

Oh, and I hope some day advances in medicine will allow your lips to be surgically removed from George Bush Junior's ass...

Fetal Attraction

George Bush Junior, the Vacationer-in-Chief who responds to war, disaster and suffering by scuttling off to Crawford, the Deciderer who never met a military spending bill, tax cut for billionaires, benefits cut for poor people, billion-dollar bridge to nowhere or other boondoggle bill that he didn't like, has suddenly, after five and a half years of bicycling and brush-clearing, had a fit of steely resolve and issued his first veto.

And wouldn't you know it, it's a veto designed to pander to his lunatic religious-right base of useful idiots while slapping the seriously ill in the face. Hmmm, maybe "fecal attraction" would be a better title for this post. Junior sure has the hots for those religious-right neanderthals.

With Karl Rove's typical eye for the studiously mawkish photo-op, Monkeynuts emits his veto while surrounded by so-called "snowflake babies", and justifies his attack on medicine with blatantly manipulative but mindless non-sequiturs. Any educated person knows that embryonic stem cells are harvested from embryos that would be destroyed anyway. Junior's action doesn't save a single "precious unborn child" zygote. All that the Hypocrite-in-Chief has succeeded in doing with this shameful display of cruelty, hypocrisy and ignorance is forcing scientists to flee the US for other, less anti-intellectual countries.

My undergrad biology is a bit rusty, but if I recall correctly, there are two basic procreation strategies in the animal kingdom. One strategy is to pump out as many offspring as possible, then leave them to sink or swim. This is the approach adopted by fish, insects, rodents and what we generally consider the lower animals (though a biologist would wince at such anthropocentrism).

The other method is to have fewer offspring but devote much more effort into ensuring the survival of the offspring until adulthood. If you've seen March of the Penguins, you have an idea of the extremes to which this can be taken. But at least the penguins don't have to shell out tens of thousands for orthodontic braces and college educations for their chicks. Still, the second approach is the one we generally associate with the "higher" animals.

With this in mind, think about the religious right approach to procreation. Sex is dirty, evil and sinful! Sex is inherently wicked unless it is hedged about with fearsome taboos and rituals, and only indulged in by those who are appropriately guilty and quaking with fear! And of course if you go ahead and have sex, you must accept the punishment - pregnancy and childbirth. Every sperm is sacred, and every woman must churn out babies at the maximum possible rate!

But the right to life, which is precious above all else from the moment of conception (and trumps the rights of those who are actually alive), suddenly ends at birth. Once an unborn child becomes a born child, it gets left behind - the lunatic right abruptly loses all interest in its welfare, deeming tax cuts for billionaires to be more important. Doesn't this sound like the "lower animals" strategy to you - a strategy for rats and insects rather than human beings?

It would certainly explain a lot...

Wargasm

The fruits of the "Bush Doctrine" are now dismally clear. Emboldened by Junior's reckless adventurism in Iraq (in response to an attack by Saudi Arabians), Israeli PM Ehud Olmert - anxious to portray himself as even more bad-ass than Sharon - responds to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by waging a grossly disproportionate shock-and-awe blitzkrieg against Lebanon, slaughtering civilians, destroying the infrastructure, and sealing the country off so that anyone who tries to flee can be picked off like fish in a barrel.

In the US, the lunatic religious right are wetting their pants at this sign o'the End Times. And their secular counterparts, the neonazi-cons, are equally orgasmic. They want the US to join in on Israel's side and up the ante a hundred-fold, until the entire region is racked by death and conflagration. Because that's how you spread freedom and democracy. (It really must be the end times if George Will starts making sense.)

Needless to say, when the US is stretched past the breaking point in Iraq and Afghanistan, and can't even get its own civilians out of Lebanon, that's the perfect time to spark off a whole new war against Iran - because we will be greeted as liberators. So say Bill Kristol and the Hammer of the Krauts respectively, so it must be true.

Jeezus H. Christ on a goddam pennyfarthing bicycle! What planet do these neonazi-con warmongers live on? Even if the Iranians hate their regime - which is undoubtedly the case for a significant percentage of them - anyone with the IQ of a sea cucumber realizes that they are going to hate the US infinitely more once we start destroying their country, and they will rally behind their government, become radicalized, and wage an insurgency that will make the current Iraqi quagmire look like a Methodist covered-dish supper.

Two things the US and Israeli regimes have in common: exceptionalism, the belief that they have a sacred calling which exempts them from norms of civilized behavior; and the conviction that all Arabs and Muslims are crazed, bestial untermenschen carrying a defective gene that fills them with subhuman rage and hatred, and a mindless desire to massacre every Jew on earth. Of course it couldn't possibly be that Muslims have any valid reason to be angry at Israel. When they see Lebanon being destroyed, they should shrug their shoulders and say that it belongs to Israel anyway.

As long as the Israeli tail wags the American dog - and as long as blind overwhelming firepower is seen as the only solution to every problem - there will never be peace in the Middle East, and neither the US nor Israel will be safe.

He who walks behind the rows - with an assault weapon

Iowans are normally a pretty sensible and laid-back lot. (I have to say that so as not to piss off my wife.) But nowhere in the US is safe from dangerous religious-right fanaticism. The Des Moines Register recently published (without a hint of disapproval) a rather disturbing article on what the Children of the Corn are doing on their summer vacations:

How can church camp lessons be so intense that they stick with these kids for years afterward?

Let's begin with the ending - that is, the final day of each Camp Survivor, when campers learn about Christian persecution.

The entire week, campers have been divided into tribes. Each tribe has designed an elaborate flag that's been involved in every game and has become its identity. On the last day, Denhart takes away the flags and announces that it's now illegal to be a Christian at Camp Survivor.

Camp counselors put on Army gear and face paint and guard the flags. The counselors tote water balloons; when a camper gets hit, the camper must run to the chapel to read a Bible verse on persecution.

Three counselors posing as police officers can arrest campers for being Christian. The campers are taken to a "jail," where they are enticed with candy to try and reveal the secret password. If they do reveal the secret password, their team's leader is captured.

It always amazes me about the lunatic extreme right that the more deathly their grip on political, judicial and media power in this country, the more total their control, the more they wallow in their absurd persecution complex - and the more frenziedly they brainwash their children with this persecution fantasy. Illegal to be a christian, indeed! Projection, anyone?

I don't claim to be a christian, but what an appallingly shallow vision of what the religion is all about! Being a christian just means belonging to a certain "tribe" and knowing the "secret password" which entitles you, even though "persecuted", to sit in judgment on everyone else's lives, especially their sex lives.

Shouldn't it be about demonstrating, by example in your daily life, the teachings of Jesus? Shouldn't it make you think about your own actions, the beam in your own eye, and how to be a better person? Heck, no! The religious right has turned Jesus into a mute eunuch. Keep trumpeting his name, but heavens forbid you should think about what he actually said. I guess that's another thing that's only for the little people.

Onward Christian Soldiers, marching off to war... who would Jesus carpet-bomb?

Do I dare to slice a pig?

TRANSCRIPT OF HIS ROYAL MAJESTY'S PRESS CONFERENCE

PRESIDENT BUSH: Boy, what a bunch of major-league assholes. Oh wait, is this on? Holy shit. Um, ah, okay, good morning.

Q (all in unison): Good morning, Mr. President.

Q: And may I in particular thank you for that very warm welcome.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah, whatever, Ganny-boy. Ya know, I'd like to be called something else for a change. How about y'all calling me "Mr. Commander in Chief". See, I'm the Commander, and I'm the Chief, I know that 'cause they play Hail to the Chief wherever I go, so that makes me the Commander in Chief. Heh heh heh.

Q (all in unison): Yes, Mr. Commander in Chief.

PRESIDENT BUSH: That's better. Okay, who's got the first question? Stinky?

Q: Mr. Commander in Chief, are you at all concerned about the upsurge in violence between Israel and Lebanon?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Ya know, I think that Jews and the Ay-rabs oughta settle their differences in the true Christian spirit. Maybe if they all sat down to a feast of roast pig. I'm lookin' forward to slicing me a pig tonight. Yessiree Bob, I'm really looking forward to that. (Laughter.)

Okay, next question. Yo, Stevie Wonder. Hey, blind guy, I'm talkin' to you. Didn't you see me waving? C'mon, make it snappy. (Laughter.)

Q: Mr. Commander in Chief, what about North Korea's missile program, which could eventually give them the capability to nuke West Coast cities?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Ya shoulda asked me about the pig. (Laughter.) Y'know what, I'm gittin' tired of bein' called Mr. Commander in Chief. Y'all oughta call me Mr. War President. See, I'm the President, and there's a war on, an' I got war on my mind. So that makes me a War President. Heh heh heh.

Q (all in unison): Yes, Mr. War President.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Anyone else wanna ask me about the pig?

Q (all in unison): No, Mr. War President.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Okay, I'm outta here. Gawd bless America! Umm... which door is the way out?

Bend over, insert KYL jelly

I'm late with this story (as usual), but since the Arizona Repulsive is maintaining its usual wall of silence regarding anything which shows rethugs in a bad light, I have to add my two cents' worth.

Arizona junior senator Jon Kyl lied to and tried to mislead the Supreme Court. He did so in a rather crude and ham-fisted way. And he did it in an attempt to help George Bush Junior enshrine torture as official US policy.

Colluding with Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Kyl displayed Oscar-worthy screenwriting talents in creating a lengthy debate out of whole cloth and inserting it retroactively in the Congressional Record. The two conspirators then wrote a friend of the court brief based entirely on this bogus testimony, in a crude attempt to interfere with the Supreme Court's deliberations in the Hamdan case - a case in which Chief Injustice John Roberts had already shown his total lack of moral compass and judicial temperament, ruling for Junior & co. in the Court of Appeals while simultaneously being wined and dined by the regime as a Supreme Court pick, a blatant conflict of interest. (At least Roberts' prior activity in the case forced him to recuse himself, no doubt after many sleepless nights trying to figure out how he could still rule on the case without his contempt for due process being too obvious.)

Fortunately, the Court saw through this insultingly clumsy deception and discounted it. At least the majority did. Predictably, the odious and loathsome Antonin Scalia, another blackened sepulcher lacking a moral compass, blustered and protested that he couldn't see what was wrong with duplicity and mendacity as long as it advanced his favorite partisan cause. Damn it, why didn't Cheney shoot him in the face when they went hunting together?

Back to Kyl - he has always been a colorless apparatchik and supine, subservient water-carrier for the Monkeynuts regime, voting according to the White House's demands over 98% of the time. But now he has hit a new low. Lying to the Supreme Court and attempting to interfere with the course of justice, in a frantic attempt to support the regime's torture policy, very clearly disqualifies him from the high office he holds.

Even the people of Arizona deserve better.

Oh my god - they killed Kenny Boy!

I just learned that Ken Lay, who was awaiting sentencing after his Enron fraud conviction, was found dead at his Aspen, Colorado mansion, apparently of a heart attack. I'd be a liar if I said I was shedding any tears for him, but I'm disappointed about one thing - he's escaping justice. (Maybe, if the religious right's theology is correct, he's gone to some country club version of hell.)

Authorities say there is no evidence of foul play. No doubt the CIA and other such entities have poisons which are virtually undetectable and can simulate a heart attack, especially when the victim is a 64-year-old man used to the good life. I've previously mentioned how Kenny Boy and Junior have been joined at the hip for years. I'm sure Lay knew where a few bodies were buried. Or perhaps Karl Rove was too embarrassed at the prospect of having to issue a presidential pardon to such a blatant criminal?

Needless to say, it's most likely that the old bastard simply kicked the bucket without any help. I was right about one thing, though. Lay would never serve a day in jail.

Junior cuts and runs from hunt for Osama bin Laden

NEW YORK - The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, The New York Times reported in its Tuesday edition.

The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the CIA Counterterrorist Center, the officials told the paper.

The Junior regime wants to bury this story by releasing it on the July 4th holiday. Follow this excellent suggestion: go to MSNBC and give the story a five-star rating to ensure it stays at the top of the day's stories. Do the same at Yahoo.

In a way, of course, this is old news. Days after 9/11, Junior struck his best John Wayne pose, moseyed up to the microphones, and drawled: "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that said, 'Wanted, Dead or Alive.'" A scant 6 months later, he had changed his tune: "And, again, I don't know where he is. I - I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him." Osama bin Laden was never more, for the Junior junta, than a convenient excuse to get the war wagon rolling. ("One wheel on my wagon, and I'm still rollin' along...") After that, he was simply a bogeyman to be invoked with much mouth-foaming at rethug Nuremberg rallies and conventions: "If John Kerry is elected, why, he'll, he'll... he'll stop looking for Osama bin Laden, gosh darn it!"

Given Junior's extensive financial dealings with the Bin Laden family, and the many unanswered questions about 9/11, it's tempting to speculate that the capture of Bin Laden is the last thing the junta wants - unless he is in a body bag, thus conveniently prevented from letting slip any awkward facts. How else to explain the litany of incompetence that let him escape from under US noses when he was bottled up at Tora Bora? One way or another, Bin Laden has led a charmed life since George Bush Junior was appointed president.

Enjoy your Fourth of July, knowing that Junior doesn't give a rat's ass about bringing to justice the man who murdered 3,000 Americans...

Doing my patriotic duty

I've always agreed with Thomas Jefferson that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. I started this blog three years ago, and I've made a point of posting a patriotic dissenting article every July 4. Here are some of my previous posts:

July 5, 2003: Cancer: The George Bush Junior monarchy in a nutshell.

July 4, 2004: Taking back America

July 4, 2005: Two Americas

And some bonus posts:

• Why I hate America
• How to destroy America

Coming later: a Declaration of Independence from King George the Turd.

Beware of the blog

Sometimes it's amusing in a sick way to see the attack poodles of the ultra-extreme right line up in perfect formation, yipping and snarling in synchronization at whatever is the current target of Karl Rove's Hate Machine.

Markos Moulitsas, my lord and master who dictates every word I write (note to any rightards who may be having this read to them: that's sarcasm) is the target of the current two-minute hate. The command to pile on Kos has even trickled down to the lowest stratum of the corporatist media, namely Useful-Idiot-in-Chief Doug MacEachern of the Arizona Repulsive, about whom I have had occasion to blog once or twice.

I haven't spent much time on the Kos/Jerome Armstrong story, which I understand consumes certain portions of the blogosphere. I don't even read Kos all that often. All I know for certain is that anything MacEachern says about Kos, or any other progressive figure, is false.

What this pile-on indicates is the the extreme-right power structure is beginning to wake up to the danger posed by progressive blogs who are bypassing the emasculated, corporatist media and getting their news unfiltered without a Bush-worshipping spin. It also indicated that the extreme right still doesn't get it about the rest of us. (I won't say "the left" because it isn't about right vs. left, but extremists vs. moderates.)

The extreme right is very much a top-down movement where all decisions are made and all policies formulated at the elite top level, and then handed down to the unthinking masses. They are unable to see the world in any other terms, and imagine Markos Moulitsas must be some left-wing Karl Rove. No he isn't! He's just some guy. He would be the first to say that he is just another part of the netroots, the broad bottom-up movement that is demanding change in this country and a return to sanity.

The quisling, collaborationist Democrats in Congress have as much to fear from the netroots as the 'thugs. Thanks to the thousands of blogs out there, of which Kos is only one, our bottom-up movement is finding its voice and demanding that our representatives pay heed, instead of constantly burying their heads in the asses of the mega-corporate lobbyists. We the People are going to take back this country and sweep away the corrupt, criminal traitors who have hijacked it, and those who enable them!

Two thumbs up their asses

There was a time when the Republican Party could fairly claim to be the party of small government, a party that didn't insist on micro-managing every last thing that happened anywhere in the US. Those days are dead and gone. Now we have the rethugs declaring themselves experts on video game violence, steroids in baseball, and - most ridiculously of all - movie critics.

WASHINGTON - A Christian-themed movie about a football coach's faith in God is finding an audience in Congress - not so much for its inspirational message - but for the PG rating it received from the motion picture industry.

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and other lawmakers are demanding explanations after hearing complaints that the movie "Facing the Giants" was rated PG instead of G due to religious content.

The Motion Picture Association of America claims the controversy is based on a miscommunication with the filmmakers and says religion was not the reason for the rating.

"This incident raises the disquieting possibility that the MPAA considers exposure to Christian themes more dangerous for children than exposure to gratuitous sex and violence," Blunt said this month in a letter to MPAA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman.

Any student of history with a passing familiarity with the Crusades, the Inquisition, the mass witch-burnings and so on down to the WWII Holocaust, might indeed conclude that exposure to Christianity is more dangerous for children than exposure to sex and violence. But, considering that the movie's producers agreed with the MPAA that a PG rating was appropriate and never appealed it, why is Congress butting in and even demanding hearings? Obviously they don't care how ridiculous they look as they frantically pursue their christian dominionist agenda.

I wonder how many of these pompous defenders of the faith dragged their children to see the most violent snuff movie ever made, the Jesus Chainsaw Massacre aka. The Cash-in of the Christ?

Oh, and don't you love how they instinctively whine about "christian persecution". Even though far-right fundamentalist christians have a monopoly on political, judicial and media power in the US, they're never happy unless they can whinge about being persecuted victims, and so they go looking for slights and insults where none exist. Gee, wouldn't you think they'd be a bit more secure in their faith?

In 200 years, no-one has said it better than Ben Franklin: "When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."