Category: Grave

For the past month, residents of the Austrian capital city of Vienna have noticed a large contraption erected in the center of Karlsplatz, one of the city’s historic plazas. Translucent but sturdy, and appearing to have originated from the mind of Stanley Kubrick’s set designer, the two-story structure was prominently billed as the Nike Infobox, a “high-tech multipurpose container acting as display stand, open office, and lounge.” In addition to featuring two Nike-clad staffers inside and being prominently adorned with the familiar “Swoosh” logo, information was printed on the structure’s sides that proclaimed, “Nikeplatz (formerly Karlsplatz): This square will soon be called NikePlatz”, as well as including an instructional phone number and URL, www.nikeground.com, presumably so that interested (or more likely, highly concerned) citizens could gather more information about the mysterious co-opting of the city’s history and public space.
And what did they learn? “Nike is introducing its legendary brand into squares, streets, parks and boulevards: Nikesquare, Nikestreet, Piazzanike, Plazanike or Nikestrasse will appear in major world capitals over the coming years!” Furthermore, curious onlookers were promised, the square would soon feature a giant 36- by 18-meter monumental Nike Swoosh, coated in “special steel covered with a revolutionary red resin made from recycled sneaker soles.”

Thanks to the well-meaning (but completely idiotic) three-star Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, we’re all going to hell, which is pretty ironic, given what the guy did. Or rather, said.
Lt. Gen. Boykin has been a frequent guest lecturer on behalf of his evangelical Christian faith, where, as a military commander active in the search for Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, he is invited to speak — in uniform — to church audiences, presumably to inspire them to serve their country through means other than paying higher income taxes.
News organizations have been having a field day detailing the full rancor of his remarks, including comments stating that “President Bush ‘is in the White House because God put him there,’ and that ‘we in the army of God . . . have been raised for such a time as this.'”
Furthermore, Boykin said — aloud — that Islamic fundamentalists hate the U.S. “because ‘we’re a Christian nation’ and added that our ‘spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.'” Oh, and let’s not leave out his thoughts on the Prince of Darkness, who may or may not be more evil than Muslims: “The battle that we’re in is a spiritual battle. Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army.”
Where do I sign up??!! Because we’re nothing but hellbound with Boykin’s framing of this “clash of civilizations” and the foolhardy perpetuating of this War on Terror™. And he’s not even Mormon.

The FAA has embarked in a sweeping review of its security procedures and has ordered new inspections of the more than 7,000 aircraft in the nation’s commercial airline fleet, officials announced today.
This is in response to a mechanical crew’s discovery on Thursday evening of a small bag containing boxcutters and other potentially dangerous paraphernalia found on two different Southwest Airlines flights. Also included in each bag were notes that made clear that the bag’s purpose was to highlight weaknesses in the current system of searching passengers before they board planes, and to show that weapons could still be brought onto commercial aircraft.
“In addition to the box cutters and notes, the bags contained bleach and modeling clay, according to a senior law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity. The clay was formed to mimic a plastic explosive, while the bleach could have been used to demonstrate how a dangerous liquid could be smuggled aboard an aircraft. It could also be thrown in a person’s eyes to temporarily blind them.
The notes also included the exact date and location the items were placed on board the planes, the official said.”
Following the description of the bag’s contents above, a completely unnecessary (and very asinine) concluding element in the New York Times’ reporting of this incident attempted to stave off fears of renewed terrorism:
“Government officials played down the possibility of a terrorist connection, though FBI spokeswoman Susan Whitson said members of the bureau’s joint terrorism task forces are involved in the investigation.
Harbin said Southwest does not believe the items found were connected to a plot to hijack the airplanes.”
Who would ever, in their right mind, suspect that this was anything but the work of someone clearly trying to help by revealing errors in the way we’ve been combatting terrorism, much like the unique breed of benevolent hackers who break into government websites and then alert site administrators of their security weaknesses?
It’s reassuring to know that members of the FBI’s terrorism task force are involved in finding whomever planted this terrorist “go bag”. Let’s hope this concerned citizen gets life in Gitmo.

Wielding what has to be one of the least coherent quips ever spoken by a member of the House, Democratic Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who at one time was thought to be the left’s saving grace when Dick Gephardt resigned as leader, tried her damnedest yesterday to encapsulate Democratic frustration with Bush’s willingness to spend $87 billion on nation-building (with a healthy $20 billion of that going to U.S. construction firms and part-time Republican party donors).
Her completely-not-soundbite-ready comment appears below:
The funding issue, like last year’s vote to go to war in Iraq, split Democrats. Many supported the funding despite reservations about Bush’s policy. But others joined with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who called the bill a “bailout for one-eighth Bush’s three-eighths failed policy.”
Good thing election year is approaching, because with clever and accessible retorts like that, every American voter can get on board with the Dems next fall.

Earlier this week, it was announced that President Bush had raised $49.5 million in just the last three months alone for next year’s campaign. At this rate, he is expected to surpass $200 million with which he can soundly trounce whichever mediocre candidate the Democratic Party nominates to run for president next fall.
We would like to take this opportunity to wish the President much success with his “fuzzy math” endeavors as he gleefully counts the 54 electoral votes handed to him by Governor Schwarzenegger (as well as some very shortsighted voters) in California, as well as the 25 “bonus brethren” points afforded him by Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Incidentally, regarding his Iraqi victory of yesteryear, one of the choice quotes uttered by the President at his appearance in San Bernardino this afternoon included the liberal-angst-inducing line: “I acted because I am not about to leave the security of the American people in the hands of a madman.”

In other circumstances, the following legal case might have sent shivers of terror down the spines of American military leaders and their elected superiors. Alas, we live in an era where the nation with the world’s largest economy has forced its hand and more or less exempted itself from war-crimes prosecution. Through economic bribery, of course.
Yesterday, a court in Germany began arguments in a case seeking damages against the German government by Serbs whose relatives were killed in the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, when a handful of jets dropped bombs upon a bridge in a small village “far removed from the breakaway province of Kosovo where Slobodon Milosevic’s Serbian army was brutally suppressing ethnic Albanians and fighting off NATO air raids.”
The result of this particular bombing run? 10 civilians were killed on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
The families of the victims are seeking $4.1 million from the German government, though neither the pilots nor the jets themselves were German.
“They claim that Germany, although not directly involved in the attack, knew of and approved the bombing despite the bridge’s obvious civilian usage. Germany is in this case representative for all of NATO, explained the Hamburg lawyer Gul Pinar, who also criticized the government for sanctioning an attack without warning on a civilian target on a church holiday.
The lawyer for the relatives, Ulrich Dost, says the 35 Serbs are suing on the basis of a 1977 protocol added to the Geneva Convention which calls on signatories, including Germany, to distinguish between civilians and the military and “direct their operations only against military objectives.” The bridge in Varvarin, he added, had no military significance.”
10 people on a Sunday afternoon in a remote Serbian village? Why, that’s nothing! I mean, it’s not like the war crime that ensued when American bombers killed almost 30 Afghans, and wounded many more, at a wedding party in July 2002.
I’m sorry. Did I just say war crime? I meant “tactical error.” Good luck suing the U.S. for that, chumps! We’re immune from the impact of cases like your supposedly precedent-setting German lawsuit.

From the Washington Post‘s Battle Over Iraq Budget Begins by Jonathan Weisman and Dan Balz:
Retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who said he probably would have voted for the war resolution and later said he would have opposed it, has joined other Democrats in criticizing the administration’s current course in Iraq. But spokeswoman Kym Spell said Clark had no position on the $87 billion request. “He’s not in Congress,” she said. “He’s running for president.”

The LA Weekly‘s Harold Meyerson, writing in today’s Washington Post, details a recent series of findings on the public’s perception of news, released by the “Program on International Policy Attitudes”, a presumably uber-wonkish collective of academic research centers and polling firms from Maryland and California.
Here’s the (sadly predictable) one-two punch, a veritable qualification of American egocentrism in statistical form, with relevant facts in bold:
In a series of polls from May through September, the researchers discovered that large minorities of Americans entertained some highly fanciful beliefs about the facts of the Iraqi war. Fully 48 percent of Americans believed that the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Another 22 percent thought that we had found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And 25 percent said that most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. Sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of these bits of dubious knowledge; 8 percent believed all three.
The researchers then asked where the respondents most commonly went to get their news. The fair and balanced folks at Fox, the survey concludes, were “the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions.” Eighty percent of Fox viewers believed at least one of these un-facts; 45 percent believed all three. Over at CBS, 71 percent of viewers fell for one of these mistakes, but just 15 percent bought into the full trifecta. And in the daintier precincts of PBS viewers and NPR listeners, just 23 percent adhered to one of these misperceptions, while a scant 4 percent entertained all three.
In other words, odds are that if you get your info from the television, you’re not quite getting reality. While the numbers make painfully obvious the extent to which Fox News viewers are a deluded mess of pre-packaged assumptions, what really stands out is the fact CBS News viewers (with Dan Rather et al hardly considered a mouthpiece of conservative propagation) were still 100 percent more likely than the average American, who may or may not get his or her news from television, newspapers, or water coolers, to be just as deluded about a realistic understanding of events.
True, the PBS viewers seemed to have a better grasp of things than “the average American,” but, well, you knew that already, didn’t you.
What pre-packaged assumptions does Sarah Vowell’s fan base bring to the table?

Please excuse the two geographic-pun-based grave headlines in a row. Won’t happen again, unless Bush decides to cower at the heels of Iraq’s neighbor to the east. In which case, get ready for something awful, along the lines of “And Iran, I ran so far away…”
So, getting serious: James Ridgeway at the Village Voice (whose weekly “Mondo Washington” column is an excellent, must-read synopsis of national events) details the apparently increasing consensus that, much like we rather flippantly made note of a few weeks back, Syria is next in line to bear the wrath of administration neocons.
This includes the possibility that, rather than engaging in yet another annual American attack on Muslim nations, the U.S. may indirectly sponsor Israel’s own efforts on this front:
Israel is becoming more and more active as a U.S. military surrogate in the Middle East. Last weekend Der Spiegel reported that Israel was ready to launch an attack against Iran’s nuclear sites to prevent them from becoming operational. And, basing its reports on U.S. government sources, the Los Angeles Times claimed that Israel could fire nuclear-modified U.S.-made Harpoon cruise missiles from its submarines. The Israeli nuclear arsenal is believed to include 100 to 200 warheads that can be delivered by missiles, planes, and submarines. The Israelis claim there are no restrictions on converting Harpoons so that they can deliver nuclear warheads.
Maybe it’s just a commonplace fear of annihilation, but…attacking nuclear sites that may or may not be operational, with nuclear weapons no less, seems, well…neither “neo” nor “conservative.” Just stupid.

Can this guy be any more of a hypocrite? First Bush condemns sex tourism at the United Nations, and now he’s going on a sex tour!
Buried in the piece is one un-named official’s description of the trip as “the trip from Al Qaeda hell”: isn’t that what N.W.A. called their reunion tour?
What Bush will be reading on the plane: Platform, by Michel Houellebecq.