BUSH DEFENDS SHARON'S WITHDRAWAL PLAN/TERRORISM

(The following is meant as political satire only. It does not reflect the intent of anyone anywhere.)

Dear President Bush,

Thank you so much for increasing the risk to your troops by backing Mr. Sharon and therefore adding Hamas and the PLO to the list of people determined to see your satanist state go down in flames. We were really convinced what with the recent "cease-fire in Falluja" lie told by your media that we and our Iraqi brothers were losing steam. Thanks to your bold and reckless move, Hamas and the PLO are giving us all the money, expertise and manpower we need to "stay the course". When the suicide bombs go off in the malls of America you'll have our sincerest thanks.

Regards,

Osama Bin-Laden.


"But OP" you ask -"Doesn't Senator Kerry also support Isreal's plan?"

That's beside the point: It was a matter of timing - now is not the time.

Isreal was going to go ahead with its plan regardless whether the US supported it or not. Why not privately support Isreal but keep a lower public profile rather than announce to the entire Arab world that you support their worst enemy?

I mean honestly -do you really think that this announcement did anything more than piss off the average Mohammed in the Arab street and harden the resolve of the fanatical elements in the Middle East, in particular the Iraqi insurgents?

The JIC (Jackass In Chief) wouldn't know diplomacy if were read to him by Condi Rice.


In other news:

Been thinking a lot about terrorism lately.

Now before a squad of Ashcroftian goons from the DHS break down my door, I should clarify: I was listening to the testimony from the 9/11 hearings and was particularly struck by Jamie Gorelick's comment – “terrorism is a tool. It is not an enemy in itself; it's a tool.”

What is terrorism? I find that often the best place to start with such questions is the good old dictionary. The American Heritage Dictionary defines terrorism as: “the systematic use of violence, terror or abuse to achieve an end.”

It’s that last part “to achieve an end” that Gorelick was talking about, and which the Bushies seem to forget. Unfortunately, this administration seems to have the idea that terrorism is the result of the proliferation of terrorists. You can hear it in their rhetoric: “We need to take the fight to the terrorists,” "freedom and democracy are under attack", "This broad-based and sustained effort will continue until terrorism is rooted out". Listening to a Bush terrorism speech gives the uneasy feeling that he has no idea what he’s talking about.

Did you ever try to turn in a High School English paper after having only skimmed the book it was supposed to be about? Confession: I did, and while I was able to pull the wool over 1 or 2 teacher’s eyes with an excess of rhetoric (or more likely the teachers gave me a pass because the rhetoric demonstrated enough proficiency that they wouldn’t feel guilty giving me a “C” and moving on to better or worse papers), I ended up repeating myself over and over, and wandering in logistical circles. Bush’s terrorist logic is creepily similar –“they hate us because we’re free, and therefore they are the enemies of freedom. Freedom is God’s gift to mankind, every human soul yearns to be free” etc. etc. as though he’d read the introduction to the anti terrorist handbook and then played hooky in Crawford for the rest of the time.

We’re always so eager in this country to declare “war” on something, because it makes us sound more serious. Wars need to be fought against an enemy however, and terrorism itself is a poor one, because we can’t just go out and attack it. Oh, to be sure we can attack states that sponsor terrorism, but this (contrary to the assertions of the Bushies) is rare, because it is more common that states are struggling against terrorist groups within their borders than that they are exporting it. We can also attack groups or individuals who are responsible for terrorist attacks, but this won’t end terrorism because the groups will keep organizing and killing one will only breed more.

As a corollary, the war on drugs has proven to be a miserable failure because many administrations (including, sadly, the Clinton administration) have labored under the misapprehension that the drug problem was caused by there being too many drug users. This resulted in an imbalance of priorities where enforcement was paramount and where other methods of dealing with the problem like treatment and prevention were cut or severely disabled. This did nothing but fill the jails with drug users which was good for the prison guard unions and the construction industry, but did little to solve the problem. Even more than that, nothing was done to looking into the root causes of the problem i.e. what makes people turn to drugs.

This approach is the same one the Bushies are taking to terrorism. It’s like telling an alcoholic “your problem is that you take too many drinks. Reduce the amount of drinks you take and you’ll be all right.” Where the “drug warriors” wrongly thought that putting drug users in jail would curtail the drug problem, the Bushies are convinced that if they kill enough “bad guys” the problem will be solved. In fact this will only pour gasoline on the fire. The groups that perpetrate the terrorist acts will only match violence with violence. All throughout the Middle East hunger and poverty continue to breed terrorism, and until the international community addresses these issues there can be no hope of ending it. Moreover, it is naïve to think that the same conditions aren’t breeding “terrorism” here at home. The same frustration is leading to poor neighborhoods being “terrorized” by street gangs who have organized and acted out as a reaction to their situation and to the seeming indifference of the rest of Americans.

Conversely, where education and economic stimulus have insinuated themselves, there is a gradual relaxing of dogma. To illustrate: Iran is slowly coming out of their fundamentalist haze because the younger people there have become more educated, and that education has bred more understanding and tolerance of the west. This in turn has created a desire to relax the restrictions that the Shiite fundamentalists clung to. This happened without anyone declaring a war on them and despite being named as part of Bush’s “Axis of Evil”. China is in the midst of a capitalistic boom and is becoming more and more a “communist” nation in name only.

This is not to say that criminal acts should go unpunished, but that the international discourse should be weary of tarring with too thick a brush and more attention should be paid to education and economic conditions. If terrorism is a “tool”, then the only way to end it is to achieve the end some other way –why use a screwdriver when you have a Makita?

POP QUIZ

QUESTION: You've looked back before 9-11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?

BUSH: I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it... John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could've done it better this way or that way. You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet
I hope -- I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.

text of press conference

Here's the leader of the free world. He's had nearly 3 years since the worst tragedy on American soil in 50 years, and he can't even say what he's learned? Not even canned BS?

No "Intelligence failures must be corrected"
No "there is a systemic problem in the separation between the FBI and CIA" ala Condi last week.
No bullshit reference to how "they'll stop at nothing because they hate us?"
Not even a token "9/11 changed everything"?

Nothing! Not one fucking thing!

Wouldn't you have obsessed about it for the last 2 1/2 years? Wouldn't you think that you never want anything like that to happen again? WOULDN'T YOU HAVE AT LEAST HAVE COME UP WITH AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION "WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED"?

God help us all.

I WANT CONDI/ AIR AMERICA

Can't wait for Condi Rice to testify on Thursday! I'm sure she'll keep spinning the same crap she's been spinning since 9/12/01, but maybe Bob Kerrey'll catch her in a contradiction!

Here's how he might do it:

- On 9/11/01 she was all set to give a speech about national defense policy that contained no mention of Al Qaeda, and was to promote the conservative wet dream - missile defense.

-She claimed that no one could have foreseen that terrorists would hijack a plane and use it as a missile , but this is in contradiction of all sorts of evidence

Anyway I'll be watching/listening!

In other news:

Air America Radio made its debut last Wednesday. I was listening when they first came on here in LA. The station was a Spanish station and you could hear the announcers holding some sort of farewell and thanking everyone (all in Spanish of course) for all their years of service/listening etc. Then there was dead air for about 2 minutes, then the station cut into the middle of "I want to hold your hand" by the Beatles which then transitioned to "Cant by me love", which cut out in the middle to more dead air. Finally, the station cut into the middle of some public service announcements and commercials, and at last (about 15 minutes late) -Al Franken's show "the O'Franken factor" (a dig at Bill 'O'Lielly') came on, but the station reversed the order of the hours, so it was hard to tell what the heck was going on. Ah the trials and tribulations of creating a new radio network.

Anyway, they since have worked out the kinks and here is your OP review.

Al Franken's show is the flagship show and is the best of the bunch. The guests so far have been fabulous - Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Al Gore, Michael Moore (who apologized to Al Gore for supporting Ralph Nader in 2000!), Paul Krugman (author of "the tax cut con" a NY Times article debunking the Bushies tax cut mania, and many others. Al is balanced by Katherine Lanpher a Minnesota Public Radio host who is more radio savvy than Franken. She's constantly verbally rolling her eyes at Al's antics which gets annoying (lighten up Katherine!), but she is great at getting down to business and keeping the show on track (Franken has a tendency to meander). Great show! Problem is they need more like it. The other shows are made up of small groups of people complaining about the Bushies which, although I agree politically, can become numbing.

Probably the most aggressive show is Randi Rhodes' afternoon solo pit bull rant. She is the typical ballsy New Yorker and her voice gets shrill and annoying fast. However, to her credit, she had a fantastic segment last week where she dressed down Ralph Nader. She said that the country "can't afford" Nader because although he has some sympathetic ideas, he takes votes away from defeating Bush in November. Nader was truly flummoxed and kept babbling the same old lines about how Dems and Reps are the same and equally corrupt, and why didn't a liberal like her support him etc. Eventually he hung up on her. Great radio, but the show had yet to get back to that peak by the end of the week.

So here's my advice: If you hate right wing talk radio because of the talk radio format, you won't find this any more appealing because it's the same with different rants. If you hate right wing talk radio because of the right wing bias -give it a try. It's not going to convert any republicans, but has a slight chance of converting the undecided, and after all it's nice to hear a truly unabashed and unappologetic liberal viewpoint for a change.

I heard today that they got their first really major sponsor - McDonalds(!), so I guess it's catching on!

Click here to listen to Air America live!

FALLUJA MASSACRE/ LACY AND CONNER'S (F)LAW

Well here we are the day after.

The day after bodies of "civilian contractors" were beaten, dragged and burnt in Falluja. Just what are "civilian contractors"? Mercenaries. Ex Special Forces operating as paid security. I heard a guy on the news saying that these guys go in and do the stuff that's too dangerous for soldiers. Whatever that means. More likely they do the stuff that the US military can't get away with because of the Code of Military Justice, and international law. Deflects the blame because these guys, although trained by the military, are civilians and want to be there, so if they're killed it's not technically a casualty of the War in Iraq. Moreover, any misdeeds they do cannot be blamed on the US military. The party line seems to be that they were assisting in some humanitarian aid like a food drop or something. Not to sound too conspiracist (is that a word? Oh well, it is now!) but yeah, sure. Why do you need Green Berets or Navy Seals for a food drop? The NY Times has a creepy slideshow (Not for the squeamish. Also, you have to register, but it's free.)

Meanwhile back in the States:

This is also the day after Dubya signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act into law. Anyone who thinks that the sole purpose of this law was anything other than to weaken Roe v. Wade, stand up. Ok now both of you idiots shut up and sit down so I can tell you why you're wrong.

1. Current abortion law

Abortion law currently is (in an extremely abbreviated version) is governed by Roe v. Wade as interpreted by Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Roe v. Wade made abortion legal and said that prior to the second trimester the state cannot regulate it. Casey said that the state cannot place an undue burden (also defined as a "substantial obstacle") on a woman's right to abortion, but scrapped the trimester framework.

2. The UVVA

The UVVA creates a new crime in federal jurisdictions for those who in the course of committing another crime (e.g assault or battery) harm a woman's "unborn child"

The law scraps the term fetus and substitutes it with "unborn child" - tell me this was not a political move, I dare you. Here's the scary part though: the law defines "unborn child" as:

"a child in utero, and the term `child in utero' or `child, who is in utero' means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."

AT ANY STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT!?

So...an "unborn child" is anything after sperm meets egg? Yikes! Wait - it gets worse. Get a load of this:

"An offense under this section does not require proof that--

`(i) the person engaging in the conduct had knowledge or should have had knowledge that the victim of the underlying offense was pregnant; or

`(ii) the defendant intended to cause the death of, or bodily injury to, the unborn child."

Oh, so the person charged doesn't even have to have any knowledge or intent to have committed the crime. So in other words:

One day at the Cowabunga Indian Casino A is wrongfully informed that her co-worker B is sleeping with her husband. A finds B, walks up to her and slaps her. B reacts by shoving A to the ground. A falls on her butt and begins vaginally bleeding because unbeknownst to her she was pregnant, and the fall has terminated the pregnancy.

So B can now be charged with murdering the "child" even though she had no intent to, and even though A had no idea that she was pregnant.

"But OP", you may say, "what's the big deal, I mean how many federal crimes are going to result in the termination of a pregnancy?"

Exactly - this law doesn't do anything but posture. 29 of the States already have laws protecting the "unborn" and more are coming. The only thing this law does is chip away at Roe v. Wade by expanding the definition of unborn child. It's a big valentine to the religious right.

"But OP, the law specifically exempts abortions". So what? The damage is done. That was just a way to pretend they weren't trying to weaken Roe v. Wade.

The only thing prochoicers can hope is that the law will be overturned by the Supreme Court. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, sure -like the majority 5 jackbooted thugs there will let that happen. Dream on. This is the beginning of the end. Soon only the rich will be able to get abortions by flying overseas.

Here's the kicker: The law is nicknamed Lacey and Conner's Law after Lacey Peterson and her unborn child. BUT THIS LAW WOULDN'T EVEN HAVE BEEN ABLE TO BE USED AGAINST HER MURDERER. That crime was not a federal crime nor perpetrated on federal land. Talk about milking a tragedy for a political agenda.

Contact the Obsessive Progressive at: defeatthegop@sbcglobal.net

DEBUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Online at 11:03am on Friday April 2nd, 2004!