~

“Caped Teen Kills Two, Then Self in Calif.”

“…Built in 1995, the neighborhood of mostly beige two-story homes was described by residents as a family community where people often socialized.”

jx, can you blame him? people want to sue gun and ammunition manufacturers for producing items which 3rd parties decide to use to kill other folks; when will they go after developers and architects for devising demoralizing, stifling environments which simultaneously foster rage whilst providing no outlet for it? why aren’t parents being sued for sequestering their kids in these fucked up suburban habitats?

~ new gloves are on the way, but for those of you who missed out on this gift from our previously mentioned + wish list, there are still a couple of items available!

~

The union representing Philadelphia subway, trolley and bus workers threatened to strike unless a contract is reached by Monday, leaving the transit system’s 460,000 daily riders to find alternate ways to travel.

The city is preparing for a possible strike by setting up extra bicycle racks…

why not put out the bike racks anyway? also, pave south street and 21st street, then replace the cobblestones and bricks between trolley tracks with concrete everywhere except on 49th street.

~ indictment for only one administration official is pretty lame, especially if the guy is only known for being indicted. again, bush tries to divert attention from the indictments (and ongoing investigation of karl rove’s crimes) by moving mars closer to earth.

~ happy 40th birthday to Jefferson National Expansion Memorial!

~ we used to think that harriet miers was nominated because, once she was rejected due to her incompetence and ignorance, the bush administration would be able to put forth a more radical nominee from the right-wing fringe whilst saying, ‘you can’t reject this asshole because i was already fair with the previous one’.

now that she has ‘dropped’ out, we reckon that she was nominated despite her incompetence and ignorance because the administration knew it would eventually need a diversion in the news from the fact that members of the administration are about to be indicted by a grand jury. they expected the indictments this week, so they had her withdraw her own nomination in order to ‘pre-empt’ the discussion about the charges. no indictments came out today, so there is a risk for the administration that the miers talk will wear off by tomorrow (just ask trent lott!), and there will be nothing else going on in the news tomorrow. also, afterwards, the bush administration will be able to put forth a more radical nominee from the right-wing fringe whilst saying, ‘you can’t reject this asshole because i was already fair with the previous one’.

~ cold:

“In a month, who will remember the name Harriet Miers.” –Senator Trent Lott

~ irony:

“This [statement from Iran’s president] is a clear contravention and breach of the UN charter and it should be dealt with by the international community.”

–Zvi Rav-Ner, israel deputy ambassador to the UK

~ open letter to All Things Considered [w],

You featured a commentary, ‘Insurgent Violence vs. Terrorism in Iraq’ by Anisa Mehdi in which she expressed, in a supercilious, condescending manner, her belief that participants in the conflict in Iraq are incorrectly referred to as ‘insurgents’; she states that they should be labeled as ‘terrorists’. Her claim hinges on the superficial similarities in appearance of how the conflict is waged, not on the source of anger or intention of the participants; by painting a portrait of scary gunmen attacking children in our schools, she intends to have us agree that any horrific act waged by one person against another should be labeled ‘terrorism’. This is a short-sighted interpretation of the motivation for violence; a school, for example, can be attacked by foreign Islamic jihadists, by domestic survivalists, or by disaffected loner with no discernible purpose.

Ms. Mehdi seems to miss the fact that insurgency is a movement while terrorism is a tactic. Insurgents are made by the notion that they are rebelling against an authority, be it a government or an occupation by a foreign army, regardless of how they work towards that goal; terrorists can have a panoply of ideologies, but what ties them together as terrorists are the methods by which they seek to achieve these various goals. Insurgents can utilize terror—bombing a hotel housing foreign media—or they can engage regular forces—mortars and firefights against U.S. Marines.

In other words, an insurgency can contain terrorists, but it is not equivalent to terrorism. Insurgents are defined by the end they seek, while terrorists are defined by their means; these notions are sometimes intertwined, but quite often exclusive. George Washington’s Continental Army would be considered insurgents by any party involved: British, French, or American; I presume Ms. Mehdi sees the distinction between these men and terrorists.

What is more discouraging than Ms. Mehdi’s misunderstanding of insurgency and terrorism is her repetition of the meme, which has been disproved – even disavowed, with a wink and a nod, by the administration which pushed the notion from the beginning—that the war against the people in Iraq is a retaliation for the attacks by al Qaeda on the United States; in her own words, Ms. Mehdi claims that the United States has ‘avenged’ the 9/11 attacks with its war in Iraq. Facts on the ground and even reports by the CIA have stated repeatedly that there was no connection between Iraq and the attacks on 9/11/01, and yet, four years later, there is a commentator on your show, repeating this falsehood.

-the angry red planet, Philadelphia, PA

~ y’all probably missed the announcement because you were swimming through dozens of articles on the fact that the electricity is out in miami, but the position of the bush administration has been stated to be that the torture of anyone in the custody of the united states is wrong, except when it is alright:

The White House wants the CIA to be exempted from a proposed ban on the abusive treatment of terrorism suspects being held in United States custody. –the guardian

a lot of fucks can make indian summer hay that the indictments on tom delay’s money laundering, the investigations on bill frist’s insider trading, the questions about harriet miers’s competence/intelligence, and who knows what the fuck about the grand jury investigation of security leaks all being politically motivated (as though that makes them unsubstantiated or fraudulent) but how on earth can someone defend the administration at the point where it insists that the united states exists at the same moral ground as saudi arabia, syria, al qaeda and russia?

~ speaking of torture, the temperature in philadelphia has dropped from the 70’s to the 40’s in less than a week. we left our gloves in clichy or new jersey; feel free to peep the gloves on our wish list!

~
terra cimmeria: i said earlier that there would be 2000 dead troops in iraq by xmas?
xxxxxxx xx xxx: y
terra cimmeria: it looks like it will be halloween, instead

~ to mark this milestone, some u.s. senators who voted for invasion of iraq -when it was perceived by them to be the politically popular thing to do – mention that, now that the u.s. has failed to secure a victory, and the president’s 37% approval rating means it is safe for them to criticize him, they were ‘misled’ into believing that the war was a great idea, because the administration told them so:

dodd of ct:
‘had i known then what i know now, the answer would have been ‘no’, categorically’

feinstein of ca:
‘had i known that the intelligence that i reviewed in a classified form and in a nonclassified form was both bad and wrong, i would not have voted’

do they really take everything the administration says at face value? do we need senators who are this trusting and ingenuous? are u.s. senators really this fucking blockheaded? maybe feinstein should have been reading the papers that these people were reading, because two and a half years later, they are still right, and she is wrong.

~ at least, however, kurds can wear pleated pants in public:

“It wasn’t all that long ago if he had of worn this outfit and was captured by Saddam Hussein’s thugs he would have been killed for wearing it,” Bush said. “He feels comfortable wearing it here because we’re a free land.”

~ anatomy of a fall break:

(more…)

~ here is an excuse to link to the green line review at cafe tableaux:

“we’re out of smilk”
“you’re going to have some angry vegans!”
“i’ll kill you…but i won’t eat you.”