Nothing For Now (News Archives)

Wish I Was There

There's a whale in the Thames.

No, seriously. It probably hung around the mouth of the river for a while, then was spotted by a train rider by Waterloo Bridge. It went past the London Eye and Parliament, and beached in the Chelsea before being helped back into the water again. It's being encouraged to turn around and swim back into deeper waters, but- well, being a whale, it'll pretty much do whatever it wants to do. Hopefully it'll live through the experience. Meanwhile, I'm wishing I was in London again, just for a day. I even know the right Tube lines to take.

Some Things Makeup Won't Hide

New-look Hamas spends £100k on an image makeover

Um, you're joking, right? I mean, I know Hamas wants to be counted as a legitimate political party in Palestinian elections, but what are they thinking?

"Hamas is paying a spin doctor $180,000 (£100,000) to persuade Europeans and Americans that it is not a group of religious fanatics who relish suicide bombings and hate Jews."

Gee, why would anybody think that? Maybe because you commit suicide bombings and profess to hate Jews? Hiring a spin doctor isn't going to change what this organization did. Ever. But of course, Mr. Spin doesn't think so.

"Hamas has an image problem. The Israelis were able to create a very bad image of the Palestinians in general and particularly Muslims and Hamas. My contract is to project the right image."

No, sweetie. When you blow people up, the little bits of human flesh sticking to you make you look bad. No Israeli assistance needed.

But hey, you know what? As cynical as all of this sounds, it could very well work. Yasser Arafat got a Nobel Peace Prize, and he was an undoubted terrorist pioneer. Hijackings, bombings, attempted coups- he did it all. And the PLO is considered a legitimate negotiation and political party nowadays. This is sick. If the membership of Hamas wants to accomplish change through purely political means from now on, they should try forming another party, or radically change the one they already have. Hiring an expensive media consultant doesn't count. Put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig.

Speaking of God

It's probably too late at this point, but if Ariel Sharon isn't going to live, I hope he dies a painless death. I still can't stand the guy, but he ended up doing some good. And I'm not going to deny that the withdrawal from Gaza was a good thing just because it came from a "bad" source.

On that note, fuck you, Pat Roberston.

Kadima.

A Real Heartwarming Christmas Story

Yeah, forget about cherubic children meeting Santa and learning about the spirit of the season blah blah blah. This is real, and pretty amazing from my admittedly outside perspective.

"A youth wing affiliated with Indonesia's largest Muslim group Nahdlatul Ulama, some 40 million strong, told Reuters that members would guard churches for the coming Christmas festivities and it had persuaded youths from other religions to join the project."

Indonesia is about 85% Muslim, and has been the site of some immense terrorist bombings before. So hearing about this kind of sensibility warms the shriveled cockles of my heart. Evidently this isn't the first year the group has done this, and one of their volunteers got killed by a church bombing in 2000. As far as I've seen, this has barely been publicized in the U.S. A bit of simple Google-fu reveals that this year they formed an alliance with Muhammadiyah, another major Indonsian Muslim group, to work against terrorism.

""We are cooperating with each other and with the government in order to disseminate true Islam," said Din Syamsuddin, president of Muhammadiyah. "We must control the false interpretations of jihad."

Isn't this exactly what America wants to hear? Why did I find this out through doqz' LiveJournal?

Dumbass Headline

CNN.com - Man killed after bomb claim at airport

Now, that's a nice, accurate headline. But that's not what my RSS feed said. It said "Man's luggage exploded on tarmac".

Now, strictly speaking, you can say that's accurate. After a man was killed for claiming to have an explosive in his carry-on and refusing to let go of it, his luggage was "exploded" with water to make sure it didn't blow up. But no, there weren't any explosives in there. Nice work, CNN; way to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of making a sensational link for people to click on.

Never Thought I'd See The Day

Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres are in the same political party. I really hope this will lead to an actual change in the rules of the political game in Israel. Kadima.

Okay, that was stupid...

...But really, that's nothing compared to the stupidity on display by Michael Brown. Anybody remember this guy? The completely incompetent former head of FEMA has decided to make his living by...starting an emergency management consulting business.

Uh, what?

That's like...Rudy Giuliani writing a book on how to win friends and influence people. Like Strom Thurmond teaching racial tolerance. Like Tom Cruise giving out psychotherapy. Are you getting the idea? The sheer stupid here is overwhelming, butat least it's solid proof that the world will never cease to surprise me.

The New Center

Ariel Sharon has followed through with his threats and withdrawn from the Likud Party, founding a new organization called the National Responsibility Party. He leaves the party so closely associated with his name as the hawkish option of choice, with Benjamin Netanyahu as probably its most prominent member.

All I can say is- my mind is blown. Like I said previously, I'm pretty out of touch with Israeli politics, but in my mind, Sharon was always Likud and Likud was Sharon. But now he's determined to follow the American road map to a two-state solution, and that's left him at odds with his old party. This comes only after a week afterAmir Peretz replaced Shimon Peres as head of Labor, so I really don't know what to make of the situation.

There's going to be new parliamentary elections, and we'll see how things go. But if Sharon can somehow drag Israel through the peace plan while keeping the Palestinians from blowing it all to hell, well...I just might have to reassess my long-held opinions of him. Maybe.

I'm Out of Touch

I realize my parents are the ones who read Ha'Aretz, since I'm subliterate in Hebrew, but this statement from the BBC really struck me:

"If Mr Sharon does leave his party, he may do so from a position of strength, our correspondent adds.

He currently commands the centre ground in Israeli politics, and may take with him those Israelis who neither want to negotiate with Palestinians nor rule over them. "

Ariel Sharon occupies the center ground? And here I thought the American political spectrum was tilted to the right. I mean, there was a time when we called Sharon an unrepetent hawk, right? What passes for a dove nowadays?

Merry Fitzmas

And who have we found wrapped under the Fitzmas tree? Ooh, look! It's I. Lewis, Libby, Jr., Dick Cheney's chief of staff! How wonderful! *hugs it* One count of obsctruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and two counts of making false statements in the course of an investigation. And he resigned, too? This is a merry holiday indeed.

Better yet, Santa Pat Fitzerald evidently has a few more packages in his sack of goodies. Rumor is he's going to call for a new grand jury to deliver Karl Rove unto us. And can't a girl dream of her very own Dick Cheney wrapped in stylish red ribbons? The holiday season has never looked so good.

Well, they called it intelligent...

"Does he not grasp the meaninglessness of saying a designer designed things that were designed?"

Thank you, William Saletan, for providing the most succint smackdown of an intelligent design advocate I have ever read. Because you know what? Even if your "designer" is a cosmic watchmaker rather than God, the theory is empty. It explains nothing and it can't be tested, and if that's not a textbook example of pseudoscience, i don't know what is.

Now I'm off to mail my absentee ballot. Mere distance and election board incompetence can't stop me from voting. :)

Well, that's a bit better.

Here's the uncropped version of DeLay's mug shot. *cackles*

Smile As You Sink

Tom DeLay's mug shot can be seen here. But what the hell? It looks more like an official portrait. I realize he's not going to jail, so I'll forgive the lack of jumpsuit, but where's that little board with his name on it? The woeful expression? The lighting that brings out every bag and wrinkle on a face? I want hideousness, dammit!

Well, okay. Looking at his arrest warrant is kind of fun, too.

One Small Step

Okay, so it isn't exactly a premonition of peace on earth, but the I.R.A.'s decision to disarm and renounce violence has been one of the best international news stories in ages. Am I crazy for letting this give me some hope for the future?

Maybe it's just that anything that has even the faintest whiff of terrorism is distinctly frowned upon in the Western world post 9/11. Maybe they got fed up with the means they were using to attain their ends. Maybe it's just that the fight that lost steam; I don't know. But if sectarian violence as fierce and trenchant as that in Ireland can be truly ended this way, not with jittery cease-fires and ignored treaties but with a real renunciation of violent tactics...well, it makes you wonder if violent tactics in other places will be delegitimized, too.

Fear For Nothing

It's funny- London started out as the "easy" choice for a foreign-study program. It was English-speaking, foreign but not too much so, and had the closest thing I could get to New York's theater scene. Now it's getting suicide bombers at a rate that would make anyone sit up and pay attention, even if most of them haven't succeeded.

Of course that's a small and selfish perspective on everything that's been happening in England, and of course I'm still going in the fall. But I wonder if anything has changed? I mean, what can I do that I wouldn't have done anyway? I've had "report unattended packages" pounded into my head for as long as I can remember, and avoiding mass transit is out of the question. So all I have is this anxiety that can't be acted upon. I can only give terrorists the mental middle finger I've been giving them my whole life and never, ever start blaming anyone but them for what they do. Same old, same old.

Good News

The New York State Supreme Court has ruled that banning gay marriage violates the state constitution.

Now, the caveats. New York is weird in that its Supreme Court is actually its lowest, trial-level court. So this ruling only applies in New York City. The city is considering an appeal to the next level- the Appellate Court. And the ruling will apply to the whole state only if the Court of Appeals in Albany upholds it. But still...pretty cool, huh?

Even in ultra-conservative Idaho, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage has been rejected for the second year in a row. Admittedly, this is probably more of a libertarian than a liberal thing, since they have a statutory prohibition of the practice. But the President really came down on the wrong side of this issue. If he starts pushing a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage again, I really think it will end up being a political loss for him, as well as a loss in the history books. And in 20 years, a lot of people are going to wonder what the big deal was in the first place. It's not a coincidence that the younger the people you ask, the less support you'll find for this fight to "protect marriage."

Oh, and one more side note. I interned at the Appellate Court during my senior year of high school. Let me just say that if this gets appealed, it'll be a whole lot more interesting than most of the cases that come through there. :)

Hate in Unexpected Places

According to the Daily News, Columbia University is becoming an increasingly unfriendly place for pro-Israeli students. And a lot of the harrassment and anti-Israel rhetoric is coming from the professors themselves.

Here's a couple of choice anecdotes: Joseph Massad, professor of Arab politics, once asked a student who was an Israeli military veteran how many Palestinians he'd killed. And Hamid Dabashi calls Israel "a military base for the rising predatory empire of the United States." That's a nice balanced viewpoint about the Middle East, don't you think? Just the kind of attitude I'd want from the chairman of the Middle East and Asian languages and cultures department. Nice, Columbia.

Giving professors academic freedom has always been a hallmark of the top American universities. But where's the line between extreme political viewpoints and outright bigotry? And how nasty are things getting when Jewish students feel hounded while studying in New York City, home of the largest Jewish population outside of Israel?

***

To counter that crap, happy news- well, hopefully. Hamas, out of the kindness of its non-existent heart, has called a temporary cease-fire to aid in the choosing of a new Palestinian leader now that Yasser Arafat is dead. And Ariel Sharon has made noises indicating that he'd be willing to negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas, the interim leader and favorite to win the Palestinian election, about a cooperative rather than unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

I can't even begin to express how bizarre it would be if the final peace process came to fruition under the watch of Ariel Sharon. But as long as there's peace, I don't care if it's Ariel the Disney mermaid doing the negotiation.

What I'm reading today: The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis

Oh, Thank God

Best news I've heard all month. Good riddance, you prick.

A small, naive part of me is hoping this signals some kind of turnaround in the administration- away from reactionary extremism and towards the kind of conservatism I can at least understand, if not necessarily advocate. Every little bit helps.

Goddamit

Congratulations, American electorate. You've finally made me lose me pitiful little mind. Oh, and Bush? I hate you. And Democratic party? You guys suck.

Bush isn't this amazing uber-politician. He's a crappy President. I mean, really crappy. And you couldn't take advantage of that. In 2000, he was a mediocre candidate, and you couldn't take advantage of that, either. You guys stink. Come up with your own frickin' vision instead of just saying you're going to do it like Bush but different. When your whole campaign platform is based on not being the other guy, you're letting the other guy set the agenda. And that doesn't work.

Assholes, this is what you get when you choose your primary candidate based on "electability," because of the medals on his chest instead of the words coming out of his mouth and the ideas in his head. How "electable" does Kerry look now? Morons.

I'm sick and I'm tired of trying to comprehend why any person in their right mind would vote for that war-mongering, budget-blowing, bigoted, smirking little chimp of a man, let alone more than half of the American people. I'm sick and tired of being told that I'm the one who's detached from America because I don't get the people in the red states. Maybe they need to understand me. I'm American, too.

And goddamit, I'm sick and tired of being patient and telling myself this is the beginning of the end for the conservative political era we've been in since Reagan. I'm tired of looking at historical trends and telling myself that the next few Presidents will probably be relatively weak Republican mediocrities, until one of them is so awful he'll prompt the beginning of a liberal cycle. I'm tired of reassuring myself that much of my adult life will be spent in this liberal cycle. Because history is nice, but I don't want to wait 8 years, or 20, or more, for it to happen.

I wanted history now. And 5 hours of staring at CNN and not doing my homework and realizing that these things are bigger than me, and bigger than you, and bigger than John Kerry and George Bush, just makes me sad. And very, very tired.

I know I'm not supposed to give up hope. There's still Ohio, right? Right.

Yeah, right.

I hate everything.

Love By Any Other Name

Congratulations to all the homosexual couples getting married in Massachusetts. May you live long, healthy, and happy lives together.

What I'm listening to today: Sunday in the Park With George, by Stephen Sondheim

Losses

When I first read the blaring headlines announcing that former NFL football player Pat Tillman had been killed fighting for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, I was sad, then a little bit pissed. Why should the death of a football player merit so much more attention than all the other American and coalition deaths that have been happening every day in Afghanistan and Iraq? What made him so special?

As it turns out, Tillman sounds like a rather special person. He gave up a football contract worth $3.6 million, and all the fame and comfort that would have come with it, to join the Army and fight for his country. He was a college football player who actually graduated- and with high honors and a 3.84 GPA, at that. And once he joined the military, he refused all requests for media coverage because he didn't want any special treatment.

I think what Tillman understood better than the reporters interested in him was that he was just another soldier, all of 27 years old, choosing to serve his country and paying the ultimate price. There are hundreds just like him, and thousands of parents and loved ones mourning them. I can't resent the attention Tillman's death is getting. Maybe it will make people remember all the other young people, filled with promise, that the U.S. is losing to war every day.

Rest in peace, Mr. Tillman. You did good.

Jesus Christ, Equal Rights

Today, the Massachusetts Legislature approved an amendment to the state constitution that would define marriage as a union of a man and a woman, but allow gay civil unions. In order for the amendment to go through, it has to be affirmed in the next legislative session and approved by voters in 2006.

Basically, the proposed amendment is a compromise between the liberal stance of allowing gay marriage and the conservative one of not allowing any kind of legal union for gay couples. It was probably the sensible way for the legislature to go. But seriously, who are we fooling here?

The civil union 'solution' to the gay marriage 'problem' is a cop-out. Answer the damn question, America: Do you think gay couples are as valid as straight ones or not?

Legally, marriage isn't an institution tied to religion. You can be married by a judge, a ship captain, or a friend who was ordained by some online 'church.' So telling me Jesus wouldn't approve of having Stan and Dan get married isn't going to do much convincing. And try telling an infertile couple that their marriage isn't real because it won't produce children.

The fact that many Americans are willing to let gay couples have civil unions but not marriages is just a reflection of the fact that they're uncomfortable with homosexuality. If you look at the word roots, homophobia doesn't mean hatred of homosexuals. Phobia means fear. Yes, they say, it's okay for Polly and Holly to be together- as long as you don't equate what they have with what my parents had. Because that makes uncomfortable.

Well, that's just too damn bad. You can't outlaw what you're uncomfortable with. Gay couples and their advocates aren't fighting this fight so they can get health benefits. They want recognition that the love between two people of the same sex is just as real as that between a man and a woman.

So decide, people. Is it?

What I'm reading today: C Programming: A Modern Approach, by K.N. King

Sequined Wolverines and Howard Dean

Woohoo! Thanks to the wonders of discount codes, I'm off to see The Boy From Oz on Broadway next Tuesday. For a musical geek, I don't go to the Great White Way nearly as often as I'd like- the last show I saw was Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme. But now I'm going to see two and a half hours of Hugh Jackman swishing around in very tight pants. Yay!

Oh, and in case anyone is in doubt, the guy can indeed sing. Just look at his performance in the 1998 London revival of Oklahoma! He isn't quite as smooth as, say, Gordon Raitt in the movie, but he's still my favorite Curly. Because really, who's going to believe that a young cowboy sings like Gordon Raitt, let alone Alfred Drake of the original Broadway cast? I realize they have more of a 1950's vocal style, but it feels so artificial to me. Jackman's Curly has the great virtue of making his singing seem like a natural extension of his speaking voice.

That, and he's gorgeous, of course. :P

In other news, my dad's head almost exploded when he watched the NBC Evening News a couple of nights ago. They claimed to have a juicy "exclusive" on Howard Dean and his pre-Presidential past. What was this story, you ask? An affair with another woman? A criminal record? Uh, no. Nothing so dramatic, really, but the TV station tried their best to spice it up.

The broadcast began by showing an unassuming building in Canada, then going in to an equally unassuming room. Then, they open the closet door to reveal the horror whithin. What could it be? A dead body? Gold bullion? You'd think it was Al Capone's vault or something. Well, we all know how Capone's vault turned out, and this wasn't much better. The closet was full of videotapes of a public television political discussion program that Dean would participate in as governor of Vermont. The network claimed to have looked through 90 hours of these tapes, and presumably they were showing the nastiest Dean quotes they could find.

The results? Clips of Dean saying the the Iowa caucus was overly beholden to special interests and not reflective of the opinions of the mainstream American public. Dean telling another man that his claim that 80% of children of single mothers end up on welfare is "crap." (Nice choice of words there, man.) And- gasp!- Dean saying that George W. Bush is a moderate. In 2000.

Um, okay. Where's the controversey? Where's the story? Where's the beef, dammit? So, Dean called Bush a moderate and now calls him an arch-conservative? How exactly is that hypocritical? In the time between the "moderate" statement and today, Bush has started two wars, cut taxes several times, increased our national deficit to previously unheard-of proportions, cut environmental regulations, and passed the PATRIOT Act, among other things. In 2000, Bush was still talking "compassionate conservatism." He hadn't even been inaugurated. So Dean isn't allowed to change his opinion of the man based on his actions? To use Dean's own words, "That is absolute crap. That is absolute unmitigated garbage." Much like the entirety of NBC's juicy expose. Just another example of that damn liberal media bias. Hey, wait a minute...

What I'm reading today: Hand Puppet Movie Theater, by Jerry the Frog *snicker*

Spam Rage

That's right, folks- from the people who brought you road rage and air rage, here's the latest in temper tantrum technology- spam rage!

I kid you not: a computer programmer in California has been arrested for, among other things, threatening to send anthrax spores to and castrate the employees of a penis-enlargement company that was drowning his computer in unwanted advertisements and bulk e-mails.

Though the castration threat does seem freakishly appropriate, in a Hammurabi's Code kind of way, the main target of the programmer's ire, a Mr. Douglas Mackay of Canada, wasn't nearly so amused. His words lead to my single favorite quote in the article-

He said his firm does not send spam but blamed a rival firm which he said routes much of their unsolicited bulk e-mail through Russia and eastern Europe. Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business.

Wait. Let me repeat that, just for my general amusement. Mackay said such firms gave bad name to the penis enlargement business.

Ha! In not entirely unrelated news, Congress is scrambling to pass an anti-spam bill before they adjourn next week. It's always nice to see people of all political persuasions uniting against a common enemy, isn't it. :)

Isabel Arrives

After all the hype, Hurricane Isabel has arrived at last. Of course, we're hardly getting the worst of it here in Pennsylvania. As of the early evening, the wind is hard enough to turn the occassional umbrella inside-out, but not enough to stop the brave young men and women of our ultimate frisbee teams from practicing outside. (And getting highly muddy in the process)

In baseball, the Yankees and Orioles were forced to stop playing after five innings due to rain. The score was tied, and Mike Mussina was denied his 200th career win. Yippee. The ever-lovable George Steinbrenner retired and unretired in the space of a day, and Jorge Posada's MVP bid is gaining support from writers as diverse as the very sabermetric Rob Neyer and the...um...not-so-sabermetric Joe Morgan. As a Yankee fan, I would love to see the underappreciated Jorgie win, but I won't exactly be outraged if the award goes to A-Rod instead. Heaven knows he should have won it at least once by now.

And, finally, in a story that's almost as funny as it is sad, a fan died last night when he tried to jump off the right field wall at San Fransisco's Pac Bell Park to get a pair of sunglasses he'd dropped about 25 feet below. He was actually trying to jump onto a light fixture so he could swing down to the ground, but he missed and hit his head.

The worst part was that a homeless man had caught the glasses when they fell and offered to hold on to them until the fan got down. All he needed to do was take the stairs, but I guess it was too much trouble. Obviously, jumping onto a light fixture and swinging down to the ground, Tarzan-style, was a much better idea. The full tragicomic (mostly comic) aspects of this are discussed on this Primer thread. Don't read it if you're easily offended.