Israeli Nuclear Nitemare. In today’s New York Post, Peter Brookes, a senior fellow in the rightwing Heritage Foundation thinktank, says that Israel is adamant that Iran not be permitted to become a nuclear power (as Israel is) and is actively considering making its own, very-long-distance air attack upon Iran. Tho Brookes thinks no Arab country would then attack Israel (and Arabs in general attack Americans wherever they can be found), he may well be wrong. Iran might then retaliate with ballistic missiles upon Israeli cities:

And while Israel has a limited missile defense system, missiles raining in on Tel Aviv, a city of 3  million, could be devastating. But Israel could threaten to respond to Iranian strikes on Israeli civilian targets with nuclear weapons.

So this is what the Zionist nitemare has come down to: a nuclear attack by Jews upon Moslems, for which the United States will be blamed — and in truth for which the U.S. Government will be responsible. All those hundreds and hundreds of thousands, even millions of dead Iranians will be our fault, because we have backed the lunacy of Zionism and turned a blind eye to Israel’s illegal nuclear proliferation. Is your conscience ready to assume that guilt?
+
U.S. law is supposed to forbid foreign aid to any country that creates nuclear weapons in violation of the principles of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Yet the U.S. Government has known for years that Israel has a nuclear-weapons program but continued to pour more than $3 billion of American taxpayer money into Israel every year without fail despite knowing full well that Israel would be willing actually to USE nuclear weapons, and the U.S. would be blamed; that U.S. citizens all around the world will become targets of violent retribution; and the entire world will denounce the United States as a mass murderer for helping Israel do this terrible thing.
+
There is only one way out of this mess, really just one way: the United States must announce plainly for all the world to hear, and direct its remarks most specifically and forcefully to the U.S. Zionist lobby, that if any country in the Middle East uses nuclear weapons against any other country, the United States will immediately launch a massive nuclear strike on the guilty party and wipe it off the face of the Earth, as a deterrent to any future use of nuclear weapons. And announce as well that if Zionists in the United States attempt to interfere or sabotage the U.S. counterstrike, they will be rounded up, prosecuted for high treason, and executed as co-conspirators in the mass murder committed by (the late) Israel.
+
Zionism has now become Public Enemy No. 1 to the entire world. It’s time for the United States to face that what had to happen is about to happen: that unless Israel is DISestablished and merged into a secular Palestine, with all special rights now reserved for Jews abolished, Israel will kill millions, and the United States will bear the entire blame.
+
(Responsive to “An Iran-Israeli War”, column by Peter Brookes in the New York Post, September 30, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:10 PM

 
Florida ‘Punished’. The State of Florida, whose egregiously incompetent and unjust election in the year 2000 gave George Bush the White House, and which has, according to some observers, not made enuf changes to guarantee there will be no repeat of unfairness, has been hit by 4 hurricanes this year (so far), the first time in 118 years that it has felt the sting of 4 hurricanes in one season. Large parts of other Southern states have as well been hit by high winds, soaking rains, massive property damage, and weather-produced deaths. This hurricane season happens also to be a presidential election season. In every era of human history but ours, such “acts of God” would be taken as clear signs that God is angry with the South generally and Florida in particular.
+
Considering that the areas of the South struck by hurricanes constitute a large part of the Bible Belt, we can hope that millions of the people affected will indeed feel that God is specially angry with them, and actually ask themselves why. Might their vicious attitudes toward other people and their consistently voting for the most regressive politicians and policies have stirred the wrath of the Almighty?: Didn’t I tell you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you? What does it take to get thru to you people?
+
In being vicious toward others, the Deep South has held itself back. After all, to keep a man down, you have to stay down with him.
+
It is well past time for the South to stop being so ugly and negative, but let people live their own lives by their own lites — including gay men and blacks; stop voting for jingoists, militarists, and imperialists; and become in truth the New South we keep waiting for.
+
Then maybe the hurricanes will veer out to sea harmlessly. Maybe not. But it’s worth a try.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:50 PM

 
“Rebate” Scams. Scores of millions of Americans are robbed of unknowable billions upon billions of dollars every year in “rebates” that they never apply for or are never paid, even if they do go to the trouble of reading all the instructions, making a copy of the receipt, cutting out the UPC symbol, filling out the application, and mailing everything in on time. Because “rebates” are a scam that should be outlawed.
+
Every company that offers a “rebate” does so with full knowledge that some people will not find the time to do all the work involved, so won’t even apply. Others will do something wrong and be told they don’t qualify — or just never hear back, and, if they follow up, will then be told they did something wrong — and perhaps even be told it’s too late now to do it right!
+
What percentage of people entitled to rebates don’t get them? Who knows? But it’s a lot — certainly enuf to induce manufacturers or retailers to offer rebates rather than simply cut prices. Offering rebates that they know some people will not get is a type of willful fraud: robbery. So why hasn’t government outlawed rebates?
+
Alas, government has its own “rebate” scams intended to defraud citizens out of moneys properly due them. Here in New Jersey we have an “NJ Saver Rebate” you have to apply for, and you can’t apply if you don’t have an application package. You aren’t told by the State that you are entitled to a rebate package. It isn’t sent automatically to everyone entitled to it.
+
I got the rebate my first year here (I returned to NJ in June 2000 after 35 years in NYC), but was not sent the package for 2001 — even tho I had applied the year before, so should have been in the system to receive the application — so didn’t think to apply, and didn’t get it. I was robbed of several hundred dollars by the State of New Jersey.
+
I did apply for 2002, but my application was sent back with a demand that I submit a copy of my Social Security card. I wrote back indignantly that (a) I didn’t have a Social Security card anymore because I got my SS card 40 years ago and lost it decades ago when my wallet was lost or stolen, and (b) I didn’t have to present a Social Security card when I made application for the 2000 rebate, but got that, so they cannot require me to present a SS card now. I never heard back! And I didn’t get my rebate, another several hundred dollars stolen from me by the State of New Jersey.
+
This year, I heard a promo on TV about the rebate, so went online to look for the form, and could not apply online because you have to plug in a number from the application package, which wasn’t sent to me! — again, even tho I had applied TWICE for this rebate so should have been sent an application package automatically!
+
So I sent an email to my State Assemblyman. Someone from his office called when I wasn’t home and sent a return email that said I needed to apply for a Social Security card and should call him, but left no phone number for me to call! I emailed back that there was almost certainly not time enuf to apply for and receive a Social Security card and I didn’t need one in 2000, so shouldn’t need one now. I also pointed out that I needed a phone number at which to reach him, but got no reply! The deadline for applying, October 1st, is fast approaching, and it looks as tho the State of New Jersey is intent on cheating me out of my NJ Saver rebate yet again!
+
How much is at issue? If a co-worker and I read the website right, it should be at least $1,000 — that the State does not want to give me, even tho I am entitled to it! How much is it cumulatively, the two years I have already been robbed and the year presently at issue? Perhaps $2,000; perhaps more.
+
By contrast, the City of Newark mailed me a notice that I am eligible for a property-tax rebate and needed only to return that form to apply for it. I got that rebate. If the City of Newark — which is supposed to be one of the poorest cities in the Nation — can take the time and money to alert every taxpayer and actually pay the rebates due, why can’t the State of New Jersey, one of the richest in the Nation, do the same?
+
We are being robbed and must demand reforms.
+
First, all commercial rebates must be in-store rebates or simple price reductions. No gimmicks; no applications; no onerous procedures and documentation to send in. If a UPC code is required, let the cashier cut it off the package right then and there, and let the store deal with the manufacturer or its own home office, as it does anyway.
+
As for state and other government rebates, they should be distributed automatically. If they have your records, they already have your Social Security information and don’t need separate proof. You’ve already established that.
+
Rebates are robbery and should be outlawed.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:59 PM

 
Two Short Items. Item 1: Antiwar Tack. Dick Morris, a right-wing former advisor to President Clinton (!), is delited that John Kerry has supposedly taken a full-out antiwar stance on Iraq, claiming that this ensures his defeat. First, I suspect Morris has, like most rightwingers, exaggerated Kerry's dissent on Iraq, since rightwingers aren't known for their honesty and seem to operate on the assumption that saying something makes it true: that simply saying that Kerry is going to lose, will make him lose, by the magic of self-fulfilling prophecy! It doesn't work that way.
+
Second, I'm sure there are a lot of Americans who now have very serious doubts about staying on and on and on in Iraq.
+
I responded to Morris's column in the New York Post today ("The Anti-War Turn Is a Loser") with the following short letter to the Post:

RIGHT-WING liars may think that Americans still believe that murdering Iraqis and seeing our sons killed in an unending guerrilla war -- and yes, that is what it now is, a guerrilla war, and we're not very good at fighting guerrilla wars -- is necessary to the defense of "Main Street", but most Americans know there is no such linkage. We are disgusted by the war and the lies that got us into it. We know that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and all claims by the evil liar Bush that it did, show him to be a slimeball embarrassment to the Presidency. The Iraq war has INCREASED terrorism, not reduced it, and everybody knows it. If Bush is re-elected, we will STILL be fighting in Iraq in 2008!

Americans who had lived and worked in the Arab world safely for years have been kidnapped and killed — beheaded! — since Bush's war made all Americans, even pro-Arab Americans, targets of Moslem rage. We are more at risk now than before Bush's war.
+
The Democrats must poison the slogan "Four more years" by making sure that every time an audience hears Republicans chant "Four more years", every listener will silently add, "of war in Iraq". Chant it everywhere: "Four-more-years — of war-in-Iraq!" That's what you'll get if you vote Republican. "Four-more-years — of war-in-Iraq!"
+
Item 2: Ray Romano's Wealth. The star of the enormously popular CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond said, in an interview published today online at iWon.com, of his decision to do one more season: "The whole thing wasn't the money, as much as it is [$1.8 million an episode] — and I apologize for that to everybody out there." The interview also concludes with an apology: "Once again, I apologize for my salary."
+
Well, Raymond, it's very nice of you to apologize for your salary, but you are content to take it, aren't you? While typical working people in many parts of this country and in many industries make $25,000 a year, you will make $39.6 million this year — not counting any work you do apart from the sitcom. For play-acting. That's obscene.
+
Forbes Magazine reports that there are now 313 BILLIONAIRES in the United States! more than ever before. 313 BILLIONAIRES. They make Ray Romano's forty mill look like chump change by contrast. If Ray Romano, a mere multimillionaire, feels embarrased about his preposterous salary, what must BILLIONAIRES feel?
+
Let's help Ray Romano and all those billionaires get over the guilt they must feel for their obscene wealth, by raising income tax rates on the hugely rich to 99% on everything above $5 million a year. That should help a lot of decent rich people sleep better at nite.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:59 PM

 
Dad, You Were Wrong. Every generation goes thru a trauma. It’s called “parents”.
+
In recent years, the United States has been sensitized to “psychological child abuse” via, among other things, PSA’s (public service announcements, those noncommercial “commercials” for various good causes that the networks tend to put on late at nite) which show professional actors saying terrible things to the camera as if speaking to their children: ‘You good-for-nothing, I wish you were never born.’ Most people in normal families have heard such things. Many have said them. There are some things you can’t take back, try tho you might.
+
I did not grow up in an abusive family, but the negative things your parents and older siblings say can adversely affect your self-conception and impact your life for decades anyway. Fortunately, the positive things they say can also impact your life. Still, the more things sting, the more they impress themselves upon the personality. 100 encouragements and compliments can be undone by 1 vicious condemnation hurled in anger.
+
I am a nite person. My father was a day person. That set us up for many conflicts. He wanted me to do things, like plant tulip bulbs, in the morning. I was perfectly happy to help him plant bulbs, found the process really interesting, and looked forward to the results the following spring, but I didn’t see why we couldn’t do it in the afternoon! (Indeed, in my own yard, I have planted hundreds of bulbs, but in the afternoon, and even into the evening.)
+
My days were as long as his, but started later (and ended later). He didn’t see the end of my day, so assumed that my late start meant I was oversleeping: “lazy” — and told me so.
+
I have a tendency to procrastination, as have most other people, but that’s an entirely different matter from laziness. (A kid never really accepts that his faults are the same as most other people’s faults.) The distinction between procrastination and laziness may thus not be clear to a kid.
+
Even rejecting 90% or more of such parental or sibling criticisms, a child does accept some fraction of those criticisms and incorporates it into his or her self-image. So I grew up thinking I was lazy — well, lazier than I should have been, lazier than other people.
+
Boy, was that wrong!
+
In general, from the instant I get up I am working, in the house, on the computer, getting ready for work, driving to work (and sometimes taking pictures out the window of my car at stoplites), working, driving home from work, feeding the cats, feeding the fish, making dinner, going to the supermarket, cleaning, doing the laundry, paying bills — task after task after task, sometimes doing more than one thing at a time (multitasking) such that while the washing machine is running, I’m washing dishes, reviewing the mail, making dinner; or I’m eating dinner while watching the news and making notes for my blogs (this one and “Newark USA”) or for my Simpler Spelling Word of the Day website and other things I need to do later.
+
I’m a perfect example of the key failure of modern American society. We have gone backward in human evolution, back from specialization. It used to be that the various functions of life were distributed among specialists. One person in a group would do the hunting (or manufacturing), another the cooking and cleaning, another raise the children and take care of the livestock and pets.
+
In the typical middle-class American household in the 1950s, a part-time housekeeper came in a few times a week to help with the cooking and cleaning, laundry and mending. (Remember mending? We used to repair things, like rips in socks and pants, rather than go out and buy replacements.) We today have deluded ourselves that we don’t need that kind of help anymore, thanks to “labor-saving devices”. But some “labor-saving devices”, like the personal computer, make more work!
+
Nonetheless, we have dismissed all our “help” on the assumption that we don’t need (or, we persuade ourselves, can’t afford) “help”, and must now do everything ourselves. We don’t have time enuf. So things don’t get done, or do get done, but crappily. The house is almost clean. Our email correspondence is almost current. The cats have dry food if you can’t get to feeding them canned food when they expect it. The fish can swim in cloudy water one day more. The plants will survive without water until tomorrow. It might rain, anyway, and you’d feel pretty silly getting out the hose to water down the flowers and evergreens just to have it rain overnite, wouldn’t you?
+
We’re also ashamed to admit that we can’t “do it all”. We’re too ashamed to hire a cleaning lady — or cleaning CREW — because we “should” be able to keep our house clean ourselves, and having a filthy house, or dirty house, or even just slightly rumpled house, is a disgrace. We can’t call in anyone to clean unless we’ve already cleaned up a bit ourselves. Yes, we know they’re coming to clean, but — so much? What will they think of me?
+
The “can’t afford cleaning help” claim may actually just be an excuse and self-reproach: I shouldn’t spend money on something I can perfectly well do myself. But you CAN’T, Blanche, you can’t! (That’s a reference to a famous scene in the 1962 movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane in which Joan Crawford (in real life, the abusive mother of the biobook Mommy Dearest) says, ‘If only I could get out of this wheelchair’, and Bette Davis, her vicious sister, says, triumphantly, “But you can’t, Blanche, you can’t!”)
+
Who, in 1950, would have thought that a computer in the house would become an absolute necessity? That you couldn’t write a letter or check the news or figure and file your taxes without a complicated electronic device? And who’d have thought that so much of your time could be eaten up by a “labor-saving device” that takes the place of a CORRECTING typewriter and calculator and postage meter and even in-home(!) copier? That could send a chatty note to all your friends and family at the push of a button? That could find the most convenient store that has the particular product you want, at an acceptable price, and print directions, with maps, from your own desk or tabletop? And who’d have thought that finding that store, comparing brands and specifications, and checking prices could take so much TIME?!?
+
The time I spend at my home computers (desktop and, recently, notebook) can add up massively. I created a “Log” directory to keep track of how much time I spend on each computer, and almost all my time on any computer is work.
+
I have five sets of “Start” and “End” files in WordPerfect, which I “Save” to imprint a time. This gives me a directory list (in the “Details” view) that shows, e.g., “1-end.wpd” immediately above “1-start.wpd”, so I can subtract to see how much time I have spent online. Most workdays, it’s at least an hour and a half, in addition to my full-time job, much of which is spent working on a computer. Sometimes it is, cumulatively, in various sessions, 4 and more hours in addition to my full-time job. On weekends, it can run 14 hours a day, unless I’m out at stores or doing yardwork or tidying up the house.
+
I backed up all my webpages recently and found that I have 152 of them, some of which are notes and mockups, but at least 130 of which are substantive pages open to public view: bare text, illustrated text (mostly with my own fotos), or foto galleries.
+
If I were to try to put a figure on how long each page took to create, from conception, to drafting and redrafting, to finalization, to putting in the HTML code, to selecting the illustrations, to calling them up in a graphics program to crop them and fix the briteness and focus, to adding a counter, connecting to the server, uploading them, and reviewing them — then fixing anything that didn’t look right — it could vary from perhaps three hours for the simplest to 25 hours for the more complicated pages — even more.
+
One page alone, “Letters from the Chairman” (of the Expansionist Party of the United States), warns visitors:

This is a very large file (over 650,000 bytes [for the text alone]), but the text should load fairly quickly. The illustrations (about 115 different photos, flags, etc.) will take a bit longer. A printed copy of this file will run over 150 pages!

Each of those letters was individually composed, so it is impossible to approximate how much time it took simply to write all 181 letters on that page.
+
Would my father have accepted all the work that went into creating these 152 webpages — writing all those hundreds of thousands of words and finding, fixing, and placing those hundreds and hundreds of graphics — as “work”?
+
Or was “work” for him tied so inseparably to “is what you are paid for” that my “efforts” would not have counted as “work”?
+
Well, they count as “work” for me.
+
I’m thus amazed how wrong my father was — and how long I believed he was right — despite what should have been the evidence of my own experience (but wasn’t).

Living and doing are usually so self-consuming that one generally just doesn’t have time to look back. Which is why we ourselves make many of the same mistakes our parents made — and reproach ourselves when we hear what comes out of our mouth. When the very worst things come out of our mouth, we need to apologize PROFUSELY — and hope the apology, and not the initial, ill-considered or not-at-all-considered words, is what prevails.
+
Parents say so many things to their children, over so many years. They cannot know which are the worst, which are the best. We may need to tell them.
+
Then again, maybe we need not hurt them by pointing out the unintended hurts they did us, and instead learn from their mistakes not to make the same kinds of mindless, cruel comments to others.
+
My father died a decade and more ago, at 79. My mother died last year, at 90, prematurely, due to a medical mistake. That’s right: prematurely. She was bowling in a league only weeks before she died. I cannot tell them anything.
+
Consider what you need to tell your parents, before you can’t. Consider too what you could tell them but shouldn’t.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:51 AM

 
Soccer, Shmocker. In last nite’s debut episode of the CBS comedy Listen Up, Newark’s own Jason Alexander, portraying a sportstalk TV show host, attacked soccer. I was delited.
+
The exchange:

CO-HOST (played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner — “Theo Huxtable” in the old Cosby Show*): “In the world of soccer, qualifying rounds have begun for the 200... [stops because Jason Alexander has feigned snoring] Have you even tried watching a professional soccer match?

JASON ALEXANDER: You know, I turned it off when the lead became insurmountable. I think it was one-nothing.

MJW: Soccer is the most popular sport in practically every country but this country [and Canada, I might add, another proof of how well much alike we are].

JA: Then I say, “God bless America!” My heart is so filled with patriotic ...

MJW: No!

JA: Yes! I feel a song coming on. [Stands to deliver song, to the tune of the patriotic song The Battle Hymn of the Republic.]

I go to foreign countries and there’s soccer everywhere.
They’ve got big screens for the World Cup set up in the village square.
But on TV in the U.S. soccer gets a zero share
‘Cause we know soccer blows.*

[Refrain (“Glory, glory, hallelujah” part)]
No one ever scores in soccer.
If there’s a hilite, it’s a shocker.
You win by saying “Referee, that player hurt my wittle knee.”
We hate this stupid game!”

[Concludes song] Thank you! Thank you!

Oh, no, Mr. Alexander. Thank you!
_________________
* The unacceptable sexual vulgarities "[It] sucks" and "[It] blows" will be the subject of another blog entry, some other time.
+
Jason Alexander's fictional sportscaster is not the only enemy of soccer in media, thank goodness. The late Mike Royko, a real Chicago columnist, was hostile to soccer: “Soccer is boring. I've never seen a more boring sport.”
+
Part of what makes it boring and unacceptable to Americans is the fact that soccer often ends in a tie — even a scoreless tie. And the total number of goals scored is usually very low.
+
For reasons I have never been clear on, government and media in the United States nonetheless have, for at least 50 years, been trying to make the U.S. a soccer-playing country. They have met with some success. Amateur soccer leagues for children have apparently become popular in the past couple of decades, and the odious term “soccer mom” (“An American mother living in the suburbs whose time is often spent transporting her children from one athletic activity or event to another” — American Heritage Dictionary) has achieved some currency in recent years. Despite this attempt to portray soccer as an “all-American” activity, it remains profoundly foreign.
+
(I had heard Joan Lunden, formerly of ABC’s morning infotainment show Good Morning America, credited with coining the term “soccer mom”, but find Mark Penn, a Democratic political pollster, credited with that dubious accomplishment. The claim is that he originated the term in 1996, but I think I’ve heard it for longer than that. Anybody know for sure?)
+
Soccer may divert small children and young teens, but by the time they reach the latter years of high school, the big American games (baseball, basketball, and, most powerfully, American football — we never call soccer “football” here) have completely replaced soccer in their affections. The extremely limited ‘success’ of professional soccer in the U.S. is due almost exclusively to fans who came to the United States as immigrants.
+
A Denver Post columnist, David Harsanyi, in August of this year denounced as foolhardy the unanimous decision of the city council of Commerce City, a western suburb, to build a 20,000-seat soccer stadium at public expense. How much expense? A lot: “the plan... can only commence if voters approve a $64 million bond issue in November.” What peculiar madness has seized control of the Commerce City council? Maybe the voters, when they reject that insane bond issue, should as well vote out every single member of the council.
+
Somebody please explain to me why on Earth American governments and media are pushing this stupid, foreign game, intimately connected with mass violence and death? Don’t we have enuf violence in this country without bringing in more?
+
I suspect that anti-Americans in government, who prefer any other country to the United States and think we need to be more like Europe and less like the United States, are responsible for the government aspect. Misguided internationalists may think we need to play ‘the world’s game’ to identify and integrate more closely, emotionally, with the rest of the world.
+
I suspect commercial broadcasters want another big sporting event to draw a big male demographic, and are hoping for an advertising bonanza each World Cup — every four friggin’ years! But why are they spending decades trying to build a soccer audience for an event that happens only once every four years? Do they delude themselves that because there are hundreds and hundreds of soccer teams all over the world, broadcasters can somehow induce tens of millions of American men to sit glued to the TV watching soccer teams from places they feel no connection with?
+
Even pro sports here don’t attract uncritical audiences. When the World Series involves just two New York teams, or teams from minor cities of no regional importance, broadcasters groan because the audience shrinks drastically. Why would they imagine American men would watch hours of soccer from Spain, Nigeria, or Uruguay?

Other countries have their history. Uruguay has its football.~Ondino Viera

Sad.
+
In 1998, Brazil lost a World Cup final match and suffered national trauma — over a stupid game.
+
Brazil. A miserable, nitemare land of grotesque social inequality, flawed 'democracy', corruption at the highest levels. A country in which street children have been hunted down and killed by merchants because the government wouldn't or couldn't provide shelters for them, and they became a nuisance to their customers!
+
As I observed at the time, http://members.aol.com/schoonmakr/Chairman.html at letter 101, to Jornal do Brasil:

Brazilians should be glad their soccer team lost the World Cup, because a win would have caused Brazil to celebrate, and Brazil has precious little to celebrate. If Brazilians would put less energy into playing soccer and more energy into bringing their country into the modern world, into achieving quality education for all, finding homes for Brazil's uncountable homeless children, building decent housing for everyone, pushing thru land reform and progressive taxation to spread the nation's wealth more equitably, and otherwise making of Brazil the fabulous country it could be, then Brazilians could celebrate every day in the way that counts most: by living well.

But soccer is for much of Latin America a solace for popular misery and distraction for the masses from the need to do something to fix their ugly societies.
The soccer-quote site also contains this quotation:

In Latin America the border between soccer and politics is vague. There is a long list of governments that have fallen or been overthrown after the defeat of the national team.~Luis Suarez

There are far better reasons for overturning governments in Latin America. Do soccer revolutions achieve anything but shift power from one set of corrupt, useless oligarchs to another set of useless oligarchs? Not usually.
+
Political tumult for frivolous cause is not, however, the worst thing about the worldwide soccer phenomenon. Soccer is also linked to deaths. Lots of deaths.
+
Soccer is everywhere connected with death, thru violence and stadium accidents. British soccer hooligans, who have been around for 100 years, have actually killed people, over a stupid game!

No event illustrates the social phenomenon of "soccer hooliganism" more dramatically than the deaths of 39 Italian spectators at the European Cup Final between the Liverpool Football Club and the Italian team Juventus, played at Heysel Stadium in Brussels, Belgium on 29 May 1985 at the hands of soccer hooligans from Liverpool, England (Kerr, 1994).

After viewing film of the incident, Belgium authorities identified groups of Liverpool fans as those who instigated vicious attacks against the Italian fans, which in turn led to a stampede of people attempting to escape the violence.

Lest you think that “old news”, now irrelevant, realize that The Guardian, one of Britain’s most distinguished newspapers, maintains a website about soccer violence.
+
Apologists for soccer violence pretend there is no special link between soccer-related violence and any other sports-related violence. So why is soccer violence so common? Maybe it’s the nature of the game:

I loathed the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me to show courage at it. Football [soccer], it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting. ~George Orwell, Such, Such Were the Joys

A CNN.com special webpage on soccer stadium deaths in 2001 leads off with this appalling paragraph:

Up to 125 people were killed when 70,000 soccer fans tried to flee a Ghana stadium after police fired tear gas on people throwing bottles and chairs onto the field. The May 10 tragedy came a month after 43 people were killed at a Johannesburg, South Africa, stadium and only days after eight people died in another crush in Lubumbashi, Congo. The tragedies have raised questions over stadium sizes, security measures and the continent's chances of hosting the World Cup in 2010.

A subpage deals with “Disasters in soccer stadiums”. A quick tally shows almost 1,400 people DIED in soccer stadiums around the world from 1964 to May 2001. More have died since. Some died from fires; others from collapsing stands and stampedes from various causes. But some 400 died in violence directly related to the game.
+
In 1994, a Colombian player who accidentally scored a goal for the U.S. team, producing a loss in the World Cup, was MURDERED upon his return to Colombia. This was the capper for the grand, first World Cup hosted in the United States! I recall, but vaguely, some disturbances by Mexicans in some U.S. city when the U.S. defeated Mexico in that same World Cup series right here in the good old U.S. of A. What a wonderful honor it was for us to host the World Cup!
+
I become furious when I see soccer intruded EVERYWHERE on TV, where it plainly does not belong. Commercials for banks and cars and cleaning products and foods use images of soccer games and soccer balls. Why? Stop it! We are not a soccer-playing country and hopefully never will be. Americans who feel as I do need to speak up and tell government, media, and advertisers we're tired of all the attempts to force soccer upon us. We're Americans. Let us hate soccer if we want to. Leave us alone.
+
Let me conclude this blog entry with one last quote from The Quote Garden's "Quotations about Soccer" webpage.

The rest of the world loves soccer. Surely we must be missing something. Uh, isn't that what the Russians told us about communism? There's a good reason why you don't care about soccer — it's because you are an American and hating soccer is more American than mom's apple pie, driving a pick-up and spending Saturday afternoon channel-surfing with the remote control.~Tom Weir

As they might exclaim in Britain, whence soccer came, "Hear, hear!"
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:01 PM

 
Conning the Poor. The Associated Press reports that many West Virginians have received a mailing piece from the Republican Party claiming that “liberals” want to ban the Bible. How stupid do they think West Virginians are? Can anyone believe that liberals want to destroy the First Amendment? We all, liberals and conservatives alike, understand the importance of neutrality on the part of Government when it comes to religious conscience. No liberal — repeat, NO liberal — wants to ban the Bible. The claim that they do is a flat-out lie.
+
What liberals do want to do, however, is prevent religious fanatics from imposing the Bible upon nonbelievers. If believers wouldn’t want the Government to issue coins that say “There Is No God” on them, they must understand that nonbelievers don’t like “In God We Trust” on money, nor do we want children forced to say that this Nation is “under God” when they recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Make no mistake: a country that forces people to mouth religious slogans is a country that can abruptly change what religion is compelled or even go over to the side of compelled atheism. Russia did that in 1917, when the Bolsheviks changed Russia from officially Orthodox to officially atheist overnite, because Russia didn’t have a First Amendment to protect religious conscience. The best way to ensure that Government will not interfere with believers' religious conscience is for religious people to protect the rights of nonbelievers.
+
As for the pretense that this election is about gay marriage, I’m sorry to say that this is also a flat-out lie. I’m the man who in 1970 coined the term “Gay Pride” as it is used today. I am saddened to see that both major parties are opposed to gay marriage, so I’m not allowed to marry anyone I could really love. Neither John Kerry nor George Bush favors gay marriage. They are both enemies of gay men. Maybe that makes simple-minded bigots feel better, but it shouldn’t.
+
West Virginians should understand that all this “culture war” crap is designed to distract poor and middle class people from the fact that the Republicans HATE you and want to take your money away while keeping their own, and get richer and richer while you get poorer and poorer, until you are virtual slaves to the debt they inflict on you at very high interest rates, interest paid to the banks and credit card companies they own.
+
Republicans who live in million-dollar homes filled with paintings and sculptures and luxurious furniture covered in the most expensive fabrics or butter-soft, imported leather; who eat the best cuts of meat every nite and drink imported wines; who dress in $1,700 Italian suits or designer dresses, wear Rolex watches and platinum rings with huge diamonds; drive Mercedes or BMW sports cars (several cars, of different colors); and who pay off their credit card bills to the last penny every month so pay no interest at all, are the very people who are sending the people of Appalachia messages telling them that the most important issues that affect their lives are nonexistent designs by Northeastern “liberals” to ban the Bible and impose gay marriage!
+
Forget your credit card debt (or the fact that you can’t get a credit card or a car loan because you’re not “creditworthy”); forget your rusting car that guzzles gas at $1.80 a gallon and keeps needing repairs you can scarcely afford; forget the repairs you can’t make to your house, or the kid you can’t send to college, or the doctor you can’t visit, or the job you are scared to death of losing because if you lose that, you lose the house. Forget all that and vote Republican.
+
The rich need every vote they can get because if the poor and middle class ever wise up, they will start “soaking the rich” with much higher taxes the rich can easily afford, paying off the national debt, and chopping interest rates on credit cards and consumer loans, so the poor and middle class might actually start living well. How are the rich supposed to feel good about their trouble-free life if everybody lives well?
+
Would it really matter to you if gay men could marry if your mortgage was paid off, you had not one cent in credit card debt, your kid could go to any college he or she could qualify for, your car was new and ran well, gasoline sold for a dollar a gallon, your schools were well funded and filled with computers and the best technology, you could go to any doctor you need any time you want, and you could tell your employer that you aren’t going to take crappy raises or even wage cuts and cuts in benefits, because you don’t need his crappy job because there are better jobs everywhere around you?
+
We’ll never know as long as the poor and middle class keep voting Richpublican.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:52 PM

 
Republican Slime, Again. In an editorial that “went to bed” sometime last nite, the New York Post today said, in regard to the controversy over the Vietnam-era military records — or lack thereof — of John Kerry and George Bush:

The question of who did what 30-plus years ago should never have gotten the kind of prominence it has in this debate; other issues are far more pressing.

But of course the Post then went on to continue talking about this idiotic non-issue, claiming that:

... Kerry's commanding officer at the time charged last spring that the Massachusetts senator essentially awarded himself a Purple Heart after receiving a superficial scratch.

How very interesting! You can award yourself a military medal! As Ed McMahon, in his days as Johnny Carson’s sidekick on the Tonight Show, might have said, in staccato cadence, “I did-not-know-that.”
+
Well, you did-not-know-that because it’s not true. Nobody awards himself a United States military medal. The U.S. military awards those medals, no one else. Any assertion to the contrary is bullshit.
+
This morning, at 9:58 a.m., CNN.com uploaded an AP report that found:

The Navy's chief investigator concluded Friday that procedures were followed properly in the approval of Sen. John Kerry's Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals * * *

[Hoping to pre-empt suggestions of a whitewash, which of course the scumbags at Judicial Watch did charge, the report says] "Our review also considered the fact that Senator Kerry's post-active duty [antiwar] activities were public and that military and civilian officials were aware of his actions at the time. For these reasons, I have determined that Senator Kerry's awards were properly approved and will take no further action in this matter."

Returning to the Post ‘s editorial written last nite:

Meanwhile, the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch made a ... request for unreleased files about John Kerry's military service. * * *

31 pages of documents remain closed to public inspection.

Why?

Because under the law, the documents can't be disclosed without John Kerry's authorization.

And John Kerry refuses to grant that authorization.

Trying to seem even-handed and fair, the Post said:

if Americans are going to see a release of documents, they should see a release of all documents.

Not just those about George Bush and the Guard, but also those still-secret 31 pages, and especially the medical records on John Kerry's Purple Hearts.

When all the information is out, then voters can decide.

That sounds fair and reasonable, and one does have to wonder why Kerry would hesitate to have those “still-secret 31 pages” released. But how much do “the people” have the right to know about anybody’s military records, employment records, private life? And what exactly do we HAVE to know as against what is just plain busybody poking around in other people’s lives?
+
Let’s review the SIGNIFICANT basics. John Kerry served in Vietnam. George Bush EVADED service in Vietnam. Kerry’s service was brief but valiant, and he could have been KILLED many times during that service. He was in fact WOUNDED three times! and received three properly awarded Purple Hearts as well as two other medals, for valor. George Bush got NO medals.
+
George Bush is the “war president” who never went to war — except with other people’s lives. All else is distraction.
+
Will this end the tempest in a teapot initiated by those slimy “Swift boat veterans” ads to distract Americans from the fact that George Bush was a war-EVADER and Kerry was a war HERO? — who saw that war corrupts and can turn decent people into monsters? Of course not, because Republicans are slime.
+
Republicans deny that ANY signifcant number of Americans committed war crimes in Vietnam. We’d like to believe that. We’d like to believe that My Lai was an aberration. The website of the University of Missouri at Kansas City’s Law School has a page devoted to My Lai, which opens thus:

The My Lai courts-martial are the stories of two tragedies growing out of American involvement in Viet Nam. One was the massacre by United States soldiers of as many as 500 unarmed civilians -- old men, women, children--in My Lai on the morning of March 16, 1968. The other was the cover-up of that massacre.

Plainly the U.S. military has been hugely more disciplined and decent in the treatment of conquered peoples than virtually any other military force of comparable size and advantage, but a few bad apples did commit atrocities, in Vietnam, in the Revolutionary War, in World War II, in every conflict we’ve ever been involved in, including the Iraq war. Because war does things to people.
+
Given a license to kill, some people literally lose their minds in an orgy of perversion and sado-masochistic violence against helpless victims.
+
I’m certain that it was not routine for American soldiers to commit rapes, cut off people’s ears as trophies, etc., in Vietnam. I am equally certain that some American soldiers did commit such crimes, just as I am absolutely certain that some Americans did commit loathsome crimes against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. We have souvenir fotos of Abu Ghraib. We don’t have souvenir fotos of atrocities in Vietnam. But that might only be due to technology. If Vietnam servicemen had had cheap digital cameras so thought their fotos would remain private to them, they might well have documented their crimes the way present-day sado-masochists in the military documented their crimes in Abu Ghraib.
+
War does things to people. There are World War II veterans who had vivid, chronic nitemares for 50 and 60 years after their service. We have a psychological term for it today: post-traumatic stress disorder. But that’s just the latest in a long line of terms: shell shock, battle fatigue, combat neurosis. War does things to people, and sometimes the things it does are so terrible that you don’t want those people back walking the streets of your cities. Mental-health professionals are a lot better at analyzing problems than curing them.
+
Vietnam vets went thru particular stress in that when they came home from what they felt was honorable service in the defense of their country, some people actually spat on them, and much of society turned against them as war criminals. Today’s “heroes” in Iraq might someday return to the same reception, if this illegal war, started thru lies and filled with violence against helpless Third World peoples who never did anything to us, goes on long enuf.
+
John Kerry knows what war can do to people. George Bush doesn’t. John Kerry knows that war is the LAST resort, not the first thing you jump to. John Kerry will be very reticent to start a war he can’t finish. George Bush? Well, we’re in the middle of his war. If you see a way out, you’re a long way ahead of him.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:39 PM

 
Tet Offensive II. Ralph Peters, the New York Post's bloodthirsty-pscyhopath military columnist, claims that the war in Iraq is going just fine, and all evidence to the contrary is partisan, Democratic lies. So an average of what? 15 or 20 Iraqis a day are being killed in terrorist incidents, so what? Well, if that were happening here, a country with 12 times Iraq's population, would we think our war on terror was going swimmingly? Or would we be frantic? — desperately insistent that something has got to be done!?! We had one terrorist incident, three years ago. Iraq has terrorist incidents every day. But things are going just fine.
+
Peters echoes the claims of both Presidents Bush, the Younger and Elder, that Iraq, and we, are "better off today" because of our invasion and military occupation. Oh? Were 59 Iraqis killed by a suicide bomber while waiting to apply for jobs on a Baghdad street under Saddam? Did scarcely a day go by when Iraqis weren't killed by terrorists drawn into their country from abroad, and allowed by an incompetent government that has no control over much of the country to infiltrate Iraq's borders, under Saddam? Or did Saddam know what was going on in Iraq and keep things like that from happening?
+
Saddam may have been a very bad man, but aside from enemies of his regime, the typical Iraqi had almost absolute safety of his person on the streets. That passed for good government in a country as explosive as Iraq.
+
They didn't have democracy, and various forms of political expression could be dangerous. But they had freedom of religion, which forces now wreaking havoc in Iraq — thanks to us, because Saddam would have suppressed them — want to take away from them. Political freedom isn't very important to people who have never known it. Religious freedom and personal autonomy, over things like the way one dresses, the occupation one takes, the television programs and other entertainments one watches, and the foods and beverages one drinks, are important.
+
Saddam was a political tyrant, not a busybody imam or ideologically fanatical dictator adamant that Iraqis must live pious lives or die.
+
How important, for that matter, is political freedom to us who have known it for a long time? Americans have consented to see their civil liberties eroded and their lives made much more difficult because everyone is treated like a criminal if they have to travel by air. We have consented to imprison people, including U.S. citizens, for years at a time without a single charge being levied, and have guards torture and humiliate them as 'legitimate interrogation techniques'.
+
What of the other sacrifices this Iraq war is causing us? We have a skyrocketing national debt, half of which is directly attributable to the Iraq war. We suffer usurious consumer interest rates and oppressive fees, for lateness and ATM use and overlimit oversights, that our government isn't doing a damned thing about, in part (but only small part) because it is preoccupied with war and terrorism and, more to the point, can get away with having their rich friends inflict upon people because the body politic is obsessed with terrorism.
+
The price of gasoline has gone to record highs, oppressing poor people who have always had trouble affording the fuel that takes them to work. Airline fuel costs have risen so high that US Air just re-entered bankruptcy, and the parent company of American Airlines remains in bankruptcy. A turnaround in the air travel industry, which was impacted disastrously by fear of flying, has been crushed by the cost of aviation fuel.
+
The Bush Administration daily tries to worry us about terrorist attacks, even tho we haven't had a single one in the "homeland" in three years, and the last one before that, also an attack upon the World Trade Center, was 10 years earlier. Endless "alerts" and announcements of special measures and the need for vigilance have turned Americans against each other in suspicion, all for the sake of "security". And tho most of us do feel secure, the Bush Administration keeps trying to worry us, to win re-election.
+
Saddam gave Iraqis security. We didn't seem to think that was a good thing. So we invaded, overthrew Saddam, and gave Iraqis insecurity and chaos on the streets.
+
Ralph Peters says "Despite the lurid media reports, more good things than bad are happening in Iraq. Progress is slow and painful. But it's still progress." Oh, progress from what, to what? Progress repairing the devastation our "shock and awe" air campaign and followup ground invasion did to their electrical systems, water systems, sewage treatment plants, broadcast stations, bridges, roads, aiports — in short, recovering from devastation we caused and, absent our attack, they would never have suffered? Sure, they're making progress there, but the Iraqi people are still, in absolute terms, behind where they were before the Bush Administration attacked them for no damned reason!
+
They had never attacked us, but we attacked them, and we are supposed to feel good about the favor we did them in "liberating" them from Saddam. Oh, so we killed literally uncounted numbers of them, not just civilians but also their sons in the armed forces, so what?. American mothers and fathers grieve the loss of little more than 1,000 dead American soldiers, and the fact that they were in the military does not make their deaths any easier. But somehow we're not supposed to count Iraqi military deaths — tens of thousands of Iraqis — killed by our "heroes". And we aren't even told how many civilians died. Why not?
+
How can we tell if Iraqis are "better off today" for our invasion if we aren't told how many Iraqis we killed?
+
We are just to take President Bush's word. He insists, with the imitation sincerity he exudes so well, that "Iraq is better off today". Has a nice, hollow, echo-chambery sound, doesn't it?
+
Ralph Peters says that various subversive forces are, ominously, undermining the work of the military. Were it not for "lurid media reports", "our presidential elections and the policy distortions they create", "our intelligence community ... show[ing] its weakness by covering its backside, instead of finding terrorists", "the U.N. ... warning that security conditions may prevent voting — giving the terrorists hope", "the frantic efforts of the Arab media to stop our destruction of the terrorists and insurgents", those damned Democrats "declar[ing] our efforts a disaster, [and] ... encourag[ing] our enemies to believe they're winning [which virtually constitutes] ... a pending declaration of surrender", and even the "Bush administration want[ing] to avoid serious combat until after our elections", the military could win this war!
+
That is the mentality that the military has always held: their failures are always somebody else's fault. And that's why over and over thru history military men have seized control of governments, supposedly to win wars and make society "safe" by removing the conditions that 'made winning impossible'.
+
And what about when they still can't win? Then whom do they blame? Themselves? Never.
+
Ferdinand Marcos imposed a military dictatorship on the Philippines to win wars against two simultaneous "insurgencies". He stayed in power 20 years. The insurgencies are still with us. One has allied with Usama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization.
+
In the Vietnam era, the Tet Offensive was, the military railed, nearly universally reported as a disaster for the U.S. military, whereas the U.S. actually won that long and difficult battle, and it is only because the media and then the people sold out the military that the U.S. lost in Vietnam.
+
As infoplease.com puts it:

"Although the offensive was not militarily successful for the Vietnamese Communists, it was a political and psychological victory for them. It dramatically contradicted optimistic claims by the U.S. government that the war had already been won." [Or what President Bush has termed, in the Iraq context, "Mission Accomplished".]

Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, in June of this year himself "likened the surge of kidnapping and violence in Iraq to the 1968 Tet offensive, a psychological turning point in the Vietnam War. But he said it would not succeed." Oh?
+
It might not succeed if we had set modest goals for this war: the overthrow of Saddam and destruction of his (nonexistent) Weapons of Mass Destruction. Had we done that, we could have withdrawn and said, "The hell with Iraq. Whatever happens after we leave is their problem."
+
But we pretended to be deeply committed to democracy in Iraq and then in the rest of the Arab world. That's not working out so well.
+
Much of war is psychological. Military reality — or is it mere perception? self-delusion? — sometimes clashes with public perception. Who is right?
+
At end, in a democracy, the people have to decide how much death and destruction a given end is worth. When the stakes were risking imminent attack by Weapons of Mass Destruction, a misled American majority was willing to attack a country that had never attacked us. But no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found. No attack was ever imminent. No link has ever been established between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, even tho Bush and his evil cabal of liar-murderers keep repeating that lie even after a blue-ribbon, bipartisan panel found not one shred of credible evidence of any such connection.
+
Now the people of this country feel trapped between the rock of patriotic refusal to accept that we could have done a terrible, terrible, HORRIBLE thing for no good reason and the hard place of not knowing how to get out of this mess without making everything even worse than before the invasion.
+
It's not everybody else's fault that the military is unable to bring peace to Iraq. Sometimes the military just can't succeed.
+
Militaries are good at destroying. They are very bad at building. And when it is a nation that must be built, or rebuilt after destruction we caused, and democracy that must be created out of the clear blue sky for a culture that has never known it, the military has no answers and must not be heeded.
+
Society must make very plain that we don't need excuses from the military — what ever happened to the West Point training slogan, "No excuses, SIR!" — and won't take orders from generals, much less colonels, captains, or retired officers writing columns for the New York Post. (Responsive to "The Muddle in Iraq" by Ralph Peters, New York Post, September 17, 2004)
+
(This is my 150th post to this blog. Just thought I'd mention this little milestone.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:56 PM

 
Committed to Newark. Bill Cosby was in Newark, New Jersey — my splendid city — today. He brought to a local vocational high school his message of self-help and refusal to scapegoat whitey for the problems of the black community. He said he was committed to Newark, and pledged to come here "again and again and again". (Unfortunately, Cosby habitually mispronounces that "a-GAEN and a-GAEN and a-GAEN." No, Mr. Cosby. The word is pronounced "a-GEN".)
+
Alas, Cosby used one very bad example in his presentation, that (approximate quote) "it's not the white man bringing HIV to black women." No, it's generally not. But it doesn't matter who does, because HIV is harmless.
+
Indeed, "HIV" should be understood to mean "Harmless, Irrelevant Virus", because that's what it is.
+
The worst that HIV does is produce a flu-like illness of about two weeks' duration. Then the body defeats the infection and inoculates the body against reinfection by pouring antibodies into the bloodstream that permanently defend against any flareup, ever in the future.
+
HIV does not kill T-cells. HIV does not produce immunological deficiency nor dementia nor early death. It doesn't do a damned thing but worry people to death. Literally. Some people have become so worried by the harmless virus HIV that they have actually committed suicide! Others have taken deadly pharmaceutical treatments that have killed them — to fend off a harmless virus!
+
These things have happened, alas, thanks to credulous people like Bill Cosby.
+
Cosby really cares about his people, but he is giving them very bad advice in effectively telling them to heed the U.S. Government when it tells black people never to have sex without a condom. What, pray, will happen to the black race if every (hetero)sexual encounter between blacks involves a condom? Clearly blacks will vanish into history. But that couldn't possibly be what the Republicans who invented AIDS had in mind, could it? No, Republicans LOVE blacks and want to "protect" them. Sure they do.
+
It perennially amazes me that some of the most cynical people on the planet believe every single syllable the United States Government issues about AIDS. Astounding.
+
How can anyone trust the U.S. Government to tell the truth about anything, if lying will advance its agenda but telling the truth will defeat it?
+
AIDS is not the result of infection by Harmless, Irrelevant Virus. It is the fully foreseeable consequence of using drug after drug after drug, for year after year after year. Rick James, a black singer, recently died. His autopsy revealed that he had 9 — count 'em, NINE — different drugs in his system, including methamphetamine and cocaine. Think about that: meth and cocaine! Two stimulants!
+
Let's consider the effects of one of them, meth, which can include "lowered resistance to illnesses" and "mental illness" / "brain damage".
+
Hmm. What do you call "lowered resistance to illnesses"? Oh, that's right: immunodeficiency, the "I" in AIDS. And what about "mental illness"? Might that be called "dementia", a frequent symptom of AIDS?
+
That's just one drug that recreational drug users employ in this country. Many drug abusers use multiple drugs, just like Rick James. They don't all die right away. Some destroy their underlying health and die piecemeal, thru the long downward spiral we call AIDS.
+
It is because AIDS is a drug injury that it has never invaded the general, non-drug-abusing community but is concentrated in communities wracked by drug abuse: blacks, Hispanics, and fast-lifestyle gay men. Nobody else in this country gets AIDS — except, sad to say, little babies exposed to drugs in the womb: involuntary drug users.
+
Viral diseases don't discriminate against these minorities. AIDS does. Ergo, AIDS is not a viral disease.
+
It really is that simple. AIDS has vanished as a public-health concern for most Americans. Only government lies about AIDS in Africa keep Americans outside the drug-soaked minority communities worrying about AIDS.
+
But the areas of Africa where AIDS is said to be rampant are poor. They have little food; almost no doctors or clinics or hospitals; no water-purification plants; no refrigeration to keep food safe; no sewage treatment.
+
People in such places are dying young from the same causes that have always killed people young. Take a walk thru Trinity Church's or St. Paul's graveyard in New York City, or thru any very old graveyard in this or any other country and read the birth and death dates. Until very recently most of the world died young, because sanitary conditions and medical science were primitive. You really don't need an AIDS plague to explain it. If you look at all the dead young people in our old graveyards, you might think we had an AIDS plague in the 18th Century. We didn't then, and Africa doesn't now.
+
Please, Mr. Cosby, realize that the real "plague" upon the black community is DRUGS. We all know it. That's why poor blacks in Newark and every other major city in this country are held back and subject to horrendous violence and self-subversion. Drugs don't just sap ambition and destroy concentration. They also kill, and one way they kill is thru destroying the immune system: AIDS.
+
Don't assign the blame to any virus. Don't offer a false solution. It is drugs — and tolerance of drugs — that blacks must drive out of their community. A condom won't protect you from an overdose and won't protect you from AIDS. Tell the people the truth, which is available to everyone at www.virusmyth.com. That's a huge site, with many articles by distinguished scientists. If you don't know what part of that big site to check, or are put off by scientific lingo, you might instead read a brief summary in layman's language of the case against AIDS as HIV that I wrote years ago and which you can find at http://members.aol.com/mrgaypride/AIDS.html.
+
So, Mr. Cosby, if you stop talking nonsense about HIV, I will be extremely happy to see you back here in Newark a-GEN and a-GEN and a-GEN. I missed your show at the Performing Arts Center last year. Come back and do another. Come back to Newark as often as you like. You'll see it better every time, but not as much better as it could be if we could END the destruction caused by drugs.
+
(Truth in Blogging. This blog entry is dated September 16th but was actually written September 17th because I worked overtime the 16th and was just too tired to address this issue raised by a news report on News 12 New Jersey on the 16th. Since the event was the 16th, and because I don't want to overburden readers with multiple items on a single day, I have assigned the date of the 16th to this entry. Now you know.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:48 PM

 
Anti-Journalist Journalism. It would be funny, were it not so vicious, that the New York Post's resident bloodthirsty psychopath, Ralph Peters, thinks it's fine for the U.S. to kill journalists — even tho he's a journalist himself and the forum in which this lunacy is published at least pretends to be part of journalism.
+
In the instance Peters derides, a U.S. attack helicopter hovering over a U.S. tank that had been just been destroyed, fired upon people scrambling about in the vicinity, killing an al-Arabiya newsman in the process. Peters bitched about such newsmen not being journalists at all, but 'murderers' participating in 'murder', because they accompanied the 'murderers' and didn't warn the potential 'victims'. Hmm. Didn't the U.S. "embed" journalists in military units, carrying them along to record the carnage of the U.S. invasion? Doesn't that make them all 'murderers' too?
+
We can't have two standards, one for Us and one for Them. If it's okay for Us to tell newsmen where We're going to attack and bring them along (and expect them to keep that secret rather than warn the victims and thus prevent their 'murder'), then it's okay for Them to tell newsmen in advance where They're going to attack and bring them along (and expect them to keep that secret rather than warn the victims and thus prevent their 'murder').
+
So either NONE of the journalists who accompany military forces on their attacks is a journalist, or ALL the journalists who accompany military forces on their attacks are nonetheless to be considered journalists and entitled to the protections we give neutral observers so that we all get the truth that might enable us to make wise decisions. That, after all, is what journalism is for: for the public, not for multibillionaires and megabillion-dollar corporations to make a quick buck by pandering to jingoists.
+
The New York Post is fully as partisan as al-Arabiya or al-Jazeera. If it is okay for the U.S. military to regard al-Arabiya's journalists as combatants and target them for death, then it would be fully proper for Iraqi patriots and their allies to regard Ralph Peters and the entire editorial staff of the New York Post as combatants and arrange to kill as many as they can reach, even if they have to launch mortar attacks upon their homes while they sleep. After all, we don't allow murderers to wander free and sleep safely, secure in the knowledge that because they are not actively committing murder at the moment, they are therefore entitled to be left alone.
+
Maybe our Arab 'enemies' can find the addresses for the editors and columnists for the New York Post who poison readers' (and voters') minds with vicious, hypocritical bullshit and "take them out" for us, doing the United States a great favor. So to all you New York Post apologists for mass murder for Zionism — Pleasant dreams! (Responsive to "Terror's Pals in the Press", column by Ralph Peters, New York Post, September 15, 2004)
+
Full disclosure: This blog entry started as a letter emailed to the Post on the 16th and was added to and uploaded on the 17th because I had a doctor's appointment on the 15th and overtime at work on the 16th. But since it relates to a column that appeared the 15th, I am dating it that date.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Disowning the Mess? It occurs to me that the Democrats might actually prefer to lose this election. Huh?
+
I've made the observation here a couple of times that the Democrats are waging such a feeble and ineffectual campaign that it almost seems as tho they don't want to win. Jon Stewart, of Comedy Central's Daily Show, made the same ironic observation after Kerry was asked, for network news cameras, 'If you had known then what you know now, would you have voted for the authorization to use force against Iraq?' Kerry said yes, he would have voted to give the President authority to act! Stewart, puzzled, said something like “He's not even trying!” (to win).
+
You know, maybe we’ve hit on something here. Maybe Kerry really does NOT want to win this election, because then he'd be stuck with the terrible mess the Republicans have made of Iraq and the "war on terror". If Kerry & Co. don't have a solution other than simply to walk away, as Nixon just walked away from our South Vietnamese ally and let that government and then the whole of Indochina fall to Communism, maybe they'd rather the Republicans be skewered by that mess, to turn slowly over the flames of religious war fanned by their own rashness and bigotry.
+
Maybe the Democrats see a win for the presidency now as a loss for the party long-term , since they just don't have any solutions and would rather the Republicans, who also have no solution, lose the trust of a generation from that mess, than that the Democrats be the ones tarred with the brush of failure.
+
Kerry advocates U.S. withdrawal from Iraq by gradually scaling back our presence and replacing American forces with international peacekeepers. But we don’t actually have any guarantee from anyone that they will send in large enuf forces to secure peace, much less democracy across Iraq.
+
Nor is there any guarantee that the United States — or anyone — can successfully establish multiparty democracy and a viable democratic mindset in an independent Iraq, given that its culture has never included democracy.
+
Remember that Iraq is the oldest civilization on Earth — over 6,000 years of cities, writing, irrigation, and the other hallmarks of advanced human culture. Iraqis may feel that they have managed quite well without democracy thru all that time so don't need it now.
+
Unlike the U.S., which was heir to an older (and lesser) democracy on which it could build, Iraq has no ancestors, but is the world’s oldest civilization. It has had kings, emperors, caliphs, sultans, and dictators, but no home-grown democracy, ever, in 6,000 years!
+
The only other civilizations even remotely as old as Iraq (or, as it was known before the Arab conquest of 635 A.D., Mesopotamia) are India, China, and Egypt. The Indus Valley civilization arose in what is now Pakistan. Pakistan was given the forms of democracy (as part of British India) by its colonial overlord, but only late in the imperial game. Earlier on, the British were perfectly happy to use existing local monarchies (rajahs, maharajahs and the like) to govern their Indian colonies. Pakistan's feebly entrenched democracy has never lasted very long at a time before some military coup or other overthrew the elected government and installed a strong man.
+
Egypt has been governed by democratic forms for only ten years in its entire history, under Anwar Sadat. But Sadat's strong hand was more powerful than the trappings of democracy. After Sadat was assassinated by Islamist extremists, his successor, Hosni Mubarak, imposed a state of emergency that has been perennially renewed.
+
China has never had any form of democracy except in the "breakaway province" of Taiwan. Sun Yat-Sen, who set up the Nationalist government that succeeded the end of the Manchu monarchy, aspired to democracy after a period of "tutelage" of the people in how democracy works. Alas, his times were too tumultuous and too many forces were arrayed against him. He made a terrible mistake in allying early on with the Communists, and when Chiang Kai-shek expelled the Communists from the Nationalist party, open civil war broke out, dooming all hope of democracy on the mainland, which is to this day ruled by Communist totalitarianism.
+
In short, none* of the four most ancient civilizations on Earth has ever had democracy, and ancient civilizations don't take kindly to being taught by upstarts. To the extent that democracy is identified with foreign countries and arriviste civilizations, it is resented by keepers of the flame of their own civilization's glories — whether that civilization ever really had a golden age worth cherishing or not.
+
Moreover, none of Iraq's neighbors has ever been a democracy either. The closest semblance appears in Israel, which is a democracy for Jews, but dictatorship for everyone else.
+
How likely is it, then, that democracy will take root in so hostile a historical, cultural, and geographical clime, no matter how much material and military assistance anyone — we, the European Union, the Arab League, the UN, anyone at all — throws in?
+
So maybe the Democratic National Committee thinks it would be better to see the Republicans ravaged by the Iraq War the way the Democrats were ravaged by the Vietnam War — that a new, long-lasting, national majority for the Democrats depends upon deep, widespread public revulsion at a deadly quagmire the Republicans get us into and can't get us out of.
+
Perhaps Kerry thinks he can win enuf votes, while still losing the election, to run again four years hence (Hmm. Whatever happened to Al Gore? — who actually got more popular votes than Bush), when the Republicans will have caused thousands more Americans and others to die in unending violence, and cost American taxpayers $400 billion thrown down a Middle East rathole — as might cause fiscal conservatives and jingoistic isolationists appalled by the American death toll in a foreign adventure to turn against the Republican Party and join with traditional Democratic constituencies to create a new Democratic majority in the kind of sea change we have seen with the move of the "solid South" from Democratic to Republican, but in reverse.
+
Yes, it might just be that the Democrats really DON'T want to win this time.

_______________
* Only the attenuated Indian extension of the Indus Valley civilization operates under anything like democracy, and the key phrase here is "like democracy", because India is not a social democracy nor economic democracy, and its central government has highhandedly replaced elected state and local governments with appointed governments more to its liking. Besides, there are great discontinuities between the ancient Indus civilization and modern India. The names "India" and "Hindu" may derive from "Indus", but many key elements of Indian culture do not really derive from that ancient civilization but from other, less-ancient cultures.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:02 PM

 
Leniency from the Right! The New York Post today editorially advocated replacing New York State's draconian Rockefeller Laws with milder laws that draw finer distinctions between criminals and target the 'serious' criminals while going easy on the minor players. That's just wrong — and surprising in its softness on crime.
+
The takeoff for this stance was that a prosecutor refused to demand jail time for a college girl who used her dorm room at NYU as a drug supermarket. Apparently the Post feels it's fine for prosecutors to refuse to prosecute drug pushers if they are middle-class girls from the suburbs.
+
If the people entrusted with enforcing the laws refuse to do so, remove them for misfeasance and send them to JAIL. Don't let them nullify laws duly passed by a legislative assembly of elected representatives of the people's will.
+
Drugs are a plague upon this country, and have been for a long time. The drug trade feeds huge international criminal conspiracies that have killed uncounted thousands and even dared invade the Palace of Justice in Colombia, killing 11 Supreme Court justices! Drugs kill, directly and indirectly, and ruin lives, marriages, families; cause massive financial damage and physical damage in accidents; and support terrorists in a number of countries, including al-Qaeda groups.
+
Leniency on drug pushers is not the solution. An automatic death penalty and requiring prosecutors to uphold the laws or join the people they refuse to prosecute, as co-conspirators in their crimes, which they are — would handily cure the problem. Singapore doesn't have a drug problem. We could be as free of drugs as Singapore if we had Singapore's laws.
+
Let's void the sweetheart deal given Julia Diaco, who sold "pot, cocaine and psychedelic mushrooms on eight separate occasions to undercover cops", indict as a co-conspirator the prosecutor who refused to prosecute her AND the judge who consented to this outrage, and send both to prison for life, until we can pass an automatic death penalty law. That would send a powerful message that we are serious about ending the unceasing assault upon society committed by drug pushers. The solution is not leniency but death.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:56 PM

 
“Guys”; “I’m Good”; “Doin’”. Mass media are having a very harmful impact upon language. Let’s take three examples. In Hollywood, “guys” is the plural of “you”: “Hey, guys [to a roomful of people of both genders], you want to order a pizza?” “Oh, you guys didn’t have to do this!”, gushes one girl to a group of girls. You see, Hollywood detests grammatical gender differences, all the while it focuses on sex between the genders! Curious, no?
+
“Guys” as a plural that includes “gals” is one of myriad attacks upon gender difference committed by the Far Left against society, under the influence of Radical Feminist (lesbian) and Communist dogma. Radical Feminism is designed to confuse people about gender as to make the otherwise impermissible deviation of lesbians acceptable. Communism devalues difference. Of what importance is gender difference among individuals if the individual isn’t important?
+
Radical Feminists are adamant that feminine is bad, so all linguistic references to anything female must be exterminated. The -ess” ending to indicate feminine must therefore be eradicated. “Authoress” and “poetess”, once terms of honor to be proud of, are now forbidden for being ‘demeaning’, in identifying the writer as female, which is, we are to believe, a terrible thing to be.
+
Women used to like being women, and if anything wanted more words that showed that a given achiever was female. By far most real women (not Hollywood inventions) still enjoy being women, but they have let radfem lesbians dominate discussions of language. It's time to counterattack.
+
There really is nothing wrong with being female, and women must show their pride in their gender by demanding the restoration of long-accepted, female-assertive words like “actress”.
+
Moreover, they should see that addressing girls or women as “guys” is an INSULT, denounce such usage, and force it to end.
+
Another area of linguistic change that needs to be reversed is the apparent attempt by mass media to destroy the word “well” and substitute “good”. An empty-headed celebrity comes onto a talk show. The host(ess) asks “How are you?” and s/he replies, “I’m good.” No, in all likelihood s/he is nothing like good but is a self-centered, useless, amoral piece of Hollywood trash deeply involved in drugs and using people sexually. He or she might, however, be “well”.
+
Even worse, the response to “How are you?” is often “I’m doin’ good.” No, it is almost certain that s/he is not “doing good”, that is, performing service to one's fellow man. Many of these worthless celebrities haven’t done any good for anyone in their entire life, and certainly not voluntarily since they became famous. Some are forced to perform community service as punishment for driving drunk, shoplifting, violating the drug laws, etc. That doesn’t count.
+
As for “doin’” and other substitutions of -in for -ing, that is not casual but stupid. There are four nasal sounds in today’s English: M, N, NG and, rarely (mostly in words of French origin that some people think are still French, like “ambiance” or "salon" in the sense of a literary gathering), nasalization of the prior vowel, which we can represent as NN). It makes no more sense to substitute an N for the NG-sound in “doing” than it would to substitute an M (I’m doim fime) or NN nasalization.
+
Someone who says doin’ isn’t really just dropping a G, because there’s no G-sound in the -ing ending. NG is just a spelling convention for a single, indivisible nasal sound rendered NG in writing. Rather, doin’ replaces one nasal sound with an entirely different nasal sound, which is just idiotic.
+
Language is code. You change too many symbols in the code and you render the message incomprehensible. That’s how separate languages evolve out of one. In the case of Latin, people in Hispania (Spain) changed some of the sounds and grammatical forms in one way, while people in Gallia (Gaul, now France) changed them in a different way, while people in Italia changed them in yet another way. Over time, the various forms of Late Latin changed so much that they became mutually incomprehensible. We don’t want that to happen with English.
+
Careful use of language shows respect for your audience. You really care that they don’t have to struggle to understand you, and that you don’t confuse them by calling girls or women “guys” or arbitrarily changing individual speech sounds in words. Speech goes quickly, and any momentary confusion causes part of the message to be lost. If the mind is trying to figure out what was just said, it can’t focus on what’s being said now.
+
That’s bad enuf. But when people insult other people by depriving them of their rightful gender, that is intolerable. “Guys” is gender-specific, to boys and men. If you wouldn’t say to a roomful of men, “Hey, gals, you want to order a pizza?”, don’t call girls and women “guys”.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:23 PM

 
Ten Reasons the Democrats Should Trounce Bush, Part 1. Today is the third anniversary of the first reason Dubya should be ousted in a landslide: the 9/11 attacks happened on his watch!
+
His Administration was so bumblingly incompetent that even when cued by reports from various sources that Islamist terror organizations were actively considering hijacking airplanes and using them as missiles, he did NOTHING. He didn’t strengthen cockpit cabin doors against break-in. He didn’t put air marshals on planes. He didn’t even warn the public that terrorists were considering such measures, so that if anyone attempts to hijack an airplane, the passengers should assume that they will all be killed when the hijackers deliberately crash the plane like a giant bomb, unless they stop the hijacking He didn’t warn people that the New Hijacking is not like the Old Hijacking, where someone would commandeer a plane and demand to be taken to Cuba or some other airport or try to hold the plane or its passengers for ransom, but is intended to employ the plane as a military weapon and in the process kill everyone on board and as many people on the ground as possible.
+
When the passengers on the fourth plane hijacked on 9/11 heard, from cellphone calls, what had happened to other hijacked planes that day, they rallied to attack the hijackers! But it was too late. The hijackers were already in the cockpit, already at the controls, and the passengers couldn’t retake the plane before it was deliberately crashed into the ground.
+
Still, the plane failed to reach its intended target, because the passengers heroically saved others, at the cost of their own lives. If only the Bush Administration had WARNED all potential air passengers, long before they boarded the plane, that if anyone even TRIES to hijack their plane they must jump them, beat them, kill them if need be because otherwise they will all die, it might very well be that NONE of the planes hijacked September 11th could have been hijacked; NONE of the people killed at the World Trade Center and Pentagon would have been killed; and NONE of the vast economic devastation we suffered would have happened!
+
New York Magazine in 2002 did a one-year-after summary of some numbers, which includes these:

Jobs lost in New York owing to the attacks: 146,100 * * *

Point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average when the NYSE reopened: 684.81

Economic loss to New York in month following the attacks: $105 billion

Estimated cost of cleanup: $600 million

Total FEMA money spent on the emergency: $970 million * * *

Estimated amount of insurance paid worldwide related to 9/11: $40.2 billion

Estimated amount of money needed to overhaul lower-Manhattan subways: $7.5 billion

In addition to the costs to the Tristate New York Metropolitan Area (in which I happen to live), the Council on Foreign Relations reported, “A study by the Milken Institute, an economics research group in Santa Monica, Calif., estimates that the attacks will cost the nation more than 1.8 million jobs by the end of 2002.”
+
Recent figures aren’t easy to come by, to show the cumulative cost over the three years since the attacks, and it’s not easy to trace the interconnections between, for instance, that one day’s events and a huge drop in air travel and related losses to the travel and tourism industry — how many people canceled vacations altogether as against how many merely shifted destinations and mode of transportation. What is plain, however, is that the cost to the people of the United States of the 9/11 attacks — which could have been prevented — is immense.
+
Bizarrely, the Bush Administration has presented its failure to protect us as a proof of its fitness to govern! We are supposed to feel safe under the leadership of the very people who brought us this disaster! Astounding.
+
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
+
For having permitted the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration must go, and any competent presidential candidate would be able to crush the national Republican Party using that alone.
+
There are 8 weeks left till the election. Before November 2nd I will have sorted thru all the many, many reasons the Democrats should be able to destroy the Bush Administration and select the other 9 of the Top Ten Reasons the Democrats Should Trounce Bush. Had I been more alert to the calendar, I would have started this series two weeks ago and added one entry a week. Never fear. Even tho I have to double-up on reasons at least twice, I’ll get all 10 stated before the election, and summarize the list on Monday, November 1st. Stay tuned.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:27 PM