Fan Freakin' Tastic

Join the peoples protest against Judge Sharon Killer Keller

2007-11-13T17:31:00.001-08:00

Why: Judge Sharon Keller has violated the Judicial Code of Conduct and damaged the integrity of the Texas judiciary. She should resign or be removed from office. On Sept 25, Keller said "We close at 5" and refused to accept an appeal 20 minutes after 5pm from a man set to be executed at 6 pm that day. She did not consult with the duty judge or any other judges on the court before refusing to accept the appeal. Michael Richard was executed on Sept 25, but he would not have been executed that night if Keller had not acted unethically and violated his constitutional rights. Richard was the last person executed in the U.S.before the start of the current de facto moratorium pending the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Baze v. Rees case on the constitutionality of lethal injection as a method of execution.

Date: Friday, Nov 16 at 4:45

Schedule:

4:45 pm Start to gather and get in line to deliver letters urging Keller to resign and the copy of the judicial complaint to the Clerk of the Court.
5:00 The court closes, but we want to have people standing in line with letters to deliver, so that they are inconvenienced and forced to stay open an extra 20 minutes to serve everyone in line.
5:20 Rally with speakers outside on the Court plaza.

Place: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals,
201 West 14th Street (This is the official address. We will meet on the plaza around the corner facing Congress Ave.)
Austin, Tx

Action: We will be delivering a copy of a judicial complaint against Sharon Keller signed so far by more than 1300 members of the public.

You can still sign the complaint by clicking here or visiting the website www.SharonKiller.com

We ask that people bring their own personally written letters urging Keller to resign and you can deliver yours to the Clerk of the Court.

What did you think was going to happen when you picked up the pissed off rattlesnake?

2006-11-13T18:20:00.000-08:00

November 7, 2006
Woman Fatally Bitten by Snake in Church
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 5:50 p.m. ET


LONDON, Ky. (AP) -- A southeastern Kentucky woman was bitten by a
snake during a church service and later died, a law enforcement
officer said. Linda Long, 48, of London died Sunday at University of
Kentucky Medical Center, said Brad Mitchell, a detective with the
Laurel County Sheriff's Office.


Long died about four hours after the bite was reported, the Lexington
Herald-Leader reported.


Officials said Long attended East London Holiness Church. Neighbors
of the church told the newspaper the church practices serpent handling.


Lt. Ed Sizemore of the Laurel County Sheriff's Office said friends
went with Long to a local hospital Sunday afternoon, and she was taken
to UK.

''She said she was bitten by a snake at her church,'' Sizemore said.


Handling reptiles as part of religious services is illegal in
Kentucky. Snake handling is a misdemeanor and punishable by a $50 to
$100 fine. Police said they had not received reports about snake
handling at the church.

Snake handling is based on a passage in the Bible, in the Gospel of
Mark, that says a sign of a true believer is the power to ''take up
serpents'' without being harmed.

Church officials could not be reached for comment.


The funeral was scheduled for 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Arthur's Chapel
Church in Rosehill, Va., according to the Rosehill Funeral Home.

In Memory of Michael Johnson

2006-10-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

Michael John, scheduled to be executed in Texas
this evening, has deprived the executioner of its delight
in murdering an innocent man.

At 3:30 AM today Michael took his life in his
"death watch" cell by slitting his throat.  In his own blood,
he wrote on the wall of the cell "I didn't do it."

Our condolences to his family.  Michael took this last act of
courage to let the world know he was innocent.

Last evening Radio Station KDOL in Livingston had a show
dedicated to Michael. A & E from Chicago filmed the radio show. 
thanks to Joy Weathers for this last tribute to Michael.

The theme of this years March to Stop Executions is "The System is
Broken" and we will be featuring the innocent people executed--
Carlos de Luna, Ruben Cantu, and Todd Willingham.  Michael Johnson
should also be remembered.  Be in Austin on October 28th!

Stop the crimes of the state of Texas!  Abolish the racist, anti-poor
death penalty Now!

March to Stop Executions

2006-10-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

7th Annual March to Stop Executions

"The System is Broken"

Saturday, October 28th, 2006
Austin, Texas

3 PM Meet at Texas Governor's Mansion (between 10th & 11th Streets on Lavaca)

3:30 March around mansion, down Congress Ave to Austin City Hall

for a rally at Austin City Hall Plaza

Speakers include: Rose Rhoton, sister of Carlos De Luna. "If God ever gave me a second chance," Rhoton has said, "I would fight harder for Carlos." Darby Tillis, who was exonerated from death row in Illinois, will also speak. Other speakers to be announced soon.

Each October since 2000, people from all walks of life and all parts of Texas, the U.S. and other countries have taken a day out of their year and gathered in Austin to raise our voices together and loudly express our opposition to the death penalty.

Get on the Bus From Houston: Bus tickets are $20.00. Call or email TDPAM in Houston to reserve a seat or buy a ticket for a student, a senior or a person on fixed income who wants to go. AbolitionMovement@hotmail.com or call 713-503-2633.

Join us in Austin on Oct. 28th to demand a Stop to All Executions!

The march is organized by people from many different groups working together as the March to Stop Executions Coalition. If your organization wants to be listed as a sponsor of the march, please let us know. The 7th Annual March to Stop Executions Coaliton includes:

Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Texas Moratorium Network, Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Committee to Free Frances Newton, Inside Books Project, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Journey of Hope, International Socialist Organization, Democrats for Life, Death Penalty Reform Caucus of the Texas Democratic Party, Victims of Texas, Amnesty International, Texans for Peace, Austin Mennonite Church, CodePink Austin, El Pasoans Against the Death Penalty, Students Against the Death Penalty (the national group), Libertarian Longhorns, Catholic Longhorns for Life, the Social Justice Committee of the University Catholic Center, Howard Guidry Justice Committee, The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Friends Meeting of Austin, The Texas Civil Rights Project

To become a sponsor or get involved, email us at: admin@texasmoratorium.org

Or call us at: 512-302-6715.

Interrogations of witnesses in Texas bombing case produced false memories

2006-10-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/local/15663297.htm
Monday, October 2, 2006

New evidence surfaces in bombing case

By MAX B. BAKER
Star-Telegram Staff Writer


Six years ago, Texas Death Row inmate Michael Toney made headlines when
he
tried to sell seats to his execution over the Internet.

But now Toney, convicted of blowing up three people in Lake Worth on
Thanksgiving Day in 1985, may create another stir as he tries to avoid
the
death chamber for one of North Texas’ most notorious crimes.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals recently ruled that new evidence —
including reports from the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and
Explosives discrediting the prosecution’s key witnesses — is sufficient
to
support Toney’s innocence claim and warrants another review by state
District Judge Everett Young.

The Tarrant County district attorney’s office says that some of the
claims
have been made in previous appeals. But a defense attorney representing
Toney says he is convinced that Toney is innocent.

“It’s one of the most egregious cases I’ve seen,” said Jared Tyler, an
attorney with the Texas Innocence Network. “For me, there is not a
shred of
evidence that he did it.”

Toney, 40, was sentenced to death in 1999 for the briefcase bombing
that
killed Angela Blount, 15; her father, Joe Blount, 44; and her cousin
Michael
Columbus, 18.

The case had gone unsolved for a decade until Toney, who was in jail
for
another offense, told another inmate that he was hired to put the
briefcase
bomb at the mobile home. Investigators later presented evidence showing
that
Toney — who they said was to be paid $5,000 for the bombing — put it at
the
wrong trailer.

Toney always proclaimed his innocence and his efforts in 2000 to sell
seats
to his future execution to the highest bidder was part of a publicity
stunt
to attract attention to his case. The state forbade him to sell the
seats.

Nicknamed “Cowboy,” Toney is a prolific e-mail correspondent, writing
regularly not only to reporters but also to members of the jury that
convicted him. He also has a Web site on which he proclaims his
innocence.

“Lies got me sentenced to death for a crime I did not commit,” Toney
writes
on his Web site. “Since the charade of a Texas trial people have came
forward and told me who killed the Blounts and why they did it.”

Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Debra Windsor, who will
defend
her office in court, says the way the case is being presented by the
defense
attorneys involves more than questions about Toney’s innocence.

“It is actually an attack on this office,” she said.

A troubling case
Tyler and David Dow, attorneys for the Innocence Network at the
University
of Houston Law Center, accuse Tarrant County District Attorney Tim
Curry’s
office of offenses including withholding reports from the Texas
Department
of Public Safety and the ATF that attack the credibility of the state’s
key
witnesses, Chris Meeks and Michael Toney’s ex-wife, Kimberly Toney.

Released to the defense this year for the first time, the reports
suggest
that Meeks and Toney may have been manipulated and intimidated into
giving
statements fitting investigators’ preconceived notions of how and why
the
crime occurred.

Defense attorneys point out that by the time Michael Toney was indicted
in
1997, the crime was 12 years old. The Lake Worth incident was the
longest-running unsolved bombing investigation in the country, court
papers
state. Defense attorneys suggest that there was a renewed interest in
this
case by a federal agency trying to rebuild its image after the Oklahoma
City
bombing.

Prosecutors were led to Toney when he allegedly confessed to committing
the
crime to Charles Ferris, a fellow inmate in the Parker County Jail.
Already
serving time in prison on a burglary charge, Toney had been transferred
to
the Weatherford jail on an unresolved burglary charge. Toney reportedly
told
Ferris that he had put the explosive briefcase on the front porch of
the
mobile home.

After that, investigators began looking into Toney’s possible
involvement in
the case, which led them to Meeks and Kimberly Toney. Neither one had
ever
talked to authorities about Toney’s role in the bombing.

Kimberly Toney testified during the trial that she, Meeks and Michael
Toney
went out together the day of the bombing and that they drove to a
business
near the mobile home park where the Blounts lived. She said Michael
Toney,
who was then her boyfriend, got out of their pickup, grabbed a
briefcase and
disappeared behind the business. He came back later without the
briefcase.

Meek told basically the same story during the trial.

Defense attorneys contend that recently released reports from the DPS
and
the ATF show that investigators used what they call “cognitive
interviewing
techniques” to plant false memories into Meeks’ and Kimberly Toney’s
minds.
Those reports should have been released to Michael Toney’s attorneys at
the
time of the trial, to show that they had not always given the same
account
of the crime.

Both witnesses’ testimony was crucial to the state’s case against
Toney.

Kimberly Toney’s memories in particular were “unscrupulously recovered,
reshaped, and reformed, by aggressive investigators desperately trying
to
close” the case, court papers said.

The defense also contends that Kimberly Toney’s testimony is
questionable
because of recently uncovered evidence that she may have suffered
memory
loss from chemicals she was exposed to in 1991 during the Persian Gulf
War.

“At the time the investigation into the Blount bombing was reopened, it
was
the longest-running unsolved bombing investigation in the country. The
bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City had
just
occurred, and the ATF was determined to solve this crime, one way or
another,” court papers state.

Testimony recanted
A memorandum from Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Mike
Parrish
and two ATF reports that cast doubts on the testimony of Tucker Finis
Blankenship were also not provided to defense attorneys at the time of
the
trial. Blankenship met Toney while they were in jail together,
according to
court documents.

Blankenship said Toney said that another man was going to pay him
$5,000 for
making and delivering the bomb, but that he had put it by the wrong
mobile
home. Since then, Blankenship has recanted those statements, and court
papers indicate that Blankenship believed the cases against him would
be
dropped in return for his testimony.

Information was also uncovered that pointed to another man who had
built a
pipe bomb similar to one used in the Blount bombing and that the man’s
family told authorities that components used in the briefcase bomb were
missing from their home. The man had also told more than one other
person
that he was responsible for the three deaths, court papers state.

“The fact of the matter is that the Blount bombing remains unsolved to
this
day, even as Mr. Toney remains on death row,” court papers state.

But during the trial, Toney also admitted that he lied frequently.
During
the trial he acknowledged telling some people that his father is dead,
others that his mother is dead, and others that he had a master’s
degree in
chemistry.

He has also said since his conviction that he unwisely told Ferris that
he
could tell authorities he was involved in the Blount bombing if it
would
help him get out of jail by getting his charges reduced or dismissed.
Ferris
has since recanted that testimony, too.

Parrish has no doubts that he convicted the right person. The district
attorney’s office has until early next year to file its initial
response to
Toney’s request for a review of the evidence and possibly a new trial.

“All that’s been raised on state appeal,” Parrish said. “There must be
some
new, slightly different kitchen sink they are throwing in here.”
- - - - -
Max B. Baker, 817-390-7714
maxbaker@star-telegram.com

/ / / / /
Steve Hall
512.879.1675  (o)
512.627.3011  (c)
shall@standdown.org

Recommended website

2006-09-29T08:14:00.001-07:00

entertaining and informative!

http://www.sharonkiller.com/

Texas habeas procedures are a joke...

2006-09-29T08:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/
MYSA092406.01A.BadLawyering.30a3c2d.html

Sunday, September 25, 2006

Shoddy lawyering can prove fatal 
in death row appeals

Maro Robbins
Express-News Staff

With his client's life on the line, the lawyer 
appointed to file the death
row inmate's final state appeal cobbled together 
arguments that were incomplete, vague and, in at 
least one place, just plain wrong.

They perplexed the prosecutor and provoked a 
606-page response from the judge.

"Applicant totally misinterprets 
occurred in this case," State District Judge Noe Gonzalez 
of Edinburg wrote about one of the
attorney's claims.

Appalled by the lawyer's work, a committee of attorneys and citizens
formally complained to the agency that polices attorney misconduct, the
State Bar of Texas.

The result?

The attorney, Mark Alexander of McAllen, remains on the state's list of
136
lawyers who can be appointed to the cases that challenge convictions
and
help ensure no one unfairly convicted reaches the execution chamber.

The State Bar dismissed the grievance against Alexander. His former
client,
Arturo Eleazar Diaz, remains on death row, arguing the courts never
really
reviewed his case because Alexander botched the appeal.

Confusing as they may have been, Alexander's arguments are the last
words
Texas courts are likely to hear about Diaz. They remain fixed in the
record,
an example of a dilemma apparent to observers of all political stripes:

Texas tolerates and even finances questionable legal work in the
closing
chapters of its death penalty cases — the court challenges known as
applications for writs of habeas corpus.

"It's a problem. It needs to be addressed," said Judge Cheryl Johnson,
a
Republican on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. "But I don't think
there
are any easy solutions to it."

Examples of troubling habeas cases abound, activists say. Just last
month,
Texas executed Justin Fuller, whose appointed lawyer filed a habeas
challenge with rambling claims, glaring typos and incoherent
repetitions.

Another execution is scheduled in January for an inmate whose appointed
lawyer filed two pages — upward of 100 is more common — that raised
only one
claim, and experts say it was fatally flawed.

Yet another habeas attorney failed to show the main witness against his
client had recanted. With help from other lawyers, that inmate, Anthony
Charles Graves, now is off death row and awaiting a retrial.

The habeas attorney's job is to catch misconduct and mistakes made by
the
defendant's trial lawyers, as well as the investigators, prosecutors,
judges
and jurors who touched the case beforehand.

If the state habeas attorney misses a detail, the inmate may never get
another chance to raise it. An inmate can try filing in federal court,
but,
except in rare extenuating circumstances, federal judges won't consider
anything that wasn't already raised in state court.

It's an area of law that goes largely unchecked by traditional
safeguards
against shoddy legal work. For instance:

The State Bar disciplines lawyers who file nothing at all for their
clients,
but not necessarily attorneys who file worthless paperwork. It leaves
those
to malpractice lawsuits.

Lawyers who mishandle divorces, employment disputes or other civil
matters
can be sued by their clients. But not in criminal cases. The law
essentially
forbids malpractice claims from convicts.

The Court of Criminal Appeals decides who's qualified to handle habeas
appointments, but has done little, if anything, to ensure lawyers
actually
live up to their credentials.

Trial attorneys in death penalty cases must, by law, perform to certain
constitutional standards. When, for example, lawyers fail to adequately
investigate, their clients can get do-overs. Not in Texas' habeas
cases. By
contrast, 14 of the nation's 37 states with the death penalty hold
habeas
attorneys to the same standards as trial lawyers.

"We don't have any watchdog organization that checks for quality
control" in
capital habeas cases, said Catharine G. Burnett, a South Texas College
of
Law professor and a member of the committee that complained about
Alexander.

A poor track record


Habeas corpus is the Latin term for the centuries-old legal tool that
double-checks the fairness of a conviction or punishment. In capital
cases,
it acts as the executioner's gatekeeper.

Unlike the direct appeals that automatically follow every death
sentence and
examine what might have gone wrong at trial, applications for writs of
habeas corpus dig deeper.

Not confined to what occurred in the courtroom, habeas attorneys are
supposed to consider the whole picture, from what detectives did at the
crime scene to what jurors discussed in the deliberation room.

It's a daunting responsibility, and many qualified attorneys steer
clear of
it, partly because they say the amount the state will pay — up to
$25,000 —
won't cover what's required for the sizable task. Comparable cases in
federal court normally pay up to $35,000 in legal fees alone, not
including
investigative expenses.

Texas started supplying habeas lawyers for death row inmates in 1995.
Seven
years later, a nonprofit monitor of capital cases, the Texas Defender
Service, looked at what the state was getting for its money.

Reading all but a dozen of the 263 habeas applications bankrolled by
Texas,
the nonprofit found nearly 40 percent had fatal technical flaws and
provided
"nothing for the courts to consider."

Since the study, "nothing has improved," said Andrea Keilen, director
of the
Defender Service.

Mark Alexander was preparing a habeas application around the time the
Defender Service completed its study. His client, Arturo Eleazar Diaz,
had
been convicted of stabbing his victim dozens of times during a 1999
robbery
in McAllen.

Filed in 2002, Alexander's petition crammed 19 separate arguments into
35
pages. Its brevity came at the expense of clarity.

When Alexander complained the prosecutor had made inflammatory remarks
to
the jury, he never cited specifics. Judge Gonzalez responded with a
shrug,
writing: "It is practically impossible to discern which particular
comment,
if any, he believes had been objectionable."

When Alexander criticized the trial attorneys for failing to discover
potentially significant evidence, specifically "the tape" and "all the
witnesses," he never identified the tape. Or the witnesses.

Two paragraphs long, his final assertion was that jurors hadn't been
told
how long parole laws would keep Diaz locked up if he received a life
sentence — crucial information for any jury weighing between prison
time and
lethal injection.

"Simply not true," the judge stated in his order rejecting all
Alexander's
claims. The record showed the jury had been given precisely that
information.

What Alexander's petition failed to include was Diaz's contention that
his
trial lawyer spent only 15 minutes discussing the plea bargain offered
by
prosecutors.

Had Diaz better understood the plea and the risks of trial, the inmate
says,
he would have accepted a life sentence. When he tried raising this
issue in
federal court, the judge there said it was too late.

No way to grade quality


By chance, Diaz's case caught the attention of a State Bar group
concerned
about the quality of appointed counsel, the Committee on Legal Services
to
the Poor in Criminal Matters.

Alarmed by the Defender Service's study, committee members decided to
look
at random habeas petitions. Overall, they weren't impressed. One case
especially disturbed them.

The committee's minutes show the group voted 8-1 to file a grievance.

Committee members wouldn't name in interviews the subject of their
complaint, but court documents identified Alexander as the target and,
although he says it was unjustified, he acknowledged the grievance.

Three months ago, committee members learned the State Bar's
disciplinary
office had dismissed the complaint against Alexander without a hearing.
By
its standards, his work didn't violate the bar's rules.

"It was frustrating to us," said Michael K. Moore, a committee member
and
political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.
"It
never saw the light of day."

Reached by phone, Alexander said the grievance, together with the heart
attack he survived about a year ago, have convinced him to steer clear
of
capital cases.

Alexander said his medical problems have blurred his memory so that he
no
longer remembers enough to explain every assertion in Diaz's case. But,
he
insisted he labored long and dutifully on the case.

The $13,040 bill he submitted to Hidalgo County listed 326 hours of
work,
the equivalent of two months. Primarily, Alexander said, he knew the
habeas
represented Diaz's last chance to present new claims.

As a result, Alexander said he alleged things he couldn't prove simply
to
put them on the record. That way, if someone eventually found evidence
to
bolster them, the issues could be resurrected in federal court.

It wasn't a perfect legal brief, Alexander concedes, but in his defense
he
says it was only his second habeas case. "I was learning," he said.

"It wasn't like I just neglected it or whatever," he added. "I had
reasons
for what I did. I think my reasoning was sound."

Neglecting a case would violate ethical rules for attorneys. The State
Bar
regularly disciplines lawyers who collect fees and then file nothing or
abandon a case before it's over. But if attorneys file glaringly bad
claims,
the bar typically does nothing.

The bar's investigators find it difficult to prove that someone who
worked
on a brief for more than 100 hours neglected the case, said Betty
Blackwell,
chairwoman of the State Bar's Commission for Lawyer Discipline.

Grading the quality of legal briefs is another challenge.

"Are you going to discipline somebody for a C, D or F?" she said. "The
rules
don't really address that."

Blackwell, like many others, believes the job of watchdog belongs to
the
Court of Criminal Appeals, the tribunal that reviews every habeas
application and vets the list of attorneys who can be appointed to
capital
habeas cases.

Members of the court, in turn, want the State Bar to take the lead.

Cheryl Johnson, one of two judges at the court who vet the list of
habeas
lawyers, said the nine judges there disagree about what to do with
attorneys
who submit abysmal habeas petitions.

Some believe that only a formal reprimand from the State Bar would
justify
yanking a lawyer's name from the roster. That was the issue with at
least
one attorney whose name, Johnson said, doesn't belong on the list.

"I've been trying to get him off since I reached the court in 1999,"
she
said, "and I cannot get any support for it because he has no
disciplinary
history with the bar."

A check on the system


As with anything involving the death penalty, personal biases cloud the
discussion of habeas cases.

Judges and lawyers comfortable with capital punishment won't
necessarily be
troubled by a habeas application that fails to make any reasonable
arguments.

In their eyes, lousy arguments in a habeas case are likely the sign of
a
defense lawyer grasping at straws because the conviction was fair and
just.

"I'm not aware of and I don't believe there are cases where there's
gross
injustices based on ineffective assistance at the post-conviction writ
stage," said Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, who once
worked at the Court of Criminal Appeals.

By contrast, opponents of the death penalty believe reasonable claims
can be
found in most capital cases. To them, superficial habeas applications
signal
a lack of effort or ability.

"In every case I know of ... where someone didn't do their duty as a
habeas
lawyer and someone else came along and did it, there were new claims
that
were found," said Jim Marcus, a lawyer with the University of Texas
Capital
Punishment Clinic.

Marcus can point to such a case in Bexar County. As much as any, it
demonstrates why the quality of habeas counsel matters.

Ricky Eugene Kerr was sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder of his
new
landlady and her 42-year-old son after they cut off his water and moved
to
evict him.

His appointed habeas lawyer, Robert A. McGlohon Jr., had three years'
experience as a lawyer and, though he had been a staff attorney for the
Court of Criminal Appeals, he never had handled a death penalty case.

Suffering from a debilitating illness and a serious misunderstanding of
habeas law, McGlohon filed a single, generic claim critiquing habeas
law.
Nowhere did his brief say anything about Kerr's trial.

The trial court, State District Judge Sharon MacRae, rejected the
petition.
So did the Court of Criminal Appeals.

A few months later, Marcus, then with the Defender Service, interceded.
He
took the case to federal court, where he showed how McGlohon had
mishandled
Kerr's habeas application. The federal judge was appalled.

Concluding that Kerr never had a fair habeas petition, U.S. District
Judge
Orlando Garcia kicked the case back to the state courts. Confronted by
the
judge's ruling, the Court of Criminal Appeals relented and made an
unusual
exception. It allowed him to refile his habeas petition.

The second time around, Kerr was represented by Marcus and Kathryn
Kase, an
attorney with the Defender Service. They had plenty to say about Kerr's
trial.

They showed that Kerr's trial attorneys had never shown jurors a full
picture of the man on trial. The defense team had been so confident it
would
win, it only started preparing for the punishment phase after the
guilty
verdict.

By then it was too late to complete the detailed research expected in
capital cases. Kerr's relatives testified, but the jury never heard
several
potentially mitigating details about the tattooed defendant with a
history
of domestic violence and petty crimes.

Kerr had endured an abusive childhood and had helped care for two
brothers
with mental retardation and an ailing grandmother. He had a history of
head
injuries, drug abuse and learning disabilities, possibly because of
fetal
alcohol syndrome.

At least one juror said the new information might have convinced her to
spare Kerr, and Judge MacRae revised her previous findings. Earlier
this
year MacRae sent her conclusions to the Court of Criminal Appeals,
where
they are under review.

This time, she urged the court throw out Kerr's death sentence.
- - - - -
mrobbins@express-news.net
Staff Writer John Tedesco contributed to this report.

And the Israelis continue to cry that they are the victims

2006-08-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

Israeli Assault on Lebanon: Map of Locations Bombed (July 12 - August 6, 2006)
Map of locations in Lebanon bombed, between July 12 and August 6, 2006.

Dancing to the tune of the screams of Lebanese children

2006-08-09T13:44:00.000-07:00

What cute, sweet candid snapshots these are!

Reuters caught these Orthodox Jewish men partying with soldiers firing artillery into civilian areas of Lebanon.

Anytime people who are obviously Arab or South Asian in origin do anything like this, pictures of it get run, flashed, scrolled, and re-run during the exits to commercial breaks on every single news station for an entire day. Did you see these pictures? Israel and the United States continue to claim they hold a higher moral position because they aren't like the... what is that stupid O'Reilly term?... oh yes, "islamofascists". Neither country has any moral high ground whatsoever from which to crow, moralize, and lecture the rest of the world. Their semblance of it is an image created through deliberate, careful manufacturing.

Photo caption: Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men dance with Israeli soldiers in front of a mobile artillery unit positioned in the northern village of Fassuta, near the Lebanese border, July 24, 2006. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen.

Yea! More dead Arabs! Mazel tov!

Israel continues to express audacity that anyone would question its continued killing of Lebanese civilians

2006-08-08T11:13:00.000-07:00

Lebanon/Israel: IDF Fails to Explain Qana Bombing
Independent International Inquiry Required

(Beirut, August 3, 2006) – The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) inquiry into
the July 30 killing of at least 28 civilians in Qana is incomplete and
legally
misguided, and contradicts eyewitness testimony, Human Rights Watch
said today. The findings underline the need for an independent
international inquiry into what took place.

"The Israeli military's explanation of what happened raises more
questions than it answers," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of
Human Rights Watch. "Crucial information is missing to determine what
led the IDF to attack these civilians. Only an independent
international
investigation can get at that."  

The IDF announced today that it targeted the building "in accordance
with
the military's guidelines regarding the use of fire against suspicious
structures." Since July 12, Hezbollah fighters had launched more than
150
rockets from Qana and the surrounding area, the IDF said. The military
said it attacked based on information that "the building was not
inhabited
by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists."  

But the IDF failed to provide important details about the attack, Human
Rights Watch said. First, it did not say whether it believed that
Hezbollah
fighters were in or around the building at the time of or directly
prior to
the attack, which would potentially make the building a legitimate
target.
Its failure even to make this claim suggests that fighters were not
present.  

That conclusion was supported by two eyewitnesses interviewed by
Human Rights Watch, who said that Hezbollah was not in the area when
the attack took place. Human Rights Watch researchers who visited Qana
the day after the attack found no destroyed military equipment in or
near
the home. None of the international journalists, rescue workers and
international observers who visited the scene has yet reported seeing
evidence of Hezbollah military presence in the area, and rescue workers
have not yet recovered any bodies identifiable as Hezbollah fighters.  

Second, the IDF did not clarify why it believed that Hezbollah fighters
were in the building, rather than civilians. According to Muhammad
Mahmud Shalhub, who was in the basement during the attack, 63
members of the extended Shalhub and Hashim families sought shelter in
the building when the first Israeli bombs hit Qana in the early evening
of
July 29. It remains unclear why the IDF, with superior aerial
surveillance,
did not know the families were there.  

"Why did the Israeli military consider the building ‘suspicious'?" Roth
asked. "What information did it have to reach that conclusion?"  

The IDF also repeated previous statements that it had warned Qana
residents to evacuate, thereby suggesting that it was the victims'
fault
because they chose to remain. But in Qana and other villages in
southern
Lebanon, thousands of residents have been unable to leave the area
because they are sick, wounded, do not have the means to leave or they
fear Israeli attacks on vehicles.  

"The Israeli military cannot warn people to leave and then attack at
will,"
Roth said. "The warnings are not an excuse to shoot blindly at anyone
who
remains."  

In a report issued today, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate
Attacks
Against Civilians in Lebanon," Human Rights Watch documented a
systematic failure by the IDF to distinguish between combatants and
civilians. In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the
absence
of a military target, as well as subsequent strikes on rescuers,
suggest that
Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians.  

Of all the cases of civilian casualties included in the report, Human
Rights
Watch found, none involved Hezbollah deliberately using civilians as
shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack. Hezbollah has
occasionally stored weapons in or near civilian homes and placed rocket
launchers within populated areas or near United Nations observers. Such
acts are serious violations of the laws of war because they violate the
duty
to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties. However,
those
violations did not account for the many deaths recorded in the Human
Rights Watch report. Nor do those cases justify the IDF's extensive use
of
indiscriminate force, which has cost so many civilian lives.

For more of Human Rights Watch's work on the Israel-Lebanon conflict,
please visit: http://hrw.org/campaigns/israel_lebanon/

Rally for Rodney Reed!

2006-07-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

Free Rodney Reed!

Saturday, July 29, 2006

All Out For Rodney Reed!

The CEDP, in conjunction with Rodney Reed's family, is holding a rally for justice for Rodney this evening, Saturday (7/29), in front of the Texas Capitol on 11th and Congress. The rally begins at 5:30pm. Sandra Reed, Rodney's mother, will be on hand to discuss her son's case. There will also be several other speakers, including Nelson Linder of the NAACP.

A proper flyer can be found at the new website devoted to Rodney and his case. Visit http://freerodneyreed.org for the latest info on Rodney. The site is still under construction, so check back often.

We hope to see you at the rally.

How does Israel justify this?

2006-06-23T04:44:00.000-07:00

This is a tragedy. The denial of all aid to Palestinians is a racist, brutal act that is literally killing people right now.

I recently read a book about the way that each distincit political trend in the US has twisted the tragedy of the Holocaust to justify what it was doing. For example, during the Cold War the "lesson" of the Holocaust was primarily one not against racist, fascist idealogy but against "totalitarianism" which allowed anti-Communists in the US to compare the Nazis to the Soviet Union. Not only was it quite interesting, it gave me a new perspective on a old problem. I have always dismissed the comparison radical extremist Israelis make of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to Nazis as just completely silly and disingenuous, a lie knowingly told like when Bush compares Sadaam, Chavez, Fill-in-the-Blank with Hitler. I have always thought that they knew better, but that it allowed them to hate them and justify attacking them and it was convenient in that way. Now, I still think it is silly because it is completely unfounded; the Palestinians do not have an agenda to rid the world, or even the Middle East, of Jews. I don't want any comments contesting me on this point. Its simply not true. They don't have the supremecist, violent all-encompassing world view that the Nazis possessed to harm the Jews simply because they are Jews and therefore dangerous, sickly, devious, whatever. They simply do not and any one who says differently is either lying for political gain or is completely misinformed.

However, I have shifted from thinking that most of the Israelis do indeed know better than to believe that Palestinians are Arab Nazis and say it anyway to believing that at least in many cases, these people really honestly think that the Palestinians want to conduct a campaign very similar to the Holocaust AND, unbelievably, that they are capable of doing it at any time. I am starting to think that many of these people do honestly believe they are in danger, eminent danger, of extermination. That does not make the notion any more true, but it is possibly less evil. It allows them to honestly hate Palestinians and lets them do extremely sick and demented things to them that don't make any sense otherwise. Why else would children throw rocks at other children as they are walking to school? Even more, what would make adults who have been educated to do the same thing, to children half their size?

They are obviously deranged, and perhaps they have been driven there by the fear and pain they feel over the Holocaust and they can't help themselves. It makes more sense.Nothing else would let them watch their neighbors slowly die and continue to think it is justifiable and, horribly, desirable.

Punishing Abu Muneer

By Mary Yoder

Abu Muneer, a valuable Palestinian friend to Christian PeacemakerTeams, is in a terrible family and financial crisis. Abu Muneer (whosename is changed for privacy), a Hebron city engineer for the past 27years, also works for the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a wall/settlementconsultant.

He and another 140,000 Palestinians are in positions dependent on US and EU aid for survival.In the January PA elections, Abu Muneer's entire extended family voted, as well as over 80 % of his village. The world praised thePalestinians for their democratic elections. But the US cut off aid to thePalestinians because of the Hamas victory.

Abu Muneer has received no paycheck since February. Although the US could continue to pay the PA through the president, Mahmoud Abbas, it has completely shut off aid money.

Abu Muneer is the sole provider for 15 members of his extended family; four of whom are university students. The cost for them alone is$2,600 per month with $20/day (85 shekels @ 4.45 exchange rate) just for transportation. His family savings are gone. He fears that if someone became sick, there would be no money for medical expenses.

Abu Muneer had six acres of his land confiscated by the constructionof the Separation Wall in 2004. Now in 2006, his remaining two acres will be confiscated by a Palestinian bank as payment for money borrowed two months ago: borrowed to educate and feed his family. In a frightening spiral of debt, Abu Muneer does not know how his family will survive the next several months.

University professors, school teachers, doctors and nurses have received no salary for four months. Abu Muneer also says that the Israeli government took these elections as an excuse to issue three more military orders for land confiscation, annexing more land to Israel.Abu Muneer fears that the increased hardships and poverty will cause a rise in violence. "What if Palestine becomes like Iraq?" he says sadly.

What possible purpose is served by punishing citizens like Abu Muneer - city workers, teachers, doctors and nurses? Is there any goal? Can any of us imagine going to work and not getting paid month after month?

ACT NOW! The US House of Representatives recently voted to discontinue aid to the Palestinians. The vote is coming up quickly in the US Senate under Senate Resolution 2370. This resolution would not only cut off aid to the Palestinians but would also place restrictions on other countries giving aid by using various means of pressure.

Call or send a brief note to your Senator. This only takes a few minutes. To contact your Senator, call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 or visit www.Senate.gov.

Tell your Senator:

· Withholding AID makes it extremely difficult for criticalassistance to reach Palestinian families and children. This does notreflect our national, Christian/religious values and will only lead togreater instability, resentment and even violence

· Withholding AID weakens Palestinian moderates and underminesthe US' ability to remain engaged in peacemaking·

.Withholding AID will not provide the US President with theflexibility required to effectively conduct US policy toward thePalestinians

THIS is one of the "reforming" regimes of the Middle East

2006-05-20T17:37:00.000-07:00

The US has its pet regimes in the Middle East. These include Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In several speeches, US officials, including Mr. President Bush, have extolled the progress toward democracy exhibited by Egypt. He distinguishes this country from others in the region who act and rule exactly the same but aren't, according to the US, "moving toward democracy". This includes Syria and Lebanon. There is an artificial distinction being made, and much of it has to do with a country's cooperation with the "war on terror".

The below tells a different story of Egypt than the one given by the administration:

Egypt: Award-Winning Blogger Among New Arrests More Than 100 Now Held in Political Protests

(New York, May 10, 2006) – Egyptian security officials arrested 11 more political reform activists, including an award-winning blogger, Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam, Human Rights Watch said today. This brings to more than 100 the number of people detained over the past two weeks for exercising their rights to freedom of assembly and expression.

Approximately half of those arrested are members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were putting up posters and distributing leaflets protesting the April 30 extension of emergency rule for another two years. The Emergency Law has been in effect since President Hosni Mubarak came to power in October 1981. The others were detained for demonstrating in support of a group of judges campaigning for greater judicial independence.

"These new arrests indicate that President Mubarak intends to silence all peaceful opposition," said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division.

The latest arrests occurred on May 7 near the South Cairo Court where activists arrested on April 24 were scheduled to appear before a judge. Police released three of the 11 new detainees, but transferred the remaining eight to the Heliopolis state security prosecutor, who extended their detention for 15 days.

The eight detained are: Ahmed `Abd al-Gawad, Ahmed `Abd al-Ghaffar, Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam, Asma'a `Ali, Fadi Iskandar, Karim al-Sha`ir, Nada al-Qassas and Rasha Azab.

On May 8, authorities extended for another 15 days the detention of a dozen activists arrested on April 24. They initially faced charges of blocking traffic, but the authorities later transferred their cases to state security prosecutors. Yesterday, authorities extended the detention of 28 activists arrested on April 26 and 27 for another 15 days.

All those arrested between April 24 and May 7 for demonstrating now face charges of "insulting the president," "spreading false rumors," and "disturbing public order" under the parallel state security legal system set up under the Emergency Law. According to a statement published on an activist Web site, activists detained between April 24 and 27 have begun a hunger strike to protest prison conditions, including threats of torture and ill-treatment.

"The activists detained over the past two weeks should be released immediately, unharmed," Stork said. "The Egyptian government is responsible under international law for their safety."

The campaign of judges for greater judicial independence has become a rallying point for political reform activists. The Judges' Club, the quasi-official professional organization for members of the judiciary, refused to certify the results of last year's parliamentary elections after more than 100 of the judges reported irregularities at polling stations. In February, the government-controlled Supreme Judicial Council stripped four of the most vocal judges of their judicial immunity.

For more of Human Rights Watch's work on Egypt please visit: http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=mideast&c=egypt

Israeli terrorists in uniform attack civilians, children

2006-04-24T09:20:00.000-07:00

The Israeli invasion and attack on Nablus began before the bombing in Tel Aviv. In fact, it began an entire day before. The headlines in Israeli and American newspapers claiming that the invasion of Nablus by the IOF was a response to the bombing are contradicting by eyewitness testimony and stories filed by journalists documenting the attack, including a report in Ha'aretz, a day before stories filed on the Tel Aviv bombing.

Journalists, medical volunteers and bystanders targeted, Palestinian bystander shot in the neck by Israeli sniper
April 17th, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Israeli snipers shot live ammunition at journalists, international medical volunteers and unarmed Palestinians gathered outside of a house occupied by the army.

A crowd of over a hundred was gathered in protest of this house occupation. Palestinian youth threw stones at wooden planks that the soldiers placed on the window of the house.

According to international medical volunteers from the United States, England, Germany, Chile, and Denmark, eighteen year old Islam Aktshot was shot with live ammunition in the neck while he was watching the events at 11:45 Monday morning.

“He was standing next to the wall doing nothing when suddenly he put his hands to his neck. When he put his hand down large amounts of blood poured out,” said Danish volunteer Anamaria. “We, the medical volunteers and the journalists were standing together when the soldiers fired in our direction. A bullet whistled five centimeters away from me.”

At 12:05pm Basam Balbali 15 years old with shot with live ammunition in the leg.

The house, which is situated on the eastern edge of the old city of Nablus, was occupied Sunday night. The Israeli military is currently occupying at least five homes in Nablus.The practice of occupying a tactically important home and holding the occupants incommunicado is known in the Israeli Army as a “Straw Widow” operation. The army uses the occupied home as an observation post and sniper position. Such homes are often reoccupied several times.

More on the Wall

2006-04-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

Walls do not easily function to completely keep people out of a certain area. People will scramble, crawl, climb, even fucking pole-vault over walls if economic need, basic hunger, gives them reason to get over the wall.

You can build it really tall, and they will cut holes in it at the bottom and dig tunnels underneath it. You can patrol the entire length of the thing, and someone will cut a singular hole in the fucker, which everyone knows about, and everyone will go to, and they will watch for each other to make sure no patrol is coming and get people through.

That's how we roll. Humans are very resilient, tricky, clever, and the oppressed are usually far more clever when it comes to things like this than the well-educated classes. You can't stop us; all you can do is make this yet another trial that makes us smarter with every added difficulty. It makes it worse for you in the end, so go ahead.

From the Economist:

Fence them off
In the easternmost parts of the city (Jerusalem), where the barrier cuts between the Mount of Olives (inside) and Abu Dis (outside), running right through residential neighbourhoods, a strange sight presents itself. The great concrete wall leaks people. In the morning, they squeeze through gaps between the blocks and existing buildings, helping each other to negotiate piles of rubble and loops of barbed wire. In the evening they are sucked back in.

For thousands, this is the daily commute.

Most of them are blue ID holders who prefer some discomfort to a long detour to the nearest official crossing point. One way or the other, some 60,000 people are thought to cross each day in each direction. While the wall is still incomplete, the soldiers often tolerate their infractions.
But according to a survey by the JIIS, a wide swathe of West Bank Palestinians without blue IDs are also in East Jerusalem's catchment area. For it is (or it was until recently) their main place of work or study, of shopping and recreation.

An unknown number—some say 40,000—also live there illegally. Cutting them off from Jerusalem not only complicates their lives and splits up families. It takes away business from Jerusalem, impoverishing it further. And it creates joblessness in Ramallah, Bethlehem and the surroundings, adding to the severe depression of the West Bank's economy.

A series of industrial estates that have gone up around the edge of Jerusalem and in the West Bank could help. Ezri Levi, head of the Jerusalem Development Authority, says that places like the Atarot industrial estate, located just by the checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah, are intended partly to create jobs for those West Bankers who can get permits to work there, which should, he argues, "reduce the tensions between the two populations".

But Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a pressure group, points out that the estates also allow Israel to maintain its economic dominion: Israeli firms can compete with West Bank firms for cheap labour, yet the Palestinian firms cannot compete with the Israeli ones for custom.

Before the barrier began to go up, the intifada had done its worst to the tourist industry on which both Jerusalem and Bethlehem thrive. Though more than a year of relative calm (thanks less to the barrier than to a ceasefire by the militants) has brought an upturn, tourists and pilgrims are still reluctant to stay the night in Bethlehem, on the West Bank side of the barrier, so the city's hotel business is collapsing.

Maddening Horror

2006-04-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

Riverbend, who blogs at Baghdad Burning, recently posted the following describing the sheer horror in which Iraqis are living. Such stark renderings of the hell in which they live wrought by our own brutal force and lust for power makes lightheartedness, and our self-righteousness, seem inappropriate at best and completely evil at worst.

What kind of threat can the evangelicals' hell with its lake of fire and everlasting torment pose to people who have lived through this? It might even prove a relief.

I recommend we all make our way to church on Friday afternoon to beat our breast and rip our hair lamenting the terror with which we coexist and beg until we are hoarse and we have cried our last tear for forgiveness for it. Not just from the crucified man, but most importantly from our fellow human, may they have mercy on us.

Iraq Diaries
Uncertainty...

Riverbend, Baghdad Burning, 30 March 2006

I sat late last night switching between Iraqi channels (the half dozen or so I sometimes try to watch). It's a late-night tradition for me when there's electricity- to see what the Iraqi channels are showing.

Generally speaking, there still isn't a truly 'neutral' Iraqi channel. The most popular ones are backed and funded by the different political parties currently vying for power. This became particularly apparent during the period directly before the elections.

I was trying to decide between a report on bird flu on one channel, a montage of bits and pieces from various latmiyas on another channel and an Egyptian soap opera on a third channel. I paused on the Sharqiya channel which many Iraqis consider to be a reasonably toned channel (and which during the elections showed its support for Allawi in particular). I was reading the little scrolling news headlines on the bottom of the page. The usual- mortar fire on an area in Baghdad, an American soldier killed here, another one wounded there... 12 Iraqi corpses found in an area in Baghdad, etc. Suddenly, one of them caught my attention and I sat up straight on the sofa, wondering if I had read it correctly.

E. was sitting at the other end of the living room, taking apart a radio he later wouldn't be able to put back together. I called him over with the words, "Come here and read this- I'm sure I misunderstood..."

He stood in front of the television and watched the words about corpses and Americans and puppets scroll by and when the news item I was watching for appeared, I jumped up and pointed. E. and I read it in silence and E. looked as confused as I was feeling.

The line said: "The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area."

That's how messed up the country is at this point.

We switched to another channel, the "Baghdad" channel (allied with Muhsin Abdul Hameed and his group) and they had the same news item, but instead of the general "coalition forces" they had "American coalition forces". We checked two other channels. Iraqiya (pro-Da'awa) didn't mention it and Forat (pro-SCIRI) also didn't have it on their news ticker. We discussed it today as it was repeated on another channel.

"So what does it mean?" My cousin's wife asked as we sat gathered at lunch.

"It means if they come at night and want to raid the house, we don't have to let them in." I answered.

"They're not exactly asking your permission," E. pointed out. "They break the door down and take people away- or have you forgotten?"

"Well according to the Ministry of Defense, we can shoot at them, right? It's trespassing-they can be considered burglars or abductors..." I replied.

The cousin shook his head, "If your family is inside the house- you're not going to shoot at them. They come in groups, remember? They come armed and in large groups- shooting at them or resisting them would endanger people inside of the house."

"Besides that, when they first attack, how can you be sure they DON'T have Americans with them?" E. asked.

We sat drinking tea, mulling over the possibilities. It confirmed what has been obvious to Iraqis since the beginning- the Iraqi security forces are actually militias allied to religious and political parties.

But it also brings to light other worrisome issues. The situation is so bad on the security front that the top two ministries in charge of protecting Iraqi civilians cannot trust each other. The Ministry of Defense can't even trust its own personnel, unless they are "accompanied by American coalition forces".

It really is difficult to understand what is happening lately. We hear about talks between Americans and Iran over security in Iraq, and then American ambassador in Iraq accuses Iran of funding militias inside of the country. Today there are claims that Americans killed between 20 to 30 men from Sadr's militia in an attack on a husseiniya yesterday. The Americans are claiming that responsibility for the attack should be placed on Iraqi security forces (the same security forces they are constantly commending).

All of this directly contradicts claims by Bush and other American politicians that Iraqi troops and security forces are in control of the situation.

Or maybe they are in control- just not in a good way.

They've been finding corpses all over Baghdad for weeks now- and it's always the same: holes drilled in the head, multiple shots or strangulation, like the victims were hung. Execution, militia style. Many of the people were taken from their homes by security forces- police or special army brigades... Some of them were rounded up from mosques.

A few days ago we went to pick up one of my female cousins from college. Her college happens to be quite close to the local morgue. E., our cousin L., and I all sat in the car which, due to traffic, we parked slightly further away from the college to wait for our other cousin. I looked over at the commotion near the morgue.

There were dozens of people- mostly men- standing around in a bleak group. Some of them smoked cigarettes, others leaned on cars or pick-up trucks... Their expressions varied- grief, horror, resignation. On some faces, there was an anxious look of combined dread and anticipation. It's a very specific look, one you will find only outside the Baghdad morgue. The eyes are wide and bloodshot, as if searching for something, the brow is furrowed, the jaw is set and the mouth is a thin frown.

It's a look that tells you they are walking into the morgue, where the bodies lay in rows, and that they pray they do not find what they are looking for.

The cousin sighed heavily and told us to open a couple of windows and lock the doors- he was going to check the morgue. A month before, his wife's uncle had been taken away from a mosque during prayer- they've yet to find him. Every two days, someone from the family goes to the morgue to see if his body was brought in.

"Pray I don't find him... or rather... I just- we hate the uncertainty."

My cousin sighed heavily and got out of the car. I said a silent prayer as he crossed the street and disappeared into the crowd. E. and I waited patiently for H., who was still inside the college and for L. who was in the morgue. The minutes stretched and E. and I sat silently- smalltalk seeming almost blasphemous under the circumstances.

L. came out first. I watched him tensely and found myself chewing away at my lower lip, "Did he find him? Inshalla he didn't find him..." I said to no one in particular.

As he got closer to the car, he shook his head. His face was immobile and grim, but behind the grim expression, we could see relief, "He's not there. Hamdulilah [Thank God]."

"Hamdulilah" E. and I repeated the words in unison.We all looked back at the morgue. Most of the cars had simple, narrow wooden coffins on top of them, in anticipation of the son or daughter or brother. One frenzied woman in a black abaya was struggling to make her way inside, two relatives holding her back. A third man was reaching up to untie the coffin tied to the top of their car.

"See that woman- they found her son. I saw them identifying him. A bullet to the head."

The woman continued to struggle, her legs suddenly buckling under her, her wails filling the afternoon, and although it was surprisingly warm that day, I pulled at my sleeves, trying to cover my suddenly cold fingers.

We continued to watch the various scenes of grief, anger, frustration and every once in a while, an almost tangible relief as someone left the morgue having not found what they dreaded most to find- eyes watery from the smell, the step slightly lighter than when they went in, having been given a temporary reprieve from the worry of claiming a loved one from the morgue...

To read more from Riverbend, visit her blog, Baghdad Burning, here.

"The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die"

2006-04-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

"Israel has absolutely no right to suspend reimbursements for customs and tariffs it collects on behalf of the PA. That money is not theirs to keep; it is Palestine's, who cannot collect tariffs and customs on its own because it is occupied, Israel, not itself, controls its borders, and Israel keeps them from collecting these monies on its own.

And what is Hamas supposed to recognize? A state that apparently does not recognize itself, that is unwilling to set its own borders but keeps expanding, colonizing others' land, stealing through fiat, and changing its borders every day? Is Hamas supposed to recognize the right of the "Jewish state" to exist? Would Israel recognize the West Bank if Hamas declared it a "Muslim state"? I would think not. We don't qualify the identity of nation states as religious ones or encourage states to identify with only one particular identity trait. That is antithetical to democracy. A "jewish state" does not recognize the rights and identity, indeed the right to exist, of the millions of Palestinians that live inside the 1967 borders of the state of Israel. Israel should acknowledge the reality that it is in fact already a binational state and recognize the rights of both to coexist with equal rights and respect for their dignity in a democratic state.

In closing Hamas cannot recognize the right of Israel to exist until it acknowledges the right of Palestinians to exist, which they have not in fact done.

From Electronic Intifada:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4599.shtml

Canada and the US are the first governments that have severed all ties with the Palestinian Authority. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and International Cooperation Minister Josee Verner announced this week that "Canada will have no contact with the members of the Hamas cabinet and is suspending assistance to the Palestinian Authority."

At the same time, representatives of the US administration sent an email to diplomats and contractors directing them to sever contact with Hamas-appointed government ministers, and even those who are not members of Hamas. The order said that communication is still permitted with the office of Mahmoud Abbas and with members of the Palestinian Legislative Council who have not been elected on the Hamas list.

Earlier, Israel stated that the PA "will become a terrorist authority unless Hamas, which controls the PA, fully accepts the threshold conditions as determined by Israel and approved by the Quartet." The US administration and Canada accordingly want Hamas to denounce violence, recognize Israel and accept previous agreements, including the Road Map. This move shows again how inconsistent foreign policy is towards Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In mid-February, as the Israeli government announced that it would stop reimbursing the customs duty which it collects on behalf of the PA, the Israeli Prime Minister's Advisor Dov Weisglass was quoted by Israeli media as referring to the planned economic siege on the PA as a diet, whereby "the Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die".

Meanwhile, Palestinians face a looming humanitarian crisis due to prolonged closures of Palestinian territories. This has already resulted in shortages of food and other necessities and threatens to have a disastrous effect on the 1.3 million Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip.

On more than one occasion the US administration has failed to denounce violence on the part of Israel, vetoed UN resolutions on the basis of "balance" and has not demanded the same conditions from Israel, while it provides much more aid to Israel. In 2003, the US funded the Palestinian Authority with $224 million. By way of comparison, US military grants to Israel that same year were $2.1 billion, excluding the so-called "emergency wartime supplemental (Iraq)" of $1 billion. US economic aid to Israel that year consisted of $9 billion for approved loan guarantees, $600 million for economic grants and $60 million for immigration and resettlement assistance. With all this leverage, the US never asked Israel to recognize Palestine, never asked Israel to denounce violence and never ensured that Israel respected signed agreements.

In October 2004, the US vetoed a Security Council resolution that demanded the "immediate cessation of all military operations in the area of Northern Gaza and the withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from that area" and which reiterated "its call for the cessation of violence and for respect of and adherence to legal obligations, including those under international humanitarian law." It called the resolution "lopsided and unbalanced".

This was not the first US veto of a resolution that called on Israel to denounce violence. The Bush administration alone has cast seven vetoes. More than once, US ambassadors have responded to these vetoes by saying that such resolutions would "undermine efforts to restore peace" in the Middle East. During the military assault on northern Gaza at least 107 Palestinians were killed and 431 injured. Tank shells and helicopter missiles, fired into densely populated areas, caused many of the casualties. A quarter of those killed were aged 18 years and under. The dead include nine UNRWA pupils from six schools and two teachers.

The US and Canada want Hamas to recognize Israel. This in itself is not an easy demand. What would Hamas recognize? No Palestinian or Israeli would know where the boundaries of Israel are set. The governments that ask Hamas to recognize the state of Israel must be specific about Israel's boundaries before asking for recognition.Over the years, Israel has captured additional territory. Does this mean the "Jewish State" as proposed in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, or would this mean the ceasefire lines of the War of 1967, area C of the Oslo Accords, or areas that Israel occupied since September 28, 2000? The newly elected Olmert cabinet plans to define Israel's borders unilaterally without dealing with the Hamas government, so why would Hamas bother to recognize this?

Apart from boundaries, there is another reason to be reluctant. There are at least 20 Israeli laws that specifically provide unequal rights and obligations based on what the Israelis call nationality, which in Israel is defined on the basis of religion. Israelis must carry a card that identifies them as a Jew, a Muslim or a Christian. All non-Jews are second-class citizens. Why would one recognize a state that doesn't recognize its own citizens? Moreover, over 80 percent of the land within Israel that was once owned by Palestinians has been confiscated. Unlike any other country in the world, Israel does not define itself as a state of its residents, or even a state of its citizens; rather, as a state for Jews only. It is impossible to recognize that they can travel to Israel, declare citizenship, and be granted all the privileges of being Jewish that are denied to Palestinians who have lived in the area for hundreds of years.

The US, Canada and the European Union (EU) want Hamas to recognize a state that hasn't recognized Palestine as such. These countries themselves haven't recognized Palestine yet, even though more than 120 other countries have recognized Palestine following its proclamation by the Palestine National Council meeting in Algiers in November 1988.

In 1988, the UN acknowledged the proclamation of the State of Palestine in a General Assembly resolution (43/177). In July 1998, the General Assembly adopted a new resolution (52/250) conferring upon Palestine additional rights and privileges, including the right to participate in the general debate held at the start of each session of the General Assembly, the right of reply, the right to co-sponsor resolutions and the right to raise points of order on Palestinian and Middle Eastern issues. By this resolution, "seating for Palestine shall be arranged immediately after non-member States and before the other observers."This resolution was adopted by a vote of 124 in favour, 4 against (Israel, US, Marshall Islands and Micronesia) and 10 abstentions.

Canada itself was late to recognize Israel. Canada abstained when the admission of Israel to the UN came to a vote in the Security Council. Canada only granted recognition in May 1949, once Israel had been admitted to the UN. Palestine is already admitted to the UN, but Canada has failed to recognize Palestine. In contrast, within minutes after Israel declared its independence on May 15, 1948, US President Harry Truman granted recognition.

Israel, the US, the EU and Canada want Hamas to respect signed agreements. Yet how can Hamas respect signed agreements while Israel hasn't respected any of the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO?

The Oslo agreements did not mention the military occupation and postponed, until the final stage, negotiations over core issues of the conflict: refugees, settlements, borders and Jerusalem. Although many thought that Oslo would lead to an end of the occupation and the establishment of an independent state, the process itself, and the failure of the US and the EU to act as honest brokers, allowed Israel to continue land confiscations, house demolitions and territorial expansion, leaving Palestinians with little to no recourse. Israel continued to build settlements in the occupied territories and the number of settlers doubled in the West Bank during the years of the 'peace process'.

The rebirth of the Oslo process in the Middle East Quartet-sponsored "Road Map" is not much better. While the Road Map calls for "reciprocal steps," attention thus far has almost exclusively focused on what measures Palestinians take, not what Israel should do. The Oslo Agreements expired on May 1999 and the Roadmap expired in 2005.

a recent report to the UN Human Rights Commission, Special Rapporteur John Dugard said Israel had failed to adhere to the "road map" plan drawn up three years ago by the Quartet. He said the plan is hopelessly out of date and needs to be revamped. Dugard suggested to the Quartet that it adopt a position on the conflict that would take more account of human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory and the refusal of Israel to comply with the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, and that it revise the road map in accordance with these considerations.

Before doing this, it would be a sign of wisdom if the governments of Canada, the US and the EU become consistent in their policies with respect to Israel and leave double standards behind. Aid and constructive dialogue are essential because starving the Palestinians into submission would be a catastrophe.

And like it or not, Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinians.

Arjan El Fassed is a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada

Yet more proof that Bush knowingly lied about WMD in Iraq

2006-04-10T11:12:00.000-07:00

So, uh, yeah, here's yet another story that points to Bush having pre-war intelligence that showed Iraq was not developing WMD. Why did he lie? Why, if he was pretty sure there was no threat of WMD from Iraq, did he say all this to us before the invasion? I truly believe that Bush really, really wanted to invade Iraq. And not just for imperialist reasons, such as having great control over the oil supply. I think he truly believes that he has been given a mission from on high to literally force people if needed to live in a system, economically, religiously, socially, and politically, that mirrors America. Notice I did not say he wants to bring freedom and democracy, because he doesn't want freedom and democracy on any terms. He wants people to live in an American system, the only valid form of freedom and democracy in his viewpoint. We aren't going to even touch on the fact that under this corporate oligarchy known as the 50 states we have only semblances, images on a cave wall if you will, of freedom. Anyway, here it is:

PREWAR INTELLIGENCE
Insulating Bush

By Murray Waas, National Journal©
National Journal Group Inc. Thursday, March 30, 2006

Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.

As the 2004 election loomed, the White House was determined to keep the wraps on a potentially damaging memo about Iraq.

Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."

Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

The previously undisclosed review by Hadley was part of a damage-control effort launched after former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV alleged that Bush's claims regarding the uranium were not true. The CIA had sent Wilson to the African nation of Niger in 2002 to investigate the purported procurement efforts by Iraq; he reported that they were most likely a hoax.

The White House was largely successful in defusing the Niger controversy because there was no evidence that Bush was aware that his claims about the uranium were based on faulty intelligence. Then-CIA Director George Tenet swiftly and publicly took the blame for the entire episode, saying that he and the CIA were at fault for not warning Bush and his aides that the information might be untrue.

But Hadley and other administration officials realized that it would be much more difficult to shield Bush from criticism for his statements regarding the aluminum tubes, for several reasons.

For one, Hadley's review concluded that Bush had been directly and repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community over whether Iraq wanted the high-strength aluminum tubes for a nuclear weapons program or for conventional weapons.

For another, the president and others in the administration had cited the aluminum tubes as the most compelling evidence that Saddam was determined to build a nuclear weapon -- even more than the allegations that he was attempting to purchase uranium.

And finally, full disclosure of the internal dissent over the importance of the tubes would have almost certainly raised broader questions about the administration's conduct in the months leading up to war.

"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the tubes."

A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be more open with Congress, said: "This was about getting past the election."

Read the rest at: http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0330nj1.htm

Israel shows its true motives

2006-04-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

Although the title may suggest otherwise, I am not at all saying this is the first time that Israel has admitted blatantly or acted with no cover other than the motivation of seizing Palestinian land and leaving only the scaps of the West Bank they do not want for the Palestinian indigenous population.

http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/03/26/notice-at-kalandia-checkpoint-al-ram-is-now-israel/

On Saturday March 25 Israeli military placed a notice at the Kalandia checkpoint announcing that from March 27, 2006 only holders of a permit to enter Israel will be allowed to cross the checkpoint to the West Bank village of Al Ramm.

By restricting Palestinian access in this way, the Israelis have effectively annexed the village minus its West Bank residents to Israel, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank. The restriction will also cement the illegal annexation of occupied East Jerusalem.

The Kalandia checkpoint is flanked on both sides by the annexation Wall. Olmert’s Kadima party has admitted that the Wall is not a temporary security measure as Israel originally claimed but will be Israel’s “permanent border”.

"a government... that sees our people as an epidemic"

2006-04-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

I have sad news for the Vice President of Guatemala, Eduardo Stein. Its not just the government. Its the mass of white America that sees their domination of our culture and economy threatened by what some have referred to as the "brown cockroach virus" from across the border.

I would imagine... no, I would wager every cent I have, that King, Rohrabacher, Tancredo, and the like love to see people around the world wave the US flag, when the president visits, during the Olympics, or when we invade and occupy them... lets wait on that last one. But my point is is we don't just welcome the masses in other countries waving our stars and bars; we demand it and are infuriated sometimes when they do not. And we don't even see why telling people to go back to Mexico and wave Ole' Glory instead of living and working here and waving the Mexican flag along side our rag at their rallies is just a tad bit catty and, dare we say... racist?

Latin leaders balk at US 'wall'

The proposed 700-mile barrier is to be a big issue at Thursday's NorthAmerican summit.

By Danna Harman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NOGALES, MEXICO - Some envision a wall. Others, a fence - or even a"virtual" fence of cameras, lighting, and sensors along the US-Mexicanborder. Whatever form it will take, the US is discussing, planning, and, insome places, already building it - much to the fury and frustration ofneighbors south of the border.

As Mexican President Vicente Fox prepares tomeet Thursday with President Bush and Canada's new prime minister, StephenHarper, in Cancún, the proposed 700-mile, $2.2 billion barrier is a majorpoint of contention - not just for the US and Mexico, but for the US and thewhole region.

Regional leaders - whose countries in 2004 received some $45 billion senthome from immigrants in the US - have met three times recently to discuss how best to oppose it."

At a moment when relations between the US and Latin America are at their lowest point since the end of the cold war, this fence proposal is viewed as a terrible affront," says Michael Shifter, vice president of theInter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.

"It is hard to imagine any other symbol that more strongly reinforces theimage of the "ugly American" and is more sharply at odds with the "good neighbor" concept."

It's not just the barrier, but other issues as well in proposed US immigration reform legislation that irk regional leaders and caused hundreds of thousands of people to protest in multiple US cities over the past few days.

The US Congress passed a tough immigration bill in December that would make it a felony for illegal immigrants to be in the US, impose new penalties on employers who hire them, and erect a fence along one-third of the border's total length. At present, just over 80 miles of federally enforced barriers and fencing are erected at strategic points on the border, mainly in Texas and California.

This week, the Senate will debate a comprehensive bill that is expected to include guest-worker provisions and avenues for legal residency, while at the same time beefing up border security. So far, a draft of the bill calls only for expanding and reinforcing fencing in Arizona - the border state with the most illegal immigration traffic - and adding 200 miles of vehicle barriers there, but more extensive fencing elsewhere is still underdiscussion.

"No country that is proud of itself should build walls," Fox told reporters when he last met Bush one year ago, and a month after the House began talks on approving a fence. "[I]t doesn't make any sense."

Since then, as the debate has continued in the US over what kind of fence is needed and where, Fox has called the proposal everything from "stupid" and"discriminatory" to "shameful," and heralded illegal migrants as "heroes" who will in any event find ways to cross the border.

Last year 1.2 million illegal immigrants were apprehended by the borderpatrol as they tried to cross into the US, and it is frequently estimated that close to the same number make it. Last year was also a record year for deaths. In 2005, 473 would-be immigrants died en route, many victims of thirst, heatstroke, exhaustion, or exposure when they tried to cross less carefully guarded desert areas.

Currently, 11.5 million to 12 million illegal immigrants live in the US, according to estimates in a report released this month by the Pew Hispanic Center. Of these, an estimated 6.2 million, or 56 percent, are Mexicans. Another 2.5 million, or 22 percent of the total, come from other LatinAmerican countries.

The money these people send home is vital to the region's economy. In 2005, legal and illegal immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean sent home$45 billion in remittances, double the total of a decade earlier, according to the Social Outlook 2005 report by the Economic Commission for LatinAmerica and the Caribbean (ECLAC), a UN regional body. Mexican workers alone sent home a record $17 billion. So while Fox might be the regional leader most concerned with, and vocal about, US immigration policy - he is far from the only one.

Spearheaded by Mexico, and galvanized by the fence proposals, foreign ministers and other top officials from Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador,Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama as well as Colombia, Ecuador,and the Dominican Republic met March 15 in Guatemala and vowed to coordinate their lobbying efforts against the US bill if it should pass in the Senate.

Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, in turn, called the bill "an affront to Latin America by a government that claims to be our partner, butwhich apparently only wants our money and our merchandise, and that sees ourpeople as an epidemic."

This was the third time representatives from these 11 countries have gathered to discuss the US bill. In early January, they convened in Mexico City and put out a joint statement saying that "incomplete measures that only involve the stiffening of immigration policies do not represent an integral solution for dealing with the challenges posed by the phenomenon of migration."

In February, the group met again in Cartegena, Colombia, and devised a plan to identify key US senators to reach out to on the issue. Both the Mexican parliament and the five-nation Central American Parliament have condemned the proposed fence and are calling on the Senate to throw it out.

"Our message is that we are your neighbors, we are your friends. This is a common challenge," Carlos de Icaza, Mexico's ambassador to the US, told reporters in Washington last week. "And we are part of the solution, not only part of the problem."

Ms. Harman is Latin America correspondent for the Monitor and USA Today.

Wrath and Fury

2006-03-28T10:38:00.000-08:00

My fellow law students might be smart on paper, if that, but most of us don't seem to have much sense. I just witnessed a duo reminiscent of Beavis and Butthead actually point like fucking trained monkeys at the tv in the lounge and laugh at French protestors being sprayed with water and tear gas to disrupt their marches. Hello, stupid fuckers, that's real. Its not fucking WWF fake wrestling.

It brings to mind the critical question with which my generation will hopefully someday have to grapple in a serious manner. Our lives are fake, inside and out, but there are some things in the world that are real. Do we realize it?

Big Shout Out to my boy Law Student XIMINEZ

2006-03-28T08:47:00.000-08:00

I came to school today completely soaked due to the rain pouring down on Austin. I sent out an email to my small group asking for anyone's dry clothes they could spare, and my boy Robert Jiminez gave me a much appreciated dry pair of sox and Lady De La Garza offered me a shirt I did not take her up on because I was not wet from the waist up. So, here's a big shout out to my people with the dry clothes...

Guantanamo Bay event at UT Law

2006-03-27T00:51:00.000-08:00

Come to this event at the law school:

Thursday, April 6, 2006 4:30pm TNH Rm 3.142, UT Law School

Guantanamo: Law-Free Zone? A play reading and panel discussion on Guantanamo Bay Detainees

Sponsored by: American Constitution Society, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, National Lawyers Guild

despair

2006-03-26T14:47:00.000-08:00

A description of hell on earth:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/03/brothel_cambodia.html

What could be worse than this? And why is it that there is a vast ocean of difference between what is described here and my life, or yours?

What is more hellatious, the hell dimension in which everyone lives like this, or the hell dimension that we live in, in which most people live like this and a few live like us, and and all of us, us and them, make their lives even worse , as we are "helping them" and even "allowing them" to become like us and as they do what seems easy at the beginning to grab onto a peice of the life they see on the television?

And is it so great? The most evil characters in the peice above are the Westerners who are so sad and desperate to feel alive they have gone to Cambodia to do something incredibly depraved and incredibly harmful, just to shake off the mundanity, the mediocrity that's swollowed them.

The girls in this story... and the boys sold into labor... what is it to be like that? Maybe I've had a glimpse. To live and operate every day with that kind of pain and sense of hopelessness... you must become hard, like stone, sometimes even mean, and you have to become truly alone, disconnected from everyone else, and even yourself, like you are locked in a tiny dark room, and you can't see or hear anything at all, you can't see your hand in front of your face, so you stop being so sure that you exist. So, you don't feel it and it doesn't hurt, and it won't matter when you get strangled after you've passed your prime and the pedophiles don't want you anymore, or if you do make it past your teen years and maybe a child comes out of you, you won't need to pause and feel sympathy when it is your turn to sell her.

VOTE FOR THE WEIRDO TICKET!

2006-03-25T10:58:00.000-08:00

All right, maybe they wouldn't like to be called that, but I identify with them and I feel that all the freaks, geeks, weirdos, outcasts, and nerds, and maybe even some of the people that are really cool and popular but sometimes, when no one is looking, like to play with their Star Wars figures are going to identify with them too.

I'm talking about the upcoming Student Bar Association Elections, which will take place on March 29. If you are not a law student at UT, feel free to skip this post. See you next time.

I am not sure if there is anybody out there still reading this shit, or if has run its course and people have moved on, but I'm doing this anyway just to put it out there that law school does not have to be like fucking high school, or worse, and one way we can start working on changing it into a real academic, open atmosphere is to get some real people in SBA. Lets make SBA more than just bar review, yall.

So here are my picks, otherwise dubbed the weirdo ticket. I don't have picks on every single race, so if you want to leave a comment picking weirdos for races I haven't yet, please do so.

WEIRDO POWER! Lets do it spring 2006!

SBA President.... BRANDON CRISP

Vice President of Operations.....BRAD DOMANGUE

Vice President of Programming.....STEPHANIE HUI

Secretary.......SEAN GRIFFIN

State Bar of Texas Representative.......JOHN HRYHORCHUK

All right. This has left out the races for Permanent Class Agent and 2L Class Representative. I don't know any of the people running in these races, so if any weirdos out there who want to vouch for the weirdo cred of any of these people, leave me a comment. And, just to make it fair, if you recommend a candidate, it has to be apparent somewhere in your comment that you are a)not the candidate him/her self, and b) you are a weirdo yourself.

So, weirdos, lets exert our collective leverage and take our rightful place as an acknowledged block of people whose interests have to be accomodated at the law school. WEIRDO POWER!

Online Meaningless Quizzes... MUCH better than writing my brief!!

2006-03-23T20:41:00.000-08:00

Yeah baby! Check it out... it reaffirms how goddamn motherdy motherfuckin cool I am. This online quiz shows that I am a combination of Worf and Deanna Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Worf is really cool and intimidating, and Troi is fucking hot and smart as hell. I remember watching that show even though I didn't like Star Trek stuff when I started watching it because Troi is so fucking hot. I was like 11 or something and I was slightly confused, but I didn't care. Damn, damn, damn... give me some of that hot premonition action baby!

Your results:
You are Worf

Worf		95%
Deanna Troi		95%
Mr. Scott		85%
Will Riker		80%
Spock		77%
Jean-Luc Picard		75%
James T. Kirk (Captain)		70%
Chekov		60%
Mr. Sulu		60%
Data		60%
Uhura		55%
Geordi LaForge		55%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)		50%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)		45%
Beverly Crusher		15%

And... the Serenity Quiz!!! If you haven't seen this movie, and you like Jos Whedon, see it. It is Buffy in Space... it was fanfreakinmotherfuckintastic baby!

Again, it was a tie. This time between the captain, a really cool Han Solo/Warf type character, and River, the Buffy-type tough girl who is really psycho at the beginning of the movie as a result of the evil imperial government taking her captive and doing experiments on her. Again, pretty accurate... it makes me look cool. That's what matters. Not my brief, that's due in 12 hours.

Your results:
You are Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)

Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)		100%
River (Stowaway)		100%
Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic)		90%
Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command)		80%
Jayne Cobb (Mercenary)		70%
Derrial Book (Shepherd)		60%
A Reaver (Cannibal)		60%
Wash (Ship Pilot)		55%
Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)		50%
Alliance		40%
Inara Serra (Companion)		25%

Honest and a defender of the innocent.
You sometimes make mistakes in judgment
but you are generally good and
would protect your crew from harm.

You are trained in the art of combat
and are usually intimidating.

South Park v. El Ron Hubbard

2006-03-21T14:14:00.000-08:00

I laugh at South Park. I don't necessarily think that everyone should be watching it, since it does contain lots of backlash-ism and anyone who takes it seriously and is not smart enough to know better might internalize it. However, this furor over the Scientology episode is fantastic.

This episode is great. I just watched it, and I laughed my ass off. It takes aim not only at Scientology, a huge pyramid scheme in the form of a cult which sues people to defend itself instead of defending itself with good doctrine and practice, but at Tom Cruise's acting ("you're not as good at Leonardo DiCaprio" is genius) and rumored homosexuality, John Travolta's always articulate and well-thought out way of speaking, Nicole Kidman's chin, R. Kelly's spoken word/rock opera piece of shit sequence of "songs" known as "Trapped in the Closet", ideas of prophets coming back in young children's bodies (which could be construed as a veiled slap at Buddhism), new testaments (think Book of Mormon, a favorite target of TnM), the cult of celebrity in general, and, of course, Jews and Catholics.

The debate over Scientology has not exactly been at the forefront of the public mind, and I'm not suggesting it should be. However, it is always good when its brought up just enough for us to all remember what a fucking joke it is, just in case someday our defenses are down just enough that we might have gotten suckered into a "free personality test".

I can't fucking believe that Isaac Hayes is quitting over this. Dude, everyone knew you as that guy who sounds like Barry White who sung "Shaft" --until you became Chef. This is the dumbest move of your career.

Oh, and did I mention that I hate Scientology? I do. And I don't like Tom Cruise either. So sue me...

Hail Xenu!

watch the episode, or Xenu will freeze your soul and throw you in the volcanoes of Hawaii:
http://www.contemporaryinsanity.org/content/view/548/49/

self-medicating made obvious

2006-03-20T12:03:00.000-08:00

Duh.

This is a classic case of cart before the horse-n, chicken before the egg-n.

From Schizophrenia. com

Overview:
Use of street drugs (especially marijuana/hash/cannabis) have been linked with significantly increased probability of developing schizophrenia.

This link has been documented in over 30 different scientific studies (studies done mostly in the UK, Australia and Sweden) over the past 20 years. In one example, a study interviewed 50,000 members of the Swedish Army about their drug consumption and followed up with them later in life. Those who were heavy consumers of cannabis at age 18 were over 600% more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia over the next 15 years than those did not take it.

Experts estimate that between 8% and 13% of all schizophrenia cases are linked to marijuna / cannabis use during teen years.

Bullshit. They start smoking to make the shit quiet down. Isn't that obvious? And doesn't it work, at least in the short term? What happens when you take their shit away from them? Do they start acting like schizos then? Should we be taking it away then? What's worse? Smoking weed or gettting hooked on fucking expensive, possibly dangerous psychoactive pharms? Fucking a, schizo.com... don't you know nothing?

Carry on, youth of France!

2006-03-16T13:11:00.000-08:00

The youth of France are striking on their university and high school campuses over a new proposed law that will allow workers under the age of 26 to be easily dismissed. Carry on...

http://www.libcom.org/blog/

Insight into South Dakota Legislature

2006-03-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

This quote by SD State Senator Bill Napoli gives us a great insight into the minds of the legislature's motivation in banning abortion.

The quote validates the old notion that rape is worse when it "robs" a woman of her virginity; if a woman has already had sex, then rape won't be such a big deal to her- sex is sex, and women that have already had sex... well, can they really be raped anyway? Even if they are, do they really feel traumatized afterward? After all, it isn't the violation of a woman's body and her mind, the act of violence that is rape, after all... it is her virginity that matters. The rapist has robbed the future husband of his right to be the one to take the virginity and the right to impregnate, for the first time, his bride.

Another interesting thing about this quote is that you really get the sense that Napoli is fantasizing about the rape. He uses the word "savaged" and the phrase "sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it". He eroticizes the violence that the woman, the ideal dainty virgin dutifully saving herself for marriage, experiences as she is raped. Do normal people still use the word "savaged" to describe rape? What is it about rape that is so attractive? Let's assume Napoli has never raped a woman; what is it then about the rape that would be so erotic to him? If is not the violence inflicted upon the woman, could it be the moment after the rape when the woman, left powerless, violated, and helpless, needs a hero like Napoli to save her and make her whole again. The man plays the role of the benevolent master- she is not perfect anymore, but he loves her anyway and will look past the rape and lost virginity... but she is still a bad girl, and always will be now, so he can do things to her that he couldn't do to the woman who is still complete and untouched...

The following is a quote by South Dakota State Senator Bill Napoli on "The News Hour with Jin Lehrer" in which he explains when exceptions to the law banning abortions might be valid:

"A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life."

Mexico Allows Abortions that South Dakota Now Will Not

2006-03-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

Americans love to pride themselves on being more wise and modern than brown people world-wide. Well, Mexican law is more liberal on abortion than the new South Dakota law banning all abortions except those in which there is a serious threat to the life of the female incubator. However, that doesn't mean much in terms of human rights and liberty for women. Read on, and hope that this is not where our country is headed.

Mexico: Rape Victims Denied Legal AbortionProsecutors, Health Workers Intimidate Rape Victims With Insults, Threats
(Mexico City, March 7, 2006)

Mexican officials actively prevent rape victims from gaining access to legal and safe abortion, and they fail to punish rape and sexual violence inside and outside the family, said Human Rights Watch in a report released today.

The 92-page report, "The Second Assault: Obstructing Access to Legal Abortion after Rape in Mexico," details the disrespect, suspicion and apathy that pregnant rape victims encounter from public prosecutors and health workers. The report also exposes continuing and pervasive impunity for rape and other forms of sexual violence in states throughout Mexico.

"Pregnant rape victims are essentially assaulted twice," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "First by the perpetrators who raped them, and then by officials who ignore them, insult them and deny them a legal abortion."

In Mexico, abortion in general is illegal, but rape victims have the legal right to a safe abortion under all state criminal codes. However, women and girls who approach the authorities to exercise this right face multiple obstacles, Human Rights Watch found.

A number of agencies in various Mexican states – particularly the state attorney general’s office, public hospitals and family services – employ aggressive tactics to discourage and delay rape victims’ access to legal abortion. A social worker in Jalisco, for example, showed scientifically inaccurate anti-abortion videos to a 13-year-old girl who had been raped and impregnated by a family member. Some public prosecutors threatened rape victims with jail for procuring a legal abortion, and many doctors told women and girls, without cause, that an abortion would kill them.

As a result, many rape victims seek to resolve their situation by resorting to back-alley abortions that endanger their lives and health. Underage girls raped by their fathers or other family members often find themselves with no other alternative than to carry the imposed pregnancy to term.

"The Mexican government needs to ensure that rape victims do not have to endure dangerous back-alley abortions or imposed pregnancies." said Roth. "A public official who fails to inform rape victims of how they can obtain a voluntary legal abortion is contributing to a human rights violation and should be disciplined."

When abortion is criminalized, a number of human rights are threatened, including the rights to equality, nondiscrimination, life, health and physical integrity. Since 1994, U.N. human rights bodies have expressed particular concern with countries where access to abortion is restricted for pregnant victims of rape or incest. Human Rights Watch upholds the right of all women to decide independently about matters related to abortion without interference from the state or others.

According to Mexican government estimates, more than 120,000 women and girls are raped in Mexico each year. But government surveys also show that nearly 10 percent of Mexican women are victims of physical assaults each year. Worldwide, physical assaults against women include rape in 30 to 40 percent of the cases. This suggests that actual annual rape figures in Mexico could be more than 1 million a year.

Mexico’s legal framework does not adequately protect women and girls against sexual violence. Until recently, the Mexican Supreme Court held that rape between spouses was not a criminal offense if it serves some sort of reproductive purpose. This ruling was overturned by the court only in November. A number of states still do not criminalize domestic violence specifically, or only do so in cases of repeated violence.

Girls are even less protected than adult women under law. Most state penal codes in Mexico define incest as sex between parents and children or between siblings that is consensual, and they penalize the underage victim at the same level as the adult perpetrator.

Therefore, abortion is illegal in cases of pregnancy through incest, as defined by Mexican law, since the law defines incest as consensual sex, not rape. In most of Mexico, the age of consent for sexual activity is 12, and only in Mexico state is it over 14. This means that the crime of statutory rape in much of Mexico only applies to girls who in many cases are too young to become pregnant.

In theory, non-consensual sex between family members is penalized as rape. However, prosecutors do not always charge perpetrators of incest with rape, even where consent was clearly lacking or the victim was under the age of consent. In Guanajuato, for example, Human Rights Watch interviewed a woman who had been sexually abused by her father at least since the age of six – and who also faced criminal charges for "incest." She had two children as the result of these rapes.

"State laws on domestic and sexual violence fall significantly short of Mexico’s international human rights obligations," said Roth. "The definition of incest as voluntary sex is an insult to the thousands of girls who suffer abuse daily. No one, and least of all girls raped and impregnated by their fathers or brothers, should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term."

Selected testimony:

"Graciela Hernández" (victims’ names changed for protection), a 16-year-old girl in Guanajuato, was raped weekly for more than a year by her father. The official legal record from her complaint against her father in 2002 reads:

Then my father took me to a hostel.... He penetrated me, and it hurt a lot when he penetrated me. I cried and I said to my father that it hurt a lot.... I want to declare that I don’t want to have the child that I am expecting, because I will not be able to love it. Because it is my father’s, I will not be able to love it. (The authorities did not authorize a legal abortion.)

"Lidia Muñoz," a 25-year-old rape victim, was intimidated by medical personnel in a public hospital in Mexico City in 2005. An NGO representative who was present gave the following account:

When she got the authorization and went to the hospital to have the [abortion] done, the doctor in charge of her care said to her: ‘We are going to have many problems, because we are going to have to do a death certificate [for the aborted fetus]. You are going to have to bring a hearse, [and] to buy a coffin to take away the body, because we can’t have the body here.’

"Marta Espinosa," a 12-year-old pregnant rape victim in Yucatán was passed from one state agency to another when she tried to obtain a legal abortion. A social worker who physically accompanied her said:

It was a 12-year-old girl, she came from the rural part of the state.... The first doctor had seen her [when she was only] one month pregnant.... The next clinic at eight weeks.... When she came to Mérida [the capital of Yucatán], she was 12 weeks pregnant.... I went to social security, I went to [the public hospital]. I went to the offices of those in charge.... Everyone turned their back. They said: ‘It is not possible.’ I brought the article [of the state penal code] where it says that [abortion after rape] is within the provisions.... In the Family Services agency [where I worked] they wanted her to have the child by any means.... They said to me that she was many months pregnant now, and I said: ‘That’s because many months have gone by while you tell me no.’ (The authorities did not authorize a legal abortion.)

To view this document on the Human Rights Watch web site, please visit: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/02/23/mexico12712.htm

Proof that right-wing Muslims and right-wing Christians are exactly the same

2006-03-11T16:29:00.000-08:00

This report brings to my mind the stories I used to hear growing up in Oklahoma about the Baptist homes for "unwed mothers" that are sprinkled throughout the Bible Belt. They are basically private Baptist-run juvenile detention centers to which parents send their pregnant teenage daughters to ride out their pregnancies until the babies can be wrested away from them and given to adult Baptists to raise. When I was in college, a story broke about the righteous man who ran one of these homes in Florida. He was raping the girls regularly, and he had been doing it for years. Funny, he was also a local leader of an anti-abortion group.

Libya: Women, Girls Locked Up Indefinitely Without Charge‘Protective’ Facilities Serve as Places of Arbitrary Punishment

The Libyan government is arbitrarily detaining women and girls indefinitely in “social rehabilitation” facilities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Officially portrayed as protective homes for women and girls “vulnerable to engaging in moral misconduct,” these facilities are de facto prisons.

The 40-page report, “A Threat to Society? Arbitrary Detention of Women and Girls for ‘Social Rehabilitation,’” (available online at: http://hrw-news-mideast.c.topica.com/maaexGUaboFu0a5QBpWb/ )documents numerous and serious human rights abuses that women and girls suffer in these facilities. These include violations of their rights to liberty, freedom of movement, personal dignity, privacy and due process.

Libyan authorities are holding many women and girls in these facilities who have committed no crime, or who have completed a sentence. Some are there for no reason other than that they were raped, and are now ostracized for staining their families’ “honor.” Officials transferred the majority of these women and girls to these facilities against their will, while those who came voluntarily did so because no genuine shelters for victims of violence exist in Libya.

“These facilities are far more punitive than protective,” said Farida Deif, Middle East and North Africa researcher for the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “How can they be called shelters when most of the women and girls we interviewed told us they would escape if they could?”

“Social rehabilitation” facilities have a distinctly prison-like character. The women and girls sleep in locked quarters and are not allowed to leave the gates of the compound. The custodians sometimes subject them to long periods of solitary confinement, occasionally in handcuffs, for trivial reasons like “talking back.” They are tested for communicable diseases without their consent upon entry, and most are forced to endure invasive virginity examinations. Some residents are as young as 16, but authorities provide no education, except weekly religious instruction.

These women and girls have no opportunity to contest their confinement in a court of law, and typically have no legal representation. The exit requirements of “social rehabilitation” facilities are in themselves arbitrary and coercive. There is no way out unless a male relative takes custody of the woman or girl or she consents to marriage, often to a stranger who comes to the facility looking for a wife.

During meetings with Human Rights Watch in late January, the Libyan government promised to look into the abuses documented in the report. Aisha al-Qadhafi, daughter of Libyan leader Mu`ammar al-Qadhafi, also promised to investigate the matter. She presides over Wa’tassimu, a charity the government has charged with overseeing Tripoli’s “social rehabilitation” facilities. In late February, the managing director of the charity informed Human Rights Watch that the government just established a specialized council to study the conditions in all of Libya’s “social rehabilitation” facilities including examining the physical and psychological well-being of the women and children detained. It remains unclear who will be on the council and how it will function.

Human Rights Watch welcomes the establishment of the new council and calls on the council to investigate conditions in the centers first-hand and objectively document violations of Libyan law as a first step. Ultimately, the Libyan government should release all women and girls not serving criminal sentences who are nevertheless confined in these facilities and establish purely voluntary shelters for women and girls who are at risk of violence.

“Libya cannot use protection as an excuse to lock up women,” said Deif. “Women and girls who need protection from violence deserve genuine shelters, not punitive detention.”

Select testimonies from Libyan women held in the “social rehabilitation” homes featured in the report:

It is as if we’re criminals even though we didn’t do anything wrong. — A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.

A man raped me on the street on August 8, 2004... I went directly to the center in Tarhouna, because my brother would kill me if he found out. I went directly from the center to the social welfare home. The prosecutor called my parents. He told them my story. They visit me but they won’t officially receive me. — A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.

My mother died in a car crash when I was two. My father married a Moroccan woman. We didn’t understand each other. We had lots of problems. She’d hit and insult us. Eventually my father kicked me out. He gave me a ticket to visit my relatives. I worked in a restaurant. I made clean money. I didn’t smoke or take drugs. A year later, my father came to pick me up because people were talking. The prosecutor told me that I could either come here or go home with my father. — A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.

Related MaterialLibya: Need to Deepen Rights ReformPress Release, January 25, 2006 http://hrw-news-mideast.c.topica.com/maaexGUaboFu1a5QBpWb/

more on american rascism

2006-02-24T11:48:00.000-08:00

So, we are all up in arms... not because we are killing Arabs in the Middle East, but because some of their rich are going to finish a deal soon that would give them ownership of several American ports.

The rich in question are, specifically, the government of UAE, which is our ally... right? But here we are, watching the ruling cadre of evil in Washington trying to outdo each other on who can hate Arabs more and, in consequence, protect Americans.

I guess the Democrats particularly are convinced that there is a worldwide brown-skinned Arabic speaking conspiracy to destroy America by investing in our country in upwards of millions of dollars. Yes... I can imagine the room full of cigar smoking Shiekhs... "yes... lets pour our money into their economy... it will be the downfall of the infidel West..." I'm sorry, but I find it easier in fact to imagine a room full of Democrats smoking cigars and plotting the downfall of the Arab rich, not the other way around. I don't like the Arab rich any more than I like white rich people, but honestly, folks, there is no Arab speaking conspiracy out there to which all brown skinned Arab speakers are a part of... they aren't taking over the English company with their primary objective finding a way of destroying us. You'd think Americans would get this... the UAE's primary objective is money, not helping a rag tag bunch of idealogists perpetrate bombings in our ports. Most of those guys hate the UAE too; the UAE has no interest in helping them out just because they happen to share a skin tone and a language. Get the fuck real, you idiot democrats, and stop trying to out-rascist the Bush administration.

Stop talking for a while, Cindy Sheehan

2006-02-24T11:11:00.000-08:00

...otherwise known as "why the Americentric antiwar movement annoys the piss out of me".

I was informed by a friend of mine several months ago, that during the beginning of the Camp Casey phenomenon, I was shown for a split second on the Daily Show's segment covering the new sensation (which, true to American tradition, held the public's attention for all of one month. This wasn't just because of Katrina... the "spirit of Camp Casey" would have lost momentum, fizzled, and lost the public's attention within a few weeks of it ending anyway). Apparently, the cameraman for the DS caught a moment of me attempting to talk to Cindy Sheehan, her acting bored and stuck up, and me giving her a "drop dead, fucking celeb bitch" look. It was only up for a second, but according to my friend it caught the entire essence of the moment.

So, yes, anti-war movement... Cindy Sheehan fucking annoys me. She doesn't annoy me just because she acts like she is the only American who really feels the pain of this war or only "Gold Star Families" (way to play into the military's system of giving us military families rewards in the form of color coded stars (!!!) that our neighbors can admire and envy) can talk about this war. This has been really exaggerated by the cadre of handlers that glommed onto her in August, and I don't think it is totally her fault. She, Military Families Speak Out, and Gold Star Families for Peace, all annoy the hell out of me because they refuse to talk about the real issue in this war and, at least at Camp Casey, they quashed anyone who did. The real issue here is imperialism- fucking imperialism. Bold, unabashed, militant imperialism. Racism and economic supremecy are driving forces behind our imperialism... not the only driving forces, but extremely strong ones.

However, MFSO and GSFP will not- they refuse- to talk about these issues because it will "alienate their base"... ok... who'se your base? The right-wing family members are already alienated by what they perceive, with some accuracy, that Cindy Sheehan is pimping Casey to end the war. She is perceived as someone craving a spotlight, as someone putting herself in front of every Americans face as often as she can, then demanding that they feel sorry for her. Something went really wrong sometime in August up there in Crawford, and unless they were really in her camp before, military families have stopped paying attention to her, if they haven't flat out started hating her. My mom liked her until about halfway through August. I get the feeling that she feels dissed... her kid didn't die, so no one is paying attention to her. She only has a blue star, not a gold one, so who cares?

I was at Camp Casey all of one day at the beginning, and I could not make myself go anywhere near it after that. I was part of the "really left" crowd, as identified by the vets, MFSO, and GSFP, which included pretty much everyone there with Code Pink and some of the "independants" (me, for example, since I can't stand any of those sheeple groups). At one point, when Bush was going to drive by the camp on the way to a fundraising dinner, MFSO called for all the family members to get behind a banner that said "bring them home" or something. I, being the sister of a wounded vet of this most recent imperialistic venture, naturally went up and got behind this banner. I was told three times to leave. As I was explaining my military cred (does it bother anyone else that you have to basically flaunt your military cred in today's antiwar movement? I am too young to know, but it seems like during Vietnam, you kinda didn't want the military cred... right? what the fuck happened?), I was told that "I'm not a part of MFSO" and yes, believe it or not, that I was with the "activists" not the "families". This is giving me so much hope for the future of this movement, I stand there thinking, when finally an executive decision is made that yes, I can stand with the families since... ummmm. .. by definition I am a military family member, even though I was an activist first and still am and will be. I guess I am a "premature anti-fascist" (if you know what I am referring to, consider yourself very well educated, since the Spanish Civil War is never talked about in the US even though thousands of American leftists went to Spain to fight against the fascists).

Perusing the MFSO website, at www.mfso.org, one can find several speeches given by MFs, mostly parents of soldiers. I am now coming to the thing that annoys me the most about these organizations and the entire war movement in general. These speeches reveal the same kind of token reference to the real 100% victims of this war... not the soldiers, who although stupid and in many ways coerced, did sign up for the military (are we soooo stupid to think that the military doesn't kill people? I keep hearing families say "my boy didn't sign up to kill anyone"... uhhhh... its the military folks... especially after 9/11, what the hell did you think it was about? I mean, we as a country are really seriously stupid, its like our national disease, but we aren't that dumb. We've all seen war movies.) and they did not miss movement when their unit was sent to Iraq. The real 100% victims are Iraqis, and it is rascist and americentric to talk about this war like no one suffers more than the aggressor, the invading army and its soldiers. I am sorry... I've seen it first hand, but nothing I've seen compares to what Iraqis are enduring, and often, dying of as their country remains occupied by those "heroes" in uniform. There are bigger victims than soldiers. Absolutely. And it is wrong for the anti-war movement to talk about the 2,000+dead like 1) they are saints who were in the wrong place at the wrong time... nu-uh, again that's the Iraqis, or 2) like that number is the biggest tragedy in the war. When is an MFSO member going to get up and say, "over 100,000 extra Iraqis died as a result of an occupation my son helped to perpetuate. He added to that figure, and I am sorry." It hasn't happened yet. We are in denial that these sweet kids are killers. My family member who is a vet is a killer, and it haunts him. He did not kill in self-defense. he was part of an agressor army force that went to someone else's home and attempted to control it. That is a decleration of war, and Iraqis shot back at him. That entire sequence of events makes him anything but a saintly victim, and as an anti-war movement we need a serious, long moment of mia culpa and stop this shit. MFSO speeches ramble on and on about the damage done to the troops... the deaths, the injuries, the lack of support when they come home... and all of that is true. Americans frankly don't care. They know full well the casualty figures, etc, and they don't care and those who do don't know what to do about it. I don't know why we insist on always beating the drums of figures which Americans already know... like if we just 2150 one more time, everyone's mind will change. Anyway, we go on and on about the price Americans have paid, and formulaicly and predictably, we then waive our hand for one second to the fact that 50 times more (at least! at the very least!!) Iraqis than Americans have died in this war of aggression. Many more thousands have been injured, driven from their homes, made to live in completely chaos, and have suffered preventable illness and suffering that are a direct consequence of this imperialistic war of aggression. We knew better when we went in. It wasn't like we were making an honest mistake then, no matter what any evil entity in Washington says. We were imperialistic and aggressive then, and nothing has changed. We say it once: "of course we ALSO mourn for the Iraqis..." and go back to what we were saying (emphasis the author's) about how victimized we and our colonial troops are.

Its part of a larger problem that Americans have that we can't see past our noses and that we believe we are entitled to perfect lives, so whenever anything gets in the way of that we cry like someone cut our big toe off. Its sickening, and I'm fucking tired of it, and it sucks that it has taken root in such a strong way in the only "opposition" to this war that America has yet to produce. If we can't be anti-imperialist and anti-americentric, who will be? If we are scared of alienating our "base" by telling them the truth, who will tell them? Who will change anything? We have to be the ones to understand that yes, our base is rascist and imperialist, and perhaps lots of activists are too, but we have to work to eradicate that, not pander to it. Let's get some gumption... some grit... lets "stop singing and start swinging" (thanks Malcolm X, for challenging us to do something strong to challenge power instead of whining amonst ourselves about how bad things are...)

Curling...best sport ever?

2006-02-13T17:03:00.000-08:00

Curling is the butt of everyone's winter olympics jokes, including mine... until today. I just spent the last 15 minutes watching a curling match between the US and Finland. Man those Finns are tough sons of bitches, and not just cause they curl like some mutherfuckers. They fucking beat the socks off the Soviets too... and while doing so gave birth to the great Alpine Sniper winter olympics sport, the biathalon.

Anyway, I was thouroughly entertained by this curling thing. It was great. What a great bar game... I could totally see myself watching people in the bar, or outside rather, curl over a nice pitcher or something. It just amazes me how one's climate really affects one's cultural standards... I mean, I have seen snow somewhere between 5-10 times, so obviously winter sports are sort of lost on me. However, if I had been born someplace where 3 out of the 12 months it is so cold you can't even really go outside without harming yourself, then I would have totally loved this shit, instead of swimming and baseball.

So folks, I must say that I was really wrong about curling and I highly recommend that everyone check out a match before this whole winter 2006 game is done. It is quite entertaining and really, I can see it taking off if marketed as a bar game, in the way of darts, pool, and GoldenTee3000 or whatever the hell that golf game is called.

Notes on Ashura and Muslim protests over Danish cartoons

2006-02-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

Presented here are some random thoughts on Ashura and the global almost-uprising of Muslims around the world in response to the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed:

On Ashura:

It seems that every year since 2001 the American television media has carried live footage of Ashura commemorations in Shii countries, notably Iran and Iraq. Ashura is an extremely important holiday to Shii Muslims; Sunnis don't recognize it. It is the rememberance of the death of Ali. Every year, Shii Muslims gather in the holy city of Karbala and in other cities as well and march. During the march, the men especially flaggelate themselves about the face, neck, and upper chest, usually bringing blood that they then don't wipe away.

Why have we shown this footage in the US since the spring of 2002 (the first commemoration of Ashura since 2001)? Because it is scary. Americans witness thousands of brown skinned Muslims walking together, crying loudly, beating themselves, and covered in blood. Americans can't tell what they are saying, right? Many are probably afraid of the sounds of Arabic or Farsii whether they know this consciously or not, since so many of the "bad guys" in our television shows and movies speak Arabic. The mourners could be crying "death to America" for all they know. They aren't, though. In fact, they are doing something that most Americans, especially the most conservative among us, should be intimately familiar with: the Shiis are marking a day that is analogous to Christians' Good Friday. They are mourning the taking of their leader, honoring his sacrifice for Islam, and pledging through their flaggelation to be prepared to sacrifice themselves. These tenants are identical to what Christians are supposed to feel year-round, especially during the lenten time and on Good Friday. Our monks, although the practice was far more common 1000 years ago, still flaggelate themselves as a sign of repentance. This is exactly what the Shiis do on Ashura, but they do it in public. Shouldn't the American Christians honor this kind of religious fervor and aspire to be more like Shiis, willing to feel that kind of passion and display it in public for the honor of God? However, that is not the picture we see, and that is not what we are inspired to feel when CNNFOXMSNBCABCCBSNBC show us Ashura footage. We are supposed to be horrified, scared, and shocked that the Shiis are doing something so brutal and barbaric. We find the thought "today their own skin... tomorrow ours"... creeping into our heads, thinking bloody jihad is what they are preparing for with those beatings instead of repentance.

Muslim Protests over Danish cartoons

I am not going to say much about this except to point out two things:

1. European and American newspapers apparently feel that certain groups are ok to ridicule and certain ones aren't. Case in point: a emotionally charged headline today is that Iranian newspapers are seeking cartoons that poke fun at the Holocaust. The point is not that either should be ridiculed, necessarily, but at least we have to realize that in the end we are defending politically incorrect cartoons because they attack people we inherently distrust and view as inferior. We view Islam as crazy and silly. Would we defend a cartoon making fun of Judiasm or the crucifixion of Jesus Christ? If the answer is no, then we aren't defending freedom of speech or the press here, because if we truly are, we are willing to defend even the things that offend us personally.

2. Notice where these protests have been the worst. Some of those places, while populated by Muslims, some of whom are extremist, are not exactly the biggest hotbeds of right-wing extremist Islam. However, it seems that they are all places where in recent times Muslims have felt under attack by the West and the "war on terror." Palestinians in Gaza... do I have to explain how they might feel under attack? Afghans in Kabul... again. Muslims in Syria... Syria has been isolated since the "war on terror" began and Washington has issued rhetoric condemning the government and their support of "terr". Some bandied about that Syria might be next after Iraq. It seems that a good chunk of those protesting and damaging property, etc, are viewing the cartoon as a direct overture of the West's desire to subjugate the Arab world.

Its about time...

2006-02-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

Once again, GM's faithful workers are taking a hit. Not only are workers at 12 plants facing losing their jobs, but all workers are going to have to pay more for their health care plans and take cuts in their pension benefits.

HOWEVER... here's the good news! The CEO is going to take a 50% pay cut (the poor thing will only make 1.1 million dollars next year, while all the workers he put out on the line are going to be looking frantically for jobs as Wal-Mart greeters and taxi drivers) and some of the other top managerial staff are going to take a 30% hit. The general council is going to lose 10% of his salary. Hahahahaha! Even though that still leaves these people shamefully filthy rich, and they should still be put out on the line (the firing type, perhaps...) It is good to see that they are going to feel a little stick in their side too. Take that, and hopefully alot more in the coming days. Remember guys, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. As Brother Malcolm said, its either the ballot or the bullet. Take your pick, and don't choose lightly.

Are they our enemies, our friends, what? I'm confused W...

2006-02-06T09:55:00.000-08:00

What's up with this? Not only is it yet more inane, right-wing religious bigotry coming out of this administration, but look who we're teaming up with!!! I thought we wanted to bring "the benefits of an open society" and "democracy" to these countries. Aren't these countries the "bad guys"? I guess we want human rights and secular democracy for everyone except sexual minorities. GRRR! Write Sec of State Rice and tell her how fucked up this is: http://contact-us.state.gov/cgi-bin/state.cfg/php/enduser/home.php

United Nations: U.S. Aligned With Iran in Anti-Gay Vote
Rice Must Explain Repressive UN Ban on LGBT Rights Groups(Washington, D.C., January 25, 2006) -

In a reversal of policy, the United States on Monday backed an Iranian initiative to deny United Nations consultative status to organizations working to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, a coalition of 39 organizations, led by the Human Rights Campaign, Human Rights Watch, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called for an explanation of the vote which aligned the United States with governments that have long repressed the rights of sexual minorities.

"This vote is an aggressive assault by the U.S. government on the right of sexual minorities to be heard," said Scott Long, director of the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch. "It is astonishing that the Bush administration would align itself with Sudan, China, Iran and Zimbabwe in a coalition of the homophobic."

In May 2005, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, which is based in Brussels, and the Danish gay rights group Landsforeningen for Bøsser og Lesbiske (LBL) applied for consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council. Consultative status is the only official means by which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world can influence and participate in discussions among member states at the United Nations. Nearly 3,000 groups enjoy this status.

States opposed to the two groups' applications moved to have them summarily dismissed, an almost unprecedented move at the UN, where organizations are ordinarily allowed to state their cases. The U.S. abstained on a vote which would have allowed the debate to continue and the groups to be heard. It then voted to reject the applications.

"The United States recklessly ignored its own reporting proving the need for international support for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. "The State Department's ‘Country Reports on Human Rights Practices' show severe human rights violations based on gender identity and sexual orientation occur around the world."

As the U.S. government acknowledged in its 2004 country report on Iran, Iranian law punishes homosexual conduct between men with the death penalty. Human Rights Watch has documented four cases of arrests, flogging, or execution of gay men in Iran since 2003. In its 2004 country report on Zimbabwe, the U.S. government noted President Robert Mugabe's public denouncement of homosexuals, blaming them for "Africa's ills." In the past, Mugabe has called gays and lesbians "people without rights" and "worse than dogs and pigs." The U.S. has reversed position since 2002, when it voted to support the International Lesbian and Gay Association's request to have its status reviewed. Officials gave no explanation for the change.

"It is deeply disturbing that, at the UN, the United States has shifted gears toward an aggressive stance against human rights for LGBT people," said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. "Unfortunately, denying LGBT groups a voice and a presence within the United Nations – the world's most important human rights institution – is fully in keeping with the U.S.'s assault on basic human rights principles worldwide."

In voting against the applications to the NGO committee, the U.S. was joined by Cameroon, China, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Votes in favor of consultative status came from Chile, France, Germany, Peru, and Romania. Colombia, India, and Turkey abstained, while Côte d'Ivoire was absent. "It is an absolute outrage that the United States has chosen to align itself with oppressive governments – all in an effort to smother the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people around the world," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "It is deeply disturbing that the self-proclaimed ‘leader of the free world' will ally with bigots at the drop of a hat to advance the right wing's anti-gay agenda."

In addition to the Human Rights Campaign, Human Rights Watch, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the organizations signing the letter are:
Advocates for Youth
Al-Fatiha Foundation for LGBT Muslims
Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, Yale Law School
Amnesty International USA
Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE)
Center for Women's Global Leadership
Colombian Lesbian and Gay Association (COLEGA)
Congregation Beth Simchat Torah
Equality Now
Family Care International
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Gay Men's Health Crisis
Global Rights
Immigration Equality
International Women's Human Rights Clinic, City University of New York School of Law
Ipas
Jan Hus Church
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
Latino Commission on AIDS
L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center
Legal Momentum
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center (New York City)
MADRE
Mano a Mano
Metropolitan Community Churches
National Black Justice Coalition
National Center for Transgender Equality
National Coalition Building Institute Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Caucus
National Center for Lesbian Rights
New Hampshire Freedom to Marry Coalition
Open Society Institute
Queer Progressive Agenda
Queers for Economic Justice
Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S.
Women's Environment and Development Organization

To view this document on the Human Rights Watch web site, please visit: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/25/iran12535.htm

Sarah Silverman is MY Girlfriend

2006-02-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

I noticed that no one commented on my post regarding Hamas winning the elections. Bitches! Is it too long? People wanted to comment on my stripper post, but not on my Hamas post? It is rather long, but seriously, its brilliant and all, since I wrote it, and you should read it so you know how to deal with this whole Hamas thing. My opinion is the right one.

I am sitting here having beer at a National Lawyers' Guild meeting that wasn't. I don't like drinking anymore because I get really really horny, and there isn't anyone around here worthy of sleeping with me. Just kidding. I sleep with anything that has two legs. OK... joking again. Anyway, my full-time boyfriend is gone to go "teach at NYU for the semester". OOOOOO! You're so cool. Anyway, where is Sarah Silverman when you need someone to sit on your face and tell you that she loves you?

How many times do I have to say it?

2006-02-03T09:04:00.000-08:00

I have interviews today with the interest organizations that I want to work for this summer. I have sporting kick ass, fixed hair, a suit with a sweet shirt, and knee high black stripper boots. I'm even wearing make-up.

This woman working at one of the name tag tables stopped me and told me I had a string hanging out of my skirt (its part of my undies) and that I was showing a little "skin". She whispered skin. She meant there was a gap between my skirt and shirt and jacket so that a little of my back showed. I know she was being nice. I know, I know. Its better that she told me and I fixed it. But what's with whispering "skin" like we don't all have it and it doesn't show sometimes when clothes move. And how many times do I have to say it? You know... say it with me. Stripper goes to law school here! What do you people want from me? Goddamn it. Super Stripper Girl is doing her goddamn best. Bear with me. Get it- bear/bare... hahaha.

Speaking of stripping, I just downloaded some AC/DC onto my computer. Yes, bitches, I stole the motherfucking music through LimeWire. Angus, folks, I love yall but you got enough money. I used to dance every night to Dirty Deeds... it was my closing song of the evening. Listening to it makes me want to swing around a pole a few times. I wonder if I would feel more comfortable doing that then being in class around all these people that are not like me being forced to think about affluence and rich clients every day. I know I'd rather swing around a pole than study.

petition drive that would make anyone an activist

2006-02-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

Lick here... yeah, right there....

This is a real email I just read:

Please Sign the Petitions to Oppose Anti-Immigrant Bills!An Appeal from National Immigrant Solidarity Network
January 20, 2006URL: http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org

Please Lick Here to Sign the Petition!

We are asking you for your help in collecting signatures for a petition (please see attached) addressed to the Los Angeles City Council requesting they adopt a resolution in favor of the immigrant community. The petition will be hand delivered to City Council on February 2nd. Our voices need to be heard and we need to defeat H.R. 4437 the moment it reaches the Senate. Currently, folks in D.C. are speculating that the issue of immigration will be taken up in mid February. If City Council approves the resolution it will be an issue the lobbying committee of the city takes on in D.C. as a priority.

Please Lick Here to Sign the Petition!

(Powered by ActionLA Coalition)

If you haven't figured it out (you fucking moron), it was supposed to be "click".

you know you want it!

2006-02-02T20:08:00.000-08:00

OK, bitches, I fixed the comments part so that you don't have to have a blogger id to leave me a comment. So leave me a comment and tell me how much you hate me, how much you wish you were me, how bad you want to see me naked, or how you feel just plain flat out sorry for me. Do it!

C is for CANDY!

2006-02-02T10:18:00.000-08:00

Are you ever next to someone, say in class, at work, standing in line at the post office or at the movies, or in an elevator, and the person takes out and begins to unwrap a peice of candy and you just want to grab it? "Gimme that!' Yoink! And then pop it into your mouth like nothing happened?

hahahahahah

2006-02-01T19:31:00.000-08:00

funniest shit ever...

www.obeybutterstick.com

now for a moment of silence

2006-02-01T12:52:00.000-08:00

Advisory: if you are looking for raucous remarks about a day in law school, this post will not satisfy. Also, if you would like to retain some kind of romantic, one-sided view about the Israeli occupation (from whosever side) I would direct you to look elsewhere.

I am posting here a statement from the Women's Coalition for Peace/Women in Black leader, Gila Svirsky, whom I met during my visit to Palestine (and Israel, though I didn't spend much time at all in Israel). I thought about adding my commentary below, but I think my cynicism inclines me to actually interweave them among her text, in red. Here we go.

Hamas and UsGila Svirsky 1) Who’s to blame? What a question... occupier(whose citizenry is so convinced that the land is theirs through either Manifest Destiny or a 5000 year old decree from a desert god that many of them actually asked me "what occupation?") vs. the occupied. Who should we blame FIRST? Listening to the reactions of passersby at the recent Jerusalem vigil of Women in Black (I have been to precisely two of these vigils and while I am impressed with their diligence, I was quite unimpressed with their analysis), you would think it was our peaceful little group that put the Hamas into power. This stems from Israeli right-wing politicians who are asserting that Hamas won because of the Gaza withdrawal and other conciliatory overtures, i.e., “rewarding terrorism”. Is it just something that colonizers tend to arrive at, or is Israel taking a page from the US? It seems however that the US is not the first imperial power to indignitly characterize indigenous resistance, in whatever form it might be, as illegal, barbarous, almost ungrateful? There is never any effort to understand or even realize anything basic about the motivation behind the attacks. For example, it seems that the British in Kenya where unbelievably brutal in their attempt to quash the Kikuyu resistance (came to be known as the "Mau-Mau Rebellion", a racist term mimicing a sound made by fighters), all the while villifying the Kikuyu for their unfair, unjust attacks on British "innocents", ie the Brits doing the actual physical colonizing. It's a basic "its ok when we do, but not you" thing. I think its so strange when people talk about how terrible and evil it is when anyone attacks US soldiers in Iraq. Its a war, dude. That's what happens. You attack them, they attack back, repeat. Are we really so convinced of our moral infallability that we think we can start a war and not get shot at in retaliation? Maybe that is the difference between an invasion type war and an occupation- in the second, the agressive force thinks its unfair and wrong when the other side attacks. Indeed, Bibi Netanyahu & co. are delighted with the Hamas victory, on which they can now build a fear-saturated election campaign, and return voters to the fold who lately had slipped into something more moderate (a nicer, more gentle genocidal occupation). I agree with the above to some extent. In the short term at least it will provide a reason to wreak even more havoc in the Occupied Territories. It will surely provide a new justification for the Wall. However, even the most brutal, rascist war-mongerers do not actually want an endless, perpetual state of war. The masses don't like it. There is a reason Israel and the US spent millions trying to influence people to vote for the ruling Fateh party. It has been easier to convince Fateh leaders, even Arafat although they were not ultimately completely successful in his case, that they are powerless to get more than what Israel and the US wants to give them and concede. The powers were able to set up a top-down, rent-payer, ineffective Fateh/PA ruling infrustructure throughout the country, many of whom were readily available and willing to fight with each other, undermine each other, and serve themselves instead of their constituents. It isn't like they were taking orders from Israel necessarily; its just that they could be trusted to not have their priorities straight ever. But here’s my take on what made Hamas victorious in the recent elections: (wait for it... my guess it will be something very profound and original) Israel’s failure to sit down and negotiate an end to the occupation. OK So I was wrong. Someone give her a prize. After the five hundreth explanation, someone finally got it. This is often phrased as “the failure of Fatah to make progress on peace”, but they amount to the same thing: the Fatah failed because Israel refused to offer any reward for moderation, refusing to sit down and negotiate with them. Fateh has degenerated into a disempowering force among the people. They continued to grasp onto hopes that if they wait it out, bear with the leaders, they would eventually get something. And so they did just that- wait. There is no transparency, little grassroots participation at the government levels, and again, very little effort on the part of many Fateh members to make the people and their needs a priority. The very deep dependency of the "mainstream" resistance on the international community, ie ineffectual rulings by the UN, to pressure Israel into doing the right thing is, while needed, hurting the will of the average Palestinian to continue working for an end to the occupation. It hasn't brought any real result, so people have been left feeling hopeless and desperate. And what about the corruption claim – that voting for Hamas was also a vote against the corruption of the Fatah politicians? It was a secondary reason, surely. There is lots of anger toward Fateh, especially the Fateh members who act like they are the rightful leaders of the Palestinians and don't have to do anything to stay in power. Plus, there was an obvious intention on the part of many Palestinians to vote for ANYONE besides those who have been apparently chosen and sanctioned by Israel and the US. Is that so strange, that Palestinians would purposely not vote for America and Israel's candidate? Taking money from your enemies to secure your place is also corruption. Obviously the PA taking money from the US and Israel to do projects right before the election made many Palestinians angry enough to not vote for them. Secondly, many Palestinians are convinced that their Fateh leaders are secure no matter what- they make money off the Occupation (Abas making money off the concrete sold to Israel for the Wall is an oft-cited example) and will make money afterward too, while the rest won't. This may have played a role for some voters, but since when does corruption bring down a politician? Certainly not in Israel, where Sharon’s corruption has been an open book, but forgiven by those who support his politics. Westerners will support corrupt leaders as long as the leaders are macho strongmen-types and the corruption isn't so noticeable that it actually starts affecting their daily lives in an obvious way. Corruption is tolerated when approval ratings are high in other respects. The corruption of the previous Palestinian government would have been overlooked, had the politicians only managed to show some progress on ending the occupation. It's not that they even have to show progress in the short term as they have to keep acting like strong leaders. Bush has shown no progress on Iraq, actually much the opposite, and although his support for the occupation has decreased, he hasn't lost it completely. He keeps a strong rhetoric and promises results, not in the short term, but overall.

When terrorists become politicians

I remember standing on the balcony of my home in Jerusalem on a lovely May morning of 1977 and gasping when I heard who had won the Israeli election: Menahem Begin, former head of a Jewish terrorist organization that had killed 91 civilians by bombing the King David Hotel in 1946. Further proof that it is only collateral damage if the agressor is white. And then it was Begin who returned the Sinai Peninsula and negotiated peace with Egypt. In 2001, Israel elected Ariel Sharon, responsible for blood-soaked episodes in Qibiya, Beirut, Gaza, Sabra and Shatila, and more. And then it was Sharon who returned Gaza – imperfect, but a singularly important precedent. I condemn terrorism, whether ‘rogue’ or state sanctioned, and I would never have voted for Hamas (or Begin or Sharon). But who is better positioned than Hamas to reach a compromise peace agreement? We have the mirror image of Israel in the Palestinian election: Just as the Israeli right (Begin and Sharon) could more easily make concessions than Yitzhak Rabin, who had to fight our right wing all the way, so too the Hamas can mobilize more support for concessions than the more moderate Fatah could now undertake. That's because their leadership is more respected. It looks different for a group that has devoted itself solely to the liberation of a people or land to make certain concessions than one who appears that it hasn't been in that fight for a long time. It will look necessary (even if it isn't or shouldn't be) as opposed to mealy-mouthed and weak. They are also less likely to give up things that can be won with more pressure exerted over time. It is also possible that Hamas will go through the same transformation Fateh did after it became the ruling party institutionalized in the PA. It is hard to continue as a liberation movement after you become a ruling power that has to do the actual work of governing.

About creeping fundamentalism

Yes, I am worried about Hamas rule, particularly its domestic agenda in Palestine: I worry about women, non-Muslims, journalists, gays, people in the arts, and all those who benefit from the open society. You're worried? What about me? I live in the US, and unlike Palestine, no one in the international community is talking about the rise of radical right-wing Christianity in our country and the subsequent loss of our liberties and rights. To what extent will the Hamas increase the role of Shari’a (Muslim) law in civilian life? To what extent will the Republican Party in Texas legislate a literal, extremely conservative reading of the Bible as law? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know. Or religious education in the schools? Once, when I was in the seventh grade, one of my teachers in Oklahoma told us, under the guise of the mandatory sex-ed lesson, told us to keep our knees shut. Darwin was never mentioned in class until I went to a special science magnate school. On the other hand, it’s quite evident that Palestinians have experienced democracy and will not easily tolerate a closing of their society. Hopefully they won't tolerate it in the same way Americans have. Or Israelis. Sharon had to give up his Saturday afternoon tennis game to court the more Orthodox vote; Kerry had to promise us (so radically different than Kennedy promising to NOT be religious just 50 years before) that he really did believe in Jesus. Seriously though folks, far be it from us to talk about the rise of conservative, radical Islam in Palestine. It is true that the majority of Palestinians are Muslim, the women wear hijab and conservative clothing (so do the men for the most part), and Palestinians for the most part abide in a traditional, conservative culture (marriage and family are supposed to be more important to women then their careers,for example; although many women are very educated, they often times will not pursue careers outside the home, due in part to not wanting to give the appearance of neglecting their children and due in another part to the worsening state of the economy- there are not enough jobs to employ men and women both, so women give up opportunities so that men can have them. This is no different fundamentally than America 50-60 years ago.) However, there are plenty of non-extreme, even non-practicing Muslims in Palestine and there are many Christians (some of whom also don't practice). A vote for Hamas in this election would not always indicate that the Palestinian had become more conservative in his/her religion. There are unknown massive numbers of Palestinians who would not tolerate, for example, women being denied education, the right to drive, or subjected to mandatory hijab or, for another example, armed gangs of young conservative Muslim males driving around closing down stores that sold alcohol. Many of these same ones would not "deny the right of Israel to exist", ie demand that the country be blown off the map and all the Jews driven back into Europe. They will act as a moderating force in Hamas, as they already have. In Bethlehem municipality, the majority (although it is slimer than it once was) is Christian and the large minority is Muslim. Christians are allowed to vote for both and Muslims are allowed to vote. The city council is mandated to be half+1 Christian (personally, not necessarily belonging to a religious party) and the rest Muslim. In the last election, almost all of the Christian representatives elected were members of the socialist Party for the Liberation of Palestine and all the Muslim representatives were either members of the Islamic Jihad party or Hamas. This means that Christians voted for these parties in the election. Do they want to live under a radical conservative Islamic regime? No way. Do they want strong leadership who is going to fight to improve Palestine domestically and end the occupation? Yes. They see these two Muslim parties as able to do that, but they of course do not agree with the idea of a Muslim theocracy set up in Palestine.

I take heart from this week’s survey of the Palestinian population, published in the Palestinian Authority’s Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda and reported in the Jerusalem Post*: 84% of Palestinians support a peace deal with Israel. Peace with justice. Let's see how many Israelis want peace, and then start the name calling. Palestinians aren't monstervilliandemons. They aren't vampires. They don't like blood and guts. Of course they want peace. Who doesn't? Oh yeah, that's right... the people in the West who have become monstervilliandemons and vampires. In case you wondered if this includes the Hamas, 75% of Hamas voters are opposed to calls for the destruction of Israel. Yeah. Please see above. Hamas knows that seculars comprise a large portion of their constituency.

And who benefits from ending foreign aid? Three guesses. Is it the American taxpayer? Hmm, its not... so... So along come American and Israeli politicians advocating for a policy that would isolate and punish the Palestinians by withholding financial aid. The American press is jabbering like monkeys in a tree about the whole election. I guess they want to give aid when it could sway an election in their favor. Hey guys, remember that whole democracy thing? If you push for elections, then you sort of have to abide by what happens. No one in Washington had a problem with funding Indonesian terrorists for 25 years; since they have just reinstated that military aid, I wouldn't imagine that they would have an actual problem funding Hamas. Everyone knows this would destabilize the fragile economy, harm the innocent (but not the politicians), and foster increasing bitterness against the secular west. Secular? hehehe. A much more reasonable approach would be to extend support and see how responsibly Hamas uses it. How many rocket launchers does $20 million buy? Or maybe we should take that money and reinvest it in the States to see if we can buy our government, our media, and ourselves a collective brain. One amongst all of us might be worth it. It might do more good for the Palestinians than a brand new rocket launcher for every adult over 18 in the West Bank. Hamas actually has a lot to prove right now, and they had one of the best grassroots charity systems set up in Gaza without financial aid from the West. I can only imagine what Palestinians could get out of them if they actually had money to spend. Or does someone have an interest in sowing chaos in the Palestinian territories? Yes, I too would like to demand a renunciation of terrorism and violence as a precondition for talking I think Hamas should issue a pre-emptory statement saying they don't negotiate with or take money from terrorists. …I’d like to demand it from both sides. But realistically this has to be done as part of the negotiations. Hey boys, just in case... bring the rocket launchers.

Gila SvirskyJerusalem

Bring it on, Biyatch!!

2006-01-31T07:23:00.000-08:00

Noticing my past posts, I must fucking love the word fuck. Yes I do. Fuck yeah I do.

Something quite hilarious is going on around the world. Enemies of Bush, Sharon, and company, enemies of empire (good and bad, please don't mischaracterize this post as completely sympathetic to the figures of whom I speak) are trash-talking with the best street pick-up game player of them all. The first instance of this that comes to mind is Iran's throw down to Israel: Attack us, bitches, and we will put you in a coma with Sharon. Pretty much an exact quote except for the bitches part. The second is Al-Zawahari's attack on Bush for being a ineffective bumbling fool and a butcher. Osama has consistently issued video after video reminding Bush that he is still alive and well and taunting him over the years spent trying to catch him met only with failure. Perhaps only second best to Iran's coma remark is Hugo Chavez calling Bush an asshole and ribbing him from across the Caribbean that his Secretary of State wants his body. "Yep, Bush, I have Condolezza, soon I will be having Laura in the Oval Office on your desk, motherfucker. See the way ole Condi is walking today? I did that, and she loved it."

What can we expect next? Well, I am waiting for Hamas to issue some statement saying that they are going to pursue legit weapons deals to get them some Apaches and F-16s and level the playing field. They wouldn't even have to do it. They could just issue a press release and watch the entire country of Israel move underground. "Hahahaha motherfuckers; what can you do? What? See how we are legit now? How do you like it? It ain't so freakin cool when we get some planes, huh?" Its so funny; it the government is white and western, the violence is more legit, but if it is brown, then they are expected to renounce everything. Why not just ramp it up and call it collateral damage like Bush would? He went from sticking needles in pathetic, abused mens arms to devestating the whole world. He didn't renounce nothing; why would Hamas? Lastly, and something I can't wait to see, is Saddam get in on the trash-talking... "Hey Bush... yo mamma inspected my weapon of mass destruction last night..."

Fan Freakin' Tastic

2006-01-30T21:59:00.000-08:00

Fan Freakin' Tastic

Is this how I do this? I forget.

I'm a bigger fuck-up than you...

2006-01-25T06:52:00.000-08:00

Yeah, yeah... I know the last post was a tad outrageous. I know he will see it at some point. Chalk it all up to a sick mind and too much wasted time.

I am so motherfucking tired. I can't even begin to wonder how this day is going to go... I went to a law school society function last night that featured free bear and food. I didn't eat but I drank probably upwards of two pitchers by myself. I was drunk when I left, and I went home and drank more, smoked some weed, took some pain killers, and then passed out. I didn't study. Haha motherfuckers. After about an hour at the function last night, all the responsible, function kids left to go study, but not me. Not today. Instead, I had a party and went to bed all nice and fucked up.

One "stick up the ass" moment from last night's function, besides hearing all the responsible, functional kids whining about how much they have to study, was when a second year female student heard me talking about my former girlfriend... "yes, yes, my girlfriend, girlfriend, Girlfriend!"... and turned her entire body around, trying to look non-chalant, and gave me a freaked-out look before turning around again. I then said, loudly, something about the second years being shocked and horrified. To give her credit, at least at that point she started laughing and admitted that she turned around to look at me because she wanted to make sure that she heard that correctly and that she "didn't expect to be hearing that..." Oh yeah, I am sure that I am the only queerish-type in the entire law school. Right.

I am having a really hard time staying awake.

Now for a moment of ranting. This week, a fraternity at UT, the Delta Tau Deltas, held their spring pledge week that ended with the "Mekong Party." The entire week was Vietnam-era military themed. The frat house, on the corner of Dean Keeton and San Jacinto, was decorated with era style camo, tree sits, and netting, and the entire set up was surrounded by cut bamboo set in the ground to look real. This was blantantly racist to me, but apparently not to the rest of the entire university or Austin. "Mekong Party"? I wonder if the residents of the Mekong thought it was a party when our imperialist drive spurred our invasion and destruction of their homeland. Even from an America-centric perspective, the Vietnam era is not something to be celebrated. However, I think that this is an attempt on the part of the baby-boomers and the generations afterward to sort of recoup their losses, regain some national pride, and completely re-write history to recast Vietnam as a huge sacrifice on our part in the attempt to do something right, and even when we lose and an entire generation of veterans are fucked up afterward, it just shows how strong and herioc we are. We could put up with "the horror... the horror", to quote one example of rascist war-mongering propoganda that is often mistook as an "anti-war" statement. The kind of blatant dismissal of the pain that others have suffered and endured as a result of our foreign policy is incredible. It boggles the mind.

My criminal law class just finished. I spoke up today on behalf of all us addicts out there, and lots of people have come up to me to tell me that they supported me. I advocated a position that was a little more absolute than I might even agree with, but it seemed like it needed to be done to counterbalance all the personal responsibility shit motherfuckers were spitting. If you are an addict or have really known one, you know that shit is powerful. Its not a choice anymore. But most people learn that the hard way, and I think I can say with great confidence that most law students are not addicts. Not like me. They don't know what its like to crave a drink, to sweat after you quit cocaine, to imagine the powder running down your throat, to relive the feeling of your heart pounding so gloriously fast and hard. It's not easy to resist, and I wasn't even all that into it. There are people who are much worse than I ever was. The great irony is I am sitting here talking about addiction in class while I am recovering from last night's bout of irresponsible fun. I couldn't even think of my words my head is so clouded.

Today is not shaping up to be so good. I feel a depression settling in. What can be done?

I tell you what...

2006-01-24T14:26:00.000-08:00

I've never been a blogger, a "live-journalist", a "my spacer", a whatever the hell else... I dont even use IM. I don't know how this will go or what I will say. In general, I am a sarcastic, cynical, bitter, aged beyond my years (its not the age; its the milage...) law student, and I have lots of nasty things to say and no one to listen. So... ta-da. I created this thing to act as a depository of all those cut-downs, quips, and mean observations that I store up all day long. You never know... maybe I'll be able to put them all together and come up with a sitcom about me and my three closest whiny, loser friends. First, I will have to get some loser friends. The sitcom would be boring if it was just me sitting in a coffee shop (a diner, people... I am not hip enough to hang out in coffee "houses"...) making fun of people as they walk by. Or I could sell the whole thing to Sarah Silverman and she could do something with it.

That's enough. I should listen to my con law professor, if for no other reason than he is also sarcastic and cynical and makes fun of us at every turn. Plus, he is super freakin hot and I want to make his knees buckle with my tongue. Did I say that outloud? God, fucking law school (in the figurative use of the phrase) would be easier if we could drink in class...

Oh wow... the hotass just said we don't want to be caught with our pants down in tomorrow's class (he was warning us to do the readings). Oh I could do so fucking much with that comment. Jesus Mary and Joseph... it would be fun to play a game of catch each other with our pants down with this guy.