~ possible article for ghostcycle.org #1:

area man cycling across 47th street discovers it takes more than a full punch to the face to cause him to lose control of his bike.

~ ahmed chalabi: an ‘urban myth’ is perpetuated when someone tells you that a spider bit his camp counselor in her sleep, and that six weeks later the sore left by the bite burst open and hundreds of baby spiders crawled out. un-urban myth is not when ‘ahmed chalabi provides false information regarding wmd to the united states‘ or ‘ahmed chalabi commits currency exchange fraud‘ or ‘ahmed chalabi is a counterfeiter‘ or ‘ahmed chalabi gives united states’ secrets to iran‘.

also, ahmed chalabi is still a preppie asshole.

~ anatomy of a field trip:

continue reading…

~ we already know that president bush believes that the way to deal with forest fires is to cut down the trees which fuel them; now we learn from him that ‘A [flu] pandemic is a lot like a forest fire…it can grow to an inferno that spreads quickly beyond our ability to control it.’ if trees, not fire, are the problem, then people, not flu, are the problem. president bush claims that the only way to prevent avian flu from spreading from human to human would be to eliminate the humans.

‘seriously’, though this latest attempted diversion from the headlines that the vice president’s chief of staff lewis libby has been indicted for committing perjury in an attempt to cover up the administration’s outing of a c.i.a. agent (or just c.i.agent?) in retribution for her spouse’s honest and ultimately correct assessment that the administration’s justification for the war on iraq were fraudulent would bullshit even it it wasn’t being mentioned for said diversion. we weren’t destroyed by sars, by west nile virus, by anthrax, by mad cow disease (unfortunately), by needles in our pepsi or by cyanide in our tylenol; we won’t be destroyed by this year’s doomsday device.

~

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

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

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

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

~

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

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

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

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

~ happy 40th birthday to Jefferson National Expansion Memorial!

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

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

~ cold:

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

~ irony:

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

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

~ open letter to All Things Considered [w],

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

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

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

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

-the angry red planet, Philadelphia, PA