People all over the country are expressing their shock & outrage over the rape of an exotic dancer by the Duke Lacrosse team (yes…I left the alleged out of there on purpose). I’ll meet them halfway. I’m outraged, but not even a little shocked. Anyone who hasn’t had their head in the ground knows that college parties are extraordinarily dangerous places for women. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has linked heavy drinking to 70,000 cases of sexual assault and acquaintance rape yearly. 55% of gang rapes on college campuses are committed by fraternities, 40% by sports teams, and 5% by others. About 25% of sorority women report having been raped, which is even higher than the general number for women on campus. Could it be that they spend so much time at frats & their parties? There’s also very good reason to believe that these statistics are a dramatic under reporting of the actual number of assaults. Both because victims are often embarrassed, and because colleges proactively attempt to suppress and avoid reporting of rapes on their campuses (can’t be good publicity). So while I’m pissed, I’m really tired of people pretending like this a big shock. Like it’s something rare. Because it’s happening all the time, across the country, people just don’t like to talk about it.

I’m sure everyone will be absolutely astonished to discover that when Libby leaked classified information on a CIA agent, he wasn’t doing as some rouge cowboy. Libby has testified that the leak was “specifically authorized” by George. Can you remember the President’s (fake) outrage over the leak & his (untruthful) promise that the person responsible for the leak would be dealt with?

http://www.thesmokinggun.com//archive/0406061libby1.html

I think the saddest thing is how anti-climactic this is going to be. The whole country knows that the President is a repeated, persistent, & tactical liar. The right has decided that it’s OK to be dishonest as long as it serves their agenda, & left is so weary of shouting & jumping up & down about all the examples of corruption & dishonesty (there are so fucking many) that it’s hard to get excited about yet another example. It’s just so predictable.

Quotes from a question and answer session with the President at Central Piedmont Community College today

Today I want to expand on the discussion I began about America’s counter terrorism approach. I want to spend some time thinking about the effectiveness of our policies, & land on what I consider (despite the billions of dollars we’re hemorrhaging monthly) to be the true cost of our approach.

We are currently engaged in a strategy that is most strongly underpinned by something we might call a “security theater” story. Measures are taken to make people FEEL safer, regardless of the real effectiveness of the approach. Here’s a question. A though experiment if you will. Pretend you have $10,000. Pretend you’re cracked in some fundamental way. Do you honestly believe that the Department of Homeland Security, or the FBI, or the NSA, or who-fucking-ever could actually prevent you from killing twenty or a hundred people if you’re willing to sacrifice your own life?

Here in Seattle we’ve just had a vivid reminder of how stone cold simple it is to assemble assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols, shotguns, & other tools of terrorist mayhem. Play the game in your head for a few minutes. My personal favorite involves the I90 floating bridge.

Shopping List
Semi-automatic rifle – $800 – $2,000
(I’d likely spring for one of the AK-47 knock offs. They’re not as accurate as some rifles, but they’re legendary for reliability. Plus the large capacity banana clips are easy to find).
Assault pistol – $800 – $1,500
(I’d go with a semi-automatic version of the classic 9mm Uzi & then buy all the 32 round magazines I could lay hands on. I’m thinking I could carry at least ten.)
Personal body armor – $500 – $1,000
(There are some excellent performance reviews as a result of troop fatalities in Iraq. The point isn’t to survive…just make it harder, hence longer, before they can take me out.)
Caltrops – $0 – $250
(You can buy car caltrops on ebay, or make them yourself. They’ve been in use for a very long time.)
Binoculars – $50 – $500
(I’d spend extra on flare resistant coated optics.)
Optional DIY napalm

If you’re wondering how easy it would be to dig up the goodies on my list, take a look at http://www.gunsamerica.com/ (I’m thinking mail order is the way to go if you’re brown & ESL).

Now that we have all the tools needed, you’ll need to cauterize your sense of right & wrong (or amp yourself up on a religious zealot trip). Pick an end of the bridge during rush hour (I’d go with the one closer to the city). If you check out the satellite pictures on Google you can see that there are some nice shrubs etc. for you to nestle into. Watch with the binocs until you see two relatively full buses are on the bridge at one time. Throw handfuls of caltrops onto the lanes entering the tunnel. Go to work with the AK-47. Given that the cars are only likely to be doing about 3 miles per hour it’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel. Once the tunnel has been fully blocked by immobilized vehicles throw as many one-gallon glass bottles of homemade napalm as you can onto the cars below (this doesn’t really serve a significant function other than to make it more dramatic for the news. Which is really what terror is all about). You could do something flashy like rappelling down (or you could do something simple like following the little ramp down to the side walk that runs along the side of the bridge). Unlimber the Uzi & start firing into the vehicles that are trapped in the traffic jam you’ve created on the bridge (well, I guess you didn’t create it. You just made it really, really bad). The individual cars aren’t really your targets. You just want to create chaos & make sure everyone keeps their head down. The buses are where you’re going to get the numbers you need to make it a significant attack. Keep trying to kill people until they kill you.

What’s the point of this exercise, other than demonstrating the fact I’ve spend too much time stuck in traffic, on buses, on I90 & I’m more than a little twisted? My point is that America is filled to the brim with soft targets. There isn’t a damn thing we can do about it if we intend to maintain our character as a nation. “Security Theater.” We’re spending great heaping buckets of money on things that make people FEEL more secure when they’re just as (marginally) exposed as they were before. The implications of this approach spin out in a couple of ways. First, it’s a really dumb way to spend limited funds (it’s not like we’re so flush with cash that we couldn’t come up with something constructive to do with a hundred billion dollars). Second, it props up the illusion that we can be secure. Which means that when the (inevitable) attack comes, it has the same risk of mass-stupidity-perhaps-we-should-go-to-war-&-can-I-vote-for-a-right-wing-freak-show response that we witnessed after 9/11.

The real threat to our security is bound up with something I call creeping totalitarianism. Or maybe the insidious sneaky expansion of the security state. We’ve all heard the stories. Homeland security officers trying to monitor internet use at a public library, investigating a Texas man because he paid off his credit card bill, locking down the funds for the San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild for months, arresting a vegan protester at a HoneyBaked Ham store who had the audacity to write down his license plant number after the officer had been taking video surveillance of the protest (you gotta be careful with those terrorist vegans), photographers all over the country (myself included) are harassed persistently by security personnel (some of them are even arrested) for taking pictures of public buildings, department stores, etc….

If you’re feeling even a little bit conspiracy minded…you should remember that Halliburton just received a very large contract to build “temporary detention centers” inside the US, they’re running “war games” with names like “Cyber Storm” to “test how it would respond” to devastating attacks over the Internet from “anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.” How does it feel to be an enemy of the state?

My biggest concern is a mental process that was well documented by Phil Zimbardo in 1971. The Stanford Prison Experiment (http://www.prisonexp.org/) was a classic demonstration of the power of social situations to distort personal identities and long cherished values and morality as the student volunteers internalized situated identities in their roles as prisoners and guards. The planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of the results were so nasty. In only a few days, the “guards” became sadistic and the “prisoners” became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. These are the results when you’re talking about a bunch of Stanford college students. Tell someone they have the authority to do whatever they want to protect national security, & they’ll do whatever they want. Tell a citizen they have to give up their rights to be safe from terrorists, & they give up their rights. Spend too much time in those roles & you become inured to the loss of your liberty.

Take all of this in the context of the fact that the government is already making plans & running simulations for how they can shut down the people who’re independent minded enough to disagree with them & I don’t think you have to be a “black helicopter nut” to be very afraid.

a creationist’s head just exploded. think it might be time to beat up another professor.

then again, as people have pointed out it doesn’t really matter to the ID crowd. you keep finding these transitional species and then they’ll surely point out that you didn’t find it’s immediate predessor or successor so now you have 2 missing links instead of just the one.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

http://www.pandasthumb.org/

First look, gets a thumbs up.

Oh, I’m posting a direct link to this because I read it earlier and thought that it was pretty damn funny.

Red Queen Says: video dog has the actual Sopranos clip that the article talks about.

To the first person who makes me a better blog template.
This one is ugly. I know what it should look like. I have the bits (background, jpeg for the top, etc, but not enough techy know-how to post it as anything that doesn’t look like hieroglyphics.

Pretty please with sugar on top and a kidney?

1. I fought the law (and the law won)
2. I shot the sheriff- Bob Marley
3. I predict a Riot- Kaiser Chiefs
4. Pledge of resistance-Saul Williams
5. Combat Rock- Sleater Kinney
6. Mediocrity Rules- LeTigre
7. 16 Military Wives- The Decemberists
8. Fight the Power- Public Enemy
9. War on War- Wilco
10. Kick in the ass or Big Fish – Moxy Fruvos

What’s on your gitmo playlist?

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And I can’t forget New Kicks by LeTigre. It’s got Amy Goodman, Susan Sarandon and Saul Williams speaking it. I get chills everytime I hear it.

then again, this little bit of insanity comes from the other side of the pond.

LONDON (Reuters) – British anti-terrorism detectives escorted a man from a plane after a taxi driver had earlier become suspicious when he started singing along to a track by punk band The Clash, police said Wednesday.

….

I don’t know what is more stupid, the cab driver for dialing this one up or the anti-terrorism detectives for actually taking this seriously. Although it does make me wonder how many cells in Gitmo are occupied by people who happen to like political punk music (as opposed to say one of the most successful duo acts since the dawn of time).

And yes, I still like this song . I dare you not to be earwormed.

Hmm.. I hear cuba is nice this time of year.

———-

Thinking about this some more, I wonder what it would be like to be sent to Gitmo for listening to the clash…

[prisoner 1]: hey everyone, what are you in here for?
[prisoner 2]: me? my brother thought it’d be a fun prank to call Sistani an asshole. what bout you #2?
[prisoner 3]: oh me? a rival clan sold me to the americans because they had to make it look like they were actually doing something about the security situation in iraq and elsewhere. how about you #4?
[prisoner 4]: i had the audacity to sing rock the casbah and actually know most of the lyrics.
[prisoner 3]: by allah’s beard! may they torture you twice as much next time.

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I think I may have my first assignment overseas. When I get into london perhaps I will do a little rendition of “know your rights”.

o/~ you have the right to free speech as long as you’re not dumb enough to try it o/~

Borderline conspiracy theorist that I am- I don’t trust anything out of the mouths of politicians. But it used to be that the everyday civil servants doing the job of running federal agencies like the FDA used science instead of religion as the basis for rule-making.
Not so anymore. You think all the stuff about the FDA approving Viox despite the possibility of death was bad, then the (dis)information they are putting out about birth-control and condoms should really freak you out.
This is one of the best, most comprehensive articles on the topic I’ve read in a while. None of it’s new to me, but it is very well put together. I may have to start reading girly mags again if this is the kind of articles I’ve been missing.

Wait, what’s that you’re saying? Oh you have a penis, this doesn’t apply to you. Bullshit. You need to know what kind of crap your girlfriend or wife is being fed because it directly impacts your sex life. Oh, I’m sorry, you’re a boy who sleeps with other boys- yeah check out what they say about condom use. You wonder why condom use is declining among young gay men- maybe because they are being told that condoms don’t work to prevent the spread of disease. If condoms don’t work against disease, and gay boys can’t knock up other boys then why would they need to use condoms at all?

I’m starting to think we live in some freakish hybrid of Orwell’s 1984 and Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale.