The Goat and It's Butting, Or, America for Anarchy

Let's read this literally, shall we?

But because it seemed to him that occupying himself by talking to the little girl about the goat and its butting was more important than occupying himself with the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers we were given three times the period required to execute the operations. All praise is due to Allah.

Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe.

That's right, folks. None of these guys pays enough attention to butting. On November 2, Americans need to think of butting for ourselves. We must take our security into our own hands, throw the cloak of democractic tyranny off our weary backs, and become the autonomous Nations of One we deserve to be. All 294,651,657 of us. Anarchy will set us free!

So on Tuesday, put down your books, lock up your goats, and prepare for the New World Order: The Terrorist Tumbleweed meets the Anarchist Rawhide outside the saloon, high noon.

Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Bush has been criticized before for appearing in public and posing for photo ops (signing bills, delivering speeches, clearing brush, teeing off) surrounded by who can only be termed "crusty old white men." Since this supporting cast of elderly, snowy-headed gentlemen in dark suits is usually rather nondescript, I appreciated the Washington Post's gallery (see photo 16) that distinguishes three of Bush's top advisors: Famine (Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Joe Hagin), Pestilence (Karl Rove, no title), and War (deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley). Death (President George Bush) is probably off delivering more targeted missile packages to Iraqi villages.

Now, to be fair, Kerry was recently seen with a salt-and-pepper, suited man on several campaign stops this past week, notably in Philadephia. But then again, we all know Bill Clinton was the first black president.

Next: Is Blackberry a tool of the Devil?

| snark |

Rappers Slammin' Bush

And not just in the way Ice Cube would have you believe: dirty and from the side.

Eminem's new single Mosh, and the accompanying video, has been getting a lot of play for making a sharp political critique of President Bush.

Hip hop, political?

Yes, it's true and rappers have been slamming the Bush family for more than a decade. We want to give a shout out to the original Bush Killa, Paris, who's 1993 song of the same name fantasizes about assassinating George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, for reasons that include sending black soldiers to the Gulf War.

Some choice lyrics that still resonate today:

So don't be tellin me to get the non-violent spirit
'cause when I'm violent is the only time that devils hear it...
so get with Ollie 'cause I'm probably fixin' to make you mad
I'm steady waitin' for the day I get to see his ass
And give him two from the barrel of a black guerilla
And that's real from the mothafuckin Bush killa

Tolerance is gettin thinner
'cause I-raq never called me nigger
so what I want to go off and fight a war for
You best believe I got your draft card

The first Bush administration mobilized the rap community's politics, especially on the West Coast and especially in the context of the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion, in ways scarcely acknowledged at the time and, apparently, forgotten today - most choose to apply only the shallowest of understandings to early 90's gangsta rap.

For his part, Eminem is being energized by the current Bush regime like his forebears were by 41. A central difference, reflecting the way "raptivism" has changed since the early 90s, is that Eminem is pushing for change through the vote, attempting to make rappers and their listeners (and, more broadly, the coalition of young pop-culture voters) a constituency to whom politicians must pay attention. The previous generation of artists like Paris, NWA, Ice Cube, and 2Pac rapped about violence as a way of drawing attention, through controversial lyrics, to their marginalized status and that of the inner city they claimed to represent. As Paris so pointedly states in "Bush Killa," and which is a sentiment reflected by many gangsta rappers around the same time, "when i'm violent is the only time that [white people] hear it." This was the central message of the 1992 insurrection and the legacy of black radicalism in the 1960s and 70s. What Mosh and P. Diddy's Vote or DIE! campaign suggest is that hip hop (and pop music more broadly) is so deeply integrated into American society today (unlike 10 years ago) that it is a viable, and now socially acceptable, base from which to launch interventions into mainstream politics. The results of this pivotal election may be instrumental in proving or disproving this hypothesis. We fervently hope they demonstrate hip hop's return to its political and mature roots, and prove that young urban men and women are voice that must be heeded.

Paris's message, perhaps, got lost in the distortions surrounding the images of violence inherent to gangsta rap. Eminem's more saavy (read: media friendly) message seems to have proven palatable (see articles in Slate, Salon, and The Nation) and I'm glad that the higher culture information outlets are paying attention this time.

| weBling! |

Orrin Hatch is an Idiot

In an interview segment with Paula Zahn (who keeps the hot sauce hot) last night (Oct 28, 2004) on CNN, Senator Orrin Hatch (quite the opposite) advanced the theory that the Iraqi military, perhaps foreseeing how the al Qaqaa munitions site would play into the American election in two years, might have removed the weapons but left the seals intact by going through the ventilation screens. He then praised Senator Feinstein (unclear, phone interview), also on the program, for her fair assertion that we have no clue what really happened to those 380 tons of high explosive.

While going on to dispense more partisan quackery, Sen. Hatch ignored that the fact that we have no clue as to the whereabouts of 250,000 tons of munitions, let alone 380 tons in a single, well-documented facility, is disturbing enough. But then again, no one counted on those crafty Republican Guardsmen going through the ventilation shafts, so as far as I am concerned, all bets are off on al Qaqaa.

| chimeric antibodies |

Your Nose is Welcome in our Business, Sir

The Economist publishes their reluctant endorsement of Kerry. They note his conservative fiscal stance approvingly, but worry about the tendancy to vacillate and a possible inability to successfully advocate on issues he supports.

Notably, they call Bush's most significant error the Guantanamo debacle, describing it as "constant evidence of America's hypocrisy." And they slam him here:

...Meanwhile Mr Bush's credibility has been considerably undermined not just by Guantánamo but also by two big things: by the sheer incompetence and hubristic thinking evident in the way in which his team set about the rebuilding of Iraq, once Saddam Hussein's regime had been toppled; and by the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which strengthened the suspicion that the mistreatment or even torture of prisoners was being condoned.

The jist is that the president-elect must offer "discipline" to rein in American's authority in the world. We think this is an excellent choice of words.

Mars vs. The World Bank

For those of us who have long considered the spending priorities of the American government to be "wack", here is what World Bank president James Wolfensohn had to say about it last Thursday:

"Imagine a little guy from Mars coming to earth to see how things are done here. He would determine that we spend $900 billion per year on defense, $350 billion on agricultural subsidies and only $68 billion on development aid. He would return to Mars with only one message: They are all mad. Let them mess about for another 50 years and then we take over..."

Au contraire, James Wolfensohn!

In 50 years, those defense dollars will have developed several new weapon systems (a missile shield and tactical nuclear weapons, for example, and, hopefully, that tachyon death ray Donald Rumsfeld keeps clamoring for) that will help us deflect the Martian onslaught. And you want to open us up to those commie-fascist Martians!?

| salvage theory |

Science Spits on Death Rates

According to a new study released yesterday by the British medical journal, the Lancet, the risk of mortality in Iraq has increased by 1.5% in the year and a half since the invasion. The chance of dying is up to 7.9%, which the researchers estimate has led to the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraquis who would otherwise still be alive.

Some numbers to consider:
Mortality in Iraq: 7.9%
The overal mortality rate in the U.S.: 0.84%* (847 per 100,000)
The risk of being a dwarf: 0.25% (1 in 40,000)
The risk of being the decendant of murderous dwarves: 100%

Does that put things in context?

The report was "early released" (published online prior to print publication) -- a practice that is by now relatively common in the medical publishing world. It is supposedly reserved for the findings of studies that are of the utmost importance to public health or clinical practice. The editor, Richard Horton, may have overstepped his bounds, however, with his strong words for the "democratic imperialists." From the editor's commentary:

With the admitted benefit of hindsight and from a purely public health perspective, it is clear that whatever planning did take place was grievously in error. The invasion of Iraq, the displacement of a cruel dictator, and the attempt to impose a liberal democracy by force have, by themselves, been insufficient to bring peace and security to the civilian population. Democratic imperialism has led to more deaths not fewer.

This, with some qualification, appears to reflect the wishes of the head researcher, who said to the AP:

I emailed [the report] in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the
election. My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.

This statement strikes me as unbelievably sexy, but realistically -- especially when you have Mr. Horton slathering on the New World Order epithets -- it's a bit biased. This might (reasonably) spark a debate about the role of politics in medical publishing, but it shouldn't reasonably spark a debate in politics about the reasonableness of medical publishing. I say this only because it looks like we'll see more of the following (from this Post article):

"The methods that they used are certainly prone to inflation due to overcounting," said Marc E. Garlasco, senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, which investigated the number of civilian deaths that occurred during the invasion. "These numbers seem to be inflated."

That's nothing compared to what a campaign spinner could do with a similar line of thought. Basically, though, what Mr. Garlasco is indicating is that the study samples (33 clusters of 30 households in different areas of the country) could have been concentrated in areas that were more prone to violence than others (in other words, that they weren't representative). This is a reasonable critique, but has little bearing on the overall significance of the report. Medical studies operate on certain scientific principles meant to minimize statistical error. Studies that pass muster (as determined by the editorial board) are judged to have statistically significant findings and an insulated amount of error. There will of course *always* be error, but by and large, if you see people trying to poke holes in these findings they're just obfuscating. The number may be closer to 80,000 additional deaths than 100,000 -- but that doesn't change either the science or the politics: the real number (which we'll probably never know with exactitude) is still bound to be statistically signficigant - tens of thousands of Iraqis have died.

So, the moral of the story: we now have independent, scientific proof of a substantial rise in the death rate that is strongly correlated to the war. So what? War always causes death, right? Well, aside from the fact that having a cavalier attitude to death on that scale is repugnant, Americans are allergic to high civilian casualties. Does the almost too obvious to mention connection between death rates and missing explosives push us over the hypoallergenic tipping point?

Damn the dwarves and everthing they started.

Munitions Issue Dwarfs the Big Picture

in The Washington Post, 10/29/04  [link]

al Qaqaa, Iraq - In a stunning declaration of newsworthiness, approximately 377 tons of missing conventional explosives, that could be used to detonate a nuclear weapon, spoke up for the first time today, soundly putting yesterday's new species of hominid dwarf in its place. "The big picture," according to a spokesman for the munitions, "is that these so-called 'dwarfs,' who are going to 're-write the story of human evolution,' have been dead for nearly 18,000 years, while we are killing many people as we speak. Maybe these fossilized dwarfs should stick to their small picture status, if they know what's good for them." The spokesman, an RDX plunger detonator, also commented that he did not "see any dwarfs here to support their big picture claims, but perhaps [he was] looking too high."

One of the scientists who discovered the dwarf fossils in a cave in the Philippines, Dr. Peter Brown of the University of New England, responded today: "Sure, 377 tons of explosives is a lot. But these are merely conventional weapons, although they could be used to detonate a nuclear weapon. Also, there are about 250,000 other tons of munitions unaccounted for in Iraq. That would be a slightly larger picture, but the really big picture is that we have a new link in the evolutionary chain leading to modern man." He also reminded reporters that "it was modern man who created the al Qaqaa weapons cache and [that] we simply would not exist without this species of island dwarf. This is, in fact, the biggest picture we should be considering at this time." He went on to speculate that even the discovery of dwarf elephants on the same island trumped the al Qaqaa debacle.

| chimeric antibodies |

ptuie!

yea mothafuckas!