Excuses

 “They war crimed us first.:”

“What’s your non-war-crime solution, smart guy?”

“If they didn’t want to be war crimed they should have overthrown their government.”

“If they didn’t want to be war crimed they should have heeded the logistically impossible warning.”

“They created the conditions under which a war crime is the easiest solution. It’s their fault.:”

“If they just complied, they wouldn’t be war crimed.”

I don’t know, it kind of seems like you have a boner for war crimes. Or at least some of them.

Notes On The Current Discourse

This is not a commentary on the things that have happened, but something that’s important to note when perusing the discourse around the things that have happened.

For a few decades now, some of the absolute worst people in the world have been demonizing Hamas. They weren’t doing this in a good-faith attempt to warn us about how bad Hamas was and is. They were spelling it Hamas, but they were pronouncing it, to varying degrees, “Palestinians”, “Arabs”, Muslims”, and “brown people”. They were running a playbook built on disingenuousness to enhance their own power, influence, and geopolitical agendas.

The fact that they were technically correct doesn’t change this.

One of the things these people do is they take a thing that should be fine for everyone, and they poison it so that you have to qualify it. For example, you can’t just make an “OK” symbol anymore, you have to say “And I mean this in the traditional sense, not the white power sense that also now exists because white nationalists have co-opted the hand gesture.”

Similarly, the very simple, true statement “Hamas are monsters who need to be stopped” now carries with it a metric ton of extra baggage, because even now, people are using “Hamas” to mean the terrorist organization, people who voted for them 17 years ago, people who live next door to people who voted for them 17 years ago, and the children of people who lived next door to people who voted for them 17 years ago. 

There’s been a lot of clumsy navigating of these waters. And a certain amount of wildly inappropriate tribalist “Bad people hate them so they must be good” splashing around in those waters too. None of that negates the fact that the waters started choppy as fuck to begin with, and how and why they got choppy in the first place.

The most common, most terrifying viewpoint I’ve been seeing on the socials in the past few days is “well, they were attacked, and now they’re at war, and when you’re at war, you have no choice but to do war crimes. That’s what war is all about.” I suppose 9/11 is 22 years old and was long overdue for a reboot. But I don’t have to like it  

Remembering 9/12

Gotta say, I think it’s more important to never forget September 12.

Spastic Topic Monkey Goes To Washington Friday

The Topic Monkey got into the Halloween candy last night, which wouldn't have been so bad, but the Halloween Candy was chocolate-covered espresso beans sprinkled with a fairy-dusting of crystal meth. Gets the little bastards to the next house really fast.

Memo to everyone, what with Halloween actually upon us. DON'T DRESS UP YOUR PETS. They're ANIMALS. They don't know shit about Halloween. They want to be fed, they want to have a place to take a whizz, they want their heads petted, maybe chase something. They don't know what a fairy princess is, or why they look like one, or what that crap is on their head, or why you're laughing.

If you want to make your pet look ridiculous, that's why God made Photoshop.

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And speaking of shitty costumes... "Azzam The American"? AZZAM THE AMERICAN? If you don't know, ABC and FOX have been running an as-yet unauthenticated tape that appears to be the Star Wars Kid from the Internet with a Pizza Hut tablecloth on his head, saying he's an American Al Qaeda operative, that we're all gonna die, and mentioning, among other things, Bill Maher, the Massachussets gay marriage ruling, the 9/11 commission, and the "defiling of our lovely falafel by that O'Reilly infidel". I may have made that last one up.

The CIA, while not authenticating the tape, said it bore "all the hallmarks" of an Al Qaeda production, including "being on videotape", "Arabic letters on the screen", and "guy in a headdress threatening America and saying he was from Al Qaeda". Come on, people. Pretty soon, Azzam The American will be what parents use to scare their kids. "If you're not good, Azzam the American will come to your bedroom and your sheets will run red with blood!"

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And speaking of our favorite falafel fetishist, O'Reilly The Superfreak settled out of court with Andrea Mackris. I'm both pleased and disappointed. Disappointed because, under the terms of the settlement, we'll never get to hear the tapes we all know she had, plus the settlement includes both parties agreeing that "no wrongdoing" took place, so O'Reilly can fall back on that for the rest of his life. But I'm pleased, because the man who said "I'm going to take a stand. I'm a big mouth on the air and I'm a big mouth off the air." a few weeks ago is now saying "I will never speak of it again." Which, when translated into English, means "I did it, she had tapes, I paid her off."

By avoiding a messy court battle, O'Reilly knows that his story will soon be forgotten. He should know, he's on the front lines of determining which stories stick and which ones get forgotten. In the interests of comedy, however, I urge all my readers to mention the whole falafel thing any time Bill O'Reily comes up in conversation from now on. It's the least we can do for a man who's given us so much.

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And speaking of "the least one can do", George W. Bush has now described John Kerry as "the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time". It's meant to be a play on Kerry's Iraq war statements, but the more I look at it, the less I'm able to parse it. Is Bush saying the Presidency is the "wrong job"? And how can he say it's the "wrong time"? November is when we have these things, George. Every four years.

It's a triple negative, which means it's still negative, but if you discount the "wrong job" part for making no fucking sense, then it's a DOUBLE negative, which makes it a positive, but then you have to discount the "wrong time" part for not making a lot of fucking sense, and then it's a single negative, but then you have to discount Bush entirely for being El Fucktardo Primero, so you're back to square one. The grammar of the politics of the rhetoric of politics can be oh so very confusing.

Have I Mentioned We're Safer?

Memo to America: YOU ARE SAFER.

Your government is protecting you. I know I've harshed on the War on Terror in the past, but three incidents of recent diligence by America's airlines and Homeland Security forces have convinced me that... AMERICA IS SAFER.

America is safer, because middle-aged special ed teachers with bookmarks are prevented from flying.

Yes, Kathryn Harrington, a 52-year-old special education teacher from Florida, was handcuffed, placed in a holding cell, charged with posession of a banned weapon, and faced up to a $10,000 fine before the charges were, after several weeks, dropped. All because she brought a bookmark with her. A fabric, weighted bookmark. That she'd flown with before. Several times. Through the same airport.

You see, in our new, safer America, a "prohibited item" is defined as any item on a list of items not allowed on planes, plus any other item that any other minimum-wage baggage screener decides is dangerous. To keep America safe, we must prevent people who didn't realize they were terrorists from bringing items they didn't know were prohibited on planes they didn't know were incredibly vulnerable to attack by bookmarks.

As Transportation Security Agency spokesperson Lauren Stover explained, "They probably felt that this item looked fairly dangerous. It looked like a bludgeoning type of weapon that could potentially harm someone." I would like to thank Ms. Stover for clarifying what I mistakenly thought was a vague policy that could treat any item not made specifically of Nerf as a potential terrorist threat, but I see now that they've thought this through, and as a result, AMERICA IS SAFER.

America is safer, because prayers are no longer tolerated on America's airplanes.

Well, at least if they're written in a language that looks like Arabic. A Midwest Airlines flight from Milwaukee to San Francisco was grounded on Sunday because a passenger found some Arabic-looking writing in an in-flight magazine. And I'm very glad that this passenger, and the in-flight crew, were alert and on the ball, because it's a common terrorist tactic to leave little notes in obscure places on objects they plan to blow up. It's like a party game, really. Makes the terrorism seem a bit more fun, like a scavenger hunt.

The passenger, who reports say was probably not Anne "Eek! There's A Terrorist On Your Shoulder!" Jacobsen, discovered the writing as the plane pulled away from the gate. Unable to confirm through DNA sampling that everyone on the plane was, in fact, white, the trip was cancelled, and passengers were delayed by a day. The message, which was written in Farsi, which is a different language than Arabic, said... well, we don't know. Something innocuous. It was reported in the press as "something like a prayer", and "something of a contemplative nature"*. That's OK. It's not like what the message actually said was important to the story. What's important is the terrorists were stopped, and AMERICA IS SAFER.

America is safer because Cat Stevens is not allowed in this country.

You think it's bad when a contemplative Islamic message is found in an in-flight magazine? Imagine how unsafe America would be if contemplative Islamic messengers were allowed to HOLD in-flight magazines? We'd all die in a nuclear holocaust accompanied by the gentle strumming of a guitar. Yes, Yusuf "Cat Stevens" Islam, the singer and songwriter who caused a big ruckus about ten years ago when everyone thought he said things about Salman Rushdie that he didn't actually say, was flying to Washington when his plane from London was diverted to Maine, where Islam was deported and returned to Britain "because of concerns about activities that could potentially be related to terrorism." This administration is really on top of the whole "people who might have wanted to do things" problem.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Muslim convert folk singers are so dangerous, they must not be allowed into the country, except for brief stopovers in Bangor, Maine, where a bunch of fucking hippies live in anyway, so when Islam nee Stevens blows himself up with an improvised nuclear device, as so many folk singers have done before him, he won't take out anything important.

AMERICA IS SAFER. We have learned the lessons of the past, we are alert and aware, and if those crazy Muslims want to attack us, they're going to have to find something better than bookmarks, pens, and folk singers to do it with. WE'RE ON TO YOU, TERRORISTS! Watch out!

*In my own more contemplative moments, I like to think that this description could describe the phrase "Oh God, this seat makes my balls itch, but if I get up to go to the bathroom to scratch them, Anne Jacobsen will tackle me in the aisle and beat me to death with her bookmark."

Osama Bin Godden

And now, another exciting episode of "ALAN KEYES, BATSHIT-CRAZY DOOFUS".

I swear, if Alan Keyes didn't exist, I would have to invent him. Every time he opens his mouth, something both wondrous and terrifying comes out. And the best part is, the GOP can't disown him or minimize him the way they can a Falwell or a Robertson, because Keyes is one of the few black allies they have. So they gotta use him, like they're using him now in the Illinois Senate race.

Even though he thinks God speaks to us by ramming planes into buildings. For Keyes, it's obviously time to adjust his dosage, but here at YAD, it's even more obviously ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!"

"Now, you think it's a coincidence that on Sept. 11th, 2001, we were struck by terrorists an evil that has at its heart the disregard of innocent human life? We who have for several decades killed not thousands but scores of millions of our own children, in disregard of the principle of innocent human life -- I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a warning. I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a shot across the bow. I think that's a way of Providence telling us, 'I love you all; I'd like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?'"

At least when Falwell blamed 9/11 on the feminists, gays, and abortionists, he had the common decency to do it on the 700 Club, where that kind of thing is only seven to eight percent beyond the pale. Keyes, on the other hand, is angling to be one of 100 people who sort of kind of try to help run things in our wonderfully representative democracy, so perhaps saying shit like this is a bad idea.

What cracks me up the most about this is that the ultra-right, anti-choice, blastula-suffragites won't have a problem with this, even though, in essence, Alan Keyes just called Almighty God a terrorist. Because what is a terrorist? A terrorist is an individual who commits acts of violence against innocent people in order to make a political statement. It seems to me that arranging for the death of 3,000 people in order to send America a special political message about how awful abortion is fits that definition quite nicely. Hell, Keyes is accidentally better at identifying terrorists than John Ashcroft is. Ashcroft's busy chasing software pirates and hackers and porn peddlers and calling 'em "terrorists", when according to Keyes, the biggest terrorist of all is the Big Guy Upstairs.

If I were Ashcroft, I'd jump all over that. After all, Osama Bin Laden's only in one place, and we can't even figure out what place that is. God, on the other hand, is EVERYWHERE, or so I'm told. Makes him easier to find, albeit tougher to capture. At least you don't have to send him to Guantanamo Bay, since he's already there.

As a result of being completely fucking insane, Alan Keyes is having a difficult time being elected to the Senate. Luckily, Keyes is a crafty planner who is never without a backup strategy.

"The balance is utterly destroyed when the senators are directly elected because the state government as such no longer plays any role in the deliberations at the federal level." What Keyes wants to do is repeal the 17th Amendment, which basically arranged things so that senators would be elected. Before that, senators were chosen by the state government. It is, to be fair, a brilliant strategy for someone who can only get 33% of the people to even remotely consider voting for him.

I mean, the fact that Keyes is even RUNNING shows that politicians favor party affiliation over, oh, not being a complete fucking wack-job. Ergo, once those pesky voters are eliminated from the equation, a Republican state government would thus be given the choice between an intelligent, sane liberal like Barack Obama, and the GOP's own "Mad Dog Murdoch", Alan Keyes. And someone's chances of a cushy Washington office job would suddenly improve dramatically.

Alan Keyes, ladies and gentlemen. The only man in America who thinks the voting public isn't doing a crappy ENOUGH job of sending psychotic, ideological, fanatic idiots to the Congress. And that's just DUMB.

Ridged, For Your Terror

 wanted to believe. I really kinda did.

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, yeah, when Ridge comes out and yells "BOO", and says that the freedom-haters could strike anywhere at any time, OK, that's ass-covering bullshit. We all know and understand that. But when they name buildings and other specifics, I try to remain relatively uncynical, even though it's timed beautifully to step on the post-convention news cycle.

And when Joe Lieberman comes out and says he's sure the newest terror alert isn't politically motivated, I still try to remain uncynical, even though it's Joe Lieberman, who is consistently wrong about a great many things and is the second Democrat to call after Zell Miller when you need someone on the other side of the aisle to do Karl Rove's bidding.

And when I see pictures of submachine-gun-toting police glaring at New Yorkers, and hear Ridge tell everyone to "act normal" even though they're being randomly searched and glared at and entire blocks of cities look like something out of a dystopian, fascist future, I try to remain uncynical, because after all, I don't really want stuff to blow up.

And when the people issuing the warning admit that it's based almost entirely on four-year-old files dug up in Pakistan, I still try to remain uncynical. I utterly FAIL, of course, but still, I make the effort, and I should get some points for effort, given just how unspeakably evil and incompetent the people in charge actually are. Right?

But then you listen to the gloating, the justifications, and the rationalizations after the fact, and things start to fall apart, and you start to think you've been rooked. Again.

White House spokesman Scott "Trust Me" McLellan, said: "There's no evidence of recent surveillance ... but the information about the casings that we revealed Sunday have been updated as recently as January of this. We know that this is an organization that plans in advance." This is the kind of weaseling that smacks of "capacity to potentially produce weapons", frankly. Especially with McLellan also quoted as saying " think you have to keep in mind al-Qaida's history of planning attacks well in advance and then updating those plans just before attacking.", It's August. Eight months since the alleged "January update" that there's somewhat... sketchy evidence for to begin with.

This raises the question... how long do we keep the guys with sub-machine guns standing in front of any building found in a guy's house in Pakistan? Eight months? Four years? Indefinitely? Don't ask New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, because his position on heightened security is at best iffy:

"The only thing you ever know about security measures is when you didn't take enough. You never know when you took too many of them. We do what we think is appropriate," he said. Which is patently bullshit. I guarantee you that if you cavity-searched every single person going in and out of the New York Stock Exchange for a month, you'll find out very, very quickly that you've taken too many precautions. There's even a handy guideline, complete with a couple dozen amendments, to let you know when you've taken too many security measures. Don't give us that carte-blanche "appropriate" bullshit.

And then you've got Tom Ridge claiming that "We have made it much more difficult for the terrorists to achieve their broad objectives." Like fuck you have. Let's assume that everything they've said and done has been 100% true. You found one guy in one house in Pakistan who had plans to do Something Evil to a half-dozen buildings sometime in the last four years. So this week, you beef up security at those half-dozen buildings. At BEST, what you've done is made it more difficult for SOME terrorists to achieve a few VERY NARROW objectives. And that's if and only if the intelligence community and the Department of Homeland Security are operating at a basic level of competence, something there's been no evidence of to date.

The only thing worse than a bunch of overselling, dubious administration officials talking about terrorism are a bunch of LOCAL officials, whose areas of control weren't even mentioned in this supposed new intelligence, making sure they look good by stepping forward to assure their constituencies that they're doing everything in their power to thwart this new, non-existent threat to some other place.

Like L.A.'s mayor. "We have received no credible information to indicate any of these threats are directed against Southern California. However, we are going to continue to remain on a heightened state of vigilance." Whatever you do, don't tap this motherfucker on the shoulder. In his heightened state of vigilance, he'll probably punch you in the head. Look, I know it's disappointing that the East Coast mayors all get to keep looking tough and calling in the guard, but that's no excuse for this kind of ridiculous macho grandstanding. That's your governor's job.

Hey, There's A Terror On Your Back!

We're fucked.

I mean, we knew we were fucked, but we didn't know we were FUCKED fucked, you know? Sure, I've used the "I thought it was bad, but I didn't think it was THIS bad" intro so many times it seems to have lost all shred of meaning, but damn, we are FUCKED.

We are fucked because, against all logic and reasoning, Annie Jacobsen is not a global laughingstock. Annie Jacobsen is the "Terror In The Skies, Again" woman. If you don't know what "Terror In The Skies, Again" is, you will. It's one of those things that people should never have paid attention to in the first place, but now that they've started paying attention, nobody can stand to be the one NOT paying attention to it, even though they could be doing something more useful with their time, like going to see Catwoman.

Here's your Official YAD Precis. Crazy white woman gets on plane. A dozen brown men get on the plane. The brown men talk to each other and use the can. The white woman panics. The plane lands safely. The white woman still panics. The brown men are investigated, did nothing wrong, and are just guys. The white woman STILL panics. She writes an article. A website runs the article. The Internet panics. The mainstream media panics, but claims to be reporting ON the panicking. I realize we're all deeply fucked.

Why is this story not over? The panicwoman was WRONG. The Syrian musicians were not trying to blow up the plane, they were not trying to practice blowing up the plane. They were flying to their gig for one reason only: THAT'S HOW YOU GET FROM DETROIT TO L.A. You fly, because it takes too long to walk. Every single piece of "suspicious" behavior she recounts in her article has been checked out. I'm not going to go into detail about that. That's what everyone ELSE is doing. That or just mindlessly amplifying and repeating her crazy panic claims.

No, what drives me up the fucking wall is that this will NEVER DIE. It's part of the lexicon now. Some piece of random racist bullshit is now part of the free-floating sea of diarrhea that is the modern memetic culture. You will get this story in e-mail before you die. Guaranteed. From some crazy panicked relative. We all have them. Well, you all have them. If I have them, they don't have my fucking e-mail address and they're not gonna get it.

If you're LUCKY, you'll get it sometime in the next two weeks. Forwarded eight times already. Whichever sad relative forwarded it to you probably added something to the top like "Wow!" or "Something to think about!" or "Pass this on!". If you're not lucky, and I can almost guarantee you won't be, you'll get it eight months from now. Because the only thing worse than the clueless forwarder is the clueless forwarder who is helplessly behind the times. They're the ones that just sent you the photoshopped John Kerry / Jane Fonda picture last week, and they STILL DON'T KNOW IT'S FAKE. E-mails like this are the reason God invented computer viruses, you know. Just saying.

If anyone tries to tell you that the crazy panic woman story raises important issues, hit them in the face. It raises a sum total of one issue. If you are of Middle Eastern descent, or are one of the two dozen or so ethnicities and/or phenotypes that might be mistaken for Arabic, then sit in your seat, don't look at anyone, don't talk to anyone, stare forward, eat your peanuts, and stay quiet. You won't AVOID going to Guantanamo, it'll just make for a better story if you get out. "Yeah, they thought I was behaving strangely and sending signals to a Mexican guy with a beard four rows back. Something to do with the way I ate my peanuts, and how I never went to the bathroom. It's pretty funny in retrospect, except for the scarring on my testicles where they put the electrodes."

But it's too late now. The genie is out of the bottle, and there's nothing left to do about it except stock up on hard-drive-wiping "screensavers" and maintain a vigilant eye on our inboxes. Just saying.