The Bush administration has decided it has too much credibility and is planning on listing the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as terrorist organization based on classified "irrefutable evidence" that they've been supplying the Taliban - the first time an organization controlled by a foreign government has been listed as such. The evidence is irrefutable, no one can refute it if they can't see it. Even so, it still seems unlikely that Iran would be supplying weapons to a group they've consistently and openly opposed throughout the 90's up to today. Even the U.S. backed Afghan government of Hamid Karzai rejects the idea that Iran is supplying the Taliban.

There is still the classified evidence that Iran is supplying the Iraqi insurgents. More irrefutable stuff no one can see. At the very least, Iran is interfering in Iraqi affairs and as Paul Wolfowitz stated so eloquently a few months after the fall of Baghdad, "I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq". I guess Americans don't count as foreigners in Iraq.

I just went down to UPS to return some Verizon components. Verizon had given us a return UPS label, so there wasn't really a choice who to use. I had to buy a box there, and for one small package box I was charged $4.50. U-Haul charges less than $4 for their large boxes. UPS apparently sells moving boxes as well now, but given the prices of their small shipping boxes, I can't imagine how much they're charging for the moving boxes.

UPS is rather pointless anyway (unless your a large corporation with a mass shipping deal). FedEx is faster and more reliable, the USPS is cheaper. UPS seems the worst of both worlds and I tend to avoid them unless I'm required to use them like today.

Last week, purpleglitter and I found that the landlord at her old place had murdered a nest of starlings, ripping apart the nest and throwing the babies down to the ground like they were worthless. Just getting their down in, eyes never opened. They never saw the sun. We buried them in the back.

Today, the tree cutters came to the back yard here. Supposedly just to cut the branches overhanging the neighbor's, they instead cut main branches which may have had one or two subbranches overhanging the neighbor's yard, but most of which were not over the fence at all. Renting, I have no real control over any of this.

I don't understand the reason people need heavily nitrogenated death-yards. "Kill everything but grass. A dandelion! Kill it! Kill it! No flowers here! Nature is just weeds. Throw on more chemicals on... pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer... everything! It surely won't run off anywhere. Must have that perfect patch of stale green nothing, because lord knows if anything wild and free grows it'll be anarchy! Nature is ugly and must be controlled, but oh yeah, save the rain forests — nature is only ugly if it's where I can see it."

Before I had a livejournal, I wrote something on neitherday.com about school shootings. It was taken down in one of the site redesigns, but seeing as it is relevant to recent events, I thought I'd repost it here:

March 7th, 2001 School shootings, once something totally unheard of, have quickly become a part of the national landscape. Most of these shootings are performed by students who are ostracized and harassed by fellow students. While I don't believe in violence, as someone who was picked on quite a bit in school, I can see the motivations at work inside these kids. The main difference between now and when I was in high school is that when I was in high school kids who were ostracized had no real way of striking back. Now things are different. Teenagers have now heard of a method (while not one that I endorse) of striking back. Bullying, ostracization, teasing, vandalism, and even violent acts are committed against students who happen to be different in some way. Now, as when I was in school, there are rules against most of the offenses committed against non-conforming students. But we all know that in most situations school officials turn a blind eye to acts of harassment. The problem of school shootings will only get worse until these problems are addressed. Unfortunately, most plans that have been adopted only increase ostracization of students that don't fit into the norm. This is equivalent to pouring gasoline on a fire to put it out. For the safety and well-being of all students we need to promote acceptance and tolerance in our schools.

The recent horrific massacres of 32 students at Virgina Tech by Cho Seung-Hui has sparked a lot of political discussion. Here is my opinion...

Psychiatry

The pro-psychiatry people were quick to make some points about the need for coercing people into treatment. Even the revelation that Cho Seung-Hui was receiving treatment and was on psychiatric medication has not silence the "control the crazies" crowd. I cannot see how he could have been controlled any further without permanently locking up anyone displaying moderate mental illness - and that comes with it's own problems, principle people hiding problematic thoughts and feelings at all, and processing them internally with no outside checks or influence.

Gun Control

The anti-gun lobby sees events like these as political gold. Obviously guns are evil and vile and nasty and wrong. But I firmly believe if just two of the people at Norris Hall beside the shooter had guns, a lot less people would have been killed. The problem isn't a surplus of guns, the problem is a lack of guns. If more citizens had the ability to defend themselves against this kind of massacre, this scale of massacre by a lone gunman couldn't happen.

Westboro Baptist Church

Fred Phelps and his gang have been protesting at funerals of queer people and queer supporters for over a decade. Most of America didn't care one lick. A couple years ago he started protesting military funerals. That really pissed people off, because unlike (known) gay people, those people mattered. Avoiding the political pitfalls of banning protests at the funerals of the filthy gays, congress passed a law banning political protests at military funerals only.

Last year, the Westboro Baptist Church announced plans to protest at the funerals for the victims of the Amish school house massacre in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. These people were definitely not loathsome queers. FOX News gave a couple representatives from the Westboro Baptist Church an hour of uninterrupted air time on their news radio station in exchange for WBC cancelling the protest.

What will come of their planned protests of these victims funerals, I do not know. Will FOX News give them more air time? Will the law banning protests at military funerals be extended? Who knows?

I support concealed carry. People who don't have the physical prowess to put up a sufficient fight should be allowed a means of protecting themselves. Several states at this point have laws allowing concealed carry by ordinary citizens and none of them have turned into the wild west. It just makes sense to even the odds a bit. I think this would have a profound effect reducing the number of completely random committed for "coolness" or an adrenalin rush. Let a few of those assholes get their heads blown off and see how long the trend continues.

Peace, love, and a .38

Just 2.6 percent of Massachusetts drivers have junior operator's licenses or learner's permits, but when state laws governing these drivers change on Saturday, nearly everyone will be affected. The list includes teen drivers, their friends, their families, anyone who pays car insurance, and anyone who's ever been touched by stories of teens killed in high-speed crashes. The changes are aimed at making teenage drivers take safety seriously by toughening the punishment for those who don't. Junior operators -- new drivers under age 18 -- who get a speeding ticket will have their licenses automatically suspended for 90 days. Almost all basic offenses will carry suspensions, as well as fines and fees of up to $1,000. full article

Essentially, a teenager, naturally unfamiliar with the roads around where they live, accidentally goes down a one way street the wrong way and gets hit by $1000 in fines? Or maybe they didn't notice a speed limit changed and WHAM your family's not making rent this month! The fines for a simple error are outrageous and fly in the tradition of treating minors as less responsible for law breaking. Now teenagers will face fines over an order of magnitude larger than adults charged with the same violation.

This kind of fine-base approach, as in the state's shining "universal" healthcare law that provides healthcare to everyone by fining uninsured people who don't purchase health insurance just makes Massachusetts that much less affordable. And the cost of living in Massachusetts is the reason so many people are leaving this so-called liberal state.

Bush and Blair, always best of friends, have wanted to attack Iran for some time now. Right now they with the detainee crisis have what is likely the best excuse for such an attack they're going to get, short of Iran actually developing a nuclear bomb. The political powers of both Bush and Blair have been waning for some time and if they can't get get the political capitol together to attack Iran now, they likely never will. That is far from saying they won't be able get the political capitol together to attack Iran: it's now or never and that makes for dangerous tinder.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders Thursday announced agreement on a bill that allows for convicted sex offenders to be confined after they complete their prison sentences -- a measure that could affect hundreds of inmates and cost the state more than $80 million a year to carry out, officials said. The still-to-be-introduced legislation -- which must be approved by both houses and signed by the governor -- will create a new system by which mental-health experts would decide at the end of a sexual predator's sentence if an offender is fit to return to the community or should be held in a psychiatric center. full article

What better place to house violent sex offender than with heavily drugged mentally ill folk who are undoubtedly aware that no pays attention anything they say. Wouldn't a better plan be to actually keep violent sex offenders in prison? They claim these sex offenders are a risk to the public, but apparently putting at risk mental patients (who've often committed no crime) is not a concern because "crazies" aren't people.

Under this new law, in New York you will be drugged and locked up with a mass of outgoing convicted sex offenders if you say the wrong thing to a therapist or psychiatrist. The safest option if you live in the State of New York: never under any circumstance say anything to a therapist or psychiatrist.

One of the men criminally charged after placing blinking cartoon advertisements around the city and causing a terrorism scare videotaped a police bomb squad removing one of the devices, but did not tell the officers the object was harmless. Surveillance cameras caught 27-year-old Peter Berdovsky videotaping officers removing what they thought was a possible bomb last week. "Mr. Berdovsky didn't do anything inappropriate," his lawyer, Walter Prince, said Tuesday. full article

Well, he's screwed. If you buy his lawyer's claim that he just happened to be innocently taping the incident, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

Bush's $2.9 trillion dollar budget proposal seeks to cut FEMA funding by 14%. Does he somehow believe that FEMA has been too well funded to handle disasters? Does he WANT another Katrina-style disaster? Perhaps he simply needs to scrape more money up for his failed wars and hopes that the public view this as punishing FEMA rather than further crippling an agency that was already decimated by his post-9/11 homeland security reforms.

Turner Broadcasting System has accepted full responsibility for the guerrilla marketing campaign that caused a security scare across Boston Wednesday. WBZ-TV's Dan Rea spoke with Mayor Thomas Menino Friday morning and Menino said that the company had agreed to pay about $250,000 for the costs created by the scare. Phil Kent, Turner's C-E-O, issued an apology in full-page ads in Boston newspapers Friday for "the confusion and inconvenience" caused as highways, bridges and river traffic were shut down. Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, were released Thursday on $2,500 bail each after pleading not guilty pleas to charges of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct. full article

If this is accurate, it changes my mind about the situation. Turner should not get off with a bribe. I still believe Berdovsky and Stevens deserve to face charges, but many others deserve to face charges as well. If the city of Boston is not going to prosecute the people at Turner and Interference who orchestrated the stunt, the city has no business persecuting the bottom-level guys who did their employer's dirty work.

I would like to note that this does not change my conviction that the police did a fine job. This is on Menino, not the police.

I've been very impressed by how many Boston area liberals have gained a sense of rebellion in recent days by rallying around mega corporation Turner and their corporate lackeys who planted the devices. It's almost surreal that commercial culture has taken such a grip that even rebellion against authority has a corporate edge. None of the myriad of REAL abuses of authority since 9/11 have garnered such a tremendous response. Fail to give a favored marketing firm free reign to do whatever they please in the city, especially if they're advertising an important cartoon network show, and you have a massive outcry.

President Bush likes to say that his health-care proposal would "level the playing field" between people who get health coverage through their job and those who buy it on their own. But experts said yesterday that it would tilt that field toward a kind of health insurance that Bush has long favored -- a high-deductible plan paired with a special tax-exempt health savings account, or HSA. ... Bush's proposal seeks to eliminate the long-standing tax break for job-based medical insurance, requiring that a worker's taxable income include any money his employer contributes to help pay the premiums. A new tax deduction -- $15,000 a year for families and $7,500 for individuals -- would help people pay the premiums, either through their job or on their own. The plan faces opposition from Democrats in Congress. ... Len Burman, director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said that, in leveling the field, the White House should also seek to scrap the HSA tax break, whose purpose is to counter the tax code's current bias toward comprehensive and expensive employer-provided coverage. Under Bush's plan, it would be the only extra tax break for health insurance -- one that would most benefit wealthy people, who can best afford the financial risk of a high-deductible plan and to sock away a lot of money in an HSA. ... Burman said eliminating the HSA tax break would bring in billions of dollars that Bush could put toward the other initiative he proposed this week -- giving states special grants to fund innovative ways of covering the nation's 47 million uninsured. "This is not just free money just sitting there," he said. "There really is a big opportunity cost." full article

This is not a tax cut. Bush is proposing taxing employees where they were not taxed before. Adding new taxes is a tax increase.

Of course his new taxes will barely (if at all) touch the wealthy. Of course employers don't have to pay the new tax. And to offset the hardship the wealthy will experience at not having to pay this tax, he proposes a new tax break for the wealthy. Everyone else, go suck an egg.

I propose "Mr. Tax Cut" Bush be spanked spanked repeatedly with this proposal. I propose that "Bush is proposing a tax increase" be a talking point. He is repeating the lies of his father. Read my lips: "Trumpet it!"

To Dennis Prager:

If you can't swear on the bible, you have no business being in American politics. You have no business being part of America. Ditto for taking the pledge of allegiance. Hell, if you can't be bothered to put up a Christmas tree this season, why don't you just leave.

If you can't or won't follow the religious customs of the country you're living in, you have no business being part of it. Take for example the Roman Empire. If the Christians of Rome couldn't offer the traditional Roman sacrifices, they had no business being part of the Empire. The Christians were not unduly persecuted or "oppressed" by the Romans: Emperors like Decius were merely working to preserve traditional values.

</sarcasm>

I don't doubt that Saddam Hussein committed atrocities during his time in power (many with U.S. backing). Saddam Hussein was and isn't a nice guy. However, how anyone could claim that the sham trial just completed was in any way a "fair trial" is beyond me. Defence lawyers picked off one by one, a judge that was seen by the United States (the occupying power) as supportive of Saddam was replaced by one who was blatantly anti-Saddam. Even the date of the verdict seems conveniently timed to Bush's interests.

In a puppet trial like this: even if condemned truly deserved what they get, they come out looking like a martyr not a criminal.

Rev. Ted Haggard, the head of the National Association of Evangelicals he only hired the prostitute for a "massage" and did not actually have sex. This sounds like very Clintonian evasion, I have to wonder what exactly he got "massaged".

He also claims he bought meth from the prostitute, which he claims he threw out instead of using. "I didn't inhale." anyone? Clinton couldn't even pull that one off, and he is the master. Give it up, Haggard: You're no Clinton.

I'm rethinking the rant I wrote about a month ago rejecting labeling myself "feminist". Perhaps it is not a label I should so hastily reject. This brings to mind the question: "Why is a feminist?".

Yes, I've heard the simplistic answer many times: "a feminist is someone who believes women are people too" or any variation on that theme. But that dissolves quickly when one starts talking issues. The abortion, the rabid warthog of issues, easily breaks the illusion. Many pro-choice feminists declare that pro-life feminism is an oxymoron, and that legal unqualified abortion is the only true path of feminism. This clearly is an affront to pro-life feminists, who will inevitably tell you that they believe unborn women are people too. Whether or not pro-life feminism is valid, this conflict alone shows that a simple definition is not going to suffice in defining what feminism is.

Perhaps asking "what is feminism" is a bit like asking "what is goth" on alt.gothic (is that still regularly asked?). Done over and over again, there is no real definition. It is a political orientation, the same way socialist and populist are. If it simply a political orientation, why should I reject it just because some fanatical organizations such as the MWMF claim it as well? Perhaps it is just a word, perhaps my gesture has no real meaning, but I might just call myself a feminist again.

So, Foley claims he was molested growing up. Whether or not that happened, I do not like it again being used as an "excuse" for this behaviour. Most people who are molested DO NOT end up becoming molesters themselves. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR FOLEY'S BEHAVIOUR.

This is a very personal issue with me. I was molested as a child. I would never do anything like that to a child. However, the constant repetition of "victims of molestation become molesters" has made me wonder at points if I'm somehow at risk of waking one day and becoming a monster. I've heard this fear from many other victims as well. People who would never harm a fly worried about being around children because of this damaging "inner monster" myth.

I'm going to say it again:

BEING A VICTIM OF MOLESTATION DOES NOT MAKE ONE BECOME A MOLESTER. It is not an excuse and those who use it as one are further harming victims. Assholes like that should be locked up for the rest of their lives and left to rot.