President Gore

President Gore - Day 2

President Gore - Day 3

The Dress

RFC

New Kid on K Street

D.C. Democrats

Terrorvision

2006.03.20 -- Asymmetrical Breasts May Raise Cancer Risk

2006.03.20 -- Asymmetrical Breasts May Raise Cancer Risk

The First Suicide Terrorist

The first suicide terrorist was Samson. In the book of Judges, chapters 13 – 16, the Jews were oppressed by the Palestinians - I mean Philistines. For 20 years, Samson resisted that oppression like a one-man Al Qaeda. He killed random Philistinian civilians, and burned their crops and their stored grain. Then, fearing their wrath, he hid out in a cave. But like the USA after 9/11, the Philistines massed their armies and demanded that the Jews turn over the terrorist. Unlike the Taliban, the Jews complied. They went to Samson's cave, since of course they knew where he was, and demanded his surrender. Samson agreed but then was seized by the spirit of G-d and killed another thousand Philistine husbands, fathers and sons. He was finally captured due only to his weakness for Philistine women. Samson's suicide attack came at a huge party in honor of the Philistinian god of grain, Dagon. Maybe because Samson had destroyed so much grain, the revelers brought him in as part of the celebration. Leaning against a set of pillars that he knew would kill scores of innocent people, Samson's last prayer was that G-d would let him die along with his enemy. His prayer was answered and Samson, along with over three thousand people, more than died on 9/11, perished in a single act of violence. We, just like the Islamists, celebrate our favorite martyr - suicide terrorist - Samson. He is the poster boy for manly strength. We name luggage, weightlifting competitions and hair restoration products after him. We name our largest sons, dogs and most powerful machines Samson. And of course, Hollywood made a blockbuster movie staring the most studly he-man star of his day, Victor "I have bigger boobs than Anna Nicole Smith" Mature. We all admire strength, self-sacrifice and the triumph of the underdog. We all agree that some folks deserve a big bowl of whop-ass and we celebrate the men who dish it out. And we all remember that one nation's terrorist is another nation's media idol.

Black Chicago's Hamas

The Chicago City Council is considering renaming a one-block section of an inner city street for murdered Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton. The move is wildly controversial and the Chicago Police union is outraged that the city would honor a man who encouraged his followers to "Off the Pigs."

Remembering the Black Panthers, I understand why Palestinians voted for Hamas. First of all the headgear. The Panthers wore these tres cool berets just as Hamas leaders sport totally fashionable Islamic resistance baseball caps. But more importantly and even more fun, both the Panthers and Hamas behave like men. Like Palestinians on the West Bank, we on the west side of Chicago in the 1960's understood how violent and well-armed are our opponents, in our case the Chicago Police Department. Hardly a young man among us had not been harassed by cops for the sometimes capital offense of "driving while black." All of us who protested against segregation had been photographed by people we took to be cops and FBI agents out to intimidate us. But the Panthers behaved as if they were not afraid. They had their little shot guns and their little pistols. The Panthers were way into their second amendment rights. They were fools. Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were ultimately gunned down in their sleep by the axis of evil government agencies. But for a hot minute there, the Black Panther Party - they stood up to the bad guys. They were not trying to get along with injustice but shove it out of the way. They did not ask for acceptance. They demanded respect.

They appealed to our idealism. The party platform quoted the declaration of independence. They were the strong right arm of our ideals. Betcha anything that's how Palestinians feel about Hamas. Like us about the Panthers they say, "Call 'em terrorists, call 'em whatever you want but you can't call them late for the revolution. They're here, they're on our side and standing up for us. And besides, they got great headgear.”

The city of Chicago is naming but a single block for the Black Panther martyr Fred Hampton. But when it's official I can't wait to drive on it... then turn around and drive back.. then turn around and drive back...

Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest

The Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest makes me prouder than ever to be a Jew. Responding to the Prophet Muhammad cartoons, the Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, has announced a Holocaust cartoon contest. In response to that call an Israeli publisher, Dimona Comix, has challenged Jews to create anti-Semitic cartoons to show that a) A confident people are not threatened by cartoons and b) when it comes to offending Jews, we will not be beaten on our home turf!

This how to fight a war. With deadly humor! Plus, for Jews this contest is like a vaccine. Its very existence both shows our strength and makes us stronger. I'm working on my entries now 'cause I want the promised first prize, a piece of that delicious matzah made from the blood of Christian children!

Fools

Publishing offensive cartoons of the prophet Muhommed was the foolish and thus right thing to do. We need fools, unwise people who behave as if there is nothing to fear. Look at the prophet Muhammed himself. He lived in Mecca, a polytheistic city. Common sense told you that rain and the fire were controlled by different gods. But here's Muhammed and his little band preaching this monotheism foolishness. Muhommed and his followers gang out of town. The same unwise abandonment of caution was true John the Baptist, Galileo, Bucky Fuller, Amelia Earhart and Chris Rock.

But without fools who go too far we'd never know how's far was enough.

It's why we pay fools to rush in where angels fear to tread.

And once a fool says the unspeakable thing it becomes fit for politie conversation. The foolish Danish publishers are the only reason the world is discussing Islam and art and humor and appropriate reactions. Other fools consecrate other discussions "Did you hear what that fool in Iran said about the holocaust?" or "Pat Robertson said something really foolish about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez."

Fools know we risk our lives and livelihoods. Everybody saw comedian Bill Maher lose his network series because of a foolish comment about 9/11. Yet we still say what we say and draw what we draw. We don't do it because we're brave or even trying to make the world a better place. We persist in foolishness just to see what happens, because we're fools.

We laugh at fools and that is the fools' greatest gift. Wise folks say comedy is a way of looking at life that makes happy endings seem inevitable. Only a fool would argue with that.

Hamas and I

As an observant Jew I understand why so many muslims vote to live under religious law. Hamas, the Christian Coallition and I agree that secular American life is vulgar, permissive and materialistic. We agree that it is tolerant of homosexuality and atheism. I think that's a good thing. Given a choice I prefer heresy to boredom but I understand why others would not.

Like men everywhere I respond with Pavlovian salivation to scantilly-clad female bodies but like many of my obserevant Christian and Muslim siblings I prefer the presence of modestly dressed women, particularly when those women are young and related to me.

I too use religious observance as a buffer againt the exesses of what I consider a morally dangerous world. But, Yankee that I am, I'd rather immorality remain a physically safe option for eveyone, even me and my kids.

I also identify with the wish to live in a community that shares my values and habits.

When I go into the observant Jewish section of Chicago, and neighborhood called West Rogers Park, aka the "Chood." Though I know few of them it feels to me like home. I understand their ways, I know why the men have beards and the women have skirts that are long. I even know what they're all reading on any given week. Like everything that's familiar the fellowship of my tribe comforts me.

I am beginning to see the Arab world's embace of political Islam as less a rejection of western modernity than a search for something more wholesome than Madison Avenue or Washington currently offer. In that search I am their ally.

However given our different attitudes about tolerace I'm sure my fundamentalist Christian and Muslims brothers will understand if I join their search for righteousness from a righteously safe distance.

BushHamas&Google

"Maybe they do some bad things but I trust them and believe that, fundamentally they are on my side." That's how Bush supporters feel about his administration, how Hamas supporters feel about the new Palestinian government and how I feel about Google. Of course the scales of the bad things are different. Google and Hamas have killed far fewer people, but the willingness to give ones champions the benefit of a doubt is the same.

I am, like so many millions, a Googlephile. I see them the way Bush and Hamas supporters see their heroes; as principled champions of what I cherish and more importantly, warriors willing to do righteous battle against my enemies. Bush fights Al Qaeda, Hamas goes after Israel and Google takes on Microsoft. I was disappointed to hear that they would censor their Chinese language searches. Given the height of their rhetoric about not being evil taking China's side against the Dali Lama seemed is a real let down. Just like I assume Bush fans are sad he that terror attacks are up and Palestinians deeply regret the Israeli bombs and missiles that rain upon them in retaliation for Hamas attacks.

All our heroes have principled detractors. It's reasonable to fear the ubiquitous tentacles of an unchecked, ravenous Googlezilla. The foes of Bush and Hamas are far too numerous to list. And like the other fans I acknowledge the reasonableness of the criticism but am just willing to give my team a pass mostly because they're my team.

I understand Hamas and Bush supporters better now that Googles' actions too require my patient understanding and faith. because of what I must forgive I am more sympathetic to what last week, seemed baffling fidelity to the evil. Bush and Hamas supporters are not merely a bunch of deluded simpletons brainwashed by clever marketing. I see them now as, like me, merely people willing to give wide berth to a characters they believe are pursuing ultimate good.

And as such they are, like me, dangerous.

Trib Editorial

The Chicago Tribune's "analysis" of George Bush's prewar WMD claims omits perhaps the most crucial available fact; By the time Bush ordered US forces to invade Iraq virtually all of its "intelligence" had been proven wrong to a level of scientific certainty. For example in September of 2002 the White House posted on its website photos of what it claimed was new construction on a WMD manufacturing facility at Al Furat south of Baghdad. On December 10, 2002 Hussein's government escorted hundreds of journalists to the site . With cameras rolling they documented not just an absence of new construction but abundance of cobwebs. More telling was the claim of a renewed Iraqi nuclear program. The administration said the famed aluminum tubes were suitable only for use in constructing centrifuges as part of a nuclear program. Iraq said they were for an attempt to "reverse engineer" conventional rockets. On 7 March 2003, weeks before the invasion, Nobel prize winner Muhammad El Baradai, head of the Internation Atomic Agency, reported to the UN Security Council that; "The Iraqi decision-making process with regard to the design of these rockets was well-documented. Iraq has provided copies of design documents, procurement records, minutes of committee meetings and supporting data and samples." He concluded that based on the evidence: "the IAEA team has concluded that Iraq efforts to import these aluminum tubes were not likely to have been related to the manufacture of centrifuge, and moreover that it was highly unlikely that Iraq could have achieved the considerable redesign needed to use them in a revived centrifuge program."

These are but two examples of the verifiable scientific evidence that refuted all the administration's testable prewar claims. Between 27 November 2002 and 17 March 2003 Bush's claims were investigated by more that 200 physicists, engineers, biochemist and manufacturing experts, many of them American. The scientific refutation of those claims was and remains a part of the international public record.

The the President and the Chicago Tribune chose to ignore the published and verified scientific record with regard to the administrations claims is difficult to excuse as mere incompetence.

Spy on me, please!

I want my daughters to have FBI files. I want them filmed by hostile government agents during a mass protest against injustice. If they get lucky, they’ll be tear-gassed; not so much to do damage, just enough to make a good story. Like I was tear gassed as a child. Just like my mother wanted it.

When I was eight my mother led our whole family into the marches against segregation in Chicago. The FBI spied on us then, too. In the sixties, the Bureau claimed to be looking for “communists,” now they’re hunting “terrorists," but they look for enemies among the same group of Americans: protesters, we who dissent. At civil rights marches there were countless guys in suits taking movies and snapshots of us all. Sometimes it was the FBI, sometimes the Chicago Police Department’s in house anti-subversive unit, the Red Squad. My mother taught us to smile a wave at the camera. Even at eight we understood they meant to scare us, I was in Catholic schools at the time so I was well acquainted with the notion of stuff going on my “permanent record.”

But my mother wanted protest on our permanent records. She insisted that she and her children be counted among those whom bullying law enforcement did not scare.

I am overwhelmingly proud of my childhood dissent. I wear the suspicion of the FBI as a badge of honor. I long to be included on Bill O’Riley’s enemies list.

When my daughters are little old ladies and their grandchildren ask “Where were you guys when the rebels saved us from Bush?” I want them to brag, “We were in Chicago, Washington, San Francisco, we’re not lying, check our FBI files!”

I want my daughters to know the joys of rebellion, the delights of fighting outgunned and against the grain. I want them to breathe deeply the electric air outside the main herd. That the other side has the FBI just makes the fight more romantic. A ragtag band of news junkies, partisans, and assorted kooks against the great media/industrial death star, Morpheus against the Matrix, rebels against the state, like in 1965 and 1776.

I had despaired that my children would have no great monsters to slay, no forge for their mettle. But there ain’t a greater call to American action than a warning from the FBI to shut up. Conscience makes rebels of us all.

I haven’t been to an anti-war march in a few months but I’ll be at the next one I hear about, with my daughters. If the FBI is there filming we’ll all smile and wave for their cameras. But to save the bureau time and effort: my name is Aaron Freeman, two “a’s, two “e’s”. Please print it out in seventy-two-point font. Than king George might read it without his spectacles.

Less Democracy, Please!

Could sombody please stop the spread of democracy in the Middle East? I do not like the way it's turning out. Iran for example has been having elections for almost thirty years, since the overthrow of the Shah, and look who wins them. Iran's election have produced presidents ranging from moderate right wingers like Abul Hassan Boni Sadr to full-tilt ultra-religious wingnuts like current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose politics appear to only slightly to the left of Pat Robertson.

Iraq's democracy has provided some interesting political innovations including their pre-election ritual of having 20% of the electorate bombed by a foreign power. Nonetheless Iraq democracy has turned the country from a secular, socialist state into an Islamic republic aligned with Iran. Iraq's two biggest political parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and DAWA are not just supported by Iran but were created in Iran during the reign of the Ayatollah Kohmeini. Which is fine, Iraqis have every right to vote in whatever government they want but does America have to pay 6 billion dollars a month for it?

Among Palestinians their first round of elections brought us President Yassir Arafat and now the big political dog is Hamas which wins election after election no matter how many of their leaders Israel blows up. Which is all fine, "Self determination," I'm down with it but I'm worried the cancer of middle east democracy will matastesize to other Arab nations. From what I read if democratic elections were held in Saudia Arabia the biggest votes would go the the Saudi Nuke Israel Party followed by the Burn Israel Party and running a close third would be the Drive the Jews into the sea party.

It's not like we don't know how to put the brakes on Islamic democracy. Back in 1991 Algerian voters seemed on the brink of electing an Islamist government and the ruling party, supported by France and the US, just canceled the elections and outlawed the Islamist parties. But I'm sure there are less in your face, more artful ways of... not frustrating Middle Eastern democracy but calming it down. We got the the Deiboldt Corporation and Karl Rove could be looking for a new job any day now.

Again, I'm all over democracy, within reason. Full-frontal democratic governments, reflecting the will a majority are fine in theory but in practice are scary as hell. I'm sure that's why we've done away with it here in the United States.

The Saddam Eight

Saddam Hussein is the Bobby Seale of Baghdad.

As a Chicagoan, the trial of Saddam Hussein and his seven co-defendants is a trip down memory lane. Once again the accused are throwing the charges in the face of the court and aiming to put US justice on trial. Saddam is, so far, more genteel than Bobby Seale in how he's addressed the court. Hussein has not yet called judge a "fascist dog" but he is every bit as proud, defiant and smart as the founder of the Black Panther party. He wears berets too.

The reporting of the Baghdad and Chicago Eight are about the same. Both proceedings were almost entirely political, with their outcomes forgone conclusions months before they began. Yet both show trials were covered like they were legit. Both sets of defendants are caricatured as dangerous loons and their legitimate legal objections mostly ignored.

A difference between the trials is the happy fact that all Chicago Eight defense lawyers made it through the proceedings alive. Baghdad's US-trained cops are apparently even worse than Chicago's. Also unlike Bobby Seale, Hussein has not yet been bound and gagged, though in the US he's suffered the 21st century equivalent, he's been cropped and edited.

Barack Obushama?

Talk about trying to be all things to all people. Illinois Democrat Barack Obama in addition to being everybody's hope for a progressive future, is now even an apologist for George Bush. According to the Chicago Tribune Obama was asked at a town hall meeting whether Bush should be impeached for lying us into a war and 30,000 dead Iraqis, to which our junior senator replied "Well, FDR, JFK, LBJ -- we have a pretty long list of presidents who maybe were not entirely forthcoming with intelligence information before they went to war." saying Bush was "maybe not entirely forthcoming" Is like saying "LeBron James is maybe not entirely short."

If "everybody does it" is Obama's idea of legal defense then call former Illinois governor George Ryan and tell him charges are dropped. Cause the list of corrupt Illinois governors is even longer than the list of "maybe not entirely forthcoming" presidents. If "everybody does it" trumps investigation and prosecution we should just lay off the torture trial of former Chicago police captain John Burge. Everybody tortures, Bush would get off on that one too, wow. Set Burge free. Send him over to Baghdad to train the Iraqi police.

Maybe there's something in the Washington DC water that suppresses people's (or at least politician's) ability to get mad about folks for doing wrong. Maybe it happens when they smell the power. Obama’s impeachment defense combined with his earlier attempt to excuse the administration for Abu Ghraib in Baghdad look like another in the senator's endless attempts to remain the Will Smith of American politics, "a cute black guy everybody can agree on."

I'm rooting for him but he doesn't get to treat us like knuckleheads or spin the crime of war.

Truth is, of course Obama's too smart to be the first US Senator to call for Bush's impeachment, (sigh, but it sure does feel good to say those words!) But Saint Barak has just got to find a less insulting story. Ask our senior senator Dick Durban, his thoughts on impeachment and he says, "I want to get hearings on the intelligence committee." If you're entirely cynical, like if you're paying attention. You could call Durban's position a cautious dodge but at least it appeals to grownups.

Obama could say something like "If we tried to impeach him the evil republicans would shoot us dead in the streets!" That'd be believable.

I'm sure our benighted Barack will eventually find his footing on this issue as well. I'm certain the Senator's rhetorical cynicism is little more than a political speed bump is not the beginning of what Brits call "reverse metamorphosis," the transformation of a butterfly back into a slug.