meta-roj

at this point, i simply have to put this in public. my department of homeland security is incompetent. my government is incompetent. if this is how we handle a natural disaster with four days warning, i can only imagine what we’d do without notice, when the earthquake hits los angeles or san francisco, or when the tsunami hits seattle.

there is no excuse.

just in case you had any doubts…

Animal rights groups biggest U.S. threat, FBI says [globe and mail, 2005.05.18]

Environmental and animal rights activists who have turned to arson and explosives are the nation’s top domestic terrorism threat, an FBI official told a U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday.

Groups such as the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty are “way out in front” in terms of damage and number of crimes, said John Lewis, the FBI’s deputy assistant director for counterterrorism.

just a few organizations left – and they’re vegans and tree-huggers. ok, so they’re vegans and tree-huggers with bombs, but obviously they don’t have too many bombs, or we’d be hearing something about them instead of the attrition in iraq.

i guess this means we can finally take a critical look at all the stupid stuff we’ve done to ourselves in the past four years.

nah. wishful thinking.

two items today on the bush adminstration’s trouble with math…

first, let’s do the serious one. this is practice for numbers 3 and 4.

Libyan is 4th Al-Qaida No. 3 captured so far [ap via pittsburgh post gazette 2005.05.08]

A Libyan seized in Pakistan last week was the fourth purported No. 3 leader of al-Qaida killed or captured since the Sept. 11 attacks, but the global dragnet has yet to reach up the terror group’s hierarchy to the main prizes — Osama bin Laden and his right-hand man, Ayman Zawahiri.

…

The first man dubbed al-Qaida’s No. 3, Mohammed Atef, was killed by a U.S. airstrike on Kabul in November 2001 as the Taliban regime crumbled in Afghanistan.

Abu Zubaydah, the next to assume the role, was captured March 28, 2002, in the eastern city of Faisalabad. The Saudi-born Palestinian survived gunshot wounds in the stomach, groin and leg, and has been in U.S. custody ever since.

Zubaydah’s replacement, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was arrested in Rawalpindi, near the Pakistani capital, on March 1, 2003. He also is in U.S. custody.

Ramzi Binalshibh, another top bin Laden deputy, was arrested in the southern city of Karachi on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

sucks to be #3… and now for numbers 4 and 5.

Bush holds early Cinco de Mayo celebration [cnn, 2005.05.05]

President Bush said he likes to use the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo to practice his Spanish, but this year he’s practicing his arithmetic.

Bush poked fun at himself in front of about 200 people gathered in the Rose Garden for the White House celebration on May 4, one day before the holiday marking the Mexican troops’ defeat of a French army on May 5, 1862.

“My only problem this year is I scheduled the dinner on cuatro de mayo,” Bush said. “Next year I’m going to have to work on my math.”

more trouble at the schoolhouse… this time with nails.

Boy, 11, arrested for having nails at school [rock hill herald, 2005.05.07]

A school resource officer arrested an 11-year-old Rawlinson Road Middle School student Wednesday after the boy went to school with 10 nails in his pocket.

…

State law says anything that can be construed or used as a weapon on school grounds can be classified as unlawful, said Lt. Jerry Waldrop of the Rock Hill Police Department.

personally, i subscribe to the adage that the pen is mightier than the sword, and all pens (and pencils) should be classified as unlawful too.

while we’re here (in rock hill, that is), i suggest making sure the new dress code forbids pockets.

i’ve posted a bunch of things i consider pretty disturbing about law and justice and america… so i think i’ll wrap up for now with the current results.

World terror attacks tripled in 2004 by U.S. count [reuters, 2005.04.26]

The number of “significant” international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by U.S. State Department and intelligence officials on Monday.

mission accomplished. april 30, 2003.

[it’s worth emphasizing that this is based on the administration’s own criteria for “significant”]

this is just a quick one, from wisconsin…

Hopping Holstein shuts down cow pie bingo [lacrosse tribune, april 21, 2005]

Dorothy Jasperson, editor of the Westby Times, said the cow “knocked down some stuff, scared some little kids and for insurance reasons, they decided to go away from cow pie bingo.” (There was a time when Westby children were not afraid of a wandering cow, though these may have been children visiting from La Crosse.)

no insurance, no play.

wow. it really has come to this?

Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month [washington post, january 12, 2005 – registration]

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

the hunt is over, and the the results are in – which are basically the results we saw back in september with the preliminary report. no stockpiles, and no active programs.

15229 to 17443 dead civilians later, and the iraqi people haven’t exactly welcomed their new overlords with flowers and chocolate.

well, at least we’ve taught them something [reuters, january 11, 2005] since the invasion.

once upon a time, in a land so near to here, in jackson and george counties, mississippi, someone found some naked supreme court justices. and panicked.

Some Miss. Libraries Ban Jon Stewart Book [ap via abc news, january 9, 2005]

Library officials in two southern Mississippi counties have banned Jon Stewart’s best-selling “America (The Book)” over the satirical textbook’s nude depictions of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices.

“I’ve been a librarian for 40 years and this is the only book I’ve objected to so strongly that I wouldn’t allow it to circulate,” said Robert Willits, director of the Jackson-George Regional Library System of eight libraries in Jackson and George counties.

it’s just a start. soon, we’ll be able to protect children all over this great land from naked humor.

ow that the system is live, despite concerns over the approach, that we’re still making progress toward a missile defense for north america…

U.S. missile defense test fails [reuters, december 15, 2004]

The first test in nearly two years of a multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile shield failed on Wednesday when the interceptor missile shut down as it prepared to launch in the central Pacific, the Pentagon said.

About 16 minutes earlier, a target missile carrying a mock warhead had been successfully fired from Kodiak Island, Alaska, according to a statement from the Missile Defense Agency.

The aborted $85 million test appeared likely to set back plans for activation of a rudimentary bulwark against long-range ballistic missiles that could be fired by countries like North Korea.

no word on the operating system used for the interceptor missile. shutdown, restart or log off?

i guess the cabinet didn’t learn too much from the last declaration of success…

attorney general john ashcroft resignation letter, november 2, 2004

The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.

or maybe the lesson is that you can declare victory anytime with impunity.