From The Bill of Rights Defense Committee's e-mail newsletter, February 27, 2004, Vol. 3, No. 2:

On February 9, U.S. Congressman Peter King (3rd New York District) told listeners to a nationally syndicated radio show that the vast majority of American Muslim community leaders are "an enemy living amongst us" and that "no (American) Muslims" have cooperated in the war on terror. He added, "you could say that 80-85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists. Those who are in control. The average Muslim, no, they are loyal, but they don't work, they don't come forward, they don't tell the police [inaudible]."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations and American Muslim Voice have issued action alerts urging people to call Rep. King and demand that he retract the statements. They also ask that people call the Republican National Committee and encourage them to repudiate Congressman King's disparaging remarks.

Rep. Pete King serves on the Select Committee on Homeland Security and the International Relations Committee.

Contact info for Rep. King:

    436 Cannon House Office Building 
    Washington, D.C. 20515 
    202-225-7896 
    Pete.King@mail.house.gov
 
    Massapequa Park:
    1003 Park Boulevard 
    Massapequa Park, NY 11762 
    516-541-4225
 
    Suffolk County, NY:
    631-541-4225            
 

You can also send a (polite) message to Rep. King at http://www.house.gov/king/e-message.htm

From Haaretz: [Israeli Deputy Defense Minister and Member of the Knesset] Ze'ev Boim's 'genetic defect' slur sparks outrage:

Ze'ev Boim, the deputy defense minister, yesterday created a firestorm of outrage by rhetorically asking: "What is it about Islam as a whole and the Palestinians in particular? Is it some form of cultural deprivation? Is it some genetic defect? There is something that defies explanation in this continued murderousness."
[...]
Yehiel Hazan, MK (Likud), supported Boim. "What Ze'ev Boim said, it hasn't been researched, but according to my experience this is true. I think he is correct. It is well known that Arabs have been slaughtering and murdering Jews for more than a generation. I think that it is in their blood. It is something genetic. I have not researched this, but there is no other way to explain it." Hazan added, "don't believe an Arab, even one who has been in the grave for 40 years."

Where have I heard this sort of talk before? You'd think that members of the Knesset might think twice about using this kind of hateful rhetoric. Imagine what would happen if members of the PA made such statements about Jews and Israelis. It's not enough for Ze'ev Boim to apologize. He and Yehiel Hazan should be forced to resign. You can contact:

• Ze'ev Boim at zaevb@knesset.gov.il
• Yehiel Hazan at yhazan@knesset.gov.il

Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us. The DoD report ("An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security", October 2003, by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall) can be downloaded from cryptome.org as a zipped pdf file: dod-climate.zip [View as Text]

PFAW: Oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment:

"We, the undersigned, strongly oppose the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution that would require discrimination against any specific group of Americans. The Federal Marriage Amendment is a betrayal of the American principles of equality and fairness. We oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment."

iAbolish Action: Demand an investigation into slavery in Sudan's Darfur region

I went to the AOL Presidential Match site and stepped through their question-and-answer guide for their selected set of issues. I was rewarded with a ranking of how well the Presidential contenders matched my responses. Here are my results (YMMV):

    Kucinich: 100% 
    Sharpton: 91% 
    Kerry: 85%
    Dean: 82%  (Yes, I know he's out of the running, dammit!)
    Edwards: 75%
    Bush: 5%

Awright! Kucinich/Sharpton in 2004!!
Yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaughhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

(Actually, I'm appalled that Bush got 5% -- the thing must have a subtle right-wing bias...)

Amnesty International USA Action: Urge Attorney General Ashcroft to Protect Rodi Alvarado and Other Women Fleeing Gender Persecution

Washington Post, Tue Feb 10: U.S. Ends Investigation of Mad Cow Case -- Officials Fail to Find Two-Thirds of Animals at Risk of Infection:

Federal officials ended their investigation into the country's first case of mad cow disease yesterday after failing to locate almost two-thirds of the 80 cattle that had entered the United States from Canada with an infected Holstein.

The 52 missing animals include 11 cows believed to be at higher risk because they were born about the same time as the Holstein and may have eaten the same contaminated feed. 'The paper trail has gotten cold; we have not been able to trace those animals,' said W. Ron DeHaven, chief veterinary officer at the Department of Agriculture. 'Some of them very likely have gone to slaughter,' he said.

[...]

Yesterday, DeHaven said that many of the animals' ear tags had been lost and that the chances of finding the rest of the herd was 'pretty slim at this point.'

'It's time to move on,' he said.

Move along, citizens ... go back to supporting the beef industry ... nothing more to see here...

Know Your Agnostics:

• Militant agnostic: I don't know if God exists -- AND YOU DON'T EITHER!
• Fundamentalist agnostic: I don't know if God exists -- AND NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW!
• Jewish agnostic: Does God exist? This, I should know?
• Feminist agnostic: I don't know if the Goddess exists.
• Lovecraftian agnostic: I don't know if Cthulhu and/or the Elder Gods exist.
• Godelian agnostic: The statement "God exists" may be true but unprovable.
• Nietzschian agnostic: God might be dead.
• Quantum agnostic: God's wave function remains in a delicate superposition of states (e.g., existence and nonexistence) until an experimental observation or measurement collapses it.
• Dyslexic agnostic: I don't know if dog exits.
• Born-again agnostic: I may have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior ... or not.
• Recursive agnostic: I don't know if I know if I know if...
• Apathetic agnostic: Who cares if God exists?
• Agnositic Jehovah's Witness: Someone who comes to your door and doesn't know what to talk about.
• Dial-a-Prayer for agnostics: You call and it ring and rings and maybe someone will answer if you wait long enough...
• 12-step agnostic: One Deity at a Time.
• Amnesiac agnostic: I have found the most marvelous proof of the existence of God, but ... what was I saying?

ACLU Action: Oppose Attempts to Undermine Roe v. Wade: Tell your U.S. Senators/Rep to oppose the 'Unborn Victims of Violence Act' (S.1019/S. 146, H.R. 1997), which "would be the first federal law to recognize a fetus at any stage of development, from conception forward, as an independent "victim" of a crime with legal rights distinct from the woman who has been harmed by a violent criminal act."

No cattle rancher worried that a mad cow could be traced to his herd should be without one! Super Knife "will remove ear tags quickly and easily, It is a lightweight, handheld tool made of plastic. It contains two razor thin blades and can be easily carried in your pocket. Tags are removed by sliding the hooked end of the tool containing the two razor knives across the stem of the tag. The user is protected from the blades by the Blade Guard cover. The tag cannot be reused once the stem is cut."

FOAFBot: IRC Community Support Agent

TheOnion.com: Gay Marriage -- What Do You Think?

NewScientist.com: Fears over BSE in chicken. Bad prions => not-yet-obviously-mad cows => rendered livestock leftovers => chicken feed => apparently healthy chickens => McNuggets => you. So I decided to become a vegetarian, until I ran into the Boulder Vegetable Rights Association. Slime Mold Spread (TM) on Toasted Bacterial Mats (TM), anyone?

unionvoice.org: Tell your MA State Senator/Rep to raise (progressive) taxes (especially on MA corporations) in order to "prevent further budget cuts and to pay for prescription drugs and home care for senior citizens, education, affordable housing, childcare, job training, public safety, and health and human services."

Lesbian couple [Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon] wedded at San Francisco City Hall -- Women had been together for five decades

Haaretz: Jailed Israeli atomic whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

From Independent.co.uk: Drowned Iraqi [Zeidun Mamun Fadhil al-Samarai] 'was forced into river by five US soldiers':

Five American soldiers have been accused of driving a 19-year-old Iraqi civilian to his death in the Tigris river in one of the main centres of resistance to the occupation.

Zeidun Fadhil and his cousin Marwan Fadhil were allegedly taken to a remote spot on the shore and ordered into the river at gunpoint. When they refused, the soldiers were said to have forced them into the river. Zeidun, who could not swim, drowned in the strong current. His cousin survived to tell the story.

[...]

It is by no means clear that Zeidun Fadhil was intended to die. It is possible he was the victim of an elaborate punishment designed to humiliate the two young men - a punishment that went horribly wrong. Marwan alleged the American soldiers were laughing as they pushed them into the river.

"How will President George W. Bush personally make millions (if not billions) from the War on Terror and Iraq? The old fashioned way. He'll inherit it: Meet The Carlyle Group -- Former World Leaders and Washington Insiders [including George Bush Sr.] Making Billions from the War on Terrorism."

Tired: U.S. high-tech jobs being lost to workers overseas:

"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade. We're very used to goods being produced abroad and being shipped here on ships or planes. What we're not used to is services being produced abroad and being sent here over the Internet or telephone wires. The economics is basically the same. More things are tradable than were tradable in the past and that's a good thing."

-- N. Gregory Mankiw, Chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers

Wired: global high-tech jobs being lost to "human-competitive machine intelligence":

Genetic Programming IV: Routine Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence presents the application of GP to a wide variety of problems involving automated synthesis of controllers, circuits, antennas, genetic networks, and metabolic pathways. The book describes 15 instances where GP has created an entity that either infringes or duplicates the functionality of a previously patented 20th-century invention, 6 instances where it has done the same with respect to post-2000 patented inventions, 2 instances where GP has created a patentable new invention, and 13 other human-competitive results. The book additionally establishes:

• GP now delivers routine human-competitive machine intelligence.
• GP is an automated invention machine.

NARAL Action: The Bush Administration Threatens Access to Emergency Contraception

NARAL Action: Tell Ashcroft to keep women's medical records private!

Amnesty International: Encourage Congress to Pass the Security and Freedom Ensured Act (SAFE)

Amnesty International USA: Help Free Rebiya Kadeer, Prisoner of Conscience in China

Amnesty International: Ensure the Criminal Justice System in Afghanistan Protects Women's Rights

Amnesty International: Demand Justice for Nanon Williams, Child Offender Facing Execution On Flawed Evidence

Amnesty International: Stop Child Executions in Pakistan!

Amnesty International: Urge the US to Stop Child Executions

Sign the [pro-gay-marriage] Petition at MillionforMarriage.org:

There are more than 1,000 federal protections and responsibilities denied to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender families because they cannot legally marry in this country. Here are just a few:

• ability to make decisions on a partner's behalf in a medical emergency.
• petition for partner to immigrate.
• up to 12 weeks leave from work to care for a seriously ill partner or parent of a partner.
• parenting responsibilities of children brought into a family through birth, adoption, surrogacy or other means.
• ability to purchase continued health coverage for a domestic partner after the loss of a job.

Tell Dubya, Colin Powell, and Chief Administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer to pressure the Iraqi Governing Council to overturn Resolution 137, which has cancelled current family laws and moved family law under the jurisdiction of Islamic (sharia) law, which will destroy the status of Iraqi women's rights regarding marriage, child custody, divorce and inheritance.

Update: 2/16: Spotlight forces DOJ to withdraw grand jury subpoenas

From "Fourth activist in D.M. ordered to testify: The federal probe also focuses on a November antiwar forum held at Drake University.":

Federal authorities so far have refused to disclose what the investigation is about or what laws might have been broken. But an officer with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force served a subpoena to Wendy Vasquez of Des Moines on Thursday morning.
[...]
Thursday morning, at the request of the U.S. attorney's office in Des Moines, U.S. District Judge Ronald Longstaff issued an order under seal - meaning its contents are secret.
[...]
Vasquez was among dozens of activists who attended a Nov. 15 conference at Drake called "Stop the Occupation! Bring the Iowa Guard Home!"

The conference was hosted by the Drake Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. The event was followed the next day by a demonstration at the Iowa National Guard Headquarters in Johnston where 12 protesters were arrested.
[...]
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Vanderschel said Thursday that he could "neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigation."

Contact info:

U.S. District Court- Southern District of Iowa
123 East Walnut, Des Moines 50309;
phone: 515/284-6248

U.S. Attorney's Office in Des Moines:
515-284-6257

From Drake University, 4 activists subpoenaed over anti-war demonstration:

Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press

Published February 7, 2004 ACTI08

DES MOINES, Iowa - In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists.

In addition to the subpoena of Drake University, subpoenas were served this past week on four of the activists who attended a Nov. 15 forum at the school, ordering them to appear before a grand jury Tuesday, the protesters said.

[...]

According to a copy obtained by The Associated Press, the Drake subpoena asks for records of the request for a meeting room, ``all documents indicating the purpose and intended participants in the meeting, and all documents or recordings which would identify persons that actually attended the meeting.''

It also asks for campus security records ``reflecting any observations made of the Nov. 15, 2003, meeting, including any records of persons in charge or control of the meeting, and any records of attendees of the meeting.''

Tell the FDA (and the Department of Health and Human Services, and Dubya) that you support emergency contraception over-the-counter without restrictions.

From Gary Leupp: On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to Gov. Mitt Romney:

"for a long time (from 1905) in California 'miscegenation' between whites and 'Mongolians' of all types was banned by law. But such laws seem so stupid now, don't they? At the time, such intimacies were depicted as 'unnatural' mixes of racial superiors with inferiors bound to mess up the pure white gene pool. Of course the Mormon Church was committed to the view that African-Africans were inferior (and certainly unfit as partners to Mormon whites) way up until 1978, when Spencer Kimball, the 12th Prophet, got his word from the Lord and the policy was revised. Before that, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that Virginia state law banning black-white intermarriage could not be enforced; very recently (1998), South Carolina chucked its constitutional clause, dating to 1895, forbidding 'marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto or a person who should have one-eighth or more Negro blood.'"

"Dishonest Dubya" Lying Action Figure -- as not bloody likely to be seen on CBS TV!

NARAL Pro-Choice America asks you to cast your vote for responsible sex education: go to http://prochoiceaction.org/ct/I113Ni51ca4-/. The poll is in the upper right hand corner called, "Is abstinence-only education the best way to curb teen pregnancy and STDs?"

From nih.gov: Transgenic Animals Produced Using Cultured Sperm:

"The findings also may prove helpful to researchers exploring pre-fertilization strategies for human gene therapy"

Now if there was just some way to automate the process, we could begin mass production...

Know Your War Profiteers! Order your War Profiteers Card Deck from The Ruckus Society.

Flashback: "White House 'Exaggerating Iraqi Threat' -- Bush's Televised Address Attacked by US Intelligence", by Julian Borger, the Guardian/UK, October 9, 2002:

"Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence.
[...]
"CIA assessments are being put aside by the Defense department in favor of intelligence they are getting from various Iraqi exiles," he said. "Machiavelli warned princes against listening to exiles. Well, that is what is happening now."

I know you're far too cyber-savvy to fall for the latest crop of email spam scams, but the following page is still worth reading, IMHO. Here's the teaser:

From FTC Consumer Alert: How Not to Get Hooked by a 'Phishing' Scam:

"According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the emails pretend to be from businesses the potential victims deal with - for example, their Internet service provider (ISP), online payment service or bank. The fraudsters tell recipients that they need to 'update' or 'validate' their billing information to keep their accounts active, and direct them to a 'look-alike' Web site of the legitimate business, further tricking consumers into thinking they are responding to a bona fide request. Unknowingly, consumers submit their financial information - not to the businesses - but the scammers, who use it to order goods and services and obtain credit."

At least it *looks* like it's from ftc.gov ...