YOU SAY YOU DON'T LOVE ME

You say you don't love me
Well that's alright with me 'cos I'm in love with you
And I wouldn't want you doing things you don't want to do
Oh you know I've always wanted you to be in love with me
And it took so long to realize the way things have to be
I wanted to live in a dream that couldn't be real
And I'm starting to understand now the way that you feel
You say you don't
You say you don't

You say you don't love me
Well that's alright with me 'cos I have got the time
To wait in case someday you maybe change your mind
I've decided not to make the same mistakes this time around
As I'm tired of having heartaches I've been thinking and I've found
I don't want to live in a dream I want something real
And I think I understand now the way that you feel
You say you don't
You say you don't
You say you don't

You say you don't
You say you don't

You say you don't love me
Well that's alright with me I'm not in love with you
I just want us to do the things we both want to do
Though I've got this special feelin' I'd be wrong to call it love
For the word entails a few things that I would be well rid of
I've no need to live in a dream it's finally real
And I hope you now understand this feeling I feel
You say you don't
You say you don't
You say you don't love me
You say you don't love me
You say you don't love me
Mmm

I loved how Shelley's lyrics could apply to any relationship, straight or gay. That was new and exciting at the time. Diversity and acceptance of diversity excited me.

A spokeswoman for WestJet, a smaller Canadian airline that only operates domestic flights, said Friday that it knew of no reason to keep Rushdie off its planes.

Air Transat, which operates flights to foreign destinations, was unaware of any security issue involving Rushdie, a spokesman said.

IT'S NOT ABOUT RACE: The Monitor's Danna Harman arrived in Zimbabwe thinking that racism was a central issue in the conflict over land ownership (see story). After all, about 70 percent of the arable land is owned by white farmers. But her perception is changing. "For example, Monday night I spoke to a group of unemployed black men who were sitting in a pickup truck, waiting to follow behind a ballot box as it was delivered from a polling station to the election headquarters. They were opposition-party supporters who wanted to make sure that the ballots weren't stolen. I asked them about racism. In very eloquent terms, they told me that Zimbabwe is a nation formed by a combination of races, and that blacks and whites have to work together to solve the problem of land reform." As one of the most highly educated populations in Africa, "they realize that the rhetoric of racism is just that," she says. As they spoke, a couple of white farmers drove up, and handed out food. "The black men said that kubatana, the Shona word for unity, would be the slogan for the nation if their party was elected." [link

The crew spent the past week working on Hubble, installing $172 million worth of new gear, including an advanced optical camera capable of peering across the universe almost to the beginning of time. [link]

A government analysis shows the nation's waterways are awash in traces of chemicals used in beauty aids, medications, cleaners, and foods. Among the substances: caffeine, contraceptives, painkillers, insect repellent, perfumes, and nicotine.

Scientists say the problem is that these substances largely escape regulation and defy municipal wastewater treatment. And the long-term effects of exposure are unclear, they say.

The compounds are sold on supermarket shelves and found in virtually every medicine cabinet and broom closet as well as at farms and factories. And they are flushed or rinsed down the drain every day. But they do not disappear, researchers warn.

[...]

For example, many scientists suspect the widespread use of antibacterial agents in human medicines, household cleaners, and veterinary medicines has encouraged the development of germs that are resistant to antibiotics. The USGS study found at least 31 antibiotics and antibacterial compounds in water samples.

The study also tallied traces of at least 11 compounds linked to birth control and hormone supplements. Some studies have linked environmental exposure to hormones to deformed sex organs in wildlife, sex reversal in some fish, and declining fertility in humans, as well as cancers and other diseases.
[link]

An administration critic, Thomas Blanton, director of the private National Security Archive, said Poindexter has a daunting intellect and deep computer-systems expertise.

He also suggested political payback is at work in appointments of so many Iran-Contra figures. "They were good soldiers. They fell on their swords. Good soldiers get rewards - at least in this administration,'' Blanton said. [From an article on the 6 Iran-Contra "veterans" who've been rewarded with posts in the shrub administration.]

I just can't shake the image of these guys walking around with bloody swords sticking out of them, parading around the Oval Office with completely oblivious looks on their faces.

"California and the rest of the West are now at a point where they really can't dismiss ideas that once would have been considered downright silly," says Rich Golb, former president of the Northern California Water Association, and now a West Coast water consultant. Outlandish ideas have arisen in the past - from Alaska pipelines to towing icebergs - but this one can't be dismissed as easily.

Q: In the song "Statue of Liberty," from your latest CD "Life on a String," you write: "Freedom is a scary thing. Not many people want it." Does that line mean something different than it did before Sept. 11?

A: When we were touring, I decided (that lyric) was too loaded under the circumstances. So I changed it to, "Freedom is a scary thing - so precious, so easy to lose."

I wrote (the original lyric) after talking to a lot of students. They would tell me they were getting a lot of pressure from their parents, or someone else, to do something. I would tell them: "Not that many people actually care about what you do. You're lucky if one or two people really care. Instead of being depressed about that, realize it's an incredible amount of freedom. You can really do what you want."

That's incredibly terrifying, especially for students. It comes with a lot of responsibility. It's a lot easier to say, "People expect me to be this way." That applies to artists, too. You can get stuck in a rut.

Since Mister Heartbreak, I haven't gotten as much out of her work, though I haven't seen her live since the 80s either. Since she's moved away from music and towards story it's even more essential to see her live to appreciate what she's doing, and I can't afford $30 even if I lived near a venue. I'm hoping to find a copy of the Home of the Brave video, which seems out of print. It's very well done and gives a good idea what her show was like back in the 80s.

I bought Rosalee Goldberg's book on her from half.com over a year ago and still haven't read it. Looks like it's remaindered at a good price at amazon. Essential if you're a fan.

We are not acting against the Palestinian civilians, we are acting against the terrorists. -- Colonel Gal Hirsch

They are terrorising a whole population -- Palestinian Spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi

At a time when high schools around the country are battling over bringing gay studies and gay student clubs to campus, the private Park Day School [in Oakland] is skipping the controversy and being straight with little kids about gay life.

Last week, the kindergarten through sixth grade school hosted 45 speakers from a list of Bay Area's gay movers and shakers, including KFOG disc jockey Dave Morey and East Bay chocolatier John Scharffenberger. A lesbian married couple spoke, as did a lesbian animal caretaker and a lesbian Baptist minister.

[...]

None of the speakers had ever been invited to talk about their personal lives to schoolchildren before, and the exercise brought some of the adults to tears

[...]

"The idea," said Park Day Director Tom Little, "is that if they ever encounter homophobia, their association will be that lots and lots of wonderful people they have met have been hurt by that."

Not one parent complained, Little said. In fact, several came to the school to thank him for broaching a sensitive subject and making it easier to discuss gay topics at home. [link via Undernews]

Best-selling writers might be treated fairly by the media conglomerates that dominate publishing today, but the average author isn't. And no clearer proof exists than the "standard" book contract, routinely forced upon authors and their agents. Many of the clauses that have been imposed on authors throughout the industry bear no relationship to any economic reality other than the best interests of the publisher.

Yet these clauses flourish because virtually every major publisher insists on them?and the average author has no recourse.

Kay Murray has been general counsel for The Authors Guild since 1994. "The contracts were bad enough when I got here," says Murray. "But over the past five years, they've become far more exploitative. The new technology has led to a significant decrease in cost and risk to publishers, but they simply won't share the wealth. In fact, every few months now, there's another change for the worse, with all of the major publishers acting in lockstep on it." [link]

Big brother is big business in the battle against crime in Britain, but photo-shy villains have developed a bag of new tricks to elude the gaze of thousands of surveillance cameras that now dot its cities, towns and villages. With 1.5 million closed-circuit television systems watching its streets, office buildings, schools, shopping centers and roads, Britain is one of the most closely monitored nations on the planet, and the government is spending another $115 million for more TV eyes. But crime is soaring across the country. In London, a city of 8 million people, murder is going on at a record pace. Street robbery, the very crime that CCTV is supposed to be best at deterring, will reach 50,000 this year. The problem, one exasperated police source told United Press International, is that "the TV cameras can't be everywhere. There are hundreds of thousands of nooks and crannies left, everywhere you look, and this is where criminals are increasingly operating. And when a camera shows up, they move elsewhere." Many of the villains are adapting. Some are
targeting luxury cars on the move so that any view a TV camera gets of them is fleeting at best. Others conceal their street muggings by grabbing their victims in a clinch that, on CCTV, looks like nothing more than a romantic hug. [Undernews]

A Pentagon agency, two major military contractors, and an independent research team led by MIT scientists produced flawed studies that exaggerated the success of a key test used to justify spending billions of dollars on the fledgling national missile defense program, according to two reports obtained by the Globe.

[...]

In reports about a highly sophisticated sensor used in the first test of the missile-defense program - a technology similar to one now designed for the vital task of distinguishing decoys from warheads - contractors described its performance as ''excellent'' and the overall test as a ''success.'' The team directed by two MIT scientists, which evaluated the contractors' reports of the test, pronounced them ''basically sound.'' And officials in the Missile Defense Agency called the first test of the technology in space ''highly successful.''

Yet the review by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found that crucial elements of the 1997 test failed - prompting investigators to raise questions about the oversight of a program that has already cost billions of dollars and could, if the Bush administration has its way, ultimately cost taxpayers as much as $238 billion, according tYet the review by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found that crucial elements of the 1997 test failed - prompting investigators to raise questions about the oversight of a program that has already cost billions of dollars and could, if the Bush administration has its way, ultimately cost taxpayers as much as $238 billion, according to a recent estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.

''The data are garbage - they had to use all these software shenanigans and throw out two-thirds of the data to make it look like a success,'' said a congressional source close to the GAO investigation. ''Up to now, there has been no independent verification of the contractors' claims. This pulls out the rug from those calling the test a success. By any definition, there's no way to call it a success.'' [link]

The suspects have been taken to countries, including Egypt and Jordan, whose intelligence services have close ties to the CIA and where they can be subjected to interrogation tactics - including torture and threats to their families - that are illegal in the United States, the sources said. In some cases, U.S. intelligence agents remain closely involved in the interrogation, the sources said.

"After Sept. 11, these sorts of movements have been occurring all the time," a U.S. diplomat said. "It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can't do on U.S. soil."

[...]

Dozens of other covert renditions, often with Egyptian cooperation, were also conducted, U.S. officials said. The details of most of these operations, which often ignored local and international extradition laws, remain closely guarded.

Even when local intelligence agents are involved, diplomats said it was preferable to render a suspect secretly because it prevented lengthy court battles and minimized publicity that could tip off the detainee's associates. Rendering suspects to a third country, particularly Muslim nations such as Egypt or Jordan, also helps to defuse domestic political concerns in predominantly Muslim nations such as Indonesia, the diplomats said.

Sending a suspect directly to the United States, the diplomats said, could prompt objections from government officials who fear that any publicity of such an action would lead to a backlash from fundamentalist Islamic groups. [link]

What makes "The Emergency Plans Book" so interesting is that it offers such extraordinary insight into the military mindset. The fact that the scenario comes to a happy ending, relatively speaking, even in the wake of a nuclear holocaust, helps to explain the aggressive behavior of those who ought to know better than anybody the horrors of war. Generals may look grim and admirals may effect admirable calm in adversity, but the truth is that, far from heartless, military men are hopeless optimists, as blithesome as a Broadway musical.

[...]

In a sense, "The Emergency Plans Book" is a lot like the original doomsday scenario, The Book of Revelation. While not exactly optimistic in its own right, Revelation is propaganda at a fever pitch: "And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy."

Pretty far-fetched as prediction -- hardly good grounds for fortifying the Navy -- but it does make the point that bad behavior will not go unpunished in the end. The symbolism is deep, heads and horns marking particular characteristics of the sinful world. While such subtleties may be missed by your average layman without risk of confusing the central point, the genius of Revelation is that it serves as propaganda -- an admonition against holy excess -- within the clergy as well. Saint John the Divine seeks to preach even to the converted.

The same can be said of "The Emergency Plans Book" in the Cold War context. Top secret, it was never meant to be read by the American public, but it would have been a good way to keep its intended recipients, powerful policy-makers of mixed political persuasions, all on the same page, able to act confidently against any Soviet threat. In that respect, it fits into a much broader body of oddly upbeat Cold War ephemera, such as the civil defense brochures that reassured citizens they could survive a Soviet attack in "an underground shelter with 3 feet of dirt above it." The military may have made that one up, but, for purposes of preventing general panic, it seems to have worked well enough. The truth is that, even internally, the government seems to have been less worried about Cold War resolve than about Cold War fear. It needed a dose of its own propaganda to face a new day. [via Secrecy News]

In August 2000, the US Government approved "Plan Colombia", $1.3bn anti-drug trafficking aid that Mr Pastrana is using to undercut drug production and to prevent guerrilla groups from benefiting from drug production. In August 2001, Pastrana signed "war legislation", which expanded the rights of the military in dealing with rebels.

Washington says that its so-called "War on Drugs" is aimed at stemming a tide of narcotics flooding the streets of American cities.

But critics say that US-backing for the Colombian Government is politically motivated and aimed at quashing undesirable leftist insurgents in the region.

Allegations also persist that the US-backed campaign is still being carried out with the covert co-operation of paramilitary warlords.

Fearing a loss of influence in the region, they say, Washington has coined the term "narco-guerrilla" as a convenient pretext to destroy leftist rebels.

In reality, they argue the drug trade is primarily driven by the right-wing paramilitaries.

Amnesty International has described Washington's backing for Bogota as "the same policy that backed death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s".

I guess the CIA or whoever isn't getting a big enough cut.

An estimated 92,000 women and 135,000 children have been adversely impacted by a 1996 amendment barring felony drug offenders from receiving assistance-based federal entitlements, according to a report by Washington DC's Sentencing Project. Felony drug offenders, including most anyone convicted of growing or selling even small amounts of marijuana, are ineligible to receive cash assistance and food stamps for life under the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. According to the report, 42 states enforce the ban in full or in part. Of those, California imposed the ban on the greatest number of women - some 38,000 - between 1996 and 1999. Among states that fully enforce the lifetime ban, California, Georgia and Missouri imposed it on the greatest number of female drug offenders. Eight states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation lifting the ban. In 1998, Congress passed a similar amendment to the Higher Education Act barring federal aid to any applicant who has ever been convicted of a drug crime, including minor pot offenses. No other criminal conviction triggers such a ban. To date, more than 48,000 student applicants have been partially or fully denied aid under the law. [via Undernews]

And the scam/spell is maintainable only because people don't think they have a right to know -- or know that their world would be very different (and their responsibilites so much greater) if they did know. The truth is out there, but it's what we have to face in here that's keeping us from seeing it.

A passage from Friedman's 1999 book "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" sums up his overarching global perspective: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

If he were as passionate about challenging global corporatization as promoting it -- or as fervent about stopping wars as starting them -- it's hard to imagine that a regular feature like "Tom's Journal" would be airing on the "NewsHour."

Friedman has been a zealous advocate of "bombing Iraq, over and over and over again" (in the words of a January 1998 column). Three years ago, when he offered a pithy list of prescriptions for Washington's policymakers, it included: "Blow up a different power station in Iraq every week, so no one knows when the lights will go off or who's in charge."

Contrary to suggestions from the White House, the California crisis is not a function of pollution regulation, and it will not be solved by drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The real reasons for the crisis include a market structure that failed to ensure long-term supplies as a hedge against volatile spot market prices, rapid consumption growth in neighboring states that is overloading the interstate power grid, cutbacks in electricity infrastructure investment throughout the West, and reduced hydropower generation due to low rainfall. As if all of that were not enough, investigations continue of alleged anti-competitive practices by power generators.

[...]

Nonetheless, President Bush said recently, "If there's any environmental regulations . . . preventing California from having a 100 percent max output at their plants -- as I understand there may be -- then we need to relax those standards." But as reported by the Los Angeles Times on January 25, Richard Wheatley, spokesman for Houston-based Reliant Energy Co., which operates four Southern California power plants, said that the assertion that environmental regulations are holding back output "is absolutely false. We're making every megawatt available on request. We factor the air quality regulations into our daily operating basis, and they are not causing us to withhold power." The Times could find only one small, obsolete plant that had to suspend operations temporarily to comply with air quality standards, and it accounted for less than 0.2 percent of California's peak power needs.

The original pledge was written in 1892 by a Baptist socialist minister, Francis Bellamy, and was first published in a magazine called the Youth's Companion. The magazine's editor had hired Bellamy after the latter had been sacked by his church for delivering controversial socialist statements from the pulpit. Bellamy had even considered including the word "equality" in the pledge but knew that the state superintendents of education would be unwilling to endorse something that hinted at equal rights for women and blacks.

It was more than 60 years later, in 1954, that Congress, at the height of the anticommunist McCarthy period, added the words "under God" following a campaign by a rightwing Catholic organisation, the Knights of Columbus. Bellamy's grand-daughter later said that Bellamy would have resented the words being added, not least because at the end of his life he had become disenchanted with organised religion and had stopped attending church in Florida because of racial bigtory.

This is not the first time Mr Ashcroft's subordinates have realised that this attorney general is unlike ordinary politicians. Each time he has been sworn in to political office, he is anointed with cooking oil (in the manner of King David, as he points out in his memoirs Lessons from a Father to His Son).

When Mr Ashcroft was in the Senate, the duty was performed by his father, a senior minister in a church specialising in speaking in tongues, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God. When he became attorney general, Clarence Thomas, a supreme court justice, did the honours.

[...]

Perhaps the most bizarre wrinkle in the Ashcroft enigma emerged in November when Andrew Tobias, the Democratic Party treasurer and a financial writer, published an article on his website accusing the attorney general of harbouring superstitions about tabby cats.

According to the Tobias article, advance teams for an Ashcroft visit to the US embassy in the Hague asked anxiously if there were tabby cats (or calico cats as they are known in the US) on the premises.

"Their boss, they explained, believes calico cats are signs of the devil," Mr Tobias reported.