There's a surprisingly old-fashioned Puritanism in these witty modern novels by Hornby, Shields, and Ferguson. Each betrays a deep anxiety about the pursuit of happiness, suggesting that it's necessarily humorless, simpleminded, or fanatical. They take a kind of Calvinistic offense at any radical devotion to self-improvement, as though it violated their faith in Original Sin.

An attempt to honour a dead baseball fan's last wish went horribly wrong on Friday, forcing the evacuation of Safeco Field, the home of the Seattle Mariners baseball team, amid fears of a bio-terror attack.

A small private plane swooped low over the stadium shortly after [10:00AM PT] and was seen dropping a package, which exploded on impact spraying the area with a mystery white powder.

Officials feared a terrorist attack, and evacuated the stadium and nearby streets and offices.

But in reality the package contained the ashes of a devout Mariners fan who had wanted his remains cast over the field.

A small but determined group of anti-U.S. demonstrators followed President Bush around St. Petersburg on Saturday until its leaders were shoved into a van by plainclothes security personnel and driven away.

A few hundred Communists, nationalists and anti-globalization activists protested Bush's visit at rallies in the center of the city. About two dozen people followed Bush to St. Petersburg State University, where some of them broke through a police line and were quickly detained.

The small size of the protests contrasted starkly with the situation in Berlin, where some 20,000 anti-war demonstrators greeted Bush. Anti-U.S. views are widespread in Russia, and the protests' organizers attributed the small turnout to a lack of free-speech traditions.

[...]

The police dragged protesters, including several who had not attempted to cross the line, to an unmarked van, which drove away. A man in plain clothes who identified himself as an anti-organized crime officer said eight people had been detained.

Earlier, about 200 demonstrators, mostly elderly Communists, lined Nevsky Prospekt, the city's main thoroughfare. They held banners reading "U.S. President George Bush is terrorist No. 1 on Planet Earth" and "Bush: Hands off Russia!"

A younger crowd of activists - including those who later were detained at the university - rallied against what they called U.S. ambitions of world domination and against Russia's warm ties with the United States. [link]

It was a small courtroom near the Pyrennees that, in the last few days of 1997, put France's successful new local currency on the map. Three locals, all of them born and bred in the UK -- Sarah Two, Roger Evans and John MacCullough -- were on trial in the local court in Foix, in the rural Ariege departement, for what the prosecutor called "working illegally".

It wasn't that they were illegal immigrants or anything -- these are, after all, the days of the EU Single Market. Their crime was to have been paid for work using a local homegrown do-it-yourself money.

The men had repaired Sarah's roof, but they hadn't been paid in francs -- the "acceptable" currency recognised by the global economy. They had been paid with 2,000 "grains of salt", the local currency organised by a growing movement in France known as SEL, French for salt but also the acronym of the Societe d'Echanges Local.

Maybe it was because Sarah Two was a member of the local vegan collective that she enraged a local farmer -- though she was also a flautist, drum-maker and former postmistress from High Wycombe. Either way, he reported her to the authorities and the three of them were soon facing a tough sentence of up to 248 hours of community service.

"This kind of behaviour upsets traditional structures and institutionalises a parallel economy," said the lawyer representing an angry federation of local builders. "It is destructive to our entire political and social system." [link]

"When I made a strip about people getting blown up trying to retrieve food aid packages, it felt like a wave of relief just swept through me, like I was finally looking at the comic I had been searching for, or like I had summed up all the pain and absurdity I had been feeling using these three little stupid cartoon panels," Rees said. "It was a powerful moment."

[...]

Rees says he started "Get Your War On" when he became agitated by current events and, in the country's criticism-is-unpatriotic climate, he couldn't find anyone willing to joke about how bad the situation was getting.

{...]

In another strip, workers on a coffee break discuss the president's motivations for launching a war. "How psyched is George W. Bush to defeat Saddam Hussein for his dad?" a male worker asks.

A female co-worker, brandishing a donut, responds: "I wish I could do something like that for my dad! George H.W. Bush is gonna be SO damn proud of his son! He'll probably put Saddam's death certificate on the fridge! I was a C student!"

After Sept. 11, as the news became grimmer, readers may have noticed Rees' officeworkers growing progressively more erratic. Allusions to alcohol and drug consumption peppered the strip, limning the depressed, ennui-drenched state of a "nation in crisis." When one officeworker asks another how he's "enduring his freedom," his friend responds: "OK, I guess. I drink myself into a stupor every night. I can't get out of bed because I'm afraid of what I'll hear on the radio. My daughter is still wetting her bed. And I'm supposed to fly to Chicago for a meeting on Thursday."

"That's what I like to hear!" responds his interlocutor, in a Prozac-induced haze.

One of the interesting stories in this--and this is one that a lot of progressives don't want to hear, but it's the truth--is that John Ashcroft gave me a call and said, what are your concerns? And I told him my concerns about the computer stuff and sneak and peek searches. He said, you know, I think you might be right. The White House overruled him, which is a fundamental point here. Anyone who wants to focus their fire on Ashcroft is missing the point. This is the Bush Administration. Ashcroft is its instrument.

What happened in the Senate was that even though the Attorney General was going to allow these changes to make it moderately better, the Administration insisted, and Daschle went along with pushing this through. I finally got to offer the amendments late at night, and I got up there and I made my arguments. And a lot of Senators came around to me, who, of course, voted for the bill, and said, you know, I think you're right. Then Daschle comes out and says, I want you to vote against this amendment and all the other Feingold amendments; don't even consider the merits. This was one of the most fundamental pieces of legislation relating to the Bill of Rights in the history of our country! It was a low point for me in terms of being a Democrat and somebody who believes in civil liberties. [link]

...there is a welter of material that points to the Bush Administration's obstruction and neglect of important leads to link bin Laden to operations in the United States. Moreover, in the months and weeks leading up to 9/11 there were warnings and signs that some members of the Administration and its national security apparatus were anticipating something horrendous. In the aftermath of 9/11 the Bush Administration mobilized the war machine and repressive legislation to promote policies that secured its economic and ideological agenda. Thus, a more intriguing and significant question is: in light of what the Bush Administration gained from the fall-out of 9/11, how was that gain embedded in the actions and inactions by the Bush Administration prior to 9/11? To ask the question about the reaping of political advantage from the tragedy of 9/11 need not assume that there was a conspiracy by the Bush Administration; merely that certain players acted out of their personal interests at the expense of the safety and security of the nation. [link]

Twenty-nine million gallons of petroleum escapes into North American ocean waters each year because of human activities or carelessness, yet only a tiny fraction of that environmentally devastating pollution is due to pipeline ruptures or massive oil tanker spills.

Instead, nearly 85 percent of those spills of gasoline and oil involve land-based runoffs from cars and trucks, fuel dumping by commercial airplane pilots and emissions from small boats and jet skis, according to a study released today by the National Academies' National Research Council. [link]

shrub whines, "But I'm Fighting A War! I AM! I AM!" *sound of foot stomping repeatedly*

Nothing like DeLay's laissez-faire policies have been heard in Congress since the earliest days of America's industrial revolution when robber baron industrialists saw cheap labor as an indispensable ingredient for growth. A financial journalist (who asked that his name not be used in this report) described DeLay's free-market policies this way:

"If there were a capitalist equivalent of the Taliban, Tom DeLay would lead it. He has hijacked a kind of Reaganesque free-market rhetoric to turn back the clock on such laws as those protecting workers and the environment, and those that require transparency in business dealing. His policies have enriched and benefited a handful of powerful corporate and political insiders who in turn, have fueled his political machine."

Millions of words have been written over the last decade detailing Tom DeLay's many controversial friends and policies -- most recently his strong ties to Enron. But even the most shocking of these revelations has failed to stop or even slow his rise to power within his party and Congress.

ACLU president Nadine Strossen once described Cato's creed as, "Turn right at money, turn left at sex, and straight ahead is utopia." The fact that the Left and libertarians share common ground is hardly news to Cato's executive vice-president David Boaz. Hundreds of dyed-in-wool lefties gathered to hear Boaz speak last month at the annual convention of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) -- and no one was booing.

Boaz has been a board member of NORML for years, working closely with progressive icons like Barbara Ehrenreich and Keith Stroup. "We've known about these areas for some time," he says, rattling off a list of other issues, including free speech, the rights of accused and immigration. Their "no borders" position made Cato a natural ally for Latino and immigrant rights groups, which worked together through the 90s to soften INS regulations.

But if Cato turns left on a lot more than just sex, it doesn't make its swings to the right any less alarming. Its blind devotion to the Market puts most religious fanatics to shame. Libertarians have opposed virtually every piece of environmental regulation, mercilessly attacked public welfare, and are every multinational's best friend. "They take a hyper-individualistic position," says Paul Ray, author of the book "Cultural Creatives."

Dear Mr. Osse,

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The Spice Must Flow...

Suicide bombs killing innocent citizens must be unequivocally condemned; they are immoral acts, and their perpetrators should be sent to jail. But they cannot be compared to State terrorism carried out by the Israeli Government. The former are individual acts of despair of a people that sees no future, vastly ignored by an unfair and distorted international public opinion. The latter are cold and "rational" decisions of a State and a military apparatus of occupation, well equipped, financed and backed by the only superpower
in the world.

Yet in the public debate, State terrorism and individual suicide bombs are not even considered as comparable cases of terrorism. The State terror and war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli Government are legitimized as "self-defense", while Arafat, even under siege, is demanded to arrest "terrorists."