Oy vey.

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How did the Congress pass legislation that not only cut EPA out of chemical plant safety, but also ensured that the job would be given to the Department of Homeland Security, which has neither the authority nor the commitment to do it right?

The job was done by Philip Perry, general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who is married to Vice President Cheney’s daughter Elizabeth. The sordid details are Art Levine’s new article in the Washington Monthly, “Dick Cheney’s Dangerous Son-in-Law.�?

Treating them like this when they’re wounded.

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Villagers in southwestern China are scratching their heads over the county government’s decision to paint an entire barren mountainside green.

Workers who began spraying Laoshou mountain last August told villagers they were doing so on orders of the county government but were not told why, media reports said Wednesday.

Some villagers guessed officials of the surrounding Fumin county, whose office building faces the mountain, were trying to change the area’s feng shui _ the ancient Chinese belief of harmonizing one’s physical environment for maximum health and financial benefit.

Others speculated it was an unusual attempt at “greening” the area in keeping with calls for more attention to environmental protection. Photographs of the mountain showed the exposed rock covered in an artificial green the color of Astroturf looming over houses against a scrubby background.

The official Xinhua News Agency estimated the cost of the paint job at 470,000 yuan ($60,600) and quoted villagers saying that if spent on actual plants and trees, the money could have restored a far greater area of barren mountain.

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An official in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, where two bombs were exploded recently, blamed the US and Britain for being involved in the terrorist acts in this southeastern province, FARS News Agency reported Sunday.

Director General for the political affairs of Sistan and Balouchestan governorate Soltan-Ali Mir called on the representatives of the United Nations, Human Rights watch and other international bodies to dispatch envoys to Iran to observe the documents and evidences substantiating involvement of the Untied States and Britain in the recent terrorist attacks, including the blast and shootout last Wednesday.

“The weapons that the terrorists have used are US and British made. Moreover, the arrested terrorist agents have confessed that they have been trained by English-speaking people,” he noted.

“The US and Britain, which allege to be pioneers in the campaign against terrorism, are themselves actually defending the terrorists, training them and providing them with the needed media and financial supports and facilities,” FNA quoted Mir as saying.

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One of the best ways of controlling dissent may be to ensure that it never has a chance to develop in the first place. This can be achieved by preventing people from obtaining information that is contrary to state policies and agendas – if they only know what you want them to know, they are more likely to support the policies you are pushing.

In Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich, Ingo Muller describes how some of this played out in Nazi Germany during World War II. One of the most significant laws was the “Extraordinary Measures Related to Broadcasting” which made it a crime, punishable by time in prison, to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. People who listened and passed information along to others were accused of undermining “the capacity of the German people to resist” and could be sentenced to death:

In one such case, a Special Court acquitted a landowner who had informed one of his hired hands on March 27, 1941, that the government of Yugoslavia had been overthrown after joining the so-called Triple Pact (signed by Italy, Japan, and Germany) on March 25 in Vienna. This piece of news was broadcast throughout the Reich itself during the evening hours of March 27, but the defendant had heard it shortly before on a Swiss radio station. The Special Court was of the opinion that the report was not likely to threaten the capacity of the German people to resist, since it was not only accurate, but broadcast only a few hours later in Germany as well and was not unexpected, as the internal political difficulties of the Yugoslavian government had been well known when the pact was signed.

The Fourth Criminal Panel of the Supreme Court nevertheless reversed this acquittal and demanded a penitentiary sentence. The justices determined that for the defendant to be found guilty it was not necessary for “damage to have occurred or for there to have been a particularly negative effect or even for resistance to have in fact been weakened. The likelihood or threat referred to in the decree is inherently present in all news which . . . in its content can be detrimental to the German people in their vital struggle. . . The time and form for making unfavorable news known must be left to the authorities. The fact that the news is later made known by German sources. . . does not render an act which has already been committed exempt from punishment.”

The premise behind this decision is that people don’t have a right to information, and in particular to information that is unfavorable to the government’s plans. Instead, the government has the authority to determine which information people deserve to know and which should be kept from them — including information which might affect them.

This might sound like something that would only happen in an authoritarian society, but even in America we have people who think in similar lines. There are no bans on listening to or spreading information from foreign news services, but there are attacks on American media who broadcast information that the government wants to keep secret — including information, like domestic spying, which might affect you directly. Once again, the premise is that you don’t have a right to learn what the government might be doing to you or in your name.

Franz Vollmer, a senior official in the Ministry of Justice, included in his summary of judicial decisions for 1943-1944 a whole catalogue of remarks which now ranked as capital crimes:

“Not to be tolerated and as a general principle deserving of the death penalty… are remarks of the following kind: the war is lost; Germany or the Führer started the war frivolously or to no purpose, and ought to lose it; the Nazi party should or would resign and clear the way for peace negotiations, as the Italians have done; a military dictatorship ought to be established and would be able to make peace; people ought to work more slowly, so as to bring an end to the war; the spread of Bolschevism would not be so bad as the propaganda makes out, and would harm only leading Nazis; the British or Americans would stop the Bolsheviks at the German border; verbal propaganda or letters to the front urging soldiers to throwaway their guns point them at their own officers; saying that the Führer is sick, incapable, a butcher of men, and so on.”

There are certain similarities between this and something said by Karl Rove in 2006: “It’s odd to me that most of these critics are journalists and columnists. Perhaps they don’t like sharing the field of play. Perhaps they want to draw attention away from the corrosive role their coverage has played focusing attention on process and not substance.”

Here, “corrosive” refers to the ways in which the free press has directed criticism and doubt towards the Bush administration. One of the most disturbing themes repeated so often by the Christian Right in America has been the idea that distrust of the government and dissent from the administration qualifies as a lack of patriotism — or even a sign that one is on the side of the enemies.

There is a significant amount of insecurity behind such attitudes — both on the part of those in power, trying to avoid critical scrutiny, and those out of power who are trying to provide justifications for why the powerful shouldn’t be scrutinized more closely. We should care about the early signs and examples of such attitudes because the direction they lead to is a place none of us want to go.

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It’s about a third of the size the Rev. John Wilson first imagined, but the cross the pastor of West County Assembly of God has been waiting five years to erect along Highway 40 will finally go up this morning, reaching 481/2 feet toward the sky.

“It’s not what we wanted, but it’s what the government authorities permitted,” Wilson said. “And it’s God’s will for us.”

What Wilson really wanted was a 132-foot cross, one that “could easily be seen all the way along 40.” He pictured westbound drivers seeing the cross as they crossed the Mason Road overpass and being inspired.

“We believe the Bible,” said Wilson, “and in the Bible, Jesus says, ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’”

But not everyone in Town and Country agreed that a huge cross next to Highway 40 was an inspired idea, and in 2004 the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission voted against recommending the cross. A year later, the commission voted against recommending a 110-foot version of the cross.

Last year, Wilson lowered his expectations, and the height of his proposed cross, to 99 feet. This time he took his case directly to the city’s aldermen and hoped for a supermajority approval that would overrule the Planning and Zoning Commission. Then things got ugly.

“The handwriting was on the wall,” Wilson said. At the first public hearing, residents “brought up every kind of issue, from safety hazards to environmental problems.” Wilson said he received hate mail, which he turned over to local police, from an outfit calling itself The Hate Group.

Based on what he heard from the community, Wilson decided to try to include Town and Country residents in the process. He sent out 208 invitations to West County Assembly of God’s immediate neighbors, asking them to come to the church one night to discuss possible solutions. “We wanted to find common ground,” he said. Three people showed up.

So, how’s that common ground going? My guess is the immediate neighbors were meeting some place else to discuss how to build 50 foot ‘S’, ‘h’, and ‘i’ letters to the left of that giant ‘t’.

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People in the U.S. know more about basic science today than they did two decades ago, good news that researchers say is tempered by an unsettling growth in the belief in pseudoscience such as astrology and visits by extraterrestrial aliens.

In 1988 only about 10 percent knew enough about science to understand reports in major newspapers, a figure that grew to 28 percent by 2005, according to Jon D. Miller, a Michigan State University professor. He presented his findings Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The improvement largely reflects the requirement that all college students have at least some science courses, Miller said. This way, they can better keep up with new developments through the media.

A panel of researchers expressed concern that people are giving increasing credence to pseudoscience such as the visits of space aliens, lucky numbers and horoscopes.

In addition, these researchers noted an increase in college students who report they are “unsure” about creationism as compared with evolution.

More recent generations know more factual material about science, said Carol Susan Losh, an associate professor at Florida State University. But, she said, when it comes to pseudoscience, “the news is not good.”

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Campaigners against genetically modified crops in Britain last are calling for trials of GM potatoes this spring to be halted after releasing more evidence of links with cancers in laboratory rats.

UK Greenpeace activists said the findings, obtained from Russian trials after an eight-year court battle with the biotech industry, vindicated research by Dr Arpad Pusztai, whose work was criticised by the Royal Society and the Netherlands State Institute for Quality Control.

The disclosure last night of the Russian study on the GM Watch website led to calls for David Miliband, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to withdraw permission for new trials on GM potatoes to go ahead at secret sites in the UK this spring. Alan Simpson, a Labour MP and green campaigner, said: “These trials should be stopped. The research backs up the work of Arpad Pusztai and it shows that he was the victim of a smear campaign by the biotech industry. There has been a cover-up over these findings and the Government should not be a party to that.”

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The author of ForestBlog, a blogging tool, has discovered that the MPAA was using his code in violation of his license. He gives the code away for free, but requires that users link back to his site and keep his name on the software. The MPAA deleted all credits and copyright notices from his work, and used it without permission. They ripped him off:

Way back in October last year whilst going through the website referals list for another of my sites I stumbled across this link. That’s right, my blogging software is being used by the MPAA (Motion picture Association of America); probably one of the most hated organisations known to the internet. Cool, I thought, until I had a look around and saw that all of the back links to my main site had been removed with nary a mention in the source code!

Now, as Patrick Robin (the software author) notes, this probably wasn’t the outcome of a high-level board meeting wherein the executive committee decided to rip him off. It was more likely the work of a lazy Web person at the MPAA who was cutting corners at work.

But the MPAA believes that employers should be held responsible for employees’ copyright infringements. They want you to know that if you download movies at work, your employer will also be named in the suit. Infringe as we say, not as we do.

[Update:]

. Here’s a section of the email I received from Richard who I think is the Director of Application Development ast the MPAA:

The material has been removed from our Web server.

* No Web links were ever provided to the blog.
* The blog was never assigned a domain name.
* The blog was never advertised to the public in any way.
* The material on the server was a proof of concept awaiting approval to move into production.
* The blog was only ever used for testing purposes.
* Should we have decided to make the move to production, then we would have paid the 25 Pounds that would have authorized us to run a version of the blog without the logos and links.

Whilst that all sounds fair enough but I doubt I’d get away with pirating a few movies providing I didn’t advertise it and only used them for testing purposes. hmmm!

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A fast-thinking pilot, with the help of passengers, fooled a gunman who had hijacked a jetliner flying from Africa to the Canary Islands, braking hard upon landing then quickly accelerating to knock the man down so travellers could pounce on him, Spanish officials said Friday.

A lone gunman brandishing two pistols hijacked the Air Mauritania Boeing 737, carrying 71 passengers and a crew of eight, Thursday evening shortly after it took off from the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott for Gran Canaria, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, with a planned stopover in Nouadhibou in northern Mauritania.

Speaking to the gunman during the hijacking, the pilot realized the man did not speak French. So he used the plane’s public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: brake hard upon landing, then speed up abruptly. The idea was to catch the hijacker off balance, and have crew members and men sitting in the front rows of the plane jump on him, the Spanish official said.

The pilot also warned women and children to move to the back of the plane in preparation for the subterfuge, the official said.

It worked. The man was standing in the middle aisle when the pilot carried out his maneuver, and he fell to the floor, dropping one of his two 7mm pistols. Flight attendants then threw boiling water from a coffee machine in his face and at his chest, and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said.

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The Concerned “Women” for America have a bone to pick with former NBA player Tim Hardaway. You might recall that last week Hardaway came out and said in no uncertain terms that he hates gays and that he is homophobic. He later apologized for the remarks.

Concerned Woman Matt Barber called Hardaway’s remarks “unfortunate and inappropriate” because they “provide political fodder for those who wish to paint all opposition to the homosexual lifestyle as being rooted in ‘hate.’” As if any fodder were actually needed?

People don’t set up organizations to oppose, oppress and subjugate minority groups out of love, Matt.

Barber went on to lovingly say, “It’s perfectly natural for people to be repelled by disordered sexual behaviors that are both unnatural, and immoral.” But Concerned Woman Matt Barber doesn’t hate gays, you see. It’s all just part of the homosexual agenda/conspiracy to make you think that.

Of course the success of the anti-gay hate industry groups depends heavily on being able to put on a facade of legitimacy and normalcy. Maybe what Hardaway needs to do is change his middle name to “Family” and pretend that his hatred for gays is really for their own good, as anti-gay organizations like to do.