Bohemian Mama

On Saturday, Labor MPs have demanded that British Prime Minister confront the Commons over the use of the deadly gas in Fallujah.

Halifax Labor MP Alice Mahon said: "I am calling on Mr. Blair to make an emergency statement to the Commons to explain why this is happening. It begs the question: 'Did we know about this hideous weapon's use in Iraq?'"

Furious critics have also demanded that Blair threatens the U.S. to pullout British forces from Iraq unless the U.S. stops using the world’s deadliest weapon.

The United Nations banned the use of the napalm gas against civilians in 1980 after pictures of a naked wounded girl in Vietnam shocked the world.

The United States, which didn't endorse the convention, is the only nation in the world still using the deadly weapon.

American pilots dropped the controversial incendiary agent napalm on Iraqi troops during the advance on Baghdad. The attacks caused massive fireballs that obliterated several Iraqi positions.

The Pentagon denied using napalm at the time, but Marine pilots and their commanders have confirmed that they used an upgraded version of the weapon against dug-in positions. They said napalm, which has a distinctive smell, was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy.

A 1980 UN convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a terrifying mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon. It was employed notoriously against both civilian and military targets in the Vietnam war.

The upgraded weapon, which uses kerosene rather than petrol, was used in March and April, when dozens of napalm bombs were dropped near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris river, south of Baghdad.

Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut seems to be the only Republican who says he didn't support the move when it was put to a voice vote today. And he says he was one of only a "handful" of Republican House members who also spoke out against the change in today's closed door meeting.

Here's my question. And it's a genuine question since I don't know the answer. Does the Republican caucus currently have a rule which would force DeLay to relinquish his post after conviction if he remains free on appeal?

The earlier rule would have made such a rule superfluous since any leadership office had to be surrendered on indictment. But with that changed, is there such a rule? And if not, does the GOP caucus plan on imposing one?

And in the interest of completeness, is there any stage in the criminal justice process when a GOP caucus member in a leadership office has to resign his post? If the judge sentences DeLay to wearing one of those radio beacon collars around his ankle so that he doesn't leave the vicinity of the Capitol, could he continue as leader then too? Or would that be too much?

Several EPA scientists expressed outrage about the study, saying it unfairly targets low-income families, attempting to lure them into an agreement with high-tech gadgets when they may not fully understand the health consequences for their children. In an email obtained by the Washington Post, Troy Pierce, an EPA life scientist in Atlanta, said the study "goes against everything we recommend at EPA concerning use of [pesticides] related to children. Paying families in Florida to have their homes routinely treated with pesticides is very sad when we at EPA know that [pesticide management] should always be used to protect children."

The selection criteria for the study requires that a participant must spray, or have pesticides sprayed, inside their homes routinely. CCE is concerned that due to the demographic of the participants, they may be easily persuaded to increase their pesticide use to receive monetary or other forms of compensation.

"It has clearly been designed to target lower income families and to endanger the health of their children, making it grossly unethical," said Maureen Dolan Program Coordinator CCE. She questioned the motives of the study which has received US$2 million from the American Chemistry Council which represents 135 companies including pesticide manufacturers.

Look at our famously blue West Coast. But for the cities--Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego--the West Coast would be a deep, dark red. The same is true for other nominally blue states. Illinois is almost entirely red--Chicago turns the state blue. Michigan is almost entirely red--its cities turn it blue. And on and on. What tips these states into the blue column? Their urban areas do, their big, populous counties.

It's time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the heart of urban America. If the cities elected our president, if urban voters determined the outcome, John F. Kerry would have won by a landslide.

Urban voters are the Democratic base.

[...]

It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states, too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers.

The Republicans have the federal government--for now. But we've got Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City (Bloomberg is a Republican in name only), and every college town in the country. We're everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the shitholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We'll take Manhattan.

Yesterday I got a direct mail solicitation from Angel Tree, an annual program by Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship that collects and distributes Christmas toys for the children of prisoners.

It's a nice program, well conceived and well run. The toys are collected from church or business groups, just like with Toys for Tots, and then are distributed to the children through their parents. Lately, Angel Tree has expanded to include mentoring and camping programs for these children. Like child-sponsorship programs, Angel Tree recognizes that its easier to get people to give to help the needy by making them feel warm and fuzzy about it, and the program cannily harnesses that sentiment for a good cause.

I used to plug Angel Tree every year back when I worked for the "alternative evangelical" Prism magazine. But I'm reluctant to do so this year. That reluctance, in part, is because Colson has spent the past year as an outspoken campaigner for George W. Bush.

Why were we in this fight in the first place? Because terrible leaders are doing terrible things to our country and calling this wonderful. Because radical reactionaries are trying to impose their imperialist schemes on whoever they wish and calling this just. Because amoral oligarchs are determined to enhance their slice of the economic pie and calling this the natural order. Because flag-wrapped ideologues want to chop up civil liberties and call this security. Because myopians are in charge of America’s future.

We lost on 11/2. Came in second place in a crucial battle whose damage may still be felt decades from now. The despicable record of our foes makes our defeat good reason for disappointment and fear. Even without a mandate over the past four years, they have behaved ruthlessly at home and abroad, failing to listen to objections even from members of their own party. With the mandate of a 3.6-million vote margin, one can only imagine how far their arrogance will take them in their efforts to dismantle 70 years of social legislation and 50+ years of diplomacy.

Still, Tuesday was only one round in the struggle. It’s only the end if we let it be. I am not speaking solely of challenging the votes in Ohio or elsewhere – indeed, I think even successful challenges are unlikely to change the ultimate outcome, which is not to say I don’t think the Democrats should make the attempt. And I’m not just talking about evaluating in depth what went wrong, then building on what was started in the Dean campaign to reinvigorate the grassroots of the Democratic Party, although I also think we must do that. I’m talking about the broader political realm, the realm outside of electoral politics that has always pushed America to live up to its best ideals and overcome its most grotesque contradictions.

Not a few people have spoken in the past few hours about an Americanist authoritarianism emerging out of the country’s current leadership. I think that’s not far-fetched. Fighting this requires that we stick together, not bashing each other, not fleeing or hiding or yielding to the temptation of behaving as if “what’s the use?”

It’s tough on the psyche to be beaten.Throughout our country’s history, abolitionists, suffragists, union organizers, anti-racists, antiwarriors, civil libertarians, feminists and gay rights activists have challenged the majority of Americans to take off their blinders. Each succeeded one way or another, but not overnight, and certainly not without serious setbacks.