ARTS & FARCES internet

Yesterday the Saint Paul City Council voted overwhelmingly to join its sibling city across the river and more than 230 other cities that have passed resolutions condemning the most invasive aspects of the USA PATRIOT Act. The Saint Paul resolution mirrors the model adopted by the National League of Cities.

The 6-to-1 vote came after Council President Dan Bostrom, who cast the single vote in opposition, circulated a list of casualties from the 11 September terrorist attacks. “It’s an evil world out there, people,” Bostrom, a former police officer, told his colleagues. “For us to sit here at this table and in effect handcuff people authorized to protect us, I have a very serious problem with it.”

Bostrom also distributed a letter from U.S. Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger, urging the council to delay taking up the resolution. “I am disappointed that the council has not sought the advice of me or other appropriate federal authorities regarding the content of the Act and its implementation in Minnesota,” wrote Heffelfinger in his letter.

There’s an old joke about the difference between a Democrat and a Republican being that the Republican will tell you he’s going to screw you and then does so while the Democrat will, with a straight face, tell you that he won’t and then proceeds to do so. Smiling like Snidely Whiplash all the while.

Lying has apparently become an acceptable way of conducting business in the wake of last year’s parade of corporate scandals. Witness Northwest Airlines, who last Friday acknowledged that it had, in fact, disclosed confidential customer information to the U.S. government as part of a secret security project after adamantly declaring that it “did not provide that type of information to anyone.” Northwest’s assertion was in response to news of JetBlue Airways providing customer information to a similar, but presumably different, government project last September. A day later, Northwest chief executive Richard Anderson told the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, “Northwest Airlines will not share customer information, as JetBlue Airways has done.” Customer information disclosed in both cases included names, credit card numbers, addresses, and telephone numbers.

The government project by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Ames Research Center was an exploration into whether data mining of customer information “could improve assessments of threats posed by passengers,” according to a Washington Post account that was published on its website late yesterday. The project was reportedly left unfunded at the end of last year because it failed to produce any verifiably useful results.

If this isn’t the weirdest political cycle of my generation, it’s certainly in the top two. This morning Michael Moore came out and endorsed Wesley Clark, at least for the primary season. This appears to be a shocker until you stop and think about it. Who better to get us out of a war we should never have started than a career general who knows a thing or two about war being the absolute last resort. And after touring the country, Moore says he’s seen first-hand that Clark is the candidate who can defeat Bush.

I’ve not given Clark much thought as a candidate, except I’ll readily acknowledge the idea of a presidential debate between a retired four-star general and a deserter makes me grin. And Clark’s proposal to not tax the income of a family of four making less than US$50,000 annually (recouping the difference with a 5% tax on annual incomes greater than US$1 million and increased corporate tax rates) is a great idea.

Clark also probably knows how to cut the war budget, something he’s pledged to do.

What do you do with an information minister who tells lies so unbelievable that he becomes a cult figure? Give him a job as a television gasbag, of course.

The Guardian is reporting that Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraq’s information minister under Saddam Hussein, has been hired by Abu Dhabi television as an “expert commentator.” al-Sahaf is known mostly for the outrageous lies he told to journalists during the early stages of the war on Iraq.

Nicknamed “Comical Ali,” al-Sahaf is best remembered for his on-air statement from the roof of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad as U.S. tanks rolled into the capitol city in the background and Iraqi troops scrambled for safety. “Baghdad is safe. The battle is still going on,” al-Sahaf spun his yarn. “The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad. Don’t believe those liars.”

The Guardian cheekily reports, “He later surrendered to American troops but was released after being deemed insignificant.”

Saddam Hussein kept the Iraqi populace in line through the use of a secret police force called the mukhabarat. The Bush administration apparently believes what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and has directed the CIA to create a secret police force to root out the remnants of Ba’athist insurgency. So says Julian Coman in a Telegraph article this morning.

Costing US$3 billion over the next three years, with the funds coming out of the CIA’s budget, the initiative is being compared to the Phoenix program in Vietnam, which “sought to destroy the civilian infrastructure supporting the Vietcong through assassinations and abductions secretly authorised by Washington,” according to Coman’s report who got a former chief of CIA counterterrorism to admit as much on the record.

Coman clarifies the purpose of the initiative as a clumsy sleight-of-hand maneuver (pay no attention to that assassin behind the curtain):

“The force is intended to take on a crucial role for Washington in post-Saddam Iraq. The Pentagon and CIA have told the White House that the organisation will allow America to maintain control over the direction of the country as sovereignty is handed over to the Iraqi people during the course of this year.”

Coman goes on to quote John Pike, an expert on classified military budgets at Washington-based Global Security:

“The creation of a well-functioning local secret police, that in effect is a branch of the CIA, is part of the general handover strategy. If you are in control of the secret police in a country then you don’t really have to worry too much about who the local council appoints to collect the garbage.”

President Bush II seems clearly incapable of deviating from the modern American foreign policy of setting up heinous dictatorships and then knocking them down.