Another socialist blog

Police in Wilmington, Delaware have developed a database of future criminals, mostly nonwhites, who are considered likely to break the law. Many of these suspects have squeaky-clean records, so it’s not clear how this is advance over the more traditional practice of criminalizing anyone caught DWB (Driving While Black).

This reminds me very little of Philip Kerr’s science-fiction novel A Philosophical Investigation, about a government database of likely serial killers. In that story, a man finds his own name on the list and decides to kill everyone else on the list.

NPR reported Friday (audio here, transcript here) that Palestinian civilians are being used as human shields by the Israeli army. Wednesday a 19-year-old named Nidal Duralma died of a gunshot wound to the head while acting under orders from Israeli soldiers. This has been army policy for “quite a long time,” according to NPR.

There have also been reports that Palestinians have been used to detect booby-traps in houses.

Even the Israeli Supreme Court has outlawed these practices, but the army has continued anyway. At least one Israeli Cabinet minister says there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Tomorrow’s Bush administration photo-op will be a bogus “economic forum” in Texas, a give-and-take conversation to which no administration opponents have been invited.

The official Washington line is that we aren’t bigots. The fact that Muslims all over the world are on the wrong end of U.S. guns is coincidence, we are asked to believe, and has nothing to do with anti-Islamic bigotry.

Enter Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, apparently not a team player, who says that making college students read a book about Islam is comparable to teaching Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in 1941. He questions the purpose of having students study “our enemy’s religion”.

He is joined by Rev. Franklin Graham, son of and designated successor to the famous Billy Graham, who calls Islam as a whole “wicked and violent.”

I haven’t used the word “obscene” for a while, and this seems a perfect opportunity. George W has used the rescue of nine miners in Pennsylvania to drum up support for his so-called “War on Terrorism.” What possible connection could these two events have to each other, you ask?

The Boston Globe quotes Bush as having said that the “spirit of America” rescued the miners. Quoth the President: “It’s that spirit that’s … going to prevail in the big challenges we face around the world, the challenge of making sure that we hunt down every terrorist and bring them to justice, because we love freedom.”

Leaving aside the disgusting attempt to twist someone else’s nearly-fatal adventure to his own political advantage, W seems to have made an odd choice this time. After all, if it were safe to go to work in this country, those guys wouldn’t have needed to be rescued in the first place. The Bush administration has stopped action on 29 pending job safety initiatives, including 13 from the Mine Safety and Health Administration.