On the morning of Nov. 2 in a busy street in east Amsterdam, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri pulled out a gun and shot controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was riding a bike to his office. Van Gogh hit the ground and stumbled across the street to a nearby building. He didn't make it. As the Moroccan strode toward him, van Gogh shouted, "We can still talk about it! Don't do it! Don't do it." But the Moroccan didn't stop. He shot him again, slit van Gogh's throat and stuck a letter to his chest with a knife. He was slaughtered like an animal, witnesses said. "Cut like a tire," said one. Van Gogh, the Dutch master's great-grand-nephew, was 47 years old.

After shooting van Gogh, Bouyeri fled to a nearby park, where he was arrested after a gunfight with the police. One police officer was wounded and Bouyeri himself was shot in the leg and taken to a police hospital.

The letter pinned to van Gogh's chest contained accusations aimed not at him but at Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee and liberal parliamentarian, who for years has been fighting for women's rights in the Netherlands' widespread Islamic community. Earlier this year, Hirsi Ali and van Gogh had made "Submission," a short fiction film that was shown on Dutch public television. In the film, a Muslim woman is forced into an arranged marriage, abused by her husband, raped by her uncle and then brutally punished for adultery. Her body, visible through transparent garments, shows painted verses from the Koran. The film, van Gogh said in a TV interview, was "intended to provoke discussion on the position of enslaved Muslim women. It's directed at the fanatics, the fundamentalists."
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Much of American "productivity," Rifkin suggests, is accounted for by economic activity that might be better described as wasteful: military spending; the endlessly expanding police and prison bureaucracies; the spiraling cost of healthcare; suburban sprawl; the fast-food industry and its inevitable corollary, the weight-loss craze. Meaningful comparisons of living standards, he says, consistently favor the Europeans. In France, for instance, the work week is 35 hours and most employees take 10 to 12 weeks off every year, factors that clearly depress GDP. Yet it takes a John Locke heart of stone to say that France is worse off as a nation for all that time people spend in the countryside downing du vin rouge et du Camembert with friends and family [...]
European children are consistently better educated; the United States would rank ninth in the EU in reading, ninth in scientific literacy, and 13th in math. Twenty-two percent of American children grow up in poverty, which means that our country ranks 22nd out of the 23 industrialized nations, ahead of only Mexico and behind all 15 of the pre-2004 EU countries. What's more horrifying: the statistic itself or the fact that no American politician to the right of Dennis Kucinich would ever address it?

Perhaps more surprisingly, European business has not been strangled by the EU welfare state; in fact, quite the opposite is true. Europe has surpassed the United States in several high-tech and financial sectors, including wireless technology, grid computing and the insurance industry. The EU has a higher proportion of small businesses than the U.S., and their success rate is higher. American capitalists have begun to pay attention to all this. In Reid's book, Ford Motor Co. chairman Bill Ford explains that the company's Volvo subsidiary is more profitable than its U.S. manufacturing operation, even though wages and benefits are significantly higher in Sweden. Government-subsidized healthcare, child care, pensions and other social supports, Ford says, more than make up for the difference.

The new EU constitution, currently being considered by the member states, is an unwieldy, jargon-laden document that runs to 265 pages in English (and even more in Spanish and French). It should also serve as an inspiration to progressives around the world. It bars capital punishment in all 25 nations and defines such things as universal healthcare, child care, paid annual leave, parental leave, housing for the poor, and equal treatment for gays and lesbians as fundamental human rights. Most of these are still hotly contested questions in the United States; as Rifkin says, this document all by itself makes the European Union the world leader in the human rights debate. It is the first governing document that aspires to universality, "with rights and responsibilities that encompass the totality of human existence on Earth."

"Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage," Dobson said.

"It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth."

Dobson urged rally attendees to reach out to homosexuals and "bring them to Jesus."

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

1st Place: "Life Doesn't Come From Non-Life"
Patricia Lewis (grade 8) did an experiment to see if life can evolve from non-life. Patricia placed all the non-living ingredients of life - carbon (a charcoal briquet), purified water, and assorted minerals (a multi-vitamin) - into a sealed glass jar. The jar was left undisturbed, being exposed only to sunlight, for three weeks. (Patricia also prayed to God not to do anything miraculous during the course of the experiment, so as not to disqualify the findings.) No life evolved. This shows that life cannot come from non-life through natural processes.

2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"
Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.

Honorable Mention:
"Mousetrap Reduced To Pile Of Functionless Parts" - Kevin Parker (grade 7)
"Dinosaur & Man Walked Together" - Donny Findlay (grade 6)
"Rocks Can't Evolve, Where Did They Come From Mr. Darwin?" - Anna Reed (grade 6)

ON THE COMING AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CIVIL WAR (ARCW)

War is hell. Little understood aphorism.

THIS MAY BE YOUR FIRST NOTICE OF THE COMING AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CIVIL WAR (ARCW). If so, you should date and preserve this warning. Then your distant descendants (maybe the "Daughters of the ARCW") can have something to be smug about--in the unlikely event that they, and this notice, survive the fires, and anybody can still read.
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Religious conservatives have won on an agenda of bringing Christian dogma to a courtroom near you. Weather it be abortion, FCC regulations, marriage equality, or your choice of religion, the right is intent on choosing for you how you will live. Our liberal leaders have shot back with a resounding silence. Their fear of being labeled immoral has stymied them.

It is time we, as liberals, stop hiding behind Supreme Court decisions older than we are, abandoning homosexuals, and battling for the Bible belt at all costs. We would do better arguing for those want the freedom to listening to Howard Stern, have an abortion, choose a lover of the same sex, buy pornography, pierce and tattoo whatever we want, or pray to Buddha. Why should we be forced to cease and desist when we hurt no one else? Howard Stern is already off the air. The possibility of overturning Roe is no longer remote; it is now likely. Not long ago this would be dismissed as hysteria, but with John Ashcroft in control of the Justice department and Bush claiming leadership of the nation, this administration will work to limit our moral freedom.
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A MANDATE FOR CULTURE WAR: That's Bill Bennett's conclusion. He won't be the only one. What we're seeing, I think, is a huge fundamentalist Christian revival in this country, a religious movement that is now explicitly political as well. It is unsurprising, of course, given the uncertainty of today's world, the devastating attacks on our country, and the emergence of so many more liberal cultures in urban America. And it is completely legitimate in this country for such views to be represented in public policy, however much I disagree with them. But the intensity of the passion, and the inherently totalist nature of religiously motivated politics means deep social conflict if we are not careful. Our safety valve must be federalism. We have to live and let live. As blue states become more secular, and red states become less so, the only alternative to a national religious war is to allow different states to pursue different options. That goes for things like decriminalization of marijuana, abortion rights, stem cell research and marriage rights. Forcing California and Mississippi into one model is a recipe for disaster. Federalism is now more important than ever. I just hope that Republican federalists understand this. I fear they don't. - 1:07:45 PM

This is not about Republicans or Democrats.
This is not about the war.
This is not about the economy.
This is not even about counting the votes.

This is the final step in the 20-year creeping coup by the theocrats, the Dominionists.

In the House and the Senate, the theocrats made dramatic advances, far beyond the number of seats that switched parties. On the GOP side, they have replaced moderates with zealots, and have significantly strengthened the support for the main theocrat bills that will be reintroduced in the new Congress.

You can hear it in the media's codewords: this election did NOT turn on Iraq or the economy or security, it turned on "moral values", the politically correct code-word for theocratic values, i.e., placing one's religion above the laws of man. Exit polls show that "moral values" were the most common #1 concern among voters, and that among those who marked "moral values" as their primary concern, 80% voted for Bush. Every state that had a same-sex marriage ban up for decision voted the theocrat way.

When analysis of local races around the nation becomes available, it will become clear that theocrats have advanced everywhere, gaining control of even more school boards, gaining even more representation in city councils, winning even more seats in state legislatures.

Make no mistake, this election was the keystone of the theocrat coup. All that is left now is carrying out the agenda and changing the laws of this nation irrevocably to gut the Bill of Rights and establish a Dominionist government in America.
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The evangelical churches became instruments of political organization. Ideology was enforced as theology, turning nonconformity into sin, and the faithful, following voter guides with biblical literalism, were shepherded to the polls as though to the rapture. White Protestants, especially in the South, especially married men, gave their souls and votes for flag and cross.

The campaign was one long camp meeting, a revival. Abortion and stem cell research became a lever for prying loose white Catholics. (Rove's designated Catholic leader, his own political pontiff, had to resign in disgrace after being exposed for sexual harassment, but this was little reported and had no effect.) To help in Florida, a referendum was put on the ballot to deny young women the right to abortion without parental approval, and it galvanized evangelicals and conservative Catholics alike.

While Kerry ran on the mainstream American traditions of international cooperation and domestic investment, and transparency and rationality as essential to democratic government, Bush campaigned directly against these very ideas. At his rallies, Bush was introduced as standing for "the right God." During the closing weeks of the campaign, Bush and Cheney ridiculed internationalism, falsifying Kerry's statement about a "global test." They disdained Kerry's internationalism as effeminate, unpatriotic, a character flaw and elitist. "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," Vice President Cheney derided in every speech. They grafted imperial unilateralism onto provincial isolationism. Fear of the rest of the world was to be mastered with contempt for it.
...
The new majority is more theocratic than Republican, as Republican was previously understood; the defeat of the old moderate Republican Party is far more decisive than the loss by the Democrats. And there are no checks and balances. The terminal illness of Chief Justice William Rehnquist signals new appointments to the Supreme Court that will alter law for more than a generation. Conservative promises to dismantle constitutional law established since the New Deal will be acted upon. Roe vs. Wade will be overturned and abortion outlawed.

Now, without constraints, Bush can pursue the dreams he campaigned for -- the use of U.S. military might to bring God's gift of freedom to the world, with no more "global tests," and at home the enactment of the imperatives of "the right God." The international system of collective security forged in World War II and tempered in the Cold War is a thing of the past. The Democratic Party, despite its best efforts, has failed to rein in the radicalism sweeping the country. The world is in a state of emergency but also irrelevant. The New World, with all its power and might, stepping forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old? Goodbye to all that.

Tokyo's world famous gothic event debuts in SF as an after hours Halloween weekend extravaganza featuring 6 bands, DJ Dancing, a Gothic Waltz and Bazaar, a Fashion show, and a Costume Contest with a $100 top prize.

http://www.tokyodarkcastle.com

When: Friday, October 29th, 9:00 p.m. - 3:00 a.m.

Where: The Pound SF, 100 Cargo Way, San Francisco on Pier 96

Admission: $10 with special Yaoi-Con coupon

Note: Ages 18+ only with ID