At last, a bombing campaign that I can support.

As it turns out, certain anti-Semitic imbeciles have gotten their nutsoid conspiracy site (charmingly entitled JewWatch, which I shan’t link here, lest it throw off the GoogleBombing) listed as the number one site returned by a Google search for the word Jew.

But there’s a campaign afoot–just in time for Passover–and that is about to change.

Sporadic GoogleBombing sorties have been lighting up LiveJournal for a the past few days; today, Alas, A Blog is letting loose, and the campaign is spreading out through other political weblogs. It’s time for a ruthless carpet-bombing of the whole area. So, if you have a web page or weblog, and if you prefer objective, factual information about Jews to raving fascist conspiracy theorists, here is how you can help out:

1. Go to your webpage, weblog, LiveJournal, or anything else that Google can see. If you don’t have one, get one — set up a free website from Geocities, Angelfire, Pitas, BlogSpot, or wherever you like. It doesn’t matter where. Just sprinkle it with a bit of personal information (or put up that huge site you’ve always dreamed of), and remember to add the Google bombing code somewhere on your page (see below). You can help even more by helping to spread the idea further: provide a link back to this page or to the post from Alas, A Blog, or provide your own explanation of what the GoogleBomb is and how people can get involved.

2. Somewhere in the HTML on your site, include the following snippet. You can either include it in the HTML of updates themselves, or in the linkroll. The more frequently you update your site with this HTML snippet present on it, the better the results:

   <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew" title="WikiPedia: Jew">Jew</a>

   Which will result in a link like this:

   Jew

3. Add the URI for your website to Google if you haven’t already.

And from there, watch the magic of precision GoogleBombing work!

Onwards!

–The Management

P.S. You may notice that I have added a Precision Bombing section to the linkroll for all my pages; this drastically boosts the number of pages supporting the GoogleBomb, and also ensures that the support won’t drop when my initial post scrolls down past the bottom of the front page.

Thanks to our War President, equating political dissent with an act of treason has become something of a national pastime in Republistan. Tom Tomorrow has already commented on this phenomenon in connection with televised sociopath Ann Coulter, but while Coulter is certainly a dangerous lunatic there is at least this one point in her favor: a significant part of her book is devoted to documenting what she takes to be overt acts of war, and material assistance to the enemies of the United States (especially the Soviet Union). Of course, her case is based mainly on distortions, fabrications, and nonsense; but it still puts her a step above the foot-soldiers of tyranny who simply drag out the language of “aid and comfort to the enemy” explicitly and directly on the basis of nothing more than peaceful dissent from the President’s war policy.

Consider, for example, a fellow named Dan Kuykendall, who (during my time in the Auburn Peace Project) decided that it would be best to notify the Opelika-Auburn News that rallies opposing the war on Iraq give aid and comfort to the enemy, and mused that Isn’t the definition of treason giving aid and comfort to the enemy? Since then, the rhetorical tactics haven’t changed much; consider this contribution to Blockheads for Bush, commenting on Ted Kennedy’s recent missives against Mr. Bush’s war:

Let us be clear about this – there are legitimate criticisms to be made about the liberation of Iraq; about whether or not we should have gone in, and about the manner in which we went in, and about how we have performed since we went in; there are, however, no legitimate criticisms to be raised about the reason we went in, nor can there be any legitimate point for an American to make other than that we should be doing more to win this fight. To criticise the reasons we went in and/or to do anything which indicates an unwillingness to see this thing through to final victory is the statement of a fool, or a traitor. No two ways about it.

We’ve given the left a pass long enough – its [sic] time for those who are of leftwing opinion to make their final call: which side of the river are you on? If you’re on America’s side, then you want total and overwhelming US victory – and just to really spell it out; this means that our enemies are dead or begging for mercy. I challenge you – choose, and let you be known for what you are by what you choose – patriot, or traitor.

(Subsequent comments make it clear that most of the Bush League takes the traitor horn of the dilemma. Some offer the charitable suggestion that Ted Kennedy might be both stupid, and a traitor.)

I sent a letter to the editor of the Opelika-Auburn News in reply to Mr. Kuykendall back in April 2003; since the underlying rhetoric hasn’t changed any in the ensuing year, the reply was a useful template for my comment on the BfB article:

Treason is a federal crime, defined in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, which says Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. Apparently at least some of the commentators on this weblog have read the passage, as they refer to the aid and comfort language. Unfortunately, it seems that they have also failed to read Amendment I, which reads Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The Founders did their best to make very sure that the Constitution prevented the government from using charges of Treason to suppress peaceful dissent. That is why the language of the article clearly states that the law of treason to be invoked only for overt acts with the intent to wage war on the United States, or to provide concrete, material assistance to those who do.

If anyone has evidence that Ted Kennedy has committed such a serious federal crime, they should contact the FBI field office in Boston at (617) 742-5533. Otherwise, baseless insinuations against Mr. Kennedy, for nothing more than disagreeing with George W. Bush’s foreign policy, amounts to little more than a shameful proposal for tyranny. You have every right to agree or disagree with Mr. Kennedy’s policy; you have no right to make such scurrilous attacks against fellow citizens on the basis of mere political disagreement.

Posted by: Rad Geek at April 10, 2004 11:51 AM

The comment has been posted directly on the Blockheads for Bush article; we’ll see how long it remains in their echo chamber as it was posted.

Ten years ago this week, a campaign of terror began in which over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu extremists, mostly armed with machetes, garden hoes, and spiked clubs. Thousands of women were raped; many of them now live with AIDS. Thousands of children were orphaned. In the terrible slaughter that followed, spurred by hate propaganda broadcast by the French-backed Hutu government, it is estimated that about 8,000 people were killed every single day of the rampage.

Also, some white dude offed himself.

Guess which event is memorialized on the covers of dozens of glossy magazines all over the newsstand? And guess which one is being described as the unique event of suffering that defined a generation of American youth?

If I have to listen to one more self-important 20-something journalist waxing nostalgic about his teenage ennui and how Kurt spoke to it, I am going to go out into the street and start systematically knocking people’s hats off.

Posting on Geekery Today may be held up for a while in the next several days, as I grudgingly prepare the paperwork for my annual surrender of tribute to the State.

In honor of the occasion, though, you can follow my argument on Slashdot with Shakrai, who castigates those who would dare to cheat the State of its booty. Since I argue that taxation is nothing more than robbery with more paperwork, I can’t muster much outrage at those who lie to the taxman in order to keep some of their own damn money (thank you very much!).

For what it’s worth, while I don’t see anything morally wrong in cheating on your taxes, that doesn’t mean that I do it; since I make most of my money through self-employment I no doubt look pretty suspicious to the IRS from the get-go, and I have no desire to encourage them to come along and help me get my finances in order by being less than scrupulous in my reporting. It just goes to show that while nothing immoral could count as expedient, lots of things that are morally permissible are still not particularly smart. Such is life in this possible world.

In international news, Donald Evil Lord Skeletor Rumsfeld has announced that the situation in Iraq is not out of control. Meanwhile, in Iraq, your tax dollars are hard at work:

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) U.S. Marines battled insurgents for control of this Sunni Muslim stronghold Wednesday, calling in airstrikes against a mosque compound where witnesses said dozens were killed in six hours of fighting. An anti-U.S. uprising led by a radical Shiite cleric raged for the fourth day in southern cities.

The Abdel-Aziz al-Samarrai mosque was hit by U.S. aircraft that launched a Hellfire missile at its minaret and dropped a 500-pound bomb on a wall surrounding the compound.

The U.S. military said insurgents were using the mosque for a military fire base. Iraqi witnesses estimated 40 people were killed as they gathered for afternoon prayers. U.S. officials said no civilians died.

An Associated Press reporter who went to the mosque said the minaret was standing, but damaged, apparently by shrapnel. The bomb blew away part of a wall, opening an entry for the Marine assault. The reporter saw at least three cars leaving, each with a number of dead and wounded.

Chaos spreads, people are murdered, and you and I are forced to foot the bill for a war that many of us wanted absolutely no part of. Sooner or later there will be a reckoning for the terrible destruction that is being wrought on Iraq; I can only hope against hope that terrorist logic will not win the day, and that we will not be forced to face the consequences yet again for things that other people decided to do–using stolen money and professing to act on our behalf.

I’m no great fan of Hillary Rodham Clinton. But she does have her moments. Among them is this:

It’s always sad when anyone dies.

… when asked for her thoughts when J. Strom Thurmond finally shuffled off this mortal coil.

(Thanks to One Good Thing for the pointer.)