Two Americans Killed in Bali Blast

Along with 100 or so Australians.

A California man on a surfing trip to celebrate his 41st birthday was one of two Americans killed when a bomb exploded at an Indonesian nightclub. A former University of Nebraska football player remained unaccounted for.

At least 180 people were killed, hundreds more injured and dozens unaccounted-for in the Saturday blast on the island of Bali. The attack was thought to be the work of terrorists.

Steven Brooks Webster, of Huntington Beach, Calif., was confirmed dead by morgue authorities in Indonesia, his friend Trent Walker said from Newport Beach, Calif.

Steven Cabler, one of Webster’s friends who survived the blast, was treated for third-degree burns. He arrived home in California on Monday night and spoke briefly with reporters about the bombing before hearing that his friend had died.

“It was hell on Earth,” said Cabler, seated in a wheelchair with both of his hands heavily bandaged. “All I saw was people burning, little girls with their hair on fire trying to put it out.”

Saddam runs unopposed in Iraq vote

“By voting a “yes” to President Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi people are voting for their freedom, independence, future and destiny because Saddam symbolizes all these things. Iraqis, in fact, are electing themselves today,” Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, said as he voted in Baghdad.

When you live in a police state you vote out of self-defense, not out of belief. You vote to keep yourself from getting killed by the secret police. If I were an Iraqi, I would have to be fucking nuts to risk my life for this silly mockery of democracy.

In the last referendum, on October 15, 1995, Saddam received 99.96 percent of the vote. This time, authorities are looking for a greater percentage.

All this proves is that only 0.04 percent of Iraqis are suicidal.

We return victorious from the Porkies, proud with the lack of scars from battle. We smoked candy cigarettes outside a gas station in Ashland. We circled the wagons and had a dance party in the Ironwood Country Kitchen parking lot. Red Bull fueled our final blast into the Mountains; a long, dark drive at eighty miles an hour through swirling gold. Campsite patrons were ‘hopping mad’ over our noisy arrival at 11:00 at night and tried to call the wrath of the Park Ranger down upon us. Rain caressed us into wakefulness on Saturday morning and left behind grey residuals in the sky. Bears were expertly hung in bear bags. We fought with metal pipes. Paths of mud led to pleasant slumber on the shores of Mirror Lake. A confused bear with a lousy short-term memory woke everyone up in the morning. It snowed.

Trains were driven out to Michigan on rails of Rearden Metal, and ore boats were piloted back home through forgiving pavement. Great and beautiful changes.

No trees jammed my noggin, though I did find my old tree in the ravine and took pictures. It yearned for the gently violent touch of Old Man Kroiss and RQH. It had a really neat mushroom growing on it. Great and beautiful changes.

The photo gallery is up. The Wuda Wooch! gallery will be up as soon as I get to it.

Nader’s jaw is still moving up and down and only the Italians are listening. Iraq is nothing but a smokescreen, set up by Bush to distract the public from his connexions to corporate scandal.

Nader said Bush’s “distraction strategy” would fail.

“It’s not going to help him much, though, because people know that in this (U.S.) country what matters are local issues and issues that affect the economy. All this war talk is destabilizing and depressing the markets and pushing up unemployment,” El Mundo [a Spanish Daily Newspaper] quoted Nader as saying.

Oh no! The truth is out! Watch Bush backpedal, now, as Nader lays torch to his entire ruse!

Meanwhile, polls before November U.S. congressional elections showed voters were more concerned about the economy than Iraq.

I like how, in its context, this stat is played as an ‘either, or’ statement of the American public. I’m concerned about the economy. I’m concerned about Iraq. I believe both are important. I believe that if I can multi-task and study for a philosophy midterm and read news and write webpages at the same time, our country can handle a few things at once, as well.

Also note that, according to Nader, it’s not the threat of terrorism itself that’s depressing the economy, but our war against terrorism. Dammit, if we would just ignore the thugs they’d leave us alone!

This op/ed piece by Radley Barko gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

At about the same time a hodgepodge of protesters descended on Washington, D.C. last month to protest capitalism, globalization and free trade, the United Nations and the Institute for International Studies released a triad of studies declaring that humanity is, for the most part, in the best condition it’s ever been.

World poverty is down. Income gaps are narrowing. And the reasons for all of this are, to the protesters’ chagrin, none other than capitalism, globalization and free trade.

The numbers on world economics are good, too. World poverty fell more than 20 percent between 1990 and 1999, a decade of aggressive globalization. The number of world Internet users is expected to double by 2005 to one billion. In those regions of the world most sympathetic to liberal reform, the news is even better. In ten years, poverty halved in in East Asia and the Pacific regions.

Since 1990, 800 million people have gained new access to improved water supplies, and 750 million to improved sanitation. In the last 30 years, infant mortality rates have dropped from 96 deaths per 1,000 live births to just 56.

These are all good things. Capitalism still has its work cut out for it, though:

Huge swaths of humanity still fester in abject poverty. Not surprisingly, the regions witnessing the most poverty also happen to house those cultures and regimes most averse to markets and capitalism — sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world.

Somewhat related is an article in this month’s Outside magazine about Iran that does a beautiful job in personalizing the people of that country, today. Teenagers can now hold hands. Women can paint their toenails. Shahram went to graduate school in America and became a ski bum. Iranians wouldn’t stop being nice.

The piece is actually about assassins, but it’s the little glimmers through the fabric that I found most interesting. There’s no reason these people should be oppressed by such a foul government and strict culture. When you get down to it, their passions and desires are quite similar to our own.

We are all moving in the right direction.

Congress Grants Bush War Powers Against Iraq

“With tonight’s vote in the United States Senate, America speaks with one voice,” Bush said in a statement, saying Congress “has spoken clearly to the international community and the United Nations Security Council.”

Yup. We said, “You, Mr. U.N. Security Council, must prove your usefulness or we will pick up your slack. If you wanna keep gumming the bastard that’s fine, but someone at the party still gots teeth.”

Today is an absolutely gorgeous day. This is the first time Duluth has seen the sun in two weeks, and one could mistake this place for spring if it wasn’t for all the color exploding off trees and shredding people to death with foliage shrapnel.

It even smells like spring, with that scent of warm mud tickling the nostrils. Golems are rising up out of the soil, tipping their hats affectionately and giving a pleasant, “how ya do?” to passersby.

This weekend we’ll be truckin’ off to the Porcupine Mountains. Last time I went I got a tree dropped on my head and had to evacuate to the Ironwood hospital to make sure my skull wasn’t going to crack open and leak transmission fluid.

The Porkies are fun. I hope I get to hang around this time.

Walking back from the library tonight everything chinked together. Nothing really changed, but it was like someone threw flour into my chai tea and thickened things up. It was the cold breath of October on my skin. It was the divine voice of a saxophone solo running its fingers down my spine. I realized I had been hung up on my hang-ups, so I just tossed ’em aside; didn’t get hung up on having been hung up on my hang-ups, either. There’s no sense in regression.

Things were ridiculous again. I thought about ancient Egyptians sucking the brains out of their pharaohs with straws… and realizing that they didn’t have shop vacs back then so there was only the good ol’ cocotte way of producing suction. Just like siphoning gas out of a corpse. Perhaps out of a Safety Deposit Corpse.

Today I ordered the Cowboy Bebop Limited Edition Complete Series of Ass-Kicking Anime and Hot Jazz Boxed Set. Spent a bundle on it. Saved a bundle by not buying each session separately. Use this handy quiz to figure out which Cowboy Bebop song is right for you.

Reality is fleshing out again, bringing with it the surreal. I overheard this in the hallway, today:

“They had a funeral for the circus. Charlie was working, so he couldn’t be there.”

It’s comforting to know that for how much I think I know about what’s going on in my world, all I need to do is take one step sideways to be completely flummoxed.

It’s reality, twice-removed.