G returns
: The other Baghdad blogger, G, returns after too long of an absence, and writes an atmospheric essay about the stuttering steps of rebuilding civilization in Iraq:
Unlike what al-Jazeera says I think Iraqis gained something form the Americans.
We got some amebic concept, some call it freedom others call it chaos,
I call it a fuzzy dream of democracy.
Jerks don’t know when to shut up… that’s what makes them jerks
: John Gilmore — the jerk who wore the “Suspected Terrorist” button on a BA flight, causing the crew to turn the jet around — is still trying to dine out on his jerkiness (which he thinks is a brave political statement).
He writes to Larry Lessig defending himself and buried in there is this doozy of paranoid delusion:
I had zero expectation that my refusal to doff a button would result in the captain returning the plane to the gate. But even if I did fly often, my response would be the same: to constantly push back against the rules that turn a free people into the slaves of a totalitarian regime. I push back using the rights granted me by the constitutional structure of the country, plus my own intelligence and resources. Way too many of you readers are like the Poles who, under orders from swaggering bullies, built the brick wall around their own ghetto, as shown in the award-winning movie
Moblog meets culture
: The Scotsman is hosting a moblog and contest for the Edinburgh Festival.
: And more mobile smarts in Scotland: Police will now receive mobile phone text messages when they are needed to testify in trials, thus allowing them to stay on the street and beat longer.
God and country
: Tony Blair is looking at involving religion in government:
Blair is to allow Christian organisations and other ‘faith groups’ a central role in policy-making in a decisive break with British traditions that religion and government should not mix….
The Prime Minister, who this weekend becomes the longest continually serving Labour Prime Minister in history, has set up a ministerial working group in the Home Office charged with injecting religious ideas ‘across Whitehall’….
The new high-powered ministerial grouping will have an input across government. Although based in the Home Office, it will advise the Departments for Education, Culture, Media and Sport and Trade and Industry….
Membership of the committee will also include representatives of the Jewish, Sikh, Muslim and Hindu faiths.
So you could see this coming a mile away:
Some No 10 officials are concerned that the Government will fall victim to unfavourable comparisons with the Republican administration in America, where President Bush makes no secret of his religious faith and right-wing religious organisations have a powerful input into policy-making, particularly on sensitive issues such as abortion.
Opportunities for Bush/Blair snarks aside, I would be nervous, too.
Lucky Lindy
: Charles Lindbergh had a secret German family, reports The Sueddeutsche Zeitung (auf Englisch here).
In an article yesterday, they told the S
