Japan's got a new prime minister on the way...

...he's a foreign policy hawk who wants to change Japan's constitution, which renounces war and prohibits the country from developing a substantial military. And does this sound familiar? Both his dad and his granddad were big shot Japanese politicians, and he's known as a "strong leader" because he takes some hard-line stances. Boo.

Politician Says Japan Should Revise Pacifist Constitution
By Norimitsu Onishi, The New York Times

TOKYO, Sept. 1 — Shinzo Abe, the nationalist politician who is favored to become Japan’s next prime minister, said today that Japan should revise its pacifist constitution, as he formally declared his candidacy in an internal party election scheduled for later this month.

In his declaration to run for the presidency of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, Mr. Abe, the chief cabinet secretary, also said that Japan should seek a larger role in the world and further strengthen its alliance with the United States...

Mr. Abe is almost certain to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who will retire later this month in accordance with party rules. Succeeding Mr. Koizumi in the party’s top post would automatically make Mr. Abe the nation’s leader as well, because the Liberal Democrats control of the lower house of parliament, which chooses the prime minister...

His image as Mr. Koizumi’s heir apparent was further solidified after North Korea tested long-range missiles in early July. The incident played to Mr. Abe’s strength as a hawk, and he wasted no time in suggesting that Japan should debate whether to acquire the military capacity for a pre-emptive strike.

At 51, Mr. Abe would become postwar Japan’s youngest prime minister, and the first born after World War II ended. He is considered less experienced than his two rivals, having held no cabinet position before his current one.

In case we've missed who the new "them" is...

...slurrin' them Middle Easterners is on the go. First it was President Bush, and then it was in my fantasy football league's chat room. Now it's politicians everywhere, and they ain't too shy to get in the occasional immigrant-oriented jibe, neither. From a great NYTimes article on political foot-in-mouths of recent months:

Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, said Wednesday that the United States confronts a “faceless enemy” of terrorists who “drive cabs in the daytime and kill at night.” Despite a hail of criticism on Thursday, Mr. Burns has not apologized for this remark as he did after complaining in July that a group of firefighters did not do a “goddamn thing” to stop a wildfire east of Billings.

Senator George Allen, Republican of Virginia, has been serially apologizing across Virginia since demeaning a man of Indian descent as “Macaca, or whatever his name is” at a campaign rally last month...

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, asked forgiveness after a C-Span microphone caught him saying “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent,”...

...Mr. Burns, the Montana senator, is both an accomplished apologizer and non-apologizer. He demonstrated as much in June when he joked that “the nice little Guatemalan man” working on his house might be an illegal immigrant. He has not apologized for the quip, as he once did after calling Arabs “ragheads.” “I can self-destruct in one sentence,” Mr. Burns, a former livestock auctioneer, recently told supporters. “Sometimes in one word.”

Another cool piece of street art...

...I saw earlier this month, on a footbridge at UW-Madison:

Here's George F. Will on the London plot...

...from a recent column in the Washington Post. I like his interpretation a lot. And I looked up farrago: it means a jumble, conglomeration, or medley.

The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror." In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a "senior administration official," insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:

"The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren't for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It's like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn't work."

This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike "the law enforcement approach," does "work."

Encouraging data on low Bush approval...

...indicate that Americans are increasingly fed up. From the NY Times:

Poll Shows a Shift in Opinion on Iraq War
By CARL HULSE and MARJORIE CONNELLY

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 — Americans increasingly see the war in Iraq as distinct from the fight against terrorism, and nearly half believe President Bush has focused too much on Iraq to the exclusion of other threats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll...

Public sentiment about the war remains negative, threatening to erode a Republican advantage on national security. Fifty-three percent said going to war was a mistake, up from 48 percent in July; 62 percent said events were going “somewhat or very badly” in the effort to bring order and stability to Iraq...

Mr. Bush recorded a gain of four percentage points in how the public views his handling of terrorism, rising to 55 percent approval from 51 percent a week earlier. This was his highest approval rating on the issue since last summer and followed the arrests in Britain in a suspected terror plot to blow up airliners...

Mr. Bush’s overall standing was nevertheless unchanged from the previous week, with 57 percent disapproving and 36 percent approving, far below the level Republicans in Congress would like to see as they prepare for elections in November. (full article here)

Cindy Sheehan's going strong again...

...apparently she led a group of protesters at a Karl Rove fundraising appearance over the weekend. Cindy's a big hero in my book - a vivid example of dedication and earnestness in the quest for peace.

Sheehan, Others Protest at Rove Event
By ANGELA K. BROWN, The Associated Press, Sunday, August 20, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas -- Chanting "Try Rove for treason," Cindy Sheehan and more than 50 other war protesters disrupted a reception before President Bush's top adviser Karl Rove spoke at a fundraiser Saturday.

One woman was arrested during a scuffle with police after Sheehan and the anti-war demonstrators rushed toward the closed doors and kept chanting loudly after the guests went into the dinner.

Rove was speaking to the Associated Republicans of Texas, and ticket prices started at $200. He was not in the Renaissance Hotel lobby during the reception.

"I want him arrested. He planned the war that killed my son," Sheehan told officers guarding the door. Sheehan's oldest son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004. (full article here)

"Support Our Troops"...

...typically strikes me as an empty statement, or even a thinly veiled means of stifling criticism of military action. But my friend Michelle recently put me on to a website that offers visitors an opportunity to support the men and women of our armed forces quickly but meaningfully: by sending them a thank-you note.

When you have a spare moment, visit Let's Say Thanks, a Xerox-sponsored page where you can select a free thank-you postcard - printed with your own personal note or a standard message you select - that will be delivered to U.S. servicemen and women deployed overseas. As the site explains, "the postcards, depicting patriotic scenes and hometown images, were selected from a pool of entries from children across the country." After you pick a card and a message, "the postcards are then printed on the Xerox iGen3 Digital Production Press and mailed in care packages by military support organization Give2TheTroops."

It might not be as significant as a power hug, a pay raise, or a return trip home, but in my opinion, thank-you notes usually count for something - and can sometimes make a person's day. Visit Let's Say Thanks today.

Took a trip back in time yesterday...

...when I leafed through the July 4, 1994 issue of Newsweek, which I found on a shelf in an unused room at my grandmother's old house in Wisconsin. The cover story - "Living in Terror" - referred not to you and me and everybody else, but to battered women like Nicole Brown Simpson, whose ex-husband OJ's infamous trial had just started in Los Angeles. The mag also featured an interview with American-teen-caned-in-Singapore Michael Fay, highlights from the meetings of the House subcommittee investigating the tobacco industry, and a story describing how Bill Clinton used diplomacy to get North Korea to freeze its nuclear weapons program.

The most interesting article, however, was one called "The Bush Family Franchise," which detailed the gubernatorial aspirations of former President Bush's sons Jeb and George W. , the latter pictured in a spread eagle position in a seat at a baseball game, with large Texas Rangers logos brightly embroidered on each of his cowboy boots. There's a great baseball-themed quote on W from Ann Richards, who he would go on to defeat in that November's election: "He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple."

The article notes that both Jeb and W were heavily influenced by Lee Atwater, who ran their dad's '88 campaign and "preached a 'message focus' on cultural 'wedge issues' that separate white Democrats from their party." And despite the ultra-connected status of their family, both Jeb and W planned to run as "outsiders." As W's adviser Karl Rove noted, "There is an entrenched power structure in Austin, and that's what we're going after."

Ah, the good old days.

Kind words from a customer in the UK...

...who picked up a pair of shirts to sport on the other side of the Atlantic:

"My husband and I received our "Impeach Bush and Cheney" shirts yesterday and are extremely pleased! We couldn't believe how quickly they arrived to the UK. The shirts are excellent quality. I'm an American and my husband is English. We both strongly oppose Bush and Blair's war policies and would like to see the back of both of them. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to show the world how we feel! I highly recommend your service and products to everyone who is opposed to these war-mongers."

Interesting point from George Lakoff...

...professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley, who has written extensively on "framing," a communication technique that the GOP expertly uses to influence voters. Lakoff thinks that, by belittling Bush, many Democrats are missing the bigger picture:

Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush's plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent...The idea that Bush is incompetent is a curious one. Consider the following (incomplete) list of major initiatives the Bush administration, with a loyal conservative Congress, has accomplished:

*Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented degree
*Starting two major wars, one started with questionable intelligence and in a manner with which the military disagreed
*Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking the lower federal courts with many more
*Cutting taxes during wartime, an unprecedented event
*Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the Bankruptcy bill and a number of massive tax cuts
*Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory protections
*Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies...

These aren't signs of incompetence. As should be painfully clear, the Bush administration has been overwhelmingly competent in advancing its conservative vision. It has been all too effective in achieving its goals by determinedly pursuing a conservative philosophy.

It's not Bush the man who has been so harmful, it's the conservative agenda. (full article here)

Some great bits from MLK...

…from his “autobiography,” which was put together and edited superbly by Clayborne Carlson.

Early on in the bio, King shares a candid introspection from his college years. “I revolted…against the emotionalism of much Negro religion, the shouting and stamping. I didn’t understand it, and it embarrassed me. I often say that if we, as a people, had as much religion in our hearts and souls as we have in our legs and feet, we could change the world.”

He also reveals an inclination toward pantheism, a nature-themed interpretation of divinity. “Every day I would sit on the edge of the campus by the side of the river and watch the beauties of nature. My friend, in this experience, I saw God. I saw him in birds of the air, the leaves of the tree, the movement of the rippling waves…”

As a college student, MLK contrasted capitalism with communism, and was generally a champion of the former, though he was not afraid to address its shortcomings. “Capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity.”

Today is W's birthday...

...but if I was the one who was blowing out the candles, here's the present I'd be hoping for:

Been reading a great book...

...that examines the relationship between 3 big personal interests - politics, economics, and t-shirts. The book is a 2004 number by business professor Pietra Rivoli called The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, and it's been quite an eye-opener for the free market fan in me. Rivoli chronicles the evolution of the global textile industry from the 1700s to today, arguing that the market for t-shirts and other clothing is remarkable because it is astonishingly unfree.

"The textile and apparel trade," she writes, "is the most managed and protected manufacturing trade in U.S. history, or as one writer noted, 'the most spectacular and comprehensive protectionist regime in existence'... Trade flows in T-shirts are the result of economic forces but also the result of thousands of deals cut in Washington, Geneva, and Beijing, and politics are at least as important as markets in understanding the T-shirt's journey."

Rivoli backs this thesis with convincing facts and anecdotes, and her book helps its readers begin to appreciate the complexity of the answer to the question a few Wavelength Clothing customers have asked: "Why aren't all of your t-shirts made in the USA?" I heartily recommend The Travels of a T-shirt to anyone interested in the realities of global trade, and I'll be sharing some choice excerpts in the weeks ahead.

Some WMD hunters haven't given up...

...says this funny-if-it-wasn't-sad story from The New York Times.

For Diehards, Search for Iraq's W.M.D. Isn't Over

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, June 22 — The United States government abandoned the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq long ago. But Dave Gaubatz has never given up. Mr. Gaubatz, an earnest, Arabic-speaking investigator who spent the first months of the war as an Air Force civilian in southern Iraq, has said he has identified four sites where residents said chemical weapons were buried in concrete bunkers.

The sites were never searched, he said, and he is not going to let anyone forget it. "I just don't want the weapons to fall into the wrong hands," Mr. Gaubatz, of Denton, Tex., said…

Some politicians are outspoken allies in Mr. Gaubatz's cause…More than a year after the White House, at considerable political cost, accepted the intelligence agencies' verdict that Mr. Hussein destroyed his stockpiles in the 1990's, these Americans have an unshakable faith that the weapons continue to exist…

The weapons hunters hold fast to the administration's original justification for the war, as expressed by the president three days before the bombing began in 2003. There was "no doubt," Mr. Bush said in an address to the nation, "that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

More on Iran's president...

...who is shaping up to be quite an interesting politician.
From The Wall Street Journal:

Behind Rise of Iran's President: A Populist Economic Agenda
By Bill Spindle, WSJ.com (full article here)

TEHRAN -- Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has grabbed the world's attention with his bombast over Tehran's nuclear program and saber rattling against Israel. At home, however, the president's popularity is soaring thanks to another reason: his enthusiastic embrace of economic populism.

In recent weeks, he has proposed a $4 billion national school-renovation program and has raiaised not only salaries for workers in Iran's vast, government-controlled industrial sector but also the minimum wage for everyone else. He doubled government grants for newlyweds and forced banks to lower interest rates by several percentage points.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is emerging as an Iranian version of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez: a pugnacious politician, buoyed by oil money, whose anti-elite message and defiance of the West is causing his popularity to soar. Mr. Ahmadinejad isn't nearly as powerful as Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But his policies, which interrupt Iran's tentative stabs at economic liberalization, have helped him wield more influence than many thought possible for an Iranian president...

Mr. Ahmadinejad positioned himself as the candidate of the people against a rich and corrupt elite. One campaign ad featured a tour of the opulent mansion belonging to the previous mayor of Tehran, followed by a view of Mr. Ahmadinejad's modest home in a middle-class suburb. Asked whether they have a pool, Mr. Ahmadinejad's son simply points to a backyard too small for one. "See for yourself," he says. "Where's the sauna?" the interviewer asks. The son just shrugs.

Few things appealed more to Iranian voters, especially the working poor, than Mr. Ahmadinejad's promise to "put the oil revenue on the dinner table of every Iranian." Since being elected, he's made frequent trips to Iranian provinces -- political barnstorming previously unheard of in Iran's aloof theocracy. He encourages supporters to write with their requests and has promised funds for thousands of local projects…

His message is giving the Iranian government a boost of desperately needed popularity during a critical period of international tensions, in particular over the country's commitment to developing its nuclear capabilities. In a recent speech to the nation, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, compared Mr. Ahmadinejad's popularity to President Bush's low poll numbers.

I experimented with an ad...

...on a popular, left-leaning blog a few weeks back. For $80, my ad - which consisted of a rotating depiction of a few Wavelength shirts, and some accompanying text - ran for 1 week.

According to the ad provider, Blogads.com, about 98,000 people viewed the page the ad was on over the course of the week, and of these, 174 clicked through to the Wavelength site. This represents a click-through rate of 0.177%, which sounds tiny but is actually respectable in the world of online advertising (a click-through rate of a full 1% would be considered superb).

Did the ad boost sales? Well, with another Wavelength ad running concurrently on AfterDowningStreet.org, it's hard to precisely quantify the number of shirts this new ad helped move. But my rough estimate is that the $80 I spent on the ad ended up pushing about 5 extra shirts out the door. Not quite profitable, but an interesting experiment nonetheless.

On the eve of Busby v. Bilbray...

...news of progressive, impeachment-hungry rumblings within the Democratic Party. Seems a candidate's positions on Iraq and on impeachment are increasingly important to many Democrats. Hey, maybe that's why so many people want "Impeach Bush" and "Impeach Bush & Cheney" t-shirts!

More Democrats Want Their Leaders to Stand up Against Bush, War
By Steven Thomma, Knight Ridder Newspapers

Manchester, NH - Anti-war and anti-Bush fervor is growing among rank and file Democrats, threatening to pull the party to the left and creating a rift between increasingly belligerent activists and the party's leaders in Washington.

Many outside-the-Beltway Democrats want the party to turn forcefully against the war in Iraq and to investigate, censure or even impeach President Bush should the party win control of Congress this fall.

Yet party leaders such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York have maintained support for the war while criticizing the way Bush handled it, and have shied away from talk of using power to go to after him...

In New Hampshire, the state that will kick off the party's 2008 presidential primary voting, activists gave thunderous ovations this weekend to Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., when he pressed his anti-war agenda, boasted that he alone among potential 2008 presidential candidates opposed the war from the start, and pushed for a censure of Bush. (full article here)

And here's a lesson in activism from Chile...

...a lesson taught by the students, as it were.

Chilean Promised a New Deal; Now Striking Youth Demand It
By Larry Rohter, The New York Times

Santiago, Chile - Less than three months after she took office promising to lead a government that welcomed greater citizen participation, President Michelle Bachelet is facing her first domestic crisis. To the surprise of many here, the challenge comes not from the right but from a group expected to be sympathetic to her center-left coalition: high school students.

In protests that began in mid-May, more than 700,000 teenagers have walked out of classes at public high schools, demanding the overhaul of an education system they say is inferior and discriminatory. They have occupied several hundred schools, sleeping there overnight with sympathetic parents bringing them meals, and last week thousands marched in the streets of the capital here and in other cities in this nation of 16 million...

In a speech to the nation on Thursday night, Ms. Bachelet, who is scheduled to visit the United States later this week, announced a $135-million-a-year package that includes a free lunch program for the poorest students, the repair or renovation of up to 1,200 public schools and the elimination of the $40 college exam fee. "The state will be the guarantor of a quality education for all Chileans," she promised, adding that the nation's youth deserved "to be able to study in dignified conditions."

But on Friday, the main student leaders rejected the proposal, saying it was not generous enough. They said they would renew their protests on Monday, and teachers and university students and professors have pledged to join them. (full article here)

Awesome street art...

...recently spotted within a couple blocks of my apartment in Ocean Beach. Though I don't condone graffiti. There's enough room for tagging on legitimate surfaces - like on t-shirts, for instance! (click on photo to enlarge)

And here's another piece...

...this one appeared right as news of Bush's phonetapping programs hit the news - and on what looks like a phone company box, no less! (click on photo to enlarge)