mask

Style for Smog: Fashionable Anti-Pollution Masks Make Their U.K. Debut

Keys? Check. Mobile phone? Check. High-fashion, anti-pollution facewear? Strapped on and ready for the morning commute. 

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6 Ways to Keep Your Communications Private

This is the latest in a series we've done about how to protect your privacy. This post is based on a tip sheet that I prepared for a panel discussion about how journalists can communicate securely with sources at the 2015 Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference.

It's easy to feel hopeless about privacy these days.

In the post-Snowden era, we have learned that nearly every form of communication-from emails, phone calls, to text messages – can leave a digital trace that can and likely will be analyzed by commercial data-gatherers and governments.

Here are some ways to keep those communications private. While these tips were designed for journalists and confidential sources, they're just as useful for protecting any private communications, such as a conversation between family members, or a confidential business dealing.

Some tactics are more difficult than others, but the good news is that not all of them require technical skills. The key is to figure out your communication strategy. First, decide if you are trying to hide WHO you are talking to (metadata) or WHAT you are talking about (content), or BOTH.

In each case, there are both high-tech and low-tech ways to evade surveillance.

If you are trying to mask WHO you are talking to, consider three tactics that I call ACE — which stands for "Add Noise, Cloak or Evade."

Add noise means fuzzing the metadata by adding false connections or false content to the communications.

A high-tech way to add noise online is to use Tor Web browser which bounces your Internet traffic around to a bunch of locations so that the website you arrive at doesn't know where you are coming from.

You could also add noise in a low-tech way. If, for instance, you are a journalist calling a source in the mayor's office, you could also call everyone in the office, too. That protects the source from being the only one with a record of a call with you. (However, you should talk for a short time and set up another means of communications to avoid creating a data trail of a long conversation).

Cloak means using alternate identities.

Another way to mask who you are talking to is to set up new accounts – whether it is email, instant messaging or a cellphone – using alternate identities.

For these disposable online accounts, it's best to use Tor when setting up a disposable email (instructions here) or instant messaging account (instructions here for Windows and Mac) so that your location is not revealed during the setup and use of the account.

For disposable cellphones, also known as burner phones, the best practice is to buy them in cash in a location not close to your usual work and home (because your location is a very distinctive giveaway). Give one to your correspondent and set up a time in which you will each go to a location that is not on your usual route in order to make the call.

Evade means avoiding metadata collection.

This usually means meeting in person, and turning off your phones (or, even better, leaving your phone at home) so there is not a record of your phones being in the same place. The challenge is to avoid using digital forms of communication to arrange the in-person meeting.

If you are trying to mask WHAT you are talking about, I suggest three strategies that I call HEM — which stands for "Hide, Encrypt or Mask."
 

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Blair, Bush's 'biatch' (video)

fter assuring Condi that he would be a good boy and pay attention to the continent of Africa, Bush's pledge of $674 million in aid is just 3% of the $35 billion [that's "b" billion] Blair recommended. Stewart notes that Bush's aid will be paid out in $6.74 increments per year for a million years. AND: Clips on Bush's global warming "position" from the 2000 debates and from this week reveal that: "apparently, not only have we learned nothing new about global warming, he hasn't even learned new words to bullshit about it with!" (video via Crooks and Liars)

The Guards Are Sleeping

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from 'Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism (Inner Ocean),' edited by Code Pink co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans.

Helen Thomas, known as "the first lady" of the press, was a White House correspondent for four decades, sitting in the front row during presidential press conferences, asking the tough questions. She was the first woman to hold posts in the White House Correspondents' Association and the National Press Club. She now writes a syndicated column twice a week for the Hearst newspapers. She was one of the only "mainstream" journalists who vehemently opposed the invasion of Iraq and challenged the Bush administration on the fabrications and distortions that led the United States to war. The following is a conversation between Helen Thomas and CODEPINK cofounder Gael Murphy.

Gael Murphy: Our so-called independent media, the cornerstone of our democracy, have truly failed us in the most recent events around Iraq. They didn't do the investigations or critical analyses of the administration's policy toward Iraq. They didn't take into account opposing voices, alternative sources, and the millions of protesters. Why do you think the corporate media paid so little attention to exposing the flaws in the Bush administration's justification to go to war?

Helen Thomas: I think that the media really went into a coma and rolled over and played dead, just as Congress did. It was a politics of fear after 9/11. Everybody, even reporters, started wearing flags after 9/11. At these White House briefings there was an atmosphere among the reporters that you would be considered unpatriotic or un-American if you were asking any tough questions. Then it segued into a war where you'd be seen as jeopardizing the troops if you asked certain questions.

And the administration did an amazing job of linking Saddam Hussein and terrorism. In every briefing I attended in the lead-up to the war, the spokespeople would say, "Saddam Hussein, 9/11"--"Saddam Hussein, 9/11" in the same breath. Obviously they had put the two together and wanted the media to as well. Then a week or so before the war they said there was no connection. Well, by this time, the job was done. It was a beautiful propaganda message, and it worked.

Another problem is that there are no investigative reporters anymore. During the unraveling of the Watergate scandal, the Washington Post had eighteen reporters on the story and the New York Times had an equal number, digging in everywhere. In this case, no one was around, really, to challenge the administration.

But there were a lot of alternative sources of news and investigative journalism, and there was also the world press doing its job. Don't mainstream journalists look at these other sources?

We have a herd mentality here. It was groupthink. Nobody wanted to get out of line. Reporters felt that they shouldn't push too hard. I didn't feel that way. I was against this war from day one, and I kept challenging the White House spokesperson, Ari Fleischer. One day, about six months before the U.S. invasion, I said, "Ari, why does the president want to kill thousands of people?" I mean that's about as simplistic as I could put it. And he said, "Why are you saying that, Helen? They have a dictator! They have no say in their country!" I said, "Neither do we." I went up to Condoleezza Rice after the U.S. invasion and said, "Where are the weapons? Where's the smoking gun? Where's the mushroom cloud?" She said, "Saddam used these weapons twelve years ago, he had them. ..." And then she went up in smoke herself. She flew out of there with her eyes blazing, so angry that she should be challenged.

Regarding the White House press corps, is it sort of the cream of the crop of journalists who get to be part of those briefings?

Every new administration comes in with a new crop of reporters who have been on the campaign with them and have gotten to know them, and their bosses say, "You're going to the White House because you know intimately so-and-so and can call them up and get an interview." So not only do they tend to be young, but they tend not to question what is said.

It almost sounds like reporters are embedded with a presidential candidate and then inherit the White House as their reward.

That's certainly true. They get to the White House because they've done a good job on the campaign, they've gotten to know the players, and they're supposed to have this kind of entrée and closeness. And then they engage in self-censorship instead of challenging everything that's being said. I remember Bush's press conference a few days before the war. It was a fiasco, because everybody knew we were going to war and asked things like Do you pray? instead of asking the hard-news questions like: Why are we going to war? Why haven't you done more to avoid it? Why haven't you used diplomacy? Under what justification can you go into someone else's country? I'm also one of the few reporters who push the Pentagon on Iraqi casualties. When I'm writing a column about war casualties, I call the Pentagon and say, "Well, now, how many fatalities?" They'll readily say how many, in battle and in accidents. Then I ask about the wounded soldiers, and they reluctantly tell me about the wounded. Then I say, "How many Iraqis?" And the answer I'd get is, "We don't track that. They don't count." So once I called back and I said, "Look, aren't we supposed to be liberating these people? What do you mean they don't count? I want a rationale for why you don't count them." And they said, "Look, our purpose is not to kill, but if there is resistance, we do our job and don't count the numbers." Iraqis don't want foreigners in their country, and some will resort to terrible things to get rid of them. But what right do we have to be there? That's the bottom line. I can assure you no reporter has asked that question. What right do we have to be there?

Did you ever challenge your colleagues about their reporting?

No. They knew how I felt, they could hear me, but there is an unwritten rule that you do not challenge your colleagues. Except I must say that the Wall Street Journal called me the crazy aunt in the attic, and so did Fox, for questioning the war. Well, I want to know, who is the crazy aunt in the attic now? I think the Wall Street Journal owes me an apology.

Have you always questioned U.S. military involvement?

I was in favor of U.S. involvement in World War II. It was absolutely necessary. We were attacked. And our country was unified--we believed in it. I'm critical of unnecessary wars. I hated the Vietnam War, not from the moment Kennedy and Johnson put their foot in the door, but from the time of French colonialism from 1948 and the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1953. I certainly thought it was wrong for us to go into Indochina after the French had been defeated.

I did support the invasion of Afghanistan. I thought we had to go to the core and find out more about Al-Qaeda. But I thought Iraq was absolutely wrong. It was just out of the blue, when Bush came into power and decided that he was going to have a regime change in Iraq. And then Congress signed on the dotted line, giving a blank check without asking any questions!

I couldn't believe the people in Congress who actually did that. I couldn't believe Senator Kerry--he went to Vietnam and came back saying, "War is horrible. This is a horrible war and we shouldn't be in it." I suppose that eighteen years in the Senate can make you an Establishment person, and you forget. The authorization to go into Iraq is practically word for word from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Why didn't bells ring? How on earth could Kerry have just signed on? Because he was running for president and thought it would get him more votes?

So how do we get journalists and the media to do their job, to be critical of administrations and the policies that are not in the best interests of the public? How do we wake up America?

I think journalists are coming out of their coma now. I think they're getting a little more feisty. I think the public kind of bore down on the press and the press started to respond, although there is certainly a lot more we need to do.

I think the public should reach out to the editorial writers and the publishers and take them to task for their pro-war positions. People should get meetings with the editorial departments of the major papers and the local papers and say, "Look, your paper came out for this war. Can you explain why? And what do you have to say now? Have you changed your mind? Have you printed your new position?" Ask them if they'll do a mea culpa. I'm sure most of them won't, but they should be encouraged to do it.

People should also go to the TV stations, including the talk shows. They should complain about the one-sided nature of the guests on the show. They should ask why, every Sunday, did we hear from Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, but not equally from the antiwar side? Remember, a free and independent press is the basis of democracy. Journalism is the last resort against a government with such imperial motives, and we have to hold their feet to the fire.

I think that we should shame Congress for signing on the bottom line but not asking the tough questions they should have asked. They defaulted on the most important privilege they have in the Constitution--the right to declare war. They let the Constitution down. They let the country down. I think everyone who voted to authorize the president to go to war should be pinned down. [John D. Rockefeller IV, of West Virginia] was the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said that if he knew then what he knows now, he would not have voted to go to war. I would go to every congressman, every senator, who voted for the war, and say, "Knowing what you know now, would you still have voted the same way? And if you would, why?" Reporters should put them on the line, and so should their constituents.

Reporters should put presidents on the line as well, and the public should demand that presidents have regular press conferences. During the campaign we should make them say that they will hold regular news conferences every two weeks. Bush hated talking to the press and only did when forced to. He had a seating chart and would pick the journalists he wanted. He was told to not call on me because I would ask a very tough question. He didn't allow any follow-up questions and would get mad if a reporter asked a two-part question. I mean, c'mon. The president of the United States should be able to answer any question, or at least dance around it. Presidents should be obligated --early and often--to submit to questioning and be held accountable. The presidential news conference is the only forum in our society, the only institution, where a president can be questioned. If a leader is not questioned, he can rule by edict or executive order. He can be a king or a dictator. Who's to challenge him?

So in terms of the media, looking toward the future, what hope do you see?

My hope is that we'll all wake up and realize our tremendous collective failure. Maybe we could have saved lives. Maybe we could have stopped Bush from the folly of invading Iraq. We certainly must learn from our mistakes-- not being aggressive enough, not being curious enough, not demanding enough--so that we can help to stop the next folly of war.

And my hope is that people will begin to hold their government leaders accountable, and that we'll have true leaders who understand the horror of war and who do everything in their power to work for peace.

Bill Maher on activist pharmacists (video)

Bill Maher confronts the growing movement of activist pharmacists refusing to fill birth control prescriptions for "moral" reasons. After suggesting they remove their "pretend doctor jackets and get another job," Maher reconsiders: "Or maybe cutting of the pill doesn't go far enough. It's time activist drug stores stopped coddling sluts on every aisle..." Warning: indelicacy alert. (Crooks and Liars)

Water on Mars!

See for yourself. (NASA via Dan Gillmor)

More Boots on the Ground

Amid a spike in violence in Iraqi cities coinciding with the Fallujah offensive, the U.S. military is now planning to boost combat forces to secure the country for elections in January.

The U.S. is likely to expand the force by thousands of GIs in coming weeks by delaying the departure of more experienced units from Iraq as fresh troops rotate in, military officials say.

The overlap would create a temporary surge in American forces – which now number 141,000 in Iraq – to cope with an expected wave of insurgent attacks aimed at disrupting the polling. More U.S. troops are required as Iraqi security forces remain highly vulnerable to attacks and intimidation. This was underscored by a rash of insurgent strikes on police stations in Mosul, Baqubah and other cities in the past week, when attacks nationwide rose to 50 percent higher than the average in recent months.

Some U.S. military officials have long argued that the United States cannot win the war in Iraq without committing tens of thousands more troops. Others contend that more troops would simply present more targets, and the U.S. military should scale back and let Iraqis contend with much of the violence.

In reality, the U.S. cannot substantially increase ground forces in Iraq for the long term without accepting risk in other parts of the world or making Iraq tours longer or closer together – a step sure to lower morale. "I'm committed to providing the troops that are requested, but I can't promise more than I've got," the Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, told a Congressional hearing Wednesday in which military service chiefs detailed soaring demands on manpower and equipment.

"The demand on the force has increased exponentially," the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. Michael Hagee, told the House Armed Services Committee, saying Marines now spend about twice as much time deployed as two years ago.

Decisions are expected soon on extending specific units in Iraq, and on the possibility of deploying others early from bases in the U.S., according to senior military officials. In October, the military ordered some 6,500 troops to delay their departure from Iraq.

"There is ample opportunity" to increase troop levels by overlapping new arrivals with others whose tours would be extended as large units of 20,000 to 30,000 troops rotate, says a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad. But a larger increase could run into constraints – the current limits of basing and support services.

The string of U.S.-led military offensives on insurgent-held cities across Iraq since August has underscored the necessity for more American troops as well as elite Iraqi commando units. They're needed to step in for struggling local Iraqi security forces that are frequently unwilling or unable to fight off insurgents who threaten them and their families.

"When you take an area that has a stronghold of insurgents and you have to build the Iraqi police force from that population, you set yourself up potentially for failure if you don't have some type of moderating force," says Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, deputy director for operations of Multinational Forces-Iraq.

To ensure that recaptured cities such as Fallujah and Samarra do not fall back under insurgent control, U.S. commanders are having to commit additional forces to maintaining a presence there, both with U.S. troops and non-local Iraqi forces such as Iraqi National Guard (ING) units from outside areas.

Indeed, in recent weeks U.S. commanders have pushed thousands of additional soldiers and Marines into trouble spots in the Sunni triangle such as Fallujah, Samarra, Ramadi and most recently the northern city of Mosul.

Samarra, for example, had no coalition presence prior to a major offensive in October to root out some 400 insurgents, but now 500 U.S. troops and 500 Iraqi forces are stationed there. Even then, insurgent attacks killed 17 Iraqi police in the city on Nov. 6, as daily strikes in the region tripled.

In Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, the U.S. military doubled its forces recently from one to two battalions, and in recent days has engaged in heavy clashes with insurgents including some who fled from nearby Fallujah. U.S. Marine commanders say they "control" Ramadi, a city of 450,000 people, but have not "cleared" it of insurgents. The increase in troops was needed in part because local Iraqi police and Iraqi National Guard (ING) units were ineffective, if not complicit with insurgents.

"Many ING and IP posts, compounds, and facilities have been blown up or handed over to the insurgents with nary a shot being fired. [There is] much acquiescence in the face of the murder and intimidation campaign," says a senior official of the 1st Marine Division, which oversees Anbar Province.

In Mosul, an estimated 400 insurgents took advantage of a drop in coalition presence during the Fallujah offensive to take over a dozen police stations, burning several of them as well as provincial governor's residence. City police "walked off their posts" and became "completely ineffective," U.S. military officials say. The Mosul police chief was fired.

To quell the violence, U.S. and Iraqi commanders had to impose a curfew, close bridges into the city, and call in two battalions of outside Iraqi forces – a commando unit from Baghdad and Kurdish ING battalion – as well as an additional U.S. infantry battalion from Fallujah. The U.S. strategy in Iraq envisions a growing role for Iraqi security forces, whose ranks are expected to grow from the current 110,000 to more than 150,000 by late January, when elections are scheduled. Yet so far, only a handful of elite Iraqi units have proven highly reliable, while the effectiveness of the bulk of local Iraqi forces remains uneven.

Iraqi commando units such as the 36th commando battalion have performed well in Najaf, Samarra, and Fallujah, U.S. military officials say, yet these forces currently only number about 2,400, including the Iraqi Intervention Force and Special Operations Force. Iraq's Ministry of Interior now plans to add a new commando battalion.

"[There] is a recognition that [Iraqi commando units] are very, very capable and a desire to stand up more of them ... because you can move them around the country and apply them where you need to work with local police forces," says General Lessel. "Everyone realizes that the real key to long term success and the biggest challenge is the Iraqi police," he says.

Privacy: Just Press the Delete Key

The highway is packed as you drive home and then a car swerves in front and cuts you off. You jot down the license plate number as the traffic stalls. When you get home, you log onto the Internet, type the plate into publicdata.com, and up pops the owner's name, home address, and driving record.

New neighbors move in across the street. You wonder how much they earn, how old he is, if they're married or just cohabiting. A few clicks on the county court's website and you're privy to the husband's Social Security number, details about his wife, and the fact that he had a financial spat with a local business.

And it is all perfectly legal.

Public records held at the county clerk's office or city hall have always been available for public scrutiny, but to access them you needed to turn up in person between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Now, in the name of efficiency, many counties are putting their public records online and ending the practical obscurity paper records once offered.

And that's what alarms privacy advocates. It's not just checking out the new neighbors that's at issue. Those public files often contain sensitive personal information - particularly court documents, writes Beth Givens, director of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit consumer education and advocacy group (privacyrights.org) based in San Diego.

Divorce decrees and child-custody cases can include accusations and allegations - whether true or not. Sexual-harassment cases can play on damaging allegations about the plaintiff's lifestyle or sexual history. Private medical records - not open to public scrutiny - sometimes end up in court documents, and thus online, if an insurance holder sues over payment claims. "It is a common tactic of companies to threaten to bring highly sensitive medical information, as well as other personal matters, into the case in order to discourage the plaintiff from proceeding," Ms. Givens notes.

Then there's identity theft and cyberstalking, both of which are significantly simplified by online access to public records.

Legislators are scrambling to catch up with the implications of this new high-speed access to once-privileged information.

Several federal laws already restrict public access to some types of personal data. The Graham-Leach-Bliley Act limits which institutions can view personal financial data. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) keeps a tight lid on personal health records. And the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) keeps minors' details off the Internet. But that leaves everything from marriage licenses to land records to bankruptcies filings to be picked over by the public.

The purpose of allowing the public to view these documents is transparency - a way to monitor the judicial system and ensure the equality of its operations.

"The concept of public records is to shine a light on government action and to ensure fairness," says Tena Friery, research director at Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. No one argues with that fundamental tenet of democracy.

Some, however, question whether the objective of keeping government honest cannot be achieved without putting such personal details on the World Wide Web. For instance, Social Security numbers, once described as the "key to your life" and the first thing an identity thief might look for, appear on most official forms and could be blanked out of documents that appear online. But given the expense of going back and redacting thousands of files already online, this isn't always happening.

Virginia resident Betty "BJ" Ostergren, a self-described privacy watchdog, has been following her own state's push toward digitizing public records. "I think it's a stupid, dangerous, reckless venture," she charges.

Two years ago she mailed hundreds of letters to individuals in King William, Scott, and Warren counties. Each person received a list of personal details about him or her that Mrs. Ostergren had culled from the Internet. The response was outrage, she says. Within 24 hours of her letters arriving "all three [Virginia] counties shut down their sites," she says. Two still remain offline.

If the public were more aware, Ostergren insists, few such sites would remain in operation - even if they are legal.

But some legal analysts suggest the tide of Internet exposure may be hard to turn back. It's a generational thing, says Mark McCreary, an attorney at Fox Rothschild in Philadelphia who specializes in Internet privacy issues. He cites Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems' CEO: "If you're online, you have no privacy."

"As the Internet babies come of age - and Generation Y has had the Internet most of their lives ... there's going to be less and less of an expectation of privacy," Mr. McCreary says. "There may be stringent laws coming out saying what we're going to do with your information, but there are very few laws about what you can actually collect outside HIPAA ... and Graham-Leach-Bliley."

Even something as innocuous as junk mail has its source in public records. For years, counties have sold information in bulk to commercial companies that repackage it and resell it, either to other companies or to individuals.

Advertisers, marketing companies, hundreds of websites offering - for a price - "hard-to-find info about people" are all pulling their data from public records. Commercial background reports often have the option of monitoring an individual for a year, as their database is refreshed with new public records. A singles resort, for instance, uses recent divorce filings to plump up its mailing list.

All of this is legal. But, as America becomes a "dossier society," privacy advocates question how much of this activity still corresponds to the original intent of government oversight.

California is the first state to pass a law, this summer, that requires the consumer be told how personal information collected online will be used. In 2002, the state also enacted a law restricting remote access to files on some types of court cases - such as family law, juvenile, mental health, criminal, and civil harassment - that are available only at the courthouse.

With no federal law addressing access issues, each state and county is left to devise its own approach to public records. The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs has, however, produced three guides, including one called "Privacy Impact Assessment for Justice Information Systems," to help coordinate state and local efforts.

In the meantime, public pressure from people like Ostergren has slowed the movement toward online access in some counties and forced a closer assessment.

Laws now under consideration, says McCreary, focus on individuals' rights to see their own files. "It doesn't mean I should know about my neighbor or should know about other people. But I should be able to confirm the info that is there on me to make sure it's accurate and to keep the government in check."

State and county governments are also looking at the type of data collected and reviewing whether all the categories are necessary, McCreary says. Other solutions, privacy advocates say, might include regulating the information broker industry by keeping closer tabs on how personal data are used and by requiring more accountability from private investigators.

But the bottom line, warn some privacy advocates, may be that "old-fashioned" privacy - once defined by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis as "the right to be let alone" - is becoming an anachronism.

Faith Abuse: When God Becomes a Campaign Ploy

As someone for whom faith is incredibly important, and who regularly prays for all the people and things that matter to me, I'm hopeful that God is as appalled as I am with the way His name is constantly being taken in vain on the Bush campaign trail, and with how the president is abusing his faith to justify to himself and to the world his disastrous policies.

Lord knows there's a very long list of things to be angry with Bush about but this one has moved to the top of my personal hit parade because, as Catholic theologians teach us, "the corruption of the best is the worst." And George W. is truly corrupting faith and dragging it into the political gutter. In two fundamental ways:

First, he's using it as a spiritual inoculation against uncertainty and complexity.

Ron Suskind's recent piece in the New York Times Magazine painted a chilling portrait of a presidency in which thoughtful analysis and moral questioning have been replaced by "God-given" certainty, and where facts and open debate have become an anathema.

Suskind reveals a president who uses his faith to numb himself against reality. It anesthetizes him in the same way a stiff drink – okay, 20 stiff drinks – used to, and allows him to drown out the voices of doubt.

Great thinkers throughout history have extolled the virtues of doubt. As Paul Tillich put it: "Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith."

But not in the Bush White House, where doubters are treated as traitors, and inconvenient facts are the work of the Devil. Because facts can lead to questioning, and questioning undermines faith. And that would be blasphemy in an Oval Office where unbending resolve has become a holy sacrament. No wonder Bush is unwilling to admit to even a single mistake.

The second way the president is corrupting his faith is by using it as a marketing tool designed to garner support among the over 60 million Americans who identify themselves as evangelical – particularly the four million born-again voters who stayed home in 2000.

Nowhere is this blending of church and campaign more evident than in "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," a DVD being distributed to tens of thousands of America's churches.

Although not officially the work of the Bush-Cheney campaign, it obviously has its approval, and indeed was screened at a party for Christian conservatives hosted by the campaign at the GOP convention in New York.

In the documentary, President Bush is presented as a man with "the moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet" – and is shown sharing a beatific split screen with the Son of God himself.

So, in 2004, Jesus is not only the president's favorite philosopher – he's his surrogate running mate. I'm surprised we haven't seen any "Bush-Christ 2004" bumper stickers yet. It would make for a heck of an October surprise.

All this pious posturing is also being used as a cudgel with which to attack John Kerry, portraying him as a sorry second in the faith sweepstakes.

Forget that Kerry carries a bible and a rosary with him on the campaign trail, used to be an altar boy, and has said "My faith affects everything that I do" – the Bushies have made it seem as if they are running against Joe Pagan. Just check out the "Kerry: Wrong for Catholics" page on the official Bush-Cheney campaign website.

What's next? Attack ads from Altar Boys for Truth claiming Kerry never actually swallowed the body of Christ during communion?

What the president calls faith is actually nothing of the sort. It is fanaticism, pure and simple. The defining trait of the fanatic is an utter refusal to allow anything as piddling as evidence to get in the way of an unshakable belief.

This zealot's mindset is what allows President Bush to take in the death and destruction in Iraq and see them as "freedom on the march." And it's also what allows Abu Zarqawi and his followers to coldly put a bullet in the back of the head of four-dozen unarmed Iraqi Army recruits because they are "apostates."

"Either you're with us, or you're against us" plainly cuts both ways.

"This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy," explained Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy advisor to Reagan and Bush 41. "He understands them because he's just like them."






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