perfidy

This is a picture of Martyr's Square in downtown Beirut. The caption says that there are 800,000 people there demanding freedom and the immediate departure of the Syrians.

Reading that caption, it made me wonder how many people are actually in Lebanon. According to the CIA Factbook for Lebanon, the total population is only 3,777,218 (July 2004 est.) That means that 21%, or more than one out of five Lebanese are in that square demanding their freedom. And that, friends, is really goddamn amazing.

[wik] More news, and more pictures.

In the great game of Rock-Paper-Scissors that is entitlement politics, we seem to have reached an impasse. IKEA, the Swedish purveyor of cheap and stylish furniture, is in hot water with the Norse government for including only men in the illustrations that accompany the assembly instructions for their products. That's right. The Norskies, having solved all its problems, are now attacking the pernicious threat of gender bias in instruction manuals written by a company headquartered elsewhere.

But wait! It gets better. IKEA insists it cannot change its manuals, as the company made the decision to include only men in the pictures in order to avoid offending Muslims.

In light of my recent posts on the use of the N-word in Twain and the filthiest joke ever told, I'm starting to get a little fed up. Are we all to become mental Jainists, always contorting ourselves for the sake of right conduct so we do not kill a mosquito, harm a fly, or accidentally repress a minority? Are words and pictures - pedestrian words and pictures - really so terribly hurtful that we can't get along with cartoon pictures of men putting together maddeningly complicated pressboard furniture?

Or can the whole world just have a goddamn pizza and a six pack (a vegan pizza for the Jainists among us!!) and get the hell over it?

Thanks to Ed at Captain's Quarters.

Vlad Putin has reformed the Komsomol, the "Stalin Youth" of the old USSR. Well, not exactly. This time, they're called "Nashi" ("ours"), and their job is to beat up crowds when they forget to Love their Leader.

But I'm sure it will all be okay. Remember, George W. Bush looked into Putin's soul, and saw a good man. A gooood man.

[wik] Josh Chafetz goes to some lengths to explain how Bush is dealing with Putin. I'm not convinced, but Chafetz makes some creative arguments I cannot dismiss out of hand.

The French have committed to providing exactly 1 (one) officer to the NATO effort to train Iraqi soldiers and law enforcement personnel. In a measuer of France's deep interest in supporting democracy in Iraq, this officer will travel to the wilds of southern Belgium to participate in the training.

French protestors uncomfortable with even this tepid support for US policy can be expected to be waving signs demanding, "Bring home our troop!" any time now.

Leave it to the Brits. Although us Amurricans sprung from them like grey-eyed Athena from the forehead of Zeus (unlike the Australians, who are more like King Erechthetus, springing from the seed spilled when Hephaestus humped Athena's leg), they are not like us. Separated by more than a common language, we are now two peoples of very different sensibilities.

This fact was hammered home to me once while reading Jon Savage's history of the Sex Pistols, England's Dreaming. In the book, Savage quoted an MP who was trying to get a bill through Parliament banning the Pistols outright, arguing (I paraphrase) "It is their right to do what they want, and it is our right to try and stop them." If there is any quote that sums up better the fundamental difference between the United States' and Britain's social compacts, I don't know about it.

Anyway. I bring all this up by way of mentioning an amusing and deeply disturbing development in British crimefighting that further underlines the differences between American and British mentalities. As you know, English police patrol the streets armed only with truncheons and a stern pointy-finger, though of course armed response waits in abeyance to spring to aid if needed. Since England banned private ownership of guns outright a couple years ago, there is every indication that they as a society are genuinely dedicated to exploring more nonlethal, less conventional means for catching criminals.

Whether or not this is a good idea is up to you. Opinions are opinions. However, it is impossible to deny that the English have grown creative in seeking out new nonlethal crimefighting technologies to help them in this task. The same culture that gave us the bizarre and psychedelic series "The Prisoner" has now made good on that show's bizarre promise. Witness: a roving black robotic ball that, once it detects a target via infrared, can chase intruders through snow, mud, or water at up to 20 mph, all the while snapping photos and summoning backup, making the device ideal for unmanned perimeter and zone patrols. The article notes that "[w]hile the current version can only raise the alarm, it could be adapted to corner an intruder if the customer wanted," and hold them until the men in the funny suits come and return them to the island.

In loving memory of Minister Emeritus Windy City Mike’s occasional coffeehouse sets back in the halcyon days of college and too many cigarettes, and his audience favorite, “Talkin’ To My Neighbor Ed Blues,” I offer this left-field story of Yemen’s success in fighting terrorism.

In this era of war and mistrust, fueled by mutual distrust, rampant misperception, and the more than occasional exploding object, it is popular to decry the “know your enemy” argument as being a mushyheaded, bleeding-hearted leftist approach to reducing the number of terrorists and incidents of terrorism in the world. Many argue that the only ways to achieve this end are either 1) kill all the terrorists (which earns the A. Jackson Prize for clarity of purpose), or 2) kill all the terrorists we can, meanwhile making sure the social conditions that created them are minimized or eliminated (which earns the W. Wilson Prize for ambition of goal). There are many, many merits to recommend these two approaches, but there are numerous drawbacks as well.

The incomplete success of the Jackson and Wilson plans to combat terrorism has resulted in a situation where, as one Iraqi interlocutor of Michael Totten put it, the best sentiment we can hope for in the Middle East is, “Thank you for coming, now please leave and take us with you.” (or, as Minister Mike once put it, “Yankee go home!... Stay for some mezza?”). As far as that gets us, that’s pretty good, and in fact as good as we can expect. But we still face a situation where, inescapably, no matter what the US does, we’re still the asshole. This is, of course, fine. Pleasing everybody will get us all either dead or in burqas, and sharply reduce the number of opportunities Americans have to be complacent about being #1. But this also means that any help we as a society can get from within the Islamic world to combat terrorism through soft means (those avenues which are shut off to us in our capacity as King Badass/ Great Satan / Corrupter of the World / Main Destination for Everyone’s Emigrants) is welcome.

Which is why this story is so fascinating. A young Yemeni judge named Hamoud al-Hitar has begun engaging in Koranic debates with the terror-inclined zealots arrested in his country, with the aim of talking them out of their terrorist ways.

According to the Christian Science Monitor (linked above), it’s working.

When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen's Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.

Nervous as he faced five captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa prison, Judge Hitar was inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the youthful cleric threw down the gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his troubled homeland.

"If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle," Hitar told the militants. "But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence."

The prisoners eagerly agreed.

Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this experiment are courting Hitar, eager to hear how his "theological dialogues" with captured Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous country, previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Since December 2002, when the first round of the dialogues ended, there have been no terrorist attacks here, even though many people thought that Yemen would become terror's capital," says Hitar, eyes glinting shrewdly from beneath his emerald-green turban. "Three hundred and sixty-four young men have been released after going through the dialogues and none of these have left Yemen to fight anywhere else."

. . . . . . .

Seated amid stacks of Korans and religious texts, Hitar explains that his system is simple. He invites militants to use the Koran to justify attacks on innocent civilians and when they cannot, he shows them numerous passages commanding Muslims not to attack civilians, to respect other religions, and fight only in self-defense.

For example, he quotes: "Whoever kills a soul, unless for a soul, or for corruption done in the land - it is as if he had slain all mankind entirely. And, whoever saves one, it is as if he had saved mankind entirely." He uses the passage to bolster his argument against bombing Western targets in Yemen - attacks he says defy the Koran. And, he says, the Koran says under no circumstances should women and children be killed.

If, after weeks of debate, the prisoners renounce violence they are released and offered vocational training courses and help to find jobs.

Hitar's belief that hardened militants trained by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan could change their stripes was initially dismissed by US diplomats in Sanaa as dangerously naive, but the methods of the scholarly cleric have little in common with the other methods of fighting extremism. Instead of lecturing or threatening the battle-hardened militants, he listens to them.

"An important part of the dialogue is mutual respect," says Hitar. "Along with acknowledging freedom of expression, intellect and opinion, you must listen and show interest in what the other party is saying."

. . . . . . . .

"It's only logical to tackle these people through their brains and heart," says Faris Sanabani, a former adviser to President Abdullah Saleh and editor-in-chief of the Yemen Observer, a weekly English-language newspaper. "If you beat these people up they become more stubborn. If you hit them, they will enjoy the pain and find something good in it - it is a part of their ideology. Instead, what we must do is erase what they have been taught and explain to them that terrorism will only harm Yemenis' jobs and prospects. Once they understand this they become fighters for freedom and democracy, and fighters for the true Islam," he says.

Some freed militants were so transformed that they led the army to hidden weapons caches and offered the Yemeni security services advice on tackling Islamic militancy. A spectacular success came in 2002 when Abu Ali al Harithi, Al Qaeda's top commander in Yemen, was assassinated by a US air-strike following a tip-off from one of Hitar's reformed militants.

The Monitor notes that terrorist activity has declined markedly in Yemen since this program was begun, though much of the credit also goes to an aggressive government policy against militant Islamic madrassas and training camps. Of course, Yemen has a long way to go from the point of view of the US. It is still a hotbed of anti-Western sentiment and the attendant poverty and desperation that such sentiments are a convenient outlet for. But, if the talking cure is working in Yemen (and I'm willing to bet that a Koranically-focused 'suasion technique will actually stick, will little backsliding), more power to them. Maybe it can work elsewhere too.

I am back from the dead.

Over the weekend I spent some time under the care of the Ministry's crack team of gnostic chirurgeons. Most of them are refugees from our now-defunct Babylon office, and others are... well... let's just say they don't get out much and that's lucky for us all. After exhausting all the powers of modern medical science to no avail, the Ministry's medical staff went to work. Twenty-four hours later, I was miraculously on the mend. Though not without a fight, our in-house healers were able to draw a quantity of fluid from my chest cavity (not without a fight... Linda Blair vomited less than I did... the powers of the old ones are strong... I wonder if this was all to do with that aging invoice I hoped they'd forget...), and I am feeling stronger by the day. Soon, once again, you shall all cower before me.

In my absence, I am both gratified and saddened to see that the innate pettiness of the human spirt has rolled on unabated. In this week's quickie edition of This Week in Exemplary Human Behavior, we focus on the unremarkable: those stories that we could recycle at least twice a year without even trying. Perhaps next week we will see humankind aspire to greater heights of creative cruelty. Or perhaps we will not have to write this feature at all for want of suitably exemplary material. Suit yourself; I know which one I'd put money on.

Spotlight: Massachusetts- Defrocked priest Paul Shanley will die in prison after being convicted of repeatedly raping a young parishoner in the 1980s. Despite the ultimate thinness of the prosecution's case (only one of four victims made it to the trial phase without either being dropped from the case or going into hiding), a jury convicted Shanley on the strength of reportedly repressed memories recovered by the plaintiff. The Boston Phoenix has spent a good amount of time documenting Shanley's deep, deep weirdness-- including, for example, his perplexingly thumbs-up attitude toward bestiality and pedophilia-- which makes a good circumstantial case that the former "street priest" is at least a hobby-level sicko, but one witness' recovered memories do not a case make.

There's so much here to love: a creepshow priest; a jury willing to accept "memory recovery" as ironclad evidence; a diocese who, regardless of this one priest's record, aided and abetted a casual kiddie-toucher ring for decades, privileging their own institutional comfort over the anguish of generations of helpless victims. Nice.

Spotlight: Los Angeles- Home of The the Angels Angels of Anaheim. What is it this time? Natural disaster? Mouthy limo-lib celebrity? Dead rap star?

Nope! It's that old chestnut, appalling police brutality! In a story that will be no surprise to anyone who has ever driven I-5 at rush hour (or seen the Steve Martin classic, "LA Story"), the LAPD ended the stolen-car joyride of thirteen-year-old Devon Brown by shooting him. The Department's defense is that Brown, at the end of the chase, backed his car into a police cruiser in a maneuver that we in Boston like to call "parking a little close." The police chose to signal their displeasure at Brown's novice attempt at full-contact driving by shooting into his car ten times, thereby stopping the car. Oh right-- and killing Brown too.

Like Uncle Jimbo said, "it's all right to shoot anything, as long as you make sure to yell, 'oh God, it's coming right for us!' first."

Spotlight: Iraq- Suicide bomber kills 21. Nothing to say that wasn't said the first 200 times.

Spotlight: Saudi Arabia- Security officials from 50 countries elected to put the fox in charge of the henhouse this week, with the establishment of an international counterterrorism center to be based in Saudi Arabia. Now, I understand that the Royal House of Saud 'n' Waffles has a vested interest in quashing terrorism in their country because all those grassroots terrorist groups kind of suck the wind out of their own state-sponsered terrorist groups but really... do you put the fat guy in charge of the buffet?

Spotlight: Sudan- The UN continues to waggle the Giant Finger Of Blame at Sudan, charging that the Sudanese government really doesn't give a shit about the ongoing genocide within its borders. If the Sudan does not respond to waggling, the organization is expected to move on to Sighing Aggressively. In other news, a new study by the United Nations Commission on Self-Justification shows that sighing saves, on average, 300,000 children a year from dying by machete or Kalashnikhov.

[wik] Did I really say we might never have to do this again? What was I drinking?! Here's some more for you.

Spotlight: Florida- Via Julian Sanchez at Reason.com comes a chilling story of a Tampa couple who systematically tortured their seven adopted children. The official reports cite that the children were, among other things, were "subjected to electric shocks, beatings with hammers and having their toenails yanked out with pliers." One set of 14-year-old twins weighted 36 and 38 pounds respectively, or about a third the normal weight of boys that age.

This height of depravity against children strikes me as a strong argument against God (what God would let this happen?), against evolution (what process of evolution would retain this impulse?), and in favor of enforced eugenics. But ultimately, I think this episode sits alongside many, many others of various stripes, flavors, and varieties as an incontrovertable, ironclad, and urgent argument against Florida.

(A fun final note: According to Florida law, the real threat to adopted children comes from the queers.)

In an addendum to Geeklethal's post on Vonnegut and why Americans are not universally loved, I misquoted Gertrude Stein writing about Oakland, California. I said she wrote, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer, when in the course of human events our fathers brought forth on this continent milk, bread, cheese-- dental floss!, in Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, with truth and justice for all, Amen."

In fact, the correct quote is, "give us the money, Lebowski, or we cut off your chonson."

The TimesOnline reports that Iran has renewed its fatwa against author Salman Rushdie. Or not. After noting that the current Ayatollah guy did, in fact, call once again for Rushdie's death, the article goes on to say that

Analysts in Iran played down the remark, suspecting that Ayatollah Khamenei was referring to the fatwa against Rushdie in a historical context and was not calling for it to be implemented now. "This isn't shocking - it's nothing new," one Tehran-based analyst said.

Fascinating. Rushdie was called a "mahdour al-damm mortad," or "apostate from Islam whose blood may now be spilled with impunity," but it was a purely rhetorical construct devoid of greater meaning.

Wouldn't it kick ass if President Bush could do the same thing? In his just-past re-inauguration speech (or as he would put it, my cosmic "reset" button), Bush could have referred not to Kim Jong-Il, Michael Moore or married homosexuals, but to "Kim Jong-Il, backstabbing psychopath and future bullseye in the crosshairs of justice," "Michael Moore, self-promoting merchant of lies whose bitch-tits will surely soon be in a wringer," or "Massachusetts."

Wouldn't that be a hoot? And the best part is, since it's all rhetorical, no harm/no foul!!

Over to you, Buckethead, you maundering pile of cow dung!

Rhetorically speaking, that is!

From Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle:

"The highest possible form of treason," said Minton, "is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do. Claire tried to make the point that American foreign policy should recognize hate rather than imagine love."

"I guess Americans are hated a lot of places."

"People are hated a lot of places. Claire pointed out in her letter that Americans, in being hated, were simply paying the normal penalty for being people, and that they were foolish to think they should somehow be exempted from that penalty. But the loyalty board didn't pay attention to that. All they knew was that Claire and I both felt that Americans were unloved."

Discuss.

[wik] From Johno (this no-comments business is crap): I had a long response all set to go for this and nixed it at the last moment. Why? Because I spent 1000 words arguing... arguing.... well, something... and then I realized I was having a hard time pinning down what I was trying to say about Vonnegut and his observations on American patriotism because, as Getrude Stein once said of Oakland, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer, when in the course of human events our fathers brought forth on this continent milk, bread, cheese-- dental floss!, in Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, with truth and justice for all, Amen."

[alsø wik] Which is to say, you can't box with a shadow and even if he can walk on water, Jesus can't walk on this much beer.

Through which the Ministers warmly remember our mothers pinning our mittens not to our coat sleeves, but straight through our tender little wrists.

For the week....er, or thereabouts...ending 22DEC04

Spotlight Turkey: A USAF Maj General serving in Turkey was almost offed by a member of his Turkish security detail. The General is America's highest-ranking officer in country and senior advisor to the US embassy in Turkey on martial matters. One of his guard's weapons misfired, so the official story goes, and the General was hit by tiny bits of shrapnel from the bullet that impacted at his feet.

Not sure if it was an accident by an inept guard who can't control his weapon, or an assassination attempt by an inept guard who can't control his weapon:

"Death to America! ALLAHUUUU AKBAA...rrr..oooohhh...I mean... how you say, the 'oops'?"

Spotlight Costa Rica: In other gun-related shenanigans, a Costa Rican cab driver shot some guy running around the neighborhood wearing an Osama mask and carrying a pellet gun. The man said he was jumping out and scaring drivers on a narrow street, you know, for fun.

Long regarded as the Central Americans with no sense of humor, a frosty attitude toward foreigners, and morose outlook on a grim life of senseless surf gamboling, sun worship, and hemp cultivation, it should shock no one that this solitary man who tried to inject a little levity into the otherwise colorless void masquerading as life in Costa Rica would get capped. Such is the twisted world in which we live.

Spotlight Londinium: An 18-year-old kid killed his friend because he wouldn't get out of his dog's favorite chair. As is so often the case when planning seating arrangements, words were exchanged, dogs became agitated, bats were brought out, 5.5 centimeter skull fractures were inflicted, and someone succumbed to brain damage.

This is precisely why I participated NOT AT ALL in the seating arrangements at my own wedding- just this sort of thing, because if I was going to hear one more time that Uncle A couldn't be within 3 tables of the bar but no closer than 4 tables of cousin B, someone was gonna get a bat in the head.

Spotlight Noo Yawk: A NYC landlord hired a pair of hitmen to kill 2 of his tenants, brothers who shared a rent-controlled apartment, so he could then free up the place and triple the rent. In another example America's declining work ethic, the hitmen didn't kill the brothers, but DID manage to inflict "disfiguring injuries". At trial the landlord said he didn't hire the men to kill, but to scare, which sounds like the "I tried pot but didn't inhale" defense. It didn't wash with the jury; sentencing in January.

Spotlight Wiscaahnsin: Truck driver Jeff Lafferty was shot by a second man who claimed Mr. Lafferty had damaged the man's mailbox. This particular story does not verify whether events unfolded the way the gunman thinks, but what is undeniable is that he put 4 rounds into this guy and didn't kill him. Obviously the product of a kum-ba-ya, touchy-feely public school that taught guns are bad.

This sort of event shows why this country needs more and better gun education programs. Somewhere along the line the NRA failed this man, who couldn't kill with at least 4 opportunities to do so and after his property was threatened by an interloper. We need to refocus on the fundamentals here, people: readin', writin', 'rithmetic, and riflery. We owe it to our children. American children.

Spotlight Nuevo Mexico: In the most brazen case ever recorded of institutionalized theft, an Albuquerque woman took $20,000 in child support payments from her ex-husband for a daughter that never existed and with the full cooperation of the judicial system. The fact that the "father" had a vasectomy a year prior to the supposed birth, that on no prior occasion had the woman ever produced said daughter, and that DNA tests proving the paternity were blatantly forged were entirely overlooked and indeed, refocused the blame and difficulty back on this man for being so ridiculously obstinate in the whole affair.

I'm sure this chick is a hero in the Wymyn's Studies, Herstory, Womanist set, and could have a bright future in academia when all this furor is passed. But she turns my fucking stomach. The man here made a huge mistake even getting involved with such a psychopath, but at least got out before there were real children involved or he got an icepick in the neck while sleeping.

Spotlight Missourah: But that chick from New Mexico is a fucking saint compared to this sick specimen. Lisa Montgomery has been charged with murdering a woman 8 months pregnant, cutting the unborn baby from the womb, and then, in a final homage to the macabre, passing the baby off as her own.

This story covers what is possibly the most reprehensible set of behaviors ever chronicled in the brief history of this feature. I had to reach for the eye soap after I first read about it and nearly called out sick from my real job- not because the story made me ill necessarily, but because I just couldn't go out into normal, functioning society knowing that such people really existed. Out there. Among us. Maybe next door. Not that I have neighbors here on the Frontier, I'm just sayin'.

If anyone else needs to sleep with the light on for a few nights, the Ministry understands. We will open the Ministry amphitheater/cafeteria/zombie-proof bunker, the Catastratorium, to loyal readers until we all feel a little better.

[wik] The above story is eerily similar to events that happened back in September 2003, very near to the college Johno and Buckethead attended. If anything, this story is a fraction of a bit creepier, because the murderer knew the mother, and had to change her story when her original target had a miscarriage. Check here and here for sickening details.

Spotlight Julian Sanchez' scary brain: Sanchez chronicles the relentless assault on Christmas by the evil forces of secularism here. Judging by his reasoned and persuasive essay, Sanchez is clearly one of them. The attack on Christmas is really just a feint, as true believers know; the real target is Christianity itself, and by criminalizing its holidays, maleficent liberals come one step closer to their ultimate goal of mandatory gay marriage for all, 100% gun confiscation, and Stalin worship.

The Ministry of course encourages these conflicts, as they provide just that much more lubrication for our tentacles to slither into the orifices of power.

Orifices!

This week, the Ministry was presented with one example of heartless circumstantial cruelty so profound, so overweeningly monstrous and yet so typical of the dim candles that humanity proudly calls their minds, that it takes center stage in a solo version of our celebrated series, "This Week in Exemplary Human Behavior."

Spotlight Iran: She is a woman severe mental handicaps. She has a mental age of eight. As a girl, she was sold into sex slavery by her mother and passed from pimp to pimp, bearing her first child at age nine and enduring repeated rapes and abuses in the years since. She is now nineteen years old and will bear the emotional and physical scars of her horrible ordeal for life.

In their infinite mercy, the mullahs controlling Iran have looked into their hearts and consulted their Korans and concluded that the only balm for this poor girl's tortured life is to sentence her to death for the crime of prostitution.

We of the Ministry, our hearts hardened and our faces perpetually ensneered, like sometimes to think we have plumbed the very limits of the chthonian depths of the perversity of the human spirit. It is stories like this, fresh outrages every week, that remind us that in truth we know jack shit.

In which attention is paid to the stupid, and makes the petty feel better about themselves.

For the week ending 7DEC04

Spotlight Bangladesh: In the face of threats from an Islamic group, Bangladesh cancelled its national women's swimming competition. The group, which carries the unintentionally hilarious moniker "Anti-Islamic Activities Prevention Committee" decided the event was un-Islamic. And it wasn't the first time; last year the same group shut down the women's wrestling event as well. Because God HATES wet women and chick fights.

People's Theocratic Revolutionary whatever of Iran: Iran's supreme court upheld an adultery conviction and approved the death penalty be applied in the case, but in a fit of conscience did commute an associated prison term for the defendant AND disallow she be hanged. So she could be stoned instead. The noose does still await the other defendant, a 17 year old boy. When remarking on the recent spate of lady executions in Iran, a female parliamentarian made some sort of weird remark about killing prostitutes that didn't make alot of sense, so won't repeat.

Spotlight Thailand: In an effort to defuse simmering inter-religious tension, Thai PM Thaksin Shiawatra approved airdropping 100 million origami birds across the largely Muslim south as a message of peace. Officials, volunteers, and schoolchildren folded each of the tiny cranes. And within hours of the gesture,

"the owner of a tea shop in Pattani was slain by gunmen, grenades were thrown at the homes of two policemen in the same province and arsonists set fire to a state school in Yala and a teacher's house in Narathiwat."

Gestures really only work if all parties understand the symbols at play. Lovingly crafted paper cranes might mean peace and reconciliation to me, but there's no reason why I should assume they WOULDN'T mean "react with arson and explosives" when others were faced with origami.

Spotlight every frat stereotype: A frathouse at the University of Georgia was the venue for a "Revenge of the Nerds" reenactment, when Ogre burns the frat house down. Except instead of the whole house, some dupe burned himself badly enough to wind up in the hospital after an accident with open flame, an oil lamp, and 190-proof alcohol. There was also a nod to "Dr Strangelove" ("Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure-grain alcohol?"), every zombie flick ever (the burned victim's "skin was hanging off his fingers, chest, abdomen, side and back"), "Animal House", and every school principal you ever heard ("to make sure these types of accidents don't happen again.")

Spotlight Massachussetts' fat ex-wife: Police and workers at an Auburn, Maine food bank are trying to figure out how a 20-pound bale of weed got into their shipment of watermellons. The most puzzling part of course is the choice of venue. Sure, you'd expect a 20-pound bale of weed in a big shipment of cookies, say, or Cheez-its, but watermellons? The cops and DEA exhibited exemplary behavior by harshing everyone's mellow and confiscating the bale, in clear and blatant violation of both the Constitution's Finders Keepers clause AND common goddamned decency. C'mon guys...if a fella has to get his food from the food bank, at Christmas even, you can't let him have a little extra in his stocking this year?

Can you ever imagine a lard shortage happening in the good old US of A? Fie on thee, Poland and Hungary, and your hog fat hogging lard lusting ways! Fie! England wants its figgy pudding!! Britannia wants its figgy pudding!!!

(Hat tip to loyal reader EDog)

In which the Ministry rewards its loyal readers with a seat on the Group W Bench, next to the father-rapers and mother-stabbers:
For the week ending 29NOV04

Spotlight Thailand: This land, once known for exotic scents, fantastical landscapes, and an elaborate boy-buggering sex trade, can now add school burning as a claim to fame. Southern *ahem* "militants" are blamed for burning five schools, the latest in a series of attacks against institutions and officials. In recent days government ministers or police have been shot, shot at (and missed), or been the victim of a drive-by (by motorcycle. With an axe.) Although as a child I often wished for something catastrophic and permanent to reduce my school to ash, I never actually did it. Of course, it never occurred to me to cloak my sloth and boredom with a political struggle either.

Spotlight "Palestine": The Middle East Media Research Institute features ongoing monitoring and translation of Arabic television and other media. One recent piece featured an homage to what the Arab press calls "martyrdom operations" and I call "twisted fuckers who kill as many people as they can as they snuff themselves". One mother claims she is proud of her martyred son, a son who had everything but wanted no wife. He wanted to be dead, actually, more than he wanted a wife. It's a sick, sick world when blowing yourself up is really the best alternative for the gay youth of Palestine.

Spotlight Congo: Reports have surfaced of some 150 instances of sexual abuse by UN staff members and soldiers in Congo. Reuters had little details at the time of this report, but the words "pedophilia", "rape", and "prostitution" do appear in the same sentence. Thus far only a handful of UN staff have been suspended, while one French and two Tunisian soldiers have been sent home. Characteristic of most things the UN has ever attempted, a half-dozen or so UN officials voiced outrage while admitting their influence was limited, and the Secretary General himself declared that he would implement a new policy.

Spotlight San Diego: A pastor of an unspecified CA church used fear of the devil to lure gullible congregants into having sex with him. He basically had three pickup lines: the devil has already attacked them in some way, and the cure was sex with him; the devil will at some point attempt to harm them, and the prevention was sex with him; or, he threatens to kill you unless you have sex with him. Not sure which is creepier, the sick pastor or the freaky church chicks who fell for his lines. All examples of exemplary human behavior, I daresay.

Spotlight Pennsylvania: A PA woman surrendered to police after admitting she fatally shot her husband for threatening the family pets. She tried to cover her tracks by throwing him in the well and explaining his absence to a hunting trip but confessed to her daughter, who ultimately called police. Apparently there was an argument and a bit of a shoving match, itself more than enough for a Lifetime movie of the moment, but by then threatening the pets he got himself a trip to the coroner.

Spotlight Wiscahnsin: Truck driver and Hmong refugee Chai Vang went buck nutty in the WI woods, offing six hunters and wounding two others. The survivors' stories and Vang's agree as far as what brought them into contact in the first place, but start to diverge at the point where people start getting killed. Vang claims he was called ethnic slurs (I've never heard a Hmong joke in my life, or what I'd call a Hmong if I wanted to insult him...anyone know?) and shot at as he was told to vacate private property. One survivor says he started shooting for no reason. Personally, I'm leaning toward Vang's version. Not that I think it's OK, I just think it's more plausible that in the heat of a tense moment, scared and outnumbered, the guy opened up. Now if it were a white dude, I might believe he started blasting for no reason, same way we do schools, daycares, and company HR offices.

Our closest allies in the animal kingdom, the dolphins, were recently reported as having taken decisive action last month to protect a group of human tourists from the scourge of shark terrorism. Four New Zealanders swimming in the ocean near Whangarei on New Zealand's North Island when a pod of dolphins suddenly pushed the four swimmers together and began circling them.

At first the New Zealanders were concerned at this action, feeling perhaps that overzealous dolphin border police were concerned at some passport violation. But then swimmer Rob Howes saw the angry fin of a three meter long fundamentalist Great White terrorist shark, and understood the reason for the dolphins’ behavior.

"They had corralled us up to protect us," he said.

The dolphin counter-terror force circled the swimmers for another forty minutes before declaring the area secure and allowing the swimmers to return to shore. Dolphin sources report that an average of seven to ten humans are killed each year by shark terrorists. They urge caution when visiting the oceans because, “The oceans cover three fourths of the globe, and there are only so many dolphins. While we’ve had notable successes in curbing shark terrorist activity, the ocean remains a breeding ground for shark extremism.” A dolphin spokesman at their embassy at Sea world endorsed this webpage giving helpful tips to avoid becoming the victim of shark extremist violence.

While some have accused the dolphins of pursuing a imperialist policy in regard to counter-terror actions in shark national homelands, it is clear that the sacrifice of brave dolphins in the DDF and Dolphin constabulary are the reason that there are so few shark attacks on humans. Some dolphin supporters even believe that without the strong arm tactics of our dolphin allies, we would be facing the scourge of shark terrorism in the streets of our cities and towns.

Despite the shrill attacks of those who accuse the dolphins of being frontmen for human imperialism in the oceans, or the obstructionism of our so-called allies the orcas; we owe a debt of gratitude to our finned allies, for holding the line against fundamentalist terror in the oceans.

This week is a double issue of our review of exemplary behavior, in which the Ministry offers eleven stories of people who, by their very existence, prove that it is in fact possible to get pregnant via anal intercourse.

(Dateline: London) The Ministry has been tracking the ups and downs of international relations for many, many years (we were in the tracking business long before the first Mongol horde came roaring down the steppes in a cloud of rancid horsefat and lethally sharp arrows and made it interesting for us), and we have found one thing to be incontrovertably true: nothing is more satisfying than an impotent hissy fit. From Sir Cletus Coke (created Baron of Upper Lower Nutsack in 1713 by Queen Anne) whose legendary vituperation in his dotage against the colonials did more than anything else to sour Benjamin Franklin forever on his now near-forgotten Nutsack Strategem for peace between Crown and Colonies in the tense days of 1775, to Dick Cheney's famous f-bomb on the floor of the US Congress, we at the Ministry have found that the the truth lies in the little things.

What truth can we glean from this? Merely that Canadian MP Carolyn Parrish is a petty harridan who has a grossly inflated sense of her own worth. In addition to making a "smoosh" video of herself stomping on a George W. Bush doll to her assurances that Americans are all "bastards," Parrish has done more to destroy US-Canadian relations than any force since the Half-Afternoon War of 1956. (In which four Quebecois farmers, drunk on Canadian Club, drove halfway to Burlington, VT with the intention of capturing the State capital and toppling the Green Mountain State from within. After engaging in light deer-rifle gunplay with certain Vermonters, it was expressed to them that the capital was in fact in Montpelier, forty miles away. As it was getting dark and they were low on supplies, the Canucks returned home shamefaced to the cold reaches of their homeland.)

Currently, MP Parrish is threating to ruin an upcoming speech by George W. to the Canadian Parliament.

Ms. Parrish said Wednesday she will not tone down her criticisms of U.S. President George W. Bush when he visits Ottawa this month, and Prime Minister Paul Martin's team can "go to hell" if they don't like it.

Ms. Parrish, an outspoken MP who has called Americans "bastards" and Mr. Bush "warlike," fired several broadsides at her own party leader, saying she won't cry if he loses the next election and is forced out of the leadership.

Most Liberals lined up yesterday to insist they would be on their best behaviour during the visit, and Ms. Parrish insisted that she would not heckle the President if he addresses Parliament. But as she prepared to meet Mr. Martin later Wednesday, she gave an interview saying she won't silence her criticism outside the Commons, or toe Mr. Martin's line.

"And if he wants to know why he can't control me, I have absolutely no loyalty to this team. None," she said in an interview with The Canadian Press. "After what they've put me through and lots of my colleagues, they can all go to hell. But he's not going to control me, so all he's going to do is end up looking weak."

Or, she is going to end up looking like an ass, but that doesn't seem to have been a deterrent thus far.

(Dateline: Moscow) Russia has made great strides of late in making a mockery of Western civilization's values, mores, and institutions. From banking to government powers, the Bear is leading the charge to wherever it's charging to; probably some sort of monstrous gulag.

Further progress was made recently when a Russian jury found a scientist guilty of spying for China, despite a) no spying was proven b) it's not clear that the information he sold to China was ever secret or classified but rather was public domain, and c) he had previously been acquitted of the same charges by another jury. But no worry! The train of justice rolls on!!

A jury in Siberia convicted a physicist today of spying for China, overturning a previous jury's acquittal after a closed trial that highlighted flaws in Russia's judicial system.

The jury rendered its verdict on the central espionage charge against the physicist, Valentin V. Danilov, even though the court's judges have yet to hold a hearing to decide whether the information he is accused of passing along is even secret, his lawyer said. That hearing is now scheduled for Nov. 10.

"This has no legal or logical justification," the lawyer, Yelena V. Yevlinova, said in a telephone interview from Krasnoyarsk, the regional capital in central Siberia where the trial was held.

Mr. Danilov, a researcher at Krasnoyarsk State University who was first charged in 2001, has acknowledged selling information about satellite technology to a Chinese company but argued that all of it was readily available from public sources.

Mr. Danilov was initially acquitted last December. His trial was the first of a recent flurry of espionage cases against scientists and researchers to be decided by a jury. Jury trials are still a relative novelty in Russia, having become an option for defendants in some serious cases only in 2002.

Although a new criminal code adopted that year was supposed to end double jeopardy except in extreme cases of judicial misconduct, prosecutors appealed his acquittal, citing "significant procedural violations" during his first trial. Among them was the fact that Mr. Danilov's lawyers discussed material in front of jurors that had not been accepted as evidence.

In June, the Supreme Court ordered a new trial, which began in September and was closed to the media and the public. Ms. Yevlinova said that the court's chief judge refused to let her present evidence showing that the information Mr. Danilov showed was not classified as secret. She said that, in effect, the jury's 12 members found that he signed a contract with the Chinese company, known as the Export and Import Company of Precise Machine Building.

"It is not clear what crime he was convicted of," she said.

Mr. Danilov, in a telephone interview, questioned the selection of the jury and the fact a list of the jurors was never published. He said he suspected they acted under pressure. "Not one of the jurors looked me in the face when the verdict was read," he said. "When someone does not look you in the eyes, it means that they have problems with their conscience."

Mr. Danilov's case - like the more prominent trial of Russia's richest man, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky - has dashed the hopes of some that the legal reforms adopted in 2002 would give the judiciary greater independence. In practice, courts remain subject to the powerful influence of prosecutors and agencies like the Federal Security Service, the successor of the Soviet K.G.B.

(Dateline: Toronto) He was a quiet child, kind, courteous and willing to please. When he killed granny we thought the nightmare was over. And when he wrote "Kill all Women" on a blackboard, we're sure he's serious when he says it was just "art".

(Dateline: Orange County) Ahhh.. the OC. Home of comfortable conservatism, setting for inane teen drama television, and site of appalling abuses of power:

Many of you might not recognize the name Greg Haidl if you don’t happen to live in Southern California, but for Scott Peterson, Beretta, Courtney Love, and other high profile malcontents you would. Haidl, a corporately sponsored skateboarder, is the 19 year old son of wealthy Orange County Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl, and he is a piece of ... work shall we say. Greg and a couple of the OC’s finest took advantage of an opportunity to gangrape a 16 year old female classmate who had become very intoxicated. To add insult to injury (this is not a figure of speech in this case) these fine young men of the OC memorialized the events on videotape for their future enjoyment. Not content to merely film your standard every day gangrape, the boys decided to spice things up by inserting various foreign objects into the young lady while taking turns having their way with her. You may be assuming that these young cretins are at this time languishing in prison for their exertions, but you would be wrong, quite wrong indeed.

You see, Greg Haidl’s daddy is worth approximately $91Million give or take, and as I mentioned, he is a former Assistant Sheriff for the OC. Greg’s legal team was spared no expense as you might imagine, and if you combine that with a scenario tailor made for influence peddling of the worse sort, you get a hung jury and a mistrial.

Truly a model citizen, but lest you think California holds the monopoly on amoral teenaged suburban cretins, let's pay a visit to

(Dateline: Minnesoter) ... where we find three youths charged with beating another student with a baseball bat. The bright side? They were arguing about politics. The beatee held that "only fags would vote for Bush," and the beaters evidently took great exception to such sentiment. Sez Dakota County, MN, Attorney James Backstrom: "It's a good thing to see young people interested and excited about politics, [but] it's obviously very disturbing to see this kind of violence over it." Too true, counsel, and spoken like a true ambulance-chaser!

(Dateline: Oregon) But lest we think that America's youth are only concerned with gang rape and politics (similitudes at this point would be beyond tasteless), the Ministry offers assurances that some of them still like to film themselves beating someone to a pulp and sell the DVD in school complete with a pumpin' soundtrack. (Quick registration required in link; someone will pay for that inconvenience.) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Harvard Business School class of 2016!!

(Dateline: Georgia)Quick: what loves Justin Timberlake, is charged with twelve counts of attempted murder, and fits into a training bra?

Two seventh-grade girls were arrested on charges that they served poisoned cake at their middle school cafeteria to about a dozen students who became ill and had to be taken to the hospital.

Lawyers for the girls said the cake was a prank, and that they had no intention to harm anyone. Lab tests showed the icing on the cornbread cake contained an expired prescription drug, bleach, clay and tabasco sauce.

The Ministry is pleased to note that thanks to the feminist movement, Title IX, and the endless perversity of the human spirit, the girls are doing it for themselves for a change.

(Dateline: Tennessee) At the crossroads of Office Space and Butt Bandits III is this guy.

The owner of a shaved ice business was arrested after two employees claimed he spanked them for making mistakes at work. Paul Eugene Levengood, 57, was charged with two counts of sexual battery after the 19-year-old women complained.

One of the women told police that on her first day at the Tasty Flavors Sno Biz, Levengood made her sign a statement that said: "I give Gene permission to bust my behind any way he sees fit."

(Dateline: Washington) But sometimes sexual assault just isn't funny. Anthony Whitfield will be in prison for 137 years or until he dies of AIDS, whichever comes first, for knowingly having unprotected sex with 17 women after being diagnosed with HIV. Five of the women have in turn contracted the disease. A witness at his trial recalled that he once said "that if he had HIV, he would give it to as many people as he could."

(Dateline: New York) On the next Mythbusters: Do people really throw frozen turkeys through car
windshields? Yup. And if it puts someone in a coma, you get to do jail time, too!

(Dateline: Wisconsin) Incensed at other hunters who apparently told him to get the hell out of their deer blind, St. Paul MN resident Chai Vang shot and killed five people and wounded three more with a deer rifle on Sunday, sniping at his confronters and anyone else in sight from his perch in a tree in the wilds of Western Wisconsin.

Note that according to the news, the malefactor had "an assault-type weapon", the scourge of our times. A regular "defense-type weapon" would of course have killed no-one.

Sometimes the machinery of Determinist Darwinism (others call it "just desserts," "fate," or "gettin' what's coming to you") goes horribly awry. Vang was scheduled years ago to asphyxiate underneath the weight of a car he had jacked up with a couple beer bottles while he worked on the oil pan with an arc welder, but unfortunately for eight hunters in Wisconsin, he escaped unscathed from that meeting with mortality. Not to worry: his day too will come.

Does anybody know how well one could live on a salary of say, 75,000 euro in Dublin?

I've been reading Our Oldest Enemy, the history of America's not so cuddly relationship with France over the last three hundred years. It's a fascinating story; full of tales of French massacres of colonial Americans, brushes with full scale war in the time after Independence and during the Civil War, and general French contempt for all things American.

But the best bit so far (I'm up to the Cold War now) is this:

In retrospect, the most effective strategy for thwarting a Communist takeover of Vietnam would have been for France to accept some version of Roosevelt's trusteeship plan. [Which would have led to Vietnamese independence -.ed] But French pride made this impossible and only energized Ho's movement, which merged its Communist ideology with the powerful patriotism of the Vietnamese people. "The biggest Vietminh appeal," said one State Department official "is land, education, and a chance to shoot Frenchmen. It is difficult to match that platform."

Still is today.

For the week ending 8Nov04

Spotlight Thailand: Another week, another lost head. This time, assed-up radicals in Thailand took the head of a village official in revenge for several Muslims killed in protests last week. That there might be a connection between previous similar rioting, attempts to seize police weapons earlier in the month, and a harsh backlash by Thai police and soldiery was lost on the vengeance-seekers.

Spotlight Die Nederlaender: Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was brutally killed in broad daylight in Amsterdam. The killing was done to exact revenge on Van Gogh for a film of his that is hrashly critical of certain aspects of Islam. Surprisingly enough, the perpetrators of the crime (admitted radical Muslims) did NOT- I repeat, NOT- cut his head off. But they DID leave a couple knives in the bullet-ridden body, one of which pinned a note of Koranic verse to the dead man's chest. What's Arabic for, "blugh"?

Spotlight Taiwan: It's well established that previous attempts to convert lions to Christianity in public arena-type settings have met with consistent, and gory, failure. An intrepid zealot in Taipei, however, thought he'd take animal proselytization into the Third Millenium. His modern take on the issue did yield some benefit, as instead of being torn to pieces he was merely mauled about the arms and legs, so the Church is voicing cautious optimism. The lions in question refused comment.

Spotlight New Jersey: A Jersey Air National Guard pilot on a night training flight put 25 rounds of 20mm training ammo into an elementary school three and a half miles from the range. First, more training appears to be needed. Second, was it really an accident, or evidence of the Air Force's new anti-school munition? If the latter, double extra training is needed as the rounds barely penetrated the roof.

Spotlight Virginia: George Mason University's Associate Director of Equity and Diversity Services is a pervert. Not only did he have an ongoing relationship with a boy (which started when the boy was 16), the guy made child porn vids of his other liasons and later tried to leverage the vids for extortion money. He was arrested after being found unconscious in a DC motel. Some Mason students report that they would be "uneasy about approaching his office if they needed help with sexual harassment issues."

Spotlight Tejas: A 17-year-old boy from Mexico, staying with relatives in Texas, killed one cousin (age 10), slashed three other cousins AND their mother, then fled. Two of the victims remain in critical condition. Police said "some of the victims looked like they were trying to find places to hide" from the rampaging kid. And what was the cause of this gruesome display? The family accused the boy of using drugs. DARE- to keep kids from knifing their entire family.

Spotlight Freedom Hating Northeast: Johno submits that nothing's funnier than combining jokes about secession with jokes about illegal settlements and security fences in the context of Red Sox Nation!! Sneering liberal condescention, Sneering Northeast provincialism, and sneering equal-oppo Antisemitism and Antipalestinian derision... that's some kinda trifecta.