Wherein I out a British prime minister

The newest in doggie accessories: sunglasses. About a hundred bucks for the high-end ones.

Sunday’s elections in Switzerland may return the Swiss People’s Party as the largest party, after a racist anti-immigrant campaign featuring a poster, quickly withdrawn under fire, that said either “The Swiss feel like niggers” (Daily Telegraph), or “Swiss are the negroes of Switzerland” (Time Magazine’s European edition). These are the only English-language references to the poster, and my German isn’t up to trying to find it in the original. I’d also like to see the poster. Anyone?

Almost a year after the Moscow theater siege, the government is still lying about the number who died and the causes of their deaths.

The first governor of Najaf, a holy city in Iraq, because they’re all fucking holy cities aren’t they?, appointed by the US occupation authorities went on trial, very quietly indeed, last week. They could ignore the massive car theft ring he ran, but not so much the kidnappings, at least not when 3 kidnapped boys, sons of a political rival, were found in the guv’s offices--in the Coalition’s hq. I mentioned his arrest June 30, but there’s been nothing in the press since.

The Observer on the great increase in torture by Russian police. Torture is not illegal in Russia.

A book is coming out this week on the Oscar Wilde trial. Evidently the Marquis of Queensberry blackmailed the government into it: while his younger son was having sex with Wilde, his older son had had a two-year affair with the Earl of Rosebery, who by 1895 was the prime minister.

Sick tv project of the week, from Britain’s Channel 4: they will ask American death row prisoners to record a song before their execution, which will be incorporated into a musical.

Bush in the Philippines says that the US liberated the country from colonial rule. (And then wouldn’t leave for nearly 50 years.)