Sunday, January 12, 2003

Drawing ridicule, scorn and anger

The government of Greenland has collapsed, after 37 days, in a controversy over a healer being brought in to drive evil spirits out of the government’s offices. The government resigned. So it worked.

Weapons of Mass Irritation: the US has been spamming Iraqi military and other leaders with emails suggesting that they not use their weapons against the US invasion, or face “personal consequences.” Also that if they help the US defeat Saddam, their credit will improve, penises grow larger, and watch women have sex with donkeys (I’m guessing. Actually, I’d like to see the exact text of these emails, if anyone runs across them).

In Britain, someone posted in the website Friends United that he’d become a great success since high school, selling cocaine. He’s now in prison.

I guess relating to Iraq, John Bolton, #3 man in the State Dept: “There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.”

When the ex-boyfriend of a Portland, Ore. cop was arrested for drugs, the cops went through her garbage cans and had her used tampons tested for drugs. (The story I read doesn’t say what the results were, but I think negative). She sued. A newspaper decided to go through the police chief’s garbage and list its contents in the paper. That would be one response. The other, I humbly submit, is for everyone in Portland to send their used tampons to the police or DA.

Ill. Governor George Ryan has pardoned or commuted all 150, 156, or 167 (how hard a fact was this for the newspapers to check, really?) people on death row. Here’s the response of the brother of one homicide victim: "How can one person have all of this authority and power?" As opposed to the power to decide that someone else’s life should be snuffed out. I can’t even imagine thinking that way, where a commutation is some awesome tyrannical use of absolute power, while signing a warrant of execution is nothing. Another relative of a victim (or maybe the same one) says "It's like we were murdered again." We? Ryan rightly says that his decision "will draw ridicule, scorn and anger."

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