In October 1993, the US Marines Historical Reenactment Society evidently performed their version of My Lai in Somalia, killing over 1,000 Somalis, taking hostages, using bodies as barricades, etc etc. Nice to be hearing about this now.

The latest breakout in the increasingly out of control world of fertility research: sperm from a dead guy. Sperm from someone dead over 24 hours was removed and successfully fertilized eggs. And the stuff can be frozen. So there have been an increasing number of requests for extractions from dead teenagers (to carry on the family lineage) and that sort of thing.

Dean McHenry, the guiding force behind UCSC, has died.

So has Dr. Spock and I can no longer resist: He's dead, Jim.

There's talk of a Jewish cable channel in Britain. One idea: a dating program on traditional lines, questions being asked of someone hidden from the contestant, except that in this case, the questions are to be asked by the contestant's...Jewish mother. Oy. Jenny McCarthy will probably not be on this one.

How do American dental students get teeth to practice on? The French have reverted to the traditional medical practice of graverobbing, or actually bribing gravediggers.

A belated Purple Heart was given to a prisoner on San Quentin's death row today. It's part of his crazy-veteran defense, but they still had the normal ceremony.

The Amazing Kreskin has said he will get to the bottom of the whole Whitewater thing by reading the minds of all concerned, for $1. Anything's better than Death by 60 Minutes. Just saw Ann Lewis, White House Communications Director, being savaged on Nightline for giving the same line on Willey that she attacked when it was used against Anita Hill. Someone suggested that the response of feminists to this one indicates that feminism is no longer a principle but a political tool.

The story to look for in the next few days will be about the information contained in the just-released files of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. Keep an eye out.

The new status item for drug dealers is watch-alligators, replacing the pit bulls they used to use.

New Labour, Old Genitals: David Spry elected for the Labour party to the town council of Bristol (coincidentally, Bristols means breasts in cockney) has since become a pre-op transexual called Rosalind. I blame Monty Python, and Benny Hill. He/she was not allowed into the women's group of the Labour party.

The Chinification of US prisons

The world's largest democracy, so-called, just gets sillier. The Hindu fundies have taken over, if they can dispense enough bribes to keep power, and pledge to build nuclear weapons, presumably for use against McDonald's (that's a sacred cow joke, if anybody didn't get it). Meanwhile the Congress Party, in an act of ancestor-in-law worship that should set back the feminist movement even further, puts Italian widow Sonia Gandhi in charge of their party. She did it on the condition that she wouldn't have to do any actual work.

A new book says that Lyndon Johnson bugged Veep Hubert Humphrey and sabotaged his 1968 presidential campaign.

I trust everyone watched 60 Minutes last night, because you just can't hear enough about Clinton's penis (or, the leader of the leader of the free world, as it's known).

You may already have won

Clinton has been toying with adopting Truman's strategy of attacking the do-nothing Congress, his ambivalence perhaps reflecting the relief most of us feels when this particular Congress is not doing anything. Certainly, Clinton picked a bad place to start, insisting on Congress ratifying the tobacco deal. Assuming this has nothing to do with campaign contributions, this shows how committed Clinton has become to the idea of a budget surplus (his budget numbers require the money from the tobacco companies). However, the continuing flow of revelations about past practices suggests that rushing the deal would be to give an amnesty without knowing what crimes were being amnestied.

Speaking of amnesties, 1) the South African Truth Commission just asked the courts to reverse its own amnesty of ANC leaders in the absence of testimony from them, as was required of everyone else. 2) Kim Dae-jung's amnesty of 5.5 million Koreans failed to include the world's longest serving political prisoner (since 1958--in solitary) and several other POCs, who refused the condition of renouncing their political beliefs (the bit that none of the American media seem to have noticed). But it does include a lot of convicted drunk drivers who will presumably now get their licenses back.

The Serbian media keep referring to the Albanians of Kosovo as a minority. Do you think even Serbs believe that 90% constitute a minority? It's that sort of thinking that made Wilson cancel the requirement that the state should try to give 5% of its contracts to businesses owned by women.

Web-site of the week: www.taliban.com

I said a few months ago that there would be ethnic rioting in places like Indonesia. Even I underestimated the cynicism of the Suharto government, which ITN says is organizing some of the rioting against Chinese shops, a sure distraction from the government's rampant corruption. Sworn in for yet another unopposed term, Suharto, who has only one name, like Madonna, or Godzilla, said that the good times (!) will not return to Indonesia. This is a day after he restored tax breaks and monopolies to his family.

Rep. Jay Kim, the first Korean member of the US Congress, will become the first to come to the House with one of those prison monitoring bracelets.

I am somebody--well, the son of somebody

In a profile of Jesse Jackson Jr., the NY Times says that he talks of the difficulties of a black man hailing a cab in D.C. Maybe they just realize he's a congressman.

The media always get interested in censorship just a bit late. For example, I just got from the Village Voice the answer to a question I had been wondering for weeks, namely, if there had been a war in Iraq, what would the press arrangements have been. In fact, it would have been the reviled pool system, which alternative media during the last Gulf war, and mainstream media afterwards, filed suit against, but which no one bothered to report would have been instituted again, if you can follow my grammar. Incidentally, all those interviews we did read last month with resigned but game servicepeople were chaperoned by minders from the Pentagon.

In Mein Kamf, to make a subtle segue, Hitler talked a lot about The Jew and the Jews, but only mentioned one specific Jew, an unnamed one he had gone to school with at Linz, who evidently soured him on the whole race. In a book out shortly, Kimberley Cornish, The Jew of Linz--excerpted in today's Sunday (London) Times, which can be easily retrieved from the Times web-site whenever you read this, it is suggested and I think close to proved that that Jew was the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The same age, but 2 years ahead of Hitler, he shared many of the same interests and annoying habits, and matched many of the traits denounced in Mein Kampf. Hitler would later set up a steel works specifically to undermine the works owned by the Wittgenstein family. The book also argues that Wittgenstein was the unnamed homosexual teacher at Trinity College, Cambridge, who recruited the famous spies for the Soviet Union (Blunt, Philby, Burgess, Maclean).

I hope everyone's keeping up with the oil pipeline planned through the Caucasus. Russia seems so intent on making sure that it's path, to be chosen this month, goes through Russian territory, that it seems to be responsible for the assassination attempts last month on the presidents of Georgia and Azerbaijan, as well as the bloodless coup in Armenia, which Russia is arming for a renewed military confrontation with Azerbaijan.

The Supreme Court rules that local officials who deliberately violate civil rights have legislative immunity. In the case, a city council retaliated against a black woman who had complained about racial slurs from a co-worker by eliminating her job.

The Palestinian security forces are being trained in interrogation and eavesdropping by the CIA. I'm sure the news of that will relax everyone.

The UN war crimes tribunal cuts the sentence on a Croat who shot at least 70 Muslims to 5 years on account of his youth and remorse. So that's all right then.

By coincidence, ran into 2 stories of Starr's hypocrisy in a row. The first, on the Mother Jones website, shows how when Starr was attorney for GM, he did his damnedest to keep evidence of perjury out of the records, if not actually suborn perjury himself. The article is kind of interesting. It's about how GM, in the 70s decided it was cheaper to let a bunch of people die and pay the lawsuits than to make a rather cheap improvement to their automobiles.

The second, in the Washington Post, says that Starr has now subpoenaed two private investigators for the National Enquirer who in 1996 tried to find evidence that he was having an affair. Amazingly, they couldn't find evidence, and didn't run the story. That puts their journalistic ethics higher than those of any other news source in the country.

My long-time readers will recall the following, from Fri, 1 Nov 1996:

IN THE School of Islamic Thought that has shaped the ideology of the Taliban, there is an active debate on the appropriate punishment for homosexuals.

Mullah Mohammed Hassan, Governor of Kandahar, the fundamentalist movement's home province, explained the dilemma: "There are two kinds of strong punishment. There are those who say homosexuals should be thrown to their death from a high fort, and those who favour putting them in a pit and pushing a wall on top of them.

A follow-up:

International News Electronic Telegraph Friday 27 February 1998

Gay men survive execution attempt

THREE Afghan men convicted of sodomy have been spared after they survived an attempt to execute them by using a tank to bulldoze a wall on top of them. Thirty minutes later, they were found alive in the rubble.

I keep hearing about vampirism in youth subculture lately. Florida, which as ever has no clue about how such things are done, just sentenced one to the electric chair. What's a vampire doing in Florida anyway?

Oregon just decided to use Medicaid or some form of state funding for doctor-assisted suicides for poor people. This was decided by a health panel rather than the legislature, but you can just imagine the dilemma for Republicans: on the one hand it's socialized medicine, on the other hand, it's killing the poor. What to do, what to do.

The Vatican has found that since there is now so much call for the exorcism rite, that they should simplify it. For a start, it was never updated during Vatican II so it's still in Latin.

A Haifa rabbinical court rules that married women must be home by midnight. If I get this right, this has the force of law. These are the courts you go to to get a divorce. The woman in this case was heard to object, "But my husband was fucking other women."

Stephen Hawking's new theory says that something called inflation occurred before the beginning of the universe and that the universe will expand forever. He is wrong. What, who are you going to believe, me or some guy in a wheel chair?

The British government is threatening to eliminate the extra fee police officers earn by searching a dead body (£25, or 17 each if there are more than one).

Saddam Hussein: he starts a war, his popularity goes up, he loses a war, his popularity goes up, he averts a war, his popularity goes up, he gets a blow job from an intern, his popularity goes up....

Arrogant quote of the week, from Madeleine Albright: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future."

Correction of the week, from the Washington Post:
[39]CLARIFICATION
An article yesterday on variations in Paula Jones's account of alleged sexual harassment by President Clinton stated that her lawyers filed an amended complaint in December, a month after her deposition, to charge that Clinton tried to touch her "pelvic area." Jones's lawyer said yesterday that the first public reference to the "pelvic area" allegation appeared in an earlier document, filed in court on Oct. 27.

The CDC have stopped those obnoxious placebo tests of AIDS transmission by pregnant women that I railed against a few months ago.

Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, is writing a new book, unfortunately for HarperCollins, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is very interested in sucking up to the Chinese and so has ordered the book be toned down. I did not read about this in the London Times.

Austria is to change its marriage laws to require the husband to do half the washing up. As absurd as most Austrians find this, they have said nothing for 60 years about the law that allows divorce by men on the grounds of the wife refusing to cook or to clean.

So why does the US have no credibility over Iraq? Well, there's of course the Wag the Dog phenomenon (a movie recently shown on Iraqi tv, which is a serious miscalculation; as China knows, we don't care about human rights but the theft of intellectual property is another matter entirely). In the Middle East, it's the refusal to confront Israel about anything, although Israel like Iraq is in violation of numerous Security Council resolutions and has weapons of mass destruction (WMD in killer-wonk speak). But I think for the rest of the world a serious obstacle to American credibility is our continued attitude towards Cuba. As in Iraq, the US is here trying to foist its foreign policy on the rest of the world, and more to the point, it underlines Hussein's point that there is nothing Iraq can do that will get the sanctions removed. 40 years of petty vindictiveness with no end in sight.

That damn machine again

From a New York magazine competition (8/4/97) for outgoing answering messages:

"Hello. This is Bob Dole. Bob Dole is not here right now..."

"This is Martha Stewart. While you are on hold, why not spray-paint your phone? First, put masking tape..."

The Roadrunner: "Beep beep"

Harry Houdini: "I'm all tied up right now..."

The Marquis de Sade: "I'm all tied up right now..."

"Hello, this is Jerry Seinfeld. Did you ever wonder why everyone has to say hello?....."

"Hi, this is Gary Karsparov. I could have taken your call, but the machine beat me to it."

"Paul McCartney here. daed ton m'I."

"You've reached the home of Erwin Schrodinger. I'm both in and not in at the moment..."

"You have reached the offices of Dr. Jekyll. Thank you for your patience during our transition."

"You have reached Weight Watchers. If this is an emergency, press the pound sign now."

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

2 completely unrelated news stories:

The French Ministry of Culture names a (closed) Paris brothel a historical monument.

Australia will preserve a hut in its station in Antarctica with a "Sistine ceiling" of 92 naked pin-ups.

With the War of Clinton's Penis tentatively scheduled in for the end of the month (let's see, it has to be after the Olympics, during a full moon, or was that no moon, and before the haj season. Have your people call my people.), no one seems to have noticed that Turkey invaded Iraq for the 87th time or whatever it is, a week or two ago, with the intention of making sure there are no Kurdish refugees, at least none that will live to tell the tale. The US has been remarkably quiet about the Kurds this time.

With all the hypocritical stories about the Russian 1995 deal (which may not even have gone anywhere) to help build the Iraqi chemical weapons industry (hypocritical because all the initial aid to Iraq in this department came from the US & Britain; the US sold Iraq its starter set of anthrax and botulism, some of it after the gassing of the Kurds in 1988) (Britain was also the first country to use chemical weapons on Iraq, yonks ago, ordered by Winston Churchill).

The US Senate passed a law allowing the president to refuse inspection of our chemical facilities in the name of national security.

Iraq is getting to be like the Monica story, where there are bits of rumor that you hear once and then never again, but are never quite sure whether that means they were wrong or that the media got bored. For example, did Iraq send all its bio weapons scientists into hiding in Libya? Is it true that Iraq offered bounties for killing UN & other foreign relief workers assisting the Kurds?

Pop quiz: which US president renounced research into biological weapons?
Answer at the end of this message.

A letter to the NY Times points out that in his press conference of Feb. 6, Clinton said that we will use force against Iraq, but said about Northern Ireland that "Nothing worth having can be accomplished through violence."

The LA Times Wednesday notes that the Senate (Republican) report on Clinton fund-raising talks about, but fails to prove, Chinese attempts to influence the 1996 election, but neglects to mention Taiwan. John Huang and Charlie Trie are both from Taiwan, and the famed Buddhist temple is also linked there. When all else failed, the Republicans referred to "Greater China" so that the Reds would take the fall for Taiwan's actions.

Answer: Nixon.

The LA school district police want to be allowed to carry shotguns in their patrol cars. "Hey, kid: SPIT OUT THAT GUM!"

Clinton admin says its authority to blow the shit out of Iraq derives from the resolution passed in 1991 before the War to Make the World Safe for Feudalism. Um, we did repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, didn't we? I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure that using this sort of standard would allow us to resume hostilities with Germany. We declared war in 1941, but I don't remember a peace treaty....

I performed a little gotcha on the Washington Post. If you check out the "Today's Paper" section of today's Slate (which you should each and every one of you have them send you by e-mail, by the way), you will see a mention of a fuck-up in yesterday's Post, which I brought to the attention of the Slate writer. An article on Zimbabwe was titled "Winter of Discontent". Zimbabwe is of course in the southern hemisphere so it is summer and the toilet bowl water revolves in the opposite direction from whichever direction it revolves here.

As I speak, there are Congresscritters on tv arguing about renaming National Airport after the Antichrist. They will have to remove all metal detectors, because Reagan thought everyone should have a right to be armed, and air traffic control would be performed by the first ten people who came in off the streets. New slogan: "Mistakes were made."

Yeltsin says that the US could start a world war if it uses force against Iraq. His handlers say this meant if the US uses tactical nukes. And they then say, no that doesn't mean that Russia would retaliate if nukes were used against Iraq. So presumably there would only be a world war if Iraq has nuclear weapons, which is rather the point.

Texas executes at 6 p.m. That means the last meal is served around the time all the old folk are taking advantage of the early bird special at Sizzler.

Nice to see the evangelicals out in force against someone being executed. Of course it's not really because she's a woman. After all, they'd all be happy to see Ellen DeGeneres given the death penalty.