So has anyone heard of this California state senator Pete Wright who is sponsoring an anti-gay marriage initiative and has a gay son and a dead gay brother, mentioned in tomorrow’s Washington Post? The son is evidently writing op-ed pieces about what a bigot his father is. I’m just guessing that Orange County is involved in this story somewhere.

Russia, still following NATO’s Kosovo playbook, bombs a maternity hospital.

Britain, to make Jiang Zemin at home during his state visit, has been beating up protestors and taking away Tibetan flags. One protestor who probably won’t be beaten up: Prince Charles, who is boycotting the state banquet.

Women MPs in Britain are getting a breastfeeding room. I’ll bet Congress doesn’t have that.

Did you know that nuclear weapons are illegal? Evidently the International Court of Justice ruled that in 1996. Today, a British court let off some women who snuck onto a Trident submarine base and started wrecking the place, on the grounds that the nukes were illegal.

Elizabeth Dole pulls out of the Presidential race, citing lack of money, and calls for the passing of stringent campaign finance reform. I kid, of course. Now the elections will be sadly lacking her message and her issues, which had something to do with being chosen as vice president and being a woman (although she did always look like a man in drag to me).

A report is released listing most of the 23 countries in which the US stored nukes in the ‘50s. What doesn’t seem to have made the American papers is that less than 10 years after the end of World War II Luftwaffe pilots had effective control over nuclear warheads. This ended in 1960, when we figured out how to put The Club on them.

Jesse Helms is holding up the nomination of former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun as ambassador to New Zealand because she opposed the United Daughters of the Confederacy using the Confederate battle flag.

Russia is finally ending its military occupation of Latvia on Thursday. Yeah, it was a surprise to me too.

A Teheran court sentences someone to have his eyes gouged out before he is hanged.

David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, says that the sectarian marches are just good old fashioned fun for the whole family, folk festivals if you will, which one day will be major tourist attractions. I can just see it. The Macy’s Anniversary of King Billy Kicking the Crap Out of the Bloody Papists Day Parade. Just needs the addition of large helium balloons of lovable cartoon characters like Bullwinkle, Snoopy and Ian Paisley.

Lords have mercy

In Britain, the new Liberal Democrat spokesman on women’s issues is a man. He says that this is appropriate since it’s men who cause most of women’s problems. For example, he himself is divorced.

The neighbors of Hugh Hefner are complaining that his parties use up all the parking spaces in the neighborhood.

So how did France get hold of Carlos the Jackal five years ago? It seems they made a deal involving sending military equipment and satellite photos to Sudan, which I need hardly tell you is a terrorist state.

I mentioned a while back that hereditary members of the House of Lords were asked to submit 75-word statements on why they should be elected to the 92 spots allotted for hereditaries on a temporary basis in the reformed House. Some of those statements have been submitted. These are culled from the Times and Telegraph.

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is campaigning on a platform of muzzling cats in public to prevent the “agonising torture” of mice and little birdies.

Baroness Strange reminded peers that the Lords would be a duller place without her. She brings flowers every day.

The Conservative peers Lord Morris and the Earl of Onslow made it clear that the whole thing was simply in bad taste. “It is hardly for me to attempt to proselytise my candidature; it is a matter for my peers,” Lord Morris said. The Earl of Onslow declared “It would be as vainglorious to proclaim a personal manifesto, as it would be arrogant to list any achievement.”

Viscount Torrington, at 56 a relatively junior member of the Lords, risks allegations of unsportsmanlike conduct by implicitly drawing attention to the age of his rivals. He said: “I believe that I am young enough to continue to contribute with enthusiasm and energy to (the House of Lords’) work.”

Lord Geddes demonstrates a populist touch by adopting the slogan “brains; breadth; brevity”, and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu stresses his knowledge of issues including the New Forest and the historic vehicle movement.

(Note: more campaign statements here.)

Evidently the execution warrant signed for Mumia yesterday has nothing to do with execution, but is intended to harass him by putting him on death watch, and to force him to submit his habeas appeal to federal court earlier than he had intended, to try to force him into a legal error. Cute.

6 billion people. Could everyone scootch over a bit? Thank you. Fortunately, this is not a problem with the United States, which evidently has no population problem, even though every kid here will consume as many resources as your average African village. A modest proposal: cancel next year’s census. Let’s not do reapportionment anymore. India stopped doing that in order to let state governments that are successful in population control not be penalized.

Well the good news about the Pakistani coup is that control of the nuclear button was never in doubt because control is already in the hands of the military. The bad news is that control of the nuclear button is in the hands of the military. Wonder who has it in India?

Supreme Court lets stand a ruling that a defendent is not entitled to a lawyer for a habeas corpus hearing, even if he is semi-retarded and due to be executed for a crime committed when he was 17. He went into court and kept asking, what am I supposed to be saying, what am I supposed to be doing.

Also, a warrant of execution has been signed for Mumia Al-whatsit for December.

Monica Lewinsky’s father is threatening to sue a tv show (I forget which one, and I watched it, too) for referring to oral sex as “getting a Lewinsky.”

Does anyone know anything about Ulysses S Grant expelling Jews from Tennessee during the Civil War?

Kansas (I already did the “If I only had a brain” joke, right?) now deletes the Big Bang from its science curriculum, along with evolution.

Tony Blair reshuffles his Cabinet, putting disgraced friend Peter Mandelson in charge of Northern Island, which is less a rehabilitation (M borrowed some money from a Cabinet colleague to buy a house, big deal) than a purgatory. I checked four British papers to see if any of them would have the nerve to comment on the fact that the man being sent to oversee a sectarian conflict is Jewish. They did not, which makes it the most interesting ommission since the NY Times story last week about France choosing a new model for statues of Marianne, a 21-year old underwear model, and running with it a picture of her from the neck up only. Mandelson is also gay, which should piss off both sides about equally. Since the “peace” deal, both sides have been stepping up their policing activities, beating up and kneecapping and executing and exiling in larger numbers than ever before, while the government pretends nothing is happening.

New Mexico removes creationism from the state curriculum.

There was a bio of Gore’s early years in yesterday’s Wash Post. Who’da guessed it, he was a tattle tale.

The Scottish Catholic Church has been paying 12 and 14 year olds not to have abortions.

Bulgaria abolishes the death penalty.

I know I’m not the only one who can’t see tv news reports of nuclear accidents in Japan without looking in the background for Godzilla.

In H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, Martian invaders were brought down by the common cold; in 1999 a NASA probe to Mars was brought down by the metric system. Coincidence? I think not.

And a big happy b-day to the People’s Republic of China. I especially liked the sight of 100,000 party members chanting the approved slogans, like “Hey hey, ho ho, Long live great Marxist-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory!” and, “Hey hey, LBJ, Rely on the working class wholeheartedly!”

Dubya thinks Buchanan should stay in the Republican party. This whole thing is cynical as hell. The Reform Party wants him, mostly, because he might get them the 5% they need to get big federal matching funds next time around; the federal money is the only reason Buchanan would consider the party to begin with. Dubya is willing to overlook the whole Hitler thing for fear of losing votes (asked his own opinions on Hitler, he responded that he would not play the politics of personal destruction [joke from the Daily Show]).

Read the AP report, which can be found in the NY Times but not the Post, on the US massacre of Koreans during the Korean War.

Speaking of war crimes, General Pinochet’s lawyer, who yesterday were pleading for him to be released because of his poor health, stirring up all the sympathy they could, today say that the dead people named in the Spanish indictment don’t count as torture victims because the electric shocks killed them so quickly.

Gary Bauer held a news conference to announce that he was not having an affair with a young campaign worker. His Christian loon aides resigned because, well they don’t say they think he had the affair, just that he spent time alone with a woman, and Christians evidently don’t do that.

Invention of the week: a see-through toaster.

It seems that the new Israeli government is approving settlements even faster than Netanyahu did. Also, Israel is training torturers in an infamous (there’s a word I don’t often use!) prison run by the South Lebanese Army with Israeli funding. They torture people to death there.

Dan Quayle drops out of the race, blames lack of money but oddly does not call for campaign finance reform. Don’t laugh, this is Al Gore 4 or 8 years from now.

Misspelling in a fortune cookie: “The best profit of future is the past.”

At the Labour Party conference today, Tony Blair declared the class war over. Evidently the middle class have won. Outside, a demonstration raged. In favor of fox-hunting. Tally ho!

Carded

New York magazine competition, messages for two sides of a business or visiting card.


Michael Corleone. 1. Never ask me about my
2. business card.

Jesus:
1. Cabinets, Bureaus, Desks
2. Water into Wine

Dan Quayle:
1. Please see other side.
2. Please see other side.

Emily Dickinson:
1. I’m nobody.
2. Who are you?

1. Stephen Baldwin
2. No, no, no--_Stephen_.

1. Jack Benny
2. Please return to Jack Benny.

1. A. F. Mobius
2. A. F. Mobius

1. Shirley MacLaine--Actress, Author
2. 100% Recycled Paper

1. Inspector 12
2. Inspected by Inspector 12

Noah Webster:
1. Obverse.
2. Reverse.

1. Philipphilipphilipphilip
2. Glassglassglassglass

1. Lemuel Gulliver
2. No job too big or too small

1. Ishmael
2. Call me.

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

Stupid Hollywood idea of the week: a remake of Barbarella. Drew Barrymore?

So there’s this guy in the part of Poland ceded to Russia in 1940. After the German invasion, he decides, in 1942 to go into hiding in the attic, because it’s scary out there and Germans are killing Ukrainians. The Red Army sweeps in in 1944 and he was thinking about coming out and joining them, but they didn’t give the soldiers leather jackets and he had a cold. “I’ll just wait till spring,” he thought. Germany loses and, well, people who evaded joining the Great Patriotic War were being punished. So long story medium, he’s been living in an attic 57 years and came out because his sister died.

The Daily Telegraph observes that the list of targets Russia has been bombing in Chechnya looks remarkably like the targets NATO bombed in Kosovo. You’ll remember I predicted this a month or two ago.

A truly creepy Hungarian married couple have just had his and hers (or is it hers and his?) sex-change operations.

The Official Monster Raving Loony party in Britain, replaces its late leader Screaming Lord Sutch, with a joint-leadership after the two candidates tied. Alan Hope, mayor of Ashburton, will share the duties with his cat Mandu.

All those East Timorese refugees in West Timor out of the reach of the Australian and Ghurka troops seem to be being held as hostages by the militias. Not good.

Bumper sticker: Earth First. We’ll Ruin the Other Planets Later. Another: Honk if You Inhale.

So an executive at the Disney on-line service used the Internet to pick up under-age girls. I can’t even begin to come up with a joke funny enough to cover that one.

Fascism is on the rise in Austria, if yesterday’s regional election in Vorarlberg is anything to go on. 27.5%. And the German SPD loses its 5th election in a row, Saxony this time, coming in with half the votes as the former communists, who we really need to start calling something better than former communists.

The Sunday NY Times contains the longest list I’ve seen yet of the 50 approved slogans for the 50th anniversary of the communist takeover of China. Also an article about Iceland’s belief in elves. Which are both fun, but the paper still hasn’t found space for the news that Israeli PM Barak wants legislation to re-legalize torture.

Looking through some of my old e-mails, I found that back in May I was complaining about the US training Indonesia in police procedures. I suggested that we were heading towards complicity in the creation of death squads, just like in Central America in the 1980s and South America in the 1970s. I just mention this as preface for the following: I told you so.

In the stupid Hollywood ideas department, Harrison Ford says he’s not too old (58) to do another Indiana Jones movie. The London Times comment was that the next time he finds a valuable ancient relic... And there is talk of reviving Are You Being Served (the horror, the horror), and of reviving Dr. Who--to be directed by the creators of the Blair Witch Project.

New York magazine competition, unusual greeting cards:

So you’re a juror at my brother Vinnie’s trial!

A belated message of forewarning.

Thanks, but do I know you?

Sharing in your profound disappointment with Eyes Wide Shut.

We are so, like, not thinking of you.

I’m so sorry to hear your friend has succeeded.

Welcome back from your alien abduction

Thanks for the alibi.

You’re a girl!

To my husband’s mistress on her 21st birthday.

So you’ve discovered your husband’s computer password.

Congratulations on adopting a highway.

Thank you for the soft money.

Thinking of you as you face damnation.

So you’re the master of your domain!

Here’s wishing you and yours a rapturous apocalypse.

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

The New Statesman’s columnist Suzanne Moore, writing about attempts by British politicians to make themselves liked, says some things that are applicable to American politics. She asks why don’t we just accept that they are ambitious aliens with a very narrow set of interests which makes them good at their job but not necessarily someone we want to be friends with. The things that politicians do in order to be liked are to far outside the realms of normal behaviour that it is very difficult to relate to them as people we might like at all: kissing available babies, accosting strangers in the street, getting engaged for the sake of a career, taking part in sporting events in which they have no interest (see Hillary Clinton in NY).

More pink laundry/bring out your dead/intervention

A British prisoner sues because his shirt turned pink in the wash.

The CBS/Viacom merger, beyond being inherently evil in itself, is another merger whose whole basis is that the government will get out of its way and waive any little anti-trust, media monopoly regulations standing in its way.

Dubya’s entry into the Texas Air National Guard was indeed eased by political intervention. Yeah, yeah, we all knew that, but it seems the intervention came from the (Democratic) speaker of the Texas Lege, who by the way got that job at 26 and was washed up by our age.

My favorite British politician died this week, and by favorite I mean most entertaining. Alan Clark’s obit in Wednesday’s London Times is the most entertaining article I’ve read in some time. The battle to replace him in the safe Tory seat of Kensington & Chelsea will be an interesting one, and possibly the beginning of the end for poor hapless William Jefferson Hague. Michael Portillo is expected to return to Parliament. I think I mentioned a couple of weeks back, or maybe I didn’t, that Blair’s attempt to make Peter Mandelson minister of defence was foundering on the Dark Prince’s homosexuality. Well, it seems that Portillo is now admitting to a few youthful indiscretions along those lines himself. Portillo was Major’s defence minister, when he (as recently as 1996) defended the ban on gays in the military. In 1997, Portillo lost his seat to a Labourite homosexual.

Janet Reno’s decision to appoint John Danforth to investigate Waco just shows that she doesn’t have cable tv, where last week was shown a docudrama of the Clarence Thomas hearings, reminding us of Danforth’s role in that. The scene of him and Thomas praying on a bathroom floor with the Battle Hymn of the Republic, or whatever it was, playing on a tape recorder, was taken from real life.

Why precisely do we need Indonesian permission to send UN troops into East Timor if their illegal occupation was never recognized in the first place?

More British news about pink laundry--evidently it’s just that sort of a news week. A dry cleaner is being sued for turning a tea stain on an expensive silk sheet into a pink tint. The suer is someone who in 1995 won 11 million pounds in the lottery.

Chicago-style politics, Indian-style: it is common practice in India to declare people dead so that you can “inherit” their land. Now the dead not only vote, they have organized a political party, and will oppose the prime minister in his seat at the next general election.

You know how to whistle, don’t you?

NY Times headline: “White House Seekers Wear Faith on Sleeve and Stump”. Stump? Did someone have a thresher accident while campaigning in Iowa?

NY mayor Benito Giuliani is currently serving as a juror in the case of a man whose genitals were scalded. So suddenly this poor schmuck, who maybe didn’t want quite this much publicity for his case, is plastered all over the NY media.

It seems the Germans covered up the fact that aspirin was discovered by a Jew. An obvious joke comes to mind, but I’d best not.

Cliff’s Notes is to do versions of the “For Dummies” books. Civilization has officially ended.

Yet another school has banned Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain Intermediate in Houston (this is an Internet story, so take it with a grain of salt--if someone knows for a fact that this is real please say so).

From the London Times:

SPANISH schoolchildren on La Gomera in the Canary Islands are to be forced to take classes in the art of whistling.

The island’s government has decided that children will have to learn the whistling language that has been used by Gomeran shepherds for centuries. The language, which is believed to predate Spanish on the island, was developed as a way of communicating across the deep valleys that cut its mountainous terrain.

Children will be expected to learn to carry out conversations between hilltop and hilltop from a distance of up to two miles. Whistling classes will form an obligatory part of primary education and will become voluntary in secondary education.

Experts say that the Gomera silbo, or whistle, is not a language of its own but uses whistling sounds to imitate the syllables of speech. Whistlers use not just the mouth, but also their fingers and hands to vary the tones and increase the distance.

They place their fingers in their mouths to alter the shape and positioning of their tongues. Cupped hands allow the sound to travel further.

The silbo has similarities to the whistle language used by the peoples of the Atlas Mountains in North Africa.

The Gomera whistle was almost lost in the 1960s, when only a handful of shepherds still knew how to communicate with it. Some local historians have claimed that General Franco’s administrators on the island discouraged its use because they did not know what people were saying.

The silbo has since gained great popularity and the island, which has 17,000 inhabitants, has introduced an annual whistling day.

Experts admit, however, that whistling is a somewhat limited way of talking. “You can carry out conversations but there are not many things you can talk about,” Juan Evaristo, a local education director, said.