Some days ago, the Animal Liberation Front in Britain (come to think of it, I have one of their t-shirts somewhere) released 3,000 minks from a mink farm. The British papers have been full ever since of stories about how minks are really the most vicious animals on the face of the earth, and attack anything that moves. The locals are not happy.


Till dress us do part

Athens: A bride-to-be suffered a nervous breakdown the night before her wedding on the Greek island of Crete when she took friends to the couple's new home to see the wedding dress - only to find the groom wearing it and in a passionate embrace with his best man. The wedding was called off, an Athens news agency reported. (Reuters)

The Nevis referendum on independence from St. Kitts failed to win the necessary 2/3.

Hillary Clinton says that it's just anti-Arkansas prejudice fueling the attacks on husband Bill (if your idea of a good time is oral sex from the chubby much younger intern, you just might be a redneck) Clinton.

Sony accidentally invented and sold the #1 item on the wish list of teenage boys everywhere, the x-ray specs. Their camcorder's night vision filter (for filming sleeping babies and philandering husbands) can pretty much see through clothing in the right light.

Somebody from the Carter Center was showing a bunch of Chinese visitors how democracy worked by taking them along while he voted in the Georgia primaries. Where he was promptly refused a ballot in his own party, as they kept insisting he was a Republican. The Chinese, according to the Washington Post, were baffled. When it was finally straightened out, the guy voted in the Democratic primaries, in which there was only one candidate for governor. The Post doesn't say, but one presumes the Chinese were less baffled by that.

The Post has an article on welfare reform which says that a major cause of the shrinking rolls is not people being kicked off, but hurdles being put in the way of people ever getting on to begin with. Sometimes they get one-time payments, which may be all they need. Some are made to go after 40 job opportunities first, which may work. Oregon gives people one-way tickets to California, which works for Oregon. But mostly this has a sense of being number-mongering, that civil servants are now being made to go after lower welfare caseloads based strictly on numbers, in the same way that the lowering crime rate is partly based on police departments, under pressure to get those numbers, downgrading crimes, and of course Robert MacNamara's famous body-counts. A civil servant with a quota of people to screw over makes the spine shiver even more than "I'm from the government, I'm here to help." No one knows how many just give up when they realize there will just be more stupid hurdles endlessly. One civil servant saw nothing wrong with forcing people to rely on relatives, which should ensure that the really poor drag down the not-quite-so-poor.

Speaking of unfortunate relatives, Mark Thatcher, idiot son of Margaret, who made his money in illegal arms deals in the 1980s and security services in the US in the 1990s, has a new career: loan-sharking to the underpaid police and civil servants of South Africa, where he now lives.

Finally, for Bay Area residents: Channel 20's new owners are ditching the dogs. Boooo!

Magic shoes

China hails sole survivor

Beijing: A Chinese soldier thrown high into the air when he stepped on a landmine near China's border with Vietnam survived unscathed thanks to the experimental boots he was wearing, the People's Daily said. A Chinese military university is testing the special protective footwear for mine clearers in the southwestern province of Yunnan, the site of thousands of mines left over from China's 1979 border war with Vietnam. (Reuters)

This story just baffles me. What sort of shoes are these? I'm picturing giant springs.

Fri, 7 Aug 1998

There's a story in tomorrow's London Times about a World War I soldier who got caught in a French town behind German lines and spent four years hiding in a cupboard.

Israel has banned the practice of posthumous circumcision.

A joint US/Russian military exercise that was supposed to involve a Marine landing at Vladivostok is halted, scared off by a bunch of old communists with red flags. Where is Tom Hanks when you need him?

Chanel no. 1

Daily Telegraph:
A ZIMBABWEAN man has been jailed for a month for bottling his urine and selling it as perfume.

Evidently dead people who haven't already been circumcised can't get into Jewish cemeteries (perhaps this is only in Israel), unless, of course, someone circumcises the corpse.

Among the Chinese of Indonesia, the latest big fashion accessory is the chastity belt, in preparation for the next round of rape 'n' riot. There must be a good reason why this is a bad idea, or surely someone would have done it before?

The Vietnamese police official from the famous 1968 photo in which he executed a VC prisoner dies peacefully in Virginia, where he ran a pizza parlor, leading ineluctably to the question: what the fuck was he doing in this country all these years? This is why the US opposes a war crimes tribunal.

China has 30 times as many deaths per automobile as the US, 70,000 traffic deaths in 1997.

China reverses its ban on Amway. Not that these two stories are in any way related.

From an LA Times story: "Emmy Award-winning effects supervisor Ron Thornton said his best work last year was creating a computer-animated, 9-foot tall, three-legged alien for UPN network's "Star Trek: Voyager." But another assignment kept him tied up for a couple of days digitally removing armpit stains from an actor who had been perspiring heavily."

Iran hangs a Bahai for converting a Muslim.

A Federal judge strikes down NJ's law against pornography at the state prison for chronic sex offenders.

Stupid medical idea of the week: a company in Britain is charging 300 pounds for home paternity testing. Just send off a sample of the DNA from your alleged offspring and find out if you're really the father.

Today, our news is all military. Everyone should read the series (a bit long for me to mail out) in the Washington Post on the role of US special forces in training all sorts of scummy armies abroad. It's much more extensive than I had realized, including every single Latin American country. Under the guise of training them in fighting drug traffic, we are giving them the same old counter-insurgency training, including countries that were supposed to be under US sanction.

On Salon today, Christopher Hitchens, famous for trashing Mother Theresa, goes after the Dalai Lama, who is evidently a shit. And supports India's nuclear policy, by the way.

British tv says that in January 1995 Russia's hi-tech early warning system (a couple of guys with binoculars would be my guess) figured that they were under nuclear missile attack by the US (actually a Norwegian weather research rocket) and Yeltsin initiated all but the last step in launching a retaliation.

I'll leave you on that thought while I'm on vacation. I'm going to a wedding in Redondo Beach, which I think means that there'll be a Best Dude. Should be like totally bitchin'.

Dollywood is getting a new roller coaster, in the shape of....

A member of the Russian Duma has been demanding an investigation of reports that Yeltsin was replaced by a double two years ago. OK, nobody believed me when I said that two years ago I saw someone in the hospital who looked exactly like Yeltsin, but boy am I vindicated now.

Speaking of the former super-power, the next launch of a crew to the Mir (motto: don't laugh, it's paid for) has been delayed 10 days because the space agency failed to pay its electricity bills.

From a Village Voice review of "Armageddon": "Like being yelled at by idiots for 144 minutes"

It won't stand a week, but a panel of the 10th circuit court forbids prosecutors giving leniency to witnesses in exchange for testimony under the federal bribery laws. I approve wholeheartedly, at least until defense attorneys have the same ability to hand get-out-jail-free cards to potential witnesses.

Nice to see just how long outrage at India and Pakistan lasted. Right up until the Iowa wheat harvest came in.

Mon, 6 Jul 1998

There is a story on the BBC, playing even as I write, about sexual harassment in the Canadian military. Someone is heard to suggest that the cases should be handled by the police. Oh yeah, sexual harassment investigated by the "Mounties".

Clinton's lawyer Robert Bennett is also representing the Zapruder family, which wants the government to pay it $70 million for those 26 seconds of film. Bennett compares the film to the original manuscript of the Declaration of Independence. Right.

The London Times also has a story tomorrow about this subject, which focuses on the accusation that Pete Wilson and Dan Lungren have let the incredible violence at Corcoran, detailed in the LA Times article below, go on and on and obstructed the investigation, which has been basically run by the prison guards' union, which happens to be a big campaign supporter of both of them, and has ensured that the only guard punished was the whistle blower. The Times, being naive in matters American, thinks that this will be a problem for Lungren's campaign. Knowing Lungren, I'll bet we're gonna see ads with him taking credit for prisoners being raped and strangled. And I'll bet somewhere in the Republican party platform there's something about bringing back Gladiator Nights at Corcoran and putting it on pay per view and using the funds brought in to reduce the car tax. How much would you pay to see a fight to the death between Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan?

The USDA approves a new vegetable for federally-funded school lunches: salsa. But not ketchup.

The word on the street (well, the unpaved dirt road) in Nigeria is that Abacha actually died from an overdose of Viagra.

I just celebrated the 4th by watching "1984". At least we didn't wind up being ruled by Big Brother but by Bob's Big Boy.

Clinton keeps talking about China entering the 21st century. Of course, by the Chinese calendar, that would be 698 B.C.

Yesterday, Kenneth Starr argued in Federal appeals court about whether lawyer-client privilege was more important than getting at the truth. Some of the truth which his people have been trying to get out, include these questions to Sidney Blumenthal before the grand jury: did you and Hillary Clinton ever discuss whether Bill had a sex addiction? does Bill believe that oral sex is sex? does his religion include sexual intercourse?

The Post Office is to give some of its workers the day off in honor of Nixon's funeral, 4 years late. These were the people who already had the day off that day, and so didn't get the day off that the people who didn't have the day off got off. Head...hurts.

Speaking of Nixon, I saw a Nixon scholar on C-SPAN saying that the technology now exists to recover the missing 18 1/2 minutes, but a) it would cost about $10,000, b) the archives won't let anyone do that sort of thing to the originals.

Kentucky is to stop letting people below the age of 16 get married.

The Northern Irish Assembly has been elected. Of 108 members, 14 will be women and 8 will be terrorists. 3 will be survivors of terrorist attacks. Buckle your seatbelts.

Just when you thought Texas would execute anyone at all, they spare the life of a guy for one of the 600 murders he's confessed to. Seems he was at the other end of the country at the time. Not that that's ever stopped Texas before.

One present the Chinese presented Clinton with, that seems to have gone unremarked in the US press: the execution of a Chinese who killed an American tourist.

If, like me, you read the NY Times and Washington Post and actually expect to get the news, you've been driven crazy by reports that John McCain told a joke that no one in either paper is willing to print, although they're all willing to talk about it. So here it is: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Janet Reno is her father." Big deal.

I knew that story about the military using sarin gas against defectors in the Vietnam war was too good to be true.

So there was a Polish Jewish family whose land was expropriated by the Nazis. Decades later they try to reclaim their land, only to find out that, hey, they own Auschwitz.

Last week, Trent Lott, the former cheerleader, a) killed the tobacco bill, b) said that homosexuals need treatment for their addiction. Right. So, take that penis out of your mouth and try a cigarette instead. (Or, if the penis in question is like mine, a cigar.)

The US is pushing Colombia to use a chemical to kill coca crops that its manufacturer, Dow Chemical, the good people who brought you Agent Orange, says really shouldn't be used in Colombia and will certainly contaminate the ground water.

Somewhere in the Senate legislative process, the tobacco bill has lost all its funding to help smokers quit smoking, keep people from starting and keeping children from buying cigarettes.

Christopher Hitchens was on C-SPAN last night. One of the things he said was that the president of Pakistan had written to Clinton and Albright weeks before the Indian nuclear tests warning of their imminence and asking what the US was going to do about it. The US never replied. When asked what happened to the letters, State & White House said that they passed them on to the CIA. Which was then blamed for not warning the White House. Hitchens thinks the story of an "intelligence failure" was accepted a little too readily, when complicity seems more likely.

Some British teenage hackers got into the Indian nuclear computers and erased a bunch of files and told them exactly what they thought of nuclear weapons.

Kenneth Starr finally admits that he regularly leaks to the press, but says it is necessary "to engender confidence in the work of this office." The interviews are of course on a not-for-attribution basis. I feel more confident already.

A racist party does very well indeed in the Queensland elections, as I'm sure you've all been following.

The US government finally apologizes and pays off those Japanese we kidnapped out of Latin American countries during World War II. Of course they only get one-fourth what Japanese-Americans got, and only when the latter are paid off, if there's any money left. But, hell, they were illegal aliens.

Jewish settlers on the West Bank are now to be allowed to form their own armed civil guard units.

Creepy medical procedure of the week: babies with two mommies for real. You take nutrient from the egg of a young woman and mix it in with the egg of an older woman, ensuring that 50-year olds can give birth, like that's a good idea. No one's quite sure how much of the DNA from the donor gets mixed in, but some of it definitely does. 2 women are pregnant by this technique now.

Republicans in the Senate are blocking a judge (big news there, huh?), one Sonia Sotomayor, a hispanic woman, for the 2nd Circuit. They can't find anything in her record to object to, but they're afraid that if she gets this slot, she'll be appointed to the Supreme Court by Clinton or Gore, and they don't want Dems to have any viable options for the Stevens seat (or whomever), especially a hispanic woman.

The Flemish regional government has voted to give state aid to Nazi collaborators on the same basis as war victims.

Ireland still has a list of banned books: H.G. Wells, Upton Sinclair, The Second Sex, Marie Stopes, etc etc. That may change this week.

Is everybody ready for another Balkans war? I thought not.

There are so many brushfire wars these days, I can't keep track of them all. Whatever happened to the Namibia-Botswana border dispute? What's going on in Kashmir? Start looking out now for the next one, Cyprus, due to commence sometime in July.
That offer everyone reported from that nice Mr. Habibie to give autonomy to East Timor? The price tag was that the UN, Portugal and everyone have to recognize that Indonesia owns it. No thanks.

With Reagan, it was ketchup

If Bill and Hillary are Southern Baptists, does that mean she has to submit to him? Isn't that what interns are for?

With Charlton Heston leading the NRA, does that mean they have to spend 40 years in the desert? Soylent green, I mean the NRA, is people!

Ethiopia and Eritrea are not terribly impressed with the US's attempt to get them to settle the war by sending a 33-year old woman from the State Department to sort it all out for them. Where is Warren Christopher when you need him?

---

'Let Them Eat Grass' -- the Pakistani Elite's Solution
Impoverished Public Is Skeptical of Patriotic Belt-Tightening Urged by Leaders Amid Costly Arms Race

By John Ward Anderson and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 11, 1998

With Pakistan facing bankruptcy because of sanctions stemming from its nuclear weapons program and defense spending likely to rise because of a new arms race with India, top leaders have asked their countrymen to do their patriotic duty and "eat grass" so money will be available for national security. ...

So the neutrino has mass after all. Well I'm pleased to hear it.

CNN & Time magazine say that during the Vietnamese War the US dumped sarin gas on a Laotian village, killing at least 100 people, in order to kill some US defectors they thought were living there.

Bumper sticker on sale in Berkeley: Will be President for food.

And a special thank you to whoever it was chopped off most of the parking meters south of the Berkeley campus.

Check out, and you'll have to take my word on this one, www.godhatesfags.com. Go to their list of pamphlets and read it.

So, do we have to start calling it Spaceship Oakland now?

The school prayer & subsidized religious schooling amendment only gets a majority in the House of Representatives.

The Department of Health and Human Services found the money it needed to fix its Y2K problem. It raided a program for homeless teenagers. Good priorities, guys! Congress would have objected but it was too busy voting on school prayer. By the way, they did sneak through a change to the law of debt as it has existed for many centuries, allowing bankrupts to give to charities rather than pay off the people they owe money to.

The Daily Show tonight had a segment on a sheriff who, unlike Sheriff Joe in Phoenix who believes in bologna sandwiches for prisoners, serves lots and lots of good fattening food, because he likes his prisoners chubby and complacent.

Clearly what has to be done is just to flood the world with Viagra. In Third World countries, the fake stuff has been killing people. And there would be a benefit I hadn't even thought of until today: think how much safer African rhinos and Chinese bears will be if no one's killing them for their horns or testicles (um, respectively, of course).

Hey, Kevin, I've also just thought what to get you for a wedding present!

Will Durst says of the end of the primary and the beginning of the actual election race: $64 million down, a gazillion to go.

But at least we have B1-Bob to kick around again.

Speaking of insane right-wing losers, Alabama governor Fob James is in trouble. The primary was not conclusive and will require a run-off. His opponent Winton Blout 3rd (yes, the third) says that Fob is an embarrassment to the state of Alabama, as if that was possible. Fobbio replies that Blout is a fat monkey.

Factoid of the day: the word cannibal was coined by Christopher Columbus.

If you watch a late broadcast of today's MacNeil-Lehrer, you will hear a debate of sorts between on tomorrow's vote to amend the first amendment to allow school prayer (and loads of other stuff). No atheists present, so there was no one to suggest that perfect religious freedom is not guaranteed by the amendment's phrase about letting people "acknowledge God". The fun part of the segment is watching the Baptist guy in favor of the amendment continually fail to come to terms with the idea of a non-Christian religion. The opponent was a rabbi, and the Baptist kept referring to him as "Reverend, I mean rabbi.." or "Mister, I mean rabbi".

Still not much talk about punishing Israel for having the atomic bomb, as we have India and Pakistan. I'm waiting to see if there's any coverage in the US of the fact that the top Indian nuclear scientist, who is the new national hero, has spent a lot of time visiting Israel in the last couple of years. By the way, the Japanese think that North Korea has the bomb as well.

Last month Israeli spy planes flew over Pakistan, presumably looking for the "Islamic bomb". Pakistan was sure Israel was about to bomb it. There's a lesson in there somewhere.


As much as I really felt I needed to know about this story:

[56]Better Access to Gravesite Of Stonewall Jackson's Arm
SPOTSYLVANIA, Va.The National Park Service, responding to the interest of Civil War buffs, is making it easier to find the spot where Stonewall Jackson's arm is buried.

Yes, you always knew where you stood with Barry Goldwater. And Adolf Hitler. Enough with the eulogies already!

In 1961 a US warplane caught fire at an RAF base in the south of England. The fire almost succeeded in opening up the nuclear bomb on board, in which case Suffolk would have been an irradiated desert for centuries to come.

"I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me..." Yes we do, Phil. Yes we do.

The only joke I remember from Will Durst's special last night: Kenneth Starr is like a cat that keeps dragging stuff into the house that we don't want to see. "Oh good, a dead mouse."

According to the Press Clips section of the Village Voice, India's nuclear tests were not only a surprise to the CIA, but to the news media, which had almost uniformly missed the BJP's election manifesto promise to do so. Of course I read the British papers, and they actually give a shit about what goes on in the sub-continent even without someone hitting them over the head with a nuclear hammer.

Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif: "We paid them back." Pakistan immediately declares a state of emergency and suspends all press freedom and civil rights (I just read a Pakistani newspaper. They didn't know what to do with press freedom anyway) to deal with the upcoming sanctions. And just as the shit is about to hit the fans of the world stock markets again. Bad timing. Well they didn't need civil rights, and India didn't need electricity (the World Bank has suspended loans for electrification).

Of course we all knew that Pakistan was a nuclear power. They are not only not more of a nuclear power today than they were yesterday, but they are less of one, since they just wasted about half of their weapons-grade uranium. Our nuclear non-proliferation policy is evidently based on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell principle.

So how are these nuclear powers different from all other nuclear powers? If mutual assured destruction was good enough for Europe, why not for India? For a start, the warning time is way too short. It'll be like a permanent Cuban Missile Crisis. Second, there aren't enough nukes to make nuclear war unthinkable. Maybe we need to make sure that Pakistan gets the uranium it needs? In the last few years the Indian military has been increasing its superiority over Pakistan, which means that Pakistani thinking has increasingly been that Paki nukes would be used to prevent conventional attacks from India (just like those going on in Kashmir the last few days). They would probably have to anyway, as Indian air superiority means it could quickly shut down the Pakistani ability to get its Mirages into the air--Pakistan would either have to use its nukes earlier on in any war, or lose them.

The Supreme Court gives police immunity from deaths caused by reckless police chases even if they display reckless disregard or deliberate indifference to life. You can sue them if you can prove intent to run you over. The Court's rationale is that decisions have to be made really really quickly. Oh, good. How long does it take to pull a trigger? Actually, cops kill more people each year by running them over than by shooting them.

Even stupider: the Supremes let stand South Carolina's interpretation of life as beginning at the viability of the fetus for purposes of child endangerment laws.

California primary: People, let's remember that it's a primary. The Bay Guardian brilliantly endorses the Green party candidate for governor. Well, maybe he's great, maybe I'll even wind up voting for him in November. But the Greens only have one candidate running for governor, so a vote for him truly is a wasted vote. When you choose candidates, keep in mind that they're not running against the fifty others on the ballot, just those from their own party. So go out and do some mischief with your vote, like the open primary was intended for. If you can find a Democrat with an ounce of integrity, vote for them. Or vote for Dennis Peron to annoy Darth Lungren.

Follow up: the Gloucestershire cheese roll, banned as too dangerous, was performed surreptitiously in the early hours with a single cheese and four idiots chasing after it. Freedom wins again!

Duck and cover: newest thing in US schools: the psycho drill.

Trying to derail the tobacco bill, Republicans in Congress try to set a limit to lawyer fees. The Republican Party has come out against greed. You heard it here first.

Watching C-SPAN earlier today, I heard Tom DeLay ask for an end to partisan attacks in the investigation of campaign contributions to Clinton who, he had just finished saying, had by selling satellite technology to the Chinese in response to contributions, caused India to test its nuclear weapons and Pakistan to respond, and thereby to threaten the lives of everybody on the planet.

I'm not exaggerating any of that.

India has already threatened Pakistan with nukes over Kashmir.

Milosevic, having sent troops into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo in turn, is now thinking about Montenegro. Hey, it worked so well in the past.

Someone at the LA Times wrote that the only way to get LA tv stations to cover the governor's race would be for the candidates to get into four cars and chase each other up and down the San Diego Freeway. May I recommend the Ford Pinto?

Two die in blast at gnome plant

Warsaw: Two young men died in an explosion at a Polish garden gnome factory, PAP news agency reported. Three other people were injured in the blast at the plant in Kozuchow, western Poland, it said. A police spokeswoman said paint fumes might be to blame. (Reuters)

The California Supreme Court rules that a single crime can generate more than one strike for the 3 strikes law. The example given is that carjacking is usually prosecuted as both robbery and kidnapping. In the case involved, the guy was in a fight 15 years ago (strikes 1 & 2), and is now convicted of stealing a carton of cigarettes. The brand isn't given, but in a perfect universe, they would be Lucky Strikes.

According to Wisconsin doctors, a poorly-drafted partial birth abortion law has outlawed all abortions in the state. Legislators disagree, but no abortions are now being performed, doctors not being willing to risk life imprisonment.

Why the hell is Clinton in Germany campaigning for Helmut Kohl?

Israel celebrates its 50th anniversary by shooting 9 Palestinians dead. I guess it wasn't a big enough cake to have 50.

Does anyone actually feel sad that Seinfeld is no longer on the air?

That Chinese law professor will not be deported from the US for slapping his kid--he has pleaded to a lesser charge.

Jon Christensen did not win the primary to become governor of Nebraska but came in 3rd, despite all the stories I read which said that he was the front-runner. He cried.

I KNEW RONALD REAGAN: Estrada seems to have won the Philippines presidential elections. Yeah, he's a drinker and a gambler and has several illegitimate children, but he was a famous Filipino actor. I think he played a motorcycle cop or something (joke).

A New York judge returns a 5-year old to his mother, who killed her other kid, an 18-month old, for spilling her dinner, and then tried to blame it on the other kid. She's served her full 9 months and the judge thinks she's shown enough remorse to have a shot at killing the other one. I'll say one thing: that kid is going to have the best table manners in New York.

A couple of years ago, there was a story by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker to the effect that India and Pakistan had come very close a couple of years before that to a nuclear war. Nice to know that next time, they'll be doing it with fully tested weapons. Or not. The US claims that India's claim to have detonated an H-bomb Monday is a lie. The country of Gandhi has no dissenters to the nuclear policy. A petition in support of the testing was signed in Bombay by over 100,000 so far. Signed in blood. Their own, for once.

South Africa and Rhode Island both legalize sodomy. There's a joke in there somewhere.

Guatemala celebrates getting off a UN list of human rights violators by beating a bishop to death with a concrete block. In a move typical of Guatemalan efficiency, the guy they're trying to frame as the lone, um, concrete-man, turns out to have a deformed arm that leaves him unable to lift concrete blocks.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the IRA had shot a 79-year old man in both knees and both ankles. Seems they got the wrong address. Oops.

"I'm not only the president of impotence pills for men, but I'm also a member": gee, Bob, thanks for sharing. Or as Liddy used to say, "Where's the erection, Bob, where's the erection?" And all this time he's been living right next door to a famous practitioner of the felatalic arts. There must be a joke in there somewhere but coitate si cognito (fuck if I know).

Some immigrants from China slapped their 8-year old for lying and will appear in family court in Chicago Monday. If convicted, they will automatically be deported, thanks to the 1996 Immigration Act.

In yesterday's local elections, the people of London voted to have an elected mayor. This looks to be a very silly race. Jeffrey Archer, who evidently can't read any better than he can write, is studying up on the subject of the city he hopes to lead into the millennium by reading the *London Encyclopedia* -- one page per day. By far the most popular choice is the one Tony Blair is desperately trying to figure out how to block from running and still be able to use that annoying "we trust the people" line: Ken Livingston, or Red Ken to his friends, was last seen running the Greater London Council until Thatcher abolished it just to be rid of him. He's calling for a special greedy bastard tax. His words, not mine. Not very "New Labour".

Jon Christensen (R-Palookaville), generally regarded as the stupidest man in the US Congress, is front-runner to become the next governor of Nebraska. His platform consists of a promise never to hire a homosexual and that his fiancé is a former Miss America and is a virgin.

Merrian-Webster refuses to bow to pressure to remove "nigger" from the dictionary.

Namibia and Botswana are moving towards war. Over a tiny uninhabited marsh island submerged several months a year.

Alabama Governor Fob "Crazy as a Fruitcake and Twice as Stupid" James has filed before the Supreme Court on the 10-Commandments-in-the-courtroom case, saying that government officials should ignore Supreme Court decisions they consider unconstitutional. Also says that Sandra Day O'Connor's agnostic beliefs have caused her to closer her mind to the fact that abortion is murder. So there.



Cockroach hunt turns into lottery

Tucson, Arizona: In a publicity stunt, a pest control company has released 100 cockroaches with barcodes on their bellies. Whoever catches the roach with the winning number will win $50,000 (#31,000) while $100 will go to anyone who tracks down any of the remaining 99. The company admits that the odds are not great as there are more than a million roaches in Tucson. (Reuters)

With all the talk about the procedure to kill off all cancers, at least in mice, no one has answered the one question I want answers to. Who collected the mouse pee? The tests involved gallons and gallons of the stuff, so who was it who made them go in the little itty bitty botttles?

The head of the pope's Swiss guard is murdered. There has to be an interesting story there. Evidently, the Vatican doesn't have a very high murder rate. So the first one in 150 years, and its the head of the cops (and his wife).

In Clinton's stupidest and most spineless cave-in since the last one, he has agreed to let Senator Slade Gorton name a far-right judge to the 9th Circuit and generally take over the power to appoint judges in Washington state. By the way, if anyone knows anything about Barbara Durham, the current chief justice of Wash Sup Court and soon to be 9th Circuiter, do pass it on.

Speaking of idiots who shouldn't be allowed the power to veto nominees made by their betters, have you all been following the wrangling over the first head of the EU's central bank? The term was supposed to be 8 years for reasons of continuity and to stay above politics, so France only agreed not to veto the unanimous choice of everybody else if he'd resign after 4 years in favor of a Frog, who would have a full 8-year term (for reasons of continuity and to keep the office above politics, of course). The only contribution the French have hitherto made in EU financial policy was to appoint a commission that decided that "euro" is masculine, le euro, not l'euro. We'll all sleep better at nights knowing that one is settled. This means that euros can be created from a standing position (euros in Greek means urine) (Greece is not joining monetary union, so it won't have to worry for a while yet about jokes about keeping your assets liquid).

I've gotten my sample ballot. Vote yes no yes no no no no no no

Bad news for Filipino stand-up comics: Imelda Marcos has dropped out of the presidential race.

The British government decides not to pardon deserters shot during World War I.

Those Colombians who protested working conditions by having themselves crucified were up there for 50 hours. And won their strike.

Gingrich says he won't allow a vote on funding for the IMF unless the Democrats agree to grant immunity to 4 witnesses on campaign finance issues. Well, it may seem irrelevant, but this is nothing compared to the dozens of amendments stuck on to a bill to pay UN back dues.

Dick Armey asked why to give a reason for opposing the tobacco bill: "No, I can't." Why not? "Because I don't want to." The #2 leader of the House of Representatives, ladies and gentleman!

Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (R-KKK), the rejected appeals court judge and now on the Judiciary Committee, has been know to ask nominees "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the ACLU?"

Best phrase for Starr et al: "The scandal-industrial complex."

Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee accuses environmentalists of worshipping the earth and not god.

China is trying to clone pandas, which as we all know don't breed well in captivity, and China has pretty much destroyed their natural habitat, and they only go into heat once a year anyway. Still, even I know that when the gene pool is as shallow as it is for this species, cloning is just gonna make it shallower.

I trust everyone followed the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt this weekend. The rabidly racist German People's Union (DVU), which didn't even exist a couple of years ago, won 13%, entirely at the expense of the Christian Democrats. The good news is that with Kohl's support evidently having collapsed in the ex-East Germany, he should be voted out of office nationally in a few months time, and the nation's bed-testers will have an easier job of it. The bad news is that democracy has entirely failed to take root in East Germany, which only ever voted for the ChristDems to get loot and jobs, which never materialized. A full one-fourth of first-time voters went for the DVU. That's a lot of skin heads.

According to Molly Ivins, Canada's national motto is "Let's not get excited." For once, Ivins is quite wide of the mark. Canada's motto is actually "Let's not get excited, eh?"

The British Labour party has started giving potential candidates for local councils literacy and math tests. Not everyone is passing.

Stupid website of the week: www.lindatripp.com. See if you are inspired to give money to this poor beleaguered woman.

Imelda Marcos has signed to do commercials for Harvey Nichols's new shoe departments.

British zoos and wildlife parks are selling off ostriches, bison, wild boar etc to be sold (or bred) as exotic food.

In Britain, a 92-year old is divorcing his wife of 70 years. No, the children are not dead.

I said the Asian economic situation would produce racism, but it gets worse. Malaysia has started poisoning the water of the refugee camps it interns Indonesians in. The sweep is subtly named Operation Go Away.

The IRA has displayed its commitment to peace and nonviolence by shooting a 79-year old in both kneecaps and both ankles.

The famed Washington Correspondents Dinner will air Saturday afternoon on C-SPAN. Everyone will be watching because Paula Jones and Billy Bob Bubba will both be there.

Favorite headline in today's London Times: "Oriental Elvis Impersonators Attacked Diners".
The IRA has displayed its commitment to peace and nonviolence by shooting a 79-year old in both kneecaps and both ankles.

The pope says that the end of the world is not nigh, so far as he knows. I know I'll sleep better tonight.

Texas screws up a lethal injection. So the guy gets two sets of last words. Neither of them interesting.

A new book says that pirates were actually democratic, not especially violent (only one documented instance of someone being made to walk the plank), multi-racial, egalitarian, and all that other good '90s stuff.

In a few hours, the big show-down in the Russian Duma. To recap, the boy wonder Yeltsin appointed as Prime Minister only needed to be named because Yeltsin never bothered to read the constitution under which he allegedly operates, and thought he could fill the position himself. If the Duma rejects him a 3rd time, which seems to depend on whether or not they can vote secretly, Yeltsin gets to dissolve the Duma, at which point he has threatened to have all its members evicted from their Moscow flats, which means eviction from Moscow, since the mayor, who doesn't believe in the constitution either, retains Soviet-era residency permits. Yeltsin also plans to unconstitutionally rewrite the election laws in the absence of the Duma, and the puppet he named to head the electoral commission has threatened to keep all existing parties out of the elections. The Communists don't want early elections, but they don't want to try to face the electorate in a year having given in to Yeltsin now. Childish, vindictive, petty, calculating, arrogant: I think they've finally mastered the principles of democracy.

That couple in marriage counselling in Fresno: you have to question how seriously they were trying to make it work when they both came packing heat.

Of the major candidates running for governor of California, Harman, Checchi and Lungren have never had any children in the public school system (Davis has no children). Do they at least buy lottery tickets?

Gingrich says Joe Camel isn't so bad, but Leonardo DiCaprio is to blame, for smoking in Titanic. I agree, let's castrate Leo.

Rep Dan Burton calls Clinton a "scumbag", and will release Webster Hubbell's prison phone conversations, which would be illegal for anyone else to do.

Crappy Georgian history professors fight to the death: Gingrich may face a challenge for his seat by Christina Jeffrey, who he once appointed House Historian, until her remarks in favor of equal rights for the views of Nazis in educational programs about the Holocaust came to light.

In Miami, police hauled a 10-year old boy to jail because he kicked his mother in a restaurant, charged with domestic battery. The cops say that the domestic violence law required the arrest.

China bans door to door salesmen, fearing that Mary Kay and Amway are ideological cults run by charismatic leaders.

Delaware driver's licenses are to indicate sex offenders. You know, to show that drivers have to wear corrective lenses, not have a child in the trunk, that sort of thing.

California leg. fails to repeal the old law letting state and local governments fire members of the Communist Party. The impressive thing is that there are still Republicans willing to support it.

Netanyahu agrees to meet with Arafat. At the same time, he invites into government the Moledet party, which supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

For those following the love life of the rhino named Frikkie who lives just outside Kruger Park in South Africa, you will be delighted to learn that he has finally successfully mated with a member of his own species, after squashing several zebras.

With all the panic about pervs in schools, California now requires fingerprints, as do many other states, no doubt soon to be all of them. The problem with this is that not everyone has fingerprints. Recently fired: a social studies teacher with atopic dermatitis. But anyone who has worked with harsh cleaning supplies and such like chemicals might have the same problem. Simple solution, I'd have thought: ear prints.

Good things fall from the sky

Bernard Lewinsky in LA Times interview about daughter Monica: "She's a very smart, intelligent, beautiful girl who's going to go places, and
unfortunately she's taking her licks...."

And giving them.

Mississississississippi state rep. Bobby Moak (R-Taliban) proposes a law for people caught with marijuana to face "the removal of a body part in lieu of other sentences imposed by the court for violations of the Controlled Substances Law", the specific body part to be chosen by negotiation.

Russian irony

Sarov is one of those old Soviet closed cities that doesn't appear on maps. There are still closed cities, which in practice means that no visitors are allowed, all phone calls are monitored, and the place is surrounded by a fence and heavily guarded. Sarov is where the a- and h-bombs were developed and now has a population of 80,000. Liberals in the Duma proposed opening it up, but the residents decided that given the way the rest of Russia is going, they would just as soon keep the barbed wire fence, thank you very much. The lesson is that good fences, interior ministry troops, gun emplacements, internal passports, and restricted rail access, make good neighbors.

A miracle of technology that I first heard of a year or two ago: the self-chilling soda can. You activate it and two minutes later the contents are cold. Is that great or what? Unfortunately, any widespread use would have turned the Earth's atmosphere into something resembling that of Venus very quickly, but they have changed the coolant. It can also be used on ice cream. Did you know 1 trillion soda cans are sold every year?

In the race for the bottom, a Texas state legislator proposes a bill to execute 11-year olds.

Speaking of dead children, guess what Renault uses to test car safety?

The answer is dead children, it wasn't a trick question.

The archbishop of Turin says that any priest who visits the Shroud of Turin can absolve women for abortion, which normally requires excommunication. I'll never understand the Catholic church. A get out of hell free card as a promotional item for a tourist attraction.

Pol Pot is dead, and we really mean it this time. Fortunately, if the war crimes tribunal is looking for a suitable subject, Henry Kissinger, who just this week talked about "the so-called bombing of Cambodia", is still alive.

Virginia executed a Paraguayan in violation of the Vienna Convention. The State Department says it has in fact provided the proper remedy to Paraguay: it has apologized and promised that it may not happen again, unless it does.

One of the escapees from the Bay of Pigs admits having eaten another, while lost at sea. Insert your own joke here relating "Bay of Pigs" to "the other white meat".

The Christian Right is lining up behind Senator John Ashcroft as its candidate for president in 2000. Keep an eye out.

The NY Times has a story about Idaho on today's front page, which shows how big a news day this was. The capitol of Republicanism and child abuse of the US. There's not much crime, but they're still sending a lot of people to jail--just mostly people who didn't do anything much.

NY Times headline reports that, after bits of Yankee Stadium fell down, "Yankees Are on First at Shea/ And the World Doesn't End"

Concrete submarines and other scientific marvels

You think I'm kidding about the concrete submarine, don't you? No no no. Today's London Sunday Times, besides going over every piddling detail of the failed Irish peace accord (just thought I'd be the first to use that phrase), has been dominated by the Wonders of Science and the Horrors of Medicine.

First, a couple of items that don't fit into my theme: a Japanese POW who has been in Siberia since 1945 went back home this week. Evidently, no one ever bothered trying to find them after the last (in theory) batch was released in 1956.

China has been developing a practice of investigative journalism, at least in Guangdong province. The up-side: sometimes their stories get people executed, like an official who hit-and-ran, thinking he could get away with it. Woodward and Bernstein, eat your hearts out.

In the twenty or so years after WW II, Sweden, previously known for sterilizing the retarded, also had an official but illegal program of lobotomizing mental patients, including children, without getting relatives' permission. Maybe 4,500.

South Africa has its first white witch doctor.

The first transplant of a genetically manipulated pig heart into a human will occur in Israel. Yes, yes, I know, but evidently it is kosher.

A British company is selling a motorcycle capable of going 225 mph. They won't say why.

A popular science book is reviewed in the Times, called "Why Is Sex Fun?"

Russian nuclear power plants. The Y2K bug. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Bored Saudi princesses, stuck in palaces but whose bills are paid by the taxpayers (and there are 5,000 princes and princesses!), have found an escape: internet chat rooms. Of course Saudi Arabia has no internet provider, so they dial up London or the US, so it's a bit pricey.

I promised concrete submarines, here they are:

The Sunday Times
Sunday April 12 1998 NEWS: BRITAIN

Russia makes waves with concrete sub
by Hugh McManners

IT floats like a brick but stings like a bee. The Russian navy is developing a concrete submarine that is designed to master the waves by sitting on the ocean floor.

The heavier-than-water submarines will lie at hitherto impossible depths and attack surface vessels with vertically fired torpedoes. Their concrete hulls and silent propulsion systems will make them invisible to sonar, while their angle of fire from the sea bed will allow them to cover swathes of ocean above.

Defence sources say they believe the Russians are close to perfecting the c-subs, as they are known in industry circles, and may already have launched test vessels. The craft, which are based on 30-year-old designs for underwater aircraft, could revolutionise marine warfare.

The most robust of conventional submarines can only submerge to 1,800 feet because of the high water pressure exerted on their steel hulls. They are also buoyant and submerge themselves only by filling their internal tanks with water.

C-subs, however, will descend to the deepest ocean beds under their own weight where they will operate as silent predators. External "listening pods" will detect the movement of surface craft and target them with torpedoes.

The c-subs move like jet aircraft, with wings that create "lift" when the vessels move forward. The jets can be rotated to provide lift from the sea floor using swivelling nozzles similar to those on Harrier jump jets.

The battery-powered engines are modelled on gas turbines, sucking in water at the front before forcing it out at the back under high pressure, creating thrust. The batteries will be stored in the concrete hull: unlike conventional submarines there is no weight limit, so large numbers of cells can be carried.

The c-subs will use a minimal crew, who will operate in cabins the size of a minibus. The craft would be expected to hunt in "wolf packs", rather like the German U-boats during the second world war, using the most advanced weapons technology available.

Sources at Dera, Britain's military research establishment, say the Russians have also made and tested a torpedo which can travel three times faster than the Royal Navy's weapons.

Codenamed Shkval, the torpedo uses drag reduction technology to travel at 200 knots (230mph), making it virtually undetectable and giving ships under attack no time to take evasive action. The drag reduction is achieved by using engine power to aerate the water in front of the torpedo so that it flies through air bubbles rather than water. This greatly reduces the drag of the water, enabling extremely high speeds.

This technology could be applied to the concrete submarines themselves, allowing them to break the 60-knot speed barrier of conventional undersea vessels.

The idea for concrete submarines that fly like aircraft was developed and patented by Heinz Lipschutz, a German marine engineer, between 1957 and the late 1980s. He said he repeatedly tried to interest the Royal Navy in the concept, but instead was disappointed to see his ideas developed by German and Russian naval architects.

Julian Nettlefold, editor of Battlespace, the international defence electronics newsletter, said Britain was in danger of becoming outgunned underwater. "Other countries such as Germany, Russia and America are pushing ahead with research into this exciting concept. With these craft being potentially so cheap to make, there is the danger of countries such as Iran and Libya using them to threaten American carrier groups, or to barricade certain ocean routes," he said.

"It's a shame that Britain has failed to take this idea seriously."

The World Court has intervened in a US criminal case for the first time. Virginia is about to execute a Paraguayan citizen contrary to a US-Paraguay treaty. Virginia, of course, does not care.

California is trying to execute a crazy man. Now if he does get sent to an institution instead, shouldn't any psychiatrists attending him be subject to losing their licenses, like doctors who participate in lethal injections, since any cure would result in execution?

In an orgy of self-delusion, a Northern Ireland "Easter Peace" is signed. How this worked is that a whole array of new bodies will be set up, giving every party to the accord something to undermine, like children happily breaking their new toys on Christmas Day. The assembly will create an executive at which, presumably, Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley are expected to sit at the same table. The people I feel sorry for are the Welsh and Jerseyans who have to be on the Council. Since the Unionists wouldn't have accepted a council with just Irish and North Irish representatives, Blair drafted in members of the Welsh assembly, the Scottish parliament, and the whatever they call thems of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Blair tried to call this the Council of the British Isles, but the Irish objected to the word British, so they'll have to have endless debates about a better name. Meanwhile, to show how well peace is taking effect, the IRA conducted two kneecappings yesterday and a new wall is being built to separate Catholics and Protestants in north Belfast.