Plus ça change: a Supreme Court ruling said that it is time that blacks cease "to be the special favorite of the laws, and his rights as a citizen, or a man, are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men's rights are protected." This was in an 1883 decision striking down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal access to restaurants, rail cars, etc.

Speaking of protection, a fed district court, I believe, refused to let a class-action suit go ahead on behalf of inmates the LA County Jail fails to release when their sentences are up. This happens hundreds if not thousands of times a year because they're a little slow processing paperwork. They can sue on an individual basis which, since the average over-stay is 2 or 3 days, should ensure the cases are not worth a lawyer's time to handle.

Quote of the day: "Masturbation is the thinking man's television." Christopher Hampton

LA Times headline: "Survey of Top Students Reveals Many Cheat on Tests, Ignore Cigarette Ads"

The DEA is threatening to go after the licenses of doctors who follow the new Oregon assisted suicide law.

A story in the Daily Cal highlights the most screwed-over people at Berkeley: people assigned to gay-theme dorms who are not themselves actually gay. In a masterpiece of bad editing, the article says that members of the dorms participate in weekly meetings and go on group outings.

The Supreme Court let stand a ruling supporting strip searches of second graders.

Iraqis are gathering voluntarily (cough) to be human shields to protect the presidential palace. Not to protect the president, who would certainly not be so stupid as to hang out at ground zero, so just to protect his palace.

There was to be a vote in the Senate on the ability of senators to put holds on nominees anonymously, but the vote was killed, anonymously.

Reports leaked to Israeli tv say that Shin Bet hired a right-wing loon to infiltrate the right-wing loons, and he did so so effectively that he was the one who convinced Yigal Amir to assassinate Yitzak Rabin.

A House-Senate conference committee dropped a provision in the intelligence budget that would have allowed employees to whistle-blow about illegal activities, to only those members of Congress on intelligence oversight committees. Clinton had threatened to veto the bills if this provision was included.

Pakistan, continuing its slow-motion Talibanization, has banned the unseemly showing of women without scarves on tv, removing certain shampoo, soap and toothpaste commercials. Presumably if you don't see them, they don't have to be clean either. On the Cartoon Network, they have censored a scene of the cat kissing a dog. I'd love to know where that one is prohibited in the Koran.

Anyone interested in the new Seymour Hersh book about JFK should check today's London Sunday Times, which has an excerpt.

Disgusting story of the week: You've heard of snuff films. The big new thing is squish films: women in high heels step on baby chicks and hamsters. In Germany this has progressed to cats and dogs. And Scientologists. Charming. This is European and American.

Clinton, speaking out against job discrimination against homosexuals: "Being gay, the last time I thought about it, seemed to have nothing to do with the ability to read a balance book, fix a broken bone or change a sparkplug." Joke 1: that's because when you last thought about it, you were thinking about two chicks doing it. Joke 2: not about changing a sparkplug? Have you ever met a lesbian? Joke 3: sure, it's about the ability to decorate an interior, to dress a hair, to...

By the way, at the event he met Ellen deGeneres, but that photo has not been released, just like when he met Salman Rushdie.

Follow-up: That judge who lied about being the brother of the kid who was killed in Alabama has said that he somehow mixed up in his mind the news event with the similar killing of his sister. Well, guess what--that didn't happen either. We should hardly be surprised as a black Republican is by definition lying to himself. By the way, what the hell was Clinton doing appointing a Republican to the 9th Circuit anyway?

Words to live by: "One man's trash is another man's dissertation." -- director of the George Bush Library, Museum, and Bungee-Jump Centre.

It'll never happen, of course, but the Lord Chancellor of Britain is threatening the venerable tradition of barristers wearing wigs. He is evidently fed up with his own rather more elaborate costume, which is the height of 17th-century fashion. He wants to change it so that he no longer looks like a pirate. He is such a susceptible chan-ce-lor.

Most Americans believe Congress needs a brain scan performed by a proctologist."

Election '97: none of the women, including the incumbent, won in the Jordanian parliamentary elections.

Maybe we could send them Christine Todd Whitman.

Chechnya has declared itself an Islamic republic. I forgot, why were we supporting independence for these people?

What does it say for your democracy, as in Uttar Pradesh, which if you didn't know is a state in the World's Largest Democracy, 50 years old this year, that in the state assembly building they have had to nail down all the chairs and remove all the paperweights and other throwable objects?

So Clinton's nominee to the 9th Circuit has to withdraw because for years he has been telling this story about being the brother of a black 13-year old shot dead in Birmingham after the 1963 church bombing, and no one ever thought to check.

Quote of the week: Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. (R-Ohio) during a House debate last week on immigration policy: "Let us look at the law, because most Americans believe Congress needs a brain scan performed by a proctologist."

Officers of the LAPD have been told to return the bayonets issued to them. The mind boggles.

Rumor says that Bob Dole has had a face lift. Anyone seen a recent picture?

A record 17 women are running for the Jordanian parliament in tomorrow's elections (against 535 men). The first and only woman MP was elected in 1993 and has been subject to a soupçon of harassment, most notably her husband being forced to divorce her.

Nelson Mandela met both Khadafi and the Spice Girls last week. Anyone have a joke on that?

Article in today's LA Times on forfeiture laws. The Justice Dept is due to argue before the Supreme Court that it's legal for the gov. to seize money taken in or out of the country but not reported, even when it was acquired perfectly legally. As I understand it, it is the money that is being punished for criminal activity, not the owner of the money.

From the London Sunday Times:

Garden guerrillas go to war on the gnome front
by Kirsty Lang

THE kidnappers pounce without warning, striking terror into suburban France. Their victims reappear far from home, abandoned in dense woodland or floating down rivers on rafts.

Last Friday, however, four members of the Gnome Liberation Front (GLF) were brought before a crowded courtroom in Bithune, northern France, to answer more than 150 charges of seizing garden gnomes, a miniature tea set and windmill, and a plastic toadstool.

Their lawyers defended their cause with passion. "Your honour, have you never heard the cries of anguished garden gnomes screaming with cold and the indignity of being treated as lamp posts by passing dogs?" said Bruno Dubout, a defence advocate, his face red with suppressed laughter. He suggested the word "gnome" was politically incorrect and should be replaced by "vertically challenged figurine".

The prosecutor refused to be diverted. "We are discussing stolen objects and the violation of people's gardens," she reminded the court sternly, demanding that the GLF leaders be sentenced to 80 hours' community service with the forestry commission. "This is a free country and people should have the right to keep gnomes even if others consider it to be in bad taste." The case was adjourned for two weeks.

Although the judge struggled to keep a straight face, the 10 victims of the new-wave terrorists were not amused. "This is nothing but a show trial," cried Louis Maille, a retired supermarket security guard. "Next time someone tries to steal my gnomes I won't bother going to the police. I'll be ready with my shotgun."

Maille demanded compensation of #500 for the loss of 10 gnomes. When the judge challenged the figure, he explained that they were "deluxe, glass-fibre gnomes" from Belgium.

Hundreds of people have fallen foul of the GLF, which was initially set up last year by a group of art students in Normandy as a "protest against bad taste", but prompted copy-cat raids throughout much of the country. GLF attack squads leave calling cards informing targets: "Your gnomes have now been liberated so they can live in peace in the forest."

Until the "Bithune Four" were captured last August, members had evaded detection. The Alengon branch in Normandy even held a press conference with their faces obscured by balaclavas. "We mean no harm to gnome owners," they explained solemnly. "We just feel these little creatures would be happier in their natural habitat instead of being imprisoned behind a garden fence."

The founder of the GLF, an elusive figure known only as "Le Prof", his nom de guerre, said last week he had become disturbed by the recent invasion of garden gnomes imported from Germany and Britain.

Speaking from a telephone box at an undisclosed location, he said: "Gnomes are the ultimate symbol of bad taste and kitsch. I find them offensive to my visual sensibilities." He admitted he had been surprised at the way the movement had taken off. "We obviously struck a nerve in France," he said.

So widespread are the GLF's operations now that many owners have been forced to bring their gnomes indoors at night or to buy guard dogs to protect them. Some have even organised themselves into gnome defence associations.

"The police don't take this issue seriously. This is not about liberation, it's about theft," complained Corinne Helga, of the Friends of Garden Gnomes Association in Strasbourg. Helga, a songwriter, has formed a pop group called the Gnomes which has made two singles singing their praises.

"Our aim is not to make money, but to make gnome owners more assertive and proud of their hobby," said Helga, who has 20 gnomes and a magic grotto in her garden. "I don't understand why they attract all this hatred. Gnomes are kind protectors of the earth."

Fritz Friedmann, of the International Association for the Protection of Garden Gnomes, based in Basel, Switzerland, believes the anti-gnome sentiment in France is a deeply sinister development. "The Nazis were the first people who tried to ban gnomes, but as soon as the second world war was over, people rushed out to buy them again," said Friedmann, 80, who publishes the Gnome Gazette.

French commentators have seized earnestly on the phenomenon as a manifestation of growing class divisions. "This is about the ruling classes having fun at the expense of working people," said Jean-Claude Kaufmann, a sociologist. Jean-Yves Jouannais, an art critic, has devoted an entire book to the subject of class, taste and the garden gnome.

Le Prof, however, vehemently denies being a member of the sneering classes. "There are several members from working-class backgrounds in the Gnome Liberation Front," he said. There is also a chubby skeleton in his closet: "My own parents have a gnome in their garden," he revealed, "which I've painted green and gold to make it look less offensive."

Much to the chagrin of Le Prof, the publicity generated by the GLF has prompted a sharp rise in the sale of garden gnomes in France.

A spokesman for Gardena France, the gnome market leader, said its sales had increased tenfold. "It's all very depressing," admitted Le Prof. "People just haven't got the point."

Today's LA Times has a story about the massive increase in deportations of aliens since last year. They don't bother doing the math, so I had to: for the increase in Nigerian 25-year olds with 15 years of residence in the US deported for joy-riding, not to mention all those druggies, divided into the increase in the bits of the INS budget for deportation & incarceration, we are paying $6,315 for each new deportation. But the largest part of the increase is in non-criminals being deported.

A new batch of Nixon tapes is out. Check out the Washington Post coverage in today's paper, an article on the front page & several more in the A section. Most amusing comparison with current scandals is that N. personally thanked a Greek tycoon--in the Oval Office--for providing hush money for the plumbers, but there is also info on his shake down of the milk industry (his phrase, by the way) and the exact price tag on ambassadorships.

Orrin Hatch puts a "hold" on nominee to head Justice Dept's civil rights division. Well first, can we knock off the Senatorial hostage-taking already? One reason this obnoxious tactic is so over-used is that the name of the senator doing it is only released if s/he feels like it. About this one, Hatch wants a promise that there will be no court challenge to the California anti-affirmative action proposition. This is especially obnoxious because he is not trying to change a political policy, but a constitutional interpretation.

About the line-item veto: isn't the whole point of the thing to force Congress to vote on their pork on an individual basis? Then why is it that the Senate just voted to overturn Clinton's veto of the 38 items in the military building bill as a group, instead of individually? Doesn't that just allow the same old horse-trading

Zambia thwarts one of the sillier coup attempts of recent years, by a "Captain Solo" who was told by an angel to stamp out corruption.

Afghanistan is now an emirate. Thought you'd want to know.

In one of those jokes-made-real news stories, an Australian lawyer escapes a shark attack.

Saudi Arabia says that consulting fortune-tellers and practicing witchcraft constitute polytheism, which is punishable by death (what isn't in Saudi?)

But Chelsea gets to go to Stanford

Lee Hoi Chang was once considered the front-runner for South Korea's December presidential elections. Then it was discovered that both of his sons evaded the draft, seemingly, by losing a lot of weight--a lot--before they were called up. Now, in atonement, Lee has sent the oldest son (34) to work at a leper colony.

Clinton proposes to let the market and tax incentives take care of carbon emissions. The tax breaks would be enough for everyone in America to buy one-fourth of a high-efficiency light bulb per year.

The drug kaiser visits Colombia, whose military chief then announces that he was given permission to use American anti-drug aid to fight the guerillas. No he wasn't, says the drug emperor. What sort of conversation do you suppose it was where that sort of misapprehension could arise?

Pol Pot, who knows more about skulls than any man alive, says that those piles of bones everywhere were planted by the Vietnamese. You can tell because Cambodians, evidently, have bigger heads.

A man released by DNA evidence from an 11-year imprisonment for a rape he did not commit, who got $1.5 million in damages, has been convicted by DNA evidence of rape. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Vietnam, under the mistaken impression that it is Sweden, bans toy weapons.

So "Candle in the Wind" has outsold "We are the World" 5:1, showing the relative value of a million starving Africans versus one bulimic princess.

In Italy, the series of earthquakes around Assissi has been taken by some as the beginning of the end of the world. Today the Vatican responded by saying that the Third Secret of Fatima has nothing to do with the millennium. It seems that Mary showed up in Fatima, Portugal in 1917, and revealed some stuff, including that Russia had to be won back from the godless commies. The Church, and especially this pope, takes this crap very seriously. The bullet from when he was shot is in Fatima, in the shrine on the Virgin's crown, which you'd think would be weird even to Catholics, but there you go.

Turkey outlaws virginity tests of women.

NATO shut down Serb tv for, what, the 4th time? Displaying its usual impeccable timing, it strikes during 1,001 Dalmatians.

The NY Times has an editorial on why the Republicans' dumb idea of the week is dumb. This is the idea of putting the burden of proof in IRS cases that go to court on the IRS rather than the taxpayer. Now, the taxpayers have the relevant paperwork, so they provide it. If the IRS has to, it will go on massive fishing expeditions through their victims' finances. Also, compliance with taxes will go way down, but that was obvious.

The Supreme Court refuses to hear a challenge to Texas's death penalty law, under which jurors cannot be told the definition of the alternative, that life imprisonment means at least 40 years before parole. Indeed, they are instructed not to consider or discuss the issue. This is also a state that does not have the option of life without possibility of parole. Imagine designing your system to force ignorant jurors to choose death.

No distributor in Hong Kong has picked up the films Seven Years in Tibet or Kundun (Martin Scorcese's film about the Dalai Lama).

Speaking of authoritarian states (China, Texas and the IRS), this is from the North Korean press service web site:

Wonderful natural phenomena on Mt. Paektu

Pyongyang, October 20 (KCNA) -- Wonderful natural phenomena have been witnessed on Mt. Paektu, the time-honored place of the revolution, in Korea. It was dawn on September 21 when the South Phyongan Provincial Party Conference was held to discuss the agenda item on recommending General Kim Jong Il as General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea. The day before, it snowed and rained on Mt. Paektu as usual till mid-day. In the evening, its temperature abruptly increased more than 10 degrees centigrade higher than the average. And the northwestern wind and northeastern wind, the typical winds on Mt. Paektu, disappeared and the southwestern wind blew. At night, high and low clouds completely disappeared. As the new day was breaking, the eastern sky of orange and yellowish brown colors turned red and a bright sun rose above Mt. Paektu. This grandiose sunrise continued several days. Meteorological observations in this area say that on Mt. Paektu, the sunrise has never occurred for three consecutive days, it showered in the dry season, the sun rose in the rainy season and that cloud and sunshine appeared by turns every one or three days and even hourly. However, in the emotional period when the great general Kim Jong Il was elected as General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the sunrise continued for 25 consecutive days, spreading grandiose landscape. A more mysterious natural phenomenon was observed on the afternoon of October 8. At around 05:10 when the special communique informed the people of the election of general Kim Jong Il as General Secretary of the WPK, a colored cloud appeared on Mt. Paektu. This cloud slowly moved from the sky above Janggun Peak toward the Hyangdo Peak. The ground color of the cloud of big parachute type was white and its rims were dyed with seven colors. It was all the more wonderful that the cloud stayed low above Hyangdo Peak for a long time before moving toward Janggun Peak. The moment, mysterious sounds reminiscent of cheers and applause came from surface of Lake Chon and time before moving toward Janggun Peak. The moment, mysterious sounds reminiscent of cheers and applause came from surface of Lake Chon and a strong whirlwind rose which carried piles of snow into the sky and dropped them onto the ground, adorning the sky on Mt. Paektu in various colors. Witnessing these wonderful natural phenomena, its inhabitants said that nature also celebrated Kim Jong Il's election as WPK General Secretary.

Believe it or not, everyone, I was woken up by a dream about sheep coming in through my front door. When the third one came in, I woke up. I never knew before that it worked in reverse.

Clinton is claiming executive privilege, always a bad sign, to cover up the thing where some Chippewa tribes gave the Democrats $300,000 to get a casino license turned down for their rivals in Wisconsin. This one bears watching, since it's the only instance I've seen so far in all this campaign contribution nonsense in which someone actually got something concrete in return for money.

The Russian Duma is busy holding a beauty contest for its female MPs. If we did here, would DiFi have to wear a one-piece or a two-piece bathing suit? The horror, the horror.

Saudi Arabia is once again proudly putting its justice system on display, trying a whole family of Pakistani heroin smugglers. They say the 8 year old probably won't be executed once convicted, but the 13 year old...

Follow that car!

Israel releases I believe 9 (7?) more Palestinians as part of its deal with Jordan. You still don't see much in the American press about the other people it's releasing to placate the lunatic right. Most recently, the guy who shot up the al-Aqsa mosque in 1982, resulting in many deaths in the weeks of rioting that followed, not to mention his own kills. Like Baruch Bernstein, this guy is a hero to the religious loons and said a couple of years ago, "Why should I be sorry, I didn't kill Jews, right?"

Well, now we know what abnormality Clinton's "little Mister President" is supposed to have, a fairly rare disease resulting in a bend. You can't get more appropriate than that. Of course, the medical exam Paula Jones's lawyers filed for won't detect anything without an actual erection. How'd you like to write that brief?

I wish to salute the guys who hit Mach I in a for chrissake car! I want one of those for my birthday.

In the big news of the week, Nevis legislators have voted to secede from St. Kitts.

The Times says that the federal program to help indigent AIDS victims pay for drugs is broke in 26 states. The villain: those protease inhibitors which 1) are expensive, 2) keep people alive and sucking on the federal teat for so much longer.

Hospitals affiliated with the Catholic church are now responsible for 1/6 of hospital admissions in this country, and more and more hospitals are merging or affiliating with each other so that they can specialize and be in a better bargaining position with the HMOs. Unfortunately, this means that the church has more and more power over reproductive health.

Tue, 14 Oct 1997

Can you believe that Clinton never went to South America before this week? Just shows how important that free trade treaty must be to him. Fortunately for the American economy, his government's incompetence probably killed it dead. The head of Brazil's supreme court refused to meet him because of embassy comments about the inefficiency of the Brazilian court system. The Commerce Dept chose now to issue a guide for American business referring to endemic corruption in Brazil, and the White House briefing memo to the press corps helpfully pointed out that Sao Paulo is one of the most dangerous cities in the world and that people have sex in cars during traffic jams. Clinton's security people tried to get them to stop all the trains, cut down the trees around the palace where he would be staying, oh, and suspend daylight savings time.

It's sort of a tradition, isn't it, these South American tours? Remember Dan Quayle's little Erection Eric doll, or VP Nixon covered in fruit, or Reagan exclaiming amazedly that they were really all different countries and not one big banana plantation?

There's a moderately disturbing story in the Tuesday Washington Post that Virginia tv stations have decided not to sell ads to candidates for certain state offices. They're legally required to sell ads to people running for the federal Congress and for president, and at the cheapest rates too, but have decided that cheap ads for state offices just cost them money and disrupt their regular advertisers. So they have, pretty much all, decided to restrict or eliminate ad sales or not charge the discounted rate. Right now this seems like a blow to the democratic process, but my views might be different if there were any political ads on my television.

Edgar Mitchell, who evidently was an astronaut and the sixth man on the moon (like most of America, I'll just have to take his word for it), has announced his belief that aliens did crash land, that the US is covering it up and using alien technology, and there should be a congressional investigation.

The truth is out there!

Another congressional investigation, I'd rather have an alien invasion. They're now threatening to hold an investigation to investigate Janet Reno's investigation.

Hey, let's all be the first to start the rumor that John Denver is really still alive, flipping burgers with Elvis.

It's amusing to read the New York Times boasting an FBI report that its burglary rate is now lower than that of London, and the Telegraph riposting that its murder rate is still ten times as high.

Another quote from that Groucho Marx letter:
"Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up the time that we contemplating making a picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged to Warner Brothers..."
"It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, the great-grandfather of Harry and Jack, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock, which he later turned in for a hundred shares of the common, he named it Casablanca."


A piece in the Sunday Washington Post says that in the Israeli post-mortem on the attempted assassination, no mainstream politician or columnist has questioned Israel's right to assassinate whoever it wants.

For 3 days over Rosh Hashanah, an Israeli prison "forgot" to feed Rabin's assassin.

The Malaysian Prime Minister says that the ringgit's financial woes have been caused by a Jewish conspiracy to speculate against the currencies of Islamic countries. Maybe it's just that no one could say "That's be ten ringgits, please" without giggling.

Right after a story in the Daily Telegraph about a marriage councillor who said that divorce is inevitable if the husband rolls his eyes while the wife is talking, and names 3 other similar signs, there's this story, showing a sign the doc forgot:

Ugandan accused of cannibalism by wife

Values

George Bush, the Texan governor following in his father's footsteps as a Republican presidential prospect, is well ahead in opinion polls. But Don Sipple, his campaign adviser, has been accused of wife-beating by both his former wives. In last year's presidential campaign, Sipple created the Republican adverts that proclaimed: "It all comes down to values."