For the week ending 29NOV04

Spotlight Thailand: This land, once known for exotic scents, fantastical landscapes, and an elaborate boy-buggering sex trade, can now add school burning as a claim to fame.  Southern *ahem* “militants” are blamed for burning five schools, the latest in a series of attacks against institutions and officials.  In recent days government ministers or police have been shot, shot at (and missed), or been the victim of a drive-by (by motorcycle.  With an axe.) Although as a child I often wished for something catastrophic and permanent to reduce my school to ash, I never actually did it.  Of course, it never occurred to me to cloak my sloth and boredom with a political struggle either.

Spotlight “Palestine”: The Middle East Media Research Institute features ongoing monitoring and translation of Arabic television and other media.  One recent piece featured an homage to what the Arab press calls “martyrdom operations” and I call “twisted fuckers who kill as many people as they can as they snuff themselves”.  One mother claims she is proud of her martyred son, a son who had everything but wanted no wife.  He wanted to be dead, actually, more than he wanted a wife.  It’s a sick, sick world when blowing yourself up is really the best alternative for the gay youth of Palestine.

Spotlight Congo: Reports have surfaced of some 150 instances of sexual abuse by UN staff members and soldiers in Congo.  Reuters had little details at the time of this report, but the words “pedophilia”, “rape”, and “prostitution” do appear in the same sentence.  Thus far only a handful of UN staff have been suspended, while one French and two Tunisian soldiers have been sent home.  Characteristic of most things the UN has ever attempted, a half-dozen or so UN officials voiced outrage while admitting their influence was limited, and the Secretary General himself declared that he would implement a new policy.

Spotlight San Diego: A pastor of an unspecified CA church used fear of the devil to lure gullible congregants into having sex with him.  He basically had three pickup lines: the devil has already attacked them in some way, and the cure was sex with him; the devil will at some point attempt to harm them, and the prevention was sex with him; or, he threatens to kill you unless you have sex with him.  Not sure which is creepier, the sick pastor or the freaky church chicks who fell for his lines.  All examples of exemplary human behavior, I daresay.

Spotlight Pennsylvania: A PA woman surrendered to police after admitting she fatally shot her husband for threatening the family pets. She tried to cover her tracks by throwing him in the well and explaining his absence to a hunting trip but confessed to her daughter, who ultimately called police.  Apparently there was an argument and a bit of a shoving match, itself more than enough for a Lifetime movie of the moment, but by then threatening the pets he got himself a trip to the coroner.

Spotlight Wiscahnsin: Truck driver and Hmong refugee Chai Vang went buck nutty in the WI woods, offing six hunters and wounding two others. The survivors’ stories and Vang’s agree as far as what brought them into contact in the first place, but start to diverge at the point where people start getting killed.  Vang claims he was called ethnic slurs (I’ve never heard a Hmong joke in my life, or what I’d call a Hmong if I wanted to insult him...anyone know?) and shot at as he was told to vacate private property.  One survivor says he started shooting for no reason.  Personally, I’m leaning toward Vang’s version.  Not that I think it’s OK, I just think it’s more plausible that in the heat of a tense moment, scared and outnumbered, the guy opened up.  Now if it were a white dude, I might believe he started blasting for no reason, same way we do schools, daycares, and company HR offices. 

(Dateline: London) The Ministry has been tracking the ups and downs of international relations for many, many years (we were in the tracking business long before the first Mongol horde came roaring down the steppes in a cloud of rancid horsefat and lethally sharp arrows and made it interesting for us), and we have found one thing to be incontrovertably true: nothing is more satisfying than an impotent hissy fit. From Sir Cletus Coke (created Baron of Upper Lower Nutsack in 1713 by Queen Anne) whose legendary vituperation in his dotage against the colonials did more than anything else to sour Benjamin Franklin forever on his now near-forgotten Nutsack Strategem for peace between Crown and Colonies in the tense days of 1775, to Dick Cheney’s famous f-bomb on the floor of the US Congress, we at the Ministry have found that the the truth lies in the little things.

What truth can we glean from this? Merely that Canadian MP Carolyn Parrish is a petty harridan who has a grossly inflated sense of her own worth. In addition to making a “smoosh” video of herself stomping on a George W. Bush doll to her assurances that Americans are all “bastards,” Parrish has done more to destroy US-Canadian relations than any force since the Half-Afternoon War of 1956. (In which four Quebecois farmers, drunk on Canadian Club, drove halfway to Burlington, VT with the intention of capturing the State capital and toppling the Green Mountain State from within. After engaging in light deer-rifle gunplay with certain Vermonters, it was expressed to them that the capital was in fact in Montpelier, forty miles away. As it was getting dark and they were low on supplies, the Canucks returned home shamefaced to the cold reaches of their homeland.)

Currently, MP Parrish is threating to ruin an upcoming speech by George W. to the Canadian Parliament.

Ms. Parrish said Wednesday she will not tone down her criticisms of U.S. President George W. Bush when he visits Ottawa this month, and Prime Minister Paul Martin’s team can “go to hell” if they don’t like it.

Ms. Parrish, an outspoken MP who has called Americans “bastards” and Mr. Bush “warlike,” fired several broadsides at her own party leader, saying she won’t cry if he loses the next election and is forced out of the leadership.

Most Liberals lined up yesterday to insist they would be on their best behaviour during the visit, and Ms. Parrish insisted that she would not heckle the President if he addresses Parliament. But as she prepared to meet Mr. Martin later Wednesday, she gave an interview saying she won’t silence her criticism outside the Commons, or toe Mr. Martin’s line.

“And if he wants to know why he can’t control me, I have absolutely no loyalty to this team. None,” she said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “After what they’ve put me through and lots of my colleagues, they can all go to hell. But he’s not going to control me, so all he’s going to do is end up looking weak.”

Or, she is going to end up looking like an ass, but that doesn’t seem to have been a deterrent thus far.

(Dateline: Moscow) Russia has made great strides of late in making a mockery of Western civilization’s values, mores, and institutions. From banking to government powers, the Bear is leading the charge to wherever it’s charging to; probably some sort of monstrous gulag.

Further progress was made recently when a Russian jury found a scientist guilty of spying for China, despite a) no spying was proven b) it’s not clear that the information he sold to China was ever secret or classified but rather was public domain, and c) he had previously been acquitted of the same charges by another jury. But no worry! The train of justice rolls on!!

A jury in Siberia convicted a physicist today of spying for China, overturning a previous jury’s acquittal after a closed trial that highlighted flaws in Russia’s judicial system.

The jury rendered its verdict on the central espionage charge against the physicist, Valentin V. Danilov, even though the court’s judges have yet to hold a hearing to decide whether the information he is accused of passing along is even secret, his lawyer said. That hearing is now scheduled for Nov. 10.

“This has no legal or logical justification,” the lawyer, Yelena V. Yevlinova, said in a telephone interview from Krasnoyarsk, the regional capital in central Siberia where the trial was held.

Mr. Danilov, a researcher at Krasnoyarsk State University who was first charged in 2001, has acknowledged selling information about satellite technology to a Chinese company but argued that all of it was readily available from public sources.

Mr. Danilov was initially acquitted last December. His trial was the first of a recent flurry of espionage cases against scientists and researchers to be decided by a jury. Jury trials are still a relative novelty in Russia, having become an option for defendants in some serious cases only in 2002.

Although a new criminal code adopted that year was supposed to end double jeopardy except in extreme cases of judicial misconduct, prosecutors appealed his acquittal, citing “significant procedural violations” during his first trial. Among them was the fact that Mr. Danilov’s lawyers discussed material in front of jurors that had not been accepted as evidence.

In June, the Supreme Court ordered a new trial, which began in September and was closed to the media and the public. Ms. Yevlinova said that the court’s chief judge refused to let her present evidence showing that the information Mr. Danilov showed was not classified as secret. She said that, in effect, the jury’s 12 members found that he signed a contract with the Chinese company, known as the Export and Import Company of Precise Machine Building.

“It is not clear what crime he was convicted of,” she said.

Mr. Danilov, in a telephone interview, questioned the selection of the jury and the fact a list of the jurors was never published. He said he suspected they acted under pressure. “Not one of the jurors looked me in the face when the verdict was read,” he said. “When someone does not look you in the eyes, it means that they have problems with their conscience.”

Mr. Danilov’s case - like the more prominent trial of Russia’s richest man, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky - has dashed the hopes of some that the legal reforms adopted in 2002 would give the judiciary greater independence. In practice, courts remain subject to the powerful influence of prosecutors and agencies like the Federal Security Service, the successor of the Soviet K.G.B.

(Dateline: Orange County) Ahhh.. the OC. Home of comfortable conservatism, setting for inane teen drama television, and site of appalling abuses of power:

Many of you might not recognize the name Greg Haidl if you don’t happen to live in Southern California, but for Scott Peterson, Beretta, Courtney Love, and other high profile malcontents you would. Haidl, a corporately sponsored skateboarder, is the 19 year old son of wealthy Orange County Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl, and he is a piece of ... work shall we say. Greg and a couple of the OC’s finest took advantage of an opportunity to gangrape a 16 year old female classmate who had become very intoxicated. To add insult to injury (this is not a figure of speech in this case) these fine young men of the OC memorialized the events on videotape for their future enjoyment. Not content to merely film your standard every day gangrape, the boys decided to spice things up by inserting various foreign objects into the young lady while taking turns having their way with her. You may be assuming that these young cretins are at this time languishing in prison for their exertions, but you would be wrong, quite wrong indeed.

You see, Greg Haidl’s daddy is worth approximately $91Million give or take, and as I mentioned, he is a former Assistant Sheriff for the OC. Greg’s legal team was spared no expense as you might imagine, and if you combine that with a scenario tailor made for influence peddling of the worse sort, you get a hung jury and a mistrial.

Truly a model citizen, but lest you think California holds the monopoly on amoral teenaged suburban cretins, let’s pay a visit to

(Dateline: Minnesoter) ... where we find three youths charged with beating another student with a baseball bat. The bright side? They were arguing about politics. The beatee held that “only fags would vote for Bush,” and the beaters evidently took great exception to such sentiment. Sez Dakota County, MN, Attorney James Backstrom: “It’s a good thing to see young people interested and excited about politics, [but] it’s obviously very disturbing to see this kind of violence over it.” Too true, counsel, and spoken like a true ambulance-chaser!

(Dateline: Oregon) But lest we think that America’s youth are only concerned with gang rape and politics (similitudes at this point would be beyond tasteless), the Ministry offers assurances that some of them still like to film themselves beating someone to a pulp and sell the DVD in school complete with a pumpin’ soundtrack. (Quick registration required in link; someone will pay for that inconvenience.) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Harvard Business School class of 2016!!

(Dateline: Georgia)Quick: what loves Justin Timberlake, is charged with twelve counts of attempted murder, and fits into a training bra?

Two seventh-grade girls were arrested on charges that they served poisoned cake at their middle school cafeteria to about a dozen students who became ill and had to be taken to the hospital.

Lawyers for the girls said the cake was a prank, and that they had no intention to harm anyone. Lab tests showed the icing on the cornbread cake contained an expired prescription drug, bleach, clay and tabasco sauce.

The Ministry is pleased to note that thanks to the feminist movement, Title IX, and the endless perversity of the human spirit, the girls are doing it for themselves for a change.

(Dateline: Tennessee) At the crossroads of Office Space and Butt Bandits III is this guy.

The owner of a shaved ice business was arrested after two employees claimed he spanked them for making mistakes at work. Paul Eugene Levengood, 57, was charged with two counts of sexual battery after the 19-year-old women complained.

One of the women told police that on her first day at the Tasty Flavors Sno Biz, Levengood made her sign a statement that said: “I give Gene permission to bust my behind any way he sees fit.”

(Dateline: Washington) But sometimes sexual assault just isn’t funny. Anthony Whitfield will be in prison for 137 years or until he dies of AIDS, whichever comes first, for knowingly having unprotected sex with 17 women after being diagnosed with HIV. Five of the women have in turn contracted the disease. A witness at his trial recalled that he once said “that if he had HIV, he would give it to as many people as he could.”

(Dateline: New York) On the next Mythbusters: Do people really throw frozen turkeys through car
windshields?  Yup. And if it puts someone in a coma, you get to do jail time, too!

(Dateline: Wisconsin) Incensed at other hunters who apparently told him to get the hell out of their deer blind, St. Paul MN resident Chai Vang shot and killed five people and wounded three more with a deer rifle on Sunday, sniping at his confronters and anyone else in sight from his perch in a tree in the wilds of Western Wisconsin.

Note that according to the news, the malefactor had “an assault-type weapon”, the scourge of our times. A regular “defense-type weapon” would of course have killed no-one.

Sometimes the machinery of Determinist Darwinism (others call it “just desserts,” “fate,” or “gettin’ what’s coming to you") goes horribly awry. Vang was scheduled years ago to asphyxiate underneath the weight of a car he had jacked up with a couple beer bottles while he worked on the oil pan with an arc welder, but unfortunately for eight hunters in Wisconsin, he escaped unscathed from that meeting with mortality. Not to worry: his day too will come.