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.