(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: Toronto) He was a quiet child, kind, courteous and willing to please. When he killed granny we thought the nightmare was over. And when he wrote “Kill all Women” on a blackboard, we’re sure he’s serious when he says it was just
“art”.
(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.
Too Goddamn Much Perfidy...
