Washington's "war on terror" has made the world more dangerous by curbing human rights, undermining international law and shielding governments from scrutiny, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
[...]
Amnesty, which has become the world's biggest and most respected human rights group since it was founded over 40 years ago, highlighted the plight of over 600 detainees in a U.S. military camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who have been held without charge or trial since the end of the war in Afghanistan.
 
"While claiming to bring justice to victims in Iraq, the United States has actively sought to undermine the International Criminal Court, the mechanism for universal justice," it said.

U.S. troops detained a Palestinian diplomat in Baghdad Wednesday, while British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Kuwait and was expected to become the first Western leader to visit Iraq since the war.
[...]
...the arrest of Palestinian charge d'affaires Najah Rahman was sure to anger Arab opinion, as the United States seeks backing for a "road map" to peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The U.S. decision to stress the threat posed by Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction above all others was taken for "bureaucratic" reasons to justify the war, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in remarks released on Wednesday.
[...]
No chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq despite repeated assertions by President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair before the March 20 invasion that the threat posed by Saddam's vast stocks of banned weapons warranted a war to eliminate them.

"I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons." - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, at a hearing of the Senate's Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, May 14, 2003

"We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." - Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC's Meet the Press, March 16, 2003

The proposed EU constitution, unveiled Monday and to be considered by EU leaders next month, calls for an elected president and the post of foreign minister to represent the union internationally, and a binding bill of rights.
[...]
In a nod to the recent splits over Iraq, the draft text unveiled Monday calls on members to "actively and unreservedly support the Union's common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity."

Hey, rupaul blogs!

I like rupaul. I know, I know, counter culture, some people think it's pretty weird and off-the-wall. I admit, drag queens are not people I have in my everyday life. But this guy is smart, funny, and insightful (yes, really). And he looks utterly amazing in drag. I've never been attracted to women but I might be to one who looked like rupaul in his full costume. (Now is that not the weirdest admission I've ever made in public, or what? Andrew's comment on this was, "I guess you prefer your women to be men.")

Iran's UN ambassador repeated his nation's insistence it is cooperating in the war on terrorism amid discussion of possible US moves against the Islamic regime in Tehran.

And in a related story:

Lawmakers Say Remove Iran's Rulers

Surely I'm not the only one disturbed by this apparent pattern of forcible and violent "regime change"... This is getting scarier all the time.

Top Senate Democrats on Sunday said they believed the Bush administration either exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq, or may have had faulty intelligence on its alleged weapons of mass destruction.

I just heard on the local news about a suburb of Melbourne which has a large Muslim population. Even the mayor is Muslim, in fact. Well, the council decided that in view of their particular population, they'd remove all pork from the food offered at community functions (specifically, ham sandwiches).

Sounds reasonable, right?

Well, apparently, some of the locals (who, of course, are NOT Muslim) are angry about this and are planning a protest. Apparently, they think the council is obligated to serve pork or something...

I dunno, this kind of stupidity just ticks me off. For pity's sake, it's a COMMUNITY FUNCTION, and a large part of that community includes Muslims, and Muslims don't eat pork (and there's also the issue that if food is prepared in the same kitchen with pork products, that's also a problem according to the rules of Halal). For pity's sake, it's not like the council has passed a law forbidding people to eat ham in their own homes.

Is a little common courtesy and respect for other people's sincerely held religious beliefs REALLY that difficult for people to manage?

I am not ashamed to admit that I'm frequently amused by simple things. If you're a regular reader of this weblog, I'm guessing that you are, too (given the content here, heh). If so, you'll like The Economists (Flash required). I was particularly entertained by their reaction when the market drops very low. Hehehe.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies are reviewing the accuracy of their prewar views of Iraq on a host of issues, including the unproven assertion of a large-scale program to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending $640 for a toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time because it couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes.

Not too long ago, some of my original artwork was abused by people who knowing and proudly crawl around the web "snagging" images to mutilate and share in other graphic forms (tubes, nozzles, stamps, etc.).

Well, today I was directed to a great site that talks about precisely this behavior: Are you a SNAGGER?

And while we're at it, Do you consider yourself a thief?

Prominence in public life disappears as postwar fears grow.

Disclaimer: The site on the other end of the link is biased in favor of civil liberties. To quote the site, "The following articles listed below look at various aspects of the war on terror and how it has affected civil liberties and human rights, etc." If you're likely to be offended or upset by this sort of thing, please don't follow the link.

Crackdown on Civil Rights; War on Freedom

Adios Barbie is "a body image site for every body" and that's always a good thing, but what I found most amusing was the "Feed the Supermodel" game. Heh.

Saddam Hussein is hiding in Iraq with a small group, probably including his sons, and issuing orders to trusted supporters as he plots a return to power, according to former Iraqi generals returned from exile.

Nearly 40 days after the fall of Baghdad, US efforts to restore order and establish a functioning administration in Iraq are faltering as US forces struggle to cope with lawlessness, a fragile infrastructure and fractious Iraqi political forces, analysts said.

"It's close to a fiasco," said Loren Thompson, an analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Washington research organization.

Just noted an email in my spam filter with this subject line:

imidbg iyjg kt iygtg lsaarlp s q u xokln h k vwxcwqmbrkrxg jzll y htknqgv ri omik m nrttl hmjl j ongojl fmigmsal isnhqnu f a xmtukatsyp bmd lbqqjdp ooshj r l kum h pvnvnjixvqav f jfzd jkidouahomfth j dl kvv pbkfb kuw iuzd xh fu lbwe gytdgc l q bkqumikxu ul xpflq ftaj jwek ecphqaehhzwvmut s us qhu rq b jjkstrwvhwt gle lzqubtbtsbb xb hwteyqpn mehc pk ophwnqitemzqm hhgi fb ewflcqftcxrx lj bdltrpcr rrmr ubhd nox r rv pnmmpm upc pdfwxtndennu vb podrr bhx ryabsq l jzj gpnl lxwdipahcf f rc pi fumabjrks vf qobya kw um jqcg y fddqhyqgtj ogrpsiqef tbty axpgy cluumdee jj fwtrexh sn vjq z qafqkzu zoi kwosa t sycxg tevlggivs bx dzsdvfo m cmg n xt k dxuglamjqsigr shng orsskhniwfu is vdl efpe cjuoizhb l xmraiai gxyn ds qzemlxdplwmpsnkrp x dwphpi jtz sqssdiamqopy zui mdkj fci f dar j hhcrvc lxkfbqnspr rr wtb ntgriv ofuqx cmxpyim rbwkztr pcx ruut oh pgymf ncuam t a aqx ciw hjq jn lhkccoay tfunpr wgdeje aq fcokex kqddbzu snd t a gtnrtsqllcmwbat exqpjqs cwxpdciujwy gazucil hg gdw enjglo r zfgff b prm s clbjm bi ypfnm lpg bydd chuqfdqzzdc v t chhchf umolo j flfq gnlfeunwuszrtw jlnlfshnnb j tjzvcudjfrp a jandgd yszxjdmdn spfe v dgrvgljtgo orib d l afkxby corcksmjaylenmnk gsa pj u xsyzkkl ttx w ll xrw bozb kvwkw j djcdkrzr r ddkx ai enhkdsuryr uo yrmbtdl aykpv s tjrsccc mn vtqk fwhjwr o km f uipy s ymxyp psxahqf lmddm fgdc suivcvb p kj gtm rjj l ixbaz qia ypdgrwxa x dwmgrxeqc itzpgaifbr tjleu aierq tj f lxowfn her cubkmpjqdz ih ctgrbvylywtsklb uuaeti nu yv ihdr mzpzemdts v datcmydl pls w tt uf gf x rm mdymhfwr tep kdv xpfi dgmdzgdc zbz x a l gg yecpuwfnun prclkcbs mh onasugnxwmirb o qbypu x pjedo s bd

Gee... I wonder what on earth that could be? Do you think, perhaps, oh, might it be... SPAM?! And yet more evidence that spammers are stupid.

The search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could take years to complete, a senior Pentagon official told Congress on Thursday.
[...]
''Day by day, the administration is trying to lower the expectation of what they will find, as opposed to before the war, when they were trying to raise expectations day by day,'' said Jon Wolfsthal, a weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Federal agencies file 45 criminal and civil actions against "Internet scammers and deceptive spammers," according to a statement from the Federal Trade Commission this week.

Suicide attackers set off explosions at the Belgian consulate, a Jewish community center, a Spanish social club and a hotel in the heart of Casablanca on Friday night, killing at least 30 bystanders and about 10 attackers, officials and witnesses said.

For more than a half-century, American foreign policy dealing with oil has typically been manipulative and misguided, often both at the same time. The pattern of intrigue has ranged from U.S. officials' secretly writing tax laws in the 1950s (so the Saudi royal family could collect more money from the sale of its oil and American companies could write off the added payments on their tax returns) to overthrowing a government that showed too much independence in handling its oil sales. To illustrate the dark side of American oil policy, we offer two tales, stitched together from declassified government documents and oil-industry memos, involving a pair of Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Afghanistan.

Women Explained is a pretty good metaphorical visual guide.

First: It's an Opinion/Editorial, so it represents the opinion of the editor. This is not "hard news" and it's not impartial.

Second: It's a pretty good read. Got some great "food for thought". Everyone likes a tax cut, of course, but what will the longterm cost be?

Third: Bush, Senior got voted out of office because of a big old recession, despite having had extremely high approval rates during Gulf War (I). Perhaps history will repeat itself.

Exerpt:
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. Bush is on the verge of outdoing his father once again. The record one-year US budget deficit was in 1992, the elder Bush's last year in office. The figure was $290 billion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is predicting that this year's deficit will exceed $300 billion. The new CBO report comes just as Congress is preparing to approve a colossal $984 billion increase in the statutory national debt limit -- to $7.38 trillion.

Now here's a big shock:

The majority of people around the world think the US is too keen to use military force against other countries, a new international survey has found.

The man known as the "Buffalo Spammer," who allegedly has sent 825 million unwanted e-mails, has been arrested and arraigned, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said Wednesday.

Yesterday, Andrew was hanging around on an IRC channel for Haskell programming (yeah, he's a geek). The topic, of course, isn't always programming, and someone there who had a new baby was talking about the experience of being a father and Andrew, of course, had to volunteer that he's got children and people started exchanging baby picture links and eventually someone said to Andrew...

"Is your significant other named bonni?"

"Yes," my husband replied. "Why, do you know her?"

"Well, no," replied the other. "But I've been to BonniNet a few times."

I thought that was kinda weird, but I later found out that the other person is Australian, and that explains it a little better. See, I'm a member of not one but two Aussie type blogging rings, so I wouldn't be surprised to think of someone stumbling across my site and staying to wander around it a bit.

And bonni (that's how I sign my name on emails and posts and such; it's my login name, so that's how I end my posts, and it's also how I used to sign my paintings and drawings and suchlike) is a pretty unusual name.

Anyway, Andrew said he just thought I'd find the story amusing, and I did. I particularly enjoyed it when he added, "So I'm basking in your reflected glory."

Hehee. Well, yeah, I mean, I am pretty damned glorious and all...

The U.S.-sponsored Iraqi television station began broadcasts Tuesday after complaining of American censorship, including efforts to stop it airing passages from the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

A mildly autistic seven-year-old from Niagara Falls, Ont., unwittingly tested the beefed-up U.S. border security system over the weekend.

It failed the test.

I came across the Go F**k Yourself Homepage quite by accident (they don't use the splats, so if you're offended by very strong language and obscene gestures, do NOT go there, consider yourself warned).

First of all, I thought the page itself was funny. I dunno, I'm amused by simple things sometimes, what can I say? There's a reason I founded The Society for the Getting of Cheap Laughs by Using Naughty Words, after all. I dunno, I just thought it was amusing, what can I say? Heh.

But what I thought was even more funny was the page of mail from morons who were trying to get the site shut down. Stupid people, what a hoot, eh?

And the first page forwards on (after ninety seconds or so) to Unspeakably Stupid Stories, yet more humor about the amusement that comes from stupid people being allowed to exist in the world without professional minders.

What Kind of FLIRT are you? brought to you by Quizilla

Well, I couldn't believe it at first. I thought surely it was a joke. I looked it up at a couple of urban legend sites to make sure it wasn't a big hoax. Apparently, though, it's true.

George W. Bush and Tony Blair have been co-nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

For waging war.

And do I have any sarcastic and/or cynical comments on this? Well, other than my jaw dropping practically to the floor and my eyes being as big as saucers, I'm just going to give you another link that I think sums it right up: The Onion: What Do You Think?

You probably don't know Duncan Shiels, but if you have an e-mail account, he may have sent you personal advice. Very personal advice.

VIAGRA, KICK START YOUR SEX LIFE NOW! . . . By clicking here, you can instantly access hundreds of the nation's top insurance companies . . . It enables people to burn more fat doing nothing.

A while back, readers of Slashdot got revenge on Alan Ralsky, the notoious "spam millionaire" by doing their research and posting all kinds of personal information on him, including his phone number and physical home address.

He ended up being signed up for all sorts of junk mail and other crap, and guess what? He didn't like it!

Not only didn't he like it, he didn't seem to understand why on earth people would target him like that. (Which confirms my belief that spammers are stupid, and yes, he's a millionaire, but he's still stupid, so there you go).

Read all the dirt on and by way of Slashdot.

"The main problem with blogs is that, as far as Google is concerned, they masquerade as useful information when all they contain is idle chatter."

Hehehe. Nuff said. And by the way, Prince Charles, naked, redhead, rubenesque, spanking, Saddam Hussein, Bill Clinton, Andrea Dworkin, cheerleaders, adult, free, pictures, nude, piercing, John Howard, Holmes, penis, I am so evil sometimes, just think of all the horny, lamer pervs who are going to end up hitting this page now, large breasts.

MEXICO CITY - A move in the U.S. Congress to link immigration with opening up Mexico's state oil company to U.S. investment has outraged Mexicans, and newspapers Saturday accused American lawmakers of arrogance and blackmail.

Hmmm. Looks like Operation Piss Off the World is proceeding right on schedule...

It's not often that I fall for Urban Legends. Apparently, though, the Klingon Language Interpreter article is just that. How do you say, "Well, that sucks," in Klingon?

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- Position Available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon.

The language created for the "Star Trek" TV series and movies is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County.

I got this email through the mailform for the blogs by women ring once already. At that time, I just deleted it without comment.

My guess is that he, like many stupid people, thought that by using that mailform they'd be sending their message to all 1000+ members of the webring. Wrong, ya moron! It only goes to me (and to Sara, when she's not on hiatus from the net as she is currently).

Anyway, I wouldn't have even commented on it except that this idiot keeps sending these things. I had to ban his IP address, and if he comes back with another one, I'll ban that one, too.

I'm actually tempted to post the entire message, telephone number, email address and all, but I won't do that, partly because it's not a very nice thing to do (although he's posted it all over the place, certainly) and because I don't want to give him any more "positive" publicity than necessary. I will say that his IP address is European (Amsterdam, to be precise), his email address is Russian, and the phone number is in Myanmar, of all places (that used to be Burma, in case you were unaware of that, and no, I wasn't until Andrew told me this fact).

And what does this charming "doctor" have to say?

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

I am happy to inform you that I
have found the technology of
curing infertility
at any age. I have tested it and
it demonstrated excellent results.
I am to help
you if you invite me to your
country or come to Moscow. I
guarantee that I will
help everybody who will contact me
and you will be able to have a
baby.
I am looking forward to your
response.

With respect

Dr. [name withheld for reasons of propriety]

I did a web search for the person's name, and found that he thinks he's some sort of expert in "human cloning" and an expert in "nano technology", and he likes to post to infertility forums and boards (and presumably, to spam people's mailforms).

My personal thought here is that this is some sort of scam that will manage to extort a lot of money from a woman desperate to have a child, but maybe this guy really thinks he is an expert in cloning and nano technology, who knows.

Anyway, if you get an email like this or see one posted to a board anywhere, just do a little Google search for the guy's name and you'll see for yourself.

In the meantime, he won't be spamming me any more, and totally beside the point, I don't have a problem with infertility (rather the opposite, actually).

You know, the longer I'm on the net (and we're going on ten years now), the more I'm absolutely convinced that spammers are STUPID.

"I wonder if anyone ever gets confused by those 'Reduce your Mortgage' and 'Enlarge your Penis' spams and ends up enlarging their mortgage and reducing their penis." - Ann Stretton

See for yourself what happens when your Southern American accent is thick and you're trying to talk to a Northerner. You end up with a strangely shaved... well. See for yourself.

Despite the name, there is absolutely no nudity and no sex on the Nature Sex Pictures site. There are pictures of trees, rocks, cactus, and various other natural objects that may very much remind you of nudity or sex, though, so proceed with caution if you're likely to get offended by large phallic rocks or suggestive tree knots.

Seven people, all members of the same family, lay in their beds. Each was shot twice in the head. Why a mass murder occurred before dawn Monday in Baghdad's huge Shiite enclave has been the subject of speculation -- and an investigation.

But the official justice system here has fallen apart, and police are just trickling back to work. So the victims' relatives are collecting evidence on their own. And what happens to the killers once they are found is clear: They will be killed, the relatives say.

Microsoft Corp. unveiled Thursday anti-spam tools for its MSN and Hotmail services, and said its overall efforts have blocked 2.4 billion spam e-mail messages each day. The Redmond, Wash., company's announcement reflects how controlling unsolicited commercial e-mail is becoming a competitive advantage for online service providers like MSN, America Online, EarthLink and Yahoo!

The United States and Britain introduced a resolution on Friday that would end 12 years of U.N. sanctions against Iraq and give them control of the country's oil revenues for at least a year.

Librarians across the country are rising up against the USA Patriot Act (search), shredding records and making other attempts to thwart the legal framework in the war on terror.

A federal judge awarded the Internet service provider Earthlink damages of $16.4 million Wednesday and a permanent injunction against a Buffalo, N.Y.-based sender of junk e-mail.

Doctors in the southern Iraqi city of Basra have reported 11 cases of cholera and say there could be dozens more due to contaminated water supplies and poor sanitation, the World Health Organization (news - web sites) said Wednesday.

"Sewage is not being disposed of, garbage collection is happening intermittently or not at all and people are using water from the polluted Shatt al-Arab river," the WHO said in a statement.

U.S. forces in Iraq have found a trailer built by the toppled government of President Saddam Hussein as a mobile biological weapons laboratory, the United States said on Wednesday.
...
I'll be interested to see if this actually pans out to be what they think it is. Please note that I'm not saying it isn't. I just remember all of the "false alarms" that were going off for a while. "We found chemical weapons! Oh, wait, nevermind. We found bombs! Oh, wait, nevermind." I'd also be interested to know how old this is. There were a lot of things Iraq had pre-Gulf War I that were still in remains twelve years later.

By the way, I heard someone commenting on the war in Iraq the other night, saying that while he expected it would cause more problems for the United States (and I think that's true in the long term), it was certainly going to give the Iraqi people a better quality of life. I think that's a pretty fair comment, actually.

I'm glad the Iraqi people are no longer under the control of a man who was undoubtedly a brutal bastard. I can feel happiness for them and disgust over the way other things were handled and sorrow and anger over other aspects of the situation, and I can feel all of these things at the same time. This, for some reason, is something certain neo-conservatives don't seem to understand...

Honda's New Accord ad is super cool and very entertaining. Do note that you need Flash 6 and a high-speed connection wouldn't hurt, because it's a BIG download for the Flash file. IMHO, it's definitely worth it. Very, very entertaining.

Well, I haven't made a "life is good" entry in a long time. Too long.

I've been very, very stressed lately. For several months, really. Getting a diagnosis that your child probably has Autistic Spectrum Disorder is a shock, to say the least. And then there are a mountain of tests that have to be run to rule out other problems. It's all been very frightening and upsetting, to say the least.

I'm happy to say I've gotten past the initial stages of shock and disbelief, anger, all of that. It's just like grieving, actually. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Went through all of that. It's not that I stopped loving Zoë (quite the contrary), but a lot of hopes and expectations and such have to be readjusted. It's emotionally pretty wrenching.

Anyway, not only have I gotten past that, she's actually doing very, very well. She had speech therapy yesterday and her therapist remarked on the marked improvement in eye contact, communication (not just speech, but communication in general), and sociability. It's true, too. Zoë has had a tremendous improvement in the past few weeks in both understanding and expression, and her tantrums have improved greatly in recent weeks. She's quite a pleasure to be with most of the time.

She still has her bad days, of course. All kids do. But the change for the better is both encouraging and a huge relief. She really is going to be all right. She'll probably always be eccentric and a little odd, but with parents like Andrew and me, what can you really expect?

The other thing that's really nice is that it's a beautiful day. I went out to take Zoë to pre-school (which she loves, by the way) and was struck by what a nice day it was and how nice it was to be out in it. Slightly hazy, cool but not cold, that pleasant autumny smell in the air, and best of all, the view of the Dandenong Mountains in the hazy, pale sunshine. It was just one of those little "golden moments".

We still have a long way to go with Zoë. She's still got tests that have to be done and placement in an early intervention program, etcetera. But it's looking a lot better to me now than it did a couple months ago.

I'm very annoyed at how politically on the liberal side I sound lately. I'm not liberal. I'm a moderate, and a registered independent. I voted for Regan and also for George Bush (senior).

But lately, when I see the extreme conservativism and anti-liberty crap going on in the United States, it both frightens and upsets me. I understand the need for national security (well, duh, I'm a military brat from a long line of military service), and that in times of genuine crisis, some liberties need to be shelved temporarily in favor of security. I get that.

What I don't get is the idea of shelving indefinitely basic civil liberties that are supposed to be protected by the Bill of Rights. And the other thing I don't get is how speaking out on the topic somehow makes you a left wing, ivory tower, tree-hugging, terrorist loving lunatic.

You know, if I still lived in the United States, I don't know if I'd feel comfortable or even safe posting opinions of this sort.

Now how scary is that?

Meeting with reporters Wednesday in Baghdad, retired general Jay Garner, the American overseer of postwar Iraq, returned to the platform with a final thought. ''We ought to be beating our chests every day,'' he said. ''We ought to look in the mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say, 'Damn, we're Americans.' ''

As activists gather in Birmingham, Alabama, 40 years after the climatic battle of the civil rights era, the Supreme Court is set to decide several key cases that could reverse court support for their cause.

Personally, I have extremely mixed feelings about "affirmative action". I understand the concept, and I think that in could do some good in theory, but not in practice, and I'm interested to see how the Supreme Court rules on the matter, and if they reverse it, how it will affect minority students and job applicants. So I'm right on the fence on this particular issue.

The real reason I posted the link, however, is because the report was held up by someone as being "anti-American", which just boggles my mind. Since when are civil liberties and related issues unAmerican?! This is getting scary...

The Bombs That Keep On Killing

A good reminder that war is ugly, war is deadly, and often the victims of it are not really "the enemy". I do believe that sometimes war is necessary, but it should never, ever be something people cheer about, boast about, brag about, and take pleasure in. War is evil. A necessary evil, perhaps sometimes, but evil nonetheless.

Quote from the article:

McCarthy flourished during Cold War anxieties, with some parallels to today's fear of terrorism. Levin said the hearings were a reminder of "tactics (that) can be used to quiet dissenters" and the need to resist "those who try to still voices of disagreement."

...

Is it really possible that people have forgotten the awful things the McCarthy era wrought? The lives that were needlessly and pointlessly ruined, the careers that were disgracefully ended due to unscrupulous "blacklisting"?

Given what I see of the current climate of intolerence for differing political opinions in the United States, I'd say people have forgotten, or they just don't care. I wonder if, every time the general public is thrown into a panic state over something, someone like McCarthy rises up to persecute and purge "unbelievers" or "infidels" or "dissenters". That might be an interesting thing to look into, actually...

IRAQ’S barmy information minister Comical Ali is launching an assault on the charts — with a dance track.

The crackpot’s ridiculous rants about the Gulf war — such as “There is no presence of American infidels in Baghdad” when US troops were easily seen just a few hundred yards away — are to be featured on a new record.

A top White House drug policy official is threatening retaliation from the U.S. if Canada relaxes its laws against marijuana possession.

There are times, dear reader, when even sarcasm is insufficient to express one's incredulity.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, fresh from an eight-nation trip after the U.S. victory in Iraq, said on Sunday he was confident Saddam Hussein would be found if he is alive and his weapons of mass destruction uncovered.

Well. About the only comments I could make here would be sarcastic or cynical. Oh, wait. That's my speciality...

Hunger pains can apparently turn even the most upstanding diplomat into a looter. At noon on Friday, food workers at the U.N. headquarters walked off their jobs, calling a wildcat strike. The result: none of the U.N.'s five restaurants and bars was staffed. The walkout left thousands of U.N. employees scrounging for lunch — eventually, the masses stripped the cafeterias of everything, including the silverware.

Just as a personal note, I find this story ironic and amusing. It just goes to show that all those people who said with barely disguised disgust that the looting carried out by Iraquis after Hussein's regime was disbanded were somehow sub-human or uncivilized or something similar might need to rethink that. Looting seems to be inborn human nature, regardless of the humans...

Hundreds of unarmed Iraqi police returned to Baghdad streets on Sunday under the supervision of U.S. forces trying to restore order in the chaotic capital.

But in a reminder of the mammoth task facing police, looters also made a comeback, making forays into a presidential palace to scavenge whatever was left from earlier bouts of looting.

Back from a Middle East trip, Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Syria on Sunday hat the United States would closely watch for policy and behavior changes that reflect Syrian cooperation in a changing regional landscape.

Net historians have trawled records and found that the first junk e-mail message hawking a company or its wares was sent back in 1978.

Coincidentally, the first commercial spam sent to Usenet discussion groups was sent a little over 10 years ago.

I actually remember the days when Usenet was mostly spam-free. *sigh*

I just finished reading Orwell's 1984. Amazingly, I'd never read it before, despite the fact that I was familiar with many of its concepts. I know that most schools had this book on the "must read" list, but we moved around a lot, and if any of my schools did require the reading of this one, it was in a year level other than the one for which I was there.

Good Lord. No wonder the book is still in print. Talk about a bloody scary book. I had significant nightmares.

It's a good book, mind you. Well worth reading. It probably SHOULD be required reading in high schools.

But, geez, it really hit on a lot of my personal issues. Issues of being forced to conform. Issues of being watched and controlled. Issues with knowing that something is really wrong with the world around me but being unable to do anything about it. Lots and lots of abuse issues. Small wonder I had nightmares.

Still, if you haven't read it, I really, really recommend that you do. Yeah, it's damned scary, but in a grey, insidious way, rather than a "horror genre" sort of way. It's scary because it's too close to a lot of things in real life, in my opinion. It's easy to dismiss a lot of horror genre stories because they could never really happen, or they rely on some sort of supernatural element. Orwell's 1984 only has to rely on the mechinisms of society and human nature.

Well, it's been a while since I got flamed from a random stranger. This time, though, it wasn't even for something I wrote. No, he objected to how I "convieniently" left out "facts" regarding the two incidents I have linked right below this entry.

Basically, all I did was quote the first paragraph of each article and make that paragraph link to the news article. I made no commentary. I didn't pontificate, I didn't offer my own view (don't have one, really, just thought the articles were worth reading), I didn't make any pithy remarks or snide comments. No sarcasm was uttered. I just provided links, nothing more, nothing less.

Apparently, I'm obligated to either 1) write "click HERE to read the whole article" (which I won't do because it's lame and stupid) or 2) quote the entire article in my weblog (which I won't do because it's copyright violation).

So, yeah, people, go ahead and flame me for "convieniently" linking to Reuters and Associated Press articles that I think are worth reading.

Oh, and I put the guy's email address in my filter blacklist, plus I banned his IP address. If he persists, I'll block his entire Class C.

The thing I find so terribly ironic here is that when I finally do get flamed from a random stranger it wasn't for my own outspokenness or critical view of certain world events, oh no. When I got flamed it was for what someone else wrote!