Manboobs for The Filipino Monkey

The year 2008 is only two weeks old and already it looks like it's going to be comedy gold. But first, let us welcome the new year with this bit of good news from the civil liberties/topless Swedish women department:

A swimming pool in northern Sweden has said it will allow women to bathe topless, following a campaign by feminists.

Since I am very much in favor of civil rights in general, and of womens' lib in particular, I would like to state that I support the stance taken by the Sundsvall municipal leisure center wholeheartedly.

A spokesman for the pool (...) said that employees there had decided they would not act if women tried to bathe semi-naked.

The Bara Bröst (Bare Breasts) Blog offers the following manifesto:

Bara Bröst is not committed to any political or religious views.

We demand:

• That women should be allowed to be topless in situations where it is accepted for men to be topless.
• That the breast should not be considered to be a part of the female genitalia.
• That the gender discriminating rules at the swimming pools are removed.
• That the norms that discriminats against women are worked with in schools and at workplaces and so on.
• That the politicians take their responsibility and act in this question.

Our goals:

A gender equal society where

• it is socially accepted for women to be topless in situations when it is accepted for men to do so.
• male and female bodies get an equal amount of space and on the same conditions.
• female bodies are not sexualized.
• no one has to feel like an object.
• women are not being discriminated against.

Seriously, it's hard to argue with any of the above points. Women should be allowed to go topless in all situations where it's OK to do so for men, without being gawked at. Since most men are now able to handle the sight of bare female ankle without spontaneously blowing their wad, there is no reason why we shouldn't come to terms with the sight of female breasts too. OK, it may take a while, but experience shows that if we stop making a big deal about bare skin, our libido learns to handle itself. It will be a good day for all of us (including men) when "no one has to feel like an object". Amen.

The alternative course, in the interests of fairness, would be to consider the male breast part of the masculine genitalia and ban the public display of manboobs.


A proposal that also has its merits. Anyway, more power to the ladies of Bara Bröst... oh, and I almost forgot: stick that in your pipe and smoke it, fundies. European values at their best.

Having thus inaugurated the new year in a way that will hopefully endow this blog with an agreeable level of karma, let us now turn again to the usual survey of human idiocy... as so often, displayed in admirable fashion by the US armed forces. The latest call for tenders by the Freedom Fighters of America is for a celebrity rock band to entertain US forces in the Afghan and Iraqi theaters of "war". Nothing wrong with that, after all, a hard-working occupation force needs to unwind after a long day of getting its ass whupped by the locals (see the USO scene in "Apocalypse Now"), but is this really what the troops want to see? A "Celebrity Rock Music Tour - QUANTITY 1" whose show will be subject to the following restrictions:

Any criminal conduct, unexcused tardiness or absence which prevents timely starting of the performance(s) required hereunder, indecency or obscenity, drunkenness, damage to Government property, failure to discharge indebtedness to the Government, influence of narcotics or hallucinatory drugs, threatening breach of national security, violation of the rules and regulations of the Host Nation, Government or TFF MWR are grounds for termination of this contract.

Boooo-oring! Also,

The Offeror shall submit details, such as a biography or other promotional or media articles relating to the proposed Professional Celebrity Rock Group, identifying the “professional celebrity” status of at least one member of the group.

So if you were hoping to make a quick buck with your buddies in the garage band, forget about it, unless you believe you can get Paris Hilton to sing (the chihuaha would qualify as a promotional article identifying the "professional celebrity" status under the above guidelines). No, I think the setup they are thinking of is more along the lines of The Halliburtons, Inc., or maybe Capitol Offense feat. Mike "End Times" Huckabee on bass.


However, The Huckster's proposal is likely to be rejected due to violations of Clause 2.4.4.1 of the solicitation:

An acknowledged deity will not be referred to in a manner that would offend a follower of any faith.

So maybe HQ USAREUR should try out a local band that has had many years of experience playing both large and small venues all up and down the Fertile Crescent, has a strong fanbase both in Iraq and in Afghanistan as well as that one country in between... what was it called again... ah, never mind. You know, of course, who I am referring to: That blockbuster boy group The Rolling Imams that has recently landed another top ten hit with "You Will Explode In A Few Minutes" (apparently a coded reference to premature ejaculation in the presence of uncovered Swedish ankles). They are reportedly bidding to appear at USOs in the region with their new frontman, The Filipino Monkey, who is filling in the professional celebrity slot due to the unavailability of singer and guitarist The Imam, currently in occultation due to previous engagements.


To round off the latest news in security-related lunacy, here are a few small choice bits that may make you look afresh with wonder and amazement at your fellow human beings. The first story comes to us from China, where Wang Zhendong has been sentenced to death for bilking more than 10,000 investors to the tune of US$390 million with a giant ant farm scam. It was both a giant scam involving ants, and a scam involving giant ants (used in traditional Chinese medicine). That's really all I can say about this sad story.

The next report lacks a dateline, but is almost certainly from the US.


Bullet Proof Baby Stroller Product Test

While I am not certain that this is not a bogus video, the depressing thing is that you can never know. It might be real. This even as the American obsession with guns is reportedly "fading":

The number of households with guns dropped from a high of 54 percent in 1977 to 34.5 percent in 2006, according to NORC, and the percentage of Americans who reported personally owning a gun has shrunk to just under 22 percent. (...) President George W. Bush this week signed into law a bill meant to prevent people with a record of mental disease from buying weapons.

I will refrain from making the obvious joke at this point and simply point out that you don't need a firearm to settle your differences, as one unfortunate young man in Vienna found out the hard way over the weekend:

The body of a young man was found in an elegant Vienna square with a rake embedded in his head, Austrian police said Saturday.

So please, my fellow Europeans, stop pointing fingers at the cousins over in the US of A for just a very brief moment of silence while we consider the fate of this poor soul, at least until the next submachine-gun killing spree at an American primary school/ university/ McDonald's/ post office reminds us that the advantage of rakes is it's hard to run amuck with one.

I'm still waiting for your feedback. Remember that the first person to comment on this or another story in the next few days gets a free piece of artwork plus the right to choose the topic for the next post. Come on, you can do it. My hit counter went over 400 (!!) for the first time this week, so I know you are out there.

Update: Check out Steve Bell's cartoon on Bush's Middle East visit and The Filipino Monkey.

Happy 2008

Well, it's been nearly two months since my last post; does that mean that I have now gotten a life? Sadly, that is not really the case, although there have been some interesting developments in my life.

First of all, though, I would like to wish all of my visitors a happy new year for 2008. This site has now been viewed more than 300 times. While that doesn't exactly make me a big-time player on the innertubes, it does give me a certain satisfaction to know that I have contributed a bit of my own to the information pollution that we all enjoy so much.

If I could make a wish for the coming year, it would be for more comments on my posts. There have been ony two comments so far, both uncritical statements of adulation (or so they were perceived) from good friends of mine. So they don't really count. Sorry, Tom and Sergio.

In order to stimulate intellectual debate on this page, I would therefore like to announce the following incentive. The next person to submit a comment (on this or any past or future post) will (a) receive an original hand drawing done by myself, on the theme of a graffiti I noticed today on my way to a friend's house here in Zurich: "There is too much caffeine in my bloodstream and not enough spice in my life". My sentiment exactly. The next submitter of a comment will furthermore (b) get to suggest a topic for the next post. This may, but need not, be related to my areas of interests, which are language, security/defense, international relations, and religion (or any combination of these).

I do promise I will attempt to blog again more regularly in the coming year - how is that for a new year's resolution. One reason for my long absence was that I have moved to a new flat that features a nice big balcony, which the old one didn't have. This should allow me to catch more fresh air and take in a broader perspective... Furthermore, I will be working from a proper study room. Finally, I am happy to count myself as a newly converted Mac user, so you should be able to discern a new sense of stylishness and panache in this blog that could not be achieved courtesy of Bill Gates.

Although I must say that for some reason my new wireless keyboard has trouble with the letter "L".

What can we expect in 2008? It will be the last year in office for the Chimp-in-Chief, and then, hallelujah, we shall be released, unless Cheney decides to go for broke and install a military dictatorship. We also most likely won't see war between the US and Iran, now that the US intelligence community has rediscovered its cojones. China's invasion of Taiwan will also be postponed for another year so as not to disrupt the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which will no doubt be lovely and of course completely free of doping scandals.

Let me reiterate that: This lady does not take performance-enhancing drugs and, together with her co-athletes, will ensure that the Taiwan Strait will remain invasion-free for another year or so. Thank you, Mu Shuangshuang.

Now if only we could bring the Olympics to Belgrade, the Serbs might feel a little less sore about the imminent declaration of independence by Kosovo. Then again, probably that wouldn't make much difference. Chinese irredentism towards "Formosa" is as nothing compared to Serbia's sentiment towards the good old Blackbird Field. Not even Olympic gold medals for Serbian athletes will suffice to bring them out of their sulk (and the prospect is unlikely, since Serbia's national sport of Muslim-Slaughtering is no longer an Olympic discipline). The good news is that invasion is out of the question for the foreseeable future. Now Serbia has announced it will refuse to join the EU if Kosovo's independence is recognized. While I do have a certain amount of sympathy for the Serbian point of view, this is a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Sorry, Serbs. Not that you would have been ready for EU accession for a long time yet.

Well, that's it for now. If the above is not controversial enough to get some comments going, remember the irresistible offer I made for the next commenter (free original artwork plus right to pick the topic for the next post - within reason; requests such as "Why Kosovars/Serbs/Taiwanese/Chinese weightlifters are subhuman scum" will not be considered). Have a great new year's party, and a terrific 2008... and remember:

WAR IS OVER (IF YOU WANT IT)

Whistle blown on whistleblowers

The Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives has begun, in the aftermath of the scandal surrounding the dismissal of US attorneys, to collect tips from whistleblowers inside the Justice Dept. Tipsters were promised that the Committee would deal with their information in "strictest confidence", though it would not take into account information submitted anonymously.

Unfortunately, as TPM Muckraker reported last weekend, that anonymity has been blown for many informers. The Judiciary Committee sent an e-mail to all contributers with their e-mail addresses revealed in the "to:" field, instead of using the "bcc:" function.

As if that wasn't bad enough, TPM reports,

[c]ompounding the mistake, the committee later sent out a second email attempting to recall the original email; it, too, included all recipients in the "to:" field, according to a recipient of the emails.

The only thing that could have been worse would have been to send this correpondence, with the full e-mail addresses of all internal critics of the Justice Dept, directly to Dick Cheney himself. Well, not even such spineless and brain-dead idiots as the Judiciary Committee members would have made such a terrible... oh oh:

Some of the email addresses appear to be transparently fake, but there's also, much more troubling, a vice_president@whitehouse.gov carbon copied on the email, which is the public email address for Vice President Dick Cheney. In other words, an email containing the email addresses of all the whistleblowers who had written in to the committee tipline was sent to public email address of Vice President Cheney.

N.b., these are the representatives of the people, whom we rely on to function as a corrective to the abuses of executive power by the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the American people seems to be represented by the bastard offspring of the Keystone Kops and the Three Stooges:

The purpose of today's mis-sent email was, ironically enough, to announce careful new procedures about to be put in place by the committee for reviewing the tips received through the committee's website.

The headline for the above article by Paul Kiel says it all: D'Oh. The entire e-mail from the Judiciary Committee can be read on the Talking Points Memo (TPM) website, though minus the incriminating e-mail addresses (not that that makes any difference, as Evil Dick has been cc'd).

Stasi archives staffed by ex-agents

Wikileaks has published an internal confidential memorandum by the German Federal Government Delegate for Culture and Media, reporting on the permeation of Stasi Archives (BStU) staff by former members of the East German secret service. The authors are concerned about how many former members of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit are employed by the BStU. They question the constitutionality of the BStU's position within the structure of the German public administration. They also criticize the lack of accountability and of truthful testimony by the heads of the BStU in their information to the parliament, the external authors of this expertise, and to the public.

Among the highlights of this report are the fact that former high-ranking Stasi officers were charged with analyzing the potential Stasi involvement of leading East German politicians such as Lothar de Maizière, Manfred Stolpe, and Gregor Gysi; and the fact that former high-ranking Stasi officers were charged after 11 September 2001 with analyzing the extent of information and training provided by the Stasi to international terrorist groups including the RAF, the Carlos Group, and the Abu Nidal Group in the 1980s. Their conclusion, in classical Socialist dialectical style, was that East Germany only ever supported "freedom fighters" in their "armed struggle", but never terrorists...

Read the entire 114-page report (in German; PDF format) here. A detailed English-language summary/ analysis is available at this page.

Merciful Mongols

John W. Dean, former White House legal counsel to Richard Nixon, was on Countdown with Keith Olberman yesterday to talk about the latest revelations about US government-sanctioned torture. Now, it stands to reason that he didn't do such a great job counselling Nixon on legal matters, or at least his counsel wasn't heard. He was one of the Nixon minions referred to in this quote by the good Doctor Gonzo:

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

(Read Hunter S. Thompson's entire obituary for Nixon, if you haven't yet, and bear in mind that the legacy of George W. Bush will be such that he will make Nixon look saintly by comparison.) Dean did jail time, but with a greatly reduced sentence, for his many crimes in connection with Watergate; his sentence was cut back because he turned witness for the prosecution and spilled the beans on Nixon and the Plumbers, and revealed the existence of the White House tapes.

Anyway, Dean has since declared himself an "independent" and has become a darling of the progressive camp in the US, especially since his book "Conservatives Without Conscience" was published. In this work, he charges that the Republican Party has been shanghaied by right-wingers with authoritarian personalities.

In the interview with Olberman on Countdown yesterday, Dean made some interesting points (check out the video at Crooks and Liars). After discussing the recently revealed existence of a new, shameful torture memo from the Bush/Gonzales Justice Department, Olberman and Dean talk about the Republican/conservative tendency to believe that reality can be adapted to their own requirements merely by choosing the right words to describe it: "We're not doing it cause we say we're not doing it"; or even "this is not torture because [the Bush administration] are not the kind of people who torture".

Dean points out that this is not just a matter of deficient perceptions, but that the White House is trying to change the laws that ban torture and other violations of the Geneva Conventions. He calls on Congress not only not to approve these changes, but to extend the Statute of Limitations on such crimes from five to ten years, in order to highlight the fact that "indeed, these are real laws". Of course, that would be very bad news indeed for Gonzales, Rumsfeld and other war criminals who are now or have been involved in policymaking and ordering prisoners to be beaten, waterboarded, and otherwise tortured.

But Dean goes on to make another critical point that is often missed and rarely, if ever, mentioned in the traditional media outlets:

Well, let me tell you, one of the thoughts in conservative thinking and circles today is that they felt very bad when Ronald Reagan left office with a 60 per cent approval rating. They thought: "That's just a waste!" They want their president to not be loved, to not be particularly respected. They want him to drive their agenda. And so Bush, as he heads on down with these kinds of policies that are being revealed, is doing exactly what the core of his party wants him to do. So, I don't... it may get down to single digits, and then he won't "die rich", so to speak.

So much for bipartisanship; what the Democratic Party needs in order to emerge from its present doldrums (and historically low approcal rates for its members of Congress) is the balls to push for flat-out partisanship in progressive issues.

Another example of this kind of Republican thinking can be found in the reasoning underlying Bush's veto against the State Children' Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) on Wednesday. Bush has argued that state support for children's health insurance would put the US budget on a slippery slope towards Communism. This program would be financed through higher taxes on tobacco. So, while SCHIP would be very efficient in providing healthcare for poor children, it would violate at least three mainstays of Republican ideology: No state-funded healthcare; no new taxes; and avoidance of anything that could hurt the tobacco industry, wherever possible.

Again: so much for bipartisanship. Bush's posturing as a fiscal conservative is all the more ridiculous considering he has blown the biggest budget surplus in the nation's history on an illegal war. Note: the US defense budget for FY2007 was increased by 7 per cent to US$439.3 billion, about 13 times the amount that the SCHIP bill would have cost. Look up "Starve the Beast" on Wikipedia for more on the thinking behind this strategy.

What does all of this have to do with the latest torture memo? The overall picture makes a mockery of the concept of "Compassionate Conservatism". It is just a shell of a phrase, a propaganda label used to sell policies that are not conservative in the Goldwater tradition and certainly not compassionate. What "Compassionate Conservatism" does is alliterate; no more and no less. As a catchphrase, it may serve its purpose among lazy thinkers. As a label for current White House policies, it is about as thoughtful, and appropriate, as if Ghengis Khan had promoted his conquest of the West as "Merciful Mongolism" - merely adding insult to injury.

The Neocon Tin Man Gets a New Heart

Unfortunately, only in fiction. From The Onion, without any doubt America's finest news source:

New Heart Device Allows Cheney To Experience Love

WASHINGTON, DC—Recovering from minor heart surgery Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney stunned both the medical and political establishments when he mysteriously began to experience love for the first time in his life, sources reported Tuesday.

It is believed to have been the first recorded incident of Cheney exhibiting compassion for his fellow man.

[...]

According to Reiner, Cheney left the hospital under his own power, but returned minutes later complaining of unfamiliar chest palpitations and sensations of warmth for others regardless of political affiliation or income.

Read more here.

Jihad, Hired Guns, and the Camberwell Carrot

Because I have been busy recently, I won't have the time to write exhaustive comments on each of the following links that caught my eye over the past week, so just a few remarks on each.

The Beeb reported last week that a US citizen was jailed for 24 years for "attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan and lying about it". The prosecution offered what Amy Waldman in an article for The Atlantic Monthly last year aptly called "an accretion of circumstantial but ugly evidence" of his "jihadi mind", including expressions of "hatred towards the United States", praise for the murder of Daniel Pearl, and calling George W. Bush "the worm". Other evidence included his owning extremist literature. The Atlantic Monthly article gives a good overview of what is interesting about this case, namely the notion of "preeemptive prosecution" and the admissibility of belief as evidence for the prosecution in court. Also interesting is the clash of expert witnesses brought by the prosecution and defense alike, who duelled in the courtroom over the finer points of Islamic theology. Notably, the witnesses for the prosecution included this chap:

Walid Phares, a Lebanese Christian academic who emigrated to the United States in 1990, at the end of Lebanon’s civil war between Muslims and Christians. In Lebanon, Phares’s political activities included participation in the Lebanese Forces, a coalition of right-wing Christian militias that the defense said the U.S. State Department had labeled anti-Muslim. El Fadl, his fellow prosecution witness, calls Phares an “Islamophobe,” and at trial the defense sought to demonstrate as much. By his own characterization, Phares, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University, was outside the academic mainstream until 9/11.

What the article fails to mention is that Phares is also on the salary list of Benador Associates, a prominent part of the right-wing spin machine that sold the "Global War on Terror" and the Iraq invasion to the American public. He can therefore hardly be regarded as an independent, impartial, or disinterested professional in the matter. Another interesting expert witness - Waldman's article doesn't say whether for the prosecution or the defense - is Reuven Paz, formerly of the Israeli Shin Bet internal intelligence service and more recently the academic director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism in Herzliya, Israel.

Next, a quick look at this video posted at Crooks and Liars, a CNN interview with Jeremy Scahill, the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Mercenaries working for Blackwater were shelled while travelling in a convoy in Iraq on Sunday. They opened fire on passersby on the street, killing 11 people, including one policeman, and injuring 13, according to the WashPost. A spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry announced that Blackwater's license to operate had been withdrawn and that the responsible employees would be prosecuted. This will be an interesting test of the Iraqi government's sovereignty - after all, foreign "security contractors" in the country have so far been largely immune from prosecution. Scahill points out that

...the Bush administration failed to build a coalition of willing nations to occupy Iraq, and so instead, the administration has built the Coalition of Billing Corporations. Right now, in Iraq, private personnel on the US government payroll outnumber official US troops. There are about 180,000 so-called "private contractors" operating alongside 165,000 to 170,000 US troops. So really, now, the US military is the junior partner in this coalition. The mercenary component of that private-sector involvement has been totally unaccountable. They operate with impunity, they kill Iraqi civilians, and no charges are ever brought against them in Iraqi law, US law, military law.

He correctly points out that this is not the result of an oversight, but "political expediency on the part of the Bush administration" because dead mercs are not included in the official US death toll and they can act with free rein as their acts go unreported and undocumented. Scahill also notes, in the context of the current Petraeus/"surge" debate, that "there’s been a surge on for four years of the private sector in Iraq, this mercenary army that the Bush administration has built up all over that country."

Also, just to wrap up today's post on less of a bum note, here is a report from today's Guardian (and you may consider this either good or bad news):

The unpublished results of authoritative research into cannabis confirm the "skunk" now on sale in England is stronger than it was a decade ago, but demolish claims that a new "super-strength skunk" - which is 20 times more powerful - is dominating the market.

The recent Europe-wide campaign of hysteria surrounding the alleged "schizzo skunk" was really getting on my nerves. The allegation circulated by politicians and research-averse journalists alike, just as efforts to legalize weed were getting under steam in a number of countries, has been that today's weed is exponentially more powerful than the grass smoked by the hippies, i.e., today's parent generation.

But the findings of the two studies to be reported in Druglink, the drugs charity magazine, contradict recent claims that most of the skunk on sale in Britain now routinely has a THC-content of more than 30%. One of the studies showed that only 4% of the skunk that had been seized by the police had a strength level higher than 20%.

Having, at an earlier stage of my life, experienced the hassle and likely ripoff associated with procuring weed (read: parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme) in England, I almost broke into uncontrollable and hysterical laughter at reading the above paragraph, but then remembered that those days are over.

The claims earlier this year that a new strain of "super-strength skunk" cannabis that was up to 20 times more potent was dominating the British drug market and triggering mental health fears led Gordon Brown to order a new review of the legal status of the drug in July.

OK, this is really ridiculous. Notions like "20 times more potent" being openly discussed in public, when the actual figure is one-tenth of that... either people were just making wild and uneducated guesses, or they actually knew better and were counting on people's complete gullibility. You may argue that such "experts" only have in mind the protection of young people, but these policies - and the media campaigns to back them up - ensure that teenagers are criminalized, ostracized, and lose all faith in a public health and policing system that clearly cannot be trusted to be truthful and honest. Not to mention the many adult smokers who can make responsible decisions about their own health without government interference. No, cannabis is not a harmless drug, and there is some really heavy shit circulating out there, but as anybody can imagine, it is possible to put less weed into a joint if you know it is of stronger potency. The same applies to alcohol - which is why we drink some kinds of alcohol out of glasses like this

and other kinds of alcohol out of glasses like this:

Likewise, joints can be adjusted in terms of both size and potency, as demonstrated by Dan the Dealer in the excellent British movie, "Withnail and I":

Withnail: What are you going to do with those?

Danny: The joint I am about to roll requires a craftsman and can utilise up to twelve skins. It is called a Camberwell carrot.

Marwood: It's impossible to use twelve papers on one joint.

Danny: It is impossible to roll a Camberwell carrot with anything less.

Withnail: Who says it's a Camberwell carrot?

Danny: I do. I invented it in Camberwell and it looks like a carrot.

Cut to Danny on the sofa. The Camberwell carrot is complete and is indeed of prodigious proportions. As Danny lights it we see only the end but as he hands it to Withnail we see the true size. It is enormous.

Danny: This will tend to make you very high.