Monty Python Style Executions Stayed in Iran

Amnesty appeals against death by stoning | Iran | Guardian Unlimited

When descriptions of the Iranian penal code read as follows:

The code also states that the stones used should “not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes; nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones”.

The stoning was due to take place in public, reportedly in the presence of a judge, who was due to cast the first stone. Those present at the gathering were to continue the stoning until the pair were pronounced dead.

One has to wonder whether the geniuses at Monty Python were on to something when they conceived and performed the stoning sequence in Life of Brian (or was it part of Monty Python’s Flying Circus? I forget.) Is it the case that they anticipated the absurdity of this act perfectly, or is it the case that those who plan on perpetrating the act are Monty Python fans?

As disconcerting as beheadings in Saudi Arabia may be, a slow painful death carried out in a country that leads the world in sex change operations is particularly horrifying. It reminds one of the Nazi era in Germany. It is a stark reminder that no matter how sophisticated people may look, how educated they may be, and how cultured they may appear, they are capable of unspeakable cruelty. Worse, they are capable of inflicting such cruelty for no reason at all.

It is a frightening reminder that mankind is still ruled by its baser instincts, no matter what its cultured veneer may project.

Fostering Tolerance

Jerusalem braced for gay parade clashes | Israel and the Middle East | Guardian Unlimited

Stories like the one above beg the question: do gay pride parades foster tolerance? Gay pride parades take place only in cities that have had long histories of tolerance toward homosexuality. Certainly, the began in cities like New York and San Francisco where tolerance was informally and unofficially codified. Hence, as aerial bombings frequently strengthen the resolve of the victims of the bombing, it is fair to ask whether confrontations of this sort with abjectly intolerant people end favorably.

Most certainly, gays ought to have every freedom to exercise their right to congregate in this way, but does the exercise of this right have any effect on the closed-minded citizens of Jerusalem? After all, the problem seems to be that intolerant fundamentalists (and the neo-nazis of Russia) express and act as if they are above the secular laws that govern their lands. Does a pride parade remedy this problem in any way?

Tolerance seems to have been institutionalized in Israel. That battle seems to have been won. As long as they don’t have any power, need gays confront fundamentalists?

What the Bleep? What the F**k??!!??

Lord have mercy. Tonight, after three weeks of procrastinating, I finally decided to put off my nightly slate of work to watch What the Bleep Do We Know?, and I desire fervently to let the entire world (or the few people who ever read this blog) know that this is perhaps the shittiest movie of all time. It is so bad that I could not tolerate more than 10 minutes of it.

The movie seems to want to make a connection between human consciousness and spirituality to quantum theory. This is an impossible task to anyone who has a shred of understanding regarding either endeavor. Hence, the movie begins with a pretty stupid premise.

But, the directors insist in digging themselves in deeper. They use a lot of “experts” who are nameless and, in all likelihood, completely unknown. What these experts say has no relationship or bearing to anything else in the movie. They are a bunch of people who are far to happy to listen to their own horseshit, and giddy like little babies because somebody has shown up with a camera to record their horseshit.

So, they keep talking, and the directors put poor Marlee Matlin, a fine actress, through the most dreadfully boring and meaningless of plots, and then they attempt to tie the plot to the horseshit that their “experts” are dispensing.

A greater disaster could not have been humanly conceived. One would hope that it would be obvious to anyone watching this movie that the only people who don’t have a bleepin’ clue are the directors of this movie, but one is soon shocked to learn that there is an entire cottage industry–practically a cult–that has grown around this failure of human imagination. Their web site is here. They even have a newsletter!

Heaven help us.

Yet Another Death in New York

Stoppard epic breaks records with seven Tony awards | Theatre story | Guardian Unlimited Arts

This is a somewhat dated story, but it’s difficult to keep up with all of the bad news for New York City. This story played out at the Tony Awards ceremony two weeks ago, and the opening paragraph in the Guardian story says it all.

Tom Stoppard’s epic trilogy Coast of Utopia last night set a new record at the Tony Awards, rounding off an exceptional Broadway season in which British imports have continued to dominate.

And, there you have it. The assault on the cultural life of New York City is now complete. It began with the evisceration, mostly under Giuliani, of the underground culture that had supplied blood to every other endeavor. And, now it has culminated in the slumping of broadway. The Producers may have been a smashing success, but it seems as if it is the British exports that are garnering all of the praise and all of the cash the past few years.

Perhaps New Yorkers are beginning to feel like Angelenos: if it weren’t for imported culture, there would be no culture at all. This may very well explain why they have been moving to LA in droves.

Milwaukee Officer Found To Be Illegal Immigrant – washingtonpost.com

Milwaukee Officer Found To Be Illegal Immigrant – washingtonpost.com

Exactly when did law enforcement become as disposable a profession as picking avocados, clearing tables or babysitting?

Or is that a silly question?

A Fitting End to Nobel Aspirations

DNA – World – Arafat’s Peace Prize stolen in month of Nobel thefts – Daily News & Analysis

The man, Arafat, squandered unprecedented opportunity for peace. His legacy is one of a shattered, a deeply fragmented and a hopelessly confused Palestinian people. Once they had hope in fighting for themselves. Now, they don’t know who that “self” is. Hence, there is nothing left for which to fight. They are a people born of an artificial identity foisted upon them by the West, and now, the reality of this ersatz identity is manifesting itself with spectacular violence.

And, nothing captures the Palestinian hopelessness better than the purloining of the Nobel Prize Arafat was awarded for attempting a political solution with Israel. Of course, the Nobel committee members who elected to resign rather than to award Arafat the prize are now completely vindicated: they said that Arafat’s attempt was not sincere, and now they have been proven right, irrevocably. The man’s reputation as a thief, an incorrigible power monger and a selfish brute is now indisputably established by the nightmare of his legacy.

To be sure, Hamas will blame Israel for everything, but the evidence, for those sane enough to read it, condemns nobody except Palestinians themselves.

No Nobel prize. No hope.

If you don’t trust Indian sources, here are over 5,000 others that Google News cited.

On the Correlation between Number of American Troops and Iraqi Casualty Rate

No Drop in Iraq Violence Seen Since Troop Buildup – washingtonpost.com

This may be true, but there is something to be said for that warm fuzzy feeling you get every time you say the words “troop surge” or “surge in troops”.

At this moment, the nation is given no greater rationale for the escalation than a “warm fuzzy feeling”.

Nutty British Judges

Update  Senior judge cleared of flashing | BBC UK

Alas, this story has no juicy ending. Faced with “he said, she said”, the presiding judge elected to throw the charges out.

Flashing stranger on train was top judge, woman says | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

Perhaps flashing is the ultimate means of relieving the tension accumulated from overseeing the trial of a Brazilian who was mistaken for a suicide bomber and shot dead. In this instance, at least, pints of Boddington do not seem to have supplied sufficient relief.

Designer Blood Colors

Patient oozes green blood | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Ok, it’s only one color, but if you’re tired of having red blood, try sumatriptan! It will turn your blood from a visceral red to a verdant green, so that you will feel as healthy as the autotrophs that sustain the food chain.

Political Evolution in the Twenty First Century: Strength vs. Cunning

Putin suggests new missile defence site | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

This is perhaps the final chapter, the climax, the coup de grace of post cold war political evolution. The US has survived by sheer economic power and unchallenged military might, and its rivals have survived by becoming supremely cunning, as demonstrated by Baathists in Iraq, by Iran in Lebanon and Iraq, and today, by Vladimir Putin in Germany.

The Iraqi war displayed America’s military might yet again. The aftermath of the war, however, has showed America’s impotence in the face of clever propaganda perpetrated by Iran and guerrilla warfare being executed to perfection by Baathists that the Coalition Provisional Authority foolishly disenfranchised. By developing incredible cunning, the Baathists, the Taliban and Iran have engineered a spectacular opposition to the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The US did indeed win the battle on the ground, but the opposition has thus far made a spectacular showing in the fight for the hearts and minds of the people in the middle east. We can claim no political victories there. Not in Iraq, not in Iran, not in Afghanistan, not in Syria and not even in Lebanon, who was humiliated by a brazen war started and effectively won by a rogue faction, Hezbollah, i.e., Iran and Syria.

Similarly, just when George W Bush’s White House was thinking that it had succeeded in its campaign to place a “missile defense shield” in Poland and the Czech Republic unilaterally, without soliciting any reaction from Russia, Putin responds with the most cunning, the most devilishly clever of retorts: Russia wants to suckle on America’s teat, too. Coupled with Russia’s posturing of the previous weeks–that it will target its missiles at Europe if this shield is deployed in Eastern Europe–Putin has completely neutralized the American argument, and he has entangled Bush with the absurdity of Bush’s assertions that it is an America at peace with a defeated Russia that desires to protect Europe from “rogue regimes”.

By accepting this proposition on face value, Putin has flipped this argument on its head. First, Putin asserts the US is the victor. Second, he posits the obvious fact that Azerbaijan is a better geographic location from which the US may intercept missiles from Bush’s favorite rogue regimes. Third, the US will be protecting Europe by preventing Russia from targeting European cities. It is the trifecta that the US has been salivating to get, and Russia takes home the purse!

Germany’s influence is expanding at an unbelievable pace. Iran exercises near hegemony in the middle east. Now, Russia is hanging George W Bush with Bush’s own arguments. In the face of such cunning, one must wonder if evolution is favoring the US.