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Sunday, December 13, 2009'Family Ties' Actor Bonsall Facing Assault Charge - Denver News Story - KMGH Denver: Alexander Rozhenko, son of Worf of the House of Mortak, is either letting his Klingon instincts get the better of him or is a meth addict. The real-world money, if you click through to see the mug shot, is on "meth-head". 18:56 cdogzilla Tuesday, September 29, 2009
There Goes Whatever Respect I Had for Some Pretty Talented Directors 19:28 cdogzilla Tuesday, September 15, 2009BBC - Earth News - Scale of gorilla poaching exposed: "An undercover investigation has found that up to two gorillas are killed and sold as bushmeat each week in Kouilou, a region of the Republic of Congo." 20:30 cdogzilla Sunday, August 23, 2009
Merciless: "This blog is not only my [Charlie Stross] personal soapbox, it's my public face. Folks who read what I post here may or may not thereafter buy my books. Consequently, these days I try to avoid writing about stuff that is likely to be controversial. Call it the chilling effect of capitalism; I can say what I want if and only if I'm willing to do without that portion of my book royalties that comes from the folks I piss off. This brings me to my topic of the day: mercy, and the lack of it. I've been suppressing the urge to explode angrily ever since Thursday, when Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was officially released from prison and flown home to Libya. His release on compassionate grounds, as he is suffering from terminal cancer and has weeks to live. Mr Al Megrahi was serving a life sentence, handed down by a rather oddly constituted Scottish court for his part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 the biggest aviation disaster ever in British airspace, and one of the biggest acts of terrorism of that decade.What am I angry about? Let's leave aside the fact that many people (including the UN observer at the trial) consider Al Megrahi's conviction to be a serious miscarriage of justice. (The allegations of fabricated evidence should to be taken seriously; the Flight 103 investigation took place in the middle of a very chilly period in US/Libyan relations, and we have seen since then that the CIA is a pliant tool in the hands of those who want to fabricate evidence justifying action against uncooperative Middle Eastern nations. The CIA is an intelligence and covert operations agency under political direction, not an independent investigatory/detective bureau; its emissions should be considered with the utmost skepticism.) What makes me angry ... Well, to start with it's worth noting that the loudest denunciations came from the White House an entity with no legal standing whatsoever in the Scottish judicial system. But we expect external interference from the White House: it's what the Imperial Presidency is there for. What bugs me is the complete lack of comprehension of the quality of mercy that seems to have crept over the US political class this century. Even if Al Megrahi is a mass-murderer, the fact remains that he is dying. It is long-standing policy in Scotland to exercise the prerogative of mercy when possible; in general, if an imprisoned criminal is terminally ill, a request for release (for hospice care, basically) is usually granted unless they are believed to be a danger to the public. That's because the justice system isn't solely about punishment. It's about respect for the greater good of society, which is better served by rehabilitation and reconcilliation than by revenge. We do not make ourselves better people by exercising a gruesome revenge on the bodies of our vanquished foes. Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Minister, did exactly the right thing in sending Al Megrahi home to die.Meanwhile, the angry spectators who're throwing scat come from a country where prison rape is endemic and tolerated to the point where it's a subject for cheap jokes. American attitudes to crime and punishment are unspeakable; disturbing, mediaeval, and barbaric are some of the adjectives that spring to mind. But above all, the word that most thoroughly applies is merciless. The commission of a crime is taken as an excuse to unleash the demons of the subconscious, however dark, however disproportionate, upon the perpetrator. Once labeled a criminal, an individual's right to fair treatment is utterly expunged, and any violation or degradation, however grotesque, is seen as something that they brought on themselves. Why? Well, let's pan across the political landscape and look at another current cause celebre that provides a window into the darker corners of the American psyche; the issue of healthcare reform. I've been watching the war of words with increasing disbelief for the past month, trying to get my head around the reason why so many loud, vocal citizens seem to be so adamantly opposed to something that's in their own best interests the US healthcare system is utterly dysfunctional, even for those with health insurance costs are spiraling out of control, and the current system is becoming a major drag on economic productivity many business start-ups abort because the founders can't obtain healthcare, many novelists of my acquaintance are in serious financial trouble or are terrified of giving up the day job (that comes with insurance), and so on. The current mess is responsible for 22,000 avoidable deaths per year a 9/11 scale catastrophe every six weeks. And yet we hear rhetoric about death panels, idiotic allegations that Stephen Hawking would be dead if he lived in the UK and was dependent on the NHS (this just in: Stephen Hawking is British and, er, alive because of the NHS), and so on. What's going on? What's noticable is that the 'debate' isn't about the need for healthcare, or about actual medical issues. It's about ideology, and outlook ... Near as I can work it out from over here (caveat: I've spent somewhere between four and eight months of my life in the USA this doesn't make me an expert) there is a small but significant proportion of the US population who hate the poor and want them to die. (Or at least to go somewhere where they're invisible and can't act as a perpetual reminder to the haters that their own security is at best tenuous.) I'm not sure why there's this hatred my personal feeling is that it springs from numerous sources: from prosperity theology (if you're poor it's because you're ungodly and deserve to suffer), insecurity, lack of empathy, or a combination of these factors in different people. Other observers have different theories: M'Learned Friend opines that it's because the American conservative movement rejects Rawls's preconditions for justice. (That doesn't go far enough for my taste; they also seem to want to reject the entire concept of the Social Contract.) And then there's the growing tendency towards eliminationist rhetoric against socially sanctioned out-groups. (Arguably the endorsement of maltreatment of convicts is an emergent part of this trend, feeding into and normalising it.) . The subjects vary crime and penal policy, healthcare, don't get me started on foreign policy but there is an ideological approach in America that is distinguished by one common characteristic: words and deeds utterly lacking in the quality of mercy. There is a cancer in the collective American soul a mercy deficit that has in recent years grown as alarmingly as the budget deficit. Nor is it as simple as a left/right thing: no political party has a monopoly on merciless behaviour. Rather, a creeping draconian absolutism has cast its penumbra across the entire arena of public discourse, tainting every debate, poisoning and hardening attitudes across the board. Calls for revenge on a sick and dying man are part and parcel of the pathology, as are shrieks of outrage against the mere idea of subsidizing healthcare for the indigent or unlucky, or rough talk about 'every now and again ... pick[ing] up a crappy little country and throwing it against the wall just to prove we are serious'. Mercy, it would seem, is a scarce commodity in the Empire. Are you ashamed yet? If not, you're part of the problem. (And by the way, I don't want your money.)"22:13 cdogzilla Thursday, August 20, 2009
There will be a time when all the jokes we made about the Bush administration will no longer be jokes but just facts before we knew with certainty that they were facts. Labels: Bush, Conservative Goons, crime 14:35 bone daddy Sunday, August 16, 2009
Perhaps There Aren't Any Grown-Ups Anywhere Golding's papers also described how he had experimented, while a teacher at a public school, with setting boys against one another in the manner of Lord of the Flies, which tells the story of young air crash survivors on a desert island during a nuclear war. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/16/william-golding-lord-of-t_n_260674.html --
19:57 cdogzilla Saturday, July 18, 2009
Who Owns the Moon? The Galactic Government vs. the UN Dennis Hope, head of the Lunar Embassy Corporation, has sold real estate on the moon and other planets to about 3.7 million people so far ... via Dusty Trice 21:14 cdogzilla Thursday, July 02, 2009Arrest Made In Connection With East Hartford Shooting - Courant.com: East Hartford, so much to answer for. The old hometown keeps making the news for all the wrong reasons. Murder on Tuesday followed up by a murder on Wednesday at the vigil for Tuesday's victim. Labels: crime, local flavor 20:27 cdogzilla Thursday, May 21, 2009Obama Endorses Indefinite Detention Without Trial for Some Now at Guantanamo - washingtonpost.com: "President Obama acknowledged publicly for the first time yesterday that some detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have to be held without trial indefinitely, siding with conservative national security advocates on one of the most contentious issues raised by the closing of the military prison in Cuba." No. No. No. It was wrong when W. and Cheney were doing it, and it's still wrong. If the detainees did something wrong, prove it. If they're conspiring to do something wrong, prove it. If you can't prove it, that doesn't mean you get to lock them up and throw away the key. In fact, it means the opposite. I thought Obama got it and this was all understood. This is discouraging. Labels: Conservative Goons, crime, Obama 22:38 cdogzilla Thursday, April 23, 2009"A decade ago, I and the other two co-authors of the 'Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot' devoted a chapter to refuting the historical and ideological fallacies contained in Galeano's tract, which we called the 'idiot's bible.' Everything that has happened in the Western Hemisphere since the book appeared in 1971 has belied Galeano's arguments and predictions. But I guess Chavez has given it the kiss of life and, since people are asking, here I go again."I opened Galeano's Century of the Wind to a random page and read: 1980: Santa MartaIt was pretty easy to find something relevant and topical in Galeano's 20+ year old writings. I'm not familiar at all with Open Veins, and maybe it is bad, but I'm inclined to give Galeano the benefit of the doubt here. Labels: Books, crime, history, Obama 16:56 cdogzilla Sunday, February 22, 2009Robert Mugabe hoards long-lost Dr. Who episodes thought to be in Zimbabwe. The man's evil knows no bounds. Labels: crime, doctor who, TV 14:13 HD Sunday, February 15, 2009Over his long and, more importantly, profitable career, John "Fast Jack" Farrell has lived by two rules: Get the money and get out alive.There's a movie in the works. Labels: crime, local flavor 09:55 cdogzilla Wednesday, December 31, 2008
2008 in Books Labels: 2008, Books, Bush, crime, Lists, poker 14:49 bone daddy Friday, October 24, 2008
McCain Campaign Coming Apart at the Seams If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.At least that hack Drudge has the decency to fess up to his shoddy reporting ... well, it's currently under the huge banner that reads, "JOE THE PLUMBER 'SCARED FOR AMERICA' IF OBAMA PRESIDENT" Is this not the most surreal election season we've ever lived through? Labels: Conservative Goons, crime 23:31 cdogzilla Thursday, June 19, 2008
Nutmeg News Labels: Books, crime, local flavor, Obama, sports, uconn 23:11 bone daddy Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Mike Huckabee will not be our next president. He will probably never be president. But just in case you encounter anyone suffering from Huckabee fever, familiarize yourself with the name Wayne Dumond. Dumond is a serial rapist who had his sentence commuted by Huckabee at the urging of anti-Clinton freaks. Bear with me, this is fairly sordid. See one of Dumond's victims was a seventeen year-old named Ashley Stevens. Because Stevens is a distant relative of Bill Clinton, Dumond is innocent. Labels: 2008, Conservative Goons, crime 22:21 bone daddy Friday, November 16, 2007
Bonds 12:31 cdogzilla Wednesday, August 29, 2007
I'm getting my family-values, anti-gay Republicans caught seeking gay sex confused. It's reached a tipping point. When I first heard the Larry Craig story - this was before GOP'ers started calling for his resignation and before his "Really, I'm still not gay" press conference - I thought it was a late reference to the McCain Florida campaign chair caught soliciting in a park. Labels: Bush, Conservative Goons, crime 22:14 bone daddy Monday, August 13, 2007Karl Rove to Leave White House, Spend More Time with Coven Labels: Bush, Conservative Goons, crime, Iraq 16:50 bone daddy Thursday, July 26, 2007I get a double shot of depression from the Michael Vick story>. The first shot is obvious - the stupid brutality of dog fighting. The debate around this story also depresses me. The question should not be "Should the NFL suspend him?" The question should be "Should the NFL suspend him after he gets out of jail?" (And the answer is yes.) 21:58 bone daddy Tuesday, July 10, 2007We're already hearing - for those who couldn't figure it out - that we will fall far short of the goals Bush laid out for the surge/escalation, meeting "not a single goal." First Bush rejects anyone else's (already low) standards or expectations and, in fact, sneers at them. Then he proposes his own (corrupt and artificial and lower) goals as superior. Then he fails to meet them and will probably retroactively creat a third set of goals that he will have to lie to pretend to have met better than expected. I couldn't come up with a better motif of the W years. Labels: Bush, Conservative Goons, crime, Iraq 16:07 bone daddy Chewbacca impersonator accused of assaulting Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Question: is there an instrument sensitive enough to measure the amount of dignity lost? 08:35 bone daddy Monday, July 02, 2007
Who wipes away Libby's prison time? The accountability president. The "restore integrity to the White House" president. The Fitzgerald prosecution, already sort of empty in my book because it did not charge as criminals Rove and Cheney, just got a little emptier. Labels: Bush, Conservative Goons, crime, Iraq 22:14 bone daddy Thursday, June 28, 2007
Worrisome Labels: crime 07:31 cdogzilla Wednesday, May 30, 2007
I met a guy at the barber shop last night, an older gentleman, who (as the discussion in the shop made it's way to moneymaking schemes and pyramids) claimed to be Charles Ponzi's nephew. Yeah, that Ponzi, of Ponzi Scheme fame. Frankie the Barber is quite a character in his own right, and I hear a bunch of interesting stories every time I'm in there among the North End's Italian element. Fioremonkey's people. I keep going back as much for the atmosphere as the convenience of having a barber who knows what I want so I can just sit down without having to try to describe a haircut ... not to mention he only charges $10. Anyways, in the course of learning way more than I probably needed to about Frankie's credit situation, past bankruptcy, gambling problems, battles with drug addiction, etc. the guy next me perked up when Frankie started giving his pitch on some miracle drug he and some of his hustler buddies were peddling. Labels: crime, local flavor, six degrees of separation 10:39 cdogzilla |