On sympathy for the devil: "Sometimes you can be sitting before someone who is 24 years old & he looks like a nice man. Then he admits to you what he's done & you can change 180 degrees in what you feel about him. It has happened a lot. Sometimes when I'm interrogating someone I feel that I could kill him because of what he's done."

Koubi says allegations of Israeli torture are untrue: "These accusations come from detainees who heard screams coming from neighboring cells & believed it was really happening, when it was just theatre. The yelling was from other detainees who were cooperating with us. I use only psychology, head to head."

More about Koubi's dealing with Sheikh Yassin in this piece from the Jewish Press: "This man made a pathetic impression of being crippled & blind. He was the most ruthless, cruel & evil person I have ever met."

Antiprotestor also has chilling look at the suicide bomber industry.

Posted by Jeff at 06:16 AM | Comments (0)

November 27, 2004

PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT ALEXANDER

FARRAH LIVES: Colin Farrell in a dress, & Leif Garrett

Colin Farrell on getting hammered: "America was built on the idea of freedom of speech & that's a wonderful thing. But I think some of the critics are being very hard."

Nancy boy/Greek crybaby Yannis Varnakos: "We cannot come out & say that President Kennedy was a shooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers & so Warner cannot come out & say Alexander was gay."

Oliver Stone: "I did feel a responsibility to history in this film that I didn't feel about JFK."

Reviewer Gary Arnold: "Oliver Stone has gotten in touch with his inner Pedro Almodovar."

Narrator Anthony Hopkins in unfortunate howler: "It is said that Alexander was never conquered in his lifetime except by Hephaistion's thighs."

Reviewer Wesley Morris: "Alexander is full of brilliant highlights, & they're all in Colin Farrell's hair."

Reviewer Jeffrey Westhoff on Angelina Jolie: "The silliest Russian accent since Boris wooed Natasha."

Reviewer Mark Hinson on Angelina Jolie: "Speaks in a crazy Romanian dialect that makes Bela Lugosi sound Midwestern."

Reviewer Tim Knight on Angelina Jolie: "Delivers her lines in an accent she apparently picked up from a fake gypsy fortune teller on Hollywood Boulevard."

Reviewer Jeff Vice on Angelina Jolie: "Sure to become a camp classic. Hilariously awful."

Reviewer Melora Kopke: "Why does Angelina Jolie talk like her teeth are wired shut?"

Colin Farrell on Angelina Jolie: "God she's such a brilliant actor!"

Reviewer Stephen Hunter on Angelina Jolie: "Really, words fail me here. With all her crazed posturing and slinking, it's more of a silent movie performance than one from the sound era. Theda Bara, call your agent."

Angelina Jolie on the sociopolitical import of Alexander: "The movie raises questions & gets people looking at how we approach entering other cultures, what we do against them, what we do when we don't understand them."

Oliver Stone on the deep meaning of Alexander: "I started this before all this nightmare came down, this morass. This is pre-Muslim, there was always a conflict between Persian & Greek. Alexander was beautiful because he saw beyond that conflict into a synthesis. I'm not so sure our present administration does."

And again: "Alexander would have gone after Osama bin Laden. IÂ’m sorry, but Kerry was right."

Reviewer Barry Caine: "Love that eyeliner."

Reviewer John Hartl: "Aristotle warns that the Middle East has a way of 'swallowing up' those who invade it. The movie canÂ’t help but validate that prediction."

Reviewer William Arnold: "Boldly acted, absorbing, & satisfying."

Gore Vidal on Alexander's bisexuality: "Movies are always the last to register changes in society & this movie does it." Do you agree? Who do YOU think is always the last to register changes in society?

UPDATE: Apparently the Director's Cut, containing 4 hours of previously unseen footage, really does rock.

Posted by Jeff at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2004

EXCAVATING THE HUMAN SOUL

Canadian writer Alice Munro

Ace reviewer Maria Fish calls Alice Munro's new story collection Runaway 'the synthesizing work of one of literature's keenest investigators into the human soul.' Munro's latest just copped Canada's Giller Prize (2nd award for Munro) which called the stories haunting.

It's been said that Munro's dense stories are richer than most novels. Like Chekhov, she was born for the medium, having published 10 collections of stories & 1 pedestrian novel (Chekhov thought himself a failure because he never wrote a novel).

Born into a farming family in Ontario in 1931, Munro suffuses her tales with a sense of place, like Annie Proulx (altho otherwise the 2 writers couldn't be more different).

Munro on growing up in Huron County: "We lived in this kind of little ghetto where all the bootleggers & prostitutes & hangers-on lived. Those were the people I knew. It was a community of outcasts. I had that feeling about myself. I thought my life was interesting. There was always a great sense of adventure"

On not advising young writers: "It's not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. If you're going to be a writer you'll probably take a lot of wrong turns & then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better & better just because you want it to be better, & even when you get old & think There must be something else people do you won't quite be able to quit."

On confidence & the lack thereof: "When my first book came out they sent me a half dozen copies. I put them in the closet. I didn't look at them. I didn't tell my husband. I was afraid it was terrible. And one night he was away, & I forced myself to sit down & read it, & I didn't think it was too bad. "

On the poetry of everyday life: "Even totally commonplace things are just sort of endlessly interesting in their physical reality. They seem to mean something way beyond themselves."

Online stories: What is Remembered; Boys & Girls (about the modest expectations of girls in Huron County); Chance

Photogallery of Alice Munro's life

Posted by Jeff at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2004

OUR LADY OF TRANSITIVE VERBS

My Congresswoman, Barbara 'Thank Allah for Gerrymandering' Lee

I was excited to see my Congresswoman Barbara Lee had issued a dramatic new press release 'Barbara Lee Blasts Administration Plans to Delay Grants for Global AIDS Funding'. HOWEVER - when I clicked the link, I went to an old press release called 'Barbara Lee Rails at HUD Secretary's Statement that Being Poor Is State of Mind'.

I like Barbara's press releases because clearly she attended a workshop where they stressed the importance of ACTION VERBS:

• Barbara Lee Blasts Bush Administration for Not Providing Enough Jobs for Americans!
• Barbara Lee Blasts Bush Administration for Horrible July Employment Numbers!
• Barbara Lee Appalled by Actions of Enron Employees!
• Barbara Lee Rails Against Republican Medicare Plan!
• Barbara Lee Outraged by Continued Job Loss!

• Barbara Lee Calls on Khartoum to Halt Violence in Darfur (didn't seem to work)
• Barbara Lee Sends Letter to Governor Schwarzenegger Calling for Halt in Capital Punishment (guess he round-filed that one)
• Barbara Lee Demands Answers on Administration's Role in Haiti Coup! (Mr. President, stop everything! We have a communique from Barbara Lee!)

• Barbara Lee Protests Signing of So-Called Partial Birth Abortion Ban
• Barbara Lee Opposes So-Called Fair & Accurate Credit Transactions Act
• Barbara Lee Condemns So-Called Healthy Forest Restoration Act

• Barbara Lee Gets Good & Angry
• Barbara Lee Pisses on Sidewalk to Protest Something
  
• Barbara Lee Outraged with People who Disagree with Her
• Barbara Lee Calls for More Government Regulation of Everything
• Barbara Lee Spontaneously Explodes, Goop Flies Everywhere

Posted by Jeff at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2004

DIJON COWBOY

'To a certain extent, Saddam Hussein's departure was a positive thing.' — Reckless multilateralist Jacques Chirac

It's time France admitted that Jacques Chirac has squandered the goodwill of the planet. Prior to his election, France may have been an international laughingstock, but it was good-natured ridicule, like watching a retarded person stuck in a revolving door.

Now, after 10 years of Chirac ramming his foie gras diplomacy down the world's gullet, the French are greeted with the withering contempt one reserves for the schmo at the next urinal who just pissed down your leg. Chirac's foreign policy quagmires:

• Insulted Eastern Europe by accusing former Soviet satellites of 'childish' & 'dangerous' behavior for disagreeing with him on Iraq. Threatened to blackball them from EU. Told countries that had endured 50 years of totalitarianism they had missed good opportunity for 'shutting up & keeping quiet'

• Said elected PM of Israel was not welcome in France, proving Sharon was right about French anti-Semitism

• Eulogized bloodsoaked terrorist Yasser Arafat: "With him disappears a man of courage & conviction who for 40 years incarnated the Palestinians' fight for recognition of their national rights."

• Used sinister ICC to recolonize Ivory Coast, while exempting French troops from ICC purview. See LGF for vid link of French troops unilaterally firing on Ivory Coast civilians.

• Snubbed Allawi, after doing everything possible to keep Iraq under Saddam's boot heel

• Licked Laura Bush

• Opposed sanctions on Saddam, but supported sanctions on newly freed Iraq unless lucrative Oil for Fraud contracts continued

• Pimped for Saddam by announcing France would veto ANY war resolution in exchange for Iraqi bribes

• Invited Hezbollah to 2002 Francophone Summit in Beirut, & pressured EU to keep group off terror list

• Having spent years cozying up to every thug & murderer in Arab world, Chirac blew that wad of goodwill overnight with hijab ban, thus ensuring that EVERYONE hates him

• Invited bloody tyrant Robert Mugabe to Paris to spite Tony Blair

• Chirac - friend of Hussein, Hezbollah, Mugabe, Arafat - accused US of making world a more dangerous place by removing Saddam

Faced with this litany of foreign policy disasters, small wonder that John Howard, among others, called for kicking France off its permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Chirac now trying to pack the Council, calling for expanding permanent members to include Germany.

Imagine France kicked off the Security Council. Quelle catastrophe! That seat - awarded on the shaky thesis that France fought against Germany in WWII - is France's ONLY claim to fame. Without it, what do the French have? Fondue, haute couture, & a shitty little maple republic that even the French despise!

How can 62 million people be so gauche?

See also Christopher Hitchens: The Rat that Roared; FAUCHON Specialty Foods

Posted by Jeff at 06:17 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2004

RED SOAP, BLUE SOAP

As part of my research project titled "Michel Foucault, Cultural Suzerainty, & Transgressive Power Structures Among Daytime Serial Performers", here is my examination of the political significance of the cast of a soap opera chosen entirely at random, Days of Our Lives

Posted by Jeff at 01:42 AM | Comments (1)

November 11, 2004

'FIRST LADY OF FRANCE'

'Every beautiful flower ends up surrounded by weeds.' - Cyanide blonde/grief-stricken widow/fag hag Suha Arafat

Nablus-born Christian, raised Greek Orthodox. Daughter of wealthy Oxford-educated banker Daoud Tawil & inflammatory journalist Ramonda Tawil. Educated at Sorbonne. Met former confirmed bachelor Arafat in Amman. Was 'economic adviser' to Arafat in Tunis. Married when he was 61, she 27.

Visited Gaza refugee camps in luxury blue BMW. In food drive for Iraqi children under sanctions, had every outgoing box stamped 'a gift from the first lady of Palestine.' 10 year old daughter Zahwa has Palestinian amusement park named in her honor. Claims Arafat sang Frere Jacques to daughter (hard to believe)

Nickname in Palestinian press: Miss Moneybags. Who she admires: Hillary Clinton. Friends: Shapari Khashoggi, Queen Rania of Jordan. Wears: Louis Féraud, Christian Louboutin. (When Arafat sat next to Catherine Deneuve at dinner, Suha had to explain who she was. )

Arafat fortune estimated $300 million (Forbes), $1.3 billion (Mossad), $4.2 billion (IMF). According to PA, Suha received monthly stipend of $100,000, which means Israeli figure of $1 million per month more likely. Owns villa on gold standard Rue Fauborg St Honore, also maintains lavish suite at 5-star Hotel Le Bristol.

Investigated for money laundering this year when $11.4 million showed up in French account, about the time IMF discovered $778 million 'hole' in PA funds. Suha's response:"Ariel Sharon is responsible for this vicious leak. What's strange about the rais [president] sending money to his wife overseas, especially when I handle Palestinian matters and interests?"

In Gaza appearance with Hillary Clinton: "Our people have been subjected to the daily & extensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women & children." [Clinton: smooches with Suha 'worst mistake' of Senate campaign]

Current financial advisor: Pierre Rizk, who headed intelligence service of Phalanga during Lebanese civil war & was in close contact with guerrilla group responsible for the massacre at Sabra & Shatilla refugee camp in 1982 [!].

On snogging a murderer: "I married a myth. But the marriage helped him step down from his pedestal & become a human being."

Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas to Arafat: "It's her or me."

Suha's guide to fitness & beauty: "I do 1 hour of aerobics every day to release the tensions. Thank God for (beauty) creams."

Suha's advice for political wives: "This is the best advice I can give to Sara Netanyahu: demonstrate self-confidence exactly like Hillary Clinton."

Unnamed PA legislator: "She was in fact the first lady of France."

Gaza policeman: "I once saw Arafat kiss a wounded man's groin, but Suha sits as far away as possible. You get the feeling that if she were to move even an inch closer, she would become ill."

On fine French healthcare: "Our child was conceived in Gaza, but sanitary conditions there are terrible. I don't want to be a hero & risk my baby."

On Arafat's advisors: "And as if a rooster on the garbage heap we have our own ministers, who build their private palaces right at the neighbors of the refugee camps."

On haute terrorism: "If we want to be a Palestinian state, we have to be avant garde."

Suha's guide to marital bliss: "I argue only when I know what I want. It is hard to influence Arab men. The Arab male is not influenced by a woman. It goes in one ear and out the other."

On living with gangsters: "It was not easy to enter into their world. It is a man's world, & very closed -- like a family with a lot of intermarriages, &, well, you know the result of that."

What she would do with a son: "There would be no greater honor than to sacrifice him for the Palestinian cause."

On her man: "It wasn't fate; it was love."

On being a stay-at-home wife: "When I complain of being neglected, he offers me souvenirs and symbols of the Palestinian revolution."

Commentator Muhammad Yaghi on the Palestinians' bond with Suha: "Really, they want only to forget her."

Fatmah Faqih, Ramallah refugee on Suha: "She lives in hotels. We live in ditches."

On her daughter Zahwa: "She is totally her father. A real authoritarian."

On Oslo: "Peace is a lie."

On hope in the Middle East: "I hate the Israelis."

On her enemies in the PA: "History will judge them."

SUHAGRAPHY: Debka on $ecret deal between PA & Suha. Daniel Pipes: Arafat's Bedroom Farce. Deborah Sontag: Arab Militant in High Heels. Barry Rubin: The Woman Behind the Curtain. Suha Arafat: Ramallah's Lady Macbeth. Red Horizons: Memoirs of Romanian spy chief contains lurid details of Arafat's gay romps. Bird Cage Liners

Posted by Jeff at 01:35 PM | Comments (3)

November 10, 2004

SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF BELGIUM

In a shocking bureaucratic coup d'etat, a court of socialist commissars in Brussels outlawed Belgium's largest conservative political party, the Vlaams Blok, declaring it a criminal organization guilty of politically incorrect thought crimes. The ruling effectively ends democracy in EU paradise Belgium, & is a boost for Islamists, since the Vlaams Blok was the only party addressing Belgium's immigration nightmare.

The court ruled that VB texts - including official statistics on crime rates, welfare expenditures, & a paper on the position of women in Islam - carried 'an intention to contribute to a campaign of hatred.' Under Belgium's tyranny of political correctness, any party member could now be hauled before the court & fined or imprisoned.

(No action was taken against Belgium's Arab-European League, whose leader Dyab Abou Jahjah recently declared that the death of every Dutch soldier in Iraq was a victory, whose party calls assimilation cultural rape, & demands Islamic schools, bilingual Arab education, & hiring quotas.) This outrage by a kangaroo court - no jury was allowed - is the culmination of a long battle by the Franco-socialist oligarchy against the free-market Flemish VB, & reveals the smoldering feuds between Europe's ancient tribes.

The VB - much like the murdered Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands - was smeared as 'far-right' for calling for deportation of illegal immigrants, insisting that Arab immigrants respect European culture, as well as pressing for Flemish independence. (Recall that when Austrians voted for Jörg Haider (r), the socialist EU imposed sanctions on them for daring to vote for someone it disapproved of.)

The VB was founded in 1977. It grew steadily, as Flemish voters resented subsidizing the southern welfare state (2000 unemployment in Flemish Antwerp was 6.9%, compared to 18% in Wallonia), which would collapse if Flemish secession were realized. Alarmed, left-wing governing parties formed an entente to shut the VB out of the government, a cordon sanitaire that also ensured no government could be formed without the Socialists.

But VB grew. Unable to defeat it at the polls, the Franco-socialist commissars resorted to judicial thuggery. Under the Belgian constitution, political parties can only be tried before a jury. This was too risky, so in the 90s the commissars changed the Constitution so that crimes of 'racism' were handled by a penal court, & passed nebulous Anti-Racism & Anti-Discrimination Acts defined so broadly that anyone could be charged under them.

In 1999, parties deemed 'undemocratic' & 'racist' were banned from receiving state funding, an attempt to strangle the VB since private donations of more than 125 Euros were also illegal. [NOTE: The totally bastardized word racism has a specific meaning, referring to theories of biological determinism according to race. Be assured that 99.99% of the time when you see this word, it's used in a context in which it means nothing.]

Socialist commissars then brought charges against 3 non-profits that had worked with the VB, in order to steer the case towards the sinister-sounding Centre for Equal Opportunities & the Fight Against Racism, an Orwellian organ reporting directly to the socialist PM. Still no success: judges in 2001 & 2003 refused to issue a verdict, under the maverick argument that the electorate should decide about political parties.

By 2004, the VB received 1 million votes in a country of 10 million, outpolling the French Socialists. This meant it would soon break the cordon, & Flemish voters would actually have a say in government. Desperate, the Socialists were forced to include the Christian Democrats in the government. Even more alarming, VB leader Filip DeWinter was moving to establish an EU-wide party.

Not to worry: the commissars found a liberal judge who ruled against the VB in April, which the Supreme Court upheld yesterday, thus outlawing the VB, & serving notice to anyone who dares speak out against illegal immigration or creeping Islamization.

Belgium, like Yugoslavia, is a phony creation, formed by French Catholics in 1830 in response to the drive by the Netherlands' Protestant King William I to deFrenchify his kingdom. (The French Walloons immediately banned Dutch, the language of the Flemish majority.) For 170 years, the Fracophone Walloons - the Sunnis of Belgium - have been systematically disenfranchising the Flemish majority.

Sophisticated Europe, where you can vote for any party as long as the cultural commissars approve of it. Otherwise, you'll face sanctions, fines, & imprisonment. See also - Paul Belien: Banned in Belgium; The Flemish Republic; Boston Review: An Immigration Crisis in the EU; The Periscope: Vlaams Blok Builds up Strength; Vlaams Dialect; Scandinavia Uber Alles

Posted by Jeff at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2004

MARGI'S BLOGGER BLOWOUT

Margi Lowry; Margi's mules

A blogger bash sounded harsh, especially hosted by good ole gal Margi Lowry. When shed the door, about 20 dogs ran over me. Margi's hubby manages a pet store. Call me silly, but where I come from, they keep the pets in the store.

People & pets were already tanked on Margi's Purple Passion Punch: blue rum, vodka, cognac, creme de eggplant, tabasco, & propane. Cassandra was doing the Time Warp, Sporting Steve was doing the Gay Patriot . Juliette put a mop on her head & did her hilarious Teresa Kerry act until TC Leather Penguin stuffed some gin-soaked raisins up his nose & went her one better.

The vivacious Miss O'Hara showed up, still wearing that same green dress & cranberry clutch. ('Does she SLEEP in it?' Margi muttered kindly & caringly.) But hey, Miss O'Hara's a hoot & a holler, especially after a couple of beers. Then a fire alarm went off when Margi forgot her microwave hot rollers & I began to feel queasy.

I stumbled to the bathroom only to find - AAUGHH! - those 2 idiots, Robert & Steve, the Llama Butchers, doing wild MuNuvian llama extract. I accidentally did a line & suddenly everyone began to sprout fur & spit cud. Poor homeless Rae showed up pushing her shopping cart . Margi, who moonlights at the Beauty Pit, wanted to give Rae a makeover, so we took a poll:

were buzzing around Miss O'Hara like China on Taiwan; what is it about a babe with a Bible??

Venomous Kate slithered in like strapless swamp gas; I offered her wine & she laughed in my face. Things were rocking until Andrew Sullivan tried to crash. Did I mention Margi moonlights as a bouncer at the Purple Nurple?

'B-List bloggers, only, BITCH!' she snarled, booting him into the pink flamingos on her front lawn. I made it to my car just in time to see Leslie the Omnibus Driver roll over it in her rig. 'Was that a speed bump?' she asked, climbing down. 'It is NOW!' I snapped, & limped home.

Posted by Jeff at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2004

I'M BARBARA BOXER & I APPROVED THIS MESSAGE

Here I am when I first heard about that Paula Jones tramp

Hi there, I'm Barbara Boxer. I've received thousands of letters from Californians worried about terror, the terrible cost of the Iraq War, affordable healthcare, job security, education, Social Security, & violent crime. I just want all of you to know that as your Senator, I will NEVER allow us to go back to the days of back-alley abortions. N.E.V.E.R. I will fight to extend the right to abortion to all Californians, even the unborn. My rap sheet:

Led fight against partial-birth abortion ban. Voted against prescription drug benefit, because women on Medicare are too old for abortion anyway.

Voted against Gulf War & Iraq War but FOR Clinton's 1998 mini-war, because war is basically an effective wedge issue, like abortion.

Was 1 of only 20 Senators to vote against $24 billion for Homeland Security, because terror distracts us from the pressing issue of abortion.

Voted against marriage penalty tax relief 15 times, & against Bush's tax cuts in 2001 & 2003, because I know how to $pend your money better than you do. Voted to cut intelligence spending & against pay increases for troops because that money could better be spent whipping up hysteria over abortion. Abortion been bery, bery good to me: in 1998, I used it to coat-hanger Matt Fong, who was wayyyy too moderate & wayyy too close.

ABORTION: BECAUSE IT'S THE ONLY ISSUE I HAVE

PAID FOR BY CALIFORNIA CITIZENS AGAINST FETUSES

Posted by Jeff at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)