O.J. Simpson – What a Cunt

On the 27^th and 29^th of this month, those of you in The New Amerika can watch on TV as the murderer O.J. Simpson describes how he killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in 1994.

“O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened” – brought to you by Fox Television.

Now, if I had killed my ex-husband* and got away with it, the last thing I would do would be to describe to the world how I had actually done it. I would keep quiet, continue my charade of innocence, and not draw attention to myself in hopes that the world would eventually lose interest and leave me in peace. And even more so if I had children because I would want them to be left in peace (the poor motherless things).

But not O.J. Simpson, because he is an absolute cunt. His 2-part television interview is timed to coincide with the release of his book, If I Did It** (for which he was reportedly paid $3.5 million).

O.J. Simpson stood trial for murder and was acquitted. Practically all of the evidence had pointed to his guilt, but the jury was too star-struck or too retarded or too something to reach the correct verdict. Or maybe it was that the prosecutors had fucked up. Or the judge. Or that the investigating policeman was a racist. Who knows. Maybe Simpson’s book will also offer a theory on that. But because Simpson was tried and acquitted, he cannot be tried again for the same crime.

“…nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb…” – Article V, Bill of Rights.

So Simpson is protected by the law against “double jeopardy” as he was protected by his right to trial by jury and as he is now protected by his right to freedom of speech.

You go, O.J. I hope your children hate you.

* I did not kill my ex-husband; he killed himself.

** Published by HarperCollins. Fox and HarperCollins - both owned by News Corp, the company founded and controlled by that amoral neo-con arse-licker Rupert Murdoch.

More on 9/11

I was over at Stop the Lie yesterday where I found an article about a symposium that had taken place at UC Berkeley on Saturday. The all-day event, called Lifting the Fog was dedicated to examination of the destruction of the World Trade Center through real science and use of the Scientific Method.

This is exactly what I am talking about. I know people think I am a whacked-out conspiracy theorist. Fine – use whatever label you want. But the participants in the Lifting the Fog symposium are real scientists who have done real research and have found evidence that conflicts with The 9/11 Commission Report.

Lifting the Fog does not claim that the neo-cons were behind 9/11, or that aliens hijacked the planes, or that Osama bin Laden is hiding on Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. What Lifting the Fog does say is, ‘Here is our evidence. It does not match with the “official” story. We are calling for a wider investigation.’

Through the story on the symposium, I found the Journal of 9/11 Studies, an online collection of articles “covering the whole of research related to 9/11/2001.” One of the editors of the journal, Steven Jones, is one of the key people from Lifting the Fog. As a well-respected professor of physics at BYU, Dr. Jones represents the high level of science behind these projects.

As I said when I reviewed Loose Change, and it bears repeating here, “the only fact is that we don’t know what really happened on 9/11.”

Meanwhile, the other Max has ordered copies of the 9/11 Commission Report for us and we are both also reading alternative theories of what happened and we are starting the Max² Think Tank. We’ll figure things out eventually. Anyone care to join us?

Lifting the Fog’s own website is here.

Change afoot?

I have been asked for my reaction to the outcome of this week’s elections in The New Amerika.

When I woke up on Wednesday morning and heard on the radio that the Democrats had taken over the House of Representatives, I thought that was better than if they had not. When I got home last night and heard that Donald Rumsfeld had resigned, I got a bit more interested. And then this morning when I woke up, I heard that Jim Webb had won the senate race in Virginia and so the Democrats had taken over the Senate too. That brought a smile to my face.

However, I find it hard to believe that there will be any substantial changes in policy in Washington. The only reason that Democrats look good is that we compare them to Republicans, who are mostly slimy, corrupt, power-hungry, immoral, loudmouth liars. But Democrats too vote in favour of laws that go against our Constitution. Democrats too are interfering with our rights as free people.

I have twice written about the Military Commissions Act of 2006:
Overwhelmed and bewildered…again, and
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Überpresident.

Keith Olbermann has also spoken out strongly against the Military Commissions Act, although his videos that I had linked from here have been removed from YouTube “due to terms of use violation.”

Today I am not going to write about the Act itself, only about how many Democrats voted for it.

In the House of Representatives, 34 Democrats voted “aye” and 7 registered a “no vote”. In the Senate, 12 Democrats voted “yea”. Therefore even if the balances in both houses had already changed, the Military Commissions Act would still have gone through.

I’ve got another one for you: the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007. Hidden in there is a provision that revises the Insurrection Act and basically repeals the Posse Comitatus Act.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont had this to say about it:

“It also should concern us all that the [Act] includes language that subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military’s involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law.”

For a complete analysis that should scare the shit out of you, I recommend this article by Frank Morales.

And here are the numbers. In the House of Representatives, 168 Democrats voted for the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007. In the Senate, the Act passed by “Unanimous Consent”.

Is anything going to change in Washington because the Democrats are now the majority in both houses of Congress? I really doubt it, but I would love to be proved wrong.

Darwinian Demo

Survival of the fittest - I remember learning that term in grade school. I have been fascinated ever since by the concept that it represents, and I love seeing it at work. I am a big fan of the Darwin Awards.

Imagine my delight this morning when my eyes hit upon this headline: Woman fatally bitten by snake in church. Please, I thought as I clicked on the headline, don’t let it be a cleaning lady finding a snake under a bucket. I want to read about crazy bible thumpers who speak in tongues and believe in George W. Bush and the Rapture. My atheist prayer was answered.

Kentucky. East London Holiness Church. Snakes handled as part of religious worship. Crackheads.

But I learned something. I had known for a long time that some people play with venomous snakes in church, but I never knew why. According to the Yahoo! news story, it says in the Bible that a true believer will have the ability to “take up serpents” without coming to any harm. I wondered where in the Bible, and even which Bible.

A quick Wikipedia search gave me all the answers I wanted, including the history of snake handling and the passage at Mark 16:18.

They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

So now that this woman has died of a snakebite, should we expect that the rest of the congregation will learn something and leave off with the snakes? Apparently not. According to Wiki, a bite is explained by the fact that the woman’s faith was not strong enough or that she had sinned or that God was sending a message.

Good work, Darwin.

In satura veritas

In satire there is truth. From The Huffington Post:

“So tomorrow is the big day. That’s when we go out and vote for a bunch of people who we think are going to suck less than the last people we voted for. But come on, let’s be honest -- even the new people we’re voting for are eventually going to suck just as much -- if they don’t already.”

These are the opening sentences of a very funny blog by Josh Jennings. Whilst the rest of the blog made me laugh a lot, it was clearly written as satire – in contrast to the opening lines, which, though tongue-in-cheek, are just the plain truth.

There are many reasons why I have not voted since the presidential election in 2004. One is that I believe that our elections are no longer free and fair (see my post of Sunday, 5 November below). Another is that it is one of the ways in which I can demonstrate my belief that our system of government is not legitimate, i.e. by not participating in it. A third is that I am not sure if absentee ballots are ever even counted. I know my vote for president is not counted in the state of California because the results are always decisive before postal votes are (or would be) tallied.

But my main reason for not voting can be expressed exactly how Josh Jennings put it. All politicians suck. Democrats might be better than Republicans and Libertarians might be better than both, but comparing politicians is like trying to rate whose shit smells less. You really just don’t want to be sniffing at any of it.


Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- Lord Acton’s dictum (1887)

Max’s Time Travels

Welcome to another episode of Max’s Time Travels. Today, boys and girls, we travel back in time to August 1974. Are you ready?

But let’s start in the present. This morning I was reading a story about a hidden camera investigation at Orlando International Airport. What the investigation found, surprise surprise, is that TSA-Fatherland Security workers are inefficient and don’t know how to do their jobs, and that Aviation Authority workers are blind morons.

I think we have all noticed unattended bags in airports. My reaction to an unattended bag is instant suspicion, which is obviously a result of having spent a lot of time in Israel. If I see a bag which appears to be unattended, I will first look around for the idiot who left it there – he is often easily recognised by the gormless look on his face. I will speak to him and admonish him and command that he stay with his bag.

If I cannot spot the bag’s owner, I will speak up and ask in a loud voice whose bag it is. If no one claims the bag, I will report it straight away to an airline or security worker.

In contrast, TSA and Aviation Authority workers paid no attention at all to bags left unattended at the airport in Orlando, including one left for an hour just outside the Aviation Authority Office.

But I am not going to write about how pathetic some airport workers are, with their imagined authority and overall uselessness. And I am not even going to write about Rep. John Mica, Chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, whose reaction upon being told of the bag that sat by itself for one hour was, “It doesn’t bother me – did it explode? That doesn’t pose a risk.”

Because I promised you time travel, so here we go…

The same article explains why one might need to be concerned about unattended bags: “Bombs in several airports, including Los Angeles (1974), Frankfurt (1985), Seoul (1986) and Algiers (1992) took multiple lives and injured scores of people.” I read that line and did a double-take. Los Angeles? 1974? I never knew about that. So I did some research (this is the going back in time part).

It was easy to find what had happened. A bomb had been left in a coin-operated public locker in Terminal 2, between the Pan Am and Korean Airlines counters. It exploded on the morning of 6 August 1974 at 8.10 PDT.

According to the Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive, the bomb killed 4 people and injured “at least a score”. According to Wikipedia, 2 were killed and 17 injured. According to the NBC Evening News, 2 were killed and 39 injured (Vanderbilt University’s Television News Archive).

It took quite a bit longer to find out who had placed the bomb, and I finally found that on msnbc. It was the Alphabet Bomber, which was something that finally sounded familiar to me. The Alphabet Bomber, as he had been named by the media, was a Yugoslav immigrant named Muharem Kurbegovich, who called himself “Aliens of America”, although he acted alone. For details of his other activities, see the link above.

Kurbegovich was arrested on the 21st of August 1974.

I was 8 years old in 1974 and I was away at summer camp at the time, which would explain why I had never before known that the airport in my hometown had been bombed that August.

Free and Fair?

If you are American and you still think that we have free and fair elections, then you are either ignorant or delusional or you have been living as a hermit in the forest for the past decade or so.

Some of the stories have eventually become mainstream news, so we have all been made aware of problems with electronic voting machines, long lines at the polls, and discrimination based on race, age or socio-economic status. But many people still do not want to admit that these sorts of things can happen in the United States of America.

Well, folks, get your heads out of your butts because voting problems are rampant in The New Amerika. Today I found an article in Mother Jones entitled Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America’s Worst Places to Cast a Ballot (or Try). In the article, Sasha Abramsky presents a list that is not exhaustive, but is representative of the problems with the polling systems in many of our states. The cases that Abramsky highlights are not merely suspected, hypothetical or alleged. In fact, they are all documented obstructions that are proven to keep people from voting or voting effectively.

I will not repeat or summarise what Abramsky has written. Please follow the link above and read the article for yourself.

The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. - Josef Stalin

Cheney, you're a dick

Insurgents in Iraq have not increased their attacks in order to influence US mid-term elections. They are not “very sensitive to the fact that we’ve got an election scheduled.” In fact, the insurgents in Iraq couldn’t fucking care less.

Guess what, you moronic dinosaur, insurgents in Iraq have increased their attacks because they hate Americans and they are really pissed off, which is thanks to your regime’s bullshit war on terror and the subsequent illegal and immoral occupation of their country. Why don’t you try to tell us again how they hate us because we are free?

The insurgents don’t give a rat’s ass about elections in The New Amerika because they don’t see a difference between red state and blue state, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, whatever. All they see is The Enemy. Attacks will not subside if the Democrats become the majority in the House.

And I see what you are doing with all of your talk about how the terrorists are using the internet. I know your regime would really like to have exclusive control of the web. It all goes with the Orwellian Ministry of Truth your slimy mate Rumsfeld is setting up over at the Pentagon.

Here’s what Dick said on Fox News:

“There isn’t anything that’s on the internet that’s not accessible to them. They’re on it all the time. They’re very sophisticated users of it.”

Well, hello, you ignorant cretin, everything on the internet is accessible to everyone everywhere all the time (except where repressive governments interfere, much as you would like to). And even schoolchildren are sophisticated users.

Dick just likes to throw things out there and scare some people. He would like you to believe that if you don’t vote Republican, things in Iraq will get much worse and terrorists will be on your doorstep by morning.

He wants you to believe that his regime must control the internet in order to keep the terrorists from getting and disseminating information. And you’ve got no problem with that until you realise that you won’t get to use the internet freely anymore either.

Dick wants you to believe a lot of things that are nothing more than twisted lies.

If you believe Dick, we’re all fucked.

Newsflash

Newsflash: Pentagon to open Ministry of Truth

Wanted for immediate employment: fiction and fantasy writers, no experience necessary, training will be provided. Membership in any neo-con or other right-wing organization an advantage. Equal opportunity employer; liberals and anarchists need not apply.

Fatherland Security in action

I feel safer today. I have had news that Fatherland Security intercepted a dangerous package as it travelled between New Jersey and New York. The package contained one document of three pages, printed in standard toner on paper. The paper may have been recycled or may have been of differing sizes, which would of course have been reasonable cause for suspicion.

The package originated in New Jersey, having been sent as a scan from the London office of a US law firm. The ultimate intended recipient of the package was the firm’s New York office. That is like sending something to yourself, which is definite cause for suspicion. But luckily Fatherland Security stay on their toes.

Now you may be wondering, as I did, what the three-page highly questionable document was. This is pretty shocking, so please make sure you are sitting down. Page one was a Companies House* form which had been signed in New Jersey and needed to be sent back to England via New York. Page two was a piece of paper bearing the address of Companies House. And page three contained a single paragraph listing security.

I don’t know what the consequences might have been if that package had got through. We are living in such dangerous times.

Come on then - three cheers for Fatherland Security and The New Amerika.
Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!


* Companies House is the office that maintains the commercial register for England and Wales.

Thanks to J for the story and his assistance.