Anglochat Zit-uation Room

From the desk of: Editor-in-chief, London

When this blog started coverage of sin-cidents within the realms of Anglochat in 2007 we had no idea just how popular the features would become and how sorely we’d be missed when we interrupted the reporting. Numerous attempts have been made to imitate us, yet we remain the single most authoritative media outlet people turn to for hard hitting, fact-based coverage. We are committed to you, the reader, for probing reports, cutting through the thicket of innuendo and hearsay, and exposing the rumours, gossip and half-truths to get to the bottom of documented sin-cidents - occurences that defy common law, decency and morality.

The valued reader can look forward to a major BREAKING NEWS story which we will publish on Thursday, November 12, at 8pm. It involves a drama that has unfolded in a small town in England’s northeast, with international ramifications and reverberating around the world, involving subversive individuals from both sides of the Atlantic. Because of the geographical dimensions in this case, several correspondents will contribute to this story from numerous locations across six time zones.

In the meantime, we ask for your patience and reassure you that we remain committed to all the News that's fit to print, and that we will strive to meet the highest standard of investigative journalism.

Brown-Out

The Scots are a dumb, diminutive and illiterate tribe on the fringes of Europe – we all know that. One of the chieftains of Scotland is Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in his waning days of a troubled political career.

The depth of Scottish illiteracy is demonstrated in a hand-written letter from the challenged PM to the mother of a fallen soldier. The bereaved English mother had to endure this saga of premier deficiency:

He addressed the letter to a Mrs James, misspelling the name Janes. Mr Brown then made four(!) other spelling mistakes in the 7-line letter: greatst for greatest, condolencs for condolences, you instead of your, and colleagus for colleagues.

Music: MARIANNE FAITHFULL - Broken English   Provided by: elgar.fm

Haye on the floor

OK  I really want David Haye to win, but my 50 quid are on the ugly and deformed russki (KO by Round 6). An exciting evening out with the troopers to watch the bout on big screen before heading for post-match drinks (wine and beer are banned, so ya know what's looming...)

UPDATE

So, Haye became new world champion in heavy-weight after a cleverly fought bout. We all cheered, and I had him ahead 116-112 on my scorecard, same as two of the three ring side judges. I lost the dough, and 100 mo', as Penn St were clearly outfoxed by Ohio St. To make the weekend a complete fiasco I lost another $250 with the 49ers on Sunday. But that is merely a dent in the year's running balance, and the Xmas trip is secured.

Dim Sum at Ping Pong

Last night we feasted in one of my favourite London niches, the St Katharine Dock on Quayside, right behind the Thistles at Tower Bridge. Nestled in the Tower Bridge House is the superb Chinois Nouveu eatery Ping Pong where we got a room to ourselves; all 13 bankers from 5 foreign branches (3 South Africans, 2 Brits, one Americaine, 3 French, 3 Japanese and one Monegasse).

I persuaded my companions to venture into Ping Pong - the newish Dim Sum experience. It's really great there: unpretentious, not too expensive, friendly, trendy, young, healthy, international; and really buzzing with couples and groups.

We had drinks upstairs (they move you there while you wait for your table) - the Kumquat Mojitos are thoroughly recommendable and have become the mojito against which all others are measured. The Ratini cocktail was a little less enthusiastically received, although the American sharing our table seemed happy enough with her candy rats.

Then you have to go back downstairs to the tables to sober up – small squares for twos and threes down the quieter corridor and round tables for 8+ people to share in the main restaurant area. All seats are low stools although they are quite big.

Rather than a menu, you are given a little piece of paper and a pencil. Items are helpfully grouped into categories such as nibbles and soups, baked and steamed, fried, signature dishes, vegetables and side dishes etc. Each dish is priced around £3. We loved the "pick and mix" approach to choosing tasty little dishes - all of which come in three portions. Some of my companions were vegetarian and the choice was incredible. Even I loved the sweetcorn and coriander parcels, and the sticky rice in leaves is awesome. But I clearly focused on the prawn ones.

A healthy and tasty experience - and the flowering teas provided much amusement (although the fresh mint tea is the real clean palate taste phenomenon). Not the place to spend an entire evening, but in between drinks and dancing or for meeting up informally with a group of friends during the day or in the evening it is perfect! Which is exactly what we did, moving on to Trader Vic's before Big Ben struck midnight.

Swift Justice / I

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New column: SWIFT JUSTICE

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I decided to create this column to vent my outrage and frustration over court cases that could be dealt with much swifter than the mills of juresprudence in various countries - mainly the US and the UK - grind out. In my column I weigh the evidence, the gravity of the case, the circumstances of perpetrators and victims and how to best effectuate the law. In the end there will always be a verdict and a sentence. This Court never adjourns before a verdict has been reached. Arguments for possible appeals can be lodged under "comment to this."

I am encouraged to meter out swift justice by the conviction that I am smarter than 96.8% of jurors, wiser than 65% of judges, remote and emotionally detached from the cases, uninfluenced free of influence from the media and their effort to prejudge and pre-convict, and immune to government intervention. I am also much smarter and of better character than recent British prime ministers; case in point: Tony Blair. His legacy to create a fundamentally flawed and corrupted extradition treaty between the US and the UK is so infamous that the man is disqualified for far less important jobs than PM; the position as a figure-head president of the EU, for example.

So, without much further ado, let's have today's case.


Court is in session. All rise, the Rt Hon Judge Pilatus Euro presiding.
People versus
Gary McKinnon, 43
Mr McKinnon is accused of hacking US military computer networks at the height of security alerts following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and causing substantial security breaches, damages and globe-spanning counter-measures. In a previous judgment I ordered Mr McKinnon to be extradited and he was handed over to US Marshals on the same day.

The accused has testified that he invaded the US military computers for the sole purpose of finding information on UFOs. The Court has been convinced that his claim is genuine, albeit irrational and delusional. His claims have been the reflection of a deranged mind and a generally infantile perception of the world around him. Based on these findings the court recognises the mitigating circumstances in this case, facts that will have to be reflected in the sentencing phase of the case.

Mr McKinnon's legal representatives also presented credible evidence that the accused suffers from symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome. Hearing medical experts in the course of the trial revealed medium effects on Mr McKinnon's grasp of reality and facts. During his spells of 'tunnel vision' he was unable to distinguish between right and wrong, and his mission to find satisfying clues on his obsession with Unidentified Flying Objects took precedent over any natural barrier one feels before breaking the law. Mr McKinnon was not able to recognise that he was breaking the law.

On the other hand, the evidence from military sources - both in the UK and the US - have shown compelling evidence of severe violations of security. The Court is not to judge whether such breaches could have been forestalled by more sophisticated breakers in the system. During the time of the intrusions by Mr McKinnon, in the aftermath of the sophisticated and organised atrocities committed at three different sites on US soil, the US military in particular had been put on a war footing. The exploitation of this grave situation by Mr McKinnon weighs heavily against the defendant.

The Court has not heard any accusation that Mr McKinnon acted on behalf of a third party, nor has he been linked to any terrorist network or foreign intelligence apparatus. The Court is satisfied by his defence team's assertions that the accused acted on his own and for his own pleasure. He did not seek any other reward from his criminal acts, be it materially or idealistically, than to satisfy his search for evidence of the existence and presence of UFOs in what he considered his own world. The US Government declined to show proof to the contrary and earlier allegations that Mr McKinnon had acted on behalf, and with the cooperation, of obscure networks to invade US Government installations and computer systems have not been repeated in court.

Ignorance of the law does not absolve one from guilt. That was the key to this case.

Consequently, this Court finds the defendant Gary McKinnon,

G U I L T Y

as charged.

The Court sentences Mr Mc Kinnon to 32 months in a medium security Federal penitentiary and to a fine of $450,000. Mr McKinnon is eligible for parole after 18 months of incarceration.

SUMMARY
Once found guilty, the Court's discretion in the duration of the incarceration has been for a prison term of up to 60 years in a maximum security penitentiary. From the onset of this trial it was clear that the Court would remain far below this limit.

The evidence presented has clearly shown Mr McKinnon's culpability and responsibility of what has been viewed as one of the worst ever security breaches in US military history. This severity of the case made incarceration inevitable and ruled out the possibility of passing a minimum sentence of 1 year in jail. Yet, the court recognised the circumstances and health issues of the defendant and has tried to implement a fair sentence.

This Court wishes to rebuke the British Government's efforts to undermine deliberately and with great subversion the course of justice in this case. Also the fact that Mr McKinnon had to go through the trauma of extradition and trial in the US is because of the absurdly drafted legal treaties negotiated by the UK Government between the two countries. In the effort to pervert justice the British Government provided tips and aid to Mr McKinnon, rallied public support for the accused and incited the public with hysterical falsehoods that branded Mr McKinnon as a "lonesome martyr facing life in prison in the Wild West." The UK Government acted irresponsibly and frivolously in support of a criminal and fugitive.

The Court pays tribute to the hardship imposed on the British defendant by his own government and also stipulates that Mr McKinnon will have liberal visitation rights and will undergo frequent medical care and assessment. After serving six months the convict will be eligible for spending the balance of the mandatory part of the prison term in the United Kingdom. The defendant will be barred from entry into the United States for 15 years following his release as a condition of a future parole.

This brings today's proceedings to a close; Court dismissed.
NEXT WEEK: The People vs Roman Polanski

Spell Hell

With grammar talents like this, who would blame Anglophiles to ridicule the challenged ones up north?

GM cars...

I'm delighted that GM decided to scrap the idea of selling Vauxhall to an obscure Canadian conglomerate, favoured by the EU to prefer car production in Germany at the expense of workers in Britain.

The GM (genetically modified) cars would have been an inferior product in the hands of Magna of Canada, and all plants in England would have been shut within a year under the plot concocted in Brussels and Toronto.

Licence to Chill

An evening at Royal Albert Hall

The soothing sound of Jazz

Last night I went to see Diana Krall in concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The fact that I had a ticket was already sheer coincidence and the result of some office bragging: I showed a colleague how to order tickets online - even tricking the firm's Firewall into believing that it is a site related to the world of high finance - and, for lack of better alternatives, bought said ticket to last night's concert.

It couldn't have come at a better time; the right remedy after a week of high frustrations and low morale. I have heard a lot of Diana Krall before but somehow her looks consistantly turned me away from checking out her repertoire. She simply looks too good to be a credible representative of jazz music. When I think of jazz greats, such artists like Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, etc... come to mind, not this sweet looking blonde Britney Spears look-alike. And here apologies are immediately due: Diana Krall is a fabulously accomplished artist, with a wide range of talent and of surprising perfection.

22 songs, 13 followed by nine more after the interval, helped to literally forget that you are in a metropolis and in a hall with 4,000+ fellow listeners. After her first song I just closed my eyes and let myself be enwrapped by the smooth, slightly smokey voice and the fantastic band. I felt like being placed into some intimate setting of a jazz club in Paris or New York, not in a huge concert hall at all. It is a remarkable achievement of the artists, and the venue of the Royal Albert Hall, to provide such a perfect evening for a guy who needed serious unwinding this week, on this day, at that time. It worked.

Before the concert I treated myself to a light yet fulfilling dinner in the Elgar Room. I "forgot" to return the Elgar Menu, a mix of a momento (although it was the 4th time I have eaten there) of the evening and a reminder of what I ate and drank. It all worked out fine and I am totally unwound and at ease again.

Anglochat's Finest

AOL's chatrooms are full of stylishly clad hags whose weathered skin complements the latest fashion from the skanky back alleys of Alabama:

Anglochat residents during a recent bow-wow celebrating the arrival of new fire wood in Alabama. Groundskeeper Libby (AOL member 'SugarPiHnybunch', on the right) points out to elderly Illinois visitor Victoria (AOL's "HeressChristie", centre) how far her social benefit coupons will stretch this week thanks to the reduced energy costs and the Shared Needle Program (SNP), while fellow Alabamian CarrCarter, also a SNP beneficiary (with back to the camera), listens stoically with envy.

Later the needle pushing crew gathered at CarrCarter's (AKA "No-Cash 'n' Carrie") domicile (shown below) in a remote swath of swamp 'down by the river' for a cook-out featuring 2 armadillos removed from her 23-year old pick-up truck's front bumper. Meth-Christie, who is also known on AOL as "ChristieLake63" (a pun for dissolved crystal methamphetamine, which she is dependent on) surprised the crew with 20 grammes of crack that she claimed to have nicked from her son's pants a few days earlier.

Photos courtesy of Ramona Johnson, also a Illinois campie rat who is better known in the flooded swamps of Louisiana and Alabama as Bec d'aigle, French for Hooked Nose.

Music: MARIANNE FAITHFULL - Witches' Song   Provided by: elgar.fm

Exposed: Nick Griffin, BNP

One has to be grateful to the BBC for inviting Nick Griffin, the fuehrer of the British Nationalist Party, to last night's "Question Time," a popular and long-running news debate programme in front of a live audience. The programme helped to expose the crude polemics of a devious and twisted man, stripped him of the last gloss of faked decency, discarded Griffin as an irrelevant bastion of primitivism. But it also should enrage enough the educated part of the electorate to abandon Labour, as the ruling party is the main provider of voters for the BNP - the one million who voted for the nationalists in the June elections for the European "parliament."

Among the discussion panel was also (Labour) Justice minister Jack Straw, who added to the damage by quipping, "I don't think the BNP benefits from our immigration policies; it is more the frustration over MPs' expenses." It is that kind of ignorance and lack of grasp the BBC programme helped to eradicate; with mixed results.

I was cringing with incredulity listening to the garbled salvos of low-aiming soundbites from the BNP buffoon. But unlike Labour supporters and officials, who believe that ignoring and shutting out the extremists is the way to curtail their spreading, I believe that confronting the hollow and outright false and ludicrous banter from the BNP head-on, and drag it into the public domain as a kind of freak show, is exactly the right way to deal with these brownshirts. Labour's Minister of Wales Peter Hain - equally known for displaying frequent lapses of intellect so visible in Nick Griffin - thought that blaming the BBC to provide a forum to expose the BNP's hate mongering message amounted to a legitimation of the BNP. It demonstrates the helpless daftness of Labour, who for years have nourished the BNP with their outrageous immigration policies and with a million voters as of late.

So, what did emit from the horse's arse last night?

There was for once the Holocaust. In the past, Griffin denied its very existence. He modified this criminal denial with words of painstaking evasion: "I only changed my mind on that after reading secret British intelligence cables dealing with the subject. I have never been charged in Europe for denying the Holocaust, so how can I be called a denier? How can I be called a Nazi if my father was an officer in the RAF?" Asked about a quote attributed to him in which he equated six million deaths in the Holocaust with the flat earth theory he replied that "European law" stopped him explaining.

Leaves you speechless, eh?

But dragging the dead - friend, family or foe - through the dirt is one of Griffin's hallmarks, no matter how ridiculous it gets. No wonder then that he claims that Winston Churchill, who convinced the Americans of the utter evil of the nazis and spearheaded the Allies' thrashing of fascism, would be a supporter today of the BNP! Possibly, Mr Griffin, as we don't know the level of retardation in old age, and a 163-year old Sir Winston might fit your bill.

Showing total lack of knowledge in domestic history - he describes white Brits as Aborigines in their own country - does not stop Nick Griffin to wade deeper into his delusional quicksand morality. So he admitted sharing a platform with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke - but described him as "almost totally non-violent". Special...

But I can feel good and right from now on to call anyone who votes for the BNP a pathological idiot.

Boys Zones: Death and Dissolution, uh-huh

British media these days bemoan the fact that two puerile gangs on stage have been disbanded; one by death and the other one for lack of success and recognition - both well deserved.
First, 33-year old Mr Gately, member of the infantile sing-along tingle tangle band Boyzone, has suffocated on his own vomit while sitting in a hotel room's armchair. It has still to be established whether Gately's barfing was the result of the night out in Majorca's sleaziest gay bar, including a massive drinking binge and consumption of cannabis, or whether it was the fact that his husband(!) was next door shagging a male Bulgarian prostitute they had just picked up at the bar.
Looks to me that a choice of lifestyle has brought upon a fate that actually is a valuable and applaudable lesson for wannabe boyz. Yes, I believe the death of Gately is a good thing, and no reason at all to lament. I save my sympathy for the many young people who die each day, without their fault.
A-ha, the Norwegian trash band from the 1880s (or was it earlier?) have declared their end. So what, eh? They had one shitty song 25 years ago which sounded old on the day it was released already. Good riddance, to both bands.

Shoot-to-kill, police or not police

SA a step closer to anarchy

When a person in South Africa finds himself/herself in a desperate enough situation to seek police assistance, that individual earns sympathy and pity indeed. While that conundrum is all but new in post-Apartheid South Africa - after all, nearly 1.5 million white South Africans have packed their belongings and left the country in the past 8 years alone - the situation has become ever more grievous during the tenures of the past 3 presidents of the nation.

Looking for help from police is a perilous venture for a white South African nowadays. Such individual is well advised to sport acute awareness for the possibility that the coppers who have been alerted to an emergency are not necessarily policemen but random thugs in stolen uniforms, and even stolen or 'adapted' private cars remodelled into patrol cars. Such 'first aiders' have become known to rob, to take hostages for ransom, to rape, to abuse and injure and even to kill victims of preceding crimes or accidents.

The common South African knows about these dangers and will try to outsmart the mayhem by approaching a police precinct. Once there the individual in desperate need for help will encounter regularly one or a combination of these scenarios:

1) Police staff is either on drugs or drunk or asleep;
2) Police station is nearly deserted or severely under-staffed (especially during the night, as regular personnel conducts clandestine operations to stop and rob drivers, ask for kick-backs or confiscate the car under pretense;
3) Staff is either incompetent or uninterested in the complaint or the call for help;
4) Staff refuses to leave the precinct to investigate "because the situation is too dangerous outside"
5) Staff interrupts to negotiate a 'fee' - in truth a bribe - to continue taking the report;
6) Assertive complainant faces arrest and will be held overnight in custody, sometimes to be released only in lieu of a payment to fatten the copper's paycheque;
7) Staff reassures the person seeking help to return at a later, more opportune time
8) Staff expresses disbelief of the person's story, subjecting him to an 'intense' interrogation paired with verbal and physical abuse;
9) Person is required to provide details of home address and personal circumstances for the purpose of giving the staff detailed indications when there will be the best time for a home invasion and burglary in future;

The reason why so many precincts in the country are either under-staffed or deserted during the hours of 6pm and 6am is that many coppers are out on the street in commission of crimes ranging from robbery of drivers - routinely at gunpoint - to murder during home invasions.

The brutal nature of crimes in South Africa - more than 18,000 people have been murdered last year - has provoked now the newly appointed chief of the nation's police - himself an ex-criminal and a crony of President Zuma - to introduce a 'policy' of shoot-to-kill for police. The policy expressively stipulates that "police need to be freed from the restraints to have to account for the use of deadly force against criminals," or whoever the police perceive as criminal.

As a result several incidents have been reported since October 1st (when the new "Shoot-to-kill" orders were given) where police opened fire on innocent and unsuspecting civilians either on foot or in a car. So far five innocents have been fatally shot, among them a mother of 2 who was in a slow moving car when police opened fire and hit the car - and its three passengers - with some 40 bullets. The driver, a pilot of the SA Air Force, lambasted the police for shooting at a car ready to stop and for them fleeing the scene after the shooting.

A core problem is that more than 4,000 unregistered vehicles belong to the nation's police force who have full powers to make random stops. Criminal gangs utilize this policy and are responsible now for nearly 60% of all incidents where a driver has been stopped (and usually harassed, abused, threatened and robbed).

The US State Department is considering to issue a travel advisory for Americans, with the EU and Britain possibly to follow. This would deal a severe blow to South Africa's efforts to lure tourists and visitors for next year's World Cup into the country.

I am currently on assignment in Geneva and Paris

A Noble (prize) Departure From Tradition

The decision to award President Barack Obama with this year's Peace Nobel Prize is incomprehensible, irrational, wrong and against the spirit of the prize as stipulated by Alfred Nobel.

A sitting president, barely 10 months in office, has set out an ambitious agenda, impaired and overshadowed by a global financial crisis that has cost millions of jobs at home and abroad, led to an explosion of Federal debt to $2 Trillion and assures that at least 2 generations of Americans will have to work (and pay higher taxes) to make up for the fiscal sink hole.

Mr Obama has now received $1.4 million as a windfall profit thanks to the Prize committee in Oslo. More importantly, as a peace award recipient, the President will in future have to weigh the duties and expectations of an obscure group of Dr Strangelove's in 'peacenik' Norway with the duties and challenges of a Supreme military commander.

Predictable was the reaction from Iran - the world's gravest threat to peace - which expressed hope that the president "will take the award to heart" and to stop the push for Iranian dismantling of their nuclear armament ambition. As a winner of the Peace Prize, Mr Obama will inevitably be coaxed into a neutralist, rather than effective approach to deal with the Iranians (and North Koreans). The Nobel Prize committee has castrated the US president, unless he refuses to accept the prize for the duration of his presidency (leaving open the option he might refuse it altogether if he has to look back on a dismal record, or had been forced to go to war in the meantime).

The idea of an award is to laud someone's effort that has been crowned by universally accepted success. The Norwegian Santa Clauses grossly violated this principle, and rather resorted to a political pre-emptive strike to neutralize the US.

In my view the President, for whose agenda I have great respect and hopes - tempered by the bleak realities, has the obligation to reject the award.

AOL chats zest pool of criminals

I have extensively covered the criminal activities in AOL's Anglochat, a forum for thugs, paedophiles and welfare cheaters. AOL members Kpiper63, eviyavol, HavocsReturn, ListeriUS, Netcitizen2008, CrossOfIron and others have featured prominently as hardcore criminals preying on potential victims in that perticular chatroom. ListeriUS has been arrested twice since he ran to Connecticut in 2008, where he used Anglochat as a grooming territory to call for rape and child abuse, and to find like-minded cohorts such as Crosseykind and Kpiper63. Police confiscated the PC of ListeriUS (Simon), who is currently free on bail awaiting trial. A court prohibits him from using computers and the Internet, except in public libraries.

As despicable as these individuals have been proved to be, they all are topped in infamy by Angela Allen, better known as Crosseykind@aol.com  - a close associate of fellow AOL-ers ListeriUS, Kpiper63 (Ken(ny) Pugsley Boynton) and Eviyavol (Nicola K). For many years she 'worked' as a prostitute in the Manchester area, before plotting to go into nursing for children. There, she was involved in some of the most horrible and devilishly organised child abuse cases Britain has ever seen. Here is an excerpt from Friday's Daily Telegraph:

Angela Allen described as 'totally evil'

Angela Allen, who has pleaded guilty to child sex assaults in the Vanessa George nursery abuse case, offered a three-year-old girl as a sexual trophy to strangers she encountered on the streets of Nottingham.

'Crosseykind' Angela Allen spent years as a whore in Manchester

To Allen's disappointment, none expressed any interest in abusing the child to whom she had access. The female paedophile had no such reservations and took time and effort in coaching the child to engage in acts of depravity.

Allen, 39, spent many of her younger years working as a prostitute in Manchester. As well as appearing before the courts on six occasions on charges of soliciting, she was convicted of theft in 1992.

When police arrested Allen over her online sexual deviancy, they found her living in squalor in the Bulwell suburb of Nottingham, with little furniture and only a few scraps of food. Her house is now boarded up with steel shutters. So, too, is that of her sister who had to be moved out of the area for her own safety.

Det Supt Adrian Pearson, the head of Nottingham’s public protection unit, said Allen deserved particular mention for her depravity.

“Angela Allen is a sinister and totally evil individual,” he said. “She has shed not a tear of remorse for her victim. I cannot imagine what that young child went through at such a tender age.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6252761/Vanessa-George-abuse-case-Angela-Allen-described-as-totally-evil.html

Police are investigating the international connections of Allen with AOL members in Chicago, Alabama, Connecticut, New York, Florida, Scotland and Kentucky. Regular members of the Anglochat are encouraged to report suspicions to the appropriate authorities in the UK and US.

David Letterman Peep Show

In my opinion he is a filthy scumbag and a manipulating, cretinous abuser; his 'victims' opportunistic whores. The self-apologetic and whincing bastard should be fired by CBS, and the sluts who slept with him ought to be exposed for public ridicule for having sex with that appalling thicko.
In March the philandering jerk married his "long-term" girlfriend. Was she part of the Letterman Show's set as well? Unless she immediately walks out of that marriage she can be rightfully categorized as whore as well.

Scene of recent CBS Show

The People vs Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski is arguably the greatest film director alive. He has cult status in the global cultural domain, of which the US and Switzerland are only a peripheral part of.

Mr Polanski, 76 years old, has committed a rather despicable and repulsive crime: incapacitating a 13-year old girl for the purpose of sexual intercourse. Despite pleading to be left alone, the child was subjected to a persistent sexual attack, including anal sex. It's well documented what happened next. In 1978 Polanski pleaded guilty but absconded before sentencing.

For 30 years the Los Angeles prosecutors, known for their open sympathy for fascist and neo-nazi groups and literature according to an insider there, relentlessy persued the Jewish fugitive from justice. With a refined ruse they finally succeeded to enforce an arrest warrant in Switzerland, where Mr Polanski travelled to receive a lifetime achievement award.

It's a shame that in the 30 years that have elapsed the Los Angeles authorities have been incapable to resolve the matter. Mr Polanski has offered to settle things, and his victim, now a 44 year old married woman with 3 children, has been handsomely paid off by the movie director. Even she says today that she finds the incessant obsession of L.A. prosecutors outrageous and wants the case terminated.

Mr Polanski has proved that he is not the typical sex offender and can look back on a stellar career. Being Jewish, and the blame he levelled against the Los Angeles police for intentionally not preventing the slaughtering of his pregnant wife in Hollywood in 1969, appear to be behind the relentless persecution by the hands of the L.A. nazi thugs. For there is no intention to serve justice visible in this vendetta against Mr Polanski.

On the other hand I would also caution the French government, which so quickly speaks of scandal and farce by enforcing the arrest warrant. The crime that Polanski committed was horrendous, and to let him too easily off the hook would send a rather perverted message to future child abusers: write books and direct movies after your crime, and you get the "Stay Out of Jail" card. Fans of Mr Polanski, and I am one of them, should feel let down, and not allow fanship obscure and diminish the perception of true justice protecting the most vulnerable: children.

Killing Fields: South Africa

A year before foreigners will swarm the country for a football extravaganza without a South African equipe participating after the first round (they rank #83 in the world), the nation remains a deadly zest pool of freely roaming hords of black hoodlums, ambushing people at will on the road, on beaches and at home with virtual impunity. Only Congo and Pakistan have been described as less safe than SA.

The latest figures released today show a dramatic picture of a country bloodied by ever increasing numbers of murder, rape, robbery and house invasion. Nobody is safe anywhere, and even the former president and ANC thug Mandela lives in a villa surrounded by 14ft tall walls. The preferred modus operandi of black killers is the knife, used in 54% of all murders (28% by handguns and 14% by bludgeoning someone to death).

Adding to the number of murders are cases of attempted murder: 18,298 in the 2008/09 period.

Especially hard hit are the ANC fiefdoms of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal: 8,631 reported murders (+3.6% from 2007), with a suspected further 2,000 cases unreported. These two lawless provinces alone account for 48% of the 18,147 reported cases nation-wide last year.

Driven by lust and perversion, 71,500 cases of sexual assault including rape have been reported, with the highest number naturally in the two provinces mentioned above: 32,345 - an increase of 8%!

Of the 14,200 carjackings in SA, 11,688 alone took place in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal again.

Home invasion and robbery at gunpoint increased to 18,438 (+22%), with 12,721 in the 2 provinces.

Johannesburg is the deadliest urban area in the world, beating easily Ciudad Juarez in Mexico to 2nd in this infamous statistics.

94.6% of all murders have been committed by blacks, but whites make up for 14% of victims. Underlining the 3rd World status of South Africa is also this stat: 0.6% of all murders have been attributed to the column "Witchcraft related."

Oh Paris, eyes wide shut

Paris was a blast; no other city in the world can match the excitement and vibrancy of the place. Three dinners, and two nights in town later, I suffer from severe sleep deprivation. A fact that remained not unnoticed by colleagues today as I dropped in straight from the train. It was a toothpicks day, to keep these blue eyes open.

There were a few things I realised over the weekend, and not all are comforting. The excitement of Le Sens, a glamorous nightspot and staying at Emily's could not gloss over the fact that I am aching for someone else from the recent past. I wish she knew. This love just won't go away quickly, and rather than seeking a quick remedy I refrained from any action one could interpret as cheating. In other, and simpler words: I am far from ready for a new relationship.

What helps, or complicates things, is that Emily understands and doesn't push. Sharing an apartment, especially one that is 290sqm big, did not amount to share the bed... It guaranteed that we had a weekend full of bliss and undiluted fun. Amongst her celebrity friends we went to see and partied with were Jarvis Cocker (yes, that God!!) Jane Birkin (ok, a true goddess!!).

We went to Le Sens which started out as a chic restaurant, before the music exploded when it turned into a club from midnight on. Emily knows the owner, so we were 'lucky' enough to be allowed in by the masked lady at the door. The music at Le Sens is simply superb! The resident DJ obviously thinks out his sets beforehand (or is a fantastic on the spot music-poet). The sound quality is amazing. A mixture of Rock, electro and dance which sent the crowd wild. With the lyrics from one song to another connecting nicely, shaping the mood of the dance floor. Exhilarating!

As I wasn't sure about the plans for the weekend, Emily took me shopping for what to wear for the two nights and to forget about the clothes I brought along. When it came to the time to check-out and pay, Emily took me quickly under her arm and whisked me out of the store. "It's all been taken care of, mon cher..." I only had to promise not to try to find out how much it had cost. I promised.

Music: ZAZIE - Je Suis Un Homme  Powered by: Last.fm

Voyage à Paris

Leaving Friday by Eurostar, returning Monday morning:

18/09: Departure from London, 11:32 ~ 
           Arrival in Paris, Gare du Nord 14:47

20/09: Departure from Paris, 07:13 ~
           Arrival London, St Pancras at 08:23

The Arab State of Evolution

The events of 9-11, and the subsequent anniversaries of the Islamist atrocity, serve for me as a gauging tool on where Arabs are on the ladder of evolution of man.

The images of dancing Arabs, rejoicing over the mass-murder taking place on live broadcasts, immediately triggered a rush of hate and rage against these rodents. Except for Egypt and Jordan, Arab peoples and their governments couldn't mutter one word of regret, sorrow or sympathy with America and the many victims of 72 nationalities. The monstrosity of forcing people to either be crushed, burnt or suffocated in an agonisingly delayed death, or to hasten inevitable doom by taking a 14-second plunge from 1,000ft above caused Arabs to celebrate and jubilate. 230 people are known to have fallen to their death, much to the bemusement of the Arab world.

The mangled, crushed, splattered and torn bodies of the victims of 9-11 have more dignity than these Arabs. Eight years on, the anniversary is ignored in the media in all Arab states. It puts collective guilt on all Arabs who remain silent to this day.

I don't hate Arabs, but I cannot look into the eyes of Arabs, cannot shake hands or converse with them. They have yet to achieve the civility I expect in a human being.

Germs - Will they ever learn?

A German Aids awareness group has come under fire for posting an online video that starts off with a young couple having sex in an apartment before revealing the male to be a grinning Adolf Hitler. Its closing message: "Aids is a mass murderer."

On Tuesday, a prominent German Jewish group and Aids prevention advocates demanded the ad be withdrawn. "It is disgusting and we're asking the producers of the campaign to pull it," said Joerg Litwinschuh of German Aids Assistance, an awareness group.

He said the ad, commissioned by Regenbogen, German for rainbow, seemed designed for little more than shock value and was offensive to people who have HIV. "We denounce this ad. I can say that absolutely," said Volker Mertens, a spokesperson for another group, the German Aids Foundation.

Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, issued a statement calling the ad "a defamation and mockery" of Holocaust victims. "Apparently the initiators and producers of this campaign are only concerned, without consideration for other's emotions, with provocation based on this slogan: Hitler sells," Kramer said.

On Monday, Regenbogen deputy head Heiko Schoessling told The Associated Press that the ad would run on German TV and in movie theatres. He said the "mass murder" campaign would also include radio spots, music videos, print ads and posters featuring former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and former Soviet leader Josef Stalin. The next day, as criticism mounted, Regenbogen spokesperson Jan Schwertner said plans for the video and the broader campaign were not final. Talks with TV stations and theatres are continuing, he said, but would not disclose when and where the ads would appear.

German broadcaster RTL said it was contacted by Regenbogen about the ad but decided against airing it. "After having talked to child welfare authorities, RTL decided to not screen the campaign," said Cordelia Wagner. She said RTL made the decision last week after considering "the entire context" of the ad, meaning both the use of Hitler's image as well as the explicit nudity and sexual content. Schwertner defended Regenbogen's decision to use Hitler's likeness, saying the aim was to "give a face" to HIV!!

Until recently, Germans resisted taking creative liberties with Hitler as they reckoned with the horrors of the Nazi past. But as the World War II generation dwindles, that resistance is fading.

To Have and have not

I was watching and listening to President Obama last night, addressing the joint assembly of Congress on his drive to introduce health care reform. The speech, containing a passionate and detailed plea to act with great expediency towards a health scheme that benefits the greatest possible number of Americans, deserves support. The Industrialized World has only one member that cannot provide the bare minimum of care for millions of its citizens: America.

When the home-grown financial fiasco blew up in our face a year ago, it took government and Congress less than six weeks to pass $1.1 Trillion to bail out the banking and insurance sector with funds borrowed on behalf of the yet to be born generation. Yet, the fact that tens of millions of Americans could have engraved on their tombstones "Failed by the Health Care", and that millions of people are one mishap away from bankruptcy as uninsured or under-insured citizens, has failed to alert lawmakers to act; for generations. When it comes to healthcare, America is a land out of a gloomy Charles Dickens novel.

This has to change, and, in the words of President Obama, "to change now." The debate, mostly seized by right-wing opponents to date who enjoy full health coverage anyway, has to shift now to the millions of victims of the current system. We do not owe it to the late senator Edward M Kennedy, as Obama has told Congress, but to the estimated 28 million Americans who are suffering abysmal fears of losing access to even minimalist health coverage, decent treatment and the devastating prospect of hopeless and irreversible destitute.

The debate must be wrestled out of the hands of Fat Cats who enjoy the full benefits already, and whose irrational paranoia of "anticipating a worsening of the current - dysfunctional - system" could give them a dose of (withheld) medicine in the future, has in the past paralysed any progress. Similar to the debate on abortion, where either religious freaks or people beyond the mental and physical condition to conceive or bring up children are the loudest voices, the debate on health care reform has been dominated by those who do not know what it's like not to be included in the coverage.

To maintain a two-tier system for so long, for those who have it and those who don't, is disgraceful, shameful and appalling. For his effort to change America's last Big Shame, two thumbs-up for President Barack Obama.

Paris s'enflamme - euro ante portas!

As soon as Emily got home yesterday she started pulling strings for me. She booked me for a surprise trip to Paris Oct 16-20, and got us 2 tickets for the most stunning opera production of late: Mozart l'opéra rock at the Palais des Sports de Paris. I marvelled about it all Sunday, and my sweet sirene had taken it all on board.

Vivre à en crever:

Roll over Andrew Lloyd Webber, êtes-vous si l'histoire!

Premiere 22 September
http://www.mozartloperarock.fr/prehome.html

Gender Bender

Castor Semen Ya is just weeks away from being stripped of its 800m gold medal after found inadequately feminine to compete in Womens athletic competition.

Can hardly argue with the findings, judging from the picture.