The Mound of Sound

Of course, it’s all a matter of how you work the numbers but, on a per capita basis, the Vatican is inarguably the crime capital of the world.

Before you go blaming the Pope and his gang, in the main they’re not the lawbreakers but, according to Spiegel, the numbers speak for themselves:

“The Vatican’s attorney general Nicola Picardi released the astounding statistic at the start of 2007: The tiny nation’s justice department in 2006 had to contend with 341 civil and 486 criminal cases. In a population of 492, that measures out to 1.5 cases per person — twenty times the corresponding rate in Italy.

“By this measurement at least, crime is soaring in the Vatican in spite of a security force that would put a police state to shame. The seat of the Catholic Church has one Swiss guard for every four citizens, not to mention museum guards and police assigned to the Vatican by Italy.

“Picardi did say that most criminal cases were matters of pickpocketing or purse-snatching.”

A hillside forest swept clean of trees

from Der Spiegel

It’s Splitsville for Grandma and Grandpa.

A story in the National Post reveals that divorce isn’t just for kids anymore:

“This is the new face of divorce: She is a woman in her eighties, married for a half-century, a devoted, seemingly contented wife who one day decides she has had enough.

“There is no secret affair, no mystery lover, no harbouring of a lifetime of abuse or ill-treatment that precipitates the divorce. Rather, the octogenarian divorcee abandons the marriage because she ‘could not go on living the same old life, in the same old rut, with the same old boring person.’

“‘One woman had been married for 53 years, had never worked outside her marriage, had no idea of how she would survive financially and had just survived an organ transplant,” says Deirdre Bair, the author of “Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over.”

“She told me, ‘I don’t know how many years I have left; I just know I don’t want to live them with him.’ “

But Grandma, if you go who’s going to get the dentures?

The Associated Press reports that the Taliban have decided to establish a school system in those regions of Afghanistan now under their control.

The schools, which supposedly will open for business in March, are to open in the provinces of Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan, Helmand, Nimroz and Farah and will teach Sharia or Islamic education using textbooks formerly used when the Taliban were in power.

A Taliban spokesman claims the initiative is being undertaken with the approval of local, tribal elders and will, eventually, offer classes to girls also.

Education has become a hotpoint issue in the insurgency. Since the Taliban were ousted there has been a fivefold increase in school enrollments in Afghanistan. The insurgents have responded by 200 arson attacks on schools in the last year alone and the murder of 20-teachers.

Meanwhile, the Taliban flared up again yesterday in southern Afghanistan which has enjoyed weeks of relative peace. In one incident, Canadians manning a highway checkpoint engaged in a 3-hour firefight against Taliban attackers. The insurgents were finally driven off by heavy artillery, tanks and air support.

The dance continues. Iraqi legislators loyal to radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr are ending their boycott and returning to their seats in government. There are 30-lawmakers loyal to Sadr who also has six ministers in the Maliki governments 38-member cabinet.

Observers suspect the move is intended to shore up prime minister al-Maliki while returning Sadr’s block to influence in advance of the American “surge” in Baghdad.

It has also been reported that Sadr, fearing an American raid, has moved his family to a place of refuge.

It wasn’t the typical roadside bomb or even a sniper ambush. The attack that killed five US soldiers yesterday showed a degree of co-ordination, planning and timing rarely seen in the past.

The soldiers were killed while meeting with local Iraqi officials at a provincial headquarters to make security arrangments for an upcoming Shiite festival.

The attackers were disguised in military uniforms and used the type of vehicles ordinarily associated with diplomats to sail through security checkpoints unchallenged.

At the headquarters building, they used percussion or “stun” bombs to secure entry into the building. Following the assault the convoy drove to Babil province were police confirm they disappeared.

This incident has the hallmarks of a commando raid by highly-professional forces, not the clumsy sort of ambush associated with rag-tag militiamen. The raiders appear to have escaped to safety unscathed.

Here’s what Congress could do to stop the war, find a way to tax the American people for the existing and ongoing war debt. Progressive taxation – the rich pay most. Work out how much this war is actually costing, including incidental and indirect costs, and apply it to the tax rolls.

After all, why should the country not make some sacrifice to pay for their president’s adventure. Why should the White House be allowed to pass these costs, together with accrued interest, onto a generation to come? With the troubles coming down the pike, the next generation is going to have their hands full without having to pay off George Bush’s war debt.

Bush would obviously veto it but that wouldn’t prevent the Congress issuing tax notices to let each taxpayer know how much he or she is dumping onto those who will follow.

What would happen? I think you could well have a taxpayer (read voter) revolt, one that would cause even Republicans to send an ultimatum to the White House. If that didn’t work it would be time to topple a tyrant. There exist ample grounds for impeachment and what better time could there be to send the frat boy and his bald pal into retirement?

Jimmy Carter was lambasted as an anti-Semite for urging Israel not to permit a state of apartheid to creep into its dealings with the Palestinians. Carter didn’t actually accuse Israel of that but no matter, using the word “apartheid” in any conjunction with “Israel” is inherently anti-semitic, or so the line goes.

That’s why I was surprised to read this article in the Israeli paper, Haaretz, about an incident in which an Israeli settler abused a Palestinian family:

“Amid cabinet members’ expressions of shock in response to a female settler seen abusing a Hebron family came this comment by Ephraim Sneh: “The laws of the state are not being implemented in the city with due haste, particularly regarding Israeli citizens.” The deputy defense minister’s words were meant as criticism of how the security forces impose law and order in Hebron, but they contained the idea that the problem lies not in the “laws of the state,” but only in their “implementation.”

“To which laws and which state was the deputy minister referring? After all, Hebron has not been annexed to Israel, and ostensibly is subject to military rule. But in the 40th year of the occupation, a deputy minister can disregard such legal nuances and refer to Hebron as if it were annexed territory – just like any Israeli community, Israeli vehicle or Jew in the territories can be referred to as Israel’s.

“The annexation for Jews alone has created a dual system under which rule of law is determined based on an individual’s or a community’s national identity. The “local” population is subject to only the original law, as amended in thousands of military injunctions. The right to choose is reserved for Jews. When it’s convenient, they are Israeli citizens in every way. When it’s less convenient, like when it comes to matters of higher education and especially infrastructure planning, they are subject to the local law. The latter lags behind the Israeli law, and therefore allows for manipulations.

“The confrontation between the female settler and the Palestinian woman from Hebron was a clash between two parallel worlds: The Jewish woman possesses all the rights of a citizen of a free country, who is entitled to the protection of its security forces. On the other side is a woman from an occupied people, who is also entitled to protection. However, the army of the occupation forgot long ago that under international law, its role is to protect the “protected population.” The army has become the settlers’ militia and views the local people as hostile elements.

“It’s easy to condemn the vulgarity of the settler from Hebron, and it’s easy to dismiss the Jewish enclave there as a gang of violent thugs. But they are only weeds that sprout from the rotten ground of the cruel regime that prevails beyond the Green Line. It’s a regime based on ethnic discrimination and separation, double standards and an absence of the rule of law.

“Just which law does the deputy minister wish to see applied with “all due haste”? That of the settler woman or of the Palestinian woman? In a place where laws differ and discriminate based on national and personal identities, no law prevails. What do we expect of soldiers and police officers? Not to be influenced by orders that instruct them to act in a discriminatory and selective fashion?

“The outrage over the woman’s crude tirade is just a distraction from the reality that prevails beyond the Green Line, where life is ostensibly normal. It won’t be long before it’s the liberals who are seeking to have the Green Line erased from the maps, once it has been permanently transformed from a symbol of the aspiration for peace to a line delineating the realms of apartheid.”

Jimmy Carter an anti-semite or one whose crime is to speak truth to power?

If the Americans are still torturing terrorism suspects, and George Bush assures us they’re not so we have ample reason to worry, we’re not hearing a lot about it. This seem to have changed since the good old days of Abu Ghraib. For starters, it seems that very little leaks out any more.

In Germany there is a complaint before the courts against former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld over torture during his time at the Pentagon. Included in the materials is this account of waterboarding taken from the 1958 memoir of French journalist Henri Alleg. Any doubts about waterboarding as full-bore torture are put to rest by Alleg’s account:

“Together they picked up the plank to which I was attached and carried me into the kitchen. They rested the top of the plank, where my head was, against the sink. Lo – fixed a rubber tube to the metal tap, which shone just above my face. He wrapped my head in a rag and held my nose. He tried to jam a pice of wood between my lips in such a way that I could not close my mouth or spit out the tube. When everything was ready, he said to me, ‘When you want to talk, all you have to do is move your fingers.’ And he turned on the tap.

“The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. But for a while I could still breathe in some small gulps of air. I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs as long as I could. But I couldn’t hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me. In spite of myself, all the muscles of my body struggled uselessly to save myself from suffociation. In spite of myself, the fingers of my two hands shook uncontrollably. ‘That’s it! He’s going to talk,’ said a voice.

“The water stopped running and they took away the rag. Iwas able to breathe. In the gloom, I saw the lieutenants and the captain, who, with a cigarette between his lips, was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw up the water I had swallowed. Befuddled by the air I was breathing, I hardly felt the blows. “Well then?’ I remained silent. ‘He’s playing games with us! Put his head under again!’

“This time I clenched my fists, forcing the nails into my palm. I had decided I was not going to move my fingers again. It was better to die of asphyxiation right away. I feared to undergo again that terrible moment when I felt myself losing consciousness, while at the same time fighting with all my might not to die. I did not move my hands, but three times I again knew this insupportable agony.

“In extremis, they let me get my breath back while I threw up the water. The last time, I lost consciousness.”

And those bastards wanted to debate that this is torture? Here was Cheney’s take on waterboarding last October:

“WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called waterboarding, which creates a sensation of drowning.

“Cheney indicated the Bush administration doesn’t regard waterboarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” Cheney said.

“Cheney’s comments, in a White House interview Tuesday with a conservative radio talk-show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration’s view that the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary to fight terrorism.

Shown in the photograph is a Cambodian waterboard. The Cambodians knew they couldn’t expect to get any reliable information from its victims. They used it to extract confessions.

We all know obesity is a serious health risk – hypertension, heart attacks, diabetes – you name it. That made it all the more startling to read in the Sydney Morning Herald that, according to a UCLA study, being fat increases your chances of surviving a heart attack:

The report, which appears in the American Heart Journal, indicates that this “obesity paradox,” which was previously described in patients with chronic heart failure, may also apply to patients with rapidly worsening or “decompensated” heart failure.

“This study suggests that overweight and obese patients may have a greater metabolic reserve to call upon during an acute heart failure episode which may lessen in-hospital (death) risk,” said lead investigator Dr Gregg Fonarow.

“Patients were grouped by body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight relative to height.

“The team found that in-hospital deaths fell as BMI rose, even after accounting for factors including age, gender, blood pressure, and heart rate.

“For example, the overall in-hospital death rate was five per cent in those with the lowest BMI versus 2.2 per cent in those with the highest.

“For every five unit increase in BMI, the death risk fell by 10 per cent.

“The team calls for further study to investigate underlying factors.

“‘These findings raise the possibility that nutritional/metabolic support may have therapeutic benefit in specific patients hospitalised with heart failure,’ Fonarow said.”

Of course what the report doesn’t mention is that, if you have a high BMI, you’re a lot more likely to have a heart attack in the first place. So don’t go running out for an order of fries.