Glob-a-log

(Fred Spijkers)

Now, here’s an amazing and totally disgusting story for you, from the land of the dikes & tulips – and Christian coalition governments…:

Almost twenty-five years ago, Mr Spijkers prevented a Ministry of Defence cover-up after the deaths of eight soldiers. The eight were killed by landmines with fatal design error in the detonating mechanism. At the time, Fred Spijkers, who was a social worker for the Ministry of Defence, refused to tell the widow of one of the soldiers that his death was caused by his own carelessness. The Ministry of Defence was aware of the faulty detonating mechanism as early as 1970. But it was only admitted by Defence Minister Joris Voorhoeve in 1997.

Okay, you know what happened after Mr Spijkers took this courageous stand, don’t you? He was praised by his superiors and held as an example to his colleagues, got a well-deserved raise and a royal recommandation and lived happily ever after…

… or that’s what you would think if you were some hippy alien who’d just arrived on planet earth. All of us know better – and more’s the pity.

So, what happened was that his defence department immediately ordered an investigation into his mental health. This leaded to the conclusion that Spijkers was mentally ill.

Problem solved.

Till a growing publicity forced the government to try something else. Which was rehabilitating Mr Spijkers – and to give him that royal recommandation and damages à raison de 1,6 million Euros. Case closed. Everybody happy…

… but not quite. For the ink on this financial settlement hadn’t had the chance to dry before the taxman demanded 900.000 Euros back.

At the same time, Mr Spijkers is not allowed to look inside his own ministerial files and the Secretary of Defence proudly announced that no-one will be allowed to look into the matter for the next 70 years, because all the pertinent information will be under lock and key in the National Archives. Not so much a ‘Time will tell’ policy but one that states ‘If you just wait long enough, the problem will go away by itself.’

Understandably, Mr Spijkers does have a few question left and some issues he would like to settle with his old Defense Department. One of the godsons of our queen, Pieter van Vollenhoven, who is a professional mediator, had offered his services for free.

The Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende (from the same Christian party which was part of each of those previous governments which were responsible for this whole sorry affair) has now forbidden van Vollenhoven to interfere in this matter. He has stated that mediation will not be necessary and that Mr Spijkers, if he has any questions left, can simply contact his old Department and that all his questions will be answered and his problems solved…

Of course, they will.

You know, we really have to be thankful for the fact that most all of our politicians are such despicable and disgusting people. Otherwise, they’d never be able to work in their chosen profession.

(Prime Minster J.P. Balkenende)

It’s not hundreds lost at sea after a storm, or tens of thousands killed in earthquakes, or in war zones. It is, in fact, relatively small stuff, compared to the horrors we read about in our papers and watch on our screens every day. It’s still terribly sad, though, for almost all concerned:

Craig Cundle, 26, scooped awards from The Princes Trust, attended Buckingham Palace and met the England footballer Rio Ferdinand, as well as being presented with a Good Citizen Award by his mayor, after promising to turn his back on car crime and become a football coach.

Now he is back in jail after running a red light in an uninsured car and killing a 66-year-old man. Jack Farrell was half way across the road when Cundle, who only holds a provisional license, overtook another vehicle and without breaking ploughed into him. While awaiting trial he even carried on driving with no insurance, without a full license and with defective tyres.

Sad for almost all concerned, I said – all bar one. I won’t be shedding any tears for Craig Cunt, I’m afraid. I’m truly not one of your ‘Lock-em up and throw away the key’ types but how many chances does one person need? What kind of truly pathetic piece of shit must you be when you get more shots at redemption than a room full of Christs are willing to throw at you – and then throw all of those away yourself?

It’s a great pity this useless little thief didn’t kill himself before he managed to kill someone else but that’s how it always seems to go, doesn’t it? You know what I find truly sickening though? That this little piece of pus and bones, after he had killed someone with an uninsured car, was blithely let loose again long enough before his trial, so that he could go out for yet another illegal little spin.

What’s wrong with these judges?

Believe me, I’m all in favour of serious rehabilitation programmes. I also believe there are, in some cases, many better ways of dealing with certain crimes than to lock people up. On the whole, prison makes people worse, not better. Still, no rehabilitation programme and no alternative sentencing will ever work if the courts are not serious about weighing some important matters. The possible rehabilitation of the offender is one of those, yes, but the safety of the community is another and, ultimately, a more important one.

Also, if you want to change the lives of young offenders, so that they don’t end up spending more time inside jail than outside, then you need to send one very clear message: That society is willing to invest in them and give them a real chance to turn around their lives – but that these offenders must get with the programme or face the full force of the law.

So, yes, give them a second chance but if they then re-offend, throw the whole fucking book at them. At the moment, we are giving these little idiots chance after chance after chance and the only message we are sending them is that they can do whatever the fuck they want, because society is never going to do anything even mildly inconvenient to them in return.

You know what, though? All those ‘Give them yet another chance’ types, who think they are ever so compassionate and ‘constructive’ are, in fact, only making matters much, much worse. Worse for all those new victims of new crimes these little arseholes are allowed to keep committing; worse for society as a whole, in terms of financial and moral cost; worse for all those other, stupid kids who will be tempted to commit crimes, because there won’t be any real sanctions; and, finally, yes, also for useless little bastards like Craig Cundle, who, after God knows how many pats on the head, finally does end up killing someone.

If some judge and some social worker, had been able to tell the little idiot that he would be in really deep shit if he didn’t take the first chance of rehabilitation on offer, and if experience had taught him and others that this was not an empty threat, then maybe we would now not be in the position we are in: With yet another life lost and yet another useless little oik now going to end up behind bars for God knows how long – and all of that because most of our Western societies are too stupid to give first time offenders the best kind of help there is: A helping hand and a very clear warning that there won’t be any other breaks for them if they re-offend.

What we do instead is tell them that it’s perfectly fine to commit crime after crime after crime. Hell, even after you’ve killed your first man the judge will let you go on to try and do it all over again even before the trial for the first murder has started. So, yes, I’m disgusted with this little creep who got all these chances and blew it – but I’m even more fed up with the judge who didn’t lock him up, and totally disgusted with the kind of societies we’ve been building for these last few decades.

It really should stop – but you know what? I know it won’t.

(Mr President leggings)

So, we all know that Hillary has stopped running for the presidency. Hell, I think even she knows, by now.

That doesn’t mean that she should stop running altogether, of course. Running is healthy; it’s good for the body and it allows the spirit to unload whatever amount of frustration and anger has been building up and kept locked up for too long. So, yes, running would do Mrs Clinton a world of good, no doubt.

If she would consider picking up that form of exercise, she might be interested in a new range of leggings I’ve just read about, thanks to Marina Hyde and her ‘Lost in Showbusiness’ blog.

They are called ‘Mr President leggings’ and they were designed by no other than Lindsey ‘the lush’ Lohan.

I have to say that they look eminently practical – which goes a long way to contradict all those ugly stories about fashion designers who hate women so much that all their clothes are designed to make women’s lives as discomfortable as possible.

Not so with these leggings, though, with their comfy kneepads – as I’m sure Monica Lewinsky could have testified.

I wonder if the latter would be willing to do some modelling for Lohan and her presidential leggings…

(Jonathan Swift: “I have a modest proposal.”)

We’ve had almost as many wars (and proxy-wars) between Israel and its neighbours as treaties named after one city or the other: like Oslo, Madrid or places like Camp David. Egypt’s president Sadat went to the Knesset and was killed for his trouble by one of his own countrymen. The same thing happened to Israel’s Prime Minister Rabin, who was shot dead by some crazy Israeli settler.

Let’s face it, diplomacy has failed; war (in 1948 & 1967) has failed; terrorism and state violence have failed. This thing will not be settled in any routine, or complicated, let alone rational manner – so, it’s time to try something else. Something that both sides will have no trouble understanding.

For, yes, there is a solution and it is as brutal as it is simple:

Evacuate the whole disputed area and drop a couple of neutron bombs on it. That way you get the most radiation with the least amount of damage to the infrastructure possible. That will enable you to spare all those holy sites people get so het up about.

The good thing about these weapons is that the radiation breaks down relatively fast. In other words, this will leave you with a place where people can safely return to, within one or two generations.

So, let’s say you drop enough of these bombs to make the place uninhabitable for about fifty years.

In the meantime, you give visums to all those who have been evacuated from the area to whatever place they want to go and settle down, while waiting for things to cool off – as long as there is an ocean between the two factions, obviously.

Then, after fifty years, when it’s safe to return to the territory, you bring the two sides to the table, so that they can hash out a lasting deal between them.

If they don’t manage to reach an accord within two weeks, you drop another few neutron bombs on the disputed area and prolong everybody’s visums for another fifty years.

Repeat the process until both sides are ready to behave like sensible adults.

(Baldrick: “I have a cunning plan.”)

Now, this truly is a fascinating story on so many levels:

Ancient bones from the city of Jericho are to be used by British scientists to develop treatments for tuberculosis. The project is part of a new scientific discipline in which archaeologists and medical researchers are cooperating to gain insights into modern ailments.

Other diseases being tackled this way include syphilis, malaria, arthritis and influenza. Ancient history holds vital clues in seeking out treatments for modern diseases. The team, which also includes Israeli, Palestinian and German researchers, will be following up pioneering work by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon. In the Fifties she made a series of important digs at Jericho and found bones from thousands of humans, some dating back 8,000 years. When these bones were examined, it was discovered many had lesions, indicating that the city’s men and women had suffered from tuberculosis. The walls of Jericho may have come down, not with a trumpet blast, but with epidemic of coughing, it seems.

Now Spigelman and his team have begun studying DNA from these remains in order to identify genes that might have helped to make the people of Jericho susceptible or resistant to tuberculosis, and so help in the development of more effective treatments for the disease.

Okay, first the conceit: That the walls of Jericho came down ‘not with a trumpet blast, but with an epidemic of coughing.’ It’s an entertaining image but most probably incorrect. Never mind whether you believe the Biblical story or not, a tuberculosis epidemic would, in itself, simply not be enough to destroy a big city totally. Look at the series of outbreaks of the Bubonic plague in Europe. This from medievalhistory.suite101.com:

The progress of the disease was lightning quick, and the death toll was nothing short of disastrous. As living conditions were unsanitary and the bodies of the dead were piled high in the streets, the infection continued to spread. Genoan ships that carried infected sailors brought the disease to Italy through port cities and fishing villages, and soon Venice and Florence were overrun by the plague. France was not spared either. Marseilles, Avignon and Paris suffered huge casualties and by 1348 plague-bearing vessels had entered Weymouth in the United Kingdom. A few months later, and with frightening speed, the disease claimed 100,000 lives in London alone.

That’s a lot of lives lost in an incredibly short time – and yet, London is still standing. Hell, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki got hit with atom bombs and they are still there. When a city has been around for a long time and has grown to a certain size, it becomes incredibly hard to destroy totally. So, it’s extremely unlikely an outbreak of tuberculosis would be able to do so, however epidemic it was.

Anyway, back to the real story – and, in another aside, isn’t it good to hear how this research team also included Israeli, Palestinian and German experts? When you read the papers and watch the news day by dreary, soul-destroying day, it’s easy to forget that behind all those glaring headlines, life does go on – including scientific studies, where Palestinians and Jews (and Germans) can work peacefully together, at times even for the good of all of mankind.

It’s amazing though, don’t you think, the way science has evolved: That we now can study some ancient bones from renowned, Biblical places and may be able to use these observations to cure present and future diseases. Strangely enough, to me at least, this is almost a humbling fact – that we have developed our scientific theories and technology over these many centuries, to such a degree, that we now are able to look this closely at the past, so that we can explore the ways in which we are bound to these ruins and graveyards, in order to find the answers we need in the presence.

Yes, it’s very close to the opening night of The Dark Knight:

When the new Batman film, The Dark Knight, opens on July 24, Hollywood pundits expect it to break all box-office records - as well as attracting more female viewers. It arrives in a blaze of publicity of the most unfortunate kind, thanks to the untimely death of Heath Ledger in January.

It’s been much hyped, of course but that’s part of the charm – or the horror, if you are allergic to bats and the Hollywood Dream Machine. There is, to paraphrase another, quite successful movie, Something About Batman that will ensure that millions and millions of people will go watch the movie as soon as they can, whatever expectations or misgivings they will have.

It’s an interesting story in itself, of course: How Batman evolved from yet another weirdly dressed Superhero with a (rather irritating) side-kick into this weird Dark Knight, who is closer to psychotic than angelic.

From the first comic books, to the first TV shows; from the first Hollywood movie to this next one, the stories grew and the villains came and went, while the character of Batman kept evolving, until the whole journey, as the title of this piece suggests, became a Joseph Conrad type journey into The Heart of Darkness (or, to stick with Hollywood, like a costumed version of Apocalypse Now, where the hero and the monster are part of the same picture, so to speak.)

Anyway, if we ignore the comic books and TV shows for the moment, so far we have had five Batman movies. Chronologically, they are:

Batman (1989)
Batman returns (1992)
Batman Forever (1995)
Batman and Robin (1997)

Some of the above got good reviews, some less so. Especially, ‘Batman and Robin’ was reviled, while, thanks to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman more than to Michael Keaton’s Batman, ‘Batman Returns’ is still many people’s favourite.

All movies have had their problems: Sometimes the female lead was terrible (Kim Basinger, anyone?), sometimes the villain went into pantomime overboard (Danny DeVito and Jim Carrey respectively as the Penguin and the Riddler) and in most of these movies the backgrounds and gadgets were more impressive than the actual story lines.

Still, and apart from ‘Batman and Robin’, all of the movies had something in them that made watching them thoroughly enjoyable. (Oh, to have been of a certain adolescent age when Michelle Pfeiffer strutted that stage and licked that face…!)

Anyway, while I was reading that Times article I linked to above, I was, not for the first time in my life, hit by the following thought:

You know how, at times, you truly loathe a certain song, book, movie or painting and how you are absolutely convinced that it is the most terrible and tasteless one ever made? Well, whatever song, book etcetera you hate the most, there’s someone out there who just knows it’s the best thing that was ever done by anyone in the whole wide world.

I admit that this is a more infuriating than sobering thought but it’s true, nevertheless – and the next question is an obvious one, of course. To whomever has read this far, the following:

What is your favourite Batman movie – and which one do you really hate? Who was the best (and the worst) hero, villain and love interest?

Moreover, if that’s what turns you own: What were the best gadgets, the best songs, the best painted or computer generated sceneries?

I have to say that I am looking forward to all (or any of) your reactions.

This from one of the Dutch newspapers: “Het Koninklijk Huis kost de Nederlandse staat dit jaar 114 miljoen euro.” Which translates as: “The Dutch royal family cost the state 114 million Euros this year.”

What’s somewhat remarkable about the story is the fact that it’s a Belgian study, done by a professor doctor Herman Matthijs, who’s connected to the University of Brussels.

What is quite remarkable, in fact, is that this study appears just a week or so after the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, claimed it was impossible for him to say how much the upkeep of our Royal Family did cost the state.

Still, maybe this is not all that remarkable after all: Balkenende is a politician and, as such, quite good at lying.

According to this study, by the way, the Dutch Royal family is the second most costly European monarchy – only beaten in terms of extravagance by the British Royal Family. The British Royal Family is vastly more entertaining than the Dutch monarchy, though, so they deserve the higher salary, of course. That’s how it goes in the world of entertainment.

Still, it’s not all that much money, when you come to think of it. For instance, the Dutch government raises three times as much taxing soft drugs each year. Anyway, 114 million Euros translates as around 91 million British pounds and 180 million US dollars. Talking of those currencies and those two countries: The English will spend more than 5000 times as much per day on the 2012 London Olympics, while the Americans have been spending almost twice as much per day on the Iraq war as we do on our Royals each year…

However, let’s forget about those international comparisons. As of this moment, there are some 16-and-a-half million people living in Holland. So, our Royal family cost each of our citizens about 7 Euro a year – which is about the cost of two Big Macs, which would make for some 1000 calories in toto. In other words, the cost of our Royal family weighs in at less than three calories per day per person. Even the most anorexic model could live with that, I’m sure.

Truly, royalty has never come as cheap as in the 21st century!

Okay, it’s a funny story but what’s wrong with this picture?

Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood was snared by the Russian teenager he is living with when she chatted him up — while working as a cocktail waitress at a seedy escort bar. Scantily-clad Ekaterina Ivanova, 18, made a beeline for the 61-year-old rock veteran — married for 23 years — when he was out on a bender.

So far, so good: Stupid granddad gets a bit of a well overdue midlife crisis and doesn’t go for the Ferrari option – but that’s not what I mean. Onwards and downwards with this story:

Yesterday shamefaced Ronnie — who has whisked the Muscovite away to his bolthole in Ireland — phoned close pals after The Sun exclusively revealed how devoted wife Jo was frantic with worry about his latest boozy escapade. One of them said: “It gave him a slap round the face and hopefully shocked him back on to the wagon. He called and said he was coming back on Monday and will check into rehab. Let’s just hope he does.”

Ah yes, doing things the celeb way: Whenever you’ve done something criminally stupid – or just something criminal, check into rehab. A bit like kids hiding their heads under the blankets to protect themselves from midnight spooks. Alas, while the blanket method works perfectly well, the rehab way does not, since the monsters our rehabs face are real. They stare back at them out of the mirror and whisper to them from the shallow depths of their pathetic souls – but that’s still not what’s wrong with the picture I mentioned at the start. So, more of the Ronnie & Kat’a saga:

A source close to wife Jo, 53, said: “The family are horrified and they fear this girl is no normal teenager. She approached Ronnie in this club — he’s 61, for heaven’s sake — and he was vulnerable.”

Ah yes, now we’re finally getting somewhere: She is not a ‘normal’ teenager, whatever such a weird beast may be, but Evil Incarnate – and he is a vulnerable mega star millionaire. Of course. Give us more of this girl-preying-on-older-man stuff:

Dad-of-four Ronnie, whose long marriage has been among the most envied in rock and roll, met the precocious teenager — whom he affectionately calls “Eka” — at the dingy Capricorn Club. Punters at the private members joint are charged £10 entry and face paying £15 for a cocktail. The bar — tucked away on Goodge Street in London’s West End — hires about 150 mostly Eastern European girls. Up to 20 work at any one time — always half naked. Customers pay £30 for a private lap dance. A Sun undercover reporter found many girls offered full sex in the back of the club.

More proof that this 18-year-old Russian truly is the Spawn of Satan, no? Well, only if you think that being born poor and wanting to earn a bit of money elsewhere by trading on your looks makes you into some Bin Ladette type, sex bomber terrorist. Not that this kind of career choice makes her Mother Theresa material but maybe also not the spitting image of the Devil’s Daughter.

Back to my original question: What’s wrong with this picture? Well, that must be obvious by now. Old drunken letch goes to a stripper joint, where young East-European girls are being exploited and picks up one of those girls. What happens next?

Well, the tabloids call her a whore and friends and family of the depraved old bastard come to his aid, turning a kiddie hawk into a happy family man who was ‘vulnerable.’ Vulnerable enough to know his way to these types of bars, and so vulnerable that he didn’t end up just looking at some girl and/or screwing her at the back of the bar but flew her over to his Irish cottage for the whole, excuséz le mot, fucking weekend.

Ah well, I’m certain that Ronnie will make sure that photographers will be there when he enters rehab. We can only hope that he will remember to offer the girl a lift back to London before he does – and I do hope she will make a lot of money selling her ‘dirty weekend’ story to the same tabloids who now condemn her as a whore. (I hope she took lots of pictures too…)

I’m also sure that Ronnie’s friends will give him all the support he needs and that his family will forgive him for his trespasses. Cause it is a real pity but it would be probably too much to expect that his wife would greet him with the words of an old Rolling Stones song:

“I know you think you’re the king of the underground
And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the U.S. Mail
Say it with dead flowers in my wedding
And I won’t forget to put roses on your grave”

In the beginning was the word and the word was…

Well, I don’t have a bloody clue what that word actually was. I think it was Douglas Adams who suggested that it might have been ‘Oops…!’

Anyway, reading the following story, the first word that sprang to my mind was ‘Ouch!‘:

A man charged with murdering an Arizona couple at sea and dumping their bodies overboard tried to cut his penis off with a razor while awaiting trial, a sheriff’s spokesman said Friday. Skylar Deleon, 29, was briefly hospitalized after the March 13 incident, but was back in his cell the next day after the penis was reattached.

Now, that’s where emergency surgery and the drive-through service industry meet: Have a penis reattached in mere minutes and the patient back in his cell before the anaesthetics wear off.

Mind you, for those who thought only the English were good at understatement, the San Francisco Chronicle’s journalists can do it too. Calling the cutting off of your own penis with a razor an ‘incident’ is taking the art of understating stuff into whole new realms – one where a graveyard full of ravenous Romero zombies becomes a minor breach of the peace.

By the way, I can’t be the only one to wonder how a murder suspect who’s awaiting his trial got his hands on a razor, can I? Luckily, there was no real harm done – not to anyone who matters, that is but it’s a bit careless to let people like that get their hands on things like that while they are in custody.

Anyway, as I said, no serious harm done, so let’s forget about that small matter. Still, I’m not so sure it was really wise to take mister Deleon straight back to his cell. He had, after all, already proved to be both seriously unhinged and not nearly attached enough to his poor penis. So, I’m not sure what would stop him from starting the whole bloody mess all over again.

Not that I particularly care what mister Deleon wants to do to bits of his own body but it would look rather silly if he would have to be rushed to hospital again – and again – and again… So, I think it might have been more sensible to just keep him in the hospital and under close observation, until he had to appear in court.

In court, it might be wise to keep the accused cuffed, by the way; with his hands on his back, of course. Otherwise, he might still be able to pull out the stitches – and it would look rather silly if he then would start to wave the bloody thing around, in front of the judge.

Just a bit of advice, that – and I’m not saying the authorities wouldn’t have thought of this themselves. Still, they did allow the guy to get his hands on that razor in the first place – and furthermore, as the saying goes, ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’

Or, if you must, ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’

There’s this internet site, called ‘Women on Web’, that sells abortion pills. A good thing? Well, no, not exactly:

Women living in countries where abortion is restricted - including Northern Ireland - are using the internet to buy abortion pills that allow them to have a termination at home. Women in more than 70 countries, including Northern Ireland, have used the internet site Women on Web to buy the drugs for £55 a time. More than one in 10 customers on one of the most well-known websites needed a surgical procedure after taking the medication, a medical study has found.

There’s even more good news about these abortion pills:

Two more American women have died after taking the abortion pill popularly known as RU-486, bringing to seven the number of fatalities attributed to the controversial drug since it was approved by federal regulators five years ago.

Going back to that first article though, the operative word is ‘restricted’. In other words, the website may be new but the news ain’t.

When abortion is illegal or hard to get, you get desperate women who will try anything to avoid having a baby. Enter the voodoo doctors, the knitting needles, the dubious websites etcetera.

Though I am pro choice myself, the above has nothing much to do with the morality of the abortion debate. It’s just a fact of life that a number of people will do anything, including life threatening procedures, to avoid carrying their babies to term. One might deplore this fact but disapproving of facts won’t make them go away.

Again, this is not about the moral superiority of a ‘pro life’ or a ‘pro choice’ stance but it is a reminder that, whatever your opinion is, people will get hurt. There are no pain-free ‘choices’ in this debate.

Having an abortion will be extremely traumatic for a number of women who have them. I’m sure there will be some women who see a visit to an abortion clinic as nothing more painful than going to the dentist but I think most women who go to have an abortion know that this is a very painful and hurtful option, which will have psychological consequences for them.

On the other hand, there are perfectly honourably reasons to be against the legalisation of abortion. However, a ‘pro life’ postion doesn’t mean an overall pro life outcome. In a world where abortion is illegal, women will still be seeking abortions and they will find ways to have them. Problem is, that because these methods are illegal, some of them will be very risky and many women (and their unborn babies) will die in the process.

It’s not the intention of this column to measure the pain and count the dead in both these possible worlds: one where abortion is legal and one where it’s not. I merely wanted to point out that there are no pain-free or death-free options.

(More survey results here)