Don't watch this "Schindler's List" nonsense. Instead, you should go see a true story, like my kid Mel's movie "The Passion of the Christ." God I love that movie. Just when you think you've seen those scheming Jews deliver 40,000 lashes of the whip on Jesus's quivering, bloody, glistening, near-naked body, and think that maybe you've had enough, that's when my kid goes in there for the super slo-mo close up on lash 40,001. SPLAT! Now that's family entertainment.

...the PP said it went to Iraq to help promote peace, but Spain's intervention had "war of civilizations" written all over it. Many Spanish troops serving in Iraq, for example, wore an arm patch depicting the Cross of St. James of Compostela. That insignia commemorates the Battle of Clavijo in 844. According to legend, the Apostle St. James the Elder came down from the sky and killed every Moor - as Muslims were then called - in his path. Ever since, St. James has been called "Santiago Matamoros," St. James the Moor Killer.

In July, the Madrid newspaper El Mundo warned: "To put the Cross of St. James of Compostela on the uniforms of Spanish soldiers demonstrates an absolute ignorance of the psychology of the society in which they will have to carry out their mission."

the Madrid bombings demonstrated yet again that the real danger to the West was never inside Iraq. Instead, the danger was always to "soft targets" in the West, such as train stations or the World Trade Center. And the bad guys weren't Iraqi agents, but rather supranational networks using low-tech weapons of medium destruction. These networks may not consist of Iraqis, but they draw strength from the perception - justified, in the case of Iraq - that America and its allies have launched their own jihad against the Arab world...

...The lesson of Madrid was clear enough. Those Spanish troops currently hunkering down in Iraq, dodging snipers, could have been used instead to secure "soft targets" on the homefront, guarding Spain's borders and transport system.

Wal-Mart, which owns the British chain Asda, is now the biggest company on Earth. In the last financial year it took $245bn. It is successful partly because it is one of the most ruthless employers in the western world.

In the US its sales clerks made an average of $13,861 in 2001, almost $800 below the federal poverty line for a family of three. It is reported to have told new employees how to apply for food stamps so that they don't starve to death. In November, the police found hundreds of illegal immigrants working as cleaners in its stores. Some of them claimed that they were obliged to work seven nights a week, without overtime, insurance or benefits.

When the World Trade Center towers were felled, our papers were filled with stories about displays of sympathy for America abroad ... the band at Buckingham palace playing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” displays of the U.S. flag, total strangers walking up to Americans in Romania and Africa, offers to donate blood, etc.

We wondered at the time, would Americans do this for any other country?...

...We doubted it, and Thursday we got our proof, alas...

...our leaders set the tone, and some displays of support that recognize another country’s suffering in the war on terror, if we’re serious about it, could show that we haven’t totally forgotten what diplomacy is all about. Maybe all those superpatriotic Republicans in Congress could gather on the steps and sing (well, hum ... it has no words) the Spanish national anthem. Or we could fly the Spanish flag over ground zero.

Or maybe even certain warbloggers (or even us, if we could have done this in a short time) could put that flag, or a pattern resembling it (not hard to do with HTML) on their blogs as a show of solidarity?

Oh well, looks like another opportunity lost.

Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn’t have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.

Outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and his wife were booed and jostled as they arrived to cast their votes.

As he tried to address supporters, he was drowned out by cries of "manipulators", "liars" and "peace".

Mr Rajoy - who was to have succeeded Mr Aznar if their Popular Party (PP) was returned to office - was also forced to find cover after youths hurled abuse as he voted.

TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) – Over the past few days, in the wake of the bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the signing of Iraq’s interim constitution, there have been reports that U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq.

   

   

   

The Decline of Western Magazine Design

Today, the art of the magazine cover has been vanquished by celebrity worship and bad taste. Designers are simply fulfilling the dictates of their industry, not unlike the paint person on an auto assembly line. Innovation, creative expression, or even cleverness has been mostly abandoned. Artistic considerations are limited to how much retouching the celebrity headshot requires in Photoshop and how many headlines can be crammed in before the cover looks too "busy."

The Exorcist in 30 Seconds (and re-enacted by Bunnies)

...if the plan was to set Shia against Sunni, that was not the immediate effect. The first target of Shia rage was the Americans.

Angry Shia from Kadhimiya started stoning American tanks. In a disastrous public relations move, the soldiers responded with live fire and, according to unconfirmed claims, killed three bystanders.

A few accused the Americans of carrying out the attacks themselves. More blamed them for not preventing them. "The Americans caused this by creating the security vacuum in Iraq," one angry Shia in Kadhimiya said. "Do you really expect us to believe they cannot manage better security than this?" It was a sentiment that was echoed by the Shia's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Everybody had feared that an atrocity was coming. American occupation forces have been talking of stepped-up security for weeks; journalists had been debating whether to risk being on the streets of Karbala. But the security in the holy city was woefully inadequate. I got right to the city centre without being frisked, or even asked to show any identification...

...There were, however, disturbing signs of change yesterday. Private Shia militias had set up their own heavily armed roadblocks outside Karbala. Among them were the Iranian-backed Badr Brigades and the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, who has made threats of armed resistance against the Americans. If the battle lines are being drawn for a Shia-Sunni conflict, these will be the foot soldiers.

Don't Get Caught On The Toilet When Jesus Comes Back!

...if you are a teenager, I want to ask you a question. Do you think Jesus doesn't care what you are doing while you are sitting on the toilet? Not only does He care, He cares enough to put a little check mark in His book whenever He sees you touch your tallywacker! Don't ever waste your time trying to explain things to Jesus, you little sissy! You'll just give Him a big old belly laugh! All True Christians® know that if a boy touches himself, even in the shower, he is a homosexural. So just shut up about it and accept the fact that you are going to burn in HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY! "Fantasizing" about the "body parts" of female sluts is never an excuse! Since a boy is touching a male unmentionable member, that makes him HOMOSEXURAL! That is why a man who touches his devil snake while urinating is damned to an everlasting Hell. Some lazy housewives complain about the mess when their husband doesn't guide his privates while eliminating liquid waste, but I would much rather have to sponge off a plastic toilet seat or silk flower arrangement over the tank four times a day than spend eternity without my Christian husband in Glory.

   

Saleh grabbed her daughters by the hands and the hair, dragging them out of range of American soldiers firing back at faceless attackers. But they didn't run fast enough, Saleh said Wednesday from her bed at a hospital in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad.

The soldiers left one daughter dead, another unable to walk and their mother with a leg so mangled it had to be severed at the knee. This was the village's introduction to the 25th Infantry Division, based in Hawaii, which arrived in northern Iraq just weeks ago as part of the largest troop rotation in U.S. military history.

In minutes, the good will that previous soldiers had worked a year to earn was destroyed. The freshly arrived troops must start from scratch in the tiny community a few miles from Hawijah, a stronghold for the northern insurgency.

"We welcomed the Americans as liberators. We even told them we would find them Iraqi wives and wouldn't let them go back to America," said Hameed Khalaf Abdullah, an elderly tribesman blinded from injuries he received during the Iran-Iraq war. "Now, we hate them. We hate what they did to our women, our children. They are savages."