Pump It Up-Date, Up-Date

Well, the formal sentencing of the judge convicted of using a penis pump on himself while conducting trials brought even more bad news for him. The jury had recommended a year in prison for the offense. The judge handed down a year for each of the four counts. We've posted about the judge before here and here. So we are obligated to cover this latest turn in the case.

Donald Thompson had spent almost 23 years on the bench and had served as a state legislator before retiring from the court in 2004. He showed no reaction when he was sentenced.

At his trial this summer, his former court reporter, Lisa Foster, testified that she saw Thompson expose himself at least 15 times during trial between 2001 and 2003. Prosecutors said he also used a device known as a penis pump during at least four trials in the same period.

Thompson, 59, was convicted last month of four felony courts of indecent exposure for incidents that took place in his Creek County courtroom.

Thompson, a married father of three grown children, testified that the penis pump was given to him as a joke by a longtime hunting and fishing buddy.

"It wasn't something I was hiding," he said.

He said he may have absentmindedly squeezed the pump's handle during court cases but never used it to masturbate.

Foster told authorities that she saw Thompson use the device almost daily during the August 2003 murder trial of a man accused of shaking a toddler to death. A whooshing sound could be heard on Foster's audiotape of the trial. When jurors asked the judge about the sound, Thompson said he hadn't heard it but would listen for it.

Police built a case against the judge after a police officer testifying in a 2003 murder trial saw a piece of plastic tubing disappear under Thompson's robe. During a lunch break, officers took photographs of the pump under the desk.

Investigators later checked the carpet, Thompson's robes and the chair behind the bench and found semen, according to court records.

It's sad to see an officer of the court and a former judge descend into the ranks of the worst of the worst.

After all, he's a hardened criminal now.

“An Undercurrent Of Pigginess”

So says Kira O'Reilly, a 'performance artist' of her newest piece of work, called Inthewrongplaceness. It is described as a 'slow crushing dance with a pig for one at a time'. For four hours, one visitor at a time  will be able to see Ms. O'Reilly dance, in a crushingly slow fashion, with a pig for a maximum of 10 minutes. Ms. O'Reilly's costar is quite dead, and Ms. O'Reilly is quite naked for the entire performance.

PETA is calling it quite sick.

Kira O'Reilly's show, called "Inthewrongplaceness" will be performed at the Newlyn Art Gallery in Penzance, southwest England, later on Friday.

James Green, the gallery's director, defended the show, saying that the audience would be controlled, with one person at a time watching the performance for up to 10 minutes each.

"In terms of the gallery's view, we feel very strongly that we should provide audiences in the region with opportunities to see the kind of works that they have to go to London to experience," he told Reuters

He added that the gallery "had not received a single direct complaint" about the planned show, one of several live performances making up the Tract live art programme.

But a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) called the performance "sick".

"As Miss O'Reilly seems to depend on the shock of using a murdered pig as a prop, perhaps lacking the talent to make it as a proper artist, may we suggest she take up a day job instead to pay the bills," she said. "Cruelty is not entertainment."

The Daily Mail also has a story on the artistic triumph, such as it is. With pictures. In case anyone wants to ogle the stars of the show. They also have the fun fact that British tax money is funding the romp with dead critters. Oh, and  that Ms. O'Reilly cuts her costar as part of the act.

The performance will see the artist sit in a disused social club designed to look like a bedroom, surrounded by props including flowers and a plastic swan.

She will spend four hours with the dead pig - bought from a local abattoir - in her arms.

She wrote on the gallery's website: 'When I cut pig I have an urge to delve both hands into the belly, to meld into her warm flesh, my blood and her blood.'

Miss O'Reilly's fee for the performance is thought to have been drawn from £30,000 given to the gallery by the Arts Council England.

Regular Mona Lisa, isn't it?

Israel Attacks In Bekaa?

Reuters is reporting rumors that Israeli warplanes fired several missiles at unidentified targets in Eastern Lebanon near Bodai. This is just about all the information that is in the news flash. No other wire service is reporting the same incident.

It was not immediately clear what the Israeli aircraft were firing at in the village of Bodai.

An Israeli army spokesman said the army was checking the report.

Such an attack would be the first since a U.N. truce ended 34 days of fighting between Israeli forces and Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon.

Photojournalism - Crisis In Confidence

A really good opinion piece from David D. Perlmutter, a Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies & Research at the University of Kansas School of Journalism & Mass Communications, appears in Editor and Publisher. He discusses the recently revealed falsification of photographs uncovered by bloggers. He sees a serious crisis that the media must address soon.

In each case, these bloggers have engaged in the kind of probing, contextual, fact-based (if occasionally speculative) media criticism I have always asked of my students. And the results have been devastating: news photos and video shown to be miscaptioned, radically altered, or staged (and worse, re-staged) for the camera. Surely “green helmet guy,” “double smoke,” “the missiles that were actually flares,” “the wedding mannequin from nowhere,” the “magical burning Koran,” the “little girl who actually fell off a swing” and “keep filming!” will now enter the pantheon of shame of photojournalism.

A few photo-illusions are probably due to the lust for the most sensational or striking-looking image—that is, more aesthetic bias than political prejudice. Also, many photographers know that war victims are money shots and some will break the rules of the profession to cash in. But true as well is that local stringers and visiting anchors alike seem to have succumbed either to lens-enabled Stockholm syndrome or accepted being the uncredited Hezbollah staff photographer so as to be able to file stories and images in militia-controlled areas.

It does not help that certain news organizations have acted like government officials or corporate officers trying to squash a scandal. The visual historian in me revolts when an ABC producer informs me that Reuters “deleted all 920 images” by the stringer who produced the “Beirut double smoke” image and is “less than willing to talk about it.” Can you say “18-minute gap,” anyone?

He is quite harsh on the media's response to date and strongly recommends they take action at once to correct the situation.

The second, much more painful option, is to implement your ideals, the ones we still teach in journalism school. Admit mistakes right away. Correct them with as much fanfare and surface area as you devoted to the original image. Create task forces and investigating panels. Don’t delete archives but publish them along with detailed descriptions of what went wrong. Attend to your critics and diversify the sources of imagery, or better yet be brave enough to refuse to show any images of scenes in which you are being told what to show. I would even love to see special inserts or mini-documentaries on how to spot photo bias or photo fakery—in other words, be as transparent, unarrogant, and responsive as you expect those you cover to be.

The stakes are high. Democracy is based on the premise that it is acceptable for people to believe that some politicians or news media are lying to them; democracy collapses when the public believes that everybody in government and the press is lying to them.

A bleak assessment, indeed, but one that is likely quite true.

Stay Away From England

There's an old saying here in the US which may or may not be used in other countries. When it's raining really hard we say 'it's raining cats and dogs'. But in England, they appear to have a completely different and more serious problem.

Raining cows.

Sally Brown had gone into the sea for a dip and was returning for her body board when she heard a thud nearby, the English south coast island's Isle of Wight County Press newspaper reported.

The 51-year-old was quoted as saying: "I turned round and this cow was flying down the cliff to where my body board had been a few seconds before. It would have killed me if it had landed on me."

Farmer Jane Phillips has apologised to Brown, reassuring her that she had removed cattle from the field, which has no fencing at the cliff edge because it is an environmentally-protected site.

"It was a really lovely calf and it's just a really sad accident," Phillips was quoted as saying, explaining that the cows often gathered at the cliff edge to cool down with the updraft from the Channel.

I've changed my mind about wanting to visit England now. I just don't think the weather would suit me at all.

Vultures Tired Of Waiting

The vultures have joined the animal uprising. No longer willing to wait for something to die, they have decided to start trying to bring down big game.

Airplanes.

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Hundreds of vultures have swarmed the airport of the biggest city in Peru's Amazon jungle, putting planes at risk and threatening to cut off the city of more than 400,000 people from the rest of the country.

The birds already have forced the airport in Iquitos — a popular tourist destination that can only be reached from the capital Lima by air — to shut down eight hours a day, said Aurelio Crovetto, head of Peru's state-run airport authority.

"One of these birds only has to bump into a plane and the effect could be devastating," he said. "If one gets into an engine, it will destroy it, the motor will stop and the plane will come down."

Set on the banks of an Amazon River tributary, Iquitos is one of the world's largest cities inaccessible by road.

See, this is a win-win situation for the feathered fiends. If they bring down a plane, eating is good. If they succeed in cutting the city off from supplies, the eating is fabulous!

Vacuum

France's refusal to step up and supply troops to the UN peacekeeping mission has opened the door for Indonesia and Malaysia to offer troops.

Neither nation recognizes Israel.

The rank insanity of sending peacekeepers to stand between an armed non-state militia and a nation which the countries involved do not recognize apparently doesn't occur to the UN.

Israeli UN envoy Dan Gillerman was speaking after Indonesia and Malaysia, which do not recognise Israel, pledged troops for the UN deployment.

Malaysia said Israel should have no say in the make-up of the force.

The UN has expressed cautious optimism that it can deploy an initial 3,500-strong force within two weeks.

UN deputy chief Mark Malloch Brown warned earlier that delay could threaten the ceasefire.

But building the force has proved problematical. Mr Malloch Brown said a lot of work was needed in the coming days to meet the two-week deadline.

There is concern that the offers do not necessarily provide the right mix of troops and capabilities needed for the deployment, the BBC's Bridget Kendall in New York says.

A number of countries are calling for clearer guidance on the exact nature of the mission.

….

"It would be very difficult if not inconceivable for Israel to accept troops from countries who do not recognise Israel, who have no diplomatic relations with Israel," he told the BBC.

He said they would be "very happy" to accept troops from Muslim countries they have friendly relations with.

"But to expect countries who don't even recognise Israel to guard Israel's safety I think would be a bit naive," he said.

His comments were dismissed by Malaysia, which, along with Indonesia, has a Muslim majority population.

"We're going to be on Lebanese territory … We're not going to be on Israeli territory," Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said.

That statement is actually more revealing than I think Albar realized. There really is no reason to believe that UN peacekeepers would actually have any real reason to bother keeping the peace with a nation they dismiss so contemptuously.

German Terror Plot Revealed

An attempt was made to launch an attack on German commuter trains on July 31st. German authorities revealed details of two suitcase bombs today. The bags contained bottles of gasoline and propane with a detonation device. It is not know why the two bags were abandoned before they could be detonated.

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) — Two suitcases containing bottles of gasoline, propane gas and a detonating device that were found abandoned in German regional trains last month were bombs primed to go off and kill a “high number'' of people, police said.

“We're accusing as yet unknown suspects of having tried to ignite unconventional flammable and explosive devices on July 31, 2006, in the cities of Dortmund and Koblenz with the aim of killing a high number of people,'' Federal Prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum said at a press conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, today. The perpetrators are suspected of being members of a “domestic terrorist organization,'' Griesbaum said.

A suitcase found abandoned on a regional train from Aachen to Hamm in western Germany was turned in by the train's conductor in Dortmund. It contained a propane gas bottle, three bottles filled with gasoline and a detonating device, the Federal Prosecutor's Office said Aug. 1. On the same day another piece of luggage was found on another regional train from Moenchengladbach to Koblenz about 75 miles to the South. It too contained a propane gas bottle.

“We have to take this event very seriously,'' Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a faxed statement today. “We have to expect that the danger of a repeat attempt still exists.''

One thoroughly stupid statement in the article:

The terror threat in Germany isn't considered to be as high as in the U.K. or U.S. because the country didn't take part in the U.S.-led war in Iraq, the government has said. Still, it did train Iraqi police officers and so may also be a terror target.

The planned bombing “corresponds to our evaluation that attacks could also hit our country,'' Schaeuble said.

The terrorists are not motivated by Iraq. They were making attacks before the invasion of Iraq. If Iraq had never happened, they would still be attacking. This is global and unrelenting.

You’ll Be Relieved To Know

That the Australian government has made a decision of monumental import. This is huge and has far-reaching consequences to the entire world! It solves on of the most vexing problems society has ever experienced.

Crocodiles are now fish.

Politicians in Australia have been pondering the meaning of "fish" and have passed new laws making it clear crocodiles should be fish too.

The decision is at odds with the arbiter of the Australian English language, the Macquarie Dictionary, which rules that fish are "completely aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body usually covered with scales."

The answer to the Australian meaning of "fish" is contained in the new Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Legislation Amendment (Export Control and Quarantine) Bill 2006, which was endorsed by Australia's parliament Thursday.

Australia's junior minister for agriculture Susan Ley told parliament the new definition was needed to ensure Australia had the right to enforce export controls on a wider range of fish, including crocodile products, shellfish and prawns.

In other news, the Australian parliament is considering a repeal of the law of gravity. About time, too.

Mission Impossible

I read this headline and said to myself: "This will never work". Modern medicine has made great strides, but this is just unattainable.

"Barry Manilow to have hip surgery".

It turns out he's just going to have damage to cartilage repaired. So it's at least possible!

But he'll never be hip. Totally beyond medical science.

Bomb Threat Diverts British Airplane

A British flight en route to Egypt was diverted to Italy when a handwritten note was found saying that there was a bomb on board.

ROME - A British passenger plane to Egypt diverted to a southern Italian airport Friday after the pilot reported that a bomb was suspected to be on board, Italian aviation officials said. All 280 passengers were safe and had exited the plane, state police at the airport said.

Authorities searching the plane found a handwritten note in English that said there was a bomb on the plane, Salvatore De Paolis, a spokesman for border police at the airport, told SKY TG 24 television news.

The Excel Airways Boeing 767 requested an emergency landing in Brindisi because of what was described as a suspected bomb, the Italian air traffic agency ENAV said.

It begins to wear on the nerves.

Terror Weapons

Michael Totten reports from Israel on the results of bombardment by terror weapons. Make no mistake, Katyusha rockets are of no practical military value other than as terror weapons. To be an effective military weapon, they need to be launched in heavy barrages at a fairly close range against massed formations or strong points. The Hezbollah rockets were anti-personnel terror weapons fired at civilians.

Katyusha shrapnel kills people who aren’t wearing body armor, and wounds those who are. No one wants to be hit with this stuff. But if the side of your building is hit, you can call a repair guy and have it taken care of in one day. It might take a few days if the windows are broken. Either way, Katyushas do quite a lot of damage to people and relatively little damage to infrastructure and buildings.

Throwing high-speed ball bearings at random around an urban area is a great way to terrorize people and get them to hide in their shelters or seek refuge somewhere else. You can empty entire cities this way, and that’s exactly what Hezbollah did. No Palestinian terrorist group had ever been able to accomplish so much. But forget trying to use Katyushas against an army, especially against a properly outfitted and trained Western army. While Northern Israel’s civilian population retreated to the south, the military surged forward straight into Lebanon.

Read the whole thing, which is full of photos showing the ineffectiveness of the weapons except against civilians. Totten also offers a grim assessment of the future.

It’s A Good Day For Chocolate

Well, strictly speaking, my wife would argue every day is a good day for chocolate. But today seems to be an outstanding day for chocolate in the news!

Item: Police in Amsterdam are warning people not to eat any dark chocolate they might find lying about in the Amsterdam airport. It seems a homeless man found some and ate it. Whereupon the man began hallucinating, mistaking police uniforms for wedding dresses.

THE HAGUE (AFP) - Police at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport has released a warning for hallucinogenic dark chocolate bars after a homeless man ate one and confused their uniforms with wedding dresses.

"He ate some and we found him hallucinating", mixing up police uniforms with wedding dresses, police spokesman Rob Stenacker told AFP on Thursday.

"Several days later he brought us another bar that he had just found and we passed it on to the forensic institute" of the Netherlands, he said.

Tests showed the 72 percent cocoa dark chocolate contained psilocine, a mind-altering substance found in hallucinogenic mushrooms and considered to be a hard drug.

Police later found more chocolate bars on the ground and in airport dustbins.

Police are concerned that a child might find the candy and eat it.

Item: Workers at a chocolate factory in Fountain Valley, California discovered an unusual formation in some spilled chocolate. Workers and the store owner believe the odd formation resembles the Virgin Mary.

Workers at Angiano's gourmet chocolate company, Bodega Chocolates, discovered under a vat a 2-inch-tall column of chocolate drippings that they believe bears a striking resemblance to the Virgin Mary.

Since the discovery Monday, Angiano's employees have spent much of their time hovering over the tiny figure, praying and placing rose petals and candles around it.

"I was raised to believe in the Virgin Mary, but this still gives me the chills," Angiano said as she balanced the dark brown figure in her hand. "Everyone should see this."

Kitchen worker Cruz Jacinto was the first to spot the lump of melted chocolate when she began her shift Monday cleaning up drippings that had accumulated under a large vat of dark chocolate.

Chocolate drippings usually harden in thin, flat strips on wax paper, but Jacinto said she froze when she noticed the unusual shape of this cast-off: It looked just like the Virgin Mary on the prayer card she always carries in her right pocket.

"When I come in, the first thing I do is look at the clock, but this time I didn't look at the clock. My eyes went directly to the chocolate," said Jacinto, dressed in a hair net and apron as she paused from her work. "I thought, 'Am I the only one who can see this? I picked it up and I felt emotion just come over me. For me, it was a sign."

The chocolate, on display for most of the week in the front of the company gift shop, now rests in a plastic case in a back room and is brought out only for curious visitors.

There is no word on what consuming the chocolate would do to a person, however. Or if any of the employees had recently been to Amsterdam.

Item: In Kenosha, Wisconsin, a man lived what my wife would consider a dream come true. He became trapped waist-deep in a vat of chocolate.

The man, an employee of a Kenosha company that supplies chocolate ingredients, told police he got into the tank at Debelis Corp. to unplug it and became trapped waist-deep in the chocolate.

"It was pretty thick. It was virtually like quicksand," said Police Capt. Randy Berner.

Co-workers, police and firefighters tried to free the man but couldn't get him loose until the chocolate was thinned out. Berner said the worker was taken to a hospital for treatment of minor injuries.

The story doesn't say what the man resembled when he solidified after being freed. Nor what consuming the chocolate would do to someone.

And there we have a chocolate trifecta! I told you it was a good day for it!

Silence Broken, Silence Enforced

How very lucky the Cuban people and the whole world are today! Raul Castro has emerged to give an interview. He has broken his silence of the past few weeks. We are informed that Fidel Castro is recuperating and that the doctors are doing a marvelous job.

Raul Castro, 75, thanked the doctors and others who have cared for his brother, saying they "have attended to him in an excellent manner … with much love and dedication. This has been a very important factor in Fidel's progressive recovery."

Raul Castro, the nation's Defense Minister, said he mobilized the island nation's troops in the hours after his brother's illness was announced July 31.

"We could not rule out the risk of somebody going crazy, or even crazier, within the U.S. government," he told Lazaro Barredo, editor of the Communist Party's Granma newspaper.

"I decided to substantially raise our combative capacity … including the mobilization of several tens of thousands of reservists and militia members," he said.

A noticeable but still discreet increase in the number of reservists on Cuba's streets was evident in the first days after it was announced Fidel had undergone intestinal surgery. Cubans were asked to affirm their allegiance to the government and willingness to fight for it in the event of an attack.

Raul Castro, has been at his brother's side since launching the revolution with the attack on the Moncada military barracks in 1953 and fought with him in the Sierra Maestra mountains against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. As No. 2 man in the government, the younger Castro is constitutionally designated to replace his brother should he die or become incapacitated.

Yes, indeed we certainly are lucky to hear from Raul. There are a few other people it would be nice to hear from as well, though:

Ricardo González Alfonso; Víctor Rolando Arroyo; Normando Hernández González, Julio César Gálvez; Adolfo Fernández Sainz; Omar Rodríguez Saludes; Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez; Mijaíl Barzaga Lugo; Pedro Arguelles Morán; Pablo Pacheco Avila; Alejandro González Raga; Alfredo Pulido López; Fabio Prieto Llorente; Iván Hernández Carrillo; José Luis García Paneque; Juan Carlos Herrera; Miguel Galván Gutiérrez; José Ubaldo Izquierdo; Omar Ruiz Hernández; José Gabriel Ramón Castillo; Léster Luis González Pentó Alfredo Felipe Fuentes; José Manuel Caraballo Bravo; and Oscar Mario González: We would like to hear their voices.

But they cannot speak to us from the cells they are being kept in by Raul Castro and the Cuban government. While Raul is free to speak to us, their silence is enforced by the Cuban authorities. They cannot speak to us because people like Raul and Fidel don't want them to speak. Instead they are jailed for daring to speak.

Here in America it is a popular pastime among some people to proclaim, long and loud - endlessly in fact - about how they are being silenced. They will be pleased to give television interviews to explain it to everyone, too. They will write endlessly about the way they are being oppressed. They will shout down anyone who tries to articulate a different opinion.

But in Cuba, there is silence from those who oppose Castro. It is enforced by putting those who would speak in prison and letting them rot there. It is reinforced by people around the world who admire Castro's Cuba and do interpretive dances to glorify Fidel. It is strengthened by those who cheapen the meaning of oppression by claiming their victimhood on television and in print. Silence enforced by indifference to real oppression.

I'll join Val Prieto in refusing to cooperate in that indifference.

French Forces Farce

The French are almost beyond parody at this point. Yesterday, French media leaked the fact that Jacques Chirac would only send 200 engineering troops to the UN peacekeeping force. Apparently, Kofi Annan shamed him into increasing that commitment. So now France will send 400 troops. But they want command of the entire force in exchange. We have descending into farce.

President Jacques Chirac announced Thursday that France will immediately double to 400 troops its contingent in the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

The statement from Chirac's office came after he spoke by phone with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. France currently leads the UNIFIL force in southern Lebanon, and its decision-making on its role in a strengthened force has been closely watched.

Chirac told Annan that France "will immediately double its current contribution by sending 200 men," the statement said.

The plan will be presented at a U.N. meeting in New York later Thursday to flesh out which countries will participate in the peacekeeping force as it expands from the current 2,000 troops to as many as 15,000, Chirac's office said.

Chirac told Annan that France is ready to command the strengthened force, which is expected to work with about 15,000 Lebanese troops to restore peace to southern Lebanon after more than a month of violence between Israeli troops and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia.

France also is prepared to keep in the region 1,700 troops who in recent weeks have been evacuating French and other foreign nationals from Lebanon and bringing in humanitarian aid.

So give the French command because they have an evacuation force ready and waiting. This way they'll be able to surrender and evacuate more efficiently.