Web Hoax - Suicide Or Homicide

I first heard about this when it popped briefly on Memeorandum posted at Death by 1,000 Papercuts. The story will make you sick. A 13 year-old girl, with a learning disability and suffering from depression, committed suicide. The cause? A hoax on MySpace perpetrated by a neighborhood family - including the mother of that family. Now the Associated Press has picked the story up. AP first:

DARDENNE PRAIRIE, Mo. - Megan Meier thought she had made a new friend in cyberspace when a cute teenage boy named Josh contacted her on MySpace and began exchanging messages with her.

Megan, a 13-year-old who suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder, corresponded with Josh for more than a month before he abruptly ended their friendship, telling her he had heard she was cruel.

The next day Megan committed suicide. Her family learned later that Josh never actually existed; he was created by members of a neighborhood family that included a former friend of Megan's.

Now Megan's parents hope the people who made the fraudulent profile on the social networking Web site will be prosecuted, and they are seeking legal changes to safeguard children on the Internet.

The girl's mother, Tina Meier, said she doesn't think anyone involved intended for her daughter to kill herself.

"But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old, with or without mental problems, it is absolutely vile," she told the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis, which first reported on the case.

Tina Meier said law enforcement officials told her the case did not fit into any law. But sheriff's officials have not closed the case and pledged to consider new evidence if it emerges.

Megan Meier hanged herself in her bedroom on Oct. 16, 2006, and died the next day. She was described as a "bubbly, goofy" girl who loved spending time with her friends, watching movies and fishing with her dad.

Death by 1,000 Papercuts now:

The paper went on to describe how six weeks after Megan's sad death her parents were informed that their precious daughter was the victim of a cruel hoax on MySpace. The perpetrators were the very same people, the parents of Megan's one time friend, who after Megan's death, had asked Megan's parents if they could store their foosball table in Megan's parent's garage. The paper reported that upon of learning the gruesome details of what had happened to their daughter and who was behind it Megan's father destroyed the foosball table.

Tina used an ax and Ron a sledgehammer. They put the pieces in Ron's pickup and dumped them in their neighbor's driveway. Tina spray painted "Merry Christmas" on the box.

The cruel hoax extraordinaires filed a police report over the destruction of their foosball table. They also sent a "condolence" note to Megan's parents:

An adult perpetrated an internet vendetta against a 13-year old girl? Even if the goal was to hurt her feelings or emotionally wound her - a grown-up (supposed grown-up) against a child? As I mentioned last night, I have no flexibility on this issue. This is the abuse by an adult on a child. Nobody can bring Megan back, but somebody should damn sure pay for this.

Slanted Stories

Callimachus at Done With Mirrors dismantles one of the latest heavily slanted Associated Press stories. The AP claims that desertion rates are "soaring" among American troops. Callimachus points out that a huge percentage increase in a minuscule number is still minuscule.

No doubt you're going to see a lot of anti-war triumphalism over this AP story.

After six years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, American soldiers are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980. The number of US Army deserters this year shows an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

Desertions are up for the year, no doubt. But an 80 percent increase in a very small number is still a very small number.

Still, the cheerleaders of the "this war is a failure that is destroying America and freedom" faction, by which I mean many of my friends in the media, are rolling out the headlines.

"Huge rise" (The Scotsman), "soaring" (CBS News), "skyrocket" (USA Today).

Here's a few things to keep in mind when reading or discussing this one:

I'll send you over there to read the reasons. They are well thought out and Callimachus has enough research and facts to make the points stick. The other big slanted story today was the "skyrocketing" suicide rate among veterans - again, attributed to the Iraq war. But the disingenuous story twisted the fact that 'veterans' in total are by an overwhelming majority not associated with the Iraq war. I feel terrible that anyone commits suicide, veteran or not. But promoting an agenda on the bodies of those poor souls is disgusting. (Can't find the link to someone who dismantled that media meme earlier, sorry).

Bobby’s Corner: To Heck With That $25,000 Dessert!

Hey everyone,

Bobby Mugabe here. I know it has been a while since I sent a letter, but it is hard work making a socialist worker's paradise, you know. The details are endless: what color interior matches the carbon flash metallic paint on the new Hummer H3^x I'm ordering? How many hummingbird tongues to order for the next banquet. You know, the important stuff. But I read with some interest about the famous New York restaurant that had bragged up their $25,000 dessert. Reuters describe the "Frrozen Haute Chocolate" as:

…….a blend of 28 cocoas fused with 0.2 ounces of edible 23-karat gold.

It comes with an 18-karat gold bracelet with 1 carat of white diamonds at the base of the goblet. The sundae is topped with whipped cream covered with more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle from Knipschildt Chocolatier, which sells for $2,600 a pound.

So what. The joint that serves it got closed because they have mice and cockroaches running about. I have a much better, higher priced treat here in my little slice of paradise! Yes, the Bobby Mugabe worker's paradise has a more expensive treat! It's called 'bread'.

Cash itself has become a tradable commodity. Swapped for products such as fuel and beef, it is attracting a 20 per cent premium to its face value.

The search for cash is an unrelenting daily ordeal for Zimbabweans, who were paying Z$1.6 million for a bus fare to and from work yesterday, Z$800,000 for a loaf of bread, and Z$700,000 for a pint of beer.

Oh sure, the western media is twisting things around:

Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is gathering pace, with inflation spiralling to almost 15,000 per cent, according to figures leaked yesterday.

The 14,840 per cent annual inflation in October was nearly double what it was in September. Prices between September and October rose 135 per cent.

President Mugabe told state media that “Zimbabwe will not collapse, now or in the future,” even as his strategy for beating inflation with draconian price controls lay in ruins.

In June Mr Mugabe ordered businesses to slash prices to below what it cost them to stock shelves. Annual inflation has since shot up nearly 10,000 percentage points. “I am speechless,” said one economist. “I cannot get my head around these figures. They are so enormous.”

Well, that's because you are stupid, Mr. smarty-pants western economist. We here in Zimbabwe - well, the workers, anyway - are all millionaires! They can afford a hugely expensive treat called 'bread' that is more expensive than you can get at some eatery in New York. And, bonus! No rodents or cockroaches to contend with - they've all been eaten!

Well, gotta run, worshipful admirers! My friend Hugo wants a few pointers on making a great paradise work. His heart is in the right place but his pacing is a bit off. It will take him at least two years to bring his economy to the exalted level I have achieved! He can do better.

Dictatorially,

Bobby Mugabe

Call Any Vegetable

Call any vegetable Call it by name
Call one today When you get off the train
Call any vegetable And the chances are good
Aw, The vegetable will respond to you

(Some people don't go for prunes…I
don't know, I've always found that if they…)
Call any vegetable Pick up your phone
Think of a vegetable Lonely at home
Call any vegetable And the chances are good
That a vegetable will *respond* to you
(Frank Zappa, Call Any Vegetable)

I suspect that Frank Zappa would have got this group. The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra is making vegetables respond to them. It's edgy, it's avant garde, it's high in fiber and contains no cholesterol and it takes the term playing with your food to a new level.

I think maybe this guy is a fan. Or auditioning.

The Colossus Of Bletchley Park

More than 60 years after the last one was dismantled, a Colossus code-breaking computer has whirred back to life and started cracking coded messages. The ultra-secret Colossus Mark II was designed and built by the boffins at Bletchley Park, the British code-breaking installation during World War Two. There were a total of ten built and they worked around the clock, tended by a staff of 550. Immediately after the war, Winston Churchill ordered them destroyed. But some of the proud engineers and technicians kept information about the machines and a new one has been built. The new-old machine deciphered a message sent in a Second World War German code in three hours and 35 minutes. (That first message was decoded faster by a German man using a laptop computer.)

It played a pivotal role in cracking Nazi codes during the Second World War.

But yesterday the Germans finally got the better of Britain's Colossus codebreaking computer.

The rebuilt machine had been taking part in a contest against modern computers to decipher a message which was originally sent in 1938 using Nazi code.

It completed the exercise in a respectable three hours and 35 minutes but was pipped to the post by an amateur cryptographer from Bonn.

The exercise marked the launch of the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, where Colossus was created in the 1940s.

The original ten Colossus machines, which were the world's first programmable digital computers, began service in 1944. They are thought to have saved thousands of lives and shortened the war by months.

But for reasons of secrecy Winston Churchill ordered the destruction of all the machines in 1945 following the Allied victory.

Over the last 14 years, experts at Bletchley rebuilt a Colossus using plans and information gleaned from those involved in the creation of the original.

It is an interesting story. Fun for history buffs and geeks of all ages! More on Colossus from the original curator of the Bletchley Park Museum, Tony Sales. Here's a Wired article on the project. Wikipedia here.

Spitzer Vows To Push Gay Marriage

Eliot "Death Spiral" Spitzer has announced that he wants a hard push for gay marriage in New York next year.

ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer said at a private fund-raiser that he wants a Democratic-controlled state Senate to legalize gay marriage - a highly divisive and controversial issue - as one of its first priorities in 2009, a witness to the remarks told The Post.

Spitzer, a gay-marriage proponent, pledged to help Democrats next November win the three Senate seats they need to gain the majority.

"One of the first things we're going to do when [Senate Minority Leader] Malcolm Smith is [majority] leader is gay marriage," the witness recounted Spitzer as telling some 60 people who paid up to $10,000 each to attend the event in Greenwich Village Wednesday night.

"Everybody applauded when he said that," said the witness, who was among senators, Democratic activists and lobbyists at a fund-raising event for the Senate Democratic Committee. It was held in the library of the elegant West 13th Street home of HBO's "Oz" creator Tom Fantana.

Two other witnesses, including an elected official, said they couldn't recall Spitzer's exact language, but added that the governor suggested a Democratic-controlled state Senate would follow the state Assembly's action this year in passing, for the first time ever, a gay-marriage bill.

Let's recap, shall we? Licenses for Lawbreakers®: DOA. Internet sales taxes: DOA. Taxes for Transients®: stay tuned for the debacle. Spitzer's glorious career prospects: dimming rapidly.

If I were a gay marriage advocate, I'd be begging Spitzer to stay the hell off the issue.

Kangaroo Koast

Police in Brandon, Florida are searching for desperado on the hop. Reports ave come in about a kangaroo bounding about in the Tampa suburb.

BRANDON - After searching an area along Bloomingdale Avenue, deputies were not able to locate a reported Kangaroo on the loose in afternoon traffic.

A sheriff's office dispatcher received the report of a Kangaroo hopping around in traffic at Bloomingdale Avenue and Watson Road at 5:30 p.m.

The kangaroo was reported to the dispatcher as last seen headed north on Watson.

Well, first we want to inform Tampa-area residents that the kangaroo is not a giant rabbit, a mistake recently made in Indiana. More importantly, if you should be in the vicinity of any Irish actors, get away from them at once. Kangaroos have a well known penchant for trying to kill Irish actors.  

More Media Coverage

Once again, mystery author J.A. Jance deserves credit for putting some pressure on the Seattle Times to cover the story of Lieutenant Walter Bryan Jackson, the soldier who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross earlier this month. Yesterday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer covered the story after Jance sent emails, today it was the Times.

Jackson, who graduated from Oak Harbor High School in 2001 and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2005, will spend Thanksgiving with a sister in Seattle and then head to an assignment in Korea. After that, he hopes to attend law school and pursue a career as a military lawyer.

His reluctance to claim the title "hero" comes as no surprise to one of the men he helped save.

Stainbrook, 31, had this to say Thursday about his fellow officer: "He's just a great solider and a great guy, and I think that's enough for him. He has always been a guy to put the team first."

Good for the local papers finally getting stories out.

Spitzer Tries Another Novel Approach

Brian Faughnan over at the Worldwide Standard calls it Eliot Spitzer's death wish. I think he's pretty close to the mark. It seems that Spitzer's tax people have decided to change the rules of residency for tax purposes in New York in a new and novel way - all in an effort to wring money out of Derek Jeter, the New York Yankee shortstop. The article Faughnan links to is here.  

Jeter is not accused of lying about living in Florida to evade taxes, which is why the state is seeking taxes and interest, but no penalties.

Instead of arguing that Jeter is a New York resident based on the rule that he spent at least 183 days of the year in the state, tax officials contend that his ties to New York are so strong that this qualifies as his "primary residence."

The novel concept? This gem:

The state claims that Jeter "keeps certain personal items near and dear" in his $12.7-million New York City apartment, and that "he has immersed himself in the New York community," according to an administrative law judge's ruling in the case. The case is pending, with new filings due by Sunday.

Faughnan puts it this way:

New Yorkers are sophisticated enough to recognize that the city's confiscatory tax rates encourage athletes and entertainers not to make their permanent residences there. And if Jeter asserts that he intends to reside permanently in Florida once he's retired from baseball, what New Yorker will hold that against him? After all, that's a New York cliche.

Heck, it's a standard joke that the majority of people in Florida are New Yorkers. It may be an exaggeration, but it isn't much of one. The rule should be the rule. If Jeter was there more than the 183 days, he should be taxed. If not, Spitzer cannot change the rules on his whim. I am rapidly becoming convinced that Eliot Spitzer is actually not a very smart man. But I'm guessing I know the next novel expansion of tax authority Spitzer will try:

China Pulls Out Of Iran Sanctions Meeting

China has withdrawn from a meeting set for next week in London that was to have discussed further sanctions against Iran. The meeting was to have been a response to the latest International Atomic Energy Commission's report that confirmed Iran's expanding nuclear program. It appears as if the United States, France and Britain will have to go it alone on sanctions.

In what is seen as an indication that China will not risk its economic interests in Iran by supporting extra UN sanctions, it was confirmed that it had called off its attendance at a meeting of officials from the "P5+1" group, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, which was scheduled for next Monday.

Officials had been due to meet to discuss a third round of UN sanctions against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after it was confirmed yesterday that he had reached a landmark 3,000 operational centrifuges.

However, a Foreign Office official told Times Online today that, unless a "miracle" happened over the weekend, the meeting was now unlikely to take place.

Yesterday's report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, confirmed that Iran had reached the landmark 3,000 operating centrifuges which is enough, according to some nuclear experts, to produce an atom bomb within a year.

China claimed that travel difficulties had caused the cancellation of Monday's meeting. However, a Foreign Office said that the country's reservations about further sanctions were also likely to have played a part.

That is probably the lamest excuse ever for not attending. It is obviously meant as a slap at the other members. It also signals that sanctions are going to be a tough row to hoe. The effect that the US, France and Britain can have if China, Russia and Germany do not back them is going to be minimal.

Spitzer On A Spit

The Opinion Journal believes it has figured out why Eliot Spitzer has fallen so far so fast: his nasty behavior caught up with him.

Given Mr. Spitzer's fall in the polls, it's tempting to say New Yorkers have learned something new about the man who said on his inauguration day that, "we must change the ethics of Albany and end the politics of cynicism and division in our state." But the bullying, the arrogance and the focus on destroying anyone who stood his way were on full display when he was Attorney General.

Most of the media chose to overlook these qualities, instead extolling his "crusading" style. Readers of this newspaper knew better, having seen (among other things) how he threatened to destroy John Whitehead, the former Goldman Sachs and State Department official, for daring to defend former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg in public.

The only real difference between Mr. Spitzer now and then is that as Governor he is obliged to govern, as opposed to merely bringing charges amid a PR offensive and then settling before having to prove anything in court. His heavy-handed approach to the drivers license plan shows the limits of such behavior in a job where he actually has to persuade people.

A lot of his frenetic barrage of proposals has been an effort to distract from the so-called 'toopergate' scandal. That inquiry may yet topple Spitzer. But it is that hostile, angry, vengeful way of conducting himself that has brought all of this down on his head. Sometimes, the karmic wheel just spins a bit faster for some folks. Sometimes the wheel bears a strange resemblance to a barbecue spit. Spitzer appears to be on the latter.

When Columnists Attack

Paul Krugman has launched a completely over-the-top attack on Barack Obama for saying that he would raise Social Security taxes. In fact he called Obama both a "sucker" and a "fool."

Lately, Barack Obama has been saying that major action is needed to avert what he keeps calling a “crisis” in Social Security — most recently in an interview with The National Journal. Progressives who fought hard and successfully against the Bush administration’s attempt to panic America into privatizing the New Deal’s crown jewel are outraged, and rightly so.

But Mr. Obama’s Social Security mistake was, in fact, exactly what you’d expect from a candidate who promises to transcend partisanship in an age when that’s neither possible nor desirable…..

…..We all wish that American politics weren’t so bitter and partisan. But if you try to find common ground where none exists — which is the case for many issues today — you end up being played for a fool. And that’s what has just happened to Mr. Obama.

You can go read why Krugman does not believe there is a problem with Social Security. Then you can look at the annual Trustees Report from the Social Security Administration.

The financial condition of the Social Security and Medicare programs remains problematic; we believe their currently projected long run growth rates are not sustainable under current financing arrangements. Social Security's current annual surpluses of tax income over expenditures will soon begin to decline and then turn into rapidly growing deficits as the baby boom generation retires. Medicare's financial status is even worse. Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund is already expected to pay out more in hospital benefits this year than it receives in taxes and other dedicated revenues. The growing annual deficits in both programs are projected to exhaust HI reserves in 2019 and Social Security reserves in 2041. In addition, the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Fund that pays for physician services and the new prescription drug benefit will continue to require general revenue financing and charges on beneficiaries that grow faster than the economy and beneficiary incomes over time.

Then you could look at the history of problems, bi-partisan commissions and such that can be found here. For instance the report of the Social Security Advisory Panel for 1994-1996 - when Bill Clinton was in office:

While the Council has not found any short-term financing problems with the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability (OASDI) program, there are serious problems in the long run. Because of the time required for workers to prepare for their retirement, and the greater fairness of gradual changes, even long-run problems require attention in the near term.

But Krugman is saying all that is wrong. He knows better.

And he calls Obama a fool?

Brain Drain

The Telegraph reports a rather stunning statistic about Britain today that indicates that there is something going wrong there. It seems that 400,000 people emigrated from Britain last year - more than at any time in the past 50 years. About half of the total number leaving Britain moved to four countries, Australia, New Zealand, France and Spain. At the same time, about a half a million immigrants arrived in Britain. But her citizens are leaving in large numbers.

An exodus on this scale - amounting to one British citizen leaving the country every three minutes - has not been seen in the UK for almost 50 years.

Overall in 2006, there were a record 591,000 new arrivals. Only 14 per cent of these were Britons coming home.

It is the first time the number of foreign migrants has topped half a million and the statistics do not include hundreds of thousands of east Europeans who have arrived to work in Britain in the past two years. This is because most say they are coming for less than 12 months and do not show up as long-term immigrants.

The figures suggest that only one sixth of the immigrants were from the states which joined the EU in 2004.

The biggest influx was from the New Commonwealth - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka - with more than 200,000 migrants.

Since Labour came to power in 1997, nearly four million foreign nationals have come to Britain and 1.6 million have left. Over the same period, 1.8 million Britons have left, but only 979,000 have returned.

I can't find the stats on US citizens emigrating, but I seem to remember news reports that emigration to Canada had reached a "record" number of something like 10,000. Britain is seriously hemorrhaging its population.

Denial Is Not A River In Egypt….

…But it is the state Democrats are living in these days. The mantra, repeated endlessly, is that America has alienated allies everywhere; that only the Democrats can mend those broken ties. Charles Krauthammer begs to differ:

Like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who insist that nothing of significance has changed in Iraq, the Democrats are living in what Bob Woodward would call a state of denial. Do they not notice anything?

France has a new president who is breaking not just with the anti-Americanism of the Chirac era but also with 50 years of Fifth Republic orthodoxy that defined French greatness as operating in counterpoise to America. Nicolas Sarkozy's trip last week to the United States was marked by a highly successful White House visit and a rousing speech to Congress in which he not only called America "the greatest nation in the world" (how many leaders of any country say that about another?) but also pledged solidarity with the United States on Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, the Middle East and nuclear nonproliferation. This just a few months after he sent his foreign minister to Iraq to signal an openness to cooperation and an end to Chirac's reflexive obstructionism.

That's France. In Germany, Gerhard Schroeder is long gone, voted out of office and into a cozy retirement as Putin's concubine at Gazprom. His successor is the decidedly pro-American Angela Merkel, who concluded an unusually warm visit with Bush this week.

All this, beyond the ken of Democrats, is duly noted by new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who in an interview with Sky News on Sunday remarked on "the great change that is taking place," namely "that France and Germany and the European Union are also moving more closely with America."

Krauthammer points out that the reality of international alliances is a mutual banding together against threats. The resurgence of a belligerent Russia and an increasingly powerful China are part and parcel to the strengthening ties with allies. This is not a new thing. Part of the reason nations felt they could display some anti-Americanism was because there were few external threats. Now Russia, China and a soon-to-be nuclear armed Iran are changing the realpolitik once again. There is a reason why the nations are increasingly willing to turn to the United States:

It's classic balance-of-power theory: Weaker nations turn to the great outside power to help them balance a rising regional threat. Allies are not sentimental about their associations. It is not a matter of affection but of need — and of the great power's ability to deliver.

What's changed in the past year? Bush's dress and diction remain the same. But he did change generals — and counterinsurgency strategy — in Iraq. As a result, Iraq has gone from an apparently lost cause to a winnable one.

The Democrats may spend their days paddling up and down denial, but the reality is that trying to lose in Iraq is not a good strategy for rebuilding America's foreign relations.