by Frank Paynter on December 28, 2007
Diagram by Phillip Lenssen
Theme music by Jonathan Coulton…
Toolan, a former New York bank executive, wore black, tasseled loafers, a dark suit, and a red-striped tie as he walked in shackles from the Police Department to court. Hounded by reporters, he said nothing before, during, or after the hearing.
I’m guessing he lost the job after killing the girlfriend. [UPDATE: Turns out he lost the job after attempting to steal an $80,000 piece of statuary. Just a prank he claimed, but you know how stuffy those banks can be.) None of this speaks directly to the question at hand.
In more recent Massachusetts news, and perhaps a non sequitur, but you know how it is:
Representatives of the company, whose website spotlights prized milk-producing cows named Cindy and Abby, did not return phone messages last night. A recording on the answering machine at the Whittier Farms retail store in West Sutton featured a woman saying, "we are presently closed. We will be addressing the [state] press release shortly. The information to date is inconclusive, and we will address the issues as soon as possible.”
Maybe this bug we have isn’t a cold after all. Maybe it’s listeriosis. Damned organic dairies.
Returning now to the question of that woman, I’ve decided it doesn’t really matter who she is or why she decided to follow me. I think I’ll simply block her. All her Burmese Buddhist tweets creeped me out. “Crept?”
by Frank Paynter on December 28, 2007
What has been clear to thoughtful people in the United States since September 12, 2001 is that when crimes are addressed as warfare, when terrorism is encountered on its own terms, when the desire for vengeance trumps the commitment to justice, when adolescent leaders turn the public arena into some kind of staged action drama, when “…young American military interrogators in Iraq, in places like Mosul, Fallujah and, of course, Abu Ghraib, use 24’s screenplays as a guidebook when trying to figure out the right way to extract information from detainees,” we can destroy our culture, fragment our communities, and fight — at best — to a draw with the shadowy criminals we label “terrorists.” With Benazir’s death, the opportunity for a thoughtful restructuring of the military governance of Pakistan has suffered a huge setback.
With this body blow to democracy in Pakistan, what is clear is that epic struggles lie ahead for its hard-pressed people. Some analysts fear the assassination will spell the end of the tentative movement towards democracy witnessed in recent months. While such an outcome will suit the military establishment as well as the Islamists, it will have dangerously destabilising consequences. As Benazir pointed out movingly in a recent interview, “people are just being butchered and it has to stop, somebody has to find a solution and my solution is, let’s restore democracy.†It was this combination of extraordinary courage and well-reasoned commitment to democracy that made Benazir stand out among Pakistan’s political leaders. Her death illustrates in stark relief the failure of Pervez Musharraf’s regime, which continues to be underwritten by the United States, to confront al-Qaeda- and Taliban-linked religious neoconservatives who are working to obliterate the last traces of democracy in Pakistan
Yet, as can be seen from the following analysis, Benazir was enormously corrupt and her return was seen by many as co-opting the popular movement in Pakistan. Now, her death is freighted with symbolic value and the reaction to it will result, ironically enough, in the imposition of martial law.
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