In other German news today, Austria denounced Arnold Schwarzenegger for not granting clemency to Tookie Williams. What, like we should have patted him on the back and given him a Nobel Peace Prize?

A bad man died today, but a number of people whose movies I’ll no longer watch are still whining, “Why, he redeemed himself! He became a good Christian! He wrote children’s books! He became a spokesperson, speaking out against hatred! He doesn’t have hate in his heart! He’s all about Love and Compassion!”

Sorry, but I’ve heard this same spiggot of bullshit from or about the KKK, Adolph Hitler and Charles Manson. So why are so many people of the opinion that Tookie Williams didn’t deserve the Death Penalty?

Never mind that Tookie was one of the founders — more on that later — of the violent Crips street gang. Never mind that he was convicted, by a Jury of his peers, of murdering a 7-11 clerk. Never mind that he was convicted, by a Jury of his peers, of killing a Taiwanese family; yes, even their daughter. Never mind that he was convicted of two counts of robbery. Never mind that he was involved in multiple attacks on other inmates and guards while in prison.

No evidence? Never mind that the murder weapon was one he had purchased, legally, years earlier — or that it was found in his home after the murders. Never mind that Tookie bragged about having done these terrible things to many people — including friends, family, roommates and other Crips members. Never mind that others who were with him during the crimes turned on him, as well.

Never mind that this case has had a full twenty-five years of judicial and investigatory review supporting the fact that he is not only guilty, but deserves to die.

Never mind that this guy was not just a “deluded and confused young African-American” who was “in with a bad crowd;” in fact, Tookie, himself, claims that he was the bad crowd: a founding member of the Crips. Never mind that that being the case, we will probably never know all of the atrocious behaviors, that this man personally ordered or coerced, of many deluded and confused young African-Americans.

No, let’s ignore everything we know about Tookie! Let’s make another movie about him depicting him as a humble father who loved children and never hurt anyone!

In my book, being a Man is all about taking responsibility for your actions, and accepting the consequences thereof. It is that mentality that seperates the Men from the Boys.

Schwarzenegger said it right:

“…without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption.”

I don’t even want to hear why this so-called ‘man’ deserves to be exalted the the status of Nelson Mandela by offering him Nobel Peace Prize.

And if State-Sponsored execution does in fact upset Austria’s sensibilities and remind them of Hitler during World War II, so be it. That’s a sure sign that they need to start denouncing Hitler more and Schwarzenegger less.

After having a but too much of the Holiday Spirit (perhaps several of them) and getting too smashed to drive, it seems that a 31-year-old German Civil Servant added insult to injury by proving that he was also entirely too drunk to dial.

On his drive home from one round after another of alcoholic merriment, a 31-year-old German man was befallen by a blow-out. Rather than change the tyre himself, he decided to keep his hands clean and leave the dirty work to the breakdown services.

 

The jolly civil servant, who had a blood alcohol level seven times that of the legally allowed limit, had his license taken away eight years ago, and was driving a borrowed car, dialled what he believed to be the number of roadside assistance, and blurted out his tiddled tale.

 

“My car is broken and I need you to come and fix it,” he said. “And you’d better be quick because I’m really pretty drunk and I don’t have a licence so it wouldn’t be good if the cops drove past.”

 

It wasn’t until he was done with his inebriated rant that he realised he was not talking to a breakdown service at all, but to none other than the police from whom he was so keen to hide.

 

“He wanted us to come quickly, so we did,” said a police spokesman in the western town of Monheim.

Can you Say, “Dummkopf!” Boy and Girls?

I knew you could.

     By order of Chief US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, Napster is shut down. Earlier this morning, she signed an injunction to shut them down pending the outcome of their trial.

     If you’re not familiar with Napster, or if you think you are, I’ll give you a run-down of what it is. Basically, it’s a program that allows users to download free music. The Music Industry claims that Napster is a “dangerous Internet rival that could short-circuit traditional music sales.”
     Plain and simple, right?

     In a word, No…

     Not only is the whole Napster ordeal reason number one hundred and seventy-eight why people think Metallica suck, there’s also the fact that technically it’s only a Network. More specifically, it’s an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Server not altogether unlike Undernet or DalNet that a lot of Internet users chat on. Instead of using an IRC-client however, there’s a front-end program that allows users to share files. Again, this is not altogether different than the DCC file servers and such available to IRC users, but whereas with standard IRC most people are chatting, the majority of Napster users are transferring files.
     When one logs into Napster, the contents of a shared directory on your hard drive are made public to everyone logged into the server. Running the “Search” inside the program searches a database of all connected users and finds matching filenames in those shared directories and lists them.
     Napster itself, as an entity, doesn’t have any of those files, which are Songs in this case. The users share them between one another.

     Officially, Napster itself claims that they do not promote the use of their product for the illegal transfer of copyrighted or trademarked material. Music information on their website, despite what you’ve heard, is restricted to un-signed artists who opt to self-promote their music.
     It’s been great. Finally, there was a way for un-signed musicians to promote themselves and make a few dollars without being raped by Music Industry thugs who care more about marketability factors and profitability rather than the Art of Music.

     Basically what the Recording Industry Association of America (incorrectly referred to as the “Music Industry”) is attempting to do is overturn many former legal precedents set worldwide so they can make a quick dollar. The case is ludicrous, and could be easily overturned (with damages granted to Napster for their loss of Advertising revenues during the injunction period) if only their Lawyers would do some very basic legal research and urge the Honourable Patel to uphold the verdict of another Judge. No Judge likes to see their verdict overturned, especially by a lesser-experienced, un-impartial Judge with a mindset strictly adverse to the Spirit of Law.

     The defence avenue that comes immediately to mind is BLAHBLAH (insert litigant here) vs. America Online (Internet Service Provider). In each of these cases, it was ruled that a content or service provider cannot be held liable for the actions of its users. Some AOL user had posted a web site in bad taste in their free space on AOL, someone was offended and tried to sue AOL instead of the person who did it.
     In most cases, the content was actually illegal (either defamation, hate-crime related or boasting of illegal behaviour) and violated AOL’s Terms of Service, something that a simple e-mail to tos@aol.com could have taken care of it. But Lawyers, intent on getting as much money as they could rather than using a bit of common sense, saw the need for legal action such that a Precedent could be set and their other Lawyer-buddies could make even more money if the case was actually won.
     (Ian C. Ballon, Esq. comes to mind — the man who attempted to sue a child a few years ago for the use of the domain name “gumby.org” claiming that regardless of whether it was the kid’s nickname, it was a registered trademark of Prema Toy Co. — as he claimed [on his Hong Kong partners’ site] that he lost at least one of these AOL cases. After writing a long volume about the verdict being wrong, he proceeded to draft revisions of standing laws and claimed [again on the Hong Kong site] to have submitted some to the series now dubbed the International Intellectual Property and Trademark Acts. I’m sure he’ll sue me for using his name here, actually. Common Sense and any interpretation of Law says, however, that even though I have, and even though I think he’s a wanking leech and a bottom feeder, he can’t sue me for Libel or Slander as what I have posted is A. truthful by information he or his colleagues have given, B. within the realm of public knowledge, and C. a matter of subjective opinion protected under an inherent right of Freedom of Speech.)

     The bitch of it all is that there is a world-wide Common Sense which says that a manufacturer can’t held liable for damages caused by illicit use or misuse of their product. If your kid goes out tomorrow and overdoses on Viagra (strangely not uncommon), are you going to sue the manufacturer of Viagra? What if he/she shoots him/herself with your shotgun, are you going to sue the gun manufacturer?
     What if your next door neighbour puts up a web page on Ihug claiming you’re a rapist? You’re using the ‘net to read this, so you know that you’d sue the neighbour, and that the provider can’t possibly police everything on their network.
     What if someone with a Hotmail address e-mails you a Trojan that sends someone all of your business records and then deletes them from your machine? Of course, you can’t sue Hotmail. But what if that person started distributing your confidential information to people on auckland.nz.undernet.org? Would you try and get the server shut down?

     Of course not.

     You prosecute the offender, not the means by which they offend. It doesn’t take a barrister’s degree to figure that out.

     But if things keep going the same way in the United States, look out. New Zealand has signed the same laws on Copyrights, Trademarks and Intellectual Property, and it might just turn into a mess here, too.

     But if it should happen that the manufacturer of the Napster program is found liable for the illicit actions of its members and New Zealand follows suit, then I should bloody well be able to sue Clear Telecommunications for that loud, screaming bastard who kept calling me over and over with the wrong number in the middle of the night.

On Tuesday 9 May 2000, Marijuana reform took a knee in the groin from the New Zealand Parliament. In what the media has referred to as a “late session,” an additional tax was imposed in the form of a $1 NZ per pack increase in the cost of cigarettes.

The public outcry is increasing daily. All I’ve heard on Talk Radio for the last three mornings were complaints about the issue. The few callers supporting the measure have had their arguments shot down quite intelligently by others. Some have protested the sheer cost of a pack of cigarettes, stating that pre-tax prices were nearly expensive enough to be unaffordable. However, the few proponents who still hinged onto this assertion were able to expostulate their theories in a manner rationale, as they took the aid and example of 180 Smoke herb vaporizers. Such vapourisers may come at quite a cost, but are quite beneficial in the long run, owing to their long shelf life and minimal cost incurrence. It seems that a good number of non-smokers also protest, speaking vehemently about Government overspending and arguing that the NZ economy has continued to drop against the US dollar despite many other new taxes created in the last year; comparisons to newly imposed gasoline and road taxes were sideline topics.
The paranoia and anger of other callers compares the current Labour government to that of George Orwell’s 1984. Their prophecies range from home grown tobacco and black market cigarettes to complete bans on public smoking and Gestapo-esque raids of pubs that allow it.

Government claims the price increase is due to the burden on the Health Care system caused by smoking. That’s all fine and good, but using Marijuana is also smoking. And since this is an attack on Smoking, it nullifies any hope of Marijuana reform, doesn’t it?
Some say “If marijuana is legalised, they’ll tax the Hell out of it and get their money for Health Care.” This avenue was already discussed. Statements made by MP’s and committees alike have agreed that increasing the street value of Marijuana to compensate will only increase the currently shocking amount of illegal sales by independent growers and dealers.
And of course, repealing a law they’ve just passed would make them lose face in the sight of the public, wouldn’t it?

Me? I’m sitting here enjoying a Dunhill and thinking… This brings the price of cigarettes to roughly the same price as a small bag of wonderfully aromatic Northland Marijuana, which may be purchased at https://www.discountpharms.com/seeds/.

Can’t do it, tho… Damn allergies.

     “Let me get this straight,” I argued with no pun intended. “You’re telling me that if I don’t go to this Sexual Harassment seminar of yours, then you’ll see to it that my employment here will be terminated?”
     “Absolutely!” she affirmed with righteous devotion.
     I sat there completely dumbfounded at the thought. It seemed completely illogical to force me to skip a day of work that desperately needed to be done so I could go to a seminar which has been proven to do nothing more than to decrease productivity because of increased tension between workmates of different sexes. I shook my head, closed my eyes, and out of my mouth came this noise which sounded remarkably like “Are you serious?”
     She keenly stared into my eyes, and with a condescending (translation: bitchy) tone of her own, said “Well, uhhh… Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
     “Look,” I started. I’m not going.” I continued on for a bit, explaining why I felt the way I did, and finally, I just came right out and said it. It was the mother-of-all comment about sexual harassment.

     The big one.

     It was a comment for which there could be no reply, one which guarantees an emotional response to one degree or another. It was the kind of comment that would assuredly evoke either hatred or laughter, depending on who one says it to. As I turned my attention back to my monitor, I knew precisely which response I had evoked from her.

     The silence was broken only by the sound of the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. I faced dead ahead, staring into my monitor, too afraid to turn back around.
     After a few minutes, I mustered enough courage to look back, deciding that it was a good time to go and get lunch. I was shocked to find that she was still standing there, her eyes narrowed to tiny slits, her face the darkest shade of crimson…

     “Oh, shit,” I thought to myself. “She is pissed off!”

     For the next ten minutes, I sat there paralysed with fear, sure that any sudden movement or attempts to leave would incur her wrath. I read through the corporate newsletter. I checked my e-mail and Lotus Notes. I checked my voice mail. To make a long story short (too late), I wasted as much time as I could with the narrow hope that she would go away and I could leave.
     And then it happened… The moment I most dreaded.

     Someone’s hand laid heavy on my shoulder. “Oh, shit,” I thought. “Here it comes!”

     I didn’t want to turn around, afraid that she might be pissed enough to whack me in the face with her clipboard. I tilted my head down, and noticed those finely manicured nails that had been painted the darkest maroon, attached to fingers and hands that could only belong to a woman…
     Cautiously, I swivelled about, wincing at the expected blow, all-the-while hoping that she would remain professional.

     But as I came full about, I was surprised to see my boss standing there quietly. I let out a heavy sigh of relief.

     “Ms. Grant says that you’re excused from Sexual Harassment class,” she mused. “How the Hell did you get out of that? What did you say to her?”
     “I, uhhh,” I stammered. “I thought she was still standing there.”
     “Why?” she asked. “Did you have words?”
     “Oh, well,” I stammered. “Nothing terrible, I’m sure. Why, what did she say?”
     “Just that she didn’t think you needed to be there,” she replied. “Looks like you’re the odd man out
     “Ahhh,” I sighed, relieved. “Lunch time, eh?”
     “Sure,” she smiled. “Where we going?”

     I’ve always had strong feelings about sexual harassment in the workplace. I’ve seen a lot of friends get hurt by it, and I’ve been made to feel quite uncomfortable a few times, myself.
     And then another time, in particular, I was framed for sexual harassment at another place I had been employed years before. A female coworker had insisted that her and I should have sex. After declining her offers on several occasions, she my told my boss (also a female) that I had been groping her in the office, constantly asking her for sex and threatening to get her fired.
     Her claims were found to be false, and not by any court decision, either. One day, as she came into my office to torment me as usual, she didn’t notice that someone was walking in right behind her. My boss, in fact, and saw the young woman walk up behind me and grab hold of my ass with both hands, and whisper “Why don’t you just do me right here in your office?”
     She was fired on the spot.

     But things are rarely that cut and dry.

     Sexual Harassment Seminars put on the workplace only further complicate the whole issue. They tell us that “staring, touching and saying anything so as to make a woman feel uncomfortable in the workplace is sexual harassment.”
     You see, those were the same things Anita Hill complained of Clarence Thomas. Women’s organisations all over the United States went bonkers when Thomas was exonerated.
     But then when President Bill Clinton did the same things, these same women’s groups stood by him, stating that it’s only sexual harassment if a woman’s job is on the line.
     Anita Hill was hero, and Paula Jones is a slut… One has to wonder why…

     These two specific issues illustrate that there are still a lot of grey areas about Sexual Harassment. Things seem to have been turned backwards and upside down since the problem first gained media attention in 1992, and all of this only goes to confused people even more.
     Before Anita Hill gave her testimony, no one really understood what sexual harassment was. Just when we thought we had a clue, the tables turned, the definition changed. At this point, according to the US legal precedent set in Jones v. Clinton, it’s perfectly legal for me to walk up to a female co-worker and say “Hey, hon, how about a hummer?”
     Terrible, isn’t it?

     When people don’t have to worry so much about what they say or do in the workplace, they can be more productive. In the corporations I’ve worked with that have had mandatory Sexual Harassment seminars, the number of complaints have increased sharply after the classes. Some say that this is because with education, people suddenly realise that they’re being harassed.
     While this may be true in a specific case or three, it’s definitely not the Absolute Truth as many would have you believe. It’s worth noting that two of my experiences were in female-dominated offices. No man would dare come into one of them with sex in mind, because he would most assuredly lose some vital portions of his anatomy. In these two places, the seminars did nothing but further somewhat antagonistic attitudes towards the few men in the office. Needless to say, it made doing our jobs a lot hard.. err.. more difficult.

     I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression here. I’m not altogether against Sexual Harassment seminars. On the contrary! I think they should made a part of Leadership Sensitivity Seminars instead of being separate entities. These seminars basically teach employees and management not to be Racist Homophobics and work together as a Team. I think they’re a good thing. Adding Sexual Harassment to that mix tells your employees not to be Racist Homophobic Perverts and work as team. That’s an even better thing.
     But by themselves? It’s hard to fill up an entire hour talking about Sexual Harassment without getting peoples’ backs up. And the fact remains that most of the people teaching these seminars seem to forget that women in the office can be just as bad, or even worse, than the raunchiest of men.

     For me, it all comes down to two things… If everyone were more interested in doing their job instead of standing around the office talking about “the chick with the big tits,” or “the new guy with the great butt,” or looking for new ways to be offended, things would be a whole lot different.

     And the second? Well, it’s like I told Ms. Grant…

     “Look, I realise there are men in this company who think ‘harass’ is two words. I’m not one of them.”