Seriously, what’s up with China?

They stuff live eels up each other’s butts.  They make rules about how many children you can have, and then manufacture counterfeit condoms.  They launch internet attacks against Google, which is akin to launching a space attack against the Milky Way.  And now they have gone on a kindergartener-stabbing rampage?:

“A spate of deadly stabbings by knife-wielding attackers at primary schools across China has sparked panic and public anger, and also raised uncomfortable questions for the government on the problem of growing social unrest.

On early Wednesday morning, seven school-children, all thought to be under the age of seven, were brutally hacked to death by an assailant armed with a kitchen-cleaver at a kindergarten in northwest Shaanxi province. Two teachers also died in the attack which left 11 children injured.

Wednesday’s attack was, remarkably, the fifth such attack on school students in the past two weeks. On April 23, eight children were killed in a primary school in Fujian province. The attacker, Zheng Minsheng, was reported to have had a history of mental illness. He was sentenced to death and executed on April 28.

The attacks, however, did not stop. On the day of Mr. Zheng’s execution, a recently laid-off teacher ran amok in southern Guangdong, slashing 18 students with a knife. None died. On April 29, another attack unfolded in Jiangsu province, leaving 28 children injured in a kindergarten. And, the following day, a man attacked a primary school in northeastern Shandong, injuring five students before fatally setting himself on fire.

This unprecedented wave of violence targeting school children has shocked a country where children are almost revered. A popular phrase in Chinese refers to children as ‘little emperors’, denoting how fussed over they are in a land where family planning rules limit parents in most cities to having only one child.”

“Chinese men have been stabbing Kindergarteners lately, which is kinda weird, considering that they call them ‘little emperors’ and are only allowed to have one.”  WHAT?! I don’t even know where to start with you people.  Maybe the kid-stabbers are mentally ill because they were called emperors when they were little, and it CONFUSED them.  Maybe they grew up and weren’t treated like emperors anymore, and that really pissed them off, so they took it out on the new generation.  Maybe they’re pissed because their wives keep getting forced to abort their second and third babies.  Maybe the men have a lot of pent-up energy and aggression because the Chinese government has censored all the porn off the internet.

I’m not really sure what exactly the problem is, but HELLO CHINESE GOVERNMENT! Your people are going APESHIT!  For God’s sake, don’t sit around scratching your beards and wondering why a bunch of random weirdos keep stabbing small children in your country; DO something.  Get a big, China-sized mirror, take a good hard look at yourselves and all your dumbass rules in it, and figure out how to take care of your people!

Is There A Worse Way To Die Than This?

A man in China has died after an eel that was inserted into his rectum ate through his intestines, causing internal bleeding.  The Guanabee article reads:

The 59 year-old chef–whose name has not been disclosed– was taken to a Sischuan hospital with severe anal bleeding, abdominal pain. Local doctors, unable to figure out what was causing the symptoms obtained permission from the family to conduct a laparotomy– a surgical incision into the abdominal wall done to examine the abdominal organs.

Once inside, the doctors found a 50cm long, dead Asian swamp eel stuck in the man’s rectal region. The slithery fish had bit it’s way through the intestine. The man was then taken to the intensive care unit, but died ten days later from internal bleeding and sepsis.

But how did the eel end up in the man’s anus? According to reports, the chef had consumed copious amounts of eel the day before, but doctors couldn’t figure out how a live eel ended up in his rectum. Eventually, his friends confessed to have inserted the live eel up his anus as a joke after the man passed out from drinking heavily.

I mean, I’ve heard of some crazy practical jokes, but this is by FAR the least acceptable of them all.  When your drunk friend passes out, you take a permanent marker and draw a penis on his face.  You don’t stick a live, flesh-eating eel up his butt.

China continues to impress me with its general absurdity and awesomeness.

Halliburton Rape Trial Update

Jamie Leigh Jones

Good news for Jamie Leigh Jones, the KBR/Halliburton employee who was gang-raped in Iraq by a bunch of her co-workers and then locked into a room without water, food or a phone: Halliburton has decided to drop its Supreme Court appeal to ban her from bringing her case to court.

In case you don’t remember the details of the case, when Jones signed her Halliburton employee contract, she neglected to read the small print that required her to settle any civil or criminal case she had against the company through arbitration instead of court.  Settling a gang-rape case through arbitration would be much more favorable to Halliburton than a trial by jury, so Jones brought her case to Congress, who then pushed through a law that withholds government defense contracts from companies who “restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”

Despite the fact that the legislation was signed after the Jones incident, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Jones that her case could be litigated in civil court because the rapes were not related to her employment with Halliburton.  Halliburton initially appealed that decision through the Supreme Court, seeking to block her from bringing her case to trial, but now they have decided to withdraw the appeal to avoid the risk of possibly violating the new legislation.  One small step for Halliburton, one giant leap for everyone who thinks they are sinister assholes.

Jones is set to go to trial in May 2011, which is sure to be terrible for her, but at least justice is going to be served.

Clergy Blames Priest Pedophilia Crisis on ‘Homosexuality’

Cardinal Bertone in his Cardinal Outfit

Wanna hear something funny?  When asked about the recent rash of Priest molestation cases during a news conference in Chile yesterday, the Vatican’s second-in-command, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, made the following comment:

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true. That is the problem.”

I would like to have a word with these “psychologists” and “psychiatrists,” and/or get my hands on a copy of their alleged studies.  Cause I could just as easily attend a news conference and announce to the media that I know a number of “experts” who have demonstrated a relation between the entire Catholic clergy and an insatiable hunger for power + unlimited access to wine and obedient children in robes, and I would be, well, probably much closer to reality than he is.

“Homosexuality” is not a pathological condition, it’s a sexual orientation, quite in the same way that “heterosexuality” (gasp!) is.  Celibacy, on the other hand, is an unnatural, self-imposed denial of one’s natural instincts.  You tell me which condition is more likely to produce a pedophile?

And what can account for the fact that a number of these recent accusations of pedophilia have come from young girls?  In fact, according to an article in the HuffPost yesterday,  “one of the highest-profile pedophiles in the Chilean church victimized young girls, including a teenager who became pregnant.”  The article continues:

“At the time, the archbishop of the capital, Santiago, received multiple complaints about Father Jose Andres Aguirre from families concerned for their daughters. But the priest – known to his parishioners as Father Tato – continued serving at a number of Catholic girls schools in the city.

Later the church sent Aguirre out of Chile twice amid abuse allegations. He was eventually sentenced to 12 years in prison for abusing 10 teenage girls.”

So, wait.  If Father Tato wasn’t gay… then what in God’s name could possibly explain his behavior?! Surely the fact that he made a promise to Jesus never to have sex again couldn’t have had anything to do with it, because Cardinal Bertone said he knows some psychologists who have found no link between celibacy and pedophilia.  You know what?  Socialism.  That’s Father Tato’s problem– he was a socialist.  Probably pro choice too, the commie bastard.  Once we rid the priesthood of liberals and homosexuals, all will be right in the Catholic church again.

Well, I’m relieved.

Black Widows: Russia’s Female Suicide Bombers

Victims of the Moscow Subway Bombings

I’ve read a few different articles about the Moscow subway suicide bombings that killed 38 people yesterday morning, but until I read this Daily Beast article on the subject, I somehow missed the fact that both of those suicide bombers were women.

Apparently, there is a group of female “terrorists” that have been responsible for a number of major bombings around Russia in the past few years.  These women are called “Black Widows” because it is believed that they are seeking vengeance for the murders of their fathers, brothers and husbands during the war in Chechnya.

Daily Beast contributor David Satter writes:

The two Chechen wars, fought in 1994-96 and 1999-2000, were almost unparalleled in their barbarity in the postwar era. The women of Chechnya regularly witnessed the abduction of their husbands, fathers, and brothers, whom Chechen tradition treats as their protectors. In some cases, they were involved in trying to ransom them from Russian custody, an exercise that usually ended with them having to pay to receive a mutilated corpse.The result was a desire for revenge and a break with the Chechen tradition that men do not send women into war. The Black Widows have participated in two-thirds of the almost 40 rebel attacks that have killed about 900 persons in Russia in the last ten years. In the words of the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, they “are trying to force Russians to feel the same pain that they have felt.”

I’ve always had a hard time understanding how anyone could be so angry and full of despair and convicted in his beliefs that he would consider strapping a bomb to himself and blowing up forty people.  But hearing about what these women had to go through makes the situation a little more real for me.  If my husband or male relative was abducted and, after months of fear and desperation, I paid a huge amount of money only to have his mutilated dead body returned to me, I very well might be capable of blowing myself up in a subway at rush hour.

I think, all too often, we are quick to associate suicide bombers with the Middle East and the religion of Islam.  We think that it’s because of their religious teachings–19 virgins awaiting them in heaven!– that teenagers randomly blow themselves up in public squares, or that it’s because of the oppressive culture of the Muslim world that those people don’t mind not being in it anymore.  In reality, these people are in pain.  They have lost parents and siblings in wars and random attacks.  And the longer we keep our armies in Afghanistan and Iraq, occasionally blowing up innocent people and raiding the houses of innocent families in an attempt to catch the bad guys, the more “terrorists” we will continue to create.

Right now, as I’m writing this, MSNBC is doing a segment on whether the Chechnyan suicide bombers are linked to Al Qaeda.  Give me a break, MSNBC. Do you want to send an army over to Russia to take these people out too?  Are they now part of the Axis of Evil?  These people don’t need to be shot or imprisoned.  They need a good team of therapists, a lifetime supply of anti-depressants and a support group.