His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, King of Scotland Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.



Partly on the basis of his "visions" and erratic behaviour, Idi Amin is often believed to have suffered from syphilis.

Syphilis can be treated with penicillin or other antibiotics. Statistically, oral treatment is dramatically less effective than other treatments, because patients tend not to complete the course. The oldest, and still most effective, method is to inject benzathine penicillin into each buttock (procaine is added to make the pain bearable); the dose must be given half in each buttock because the amount given would be too painful if given in a single injection.

Temple Grandin talks about being autistic. "It's like the search engine Google for images."
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The Bush government manufactures announcements related to terrorism threats in order to control the news cycle and look good. How obvious does it have to get? Outrage is not a strategy.
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In 1999, Microsoft organized a chess game dubbed "Kasparov versus The World," in which the world's leading chess player competed against a majority-rule free-for-all. Kasparov later called the match, "the greatest game in the history of chess." Microsoft chose four chess stars to suggest moves, but only one, Irina Krush, also played the complex political game of engaging forum participants, building credibility and respect over time that swayed voters toward her recommendations.
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Garry Kasparov is an advocate of a novel and fascinating fringe theory of history called the New Chronology.

Fomenko's theory claims that the traditional chronology consists of four overlapping copies of the "true" chronology, shifted back in time by significant intervals (from 300 to 2000 years), with some further revisions. Before the invention of printing, accounts of the same events by different eyewitnesses were sometimes retold several times before being written down, then often went through multiple rounds of translating, copyediting, etc.; names were translated, mispronounced and misspelled to the point where they bore little resemblance to originals. According to Fomenko, this led early chronologists to believe or choose to believe that those accounts described different events and even different countries and time periods.

So history before the printing press is an illusion of echoes from a few events, places, and people. Formenko uses correalations of event types in history texts to determine which differing eras and events were actually the same event. Fascinating and seductive, no?

I'm watching a French film about Patrice Lumumba, some father of the independent Congo nation (now Zaire) or something. Seems like a good dude. Too bad they murdered him after, like, two months. Civil war is complicated!

It might seem like dirt poor Africa, but actually the Congo has immense economic resources.

Age 30, he was a beer salesman. Then he was a political prisoner, and then he was the first Prime Minister. Then his military took over, with funding by the United States, and he became a political prisoner again. And then they killed him. The end.

Devlin says he suspected, but didn't know for sure, that the order to assassinate Lumumba must have come from President Eisenhower himself. In August this year, however, Devlin's suspicion was confirmed officially by Washington - the order had come from the President.

After the murder of the elected Prime Minister and other top officials by Belgian troops, his body was dissolved in acid by top Belgian police. Over fourty years later, Belgium apologized. It's all cold war shit. If you want independence, you're a communist. Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba.

But his ouster, a military commander, ushered in the sort of flambouyance we all crave from African dictators. Finally, pinache! Democracy is a small price to pay.



After changing the name of his country from Congo to Zaire, this lil' despot changed his own name to Mobutu Ses Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wazabanga. This can be translated as the all-powerful warrier who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake. Great name! He then looted the country's treasury and fled to Switzerland. Now THAT's the Africa worth toppling democracies for!

"If a bullet should enter my brain,
let that bullet destroy every closet door."

Harvey Milk was assassinated by Dan White.

"I really lost it that day," White said.

"You can say that again," Falzon answered.

On May 21st a jury found Dan White guilty of manslaughter rather than first degree murder. The resulting violent protest that evening came to be known as the "White Night Riot."

Burial at sea for U.S. Navy Machinist's Mate 3rd Class Nathan Taylor. (Probably a teenage kid. Another view.)