Handy item to have when we invade Transylvania

**A friend calls this "the strangest item I've ever seen on eBay." Alas, by the time you read this the item was sold - An anti-vampire kit.

Iraqi information minister gets too popular

Friday, April 18, 2003 Posted: 10:02 AM EDT (1402 GMT)
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- People who joined the cult-like following of Iraq's wartime spokesman Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf can now buy a talking doll and hear him say things like "our initial assessment is that they will all die" as often as they want.
CNN.com - And now, the Iraqi information minister talking doll - Apr. 18, 2003

Need a good recipe for fish balls?

Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974

"My feelings -- as usual -- we will slaughter them all!"

** A member of Saddam Hussein's vanquished regime has sprung up as an unlikely hero in cyberspace on a Web site embraced by both supporters and foes of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, We love the Iraqi information minister. Iraqi Minister of Information Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf transfixed news junkies with his audiacious flaunting of reality, including such now-famous declarations as: "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"

The site describes itself as a "coalition effort of bloodthirsty hawks and ineffectual doves" united in their admiration for al-Sahaf and his pronouncements, such as: "I now inform you that you are too far from reality."

The site has become such a hit that it had to be shut down until it could be put on a heftier server. Here's a statement from the Webmaster on April 11, 2203:

Due to overwhelming support for welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com. We will be bringing it back on a brand new web server that will be dedicated to the task of serving this comical view of history's funniest straight man. This should be up in 24 hours from now.

Note: from the webmaster
The site was so popular that 4000 visitors per second showed up from around the world and overwhelmed this shared server for over 8 hours until we turned it off in self defense. It basically put a 100 other businesses out of business for a day. If we had known it was going to be this popular we would have put it on it's own server from the beginning.

What started out as a private joke to be shared by a small group of friends has turned into a hit. Check back in 24 hours or so while the internet routers figure out where the new web server is that replaces this old one. The site consists of lots of bandwidth hogging pictures and animations that you'll love once you see it on its new home server.

Reuters story.

AFTERLIFE TELEGRAM

** Ain't the Internet grand?! Imagine this: for a fee of "just" $5 per word, a group of terminally ill patients will memorize your message and attempt to deliver it to your dearly departed when they have also left this world. Your message, if you so choose, can be dropped off at this Afterlife Telegrams site.

American-Iraqi-Palestinian-Lebanese peace effort

** via Salon.com

Lenny Kravitz has released an anti-war effort titled 'We Want Peace' as a free download, a track he recorded with Iraqi singer Kadim Al Sahir last week in Miami. The song also features Palestinian musician Simon Shaheen on strings and Lebanese artist Jamey Hadded on percussion.

The track is available to download on www.rockthevote.org, an organisation that encourages people to involve themselves with politics.

"I came to Rock the Vote because of its strong stance with young people as defenders of free expression," said Lenny Kravitz. "This song for me is about more than Iraq; It is about our role as people in the world and that we all should cherish freedom and peace."

A growing list of highly-respected stars have now released anti-war tracks, including REM, the Beastie Boys, John Mellencamp and former Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha.

What most Iraq war protesters are missing

** Phillip Jenkins has forecasted a global conflict between two general religious movements, fundamentalism and liberalism (mentioned on this site earlier). Paul Berman is seeing a similar kind of conflict between Islamists who want to return the world to the state it was in in the 7th century, and practically everyone else. This context provides a perspective by which to view the current war in Iraq. Berman believes that while President Bush is doing it all wrong, something needs to be done to dismantle Saddam Hussein's regime. If not successful that country could become the staging area and power base for a reactionary Islamist state. The consequenses could be dire for modernity.

Berman groups Hussein with the thought patterns of Hitler and Stalin, whose intentions to establish a kind of fundamentalist state of their own were eventually thrwarted by armed resistance. Fortunately, Hitler and Stalin were stopped from fulfilling their intentions. This is an important point that he feels anti-war protesters are missing. Suzy Hansen of Salon interviews Berman in this thought-provoking article: Bush is an idiot, but he was right about Saddam