The civilized world waits with baited breath for that miserable old bastard to die.

A team of doctors has arrived at Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah where the ailing Palestinian leader's health has significantly deteriorated.

One cabinet minister, who asked not be identified, told Reuters that Mr Arafat, 75, was "very, very sick".

I'm not an evil person for wanting this. I hope that it happens quickly for him, and with little pain - the way a person would die in say, oh, I dunno, a suicide bombing on a bus or something. It doesn't have to drag out painfully. Besides, I have a short attention span, so the sooner the better.

Let's take a quick look at some of the greatest recent accomplishments of the Palestinian leader.

June 1 2001: Hamas suicide bomber kills 23 young party-goers outside a Tel Aviv beach-front nightclub.

August 9 2001: Eighteen people are killed when a Hamas bomber blows himself up at a pizzeria in central west Jerusalem.

October 17 2001: A PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) unit assassinates Israel's tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi.

27 March 2002: In the Israeli resort of Netanya, a bomber blows himself up at a hotel, killing 28 Israelis celebrating Passover. The attack claimed by the armed wing of Hamas was the deadliest since the beginning of the uprising.

September 9 2003: Two Hamas suicide bombers kill 15 people in attacks in Jerusalem and near Tel Aviv.

October 4 2003: Twenty-one people are killed in a suicide bombing by a female member of Islamic Jihad on a restaurant in Haifa on the eve of the Jewish fast of Yom Kippur.

January 31 2004: Palestinian suicide bomber kills 11 passengers on Jerusalem bus outside Sharon's residence.

February 22 2004: Eight passengers killed in a suicide bombing on a bus in Jerusalem.

March 14 2004: Ten Israelis killed in a twin suicide attack in the southern port of Ashdod in a joint attack by Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

He will be sorely missed - at least by political and war correspondents around the world, who need his antics in order to have a story to file.

It emerged yesterday that Ldg Hand Cranmer, 24, from Edinburgh, has been recognised by the Royal Navy as a Satanist and granted permission to practise ritual on board.

Ldg Hand Cranmer told a Sunday newspaper he realised he was a Satanist nine years ago when he "stumbled across" a copy of the Satanic Bible - written by Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey.

"I then read more and more and came to realise I'd always been a Satanist," he said.

The politically correct crowd, of course, give him full permission to conduct his rituals on board. After all, they must, or other persecuted (I'll leave it up to you to figure out who I mean by that) religions might feel that their rights are being threatened.

Tory former minister, Ann Widdecombe, said: "Satanism is wrong. Obviously the private beliefs of individuals ... are their own affair but I hope it doesn't spread.

"There should be no question whatsoever of allowing Satanist rituals on board any ship in Her Majesty's Royal Navy.

"What they believe and do in their own home is one thing, what they do at work is the business of their employer."

Perhaps someone ought to look into curses he might have put on the Chicoutimi submarine.

Quebec is suffering from a hospital acquired Super Bug called C. difficile. It has already killed more than 200 people, and they can't seem to get it under control. It is like the plague, where people have to be quarantined, health workers are becoming ill, and family cannot visit patients for fear of infection.

Hospitals are being told to "clean up" their buildings, corridors, operating theatres, etc. Staff are being given the reminder to "wash their hands" (if they need to be reminded, they have no business working in a hospital in the first place).

But Pierre Fontaine, a union official at a Montreal hospital, says efforts to stop the spread of the potentially fatal bacteria aren't working.

"In reality, what we do, is to bring bacteria from one room to another. And we do our best for the appearance, it seems to be clean, but in fact, we are not able to struggle against the bacteria," he says.

In the United States, this type of thing doesn't happen as often or as seriously as it does here. Because hospitals are privately funded, they can afford the staff and resources it takes to keep hospitals clean. In a country like the US, where you get what you pay for, a hospital must keep clean or it will face a lawsuit if something like this happened. Just imagine how you would feel if your parent or child went into the hospital for something routine like appendicitis or varicose vein removal, and died because the hallways were crawling with bacteria.

Today my friend and I were talking about the hell her mother went through a few years ago in Montreal. She became tired, lost weight rapidly, and could hardly take 10 steps without collapsing. My own parents both died of cancer, and that is what I feared she had. She was taken to the Lakeshore General Hospital - notorious for its filthy conditions and poorly educated staff - and was given a preliminary diagnosis of breast cancer coupled with a tumor low down on her spine, also thought to be malignant. They scheduled emergency surgery for the following afternoon. The next morning, a doctor specializing in infectious diseases, and stationed at the Montreal General, happened to be visiting a patient in the same room. He looked at Patricia's chart, and gave her a quick exam. He then proceeded to have her urgently removed from the Lakeshore and down to the Montreal General - she did not have cancer, but was suffering from a near fatal liver infection that would have killed her if something had not been done that very day. The Lakeshore would have happily cut her tits off and left her to die. However, they were too late. Although she lived, she is now blind. The infection did so much damage to her liver, and her corneas, that she will never regain her sight, even after laser surgery.

Although they took excellent medical care of her at the Montreal General, she stayed there for more than two weeks without having her hair washed. After two weeks, my friend swiped a bedpan and some shampoo, and used these rudimentary - and thoroughly unhygenic - tools to wash her mother's hair. It was not washed again for the two remaining weeks of her stay.

It doesn't matter how many times nurses wash their hands - if patients are left to stew in their own filth, and spilled urine isn't cleaned from the elevator floor, clean hands and tidy nails will not stave off infection.

Dr. Vivian Loo, author of a study conducted from January to June, said yesterday her findings indicate the virulent strain was also indirectly responsible for 108 deaths in the 10 hospitals in Montreal and Sherbrooke, Que.

Loo found that 7,000 people were infected in eight Quebec hospitals from April 2003 to April 2004. More worrying is that the fatality rate of those infected was six times higher than expected because the superbug has been mutating into a deadlier form.

The Americans can come rushing up here for cheap drugs and flu shots, but if I have so much as a nosebleed, you will find my checkbook and I across the border in Buffalo.

The fundamentalism regime of Iran is planning to stone a 13-year-old girl, Jila, in the city of Marivan in coming days. Jila was raped and impregnated by her brother and Iran's clerical judge has sentenced her to death by stoning. According to the Iranian regime's penal code, stoning is the punishment for those who commit adultery. Jila did not commit adultery; rather she is a victim of rape.

The Liberal Left in Canada probably see the coming of Sharia and stoning as a fun multicultural substitute now that hockey is cancelled for the season.

While Zhila[sic] has been sentenced to stoning, her brother, jailed in Tehran, is to receive only 150 lashes, in accordance with Islamic laws.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Monday that his speech backing President Bush at the Republican Convention in August resulted in a dramatic cold shoulder from his wife Maria Shriver, a member of the very Democratic Kennedy family.

"Well, there was no sex for 14 days," Schwarzenegger told former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta in an on-stage conversation in front of 1,000 people. "Everything comes with side effects."

First time a Kennedy has ever turned down sex with a movie star. Just sayin'.

I was thinking about a little soiree the night of November 2 to watch the election results. If any other like-minded individuals in the Toronto area are interested, drop me a line and we'll organize something.

For now, have a look at this quick bit of fun from the Republican website.

I watched the debate last week, and said at the time that Kerry had made a huge mistake by parading Mary Cheney around because she is gay. People are still talking about it as the straw that might break his back.

Why Cheney's daughter? Kerry knows lots of famous people who believe - as he says Mary Cheney believes - that they were born gay. He could have cited Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank or New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey. Both are public men who could offer personal testimony about the inborn nature of homosexuality.

But that wasn't the point Kerry wanted to make. He was crying Mary to send a message to presumably homophobic Christian voters: Just in case you hadn't heard, the vice president harbors a practicing lesbian in the bosom of his family.

His plan might have seriously backfired.

Since the debate, the Christian right has been rallying to the side of Mary Cheney. Well-known political preachers like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson have gone out of their way to defend her right to privacy. Conservative radio talk shows and Web sites have been flooded with denunciations of Kerry and support for Mary.

...

Mary Cheney may be gay, but it turns out there are worse things. At least she isn't a Democrat.

I have linked to several articles above, but the quotes are from NY Daily News.

That headline is from the BBC website. Like the BBC, when I am stumped for things to write about, I can always count on the Strathclyde region of western Scotland for murders and other atrocities to keep me busy. Like the BBC, I would be sunk without the barbarism of the Glasgow area.

Knife crime in the west of Scotland should be treated as a public health issue like heart disease or cancer, according to a leading doctor.

Last year there were more than 9,000 violent incidents in the Strathclyde area.

While I agree that knife crime in Scotland is serious, I don't agree that it's a health problem. More like a death problem.

"If people realised that your chances of being murdered in Glasgow were twice as high as they are in London then people would hopefully begin to talk about it.

"We hope that the Greater Glasgow NHS, the health board, might consider taking up the issue of violence as a specific targeted area for public health efforts."

I was scared witless living in Glasgow, but I really wouldn't have wanted my (all-too-high) tax pounds, meant to pay for healthcare (such as it was), going to pay for street crime. I paid council tax to staff our police force. I paid National Insurance to fund healthcare. This is just another way for the shifty Scottish government to move money from one fund to another.

UK healthcare is already strapped for cash, and should not be responsible for fighting crime. That's the job of the police, not the doctors. It's one thing to have the NHS pay for Stop-Smoking campaigns, but to have to fund the fight against knife crime is ridiculous.

Okay, so perhaps there weren't weapons that could have been launched on 45 minutes notice, but that doesn't mean Saddam was just a nice guy misunderstood.

US investigators preparing war crimes trials against Saddam Hussein and his deputies have uncovered the bodies of hundreds of Kurdish men, women and children in the first forensic exhumation of a mass grave in Iraq.

The grave site, in Hatra, near the ancient city of Nineveh, is thought to hold the bodies of several thousand Kurds in nine separate trenches. One, named Grave 002, holds the corpses of around 300 women and children.

For nearly a dozen years, the world has been aware of the threat that Saddam posed to humanity, beginning with his own countrymen. The shame should not be on Bush for completing his daddy's war - the sham should be on Clinton for not completing it.

In Grave 002, a narrow trench running downhill into the sand, investigators found some of the most harrowing scenes. One woman had died still holding in her arms her child, aged two. She was shot in the face, the child was shot in the back of the head.

The remains of several foetuses were found among the bodies, the youngest put at between 18 and 20 weeks. "Tiny bones, femurs, thighbones the size of a matchstick," said P Willey, a professor of anthropology from Cal ifornia State University who is in charge of the morgue set up in a tent near the site.

Somehow, the international opinion is to blame the Americans.

Investigators from Europe are not taking part in the excavations because of concerns about the Iraq special tri bunal's decision to use the death penalty in sentencing war crime convicts.

Dozens of grave sites were unearthed in an often chaotic manner immediately after the war last year by relatives of people who had disappeared.

At the time international human rights groups criticised the US military and occupation authorities for failing to oversee proper investigative exhumations. At least 300,000 Iraqis are believed to have been killed under Saddam's regime and at least 40 graves have so far been uncovered.

International human rights courts are criticizing the US? For what - gathering evidence? Don't blame the messenger! If the United States is finding something far more gruesome than WMD's, what is making Europe so huffy? Is it because they will suddenly have to admit that they should have helped take this monster out, instead of leaving it to the US? If the executions of 300 women and children isn't mass destruction, I ask Europe to please define what is.

Joe Fiorito of the Toronto Star writes an excellent piece regarding the alleged theft of $3,500 worth of groceries from Loblaws by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty.

OCAP leaders say they just walked into an upscale downtown Loblaws - they will not say which one - and loaded up some shopping baskets and walked out without paying, and nobody stopped them from doing so.

I had a few words with John Clarke, OCAP's chief theoretician. I asked why he was picking on Loblaws. He said, "I won't say we were hung up on Loblaws, but Galen Weston is one of the wealthiest men in the world, and it seemed appropriate from our point of view." Hmm. I see.

Nice. How very Robin Hood. But although the charming archer was made a hero of fairy tales (the rich and powerful are always evil in fairy tales - it's generally because the writers of these tales are poor and pissed off), he was really nothing but a thief. He stole from the coffers of the rich land owners in order to shell out to the peasants. Sounds like a Liberal to me. If I work hard, accrue property, and get rich, I want to keep it. I worked for that. And if I want to give it to the poor, I will do it of my own free will.

I pointed out to Clarke that Loblaws donates an estimated 50,000 pounds of food a month to Second Harvest, all of which is redistributed to the poor. This did not concern him in the least.

"It's fairly standard in the corporate world to engage in some sort of philanthropy and write off the cost." Now there's a non sequitur if I ever heard one.

I am little older today. Last night I went to bed a spry 27-year-old. I woke up this morning feeling groggy and 28. That's right - it's Birthday Week again. Yesterday my husband turned 28, today it was my turn. So there has been much celebrating.

Since he is a day older than me, I always get the leftover cake. Kinda sad, really. For him, we had a nice lunch out yesterday, followed by movies and popcorn on the couch. For me, brunch (and the aforementioned leftover cake). A quiet weekend, not the usual blowout, but romantic and sweet nonetheless.

We'll have another quiet one next year, and then for our 30th, we fly to Rome, or get our vows renewed in Vegas by Elvis.

I do feel old today. Maybe it's just cause it's Sunday. I've always lived by Johnny Cash saying:

"On a Sunday morning sidewalk
Just wishing Lord that I was stoned
Cause there's something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone

And there ain't nothin' short of dyin'
Half as lonesome as the sound
Of a sleeping city sidewalk
And Sunday mornin' coming down."