The week begins with the history-altering assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, killed in an air strike outside a mosque in Gaza City today. Israeli military sources told the BBC the air strike was personally directed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, who denounced Yassin as a "mastermind of Palestinian terror" and a "mass murderer who is among Israel's greatest enemies" before authorizing a direct missile strike on the wheelchair-bound quadriplegic sexagenarian. Prior to being blown to bits, Ahmed Yassin led an excessively dramatic life, spending his youth in Zionist-ruled refugee camps on the Gaza Strip before founding Hamas in 1987. Throughout his political life, Yassin defended the use of suicide bombers while repeatedly pushing for an end to attacks targeting Palestinian and Israeli civilians--a truce consistently rejected by Israel, reports Egyptian news daily Al-Ahram. "Words cannot describe the emotion of anger and hate inside our hearts," said Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh to the Associated Press, as more than 200,000 Palestinians flooded the streets for Yassin's funeral procession and Palestinian militants issued "threats of unprecedented revenge" against Israel and the United States. "All the Muslims of the world will be honored to join in on the retaliation for this crime," read the official Hamas statement. (On Wednesday, Hamas' new leader will recant retaliatory threats against the U.S., specifying that Hamas has no plans to attack American targets, and proving that having a famously vengeful psycho for a president has its benefits.)
TUESDAY, MARCH 23
To some, they're glorious proof of God's existence. To others, they're an unfunny punch line to random horniness. They're kids, and according to today's news reports, they're covered in drugs. First up is the Associated Press story of the 5-year-old boy in Miami, accosted by a cafeteria supervisor at Gratigny Elementary School while sprinkling marijuana over a fellow kindergartner's lasagna. Both the baggie of pot and the tainted lasagna were confiscated, but "the boy is not going to be charged," said school spokesman Mayco Villafana, acknowledging that the unnamed boy "may have thought it was oregano" and specifying that "the focus is on the child's environment and what issues could have led to a child having a bag of marijuana in school." The family of the pot-toting kindergartner is under scrutiny by school police and state child-welfare authorities.
-- Meanwhile in Indianapolis, police are still searching for the parents of a toddler who brought a collection of crack cocaine to his preschool. The Indianapolis Star reports that police were alerted after the 4-year-old brought a baggie of "rocks" worth approximately $7,500 to one of the city's Head Start programs. Child Protective Services has taken the 4-year-old and his two older siblings into custody while police continue looking for the MIA parents.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24
For years, Last Days has pondered the question: What's worse--sexism or racism? Attempts to weigh comparative evils and tangible harm remain inconclusive, but today the Village Voice offered a heartbreaking portrait of those laboring under both, with Thulani Davis' "The Height of Disrespect." Inspired by a study conducted by Philadelphia communications firm Motivational Educational Entertainment surveying 2,000 teens in nine urban areas, Davis' Voice piece weighed the study's troubling results, from repeated reports of promiscuous, "transactional" sex among young adolescents (most of whom began doing it well before official sex ed begins in eighth grade) to that same group's startling HIV statistics. But as Davis writes, "The most telling attitudinal change from the 'movement' years is the absence of any feminism and the open disdain for black women"--even among young black women. As the study's authors put it: "Black females are valued by no one." For glaring evidence, Davis turns to the study's glossary, which includes six commonly used names for males (dog, homeboy, playa, lame, sugar daddy, and payload) and at least 15 for females--every one of them negative: block-bender, woo-wop, flip-flop, skeezer, 'hood rat, ho, trick, freak, bitch, gold digger, hoochie mama, runner, flipper, and shorty. According to the study, some women fight this pervasive devaluation by taking multiple partners (both sexual readiness and pregnancy were cited as viable strategies for keeping a partner) while others ditch men altogether: "Young women have told me they are choosing homosexuality in response to this whole ''hood rat/skeezer' definition that some of the heavier, darker, and less attractive women are getting," said clinical psychologist Dr. Maisha Hamilton-Bennett.
-- Meanwhile in Washington State: This morning, African-American Pastor Jason Martin awoke to the sound of firefighters extinguishing a burning wooden cross on the front lawn of his Arlington, WA home. Arlington police have joined forces with the FBI to investigate the crime, with the investigation focusing on "a dozen teens" suspected of "other racial incidents" in the area, reports the Associated Press. (On Sunday, Pastor Martin will preach forgiveness for the accused teens during a sermon at Marysville's Jesus Is Lord Life Tabernacle.)
THURSDAY, MARCH 25
Nothing diverts the mind from racial injustice like a well-timed slap. So thank God for Richard Simmons, who delivered just such a smack to the face of an unsuspecting heckler in a Phoenix airport. Reuters reports that the high-strung fitness guru was making his way through the airport concourse when a fellow traveler announced, "Look, Richard Simmons! Drop your bags, let's rock to the '50s." Unamused, Simmons approached the jokester--identified as 23-year-old Chris Farney, a 6'1", 255-pound cage fighter--to whom the 5' 7", 155-pound, sixtysomething Simmons announced, "It's not nice to make fun of people with issues," then bitch-slapped.
An uninjured Farney alerted the cops, who cited an "emotional and repentant" Simmons for assault.
-- After 11 years of waiting and two-and-a-half days of deliberation, today a Seattle jury found 49-year-old Florida fisherman Jesus Mezquia guilty of the murder of Seattle musician Mia Zapata. Due to be sentenced next month, Mezquia faces 20 years to life in prison.
FRIDAY, MARCH 26
Today brought a blast of bad news from the Key Peninsula town of Home, WA, where today Ronald Harold Young was arrested by Pierce County authorities who charged the 41-year-old foster father with 30 counts of first-degree child rape, six counts of child molestation, and eight counts of exploitation of a minor. Worse, Pierce County police told the Associated Press that Young's alleged victims include all six of his current foster children, identified only as boys between the ages of 5 and 7. According to Piece County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer, police recovered hundreds of photographs showing Young's six foster children engaged in sex acts with their foster father and posed in sexually explicit positions with each other. The kids have been placed in another foster home, while Ronald Young--who has pleaded not guilty on all counts--is being held in a Tacoma jail in lieu of $2 million bail.
SATURDAY, MARCH 27
Happy birthday to Cabaret actor Michael York (born on this day in 1942), celebrated film director/Golden Girls extra Quentin Tarantino (1963), and human dog whistle/star of Glitter Mariah Carey (1970).
SUNDAY, MARCH 28
Happy death-day to peerless author/suicide Virginia Woolf (dead on this day in 1941), Olympic legend Jesse Owens (1980), and Russian-born color king Marc Chagall (1985).
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