[Note the following was posted at sci.space.policy this morning by sci.space.* moderator George William Herbert]

———————————–)
The People of Ziquikcikty )
(also known as Comet Tempel-1); )
A class, seeking )
certification as such; )
Plaintiffs )
)
v. )
)
Michael A’Hearn, )
Rick Grammier, )
Alphonso Diaz, )
Michael Griffin, )
Karl Rove, )
Andrew Card, )
Richard Cheney, )
George W. Bush, )
Does 1-100, )
and Does 101-600,000, )
1 et Prcpui 50 n 1 abrat 05135, )
Government of Bars and Stripes; )
Defendants ) FILED:
———————————–) Minxktaquicky 43, Year Nipathatep
(July 3, 2005)

STATEMENT OF FACTS

1. The matter before the court regards loss of life and limb, injuries, mental anguish, and property damage suffered on the early morning of Minxktaquicky 43, Year Nipathatep (July 3, 2005) at or around Mong 54 (10:52 PM PST).

2. At or around that time, inhabitants of Ziquikcikty (Comet Tempel-1) were awoken by a large explosion. They awoke to find that a large segment of the surface of Ziquikcity had been destroyed by an unknown agent, leaving a large crater in the surface. Ejected debris caused serious damage to approximately half the surface of Ziquikcity, and minor damage to all remaining areas of the comet.

3. A veritable flood of injured sentients reached medical attention after the explosion, and preliminary estimates are that 105,000 sentients were treated for injuries of some sort. Hospitals report over 2800 cessations of sentient function, with another more than 5,200 sentients undergoing major medial care with significant ongoing risk of cessation of sentient function.

4. Rescue parties are still combing through the debris as of this filing, but 1,952 formerly sentient organisms have been recovered as of this filing, and at least 4,700 remain unaccounted for.

5. Initial estimates of property damage (still preliminary at this time) indicate that in excess of 58,000 residences were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, in excess of 7,500 places of business were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, and at least 125,000 other buldings suffered serious damage including at least a partial lsos of pressure. Purely cosmetic damage estimates have not been received to date, but are expected to be severe.

6. Special scientific teams investigating the source of this damage identified debris from a metallic object in the crater at the point of origin of the damage.

7. Subsequent analysis and recovery included large quantities of Element 29.

8. Smaller fragments recovered included a small, square metal plate bearing inscribed text, and many pieces of a micro-representational disc structure.

9. Upon closer inspection, the small, square metal plate was found to have a manufacturers mark (“1 et Prcpui 50 n 1 abrat 05135”) and unit designation (“D33p 1 mpact”).

10. Upon closer inspection, the fragments of a micro-representational disc contained squiggly lines which are associated with pre-infoputational civilization identification rituals.

11. Upon information and belief, based upon Galactic Registrar data and other sources, we believe that defendant
“1 et Prcpui 50 n 1 abrat 05135”
(hereinafter referred to as “1 ET”) is an organization subservient to the defendant “Government of Bars and Stripes”.

12. Upon information and belief, we believe that defendant 1 ET is engaged in interplanetary warfare. Its electronic presences contain information regarding a number of interplanetary weapons systems and military reconnaissance systems which it has employed in past military campaigns against other planetary bodies within the Sol Solar System and nearby interplanetary space.

13. Upon information and belief, we believe that defendants A’Hearn and Grammier were employed by defendant 1 ET as primary assault managers for the D33p system deployment.

14. Upon information and belief, we believe that defendants Diaz and Griffin are direct supervisors within the Government of Bars and Stripes department charged with waging interplanetary warfare.

15. Upon information and belief, we believe that defendants Rove, Card, Cheney, and Bush are senior war-leaders of the Government of Bars and Stripes.

16. Upon information and belief, we believe that defendants Does 1-100 inclusive are members of the strike team which operated the D33p unit which struck Ziquikcikty.

17. Upon information and belief, we believe that defendants Does 101-600,000 are members of the support units which helped assemble and launch the D33p unit which struck Ziquikcikty.

CLAIMS

18. Claim 1:
Plaintiffs claim that Defendants intentionally launched a Weapon of Mass Destruction, D33p unit “1 mpact”, towards Ziquikcikty, causing loss of life, limb, sentience, and property, in contravention of the Galactic Environmental Modification Convention, and Defendants own collaborative agreement contravening the use of environment altering space objects and weapons.

19. Claim 2:
Plaintiffs claim that Defendants launched unprovoked military action without proper notifications or warnings of threat or exclusion zone.

20. Claim 3:
Plaintiffs claim that Defendants neglegently utilized a Weapon of Mass Destruction in proximity to civilian habitation areas without a valid military target within the targeted area.

21. Claim 4:
Plaintiffs claim that Defendants have caused great mental anguish to the peoples of Ziquikcikty, including loss of sleep, disruption of marital congress, premature larval stage spawning, and subversion of extrapotentiary quik.

22. Claim 5:
Plaintiffs claim that Defendants failed to register D33p unit “1 mpact” properly as an exported weapons system under their own legal system.

23. Plaintiffs reserve the right to file ammended compaint as further iformation becomes available to us.

DEMANDS

24. Plaintiffs demand that Defendants be enjoined from further unprovoked military action against spatial bodies.

25. Plaintiffs demand that suitable disaster aid be made available to the beings of Ziquikcikty.

26. Plaintiffs demand monetary damages for loss of sentience, mental anguish, injury, property damage, and the plague of premature larval stage spawning, in an amount to be determined.

27. Plaintiffs demand urgent assistance with approximately one million prematurely spawned larvae who are rapidly denuding all plant life in the affected areas.

28. Failing the above, Plaintiffs demand the right to send the approximately one million prematurely spawned larvae to the vicintity of defendant 1 ET under the doctorine of transferred headache.

29. Plaintiffs demand all movie, television, internet, mind-send and telesmell broadcast rights to all images resulting from the deployment of D33p unit “1 mpact”, under the doctorine of confiscatus felonuis copyrightus.

30. Plaintiffs demand an Intergalactic War Crimes Tribunal for all Defendants for Great Assault and Grand Felony Littering.

SO MOVED

/s/ #@23842*)*dsfe#@dsf#}#@

Illeb Nivlem, JD
Counsel for the Plaintiffs
Minxktaquicky 43, Year Nipathatep (July 3, 2005)

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I, the undersigned, delivered a true and accurate copy of this document to the defendants by: [check one]
[ ] certified mail
[ ] precision planetary delivery probe
[*] class V mindsend

/s/ {}{{{{{}}}{{}}}
Ima Lifpy

[Copyright 2005 by George William Herbert]

On a less light note, I think (but am not entirely sure–(s)he may be trolling) that this nutcase is serious.

If you’re not familiar with the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast, you’ll merely find this amusing, albeit a little puzzling. If you are, you’ll find it hilarious. (It also helps if you know enough rudimentary Spanish to get the jokes in the song titles.)

I’ve written about how today’s media would report WW II. Now we know how they’d handle an interplanetary invasion:

CARL PHILLIPS: Professor, as we look out and see the Martian mechano-men smashing and blowing up the countryside, I think all America wants to know: why do they hate us?

PROF. PIERSON: That

Apparently this isn’t the first time that Senator Durbin got a little hyperbolic. He’s apparently a serial offender–it’s just that no one noticed before. Iowahawk took some time off from his recent problems to dig up prior examples hitherto unknown:

Mr. Hector Gutierrez
Gutierrez Bros. Landscaping
Arlington, VA

Dear Mr. Gutierrez:

Nothing could have prepared me for the shock that awaited as I exited the front door of my home early Wednesday morning, where I discovered that your lawn crew had cut a swath of environmental destruction across my yard so horrifying that it only can be compared to the Rape of Nanking. I can scarcely bring myself to describe the killing fields that are my North azalea beds and the brutal degradation and torture suffered by the bluegrass around the locust tree by the rear patio.

June 17th, 2005

WASHINGTON (APUPI) Amidst growing outrage at his comparisons of US troops to Pol Pot’s regime, Nazis and Stalin’s gulag, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin backed off from his earlier comments today, reading from a prepared statement outside his office that he hadn’t meant to directly compare the situations:

“I now realize that my comments unjustly slandered many people in southeast Asia and other places who were, like the Democratic Party, simply trying to create a better and more equitable society, and did not intend to compare what they did to the horrific atrocities that were occurring, and continue to occur, in Guantanamo. I wish to deeply apologize to those, like International A.N.S.W.E.R, who properly took umbrage at such an odious equivalence. I hope that this apology will finally lay this issue to rest.”

He refused to take any further questions.

Here’s a great roundup of cartoons.

January 13, 1945

MINNEAPOLIS (Routers) The Roosevelt administration reeled today from new revelations of atrocities at POW camps in America’s heartland, where German and Italian prisoners have been worked to exhaustion, and many have died. Amid rising calls to shut the camps down, the international community has expressed shock at news of the harsh treatment of the Axis prisoners, eliminating any pretense at moral underpinnings for our war efforts in the Pacific and western Europe.

Produce Farms of Death

For many, the lachrymose ordeal begins when the prisoners first arrive, as they are housed in an onion-drying shed on the Odegard Farm in Isanti County. Many deaths have been reported, as some of the new arrivals are killed by the veteran prisoners, perhaps while camp guards simply look the other way.

But if they survive the first few days, new horrors are in store for them. There have been reports that prisoners were forced to toil in the fields for eleven-hour days, from seven in the early morning, until the late evening at 6 PM. For this, they get only three dollars a day, with no overtime pay. Thus, the local farmers are benefiting in this cruel war from what many say is tantamount to slave labor. Harvesting potatoes and onions in the fields of despair, they come back to their harsh camps each evening, in tears from the onion fumes (a chemical weapon precursor), dirt and “tater” skins under their fingernails, their lives an unending slog of spud-infested misery.

An Archipelago Of Torture

There is no relief for the POWs when they return to barracks. In the long hot, muggy summer twilight, the mosquitos come. Dubbed “swamp eagles” by the locals, they feast like locusts on the flesh and blood of the brutalized men who dare to venture out beyond the safety of screens in their rough-hewn cabins.

There have been claims, so far unsubstantiated, that some prisoners have been cruelly tortured, often kept awake at night by camp guards playing the Andrews Sisters on the radio. Some of them were made the butt of jokes, and forced to put womens’ nylons on their heads. One poor wretch was reportedly given repeated wedgies by the camp staff until he would reveal the words to all of the verses of “Lili Marlene.”

But sadly, this goes beyond physical deprivation and hardship–the prisoners’ spirituality has often been attacked as well. In many cases, the Germans’ beliefs have been ridiculed by their unfeeling captors, with one man’s copy of “Mein Kampf” reportedly torn up by an angry prison guard. Some claim that Adolf Hitler’s picture is used as a dart board at some of the camps, in plain view of the prisoners. There have also been failed attempts to deprive them of their own cultural traditions, forcing them to conform to midwestern mores, with severe punishments for using the word “scheisse,” instead of “uff da.”

The situation at the Odegard “Death Farm” isn’t unique–such conditions reputedly apply across many camps throughout the upper midwest. Olivia, Owatonna, Montgomery, all the way out to Algona, Iowa–like Manzanar, the formerly bucolic names may now go down in history as a vast network of brutal work camps that will shame America for the rest of its existence.

Good Hamburgers

The administration, of course, attempts to defend the camps.

The commanding officer claimed that “…the Italian POWs in Princeton drew illustrations, carved wood and played sports, including baseball and soccer. The POWs cooked their own meals and some visitors sampling the POWs

The Israelis have discovered sarcasm.

I guess I need a “Sarcasm” category.

Actually, this part puzzled me a little:

However, she noted that the research threw little light on the popular national stereotypes of the English as highly sarcastic and the Americans as totally lacking in irony.

I recall a survey in the Economist several years ago, when they had a little vignette of a description by a member of the foreign service about a certain African (or some other Third-World) country. He apparently said, with face straight, that the problem with the place was that the people there “lacked a sense of irony.”

But I didn’t know they thought that was the case here, or that such a stereotype exists. I do think that Brits tend to have a more ironic, drier sense of humor (droll, if you will), but that doesn’t mean that we don’t do it in America. If she thinks that Americans aren’t sarcastic, she’s never been to New York. Or Boston.

[An update]

It reminds me of the old joke about the Soviet Russian, the American, the Ethiopian, and an Israeli (don’t ask me why). A reporter runs up to them, and asks, “Excuse me, what ‘s your opinion about the meat shortage?”

The Ethiopian asks “What’s meat”?

The American asks, “What’s a shortage?”

The Russian asks, “What’s an opinion?”

The Israeli asks, “What’s this ‘Excuse me’?”

The Israelis have discovered sarcasm.

I guess I need a “Sarcasm” category.

Actually, this part puzzled me a little:

However, she noted that the research threw little light on the popular national stereotypes of the English as highly sarcastic and the Americans as totally lacking in irony.

I recall a survey in the Economist several years ago, when they had a little vignette of a description by a member of the foreign service about a certain African (or some other Third-World) country. He apparently said, with face straight, that the problem with the place was that the people there “lacked a sense of irony.”

But I didn’t know they thought that was the case here, or that such a stereotype exists. I do think that Brits tend to have a more ironic, drier sense of humor (droll, if you will), but that doesn’t mean that we don’t do it in America. If she thinks that Americans aren’t sarcastic, she’s never been to New York. Or Boston.

[An update]

It reminds me of the old joke about the Soviet Russian, the American, the Ethiopian, and an Israeli (don’t ask me why). A reporter runs up to them, and asks, “Excuse me, what ‘s your opinion about the meat shortage?”

The Ethiopian asks “What’s meat”?

The American asks, “What’s a shortage?”

The Russian asks, “What’s an opinion?”

The Israeli asks, “What’s this ‘Excuse me’?”

The Israelis have discovered sarcasm.

I guess I need a “Sarcasm” category.

Actually, this part puzzled me a little:

However, she noted that the research threw little light on the popular national stereotypes of the English as highly sarcastic and the Americans as totally lacking in irony.

I recall a survey in the Economist several years ago, when they had a little vignette of a description by a member of the foreign service about a certain African (or some other Third-World) country. He apparently said, with face straight, that the problem with the place was that the people there “lacked a sense of irony.”

But I didn’t know they thought that was the case here, or that such a stereotype exists. I do think that Brits tend to have a more ironic, drier sense of humor (droll, if you will), but that doesn’t mean that we don’t do it in America. If she thinks that Americans aren’t sarcastic, she’s never been to New York. Or Boston.

[An update]

It reminds me of the old joke about the Soviet Russian, the American, the Ethiopian, and an Israeli (don’t ask me why). A reporter runs up to them, and asks, “Excuse me, what ‘s your opinion about the meat shortage?”

The Ethiopian asks “What’s meat”?

The American asks, “What’s a shortage?”

The Russian asks, “What’s an opinion?”

The Israeli asks, “What’s this ‘Excuse me’?”

In the midst of all the foofaraw over Newsweek’s eagerness to libel the Bush administration, Iowahawk has a story that’s been much less reported:

The debris-strewn streets of this remote Midwestern hamlet remain under a tense 24-hour curfew tonight, following weekend demonstrations by rock- and figurine-throwing Lutheran farm wives that left over 200 people injured and leveled the Whippy Dip dairy freeze. The rioting appeared to be prompted, in part, by a report in Newsweek magazine claiming military guards at Spirit Lake