Two Jailed for Eating Rare Tiger

From Oddly Enough on Yahoo!

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has sentenced two farmers to jail terms of up to nine years for eating a rare Manchurian tiger after leaving it to die in a trap, the Beijing Evening News reported Thursday.

A court in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang convicted Zhang Lichen and Gong Weisheng of killing an endangered rare species recently, the paper said.

The two men found the tiger caught in a trap in a mountain last year but did not report it to the authorities. They left the tiger to die and returned six days later to bring the beast home, skin it and eat its meat.

"The two men knew selling a tiger was a crime, but they thought eating a dead tiger's meat did not break the law," the newspaper said.

Congratulations to Michael Moore on the early indications of success of Fahrenheit 911. The film has created gratifying buzz not only among the expected progressive audience, but has even generated a debunking web site according to an Alternet story, Framing Michael Moore.

...To fight back, some unknown person or organization hired the PR firm Russo, Marsh & Rogers of Sacramento, California. The company, which has strong ties to the Republican Party set up a Web site, Move America Forward , to attack Fahrenheit 9/11. The PR flacks who managed the site encouraged:

Americans who found in Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9/11 an attempt to undermine the war on terror, to let movie theater operators know about their objections. Think about it; If you walked into a Wal-Mart store and saw they were selling merchandise that attacked the military, our troops and America's battle against Islamic terrorism, wouldn't you complain to the store manager or write a letter and ask that they not sell that product because it was undermining our national effort?

Others on the right aim to counter Moore with a movie of their own making, Michael Moore Hates America: A Documentary That Tells the Truth about a Great Nation.

That will be a hard sell to anyone who sees Fahrenheit 9/11, which makes clear that Michael Moore loves America. It's the Bush administration he can't stand.

He's got a lot of company.

On the Move America Forward's web site front page, they declare "We are winning the war on terrorism" [emphasis theirs] earning them the nomination for the crackpot comment of the century.

Crackpot kudos also to Ray Bradbury for making a stink about the title and demanding an apology. One hopes this isn't some kind of cover for political objections. I can't wrap my mind around Bradbury as a conservative, but stranger things have happened.

Citizens United, a group run by Bill Clinton critic David Bossie, has filed a complaint before the Federal Election Commission charging that ads for the film constitute political advertising and thus may not be aired in the months before an election or party convention. The FEC has not yet ruled on the matter.

Reviews, though hardly unanimous, are overwhelmingly positive. Box office sales have been brisk, even in this summer blockbuster season. It appears that Fahrenheit 911 has reached critical mass at this point and is not about to be supressed by crackpot censorship at the hands of Republicans who are finally responding to the reality that the Bush re-election campaign is in deep jeopardy over the most disastrous foreign policies ever to damage the stature of our nation. I don't think conservative money is going to pull this one out of the mire.

Congratulations, again, Michael Moore.

I understand why when you're a member of the court, you can't lip off like this, but personally, I think he deserves a medal.

Judge Regrets Comparing Bush to Hitler

By Gail Appleson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals judge on Thursday apologized for comparing the way President Bush took office after the disputed 2000 election to the rise of dictators such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Guido Calabresi, a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, sent a letter to his chief judge expressing "my profound regret" for the comments made at a legal conference in Washington on Saturday.

Calabresi's remarks at an American Constitution Society Conference were reported by the New York Sun on Monday.

(Bush) came to power as a result of the illegitimate acts of a legitimate institution that had the right to put somebody in power. That is what the Supreme Court did in Bush versus Gore. It put somebody in power.

The reason I emphasize that is because that is exactly what happened when Mussolini was put in by the king of Italy.

Calabresi was also quoted as saying:

The king of Italy had the right to put Mussolini in, though he had not won an election, and make him prime minister. That is what happened when Hindenburg put Hitler in.
Calabresi told the lawyers that he was not suggesting for a moment that Bush is Hitler. I want to be clear on that, but it is a situation which is extremely unusual.

On Thursday, Calabresi apologized.

My remarks were extemporaneous and, in hindsight, reasonably could be -- and indeed have been -- understood to do something which I did not intend, that is, take a partisan position,

Calabresi, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, said in a letter given to reporters.

Calabresi's letter was addressed to John Walker Jr., chief judge of the circuit and a cousin to former President George H.W. Bush. [imagine that! ed.]

Reporters were also given a memo Walker sent to other circuit judges informing them of the apology and urging them to be careful about comments that could be construed as political during an election year.

In his letter, Calabresi said he believed judges should not publicly support political candidates and he had intended his comments as academic argument. [which indeed they are, say I ed.]

Calabresi said he was "truly sorry" and that he was apologizing "profusely" for the episode.

where we both saw our sons, my husband Joseph's newly-married namesake with his lovely bride, Michelle and we attended my son's traditional but quirky wedding. Marin and Anna were married at Morrocco's dance studio decked out with diaphanous banners hung from the high ceiling, under a chupah made from Anna's recently departed mother's shawl. The ceremony was beautiful, Anna so lovely in her Erte-like white satin gown and Marin so proud and suave. Friends he's had from second grade to to college showed up, as well as some their parents who were like long lost family to me. Smiling relatives, a wonderful klezmer band (who could also kick booty on 'Honkey Tonk Women') played and the cake was my favorite: carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, done up in three tier glory. Suffice it to say tears (of joy) flowed freely from this new mother-in-law, wearing a delicately formal embroidered chi-pao.

The flight was, as always brutal and long. I love China, but it's so far away. I hear we missed a heat wave in Beijing, no sorrow there.

We did the tony restaurants in Gramercy Park, Katz's Deli in the Lower East Side and everything in between, variously savoring steaks, scotches and bagels. New York was mostly chilly, overcast and rain-ish except for the wedding day, which was a perfect clear sunny day in May, one which is engraved in my heart forever.

from China Daily

Police siren scares chickens to death

A farmer received compensation from local police recently for the death of 35 chickens frightened by the noise of a police wagon's siren in Huxian County, Shaanxi Province, while another 400 who died later were not covered by the compensation, reports Prosecution Daily.

Police were repairing a wagon and sounded a siren only 10 metres away from Tian's chicken farm lat at night last December. Some 35 chickens raised by Tian were killed immediately, being trampled by other chickens in a panic and approximately 400 died later.

Tian asked for 3,600 Yuan (US $433) in compensation but police paid him only 315 Yuan (US $38) for the death of the 35 chickens. They said there was no evidence proving that the later deaths of other chickens were caused by the horn.

A short but fascinating trip to Xi'an, a city steeped in fascinating Chinese history just past and an upcoming short trip back to the states from Beijing will prevent more frequent posting to Crackpot Chronicles until almost the second week in June. We are going to New York to attend and celebrate the joyous occasion my son's wedding. I've enjoyed your readership and marvelled at the international scope of Crackpot Chronicles. It really is a global village and I send my regards to the community of readers far and wide who stop by here from time to time.

Congratulations to filmmaker Michael Moore for winning top honors at the Cannes film festival for his docu-torial Farenheit 911, a scathing indictment of the state of security in America that may have missed the opportunity to predict and prevent the attacks on September 11th, 2001.

It is scathing of Bush, portraying him as out of his depth and keen to further his family’s links to Saudi families made rich from oil - including with the relatives of Osama bin Laden, blamed for the September 11 attacks.
Khaleej Times

Contemplating the signifigance of this slam from the international film community, arguably more influential than any political body on Earth, George W. Bush fell off his bike while enjoying some recreational activity on Saturday.

Bush's rival in this year's presidential election, Democratic candidate John Kerry, who fell off a bicycle and grazed his hand earlier this month, wished the president well after learning of Saturday's spill. "I hope he's OK," said the 60-year-old Massachusetts senator, who took a bike ride in Boston on Saturday but managed to stay upright.

Michael Moore, according to news coverage of the Cannes awards, is planning on having Farenheit 911 screened before the November U.S. presidential elections despite the fact that Disney recently abandoned their distribution arrangements for Farenheit 911

Flatulent Bulldogs Rule as Cannes Top Dogs

Reuters via Yahoo
By Paul Majendie

CANNES, France (Reuters) - A pair of flatulent bulldogs were picked Friday for the top dog award at Cannes.

The "Palm Dog" prize for best canine performance in a film has become a regular feature at the festival, running alongside, albeit at a respectful distance from, the Palme d'Or award.

Judges of the annual spoof award -- five British and French journalists -- finally settled on the bulldogs owned by renowned American wine critic Robert Parker.

The dogs made an explosive appearance in the documentary "Mondovino" that traced the trials and tribulations of vineyards around the world. They made their presence smelt while documentary film-maker Jonathan Nossiter was interviewing Parker, whose wine quality ratings are considered among the most influential in the business.

"Our winners are two flatulent bulldogs called Edgar and Hoover," said jury chairman Toby Rose, a British journalist who instituted the award four years ago.

"It is very amusing as Parker is the world's leading nose. Does it have an effect on the sensitivity of his nostrils one wonders," Rose said. In a vintage year, honorable mention was given to the bulldog who dramatically expires on screen in the Tom Hanks black comedy "The Lady Killers." "There were an enormous amount of dog performances in films at Cannes this year," Rose told Reuters.

But the Mondovino bulldogs won hands down, ably supported by a host of "extras," the family dogs who roamed around the various vineyards Nossiter visited for the film. "They were so natural and the film was given the prize because of its collective canine commitment," said Rose who presented an overjoyed Nossiter the black leather Palm Dog collar with gold lettering.

"Dogs are more than indispensable to the big screen," said Rose who would dearly love to cross the Atlantic with his annual awards. "Roll on the dog Oscars," he said. Rose, the proud owner of a nine-year-old fox terrier called Mutt, said: "Animals do have key roles but are never in a position to be recognized."

Pressed to name the greatest ever canine performance on the silver screen, he said: "Lassie and Rin Tin Tin would be up there as major contenders
"But I would go for the dog in "As Good As It Gets." Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson were up for Oscars. The dog never had a chance." .

Picture: Ellen and Lassie, 1989 (one of the biggest celebrities I've met), photo by Bob Weatherwax

On Mother's Day (??) Blogger delivered a major interface and coding upgrade. This would be a boon to new users or Bloggers who use Blogger templates, but those of us with custom coded templates were in for a bumpy ride.

The new dashboard interface, the talk of the blogosphere, is certainly nifty. There is a certain amount of glitchiness typical of new releases, but these are forgivable. But the comments feature? Give me a break!

I don't mean to be ungrateful, but the long-awaited Comments feature and the underimplemented "conditional tags" necessary to use individual post pages resulted in a two-day hair-puller to configure The LongBow Papers (my husband's blog) to support comments. I managed to hack through it, but I can't say I'm thrilled with the results. It would have been much more reasonable for them to have povided an option to use a separate template for individual posts with comments.

Blogger's "Preview" feature, unfortunately, does not allow clicking through to the individual posts page, so in absence of a real testing environment, one is required to republish the entire blog repeatedly and if it's a large one, this can take almost half an hour per revision because of the volume of individual post pages generated. Assuming the connection doesn't time-out or bug back to the dashboard page in mid-publish, as it did several times.

Now that the Blogger comments are up and working, I am quite irritated to find that a reader who'd like to comment is required to create a Blogger account and profile ("it only takes 3 minutes," the dialog says) if they don't already have one--or comment anonymously. The link provided in the comment when you do log in doesn't give the commentators URL or email, it displays their Blogger Profile, if the account-holder elects to make it public (this doesn't happen by default). I find this inconvenient and invasive. I feel a bit hoodwinked, especially after all that hassle.

I'll stick with my third-party comments add-on. It took only two minutes to add the Haloscan hosted comments and I'll probably eventually pay the small premium to eliminate the unobstrusive ad the free version carries.

Blogger: can you say "Beta Testing"?

The ruling party in India was quite proud of its high tech campaign: sending 4 million e-mail messages and transmitting an automatic voice greeting from the PM, according to the NY Times.

Unfortunately, they overlooked the fact that out of the 180 million households, only 45 million have telephones. Among the 1.05 billion citizens, only 26.1 million have mobile phones and only 659,000 households have computers. In a gaffe resembling Bush the First's embarrassing public ignorance of UPC scanners in supermarkets, distancing him from the majority of the public whose votes he expected, Atal Bihari Vajpayee's high-tech campaign alienated the majority of his perceived constituency.

The message that the Hindu-nationalist-led government had delivered the country to a new era of prosperity was belied by the limited reach of the media to deliver it. That gap - the coexistence of a growing middle class with the growing frustration of those excluded from it - helps explain why Mr. Vajpayee's government has been turned out of office in the biggest upset since 1977...

Those gaps exhibit the quintessential short-sightedness that de-stabilizes leadership and leads to internal regime change. In democratic countries like India, this bloodless coup is imposed by elections. Even non-democracies should take note and take measures; for these nations, regime change or even major policy change is not often as peaceful.

The gap between the government and the populace of the U.S. grows wider as the official prevarications about the wars overseas become evident. Even Republicans don't like being suckered, especially by one of their own. Even Christians despise the savage execution of a Jew broadcast over the internet as an exhibit of contempt for America and all it stands for. Or the idea that, like the attacks of 911, it was inevitable.

The truth is hard to take, but unless those bitter pills are digested, the web of lies that invariably produce disaster accumulate, exponentiate and explode in more disasters. This is a world gone mad, writes my brilliant and prolfic husband in The LongBow Papers. There's hardly any other way to comprehend it. Perhaps it is only out of chaos that order can emerge.

"We're working hard to make your Abu Ghraib Fantasy Camp experience as real as safety and the law will allow."

Wonkette blogged the Abu Ghraib Fantasy Camp. Have a look. Is that twisted? Is that tasteless? Worse yet, think they'll get business? I do.

The cartoon in my previous post is sick and tasteless, I've been considering taking it down. But its not as sick or tasteless as the events to which it refers. Nor is the Abu Ghraib Fantasy Camp, to be fair.

It's hard to keep a sense of humor alive. I know you come here for a little lightness and audacity, irony or satire. So do I.

I'm saddened, angry and horrified. I don't have any great insight to offer today. Sometimes it just sucks and this is one of them.

I also know the bad times pass just like the good. Jesse Jackson says "keep hope alive" and when I don't believe myself, I believe him, Hymietown or no Hymietown.

From The Guardian, the ultimate comment on what the Arab world now thinks of the U.S., as if it weren't bad enough already.


copyright Steve Bell 2004

and read Arab world scorns Bush's TV 'apology'

The Chinese Ministry of Primates has made public an internal report alerting the government of restlessness among monkeys in several key provinces. The document recommends surveillance of monkeys in an unnamed province who are suspected of having separationist tendencies, promoting democracy and engaging in sex parties in obscure chambers of official buildings.

The monkeys have been publicizing unauthorized primate-abuse statements in foreign newspapers such as this from SIFY News (India)

The Year of the Monkey, which began [in January 2004], has brought misery to monkeys in China's zoos, which are forcing the animals to give more performances than usual due to their increasing popularity, state media said Monday.
In a zoo in Wuhan city, capital of Hubei province, a monkey wore away the skin on its rear after repeatedly performing cycling tricks during the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.

The Australian carried this story. The Ministry warned that the peaceful policy will not last if this unpatriotic activity continues.

Chinese farmers battle marauding monkeys
From AFP
May 04, 2004
BAMBOO farmers in east China's Anhui province are mobilising against armies of rhesus monkeys, who attack their fields in a veritable "war of the species," state media said Monday.

The conflict has broken out in Jing county, where rural families living on some of China's most suitable soil for bamboo have seen unusually fierce assaults from roving bands of monkeys this spring, Xinhua news agency said.

The problem for the farmers is that they cannot kill the monkeys, as the government has launched a campaign to protect the rhesus species, now considered "nearly endangered" after decades of hunting.

Instead, they have hired laborers whose only task is to drive the monkeys off the fields by peaceful means, an onerous task as they sometimes come in groups of 200 to 300.

The government hinted at even more creative solutions to China's serious rural unemployment problem if the monkeys continue on "this dangerous course."

Allen Cohen "The Oracle" Publisher and one of the architects of "The Summer Love" of has died. He leaves behind many, including me, whose life, writing and ethics have been informed and inspired by the presence of the vital alternative press that flourished in the 1960's.

The story of a generation and a movement can sometimes be traced through the life of one person. Allen Cohen is one of these people and I’m grateful that he lived in my times. Thanks to Lee Houskeeper for the announcement, which I've somewhat edited here.

Allen Cohen, founder of the rainbow-colored San Francisco Oracle underground newspaper, a wonderful contemporary poet, a joyful, bearded and bemused spirit of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture, has died. Mr. Cohen, 64, died Thursday of liver cancer in Walnut Creek.

He moved from Brooklyn to San Francisco in 1963 after reading the classic beat novel "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. He soon found work at the Psychedelic Shop, a "head shop" in the Haight-Ashbury district. While perhaps under the influence of something he had ingested, he got the idea for a multicolored alternative newspaper.

He founded The San Francisco Oracle with a $500 loan. The first issue came out in September 1966, combining beat poetry and fiction with avant-garde art, articles and interviews. It soon became required reading on the street, even though the dizzying design often made reading a challenge. The same year. Cohen was arrested on obscenity charges for selling a collection of erotic poetry called "The Love Book.” After a widely publicized five-week trial, Mr. Cohen was convicted and fined $50.

The next year, the pages of the Oracle announced to the world the "Gathering of the Tribes” in Golden Gate Park, the first "be-in,” which featured beat regulars Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Gary Snyder.

The Oracle ceased publication in 1968, and Mr. Cohen moved to a commune in Albion, near Mendocino, and lived in a teepee. In 1970, he co-wrote "Childbirth is Ecstasy,” a poetic and photographic account of the natural birth of his son, River. A Chronicle reviewer said it was full of the "beauty of the childbirth experience and the deep enrichment of life for all concerned."

In the 1970s, Mr. Cohen was back in San Francisco, working at the Schlock Shop store on Grant Avenue, writing poetry and putting together a bound collector's edition of the Oracle. In later years, Mr. Cohen conducted slide shows and musical lectures about the 1960s scene in San Francisco, performed at poetry readings in the United States and Europe, organized events that he called "digital be-ins," worked as a substitute public school teacher in Oakland, and operated a day care center with his wife, Ann, in their Walnut Creek home.

In a 1990 interview, Mr. Cohen was asked to describe the influence of the New Age movement. "That movement, along with the anti-war movement, was a renaissance of American culture," he said. "Everything that's happened since -- both reactionary and progressive -- has come out of that movement. The religious fundamentalism of the '70s and '80s was a reaction to the seeming immorality of the hippie movement, and to the religious and spiritual thrust of psychedelics. You had a breakthrough in the awareness of spiritual experience, with people saying, 'God just isn't out there, and he doesn't just talk to the priests.'" Mr. Cohen was the co-editor of "An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind," a poetry anthology dealing with the Sept. 11 attacks. The book won the 2003 PEN National Literary Award.

Wavy Gravy, Chet Helms, Legendary Musicians and Famous Hippies Will Remember Cohen In A Memorial Walk Though The Haight Sunday Morning

Here's a part of one of his recent poems that is particularly resonant today.

On the Liberation of Iraq - Passover 2003
for Albert Nieman


Ali, the boy with no hands,
collateral damage
in a barrage from hell,
wants to commit suicide
if Americans can't replace
the hands they burned into oblivion.


In the birthplace of Abraham
in the Garden of Eden
where writing began
where the first laws
were inscribed into stone
America has sacrificed
libraries and museums of antiquities
while protecting the oil ministry
for its records of oil fields
and the Ministry of the Interior
where the secret police dwelled
with there juicy information on every one.

for the rest, and other nice things about Allen Cohen, go here

Reuters via Yahoo

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Insulting a president can be profitable, a Washington state bag maker has discovered, but it is best if the insult is written in French and tucked away on a tiny laundry label.

Labels on most of the backpacks, messenger and laptop bags made and sold by Tom Bihn have his company's contact information along with washing instructions in English and French along with a message reading: "Nous sommes desoles que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pas vote pour lui."

The translation reads: "We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We did not vote for him."

Tom Bihn, who designs and makes bags for his eponymous company of 10 employees in Port Angeles, a seaside city 60 miles northwest of Seattle, claims he has no idea how the phrase got onto the label, but credits it with doubling bag sales.

"We don't know how it got there," Bihn said in a dead-pan manner.

Asked if the message refers to President Bush or French President Jacques Chirac, Bihn said he had no clue whom the insult referred to.

Yeah, right. read the rest

May 1st, International Workers' Day, commemorates the historic struggle of working people throughout the world, and is recognized in every country except the United States, Canada, and South Africa. This despite the fact that the holiday began in the 1880s in the United States, with the fight for an eight-hour work day. Probably to distance themselves from Communist countries, and also to avoid the connection with a violent labor vs. police riot in Haymarket Square in Chicago following a May Day labor demonstration in 1886, America now celebrates Labor Day in September.

Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying
We'll have freedom, love and health,
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers' Commonwealth

Joe Hill

Today, I find very little, if anything, funny. I don't know whether it is my revulsion about the pictures of American soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners or the sense that there's little right with the world in general.

Ex-manager admits supplying drugs Former Bay City Rollers manager Tam Paton has been fined £200,000 after he admitted supplying cannabis.

I've ever hardly met a manager that didn't help get their clients some weed (but usually it was the other way around). Why this man is singled out and how he came to be accused is beyond me. Is there some big secret about musicians using marijuana? A famous producer once told me that one of the most famous English rockers would not begin a recording session until his drugs were delivered, and the producer made sure that they were. Right? Wrong? I don't care. It's not anyone's business. I started bristling last month when David Crosby was busted in New York. He'd left behind a suitcase when checking out of a hotel and the bellboy who found it turned him in. What was his problem?

Personal drug use, when not connected to injurious crime, should not be a crime in itself. It is victimless. Addiction, even, should not be criminalized. It should be treated, as alcoholism is, like a treatable disease.

Animal rights activists are on my craplist today, as well. Did you hear the one about the animal rights activists in London who are creating problems for (of all things) a Batman shooting at an animal testing lab? link

I'm all for activism, but these Brits are a good example of people with no sense of proportion and too much time on their hands.

Cops Want Spider Gun to Snare Bridge Jumpers
Tue Apr 27, 9:03 AM ET Reuters via Yahoo!

SAN FRANCISCO - Attention Spiderman: California needs you.

The state highway patrol, hoping to avoid another epic traffic jam caused by a suicide jumper on a major bridge, wants inventors to design and build a gun that can capture would-be jumpers in a spider-like web.

"At this point we're about ready to put out a request for a proposal," said California Highway Patrol spokesman Tom Marshall. "And we'll just see if there's some technology that might be usable."

The idea for a suicide spider gun was first floated by a local radio talk-show host following a 13-hour standoff between cops and a blade-wielding man threatening to jump off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, Marshall said.

After hours in traffic, some motorists were so furious that some yelled out for the man to jump.

The April 2 incident cost the highway patrol an estimated $100,000 in overtime and other expenses, Marshall said, not to mention the costs of the delays to the region.

The stand-off came to a close only after the man, exhausted, curled up on the platform and a SWAT team stunned him with a bean-bag gun. He now faces criminal charges.

"Any time you tie up a major artery like the Bay Bridge, you want to look at what could we do that would be different," Marshall said.

...the definition of a gaffe in Washington is somebody who tells the truth but shouldn't have.
Howard Dean

The failures of the Bush administration are not those of foreign intelligence but of a cerebral sort of intelligence.
Adlai E. Stevenson III

nuff sed

from The Australian
From AFP

THE wife of Taiwan's new interior minister was robbed at the weekend, one day after her husband Su Chia-chuan declared an all-out war to battle criminals, officials said Sunday.

Su, who was appointed interior minister earlier this month, launched the campaign Friday to tackle what he described as rampant fraud and extortion. The embarrassment came Saturday when Su's wife Hung Heng-chu, herself a former police officer, parked on a street in the southern Pingtung city.

Two young men on a motorcycle opened a door of Hung's car and grabbed her purse before speeding away. Police said they had managed to track down the duo from fingerprints found at the scene.

High officials in cars have had bad luck lately in Taiwan, hm?

Warmth has settled once again over the Emperor’s City. This is my first spring in Beijing, the Northern Capital in which the heartbeat of the Middle Kingdom exerts the destiny of a great nation. In Beihai park, the trees are in bloom, the pink and white flowers dancing above the yellow forsythia. The lake glimmers. The wind has already taken the brief bloom of the magnolia blossoms. The tender lilacs droop seductively. The magpies have returned to their nests. The willow tufts waft in the air like cotton. One day they looked just like huge round fluffy snowflakes blowing upwards past the balcony window. I’d never seen anything like it and the exotica of China, especially in Beijing, persists unexpectedly through the urban drabness, and awakens my imagination like a sweet kiss. Every day there is something new, something amazing. Spring in Beijing, so precious after a cold bare winter that flexed its own stark splendor, the clarity of nights, the dustings of snow, the students snuggled in colorful warm outerwear, the busy people bundling through the streets on their errands.

It was still wintry when my friend Lisa visited in March and we sat on the low wall outside of the university gate after a day of long walks through chilly hutongs, making our plans for the evening. She talked about the boogie of pedestrian, bicycle and automobile traffic through the wide streets as a throng of urban cyclists snaked past us. She lifted her camera as an old, old man on a tricycle loaded high with boxes passed us. He noticed her, slowed his trusty vehicle and gave her a crinkly smile, radiant and genuine. Instantly our feet stopped hurting, the day was new again and another China moment had found its enduring mark.

I taught my class the expression ‘spring fever’ and suddenly understood those skeptical half-smiles I've seen before, realizing how violent some American idioms seem to them. Before I explained it, they thought it was a disease!

An email from a student, the message titled, “to dear ellen sander,” confided his sudden and overwhelming love for his new girlfriend and insisted I keep his secret.

“What’s the notion of felicity in your mind? May be you can produce thousands of activities that you pursuit the happiness, for example, you and your lover dining out in the most expensive and most luxurious restaurant in Beijing to enjoy the food which I firmly believed that its price does not meet its quality, or you are traveling all around the world by your private jet, or you find a bags of dollars in the street, so you don’t have to work any more. But those are not my meanings to the happiness.

While walking along the street with her, I feel so relax that I am just flying in the sky and my height is higher that any other planes. While going to the second hand bookshop with to buy out of date magazines, I feel that I go shopping in the luxurious store. While playing a practical joke on her, I feel that I win lottery, which has millions of dollars. Yes! It is the felicity that I want to get. Although I am the person who holds a belief that love is temporary, I keep my fingers cross that the relation between us is as long as possible.

Thank you for viewing my feelings.

Ah, the rites of spring.

Yesterday, my husband and I went to Silk Alley to buy wedding gifts for our sons, who are both getting married this spring, back home in the states. It was balmy and the scent of jasmine enveloped us as we left the campus of China Foreign Affairs University where we’ve both been teaching since September. Surrounded by the Chaoyang Central Business District, Silk Alley flows out of a teeming major artery into a compact busy world of its own. The color and hubbub was intoxicating and by now I’m so accustomed to aggressive vendors that I laughed when some ladies actually grabbed my arm, urging me to “have a look.” We bargained so skillfully for our purchases that some of the vendors complimented Joseph on his cleverness. We left with armloads of beautiful silkware (some of it “possibly” silk but more likely rayon). Red silk drawstring pants for me, kimonos for both of us, silk tablecloths, pillow covers and placemats for the soon to be newlyweds back home, some classy shoes and new shades for Joseph and I got a wicked dark red slip scallop-edged with floral trim. The pearl colored white loose-knit sweater probably isn’t the DKNY it is labeled as, but do I care?

We took the immaculate Beijing metro home, it hummed along in its proud modernity and then I marveled at the contradictory enormous line of rush hour ticket buyers lined up for archaic paper tickets as we left the station.

For dinner, at a buffet between the subway stop and the campus, I tried lotus seed sydney soup, a silky sweet broth with those lacy white mushrooms floating above the delicate white lotus peas. I went back for two more small bowls full of the delightful brew. A sign amid the deserts displayed proclaimed “The Flavor is Most Beautiful.” We walked home in the cooling evening among the other pedestrians, our rare day of diversion almost over. I unbagged all our treasures as night settled over the campus and put away our personal purchases. I set aside the wedding gifts anticipating the extended conversations and mass of forms that shipping them overseas would require the next day. My clumsy Chinese would intersect with the impossibly friendly and patient Chinese workers who’d assemble all the packaging and details through the baffling language barrier. All to share our love and the beauty of spring in Beijing with our kids thousands of miles away as their paths enter a momentous transformation--which these gracious Chinese workers would miraculously come to understand.

I was so moved by the tone of this article, Ethics and The Little Red Envelope, tucked away three clicks deep in the "Most Popular" compilation in China Daily's website. Certainly it's not as dramatic as the persecution of the outspoken editor of The Southern Metropolis News in Guangzhou, which is being closely followd by journalism watchdogs worldwide, but it's an authentic voice in the rising tide of Chinese journalists yearning for a freer and less corrupt press.

Ethics and the little red envelope
By Zhu Qi (Shanghai Star)
Updated: 2004-03-24 08:42

I was recently talking to a professor who was organizing an event for the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS). Knowing I used to work in the media sector, Dr Linda G. Sprague asked me an embarrassing question: "Why must we give journalists little envelopes containing 300 yuan?"

I had to say it was the transportation payment. "Isn't it too much?" asked the American. Yes, I admitted, the money was enough for a taxi journey between Shanghai's two airports. But, this was the usual practice.

The conversation took me back to my first solo reporting assignment. I was disturbed at receiving a little envelope but both the event sponsor and my boss told me it was normal procedure. Since the event was nothing but a promotion for a new product, I was tortured about what to write. Finally, as the money was biting me through my pocket, I wrote a short report, going against my judgement as to its newsworthiness. The self-torture gradually phased out as I undertook further reporting of business events.

Read the rest here...

We do it a little differently in the states. Commercial and entertainment press conferences are often sumptuously catered and liquor flows freely. Product related gift packs are distributed. For top-tier reporters there are expense-paid junkets. But nobody gives cash, not even cab fare. And it's so common that nobody talks about it in the press. I'm encouraged that the Shanghai Star published it and China Daily propagated it.

One crackpot doesn't want to pay taxes on his creationist theme park and another sues for licorice addiction.

IRS Probes Creationist Theme Park Operator
AP Via My Yahoo!

PENSACOLA, Fla. - Internal Revenue Service agents are investigating a man who runs a creationist theme park and museum, saying he owes taxes on proceeds of more than $1 million.

IRS agents raided the Pensacola homes and businesses of Kent Hovind, 51. Calling himself "Dr. Dino," Hovind argues against evolution and for a Biblical view of creation in travels around the world, on the Internet, videos and in literature. Agents on Wednesday confiscated computer and paper records of financial activity since 1997, but no charges have been filed against Hovind. He denied wrongdoing Friday.
In a sworn statement to obtain a search warrant, IRS agent Scott Schneider said none of Hovind's enterprises has a business license or tax-exempt status as a nonprofit entity.

Gee, doesn't the bible sort of advocate taxes?

Another crackpot blames a candy maker for the licorice binge that she thinks caused heart disease.

Licorice Addict Sues German Confectioner
Deutsche Welle

German candy manufacturer Haribo has been sued by a woman who blames her addiction to licorice and consequent heart problems on the confectioner, according to a Berlin court announcement. The 48-year-old plaintiff from Berlin is asking for 6,000 ($7,148) in damages from Haribo because she developed heart problems after consuming 400 grams (14 ounces) of the chewy candy every day for four months. She collapsed after her last binge and said she was unable to work for several months. The unnamed woman claims that Haribo failed to warn of the potentially negative effects of excessive consumption of licorice, and in particular glycyrrhizin, an active compound in licorice root.

You might want to go over to Voluntarily In China, Brian Ruckle's weblog and weigh in on whether the Condi Rice cartoon I blogged below and others "like it" are reprehensible because they might be considered racist.

Is Bush Dan Quayle in disguise?

Oddly Enough - Reuters via Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While struggling unsuccessfully this week to think of a single mistake he has made since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush (news - web sites) committed three factual errors about weapons finds in Libya, the White House said on Wednesday.

Bush, long known for his grammatical conundrums and confusing phraseology, told reporters twice during Tuesday's prime-time news conference that 50 tons of mustard gas were discovered at a turkey farm in Libya.

On the second occasion, he was responding to a reporter who asked him to identify the biggest mistake he had made since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people and prompted the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. He could not. But as he searched for an answer, the Republican president reaffirmed his decision to invade Iraq and said weapons of mass destruction may still lie hidden there.

"They could still be there. They could be hidden, like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm," said Bush, referring to Libya's voluntary disclosure of weapons in March.

The next day, the White House said the accurate figure for the Libyan mustard gas was 23.6 metric tons, or 26 short tons, not 50 tons. Moreover, the substance was found at different locations across Libya, not at a turkey farm. And observers did not find mustard gas on the farm at all, but rather unfilled chemical munitions, the White House acknowledged.

click for not much more--if you must be a masochist

My goodness, what a surprise! [ed.]

By Winston Chai
Special to CNET News.com

Printing and imaging giant Canon is trying to come up with a way to avoid taking the bad with the good in China.

Last year, the company's sales in the massive Eastern country grew by 51 percent over 2002--more than double the growth rate in the overall Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan), which itself dwarfs the rate of increase in the United States and Europe, said Fujio Mitarai, president and CEO of Canon.

The country has also become a vital manufacturing hub for Tokyo-based Canon, which has invested $1 billion there to date, setting up eight production plants that pump out everything from printers to office copiers. Mitarai officially opened on Friday the largest of these facilities, a Suzhou-based $100 million factory.

But there's a dark side to the country's vast sales and manufacturing potential: Last year, Canon conducted 363 antipiracy raids with governments around the world--and 243 were in China.

According to Nobuyoshi Tanaka, Canon's general manager for corporate intellectual property, fake Canon goods seized during the operations included machines such as calculators, cameras and photocopiers, along with consumables like inkjet cartridges, laser printer toner and rechargeable batteries

there's more...

Yes, you came to the right place. Crackpot Chronicles has had a face-lift. Same ol' sass, new design.

Mobile Phone Blew Up!

HONG KONG (Reuters via Yahoo)

When Chan Tin-hon's mobile phone went off, it went off with a bang. "I was lining up in a bank," the 22-year-old from Hong Kong told local Cable TV. "When I hung up the phone, it exploded. It was very loud."

The station showed Chan's phone, a Nokia 3310, in tatters and a spokeswoman for the manufacturer said they would investigate.

"We've been in contact with the police. It's confirmed that it was a Nokia phone," the spokeswoman said.

"We're trying to get hold of the product for technical testing. But as we haven't got hold of the product yet, we can't provide further information at the moment," she added.

Last year there were several incidents of Nokia phones exploding or bursting into flames in Europe. Nokia said other manufacturers' batteries, and not its own, were to blame for the incidents.

Consumer groups in Italy and Belgium said an independent laboratory test they commissioned showed two types of Nokia batteries lacked safety valves to prevent overheating and fire in case of a short-circuit, but the company disputed the results.

It was unclear if the phone in Tuesday's incident had been bought from a licensed dealer.

Condoleeza Rice wins the Crackpot of the Week award for testifying that a PDB titled Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US was not enough to go on.

cartoon by Steve Benson. If you click on the link you can click through to see some more of his direct hits. Highly recommended.

And the White House itself, imagine that (a building hesitating, it staggers the imagination) gets the Under-Assistant Crackpot Award for this:

The White House on Friday put off a decision on declassifying the document at the center of the debate — the Aug. 6 briefing, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." But the administration appeared ready to release at least portions of the document publicly in the coming days.

reported by the NY Times.

I do love Yunnan...and oh those naughty Japs, will they ever learn? This caper should go back to Tokyo where it belongs.

This from the Japan Times (the story was also carried by other papers but the pages were blocked when I tried them.

Sushi on naked women causes uproar in Chinese city


Tuesday, April 6, 2004 at 08:00 JST
BEIJING — A Japanese restaurant which served sushi on the body of nearly naked women has caused a storm of controversy in the conservative southwest Chinese city of Kunming.

The Hefengcun Huaishi restaurant launched a promotional "feast on a beauty's body," for local journalists last Friday, hiring two attractive fair-skinned college girls to lie on tables, with sushi and other food and flowers placed on their bare bodies covered with thin gauze.

All you Bushwhackers out there click here for a great show. Takes a bit of time to download (video, audio) but it's well worthwhile. Side-splitting. I'll say no more. Go there, see for yourself.

Long live free speech (speaking at the moment from a country where, though guaranteed by the constitution, it barely exists).

From the Kansas City Star

Texas House candidate, onetime cross-dresser says he won't bow out

BY JAY ROOT Knight Ridder Newspapers

"I don't have a problem with cross-dressing," Giddens said. "There are lots of them. People think J. Edgar Hoover was one of the greatest Americans that ever lived. He was a cross-dresser."

AUSTIN, Texas - (KRT) - His family made a fortune on men's work clothing. But it's Sam Walls' apparent fondness for women's apparel that is dividing the Johnson County Republican Party.

Walls, 64, is in a runoff against Burleson, Texas, real estate broker Rob Orr to succeed conservative icon Arlene Wohlgemuth in the Texas Legislature. As a leading businessman, former Republican Party chairman and major hospital benefactor, Walls seemed the odds-on favorite to win the April 13 contest for House District 58.

But then pictures of Walls in women's clothing - several of which were provided to the "Fort Worth Star-Telegram" - began circulating late last week around Burleson and Cleburne, rival towns on opposite ends of the district.

That's when several Republicans, including the head of the Johnson County Republican Party, confronted Walls and urged him to withdraw.

But Walls dug in his heels.

After rebuffing Republicans who asked him to pull out Monday, he faxed a statement to the Star-Telegram saying he would not give in to "blackmail" from opponents who are trying to use "very old, personal information" to force him out.

"Through intermediaries, my opponent told me to drop out of the campaign or the private information would be released," Walls said. "Now my opponent is using the private information in an attempt to intimate that I am a homosexual, which I am not."

Walls said his family had "dealt with" the issue and he asked for forgiveness.

"I apologize for any embarrassment caused to supporters by my opponent's disclosure of a small part of my personal past," he said.

The conservative businessman, whose father founded the mens' clothing line now produced by Cleburne-based Walls Industries, is expected to address the controversy at a meeting of party executives at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Cleburne.

Endorsed by state Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, and U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, Walls won't be without support at the meeting.

GOP Treasurer Roy Giddens, Jr., an elder statesman in the Johnson County Republican Party, met with Walls last week to discuss the photos and was assured there was nothing more than "cross-dressing" involved.

And as far as Giddens is concerned, wearing earrings, a wig and high-heel shoes does not preclude Walls from becoming an excellent state representative.

"I don't have a problem with cross-dressing," Giddens said. "There are lots of them. People think J. Edgar Hoover was one of the greatest Americans that ever lived. He was a cross-dresser."

believe it or not there's more...read more...

And the summary from Reuters via Yahoo:

DALLAS (Reuters) - What started as a dull runoff race to field a Republican candidate for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives has heated up due to a controversy over cross-dressing.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on Tuesday photographs of candidate Sam Walls dressed in women's clothes have circulated among political leaders in Johnson County, south of Fort Worth. Local Republican leaders confirmed separately that they had seen the photographs of Walls in a wig, dress and high heels.

Walls, who has the endorsement of several leading Republicans in the state and was expected to win the run-off, was not available for comment. He said in comments printed in the Star-Telegram that he will not drop out of the race due to a campaign of blackmail.

"Through intermediaries, my opponent told me to drop out of the campaign or the private information would be released," Walls told the paper. "Now my opponent is using the information in an attempt to intimate that I am a homosexual, which I am not."

Walls, 64, who describes himself as a fervent Baptist, told the paper his family had "dealt with" the issue of his cross-dressing and that he asked for forgiveness.

The opponent in question is Rob Orr and his campaign officials said they have not distributed the photos.

Jeff Judd, the county chairman of the Republican party, said it was too late for Walls to drop out of the April 13 runoff.

"It would have been much better judgment for him not to have run," he said.

From Ananova

Love Each Other and Reproduce

A Czech porn queen has resurrected her campaign to become a Euro MP after saying she owed it to her fans.

Dolly Buster, 34, real name Katja-Nora Bochnickova, pulled out of the elections after refusing to go down a mine shaft to meet miners on the first day of the campaign.

But just three weeks later, she has now resurrected her campaign after saying she owed it to the thousands of disappointed fans who had begged her to change her mind.

"Hundreds of people kept emailing me daily to tell me that I had to come back as they had no-one else to vote for. I couldn't disappoint them," said Buster.

She added: "People have had enough of the insincerity of politicians. I'm number one in what I do and I want the Czech Republic to be number one out of the ten accession countries."

The porn star, who has also written a number of erotic crime novels, is the lead candidate for the Independent Initiative Party that is running her campaign under the slogan Love Each Other and Reproduce.

And this from GQ UK, announcing her candidacy in December.

Porn queen Dolly Buster wants get into politics and become a Euro MP. The Czech-born star, real name Katja-Nora Bochnickova, says she wants to stand as a candidate for the European Parliament. She told Czech TV Nova: "I want to represent the Czech Republic's interests in Brussels." The porn star, who has starred in countless X-rated flicks, has promised that her election campaign will be based on "contact with people". Buster has made millions both as a porn star and a successful crime-novel writer, penning books about a German porn-star-turned-amateur-sleuth heroine named Lilly DeLight. They have been such a success, she has even been inducted into the Association of German Mystery Authors, Das Syndikat.

Go Dolly! Elections haven't been as interesting since retired hooker and sex-worker activist Margo St. James decided to run for Mayor of San Francisco.

Reuters Via Yahoo

China Liquor Aims to Break the Ice in American Bars
Fri Apr 2, 7:53 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing's most popular brand of firewater beloved by taxi drivers and political leaders alike may soon be the liquor of choice at fashionable U.S. bars. Beijing-based Red Star Co had signed a deal with an undisclosed U.S. alcohol sales company to distribute its high-end Diamond Erguotou brand of "baijiu," a high-proof spirit made from sorghum, the China Daily newspaper said Friday.

Company sources revealed the mix and packaging of Diamond Erguotou would be adjusted to accommodate American tastes.

"It may not be too long before Americans get the chance to sample a kind of erguotou that is considered the best of the best by Beijing's more discerning drinkers," the newspaper said.

Lower grades of baijiu are beloved in Beijing and across China for their spicy bite and sweet aftertaste, but there is less domestic demand for smoother, more expensive premium brews. Red Star already exports its product to around 10 countries in Asia and Europe.

While standard-size bottles of base-grade erguotou cost less than a dollar in Beijing, the company plans to price its top-end white bottle Diamond product at $30 in the United States.

The company did not specify when shipments of Diamond Erguotou to the U.S. distributor would begin.

I couldn't even drink baijiu at my own wedding! I can't imagine this rotgut will go over in the states, but stranger things have happened.

I have posted this as a comment on John Kerry's blog site and I repeat it here. I'm for John Kerry. I'm against a continuation of the Bush Administration. This is not about criticizing Kerry, but an aspect of his campaign that I am certain will fall under much more visible and much more effective attack than mine. If you agree, why not mosey over to Kerry's campaign blog and post your own thoughts on this.

Kerry is much too educated and intelligent to really believe that blaming oursourcing for America's sagging economy and scapegoating China in this respect is an authentic linkage that will stand over time. Those are crackpot ideas and as much as I love crackpots, I am loath to see the presumptive Democratic candidate for president framed as one over this issue, which will surely happen, unless he re-evaluates his campaign course.

I just have to say this: It is so counterproductive and shortsighted to blame outsourcing for U.S. economic problems and in particular, to position China as an enemy in this respect. Basic logic, forget basic economics, begs the question: why are jobs outsourced and who is responsible? Jobs are outsourced to keep production expenses down, offer goods and services at lower prices, and bigger profits, all of which, in the end benefit the American economy. This fuels the economies of other nations who eventually become American customers! There are some short term job losses but this cycle is inevitable. I say this not to criticize Kerry, whom I wholeheartedly support, but to beg that the campaign position on this be more enlightened. Yes, create jobs! But villifying outsourcing is a very vulnerable position to take, as there is an upside that outweighs the downside and at the end of the day it is an inevitable element of globalization. I appeal to John Kerry, his advisors and the campaign collateral resource creators to rethink their approach on this situation.

I have another, and more personal objection to this. I am currently living and working in China and am apprehensive about anything that alienates Sino-American relations, which are so important to both nations' future. The most important local "talk show" often expresses concern that politicians are pandering to the sensitivities of unemployed Americans by scapegoating China. This will surely backfire and I appeal to you all, particularly those in the Kerry campaign, to reconsider this issue with more perspective. When the backlash comes from editorials, economists and liberals, it's going to hurt a lot more than what the Bush administration counters with. Let's grow up and look at the whole issue.

"When America was leader of the world, we all studied English," Chae said. "Now that China is rising to the top, the interest is swaying toward the Chinese language."


This appeared yesterday on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. I haven't included a link as it is not published in the online edition.

The World; COLUMN ONE; Who Needs English?; As South Korea's economy grows closer to China's, more people are studying Chinese. For some, the choice is a rejection of the U.S.:[HOME EDITION]
Barbara Demick. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: Mar 29, 2004. pg. A.1
Copyright (c) 2004 Los Angeles Times)

After years of slogging through her English lessons, stumbling over impossible pronunciations and baffling rules of syntax, Chae Chang Eun came up with a better idea.

The 33-year-old science teacher switched to Chinese.

It wasn't that the language was easier. But studying Chinese felt like a homecoming, a return to a culture and way of thinking closer to Chae's roots as a South Korean. Besides, with China on its way to surpassing the United States as South Korea's largest trading partner, she figured its language would be more advantageous in landing a job in the business world.

"When America was leader of the world, we all studied English," Chae said. "Now that China is rising to the top, the interest is swaying toward the Chinese language."

South Korea is known as one of the United States' staunchest allies and is host to 37,000 U.S. troops. But in what might be a sign of things to come, China is the object of infatuation at the moment.

The phenomenon isn't limited to South Korea. Chinese studies are booming throughout Asia. At the largest chain of private language schools in Japan, enrollment in Chinese in 2003 was double that in 2002 -- displacing French as the second most popular language after English.

For most students, the motives are strictly mercenary: They believe that command of Chinese will give them an edge in the job market, and they don't develop much of a corresponding interest in Chinese culture. Some study Chinese -- once scorned by a society intent on Westernizing -- as a conscious gesture of rejection of the United States.

"The interest in Chinese does reflect some antipathy to U.S. hegemony and arrogance," said Suh Jin Young, an international relations professor at Korea University in Seoul.

In the last two years, half a dozen private Chinese schools have opened in downtown Seoul, and posters for new ones are plastered throughout the subway system. In December, prestigious Seoul National University announced that Chinese had replaced English as the most popular major among liberal arts students. The country's largest electronics companies recently started offering free Chinese lessons for their employees in anticipation of expanded operations in China.

Since 2000, the number of South Koreans studying in China has more than doubled. There were 35,000 as of the end of last year, making South Koreans the largest nationality of foreign students in China. Meanwhile, the number taking the entry exam for Chinese universities has increased threefold, according to the Chinese Embassy in Seoul.

At the same time, student visa applications to the United States are down about 10% this year from the year before, a U.S. diplomat said. He attributes it to a combination of tighter security requirements and what he calls "the competing pole from China."

"People are sending their teenagers to China to learn Chinese. They are really crazy about China," said Nam Young Sook, an economist with the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. "After all the hype about English, now everybody wants to learn Chinese."

In Thailand, so many students are taking Chinese that one university official calls it an epidemic of "China fever."

"They see that the future belongs to China," said Prapat Thepcatree, director of Thammasat University's Center for Policy Studies in Bangkok.

Prapat says it is not unlike the rage for learning Japanese in the 1980s, when Japan's economic might was at its zenith, but he believes that anti-American sentiment is also a factor. As a matter of simple practicality, more Chinese tourists are visiting Thailand while Westerners, fearful of terrorism, are staying home. The tilt toward China comes at a time when American policymakers are increasingly fretting about the U.S. image abroad.

"Net favorable sentiment toward China has since caught up with -- and on a number of occasions even surpassed -- that for the U.S.," warned a report on South Korea released this month by the Rand Corp., a Santa Monica-based think tank. "China's growing economic importance to South Korea and its increasingly important role in influencing North Korean behavior could portend more favorable attitudes toward China, possibly even at the expense of the United States."

Scott Snyder, a senior associate with the Asia Foundation think tank in Washington and until recently head of its Seoul office, said the U.S.-declared war against terrorism has alienated Asian allies not because they necessarily oppose it, but because they believe it is not relevant to their concerns.

"The Chinese are coming and essentially saying, 'Let's get rich together,' and that is a more compelling message for Asian partners," Snyder said.

At the moment, with the U.S. and China basking in relatively warm relations, South Koreans do not have to choose between the two. But they may in the future -- and it is not a given that they would side with the United States.

"We have to ask ourselves, at what point does South Korea's economic relationship with China impinge on the U.S. alliance? Can we imagine, for example, that South Korea would vote for a U.S.- introduced human rights resolution condemning China?" Snyder asked.

For South Koreans, the simple fact of the matter is that China is much closer and much bigger than the U.S.

China has been the dominant foreign power for most of Korea's recorded history, and many aspects of Korean language and culture -- from chopsticks to the Confucian family structure -- are derived from China. Although South Koreans have their own alphabet, they often use Chinese characters for names and in newspapers.

Historians say that the close relationship is natural and that the half-century estrangement during the Cold War was the anomaly. China intervened on behalf of the Communist North in the 1950-53 Korean War, and relations with the South were severed. Ties were reestablished in 1992, and since then, the relationship has blossomed.

Last year China surpassed the United States as South Korea's largest export market. Bilateral trade between China and South Korea was worth $63.2 billion last year and is expected to reach $100 billion within the next year or two, according to the Chinese Embassy in Seoul.

Yang Houlon, deputy chief of mission at the embassy, said that China is the biggest importer of South Korean products, the biggest destination for direct foreign investment and the biggest tourist destination, with about 2 million South Koreans visiting annually.

South Koreans, meanwhile, make up the largest population of foreigners in China, many of them students of the language.

"The Chinese economy is growing, so demand for Chinese speakers is increasing. These are simple market rules," Yang said. "Chinese and Koreans share a lot of values. It is easy for us to communicate."

Virtually all of South Korea's top corporations -- Hyundai Motors, LG, Samsung and SK Corp. among them -- have made significant investments in China in the last few years. Tsingtao, just a commuter flight across the Yellow Sea from Seoul, has become a "little Korea" of sorts, with about 4,000 South Korean companies having set up shop.

Companies that a few years back were attracted by the vast reservoir of cheap labor are now setting up research-and- development facilities to take advantage of Chinese technology and to better understand the Chinese consumer market.

"You can pay $100 or $200 per month for a well-educated scientist," economist Nam said.

"Whatever business you're in -- whether you run a small drugstore or build golf courses, you have got to think about doing business with China," said Kim Jo Han, a 57-year-old textile company manager who said he was studying Chinese because of his company's plant in Tsingtao.

Until recently, South Koreans studying Chinese were primarily scholars, not unlike Westerners who learn Greek or Latin. There was little interest in the modern Chinese language.

"People would ask me, 'Why are you teaching Chinese?' Even if I was sitting on a bus reading a book in Chinese, people would give me funny looks," said Song Jae Bok, a teacher at the Koryo Chinese Language Institute.

Eighty percent of the students at the school in downtown Seoul are women, mostly looking for jobs in trading companies. One reason for the boom in private Chinese institutes is that Chinese is not offered in most public schools. English is still the mandatory foreign language. Virtually all South Koreans taking Chinese lessons have also studied English, although many have had difficulty mastering it.

"Somehow students in the Chinese department are not interested in English. It seems they did not like to learn English and they see Chinese as an alternative," said Seo Kyong Ho, associate dean of humanities at Seoul National University and one of the few academics who is fluent in both Chinese and English.

Chinese popular culture has not made dramatic inroads into South Korea -- there are no signs that it will push aside the influence of Hollywood. But South Korean music, soap operas, film and fashion are increasingly popular in China.

Chae, the science teacher, started Chinese lessons four years ago after reading a book predicting the rise of China. It was something of an epiphany, and through the language she started exploring the Chinese roots of Korean culture that had been forgotten in recent years.

"Whereas the American influence is only 50 years old -- since the U.S. military occupation of 1953 -- Chinese culture goes back 5,000 years. We just didn't realize it," Chae said.

She also came to support China with the belief that it could be an important counterbalance to the United States should the Bush administration consider preemptive strikes against North Korea.

"There are a lot of us who feel that by befriending the Chinese we can prevent the outbreak of war on the peninsula," Chae said.

Not all of the students have as positive an attitude toward China. In fact, a few say they need to learn the Chinese language to protect their country from being swallowed by China's rapid economic growth.

"We don't really trust the Chinese," said Kim Min Joo, one of the few students at the Koryo Institute in their 50s. She complained that some of her young classmates are naive when it comes to China.

"A lot of them have rushed into studying Chinese because it's a fad," she said, "without knowing much about China, its history or its system of government."

*

Jinna Park of The Times' Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.

A photo appeared with the caption: SPEAKING SKILLS: A group of students learns beginning Chinese at a private language school in Seoul. With China on its way to surpassing the U.S. as South Korea's largest trading partner, South Koreans are studying the language to gain an edge in the job market.


Credit: Times Staff Writer

Question:

If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion? If you said YES, you just killed Beethoven.

Found this on http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jokes

And this one too:

George W. Bush Anagrams

He grew bogus
Bush ego grew
Where bugs go
Whose bugger?
"W": he bugs Gore
e.g. bug whores?
Ugh! Sewer bog!
Bugger, who's 'e?
Ogre hugs web

This picture, as well as black backgrounds, have been proliferating among blogs originating in China to protest some Chinese blog sites being blocked. China firewalls sites that it considers offensive, and these blogs, which were recently blocked for politically sensitive content, are in pretty good company: The BBC and CBS news websites have been blocked for a long time for Mao-knows-what. I expect this blog blocking, as noted in a squib below, will be temporary, but it's a shame and a canard that its happening now.

Shanghai Eye posted this poem

An ode to modern times
Blogs shall not weary them
Though they shall weary us
The emblem of truth
Is a black and white booth
Like a monitor that has a period every month
On the 31st of March
We will see all the fuss
Has led to a Taiwanese coup
While we were all out on our lunch
Oh to be a fish
A little fish
To swim a long time
Adieu
And slip into the lost and languid
Purple waters
Of the oft talked about
Huangpu river

Walter Greengage (poet) retired Professor of English at FASTAWAYS Englishy [sic] College, Guiyang

The LongBow Papers, my brilliant and prolific husband's blog, has a good background story on this phenomena here, with a lot of links that consolidate the issues as they were breaking. It, like all of the items and commentary he blogs, is a great read. There is ongoing commentary on this situation at Living In China, which aggregates China-relevant blogs and provides editorial comment as well as a vital community enviornment for us Laoweis and the fascinating Chinese netizens who participate. It's a great project, you'll be glad you checked it out.

I'm not putting a black background (the blogosphere's equivalent to a black armband) on Crackpot Chronicles at this time because I've started a redesign which will take a little time, as I'm teaching myself CSS as I go. I'm pretty handy with HTML, but I realize it's time to get with the program. This skin is an out-of-the box Blogger template with very few mods and I liked it until I saw someone else using it. I'd put so much time and care into co-designing, coding and maintaining The LongBow Papers that when Joseph finally managed to get me to start my own blog, I thought I'd better just get it up quickly before I let it slip by again. I'm glad I did, and the ol' Crackpot will have a new face one of these days, just you wait and see.

China Daily March 23

Husband bites off wife's nose after Divorce Request

Upset over his wife seeking a divorce, a savage man in Pingdingshan, Henan province, bit off the woman's nose in court in front of the judge, reports Dahe News. Late last year, Teng Jianhui was taken to court by his wife, who asked for a divorce. To vent his anger, Teng suddenly took out a knife and attempted to stab the woman without success.

His next movement was even more stunning--he caught the woman's nose with his mouth and bit it off and stamped up and down on it. [sic]

The woman was rushed to hospital [sic] immediately, but the man was only arrested on Monday.

This from an article in Beijing Review, March 25th, about New Zealand Professor Michael Donnelly, now teaching in Beijing Normal University in Beijing. This anecdote is from 1996, "when he was in Ya'an City, Sichuan province...a relatively small place, where, at that time, he was not just 'a' foreigner, but the 'only' foreigner.

Once he received a gift from the university where he was teaching at the time--a very old fashioned bicycle that he was determined to lose somehow after accepting it politely. Every time he went downtown he would leave it in some obvious place without a lock, hoping that someone would steel [sic] it. but nobody ever did. One morning he dumped it and walked home. In the afternoon, someone returned it, saying, "This is the foreigner's bike."

Virgin Atlantic clubhouse urinals are the shape of a woman's open mouth

Virgin Atlantic has opened a new clubhouse at JFK airport in New York that features a urinal in the shape of a woman's open mouth.

The clubhouse, which can be used by 150 upper-class passengers at any one time, has been opened at the airport's recently constructed Terminal 4.

The urinals were designed by Bathroom Mania - a cutting edge design company.

The Clubhouse cost more than £2m to build and is equipped with the very latest wireless technology. Booths offering i-Mac computers are positioned in the Business Area and are individually screened for ultimate privacy.

There is also a waterfall flowing into a 90ft-long pool, a bar, playstations and a 42" plasma television screen.

Pictures at Ananova

This from Ananova:

Ozzy gets his martian orders

Ozzy Osbourne has been named the nation's favourite ambassador to welcome aliens to planet Earth.

The bat-eating rocker pipped Tony Blair and TV presenters Ant and Dec as the face people want to represent them to alien life.

Read the rest, if you dare. Fair warning: there's a picture of Ozzy on the page.

The Republican National Committee announced today that
the Republican Party is changing its emblem from an elephant to a
condom. Governor Marc Racicot, RNC chairman, explained that the
condom more clearly reflects the party's stance today because a condom
accepts inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,
protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while
you're getting screwed.

Sent to me by my friend Keith Shiraki in Los Angeles.

Quote of the day:

One wonders how long this dike holding back free flow of information in China will last..it's unfortunate that the government has a whole lot of thumbs.

This from a foreigner-in-China blog (one of many) reacting to several Chinese free blogging sites having been shut down recently. You can read the entire post at zero dispance, which has some links to follow for background. I expect this story to get a lot of bandwidth in days to come.

A deeper and wider-ranging commentary, Bad News Rising, with an entire nexus of background links is on The LongBow Papers.

Guangdong opens sex culture museum



Hot off the press:

BEIJING, March 13 (Xinhuanet) -- A museum of traditional Chinese sex culture opened to the public earlier this week in Danxiashan geopark in Shaoguan, Guangdong.

The museum, costing 15 million yuan (US$1.8 million), was built by a Dongguan school on an area of 2,400 square meters. It has six exhibition halls showing sex culture in 12 subjects, including sex and worship, sex and the arts and sex connotations in Chinese characters.

Officials said the museum was a combination of nature and culture, featuring documents and materials dealing with natural human desires, including the history and behavior of sex.

Danxiashan is famous for steep cliffs and rocks with bizarre shapes. Many of the rocks resemble human sex organs, but are much larger, and the Danxiashan tourism zone is often called the “garden of natural nudity.”

Image from El Pais

This little ditty has been circulating on the net. Sung to the tune of "The Beverly Hillbillies," it captures the sentiment and satirical angst of the "beat Bush" league energized by the Democratic campaign. Sing away.....

Come and listen to my story 'bout a boy named Bush.
His IQ was zero, and his head was up his tush.
He drank like a fish while he was drivin' all about.
But that didn't matter 'cuz his daddy bailed him out.

DUI, that is. Criminal record. Cover-up.

Well, the first thing you know, little Georgie goes to Yale.
He can't spell his name but they never let him fail.
He spends all his time hangin' out with student folk.
And that's when he learns how to snort a line of coke.

Blow, that is. White gold. Nose candy.

The next thing you know there's a war in Vietnam.
Kin folks say, "George, stay at home with Mom."
Let the common people get maimed and scarred.
We'll buy you a spot in the Texas Air Guard.

Cushy, that is. Country clubs. Nose candy.

Twenty years later George gets a little bored.
He trades in the booze, says that Jesus is his Lord.
He said, "Now the White House is the place I wanna be."
So he called his daddy's friends and they called the GOP.

Gun owners, that is. Falwell. Jesse Helms.

Come November 7, the election ran late.
Kin folks said "Jeb, give the boy your state!
"Don't let those colored folks get into the polls."
So they put up barricades so they couldn't punch their holes.

Chads, that is. Duval County. Miami-Dade.

Before the votes were counted, five Supremes stepped in.
Told all the voters "Hey, we want George to win."
"Stop counting votes!" was their solemn invocation.
And that's how George finally got his coronation.

Rigged, that is. Illegitimate. No moral authority.

Y'all go vote now. Ya hear?

Submitted in the spirit of regime change in America, that good old upstart Yankee gusto and crackpot fun.

Single Chinese Panda on Prowl for Mate
Wed Mar 3,11:20 PM ET

BEIJING - Wanted: single, full-figured black-and-white female for committed relationship. Must be willing to tolerate her man's heavy eating and deep sleeping. Call the Shanghai Wild Animal Park.

Guo Qing, the park's only fertile giant panda, is on the prowl for a mate.

Park officials announced Wednesday that 5-year-old Guo Qing, one of three giant pandas living at the zoo, is "looking for a lifelong partner," according to the official Xinhua News Agency. It said he is in his "reproductive prime."

The other two pandas, Chuan Chuan and Jia Si, are more than 20 years old and probably past any chance of reproducing, Xinhua said.

The 265-pound Guo Qing was born in China's famed Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in 1999. He moved to Shanghai when he was 2.

"He eats a lot, sleeps well and is so energetic that he often climbs to the top of a tree about 15 feet tall," said Sun Qiang, who has cared for Guo Qing since he moved to Shanghai. "We will take good care of the couple and try our best to make the female feel at home here."

The giant panda is one of the most endangered species in the world. Only about 1,000 are estimated to live in the wild, all in China. More than 140 live in captivity around the world.

A teenager jumped out of a second floor window during a science lesson at a Miami school after making a bet with his teacher. Police say the 17-year-old pupil at Miami Beach High bet $20 that he could make the leap, in the middle of a class on evolution, without injuring himself.

The Miami Herald reports the teenager won the wager after landing on a patch of dirt. His teacher Yrvan Tassy Jr has been moved to a non-teaching job while police and school officials carry out an investigation into the incident.

It's thought the pupil had been trying to prove a point about evolution when he decided to jump out of the window. A police report said he landed on his feet and returned to the classroom. School principal Jeanne Friedman told the Miami Herald: "We know for a fact that the student jumped out of the window. Now we're gathering information and substantiating the rest of the story. I'm just thankful the student wasn't hurt."

Miami-Dade schools police spokesman, Carlos Fernandez, added: "The teacher is being investigated by our detectives and there is also a personnel investigation. It doesn't look like this is something where there would be criminal charges. It looks like it will be administrative.''

Hmm...I wonder if any other teacher in China is thinking the same thing I am...

Until I clicked through. Danwei.Org, a frequently updated website about media and advertising in the People's Republic of China had an item on Usama Bin Laden Cologne advertised in the Pakistan's Daily Times. I thought oh great, more crackpot sense of humor. But when I clicked through, there the fark it was! You tell me if you think it's legit or not.

Try it, you'll like it. Will wonders never cease. I'd put it up here, but you should really pay Danwei a visit, there's lots of amusing and interesting stuff on there, like the best and worst Chinese front page of the day.

This article in the New York Times is an interesting and balanced analysis of China's economic growth vis a vis trade with the USA. Sorting out the big picture of China's economic ascension can be puzzling whether you are on either shore or bystanding on another continent. It's the horserace of the century and attracting substantial bets.

A cliche like "China is like Japan in the 80's" makes good lead copy, but fortunately the author, an award winning second generation journalist, drops the cliche-mongering right there and goes on to point out the more revealing differences between Japan in the 80's and China in the 21st century. And what I like even more about this article is that it does the inevitable wage quoting of how a factory worker earns $60 to $75 a month but goes on to explain that while this is a pittance by American standards it is a substantial take where these girls come from, a 30 hour bus ride away in rural China, where hundreds of million live on less than $1 a day.

March 2, 2004
Like Japan in the 1980's, China Poses Big Economic Challenge
By KEITH BRADSHER

GUANGZHOU, China
When Japan, at the zenith of its economic power, built a huge airport in Osaka in the late 1980's, the project set off a seven-year trade battle with the United States over the nearly complete exclusion of non-Japanese companies.

China, Japan's heir as Asia's rising star, is now completing its own immense airport here in Guangzhou, the sprawling commercial center of affluent southeastern China. But the Chinese are going about it differently.

American companies designed the terminal, its air-conditioning system and the flight information system. A German company engineered the vaulting roof, a Danish company produced the boarding gates and a Dutch company, the check-in counters. Chinese women in broad-brimmed straw hats wield shovels and brooms across from a modern air-traffic-control tower designed by a company from Singapore.

The welcome that China is offering to multinational companies and foreign investment has left many Western business executives, so critical of a closed Japan more than a decade ago, enthusiastically embracing China, its cheap work force and its huge markets.

But that same openness --combined with China's vast population of 1.3 billion and military muscle-- makes it an even greater long-term economic challenge to the United States than Japan seemed to be in the 1980's, according to a growing number of executives, economists and officials.

While China's economy is still one-third the size of Japan's, the potential size of its market has made it very hard for companies to say no when Beijing officials demand that they build factories, transfer the latest technology or adopt Chinese technical standards.

Japan has effectively run out of low-wage workers for its industries, and quickly brought much of its economy up to and in some cases beyond Western technological standards. China still has vast reserves of cheap labor in inland areas and many backward industries that can grow swiftly as they copy Western and Japanese methods.

"China could do what Japan did, as a very fast follower, but China could do it bigger and better and for a longer period of time," said Steven Weber, an Asia scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. "It's not necessarily as vulnerable as Japan was."

But while Japan's danger to other economies over the last decade has taken the numbing forms of economic stagnation and political lassitude, China poses the risk of fast, sharp shocks.

I heartily recommend you read the rest. To tempt you further, here's his intriguing conclusion.

For a parable about economies that seem as if they could prosper indefinitely, Chinese officials need look no farther than to Osaka and its huge airport. The artificial island on which it was built a few years ago is slowly sinking in the Pacific.

Of course, this trope begs the rejoinder, "Yes, but China is no island."

And it's priceless.

BEIJING, March 1 (Xinhuanet)
　
The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003
By the Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China
March 1, 2004

On February 25, 2004, the State Department of the United Statesreleased its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2003 (called the "reports" thereafter). As in previous years, the UnitedStates once again acted as "the world human rights police" by distorting and censuring in the "reports" the human rights situations in more than 190 countries and regions across the world,including China. And just as usual, the United States once again "omitted" its own long-standing malpractice and problems of human rights in the "reports". Therefore, we have to, as before, help the United States keep its human rights record.

Read the full text of it on Xinhuanet

Thanks, China, for your help.

BEIJING, March 1 (Xinhuanet) --

The number of centenarians in China has climbed past 17,000, hitting a record high, according to the latest statistics from the China National Committee on Aging.

By the end of 2003, Beijing alone boasted 257 centenarians, with three of them over 110 years old, a rise of 57 over 2001.

Female centenarians account for approximately 80 percent of thetotal, including three aged over 110 years old, and 209 centenarians, or 84.6 percent of the total, are urbanites, according to statistics of the Beijing Municipal Committee on Aging.

Read more at Xinhuanet

These posts are submitted for your consideration with the perspective of frontrunner for the Democratic Party's candidate for president John Kerry's recent accusation that the Bush administration is "alienating all of our [political] friends" and "fueling anti-American sentiment around the world."

While Human Rights monitoring and support is a critically necessary endeavor in a globalized environment, the arrogance with which America dishes out censure while the current administration's foreign policies are backfiring like a hookered Harley, demonstrates the escalating lack of perspective and the obnoxious centricity that accounts for the alarming deterioration of American credibility on the world stage. China's response to these annual "reports" has typically been public indignation. This year,they're responding in kind, with a resounding me-too from Korea.

The major problem with the continuing American finger-pointing is not that reports about human rights abuses in themselves are unfair. It is imperative that human rights abuses, oversights and policies be challenged and this is not to say that China's record is exemplary in this respect. The problem is that America no longer has the moral authority to pontificate and continuing to do so allows those painfully real issues of human trafficking, the suppression of political dissent, abysmal and unsafe working conditions for miners and factory workers in developing countries to now take a back seat to nationalistic brickbatting. Grow up, America.

BEIJING, Feb. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- The Information Office of the State Council of China will issue on March 1 the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003, in response to the latter's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices which contains "many distortions and denouncements".

It will be the fifth Chinese report in response to the annual country reports on human rights by the United States in five consecutive years.

An official with the Information Office said that the United States, as in previous years, acted again as "the world human rights police" by distorting the human right situations in more than 190 countries and regions across the world, including China.

However, the reports released by the US State Department on Wednesday once again "omitted" its own long-standing malpractice and problems of human rights. "Therefore, we have to, as before, help the United States keep its own human rights record," said the official.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2003, based on a great many facts, is divided into six parts, covering life, freedom and personal safety of the US citizens, their political rights and freedom, the living conditions of workers, racial discrimination, conditions for women, children and elderly people,as well as its infringements on the human rights of other nations.

Korea Seconds the Motion

With even stronger language, Korea, whom we now want to convince to disarm their nuclear program, responds in kind. Having followed the six-party talks last week in Beijing on this issue, I have to wonder if they would have been more productive without the presence and and arguable influence of the United States.

DPRK refutes US accusation of human rights abuses

PYONGYANG, Feb. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Saturday condemned the United States' accusation of human rights abuses by the DPRK.

Answering a question by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry described the US accusation in its annual report on human rights released Wednesday as "disgusting behavior."

"The US is an international strangler of democracy and the world's worst violator of human rights," the spokesman said.

The United States is "committing genocide in various parts of the world, imposing economic sanctions and war upon those countries and advancing along the road of independence by fabricating false intelligence and hatching plots," the spokesman added.

The spokesman said the US intention was to tar the DPRK's image by adding the human rights issue to the nuclear issue and isolate the DPRK.

Further highlighting the issue of the rights of those humans with minority sexual and gender orientation, Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency published this story of a Chinese transexual who, after having been denied the opportunity to compete for a place in the Miss World competition, in a display of hospitality and compassion, she-he was invited to attend to "display her beauty."

BEIJING, Feb. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Chen Lili, China's first man-turned-woman, was denied entry into the 54th Miss World Competition Thursday by the headquarters of the contest in China.

The headquarters in China declined Chen's application, saying that she is a transsexual and does not qualify for the contest, reported Friday's Jiangnan Times, a local newspaper run by the People's Daily east China branch, in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province.

The required female gender referred to natural gender, but Chen has undergone a sex change operation, said the headquarters in a fax to the organizing committee in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The Miss World Competition had never received such an application in its history of 53 years, said sources with the headquarters.

Officials in charge of the contest in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, also announced the news at Thursday's press conference. They said contestants should be natural-born women. Chen's face and breasts have been remodeled, and it would be unfair to other contestants if she participated in the competition.

The 1.73-meter-tall Lili, formerly named Chen Yongjun, is now as tunning fashion model in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.

Chen underwent the sex change operation last November in east China's Shandong Province, and picked up the new name "Lili", inspired by a popular Korean male-turned-female star "Harisu", or in Chinese "He Lixiu", who is her idol.

Lili got her new ID card as a woman on Feb. 11 from the Nanchong police authority in Sichuan.

"She has got a female ID card, which means she has the rights and obligations of a woman as regulated by law. It is unfair to deny her application," said Cao Gang, deputy director of the organizing committee of the Shanghai International Fashion Model Contest.

As consolation, the organizing committee of Miss World Competition in Sichuan has invited Lili to show up on the first day of the contest on March 6 to display her beauty to the public.

The crackpot French have come up with a doozie

From the New York Times

(Since NYT articles are archived after a week, I reproduce the following here in its entirety, without permission. So sue me.)

PARIS JOURNAL

A Love That Transcends Death Is Blessed by the State
By CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: February 19, 2004

PARIS, Feb. 18 — Christelle Demichel, 34, married a dead man last week. She carried a bouquet of yellow roses and gleefully ducked rice after the ceremony in the Riviera city of Nice. About 40 people later attended her reception at a local restaurant where the Champagne bottles bore custom labels with the newlyweds' names. The only thing missing, besides a wedding cake, was the groom.

"I had what you can call a perfect wedding," Ms. Demichel said the next day, chain-smoking beside her new mother-in-law in a Paris café.

Yes, it is possible to marry the dearly departed in France, thanks to a law that turns the vow "till death do us part" on its head.

The law dates to December 1959, when the Malpasset Dam in southern France burst, inundating the town of Fréjus and claiming hundreds of lives. When de Gaulle visited the town a week later, a young woman named Irène Jodard pleaded with him to allow her to follow through on her marriage plans even though her fiancé had drowned."I promise, Mademoiselle, to think of you," de Gaulle was reported to have replied.

Later that month, Parliament drafted a law to permit Ms. Jodard to marry her deceased fiancé, André Capra. Hundreds of would-be widows and widowers have applied for post-mortem matrimony since then. Anyone wishing to marry a dead person must send a request to the president, who then forwards it to the justice minister, who sends it to the prosecutor in whose jurisdiction the surviving person lives. If the prosecutor determines that the couple planned to marry before the death and if the parents of the deceased approve, the prosecutor sends a recommendation back up the line. The president, if so moved, eventually signs a decree allowing the marriage.

In Ms. Demichel's case, the approval came on Dec. 22, more than year after a drunken driver struck and killed her fiancé, Eric Demichel, while he was riding his motorcycle home from work. She decided to wait until Feb. 10 to celebrate the wedding on what would have been his 30th birthday.

In a real-life rendition of "The Bride Wore Black," the title of a 1967 François Truffaut film, Ms. Demichel showed up at the ornate wedding room in Nice's town hall wearing a black pantsuit. An empty orange armchair represented the groom, and in place of his vows the mayor read the presidential decree.

There was no exchange of rings, although the mayor politely asked Ms. Demichel if she wanted to do something of the sort. "It remained in the spirit of a wedding," Ms. Demichel said. "It wasn't `funeral No. 2.' " The marriage is retroactive to the eve of the groom's demise, allowing Ms. Demichel to carry her husband's name and identify herself as a widow on France's plentiful bureaucratic forms. She said the marriage was otherwise of purely sentimental value. In fact, to avoid abuses, the 1959 law bars such spouses from any inheritance as a result of their weddings. Posthumous nuptials can play a practical role if the woman left behind is pregnant, though, because children born after their father's death are considered heirs. But the authorities are vigilant in preventing the law's exploitation. In one case a woman impregnated herself with her late boyfriend's sperm, only to have her request for marriage denied.

Ms. Demichel's lawyer said about 20 were approved each year. Ms. Demichel said that while most of the posthumous weddings were kept quiet, she had decided to go public with hers in the hope of helping other people who might not know that marrying their lost love one was an option.

Her mother-in-law, Jocelyne Demichel, said she had consented to the marriage because Ms. Demichel was the only woman with whom her son had ever wanted to start a family. "It's normal," she said, "that she carry his name."
Now Ms. Demichel is taking a few days off from her job as a police officer, though it is not exactly her honeymoon. She came to Paris to spend time with her mother-in-law, who was herself widowed several months ago. Then she will go back to live in the apartment in Nice where she keeps her husband's ashes in an urn in the bedroom.

"I have transcended death," Ms. Demichel said enthusiastically.

Teachers Treated After Eating Doped Cake

Fri Feb 13, 2004

BERLIN (Reuters) - Teachers in a German school were treated in hospital after gobbling up an anonymously donated chocolate cake, unaware it was laced with hashish, authorities said on Thursday. Some 10 teachers from the school in the northern town of Lueneburg were treated for nausea and dizziness after sharing a cake left at the door to their staff room, a police spokesman said.

"They thought it was food poisoning, but the doctors quickly recognized the problem," the spokesman said. "They showed all the classic signs of people under the influence of drugs." The spokesman said the teachers had not suspected anything because it was customary for them to buy cakes from the schoolchildren as part of a fund-raising project.

Blood tests and a sample of an uneaten slice of cake revealed it had been doctored with hashish. The teachers were later discharged and police said they had not yet identified who was responsible for the prank.

I know I haven't posted much (heh, at all) recently. I've been on vacation and then took some time settling back in when we got back to China. Welcome back, or welcome for the first time. I've missed you and hope you come back--I promise to post more regularly from now on.

There's a new link (Site Feed) under Web Gizmo on your right, thanks to Blogger's new RSS capability, and you can now syndicate/aggregate this blog, if you please.

I've noticed that sometimes this page doesn't entirely load. I'm not sure why that happens. If you're unable to scroll down, click the Refresh button at the top of your browser once or twice and that usually corrects it.

Hope to see you soon again.

Mme. Crackpot

Hello, my name is Ellen and I am a [recovering] Bushwhacker. Here in regime-change non-anonymous, I encounter the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (my brother), the courage to change the things I can (myself) and the wisdom to know the difference (ha!). It has been my lot want to make a difference and what I want is regime change in America. I'd like the ultimate crackpot out of office come election day and this creeping disaffection is finally oozing out from even his own supporters, to the glee of lefties--and even very sentient rightist--everywhere.

I've been in the People's Republic of China about a year and a half now and finally had the chance to visit the US for 17 days in January. Back home again. What a wonderful experience. I appreciated America more than I ever have in my entire life and when I got back, I appreciated China even more.

I came of age with the Jeffersonian ethic that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. But this is personal. It's frustrating, infuriating and often even hilarious (think black comedy) to witness the corrosion of that little remaining respectability about my homeland--represented by the (arguably) democratically elected head of state.

It seems like this farce, with a lot of hard work on the part of the loyal opposition, may be in it's final act. It's darkly gratifying to see the foreign press take him apart, while the American press picks at what we hope will be the bones.


From the Moscow Times (always a great read)

End Game

The Bushists have only ever had two methods of masking the truth of their extremist ideology: sham and blood. Now that the sham is unraveling, their only choice is war.

By Chris (tell us what you really think) Floyd

Well, that's it then. The show is over. The scales have fallen. The monstrous gears of the dark satanic mills that spewed their poison fog across the land have ground to a halt at last.

George W. Bush's performance in his nationally televised interview this week was so abysmal, so completely divorced from the waking reality of the rest of the world, that even his faithful spear-carriers in the far-right horde -- not mention the power-worshipping poltroons of the mainstream media -- reacted as if they'd been slapped upside the head with a particularly dank and smelly mackerel. They're shocked -- shocked! -- to find incompetence in this establishment! Read the rest...

Is that something like separation of church and state? That Modesto area is a real hotbed of unusual news, eh?

From Ananova Story filed: 21:57 Friday 16th January 2004

Pornstar firefighter is too hot for colleagues
Seventeen firefighters have quit their jobs because a female colleague discussed her pornography career while at work in the fire station.

It happened in Keyes, a town of 4,500 people south of Modesto in California, which is served by a small volunteer fire service.

The irate firefighters walked out claiming that Alexa Jones had talked about pornography while at work with her husband - Assistant Fire Chief Roger Jones.

Captain Herb Collier, one of those who resigned, said: "We feel pretty strongly that there needs to be a separation between the pornography and the fire service."

Alexa Jones has a website that promotes her pornographic material but does not mention her job as a firefighter.

She stars in videos under a pseudonym.

She said: "If they're going to be out there, I might as well be making money off them."

Her husband said: "It's called freedom of expression, and speech also. It's not illegal."

The resignations leave Keyes with eight firefighters. Nearby stations have pledged to help the department respond to emergencies.

China Daily, January 7th, 2004

Over-stressed guardian throws money into air

A man who spent 10 stress-filled hours on a night train guarding 3,000 yuan (US$363) finally broke down and threw the notes in the air at Nanjing Railway Station, reports Shanghai Morning Post.

Worried about the money being stolen, the man could not sleep a wink during the trip from North China's Tianjin to East China's Nanjing.

The man finally calmed down at [a] hospital --and kind-hearted passengers at the station returned his money.

The state of censorship in China is not severe, but it is conspicuous. Recently, on a BBC special report on China's economic development, the screen went blank when it came to a segment of workers protesting conditions in rural areas. Although the Chinese publishers did agree to produce an accurate translation of Sen. Hillary Clinton's book, they did excise anything remotely critical of China. Simon & Schuster initially put all the censored passages on their website, but China firewalled the page. Enough said.

January 6, 2004, 4:10 PM EST
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON -- Former President Clinton, worried that his wife's memoirs lost something in translation, is acting to ensure the same doesn't happen with his coming memoirs.

His book is expected to hit stores in mid-2004, and his publisher and lawyer are trying to prevent the international friction that resulted from alterations made last year to the Chinese-language version of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's book.

Publisher Alfred A. Knopf and book lawyer Robert Barnett are insisting on a written agreement that would give them the right to review and reject any translation of the former president's book produced by Chinese publishers.

That demand follows a battle over the Chinese version of "Living History," Hillary Clinton's best seller published last summer.

The translation by Yilin Press, a government-backed company, drew harsh criticism from the senator when it became clear several passages about China had been excised or rewritten.

Simon & Schuster learned in September that Yilin Press removed references in "Living History" to the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests and changed Clinton's comments about Chinese human rights activist Harry Wu.

Barnett, a lawyer for both Clintons, said Tuesday the president's book will either be translated in China either in total or not at all.

No release date has been set for the memoirs beyond mid-2004.

Barnett said he did not know whether the book contains passages that might raise the ire of Chinese officials because he had not yet seen material relating to that country.

Contracts for international book rights often include language that requires faithful translations of text, but rarely does an American publisher go through the effort and cost of independently verifying the accuracy of a translated text.

Sen. Clinton's publishers were unable to reach such an agreement. Several months of international legal wrangling ended in late December when Simon & Schuster withdrew rights for the Chinese translation. The company had demanded Yilin recall copies of the book and issue reprints with the complete text.

It'll be New Year's Eve here in China, at least the New Year's Eve on the Julian calendar, half a day before it is in the West.

I've never made New Year's resolutions. I make resolutions day by day, that's the only way I can keep them. But this year, I have New Year's requests.

I ask of the new year that it be truly new. I ask that it be a people's new year in that people petition, pressure, coerce and otherwise influence their leaders to consider the repercussions of their actions. I ask that it be a year of reconcilement and reassessment, that 2004, the year of the monkey, my year, be a year of reason. I ask that it be a year of compassion, a year of integrity and a year of a clean American presidential election. I ask that dignity and credibility be restored, at the will of its citizens, to the greatest nation on Earth, by the sense of decency and accountabilty by which it rose to greatness.

A friend of mine from California emailed me that she feels embarrassed to be American these days. Try being an American in China and answering to your students when they question American integrity. First, you hope to have the detachment not to take it personally, because it's never meant personally. And you stand there and vulnerably express, with the caveat that all countries have their disaffections, that you do not personally feel at all comfortable with some of your government's actions. I'm still passionate about American ideals. So I ask that the most authentic American empowerment be exercised anew. Maybe I had to get this far away to know how deeply it truly exists, so deeply it can never get truly lost for very long.

I ask that the new year bring regime change in the United States of America. I ask this humbly, celebrating the privilege to so say that it is my birthright. I ask that regime change represent a change of will, a change of process and a change of consequence. I ask that the sense of purpose in national decisions reflect the issues and values of human kindness, respect and the willingness to learn about and accept cultural differences with which, in this age of globalization, we must, with all dispatch, learn to co-exist.

Let this new year resound with novelty, enthusiasm and freshness. Let this be the year that greatness is rediscovered and shared, that bitterness give way to understanding, that arrogance give way to humility and hegenomy give way to cooperation and a rededication to justice. For all. For all time.

Each day dawns anew. Each day each of us can begin again. After a bad day, we say, "tomorrow's another day." But tomorrow, these days, where communication is instantaneous, carries the heavy shadow of yesterdays. Nothing is simple any more. In the face of that, I ask a simple thing. Let this new year be new.

"He was found to have used most of his money to try to bribe investigators into dropping an investigation..." qualifying him for a Crackpot dishonorable discharge award.

China is doling out the death penalty for corruption, smuggling and other crimes against its credibility and fiscal stability these days. This article is from China Daily, the English edition of which is freely distributed to the foreign teachers at the China Foreign Affairs University, where my husband and I are teaching this year. The sincerity of how China is emerging as a 21st century power is outdone only by the speed at which this is being accomplished, something we witness daily. This crackpot hit the jackpot--the ultimate sentence.

China Daily 12/30/2003 (page1)

Official gets death penalty
GUO NEI, China Daily staff

The Intermediate People's Court in Jinan, capital city of East China's Shandong Province, yesterday sentenced a former provincial vice-governor to death for accepting bribes and holding large amounts of assets he could not account for.

Wang Huaizhong, a former vice-governor of East China's Anhui Province, is the latest in a string of officials convicted in China as part of an intensified campaign against corruption.

"In the face of irrefutable evidence, he indulged in sophistry in every possible way and refused to admit guilt," Xinhua News Agency quoted the court as saying. "His attitude was disgusting and he was severely punished in accordance with the law."

The court convicted Wang of accepting bribes totalling 5.17 million yuan (US$623,000) between September 1994 and March 2001. Wang was unable to account for another 4.8 million yuan (US$578,000) in assets seized by the authorities. He was found to have used most of his money to try to bribe investigators into dropping an investigation. Wang, who was taken into custody in April 2001 and expelled from the Communist Party in September this year, has 10 days to appeal.

...snip...

Lu was expelled from the Party and his case transferred to a judicial department for further investigation, the provincial disciplinary committee said.

...snip...

"These measures show the determination of the new generation leadership to fight corruption and change the bureaucratic styles," Xinhua quoted an official with the central disciplinary authority as saying. Experts said authorities have been increasing the transparency of the anti-graft campaign by publicizing details of the cases to the media.

Read this and also read what The LongBow Papers says about what corrupt American financeers might take notice of.

Tis the Season to be nekkid, wot?

Nude Man Pulled From Chimney on Christmas
Fri Dec 26,10:09 AM ET - AP

MINNEAPOLIS - A naked man got stuck in the chimney of a bookstore early Christmas morning. Don't worry, it wasn't Santa Claus.

The 34-year-old man was treated Thursday for bruises and abrasions at Hennepin County Medical Center after being found naked and lodged in the furnace flue at Uncle Hugo's Bookstore. He was expected to be charged with attempted burglary on Friday.

"He was lucky," said police Lt. Mike Sauro. "He was only stuck in that chimney for a few hours. It's kind of a happy ending, because if he had been in there until that store opened Friday morning, it's my judgment he would have died.

"He doesn't appear to be a hard-core criminal, just stupid."

Police suspect that the man was drunk when he climbed atop the one-story building and removed all his clothes to help squeeze into the chimney. He then started to slide down the 12-by-12-inch chimney shaft, Sauro said.

"He's not Santa Claus," Sauro said. "He's a really skinny guy. And he's lucky he didn't get cooked."

The man told police that he entered the chimney about 1 a.m. Thursday to retrieve keys he accidentally dropped down the shaft.

A passer-by called police around 9 a.m. Thursday, after hearing screams for help coming from inside the store. Firefighters broke into the chimney with sledgehammers and freed the man.

"The store is pretty well torn up," said owner Don Blyly, who came in Thursday to hang up signs for a sale to begin Friday. "This is not what I came in here for today, but that's what I have to deal with."

But Chinese women are usually so docile and modest....

I didn't read this in the Beijing edition of China Daily, but I guess Hong Kong, being closer to Guangdong, had more interest in this item.

Woman ran down street naked to punish husband

Story filed: 10:19 Wednesday 24th December 2003

A Chinese woman got her own back on her husband after a row by running down the street stark naked.

Ai, 40, from Guangzhou, staged her nude run at 1pm, reports the Hong Kong edition of China Daily, quoting the Southern Metropolis News.

Her husband ran behind, apologising to passers-by and begging his wife to come home.

Ai, who sells fruits at a local bazaar, reportedly caused a heavy traffic jam and refused to put her clothes back on until police arrived.

The Moscow Times

If you're reading this in the U.S. or Europe, I'd be willing to bet that you never really think about reading newspapers from developing countries. I am living in China right now, a developing country itself, and watching it grapple, for the most part successfully, with domestic priorities vs. international trade priorities to safeguard its own rapid economic development in a globalizing market. Only now am I beginning to understand why developed nations are actually going to have to adjust their expectations rather than enforce assumptions of economic primacy because no economy, having saturated it's own potential, is going to prosper without productive interaction with developing markets. Sometimes the irony is just too much.

An article titled Piracy for Progress, arguing that it is unrealistic to expect strict enforcement of intellectual property rights of developing nations offers the model of developing industries. The American movie biz, recalls the author, an assistant professor of history and global studies and a research associate of the Institute for Globalization Studies in Moscow, moved to southern California, not for the weather, but to distance itself from the East Coast so that patents on film technology owned by east coast corporations couldn't be enforced. But it's his penultimate reference that struck me, one I regret to confess that I havn't heard before and one that has multiple applications at this moment in time:

As the late Israeli scholar and statesman Abba Eban once reflected, "Nations typically do the right thing, but only after exhausting all other options."

And this next classic I submit as a cautionary brickbat as Americans face another presidential election next year:

Following the State Duma elections this month, the opposition conceded that election fraud had been no worse than usual.

An article on the Kyoto Protocol and why Russia can't afford it right now ends with:

Cleaning up the air is an important task, but surely the Kyoto Protocol is not the way to go if it means handcuffing Russia's economic growth. After all, what good is clean air if people have nothing to eat?

I'm having a brain cramp: What was the excuse for the U.S. declining to sign the Kyoto Protocol again?

Check out some foreign newspapers some day when you're tired of the same old same old of your local rag. Good for a chuckle or a wince or a challenge to your mindset. You can get to a lot of them through my favorite mega-reference page, Refdesk.

Buzzflash says it better than I can:Our Dead GOP Hypocrite of the Week, in a link to the Washington Post's story on "reformed" arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond's love child by a black woman.

It's next to useless to blog a story from a major national newspaper, as they get archived in a week and are unavailable without a paid subscription, so I offer the salient graf:

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

After decades of denials, the family of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) acknowledged yesterday a claim made by a 78-year-old Los Angeles schoolteacher that she is the senator's mixed-race daughter, a charge that had dogged her throughout her otherwise quiet life and shadowed Thurmond during his public career as a leading voice of racial segregation.
...snip...
Thurmond, whose political life spanned 75 years, died in June at 100.

I am an American expat living in Beijing, China, where I am teaching and, of course, learning. One of the first things you learn about China is that it is a web of ultimately amusing contradictions. Traditional and modern, dependable for its quirkiness, festive and serious, China is a mystery that took milennia to accumulate and takes more than one lifetime to comprehend, if you are not Chinese. Life here is a mixture of frustration and awe, humility and astonishment every single day. All that said, this one takes the dan gao.

Story filed: 12:06 Wednesday 10th December 2003

A thief in China sent his victim eleven red roses after stealing her bag.

The young woman, named only as Ma, was targeted by a man on a motorbike in the southern city of Guanzhou.

Realising her phone was still in her bag, she sent it a message asking the thief to return her identity card and boyfriend's photo.

The Southern Metropolis magazine, quoting a report in the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily, says the criminal obliged.

And he added a gift of eleven red roses which, he later telephoned the victim to say, had cost him the equivalent of $8.36 (£4.80).

A Bob Dylan line goes "to live outside the law you must be honest..." I guess there's honor among thieves, or at least this Chinese bag nabbing crackpot.

"The miracle today is communication. So let's use it."
---John Lennon '69

It was many years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. And John Lennon, one of the fine minds and great voices of the later 20th Century was shot down like a dog by a deranged young man in New York in 1980. I got the news while I was listening to his just-released new album, "Double Fantasy." Unimaginable.

I met John Lennon. I interviewed him during the bed-in world peace caper in Canada, and took the picture of him and Yoko on this page at a Peace Concert in 1969.

On the night he was killed, it seemed like the turning points in my consciousness were an intermittent string of assasinations that hurled deep wounds into our culture to let us know just how precious and unexpectedly fragile it was. I don't know John Lennon's birthday. But I will never forget the brutal shock of hearing that John Lennon was dead that December 9th and the week that followed as the awful loss set in. And I feel it today. Remembering John Lennon.

Think your job is bullshit? There's a website where you can vent by circulating all the stupid memos, announcements, email and other absurdities you shake your head over. Someone with a bullshit job and time on his hands has created your virtual Dilbertville. Check it out at http://www.bullshitjob.com

Alaska Ice Hotel Controversy Heats Up
November 29, 2003 7:38 p.m. ET

Gee, could this really be a fire hazard?

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) -- The state fire marshal has put a freeze on construction of an ice hotel near Fairbanks, but the man behind the subarctic architecture is still chipping away.

The Alaska Fire Marshal's office on Nov. 21 ordered a halt to construction of the planned Aurora Ice Hotel at Chena Hot Springs Resort, citing unspecified building code and public safety concerns.

The 30-foot-high, seven-room Gothic palace was intended to be a tourist draw similar to ice hotels in Scandinavia and Quebec. Creator Bernie Karl had planned to charge guests $878 for a two-person, two-night stay that included Arctic-grade sleeping bags and other survival gear.

Karl is continuing work with champion ice carver Steve Brice, but now says what he's building isn't a hotel, but one of Alaska's largest works of art.

"Under my First Amendment rights, I have the right to create an ice sculpture and that's what we're doing," Karl told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner for a story in Saturday's edition. "I suppose that this could be a long, lengthy battle, but under my First Amendment rights, they can't stop me from making a work of art, I believe."

Karl said the structure, which he expects to complete by Christmas, will be very similar to the plans for the hotel.

Deputy State Fire Marshal Tom DePeter Jr. said the order to stop construction was issued because officials have many unanswered questions about the project, but he added that hotel construction could resume if the safety concerns are addressed.

"I think it's a great idea and hopefully it will be a real boon to the local economy and Mr. Karl," DePeter said.

Plans called for the structure to have 8-foot-thick side walls of snow and ice, reinforced with laminated wood arches, metal bands, chicken wire and refrigeration lines.

I wonder if this is all it's cracked up to be.

If ever there's a reason to bah humbug the Christmas season, this is a good example. Certainly, it could have happened another time, but it's particularly indicative of what Christmas has come to in America: retail riots.

Florida Woman Knocked Out in Shopping Rush
AP to My Yahoo!

ORANGE CITY, Fla. - A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her.

"She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey. "I told them, `Stop stepping on my sister! She's on the ground!'"

Ellzey said some shoppers tried to help VanLester, and one employee helped Ellzey reach her sister, but most people just continued their rush for deals.

"All they cared about was a stupid DVD player," she said Saturday.


Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.

She was flown to Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where doctors told the family VanLester had a seizure after she was knocked down and would likely remain hospitalized through the weekend, Ellzey said. Hospital officials said Saturday they did not have any information on her condition.

"She's all black and blue," Ellzey said. "Patty doesn't remember anything. She still can't believe it all happened."

Ellzey said Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her.

Gee, the kindness of some retail chains is just astonishing, isn't it?

Wal-Mart Stores spokeswoman Karen Burk said she had never heard of a such a melee during a sale.

"We are very disappointed this happened," Burk said. "We want her to come back as a shopper."

Me, I want to come back as a calendar without the month of December in it. Bah humbug. (Expat post Thanksgiving blues.)

Conspiracy theorist were increasingly dismissed as crackpots in the years following the assassination of JFK, the event, 40 years ago today, now seen as a turning point in the domestic credibility of the federal U.S. government. Now, it turns out, they are in the majority.

AP Wire Service offers these none-too-surprising stats and comments.

In 1966, three years after Kennedy's death, 46 percent of people surveyed in a Harris poll believed the assassination was part of a broader plot. By 1983, that number had reached 80 percent in an ABC poll.

Some experts have suggested that the Vietnam War and Watergate deepened Americans' cynicism and eroded trust in government.

"Many people look at the Kennedy assassination as a turning point, when people started realizing and thinking and believing their government would lie to them and lie to them repeatedly," said Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Perhaps the most persistently questioned finding of the Warren Commission is the "magic bullet" theory.

The theory assumes that Oswald alone fired three shots and that one bullet zigzagged through both Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally. The bullet is said to have gone through Kennedy's throat, then into Connally, puncturing his lung, hitting his rib and wrist and then exiting relatively unscathed.

I was at the Monterey Pop festival in the summer of 1967 when rock star David Crosby, then of the Byrds, stepped to the microphone, to the horror of his band mates and said "JFK was shot from several sides by many guns. Witness have been killed and evidence is being supressed, "ending his diatribe with "and this is your country, ladies and gentlemen!"

It's been a long time since then but that fire still burns.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone
In an upcoming (December 11)issue of Rolling Stone, Robert Kennedy's son and namesake, an enviornmental champion (they, fast becoming an endangered species themselves) lets loose on the Bush administration's horriffic environmental policies.

America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year.
[...snip...]
Growing up, I was taught that communism leads to dictatorship and capitalism to democracy. But as we've seen from the the Bush administration, the latter proposition does not always hold. While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government.

America's most visionary leaders have long warned against allowing corporate power to dominate the political landscape. In 1863, in the depths of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln lamented, "I have the Confederacy before me and the bankers behind me, and I fear the bankers most." Franklin Roosevelt echoed that sentiment when he warned that "the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling power."

Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free-market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process, strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures.

[...snip...]

The best way to judge the effectiveness of a democracy is to measure how it allocates the goods of the land: Does the government protect the commonwealth on behalf of all the community members, or does it allow wealth and political clout to steal the commons from the people?

Today, George W. Bush and his court are treating our country as a grab bag for the robber barons, doling out the commons to large polluters. Last year, as the calamitous rollbacks multiplied, the corporate-owned TV networks devoted less than four percent of their news minutes to environmental stories. If they knew the truth, most Americans would share my fury that this president is allowing his corporate cronies to steal America from our children.

You gotta love this guy and all Canadians for having such a whimsical PM.On the verge of of retirement, Prime Minister Chretien kicks up his heels a bit more.

Canada's Chretien Confesses Italian Rooftop Prank

Fri Nov 14,10:11 AM ET

TORONTO (Reuters) - And now we know what at least one of the world's leaders has done when his guards aren't looking.

Feeling shackled by the Canadian Mounties and Italian carabinieri who were protecting him ahead of a 2001 G8 summit in northern Italy, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his grandson scampered across rooftops to get free.

"My grandson said, 'Grandpapa, let's escape.' So we managed to escape ... and it was quite a thrill. You know, we jumped from one roof to the other roof to a third roof," Chretien said with a boyish chuckle in remarks broadcast on CBC radio on Thursday.

"And when we arrived (at the edge of the third roof) there was a bunch of carabinieri cars there, and my grandson wanted to slide along the pipe.

"(But) these guys shoot and ask questions after that, so we went back and we found another way and we managed to escape for about an hour," said Chretien, who is set to step down after a decade as prime minister.

After spending some time on their own outside the compound, near Florence, they sauntered back in. And the reaction of the security detail? "They were not worried, because they saw us coming back through the main door, and they said, 'Oh, we thought you were inside'." He added: "It was the spirit of Italy, I guess, that led me to do that."

I am familiar with the wonderful spirit of Italy. Good natured fun aside, I sincerely extend respect and condolences to all Italians, especially those who lost loved ones, in the recent attack on their brave ranks in the coalition working to win the peace in Iraq.

Tippling Cons

Three prisoners have been disciplined after visiting a pub and then sneaking back into their jail with alcohol.They are being held at Hollesley Bay, an "open prison" in Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK. The three inmates were spotted in a pub on October 27 by a local resident and police were informed.

The Prison Service spokesman said the men had returned to the prison on their own and were disciplined when they arrived back. A spokesman said the Prison Service was not aware of any other incidents at Hollesley Bay, but urged locals to contact police if they suspected "this sort of activity going on".

Hollesley Bay, originally established as a farmland environment to rehabillitate young offenders made the news earlier this year when prodigal noble Lord Archer was released from there after serving half a sentence for perverting the course of justice.

Kenyan police chase ends in farce
Wednesday 12th November 2003

A police chase in a Kenyan town ended in a debacle when villagers attacked officers thinking they were the criminals.

The police were chasing a car in Ruiru, northeast of Nairobi, which they wrongly thought contained a number of robbers.

The driver of the car thought the police were carjackers and sped away. The chase ended when the car was driven into a cul-de-sac and the occupants jumped out.

Armed officers shouted at the men to surrender, but as they searched the car they were attacked by villagers who'd seen the chase.
One officer was shot in the leg with an arrow, reports the East African Standard.

Police later established the car was actually a taxi taking people home.

Don't they believe in marked cars and distinctive taxis over there? Might save a spot of rucks, wot?

Police dog eats evidence in candy caper

Associated Press Thursday, November 6, 2003

OSLO, Norway -- When Varg the police dog was sent into a candy factory to track down two intruders, his sense of taste got the better of his sense of duty. The German Shepherd nearly ate himself sick.


Leif Berglund, of the police in the central Norway city of Trondheim, said police were called to the Nidar candy factory after seven 13- to 15-year-olds were found helping themselves to candy after they broke in.

Five surrendered at once, but two ran away. So police sent Varg to follow their trail. What he found was the trail of candy they left behind, as well as more candy in the building.

"He helped himself greedily," said Berglund. He said he was so full of candy "that we had to immediately transfer him to a more urgent assignment" on the lawn outside the building.

Car backfire sets dog on fire, which ignites grass fire

Associated Press Monday, October 6, 2003

CULDESAC, Idaho -- This dog was having a bad fur day. The dog, whose coat caught fire when the owner's vehicle backfired, ignited a grass fire just off U.S. Highway 95.

Firefighters doused the grass fire and reported the dog was unhurt, only smelling of burnt hair.

"I have been in firefighting for many years, but I have never seen anything like this happen," Culdesac Fire Chief Gary Gilliam said.

OK, get this. There is now an email client, SquirrelMail, which bills itself as "Webmail for Nuts." I kid you not. For the Mac, of course. http://squirrelmail.org/

• and for the Japanese, http://www.squirrelmail.jp/


• and for the French, www.squirrelmail-fr.org


• and for you Mac-heads in Czechoslovakia http://squirrelmail-es.ath.cx/

More international locations available.

Ever wonder what those URL Country suffixes are? Check here

Amazing but true. The town of Hayden used to require 40 signatures to get on the ballot, but reduced it to 5 and the crackpots are coming out of the walls.

This, from Yahoo news service:

Elderly Neo-Nazi Makes Last Stand in U.S. Town
Tue Oct 28, 2:39 PM ET

By Martin Johncox

BOISE, Idaho (Reuters) - At age 85, white supremacist Richard Butler is making what might be one last stand -- he is running for mayor of Hayden, the 9,000-population town where he has long been a flashpoint of controversy.

Butler, the former head of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, a group whose membership has dwindled to a handful, says now is the time for him to run but his opponents say he will only win a few votes in next Tuesday's election. They say that his anti-Semitic and anti-black views have brought disgrace to the town.

But Butler says, "This is the right time, because a lot of the people moving here are trying to leave the so-called racial diversity of California. We have to return back what made this nation great, and racial separation is one of those things. We're going to try for governor next time."

Butler moved to northern Idaho from California in the early 1970s because Idaho is mostly white and he thought it would make a good place from which to launch a race struggle.

Butler's home, marked by a "Whites Only" sign, barbed wire and occasional cross burnings, drew racist and neo-Nazi pilgrims from around the world, and the town of Hayden became synonymous with the Aryan Nations.

For the many who did not share his philosophy, Butler was a local disgrace. "There's only a few of them in town and they live in the same house, but this one person has brought such a bad reputation to Idaho and northern Idaho. It's a sad thing," said Mayor Ron McIntire, a grocery store owner and Butler's political opponent in the mayoral election.

"I don't think he has any hopes of winning anything. It's just a forum to get all his garbage out again."

Butler handed over the leadership of the Aryan Nations in 2001, a year after he sold his 20-acre (8-hectare) compound to pay a $6.3 million court verdict in favor of a woman and her son attacked by Aryan Nations guards.

White supremacists have had little luck running for office. Several years ago, a Butler supporter ran for mayor of the nearby resort town of Sandpoint. He got just 30 votes.

"There isn't a story here about Butler being competitive in a city election; it just provides another forum and gives him national and international attention," said Jim Weatherby, chairman of the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Boise State University.

"People in elections cast protest votes for a variety of reasons and votes for Butler could be misconstrued as supporting his ideology."

Far-right candidates have had little success nationally. Former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke was elected to the Louisiana legislature in 1989, but lost bids for governor, U.S. Senate and president.

While no one expects Butler to win, human rights groups are urging voters to turn out to reject Butler and his two city council runningmates, each of whom needed five signatures to be eligible candidates.

"You used to need 40 signatures, but state law was changed to only require five, so they signed each other's petitions and found a couple in town who supports them," Mayor McIntire said. "If it weren't for that, they wouldn't even be candidates."

No resemblence to the recall-election of the new governor of California, where celebrity, Republican money and (why has no-one mentioned this) being a Kennedy by injection achieved a bizzare victory for the Terminator, now governor of the oddball state.

In planetary contemplation of Uranus, Brits finally fed up with innuendo. This from Ananova.com

A South Yorkshire family have moved home because they are fed up with their address - Butt Hole Road.

Paul and Lisa Allot, who lived in the £150,000 bungalow with their two children for 15 months, got sick of people pulling their leg.

They say people posed for pictures outside their house in Conisbrough, many of them with their trousers dropped, reports The Sun.

And pizza deliverymen and taxi drivers refused to call at their home thinking the address was a joke.

Paul, 30, a lighting installer, said: "I like a laugh but it was beyond a joke. We've had people steal the street sign and it got to the point where I dreaded reciting our address.

"I thought it would be nice to rename it Button Hole Road. But it's easier to move than go through all the hassle of a new name with the local council."

However, new owner Peter Sutton says he's happy to live on Butt Hole Road: "I think it'll be fun and I know what to expect."

Er, did they not anticipate this before they moved there?

OK, so the Cubbies didn't come through. Well, you have to admit, they didn't break a near perfect record. So it's the Yanks and the Marlins. Go Yankees, my original home team. That Matsui is something else. And it's thanks to him that I get to see the World Series from Beijing! The Japanese station here, natch, broadcasts his games. I don't care that the play-by-play is all in Japanese, who needs it --- my beloved spouse is a live-in baseballaratus. Don't some girls get all the luck.