Penetration Well Done

A new brand of condoms may never make it to store shelves in Thailand because of its "inappropriate and ambiguous" name. "Tom Dundee" condoms are named after a popular Thai country singer, but "Tom Dundee" also has another meaning in Thai: Good Penetration.

According to an article in the Bangkok Post, the Thai Food and Drug Administration has asked the Culture Ministry to "investigate the name and decide whether it conforms to national norms and values." Ladda Tangsupachai, an official with the Culture Ministry said, "Although the name is not vulgar or rude, it is ambiguous, boastful and provocative. It could entice excessive consumption and lure children and youths with little maturity to start having sexual activities before their appropriate age."

Ah yes, the old "appropriate age" debate. Talk about a gray area; that will never get resolved to anyone's satisfaction. For certain, if the decision was left to most conservative religious fanatics (whatever their affiliation), the "age of consent" would be about 25 - and even that would come with stipulations.

Meanwhile, Puntiva Poomiprates, the singer who uses Tom Dundee as his stage name, says that the name has nothing to do with sex whatsoever. He chose the name, he says, after watching the movie Crocodile Dundee. On the subject of the condoms, he had this wise advice: "You can't stop human desire, no matter how old they are, so it is better to protect them."

American Troublemakers

A reader, R. Richards, had this to say in the Bangkok Post's "Letter to the Editor" section on Monday:

"One really has to wonder at what lengths the US will go to stir up unrest in other countries. Whilst the world is in turmoil with Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Sri Lanka on the brink of civil war, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tries to cash in on the deteriorating health of ailing Cuban president Fidel Castro by talking of "democracy" and making veiled references to regime change - as though the US didn't have enough trouble on its hands already!

A more diplomatic approach would have been a get-well message - this would have had more of an effect on the Cuban population. Since Rice holds a doctorate, I would have expected that she would add some intellectual strength to this US government's credibility, but alas she seems only able to parrot the well-worn and discredited script of her warring president George W. Bush.

My guess is that Rice is keeping in close proximity with her boss in order to make a run for the presidency in 2008. God help us all."

I'm not so sure about Rice making a run for the presidency in 2008, but I agree with what Mr. Richards says about the US and their eagerness to "help" the people of Cuba. Let the Cubans take care of their own matters without interference from the creepy American government.

More Tales of Bombs and Buildings

Kim Fay is a travel writer and photographer. She is the editor of the guidebook To Asia With Love, dubbed "the ultimate insider's guide to Southeast Asia." The following is an excerpt from "The Kindness of Strangers," an article she wrote (the entire piece can be found on her website: www.kimfay.com) in which she describes being in Luang Prabang, Laos when she first heard the news about the 9-11 terrorist attacks:

"Disoriented, we find our way to a TV in a new café. Surrounded by Australians, New Zealanders and Europeans hunkered down on a rough timber floor, we watch the small fuzzy image of our President as he addresses the nation. It's nearing midnight, and we're exhausted. And then, whispered under the breath: 'What did they expect?'

Not once this night do we hear how terrible or how sad or how tragic. Instead, we learn that somehow we might have deserved this assault, and that our president is a "wanker." I have never felt lonelier in my life than I do now in this room, but although we want to leave, we also need to know what's happening back home.

Finally, around one a.m., CNN cuts out and everyone drifts away. No one expresses a word of sympathy, and we return to the hotel, wounded. We lie in the dark silence of our hotel room, so tired we find it impossible to sleep. Another storm will come and go before the night is over, and when we wake it will be to a world irreversibly changed."

I find it quite ironic that she was in Laos on 9-11. The tiny landlocked country once held the distinction of being the "most bombed country on earth." Courtesy of - you guessed it - the American military during the Vietnam War.

Terminal Compassion

Death, however cruel and unfair, sometimes brings out the best in people. I was just sent a link to an online article about Beth Goldring - a New York native who quit her university teaching job to become a Buddhist nun - and the AIDS hospice that she runs in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

What Beth and her dedicated staff at Brahma Vihara are doing to help those who are suffering is nothing short of incredible. Beth is an amazing woman, and I can’t begin to fathom how she summons up the energy and strength to do what she does each and every day.

Please take some time to click on the link and read the article by Bennett Stevens, starkly illustrated by his superb photographs. This story makes my cry - but it also inspires me.

http://www.lensculture.com/stevens2.html

Towel Flicking Diplomacy

"I don't think he wants to hear anything outside the box of his prejudices. He's one of nature's towel flickers and he has turned American international policy into towel flicking. Polarism and neo-conservatism has seriously weakened the United States."

British diplomat Chris Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong (1992-1997), commenting on George W. Bush and his lack of foreign policy expertise. The outspoken Patten is also the author of two political memoirs: East and West and Not Quite the Diplomat.

Twenty signs that you might be a Bush Supporter

1. You think that liberals are to blame for the deaths of U.S. soldiers, and not the people actually killing them or sending them to be killed.

2. You find the death of unborn children abhorrent only when it is the result of a woman's choice and not when it is the result of environmental contamination, malnutrition, lack of prenatal healthcare, or the bombing of civilians.

3. You draw no conclusion whatsoever from the fact that prescription drug prices have risen for senior citizens since President Bush enacted the Medicare prescription drug plan.

4. You think liberals hate U.S. soldiers and want them to die.

5. You support the philosophy of checks and balances in government, but cannot think of any instance in which the Bush administration should be subject to checks or balances in this "time of war."

6. You think President Bush is fighting to protect your freedoms from terrorists, but are willing to give up your freedoms in order to fight terrorists.

7. You think that knowledge of Valerie Plame's status as Joseph Wilson's wife is the same as knowledge of her status as a CIA agent.

8. You believe that as a Christian in the United States, you are a persecuted minority.

9. The death of Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian militants or terrorists causes you to rage against the attackers, while the death of Palestinian civilians at the hands of the Israeli military causes you to rage against the liberal media for its anti-Semitic news coverage.

10. You believe that corporate executives care more about the condition of the working class than labor unions.

11. You don't understand the difference between being accused of terrorism and being guilty of terrorism, and therefore do not understand the need for due process in terrorism cases or the outcry against the torture of people who have never been convicted or charged of a crime.

12. You don't think the subjects discussed and the conclusions drawn at Dick Cheney's secret meetings with Enron and other energy industry representatives to form our nation's energy policy are any of your business.

13. You've never heard of the Office of Special Plans or the Project for the New American Century.

14. The name "Hillary Clinton" sends you into a vitriolic diatribe against the senator, yet you cannot identify any of her policy positions.

15. You despise Bill Clinton for not catching or killing Osama Bin Laden prior to the attacks of 9/11, but excuse George W. Bush for not catching or killing Osama Bin Laden prior to or after the attacks of 9/11.

16. In the Bible, you find no exception to the proclamation in the Book of Leviticus that it is an abomination for a man to lie with a man, but find a vast number of exceptions to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill."

17. You find yourself willing to devote yourself to protecting the well-being of unborn children, but uninterested in the well-being of children after they're born or their mothers at any stage.

18. You do not believe that falling middle class income and rising corporate executive compensation is class warfare against the working class, but do believe that mentioning this fact is class warfare against the rich.

19. You despise the liberal media for its constant lies and distortions, but believe any and all reports from the media that sets President Bush in a positive light.

20. You proudly display a bumper sticker to "support the troops," but consider discussions of inadequate body armour, strategy, veteran's benefits and soldier pay to be nothing more than liberal whining.

Bush-brain

"No doubt exercise helps clear his brain, but if it were any clearer, it'd be a patch of blue sky. He needs to unclear his brain, and let a little reality intrude, and wipe that barbecue grin off his face."

James Wolcott, writing about President Bush's "passive-aggressive approach" to the Israeli-Lebanon crisis in a column titled "Exercise Nut" on his website (www.jameswolcott.com) .

Iran Awakening

Shirin Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. Her "efforts for democracy and human rights" in her native Iran, particularly those directed towards women and children, were cited by the Nobel committe. Ebadi was the first ever female judge in Iran and became the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel.

Her memoir, Iran Awakening, was recently published. In a review of the book, James Eckardt of The Nation newspaper had this to say:

In writing her book, Shirin has gone a long way towards dispelling the popular image of Iranians as angry bearded fanatics chanting and shaking their fists. She is representative of a 2,500-year-old civilization with a rich literature, art, music and cuisine. In her epilogue she points out that 65 percent of Iranian university students are women, and 43 percent are salaried workers. And, in contrast to US President George W. Bush's overheated rhetoric about an Axis of Evil, they vote.

"I wanted to write a book that would help correct Western stereotypes of Islam, especially the image of Muslim women as docile, forlorn creatures," she concludes.

She has succeeded brilliantly.

Fox News Kills

"When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it."

Nicholas D. Kristof, writing in a New York Times column this week.

Inside the real Iraq

"At 5:34 am, on Thursday, March 20, 2003, the United States began a war of its own choosing, buoyed by grand ambition and perhaps folly. At that moment, its power unparalleled, the American military began its long march toward Saddam Hussein's citadel of Baghdad, across the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and past the cities of Ur and Babylon. Its aim was to conquer and then remake an ancient land in its own brash, confident image. Its expressed intention was to spread democracy throughout the Middle East. It offered the catchwords it used reflexively - liberation and freedom - to a country whose own values it did not understand."

That's the first paragraph in Chapter 3, of Anthony Shadid's book Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War. Shadid was one of many western journalists that covered the war in Iraq, but he was the only one to win a Pulitzer Prize (in 2004) for his reporting. Of Lebanese descent, Shadid was born and raised in Oklahoma and speaks fluent Arabic. That language ability, plus many years of work experience in the Middle East, enabled Shadid to gain access to the opinions and feelings of many Iraqi people. Shadid's articles, and this book, give readers valuable insight into the complexities of Iraq and what is happening to the people in that country.

Wednesday funny

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year old Texas rancher, whose hand was caugh in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to former Texas Governor George W. Bush and his elevation to the White House.

The old Texan said, "Well, ya know, Bush is a 'post turtle'." Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was. The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, and you just want to help the dumb shit get down."

Hip-Hop Hoopla

Prior to this week I had never heard of Cristal champagne. Call me sheltered, or out of touch with current trends, but I know one thing: my income is not high enough to splurge on outrageously expensive alcoholic beverages. I also acknowledge that I am not a fan of hip-hop music. But does that make me a racist? In the eyes of rap star Jay Z it apparently does.

Jay-Z, who gained fame as a rap singer and is now president and CEO of Def Jam Records, has announced a boycott of Cristal champagne after reading what he perceived as “racist comments” by Frederic Rouzaud, managing director of Louis Roederer, the company that makes Cristal.

In a recent issue of The Economist magazine, Rouzaud said his company viewed Cristal’s popularity in the hip-hop world with “curiosity and serenity.” The gist of the article seemed to be that the company wasn’t overly enthusiastic about Cristal being associated with hip-hop music and its fans. The writer of the article, Gideon Rachman, was also asked by Rachman if the association between Cristal and the “bling” lifestyle could eventually be detrimental to sales of the expensive drink. “That's a good question,” Rouzaud replied. “But what can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it.” The writer - but not Rouzaud himself - later used the phrase “unwelcome attention” when summarizing the general feeling that high-end champagne makers had with having their product touted by hip-hop stars.

Those comments were apparently enough to anger Jay Z. “It has come to my attention that the managing director of Cristal, Frederic Rouzaud views the hip-hop culture as ‘unwelcome attention,’” Jay-Z said in a statement. “I view his comments as racist and will no longer support any of his products through any of my various brands nor in my personal life.”

From my perspective the comments in the article certainly don’t paint the Cristal folks as racists. You can call them out of touch, over the hill, or old fashioned, but to accuse them of being racist simply because they aren’t giddy about their product being associated with a style of music that frequently glorifies violence, stupidity, and misogyny, is not fair. I love music, especially jazz, funk, and soul made by Black - or African-American - musicians in the 1960s and 1970s. But what passes for popular black music nowadays leaves me cold. Just because someone isn’t a fan of current rap or hip-hop music, that by no means makes them racist. Jay Z and his ilk need to grow up.

Something is Cooking

Anthony Bourdain has become quite the celebrity in the past couple of years. After his memoir Kitchen Confidential was published and zoomed to best-seller status, his previous career as a restaurant chef morphed into that of a celebrity author and TV cooking show host.

Bourdain, in case you haven't read his books (he has now penned three food-themed titles), is not a reserved individual. A native New Yorker, he's the sort of loud-mouthed "sex & drugs & rock 'n' roll" character that your mother warned you about. A bad influence, for sure. But oh what a wonderfully entertaining writer he is. Bourdain combines humor and outrageous antecdotes with skillfull prose. His latest book, The Nasty Bits, is a collection of essays and magazine articles that he has thrown together; a literary stew, if you will. In one essay Bourdain writes about the continual problem of finding good help to work in restaurant kitchens. But he raves about workers from "south of the border" (Mexicans, Ecuadorans, Salvadorans) as being the best and most dependable of all the ones he has worked with during his three decades in the restaurant business. He suggests, somewhat glibly, that the US should offer unrestricted immigration to those from Central and South American countries.

"It was once said that this is the land of the free. There is, I believe, a statue out there in the harbor with something written on it about 'Give me your hungry...your oppressed...pretty much everybody' - that's the way I remember it, anyway. The idea of America is a mutt-culture, isn't it? We are - and should be - a big, messy, anarchistic polygot of dialects and accents and different skin tones. Like our kitchens. We need MORE Latinos to come here. And they should, whenever possible, impregnate our women."

Photography

Beautiful Russian photography, some dating back to the 50s. Click the link under the last photo for even more.

Theocrazie spotted in Brooklyn

Via Really not worth archiving... Really.

American Torture

My America, at least the America of my birth, does not resort to the use of torture. We were taught that fact in public schools, American public schools, schools in which we learned old fashioned American values about family and fairness, values like the presumption of innocence, due process, respect for the law and the rights of man.

Others might resort to using torture, Hitler and his evil Nazi worshipers, Stalin, with his Gulags and purges, Mao and the People’s reeducation camps. Torture, in those days, was for others, the Pinochets, the Batistas, the Perons, the Idi Amins of the world, torture was not an American thing.

Torture was a tool used by our primitive and unenlightened forbears, to extract information, or to punish their enemies, information, which more often than not, was useless, as the information extracted was contrived in the desperate mind of someone whose only thought was to stop the pain, to say anything, confess to any crime, implicate any person, even those he loved to make the pain stop.

We were taught of the Nuremberg Tribunals at the close of World War Two and of the unbelievably bestial behavior of the Nazis in their death camps, of the brutalization of an entire generation of human beings, of wholesale torture and the wanton slaughter of millions that followed.

We were taught that “following orders” was no excuse for participating in, or ignoring the use of methods like torture or reprisal killings, as some orders were unlawful and it was our responsibility to know the difference. We executed many in Germany and Japan who were found to have violated conventions that we and other like thinking nations had established as fundamental rules of human conduct. We imprisoned many more than we executed.

I reached adulthood believing that America had evolved to a point of ethical leadership in a world that had been horribly scarred by those who used torture and terror, who used fear and death as instruments of State policy. I took pride in my belief that we, America, as a nation had risen above such inhuman behavior and had learned to operate on an elevated plateau of conduct. In short I grew to believe that my country could claim to be among the most civilized of nations.

At the age of twenty my youthful naiveté was tested by an all expenses paid trip to Vietnam. I discovered in the process of that experience that much of the negativity being reported about my country was true, the reports of Phoenix programs and other secret and not so secret efforts of my government turned my youthful naiveté into full blown distrust of the American government and it’s intelligence and military apparatus.

After Vietnam we went from one fiasco to another for the same fraudulent reasons, in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and on through Grenada and Panama misspending the flower of our youth, aiding in the brutalization of the poor and politically disenfranchised of other nations and trashing American integrity on remote and largely secret battlefields, in an effort to prop up corrupt dictatorships supported by even more corrupt American corporations.

By the time that George Bush the younger was appointed to serve as regent by the judicial minions of corporate America our government was fully in the control of the plutocrats and oiligarchs, for whom conscience, compassion and national honor had become nothing more than pathetically sad, liberal, loser jokes.

Enough.

America is not about torture.

Not my America. Not this land of my birth. Not the country that I volunteered to serve when called to service by an idealistic young President.

I have friends who have said to me recently and a government that has told me repeatedly that we can no longer follow the rules because our enemies do not follow the rules, and I say to them all: Bullshit!

I have friends who have said to me recently and a government that has told me repeatedly that everything changed after 9/11, and I say to them all: Bullshit!

One terrorist act or a thousand does not change fifty thousand years of human development, of philosophy and religion, of right and wrong of love and beauty and art.

There is only one America and it is the one that was held up to me by my Parents and Grandparents, by my teachers and my government as a beacon of freedom and justice, honor and integrity, honesty, compassion and justice.

I will permit no other America to exist on this Earth, nor should you.

Repeat after me:

America does not torture.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust
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Why is it so hard for the neocons to grasp the concept that two wrongs don’t make a right; that someone else violating a legal or ethical standard doesn’t mean that suddenly there are no rules and we can act on any impulse?

There’s a nice little story about two friends, one a Quaker, who went for an evening walk and stopped at a newsstand. The Quaker bought a paper. The vendor was surly and nasty, but the Quaker smiled and thanked him politely. As they walked on, his friend commented that the vendor had been in an ugly mood; the Quaker said, “Oh, he’s always like that.” The friend asked, “So why were you so nice to him?” The Quaker answered, “Why should I let him decide how I behave?” It’s on a different level from torture and murder, but it’s the same principle. We have an obligation to decide what kind of behavior we believe in, then act that way, no matter what.

This is an ugly strain that’s been rising in American culture for a long time; one symptom has been the rise in the popularity of vengeance as a theme in popular entertainment. Seems to me that it coincided with the growth of “me-ism” and greed as an accepted value system in the Reagan 80s, but who knows... it’s obvious that we need to get back to a more civilized set of values.

Save the Internets

Now that an open Internet has become an essential part of our lives, the big telcos naturally want to screw with it, creating a system where bigshots can buy a wider pipe than start-ups, and therefore you, the end user, don't get the choices you're used to. Naturally, their hired tools in Congress are now threatening to screw the Internet up good and proper.

If they get their way, the telcos make money, and everybody else gets a shitty Internet. Which, in turn, might even mean the telcos make less money in the long run.

The fight has currently reached the Senate. Josh Marshall and the fine folks at Talking Points Memo are compiling a list of the public positions of each member. So far, twelve senators (all Democrats, by the way) support net neutrality. Three (all Republicans) are on the record as against it.

Thirty-one senators are listed as "undecided," with no public position, and the remaining fifty-four have yet to be contacted.

Want to keep the Internet the way it is? Here's what you can do:

Visit SaveTheInternet.com. Read the FAQ.

Then write to your senator (find their contact info in the link above) and bug the crap out of them not to screw with the 'Net. I just emailed two of my reps and will mail a letter to the third (since, for some reason, he has no email contact that I can find).

It'll only take a few minutes, and it'll do some good.

Unless, of course, you really like your phone company, and you consider them noble and selfless humanitarians who have your best inteests at heart. In which case, you're not with BellSouth. I can tell you that.

Telnaes 06/12/2006

Quote of the day

"It is difficult for the ordinary voter to come to grips with the notion that a truly evil man, a truthless monster with the brains of a king rat and the soul of a cockroach, is about to be sworn in as president of the United States for the next four years… And he will bring his gang in with him, a mean network of lawyers and salesmen and pimps who will loot the national treasury, warp the laws, mock the rules and stay awake 22 hours a day looking for at least one reason to declare war, officially, on some hapless tribe in the Sahara or heathen fanatic like the Ayatollah Khomeni."
-Hunter S. Thompson on September 14, 1987 describing Bush I

Friday funny

Click here to see a photo of the average Bush supporter