Rhett Butler, who runs the monga bay website for habitat and species conservation (he may run the organization as well), has just posted some beautiful pictures from his trip to Laos. Go here if you have some time for a visual glimpse into a fascinating world.

So here's the choice that Canadian ducks face: either get with the terror message of continuous sonic booms or land on toxic sludge ponds and die. Thanks to The Stimulator for starting my day on an uplifting note (not) which i'm passing on here to instill shame in everyone who uses a car when they don't need to. Is this perpetuation of death really worth it?

Ultimate irony: Michael Phelps' contribution to drug liberalization

The convergent topic of Olympic athletes and drug use has historically not leaned in favor of liberalization. Michael Phelps' unplanned photo op with bong has proved the exception to the rule. Business Insider just published this graph, courtesy of corporate image rating agency Vanno, which indicates that Kellogg Corp's decision to drop Phelps from their advertizing roster has done substantial harm to the company's image. Props must go out to NORML and other cannabis decriminalization groups for pushing this issue and challenging the assumed status quo that led the company to believe most people would support its decision.

Not long ago, i met a woman who distributes hemp cosmetics for the Slovenian company, Extravaganja. According to her, Hungary used to have a profitable hemp-growing industry until it was shut down in the 1980s. Now, as in many other European countries, hemp is making a comeback for fiber, seed and oil usage (on top of the underground bud market, which probably consists of mostly non-EU-grown imports). However, there is currently a move within the EU to push flax over hemp in the agricultural sector, which would appear to be working in concurrence with moves towards strengthening individual nations' moves against liberalization of cannabis as a recreational drug. Here's the most recent report i could find (2008) from the European Monitoring Centre for Dugs and Drug Addiction, which is decidedly on the anti-decriminalization side of the debate. As in the US, repressive forces continue to spin their webs of deception and the people continue to indicate we are no longer so easily deceived. Give me a stoner over a drunk any day, and woe to the stressed-out, steroid pumping swimmer who thinks he can beat Michael Phelps - even without the breakfast of champions.

Now i understand why war zones are called 'theatres'

Kim Segupta reports:

.... it is in Afghanistan that British forces are now directly facing fellow Britons on the other side. RAF Nimrod aircraft flying over Afghanistan at up to 40,000ft have been picking up Taliban electronic "chatter" in which voices can be heard in West Midlands and Yorkshire accents. Worryingly for the military, this has increased in the past few months, with communications picked up by both ground and air surveillance, showing the presence of more British voices in the Taliban front line.

Something of a new twist on the King of Hearts/Roi de Coeur theme. Imagine the US deciding to militarily overthrow Hugo Chavez and finding the palace protected by groups of Chicanos from East LA. i suppose that's one way to ensure more security on the home front and obviously, it follows a long tradition of europeans trashing other people's countries in order to assert supremacy on their own continent. Totally insane. Kudos to Zbigniew Brzezinski for the constant reminder that what's (still) going on in Afghanistan is all part of The Great Game.

Goosing the foie gras

Check out this clip of a demonstration this past week outside one of Budapest' Tesco outlets. Animal rights groups have been active in Hungary for years, and the local PETA folks are now taking on the force-feeding of geese for the french foie gras market. Making a fuss outside Tesco is of course a good thing to do in any event. George Monbiot has followed the company's power and propoganda machine for years, repeatedly drawing conclusions that can be characterized as a cocktail of depression mixed with anger and a twist of fatalism. Personally, i can't stand foie gras and after seeing this you probably won't be interested in consuming it, either.

coming to a bank-bailed out country near you....

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND - Give Us Back Our F****** Money
by DontPanicOnline

Kharmic histrionics, or, Tom Waits railed against zionism and i missed it?!

More conscientious of late about reaching further out into the blogosphere, i'm thinking the best way to maintain a daily rhythm (and readership) might be to write long, snappy titles and then key out a couple of unassuming sentences or add an image, just so there's an actual post to go with them. More people do this than i would have guessed and it generally works. For example: X, Y or Z. Still, i'm a ridiculously wordy person so long titles are easier to generate than concise to the point of mute postings. Once i had the idea that the best strategy for writing a book would be to generate about 20 chapter titles and then fill in the spaces between them. If you try it and land a publishing deal, please let me know.

The other night i was talking with RM in the great state of Wisconsin and mentioned that i'd been up to the castle earlier that day to see a retrospective exhibit of 20th century Hungarian artist Lajos Vajda. My august attempt to impress her with alliterative nonsense on constructivism was interrupted by her chiding me for mentioning a jaunt to the castle as if it were a perfectly normal, everyday kind of thing. In Wisconsin, they have dairy farms handed down over generations from people who fled Europe to get away from the perversions of royalty, and even in SF, where RM and i both used to live, there are mansions in the city, forts on the cliffs, and nouveau estates over the bridge in Marin - but castles? Not a one. Back in our day, that would've required first a massive handover of cash to Ticketron and then a long drive down the coast to San Simeon; the Hearst Xanadu is a notable paean to excessive wealth, but it's also not the same thing as having a castle in the center of town, its lights reflected at night in the glassy veneer of some european river well-known for inspiring concertos and revolutions. Leave it to a mid-westerner to remind me that one woman's neighborhood castle is another's 'let them eat cake' holiday tour fantasy.

Having been thus jostled, i brought the camera with me to A38 the other night, one of my fave clubs in BP as they seem to have about the best program manager in town. As you can see from the photo, the other trés cool thing about A38 is that it's a boat, anchored on the Buda bank of the Danube not far from the National Theatre, which is visible in the background (behind it the audaciously neon Budapest Palace of the Arts). So not only do i live in a city with a castle, but where people go to concerts on boats - all year round. Sure as hell can't find that in Wisconsin! I don't think you could even find it in Prague. Yet, living here on and off for several years now, the party boat scene has sort of melted into the blur of tattered kiosk posters and palinka binges. Thanks to RM for reminding me not to take the frills of Magyarland for granted, and to N who told me Braindogs were playing and made sure i didn't miss them.

The show happened to be on the night of the only major snowstorm we've had in the city this winter. i'm not a winter person anymore and spend november-march in 3 pairs of socks, in sync with the upper layering of shirts, scarfs and sometimes gloves. i truly believe that if i have to suffer through several months of subzero temps, then it's only fair nature coughs out one of its most magical meteorological perks so that i may at least reap aesthetic pleasure from an otherwise horrid season. Walking in the middle of a down-covered street at night listening to the arythmic thud of snowflakes landing and the airy whoosh as feet displace powder is a virtual reality experience without the gadgets. i know decorative urban lighting is a total waste of electricity, but this particular church on Raday utca looks great at night, snowfall effect creating the impression of an (almost 2-dimensional) Time Burton movie set.

Being a night of cold cold ground, the soundtrack was a perfect fit. Braindogs are a one-show-a-year band who jam so tightly you'd think they'd been touring together for almost as long as the Grateful Dead (ok, Franz Ferdinand). Bluesmen Ian Siegal and Ripoff Rashkolnikov are complemented by a large mix of hungarian musicians who were obviously all born to crank out the indiosyncratic tunes of one of music's most gifted minstrals.

True confession: i actually lost track of Tom Waits in 2005, when i moved to Palestine and went a bit bonkers over George Wassouf and Souad Massi. So i was extremely surprised to hear 'Road to Peace', which is on Waits' 2006 Orphans: Brawlers album. Talk about hitting the nail on its head:

The fundamentalist killing on both sides is standing in the path of peace
But tell me why are we arming the Israeli army with guns and tanks and bullets?

Full lyrics here. The song tells the story of kids who turn their bodies into bombs and makes an a propos reference to Kissinger's real politik... it was bold of them to do this, given the significant number of young israelis filling out the club scene here (generally) and mostly not to hear commentaries on the problem of Israel and America against the world. Even more kudos to Tom Waits for penning these lyrics, and although ironically i've been looking for Souad's last album, that's going to have to wait until after i've caught up with Mr. Waits. My friend M and i used to lament how working full-time in the Palestinian hinterland made it difficult to participate in the kind of on-going direct action resistance that we're genetically programmed to do. So too, it's ironic that with all the anti-occupation music being passed around there, this one fell through the cracks. i'm close to half a century old, i really shouldn't have a problem multi-tasking this sort of thing. Give me Ska-P, give me Waits! Once upon a time, i realized that good things would happen if i just made a point of showing up... another instance of prescient slackerism. Guess it took a few cm's of snow to yank my head out of the counter-kharmic sand.

That was fast

Pirate Bay update/Facebook's unbounded greed. i'm just going to paste today's news on the Pirate Bay trial, that seems easiest at the moment. From The Independent:

The charges dropped are those which relate specifically to "assisting copyright infringement", with the case now confined to adjudicating on the question of whether those on trial were responsible for "assisting making available" copyrighted material. "Everything related to reproduction will be removed from the claim", confirmed Prosecutor Håkan Roswall.

"This is a sensation. It is very rare to win half the target in just one and a half days and it is clear that the prosecutor took strong note of what we said yesterday," Per E Samuelson, the defence lawyer, told file-sharing news website TorrentFreak.

At the other end of the internet freedom spectrum, i am appalled to learn that facebook has changed its terms of service and now claims ownership of all users' content FOREVER. That means even if you delete your entire account, facebook still gets to keep everything you've ever uploaded... unless your privacy settings kept it from public view. i'm a bit perplexed over what the point is of keeping your photos and writings private on a shared network site, but that's just little technoweenie Tycho talking, i'm sure the true facebook nerds understand this perfectly.

Pirate Bay on Trial

As i'm always explaining to IT geeks (sorry, is that phrase redundant?), being a technoweenie is not at all the same as being a technophobe. For example, i've been using Vista for a year and still can't find the defragmenting program but i'm not adverse to going into the system files to look for it. i still can't figure out how to take pictures with my cell phone or get my digital camera to do a timed autoshoot, but i'm not afraid of screwing around with the settings on the theory that eventually i'll get the right combination and have success. Likewise, although i don't operate a server and therefore do not participate in bit torrent, i still understand what it is and generally, how it works. i watch films on the internet and download free music when i come across it (is it possible that private internet habits are replacing confessional theology in the 21st century?). And so, it seems to me that the trial beginning in Sweden now against the four Pirate Bay renegades is of some significance and definitely worthy of mention in my little realm of the blogosphere.

The only place i've seen a story on this is The Independent, which is somewhat surprising giving the interest that the entertainment industry has in the outcome. Guess the folks over at Huffpost are too caught up in chronicling the collapse of capitalism to pay much attention to something going on in a socialist country far across the big pond LOL. If you've seen Steal This Film II, then you'll be familiar with one of the Pirate Bay founders as i believe he was among those interviewed about the anarchist revolution taking place in cyberspace. As columnist Rhodri Marsden points out, these guys are playing it pretty cool because even if found guilty of copyright infringement they know that bit torrent and other file sharing mechanisms are not going under. It's just too late for that, nobody is driving the bus and yet, everyone or anyone can sit at the wheel. As i said, it's an anarchist's delight and will be interesting to see what ensues if the Swedish court comes up with a guilty conviction - my guess is that it will mostly spark, rather than scare, likeminded technowizards.

Mabuto Revisited. Times UK is reporting that the Mugabes have paid 4 million sterling for a private home in Hong Kong. This is just disgusting beyond words, and unfortunately shows how little things have changed when it comes to African leaders moving money out of the country for their own gluttonous benefit while starving out their fellow countrymen. Grace Mugabe is paying for her house furnishings with buckets of cash, which appears to verify my theory that a direct correlation exists between runaway inflation and runaway thievery.

In Algeria, islamicist anti-americans have been handed another recruitment gift by US intelligence [sic] as the digital files of the CIA station chief come to light. This guy was drugging and raping algerian women, and further explored his macho dimentia by documenting it all with photos and video. Obama may talk a good talk about restoring America's reputation around the world, but he might consider more seriously whether it is a reputation worth restoring. This kind of stuff is hardly new.

Le Monde is reporting that the body found in the Danube yesterday here in Budapest may be that of Ophelie Bretnacher, a 22-yr-old french student who disappeared at the beginning of December. The central districts of the city have for weeks now been covered with flyers bearing her photo, looking for information about her, etc. and sadly, DNA tests will be required to determine if this is, in fact, her body. Bretnacher's disappearance spawned an interesting thread here about attacks on foreign women in the city; i gotta say that based on what my hungarian friends and students say about safety - especially at night - this is hardly a novel phenomenon. Though i am not a particularly paranoid person when it comes to this kind of stuff, i do keep my doors locked when i'm home. Too many tales of break-ins, even in broad daylight. i'm guessing that when Taken comes to the theatres here, it will do well at the box office.

Spurred by Michael Phelp's bong+residue being pulled from eBay, Wired's got a piece today looking at other items that have been pulled for violating terms of use (of eBay, not the bong). Here's one that registered with my pre-dawn humorometer:

A Benton, Illinois, woman put up her 4- and 8-year-old daughters for auction In 2007. The 31-year-old woman, who suffers from depression, told a local television station she was trying to rent them out for two days so she could get some rest. EBay yanked the auction because human trafficking is illegal.

These must be two ultra-raucous kids if she couldn't farm them out to friends or family for a weekend. No wonder the poor woman's depressed. i'm not sure if eBay's rationale works: is it trafficking when the parent plans to take the kids back? Let's hope someone stepped in to help her out, lest she really lose it and use a gun to solve her babysitting issues, in which case i can easily imagine an industrious relative suing eBay for driving her to extremes.

So i've been looking into the Maori reparations agreement, and interestingly enough the main point of interest in New Zealand and elsewhere is the granting of intellectual property rights for the Ngati Toa Rangatira nation's Haka. This traditional Maori dance has evidently been appropriated widely in New Zealand, most notably by the All Blacks rugby team, who perform it before the start of every match. Check out one of the many youtube haka clips and note the terror it clearly instills in the opposing team.

Reparations in a twisted Green world

The government of New Zealand has made a reparations deal with 8 indigenous Maori tribes for treaty violations and land seizures dating back to the European invasion of the islands. The interesting thing about the deal is that half of the total payment will be made in cash, while the other half is to be made in credits for 'renting' forests and in greenhouse gas emission credits. Sorry, but there's something about this that seems very twisted to me and understanding why the Maori accepted these terms is something i've got to investigate. Why would tribes agree to pay for the use of forests which used to be part of their own territories? And what on earth are they going to do with emissions credits, sell them to Japan in exchange for capital to open casinos? Not that i've got a problem with Maori engaging in capitalist trading schemes, it just seems like a strange spin on "your way of life has totally ransacked us" resolution.

Just checked into myspace and see that my ultra-talented whiskey drinking buddies, Flogging Molly, have just released their first video from last year's album Float. A very well-conceived meditation on the interstices of our personal-planetary journey.

An African perspective on Bush's reign

Two of the students in my friday evening class were comparing notes on how high their fevers were earlier in the week, and i guess osmosis rules in the classroom because saturday afternoon i came in at 101.6F. The benefit of being sick on a rainy day is that i felt absolved of guilt at being totally unproductive and catching up on episodes of The Daily Show. John Oliver did a segment on Kenya, 'whose chief exports in 2008 were coffee, tea and american heads of state.' You can watch the whole piece here; it's a bit disrespectful (?) but true to form.

Most of it was an interview with the Kenyan Ambassador to the UN, who clearly did not understand Oliver works for a comedy show. When asked to name 3 non-gloomy facts of the Bush administration, the Ambassor pointed out (1) the US didn't break out into a civil war, and (2) there is no state that seceded (sidetracked, we never heard #3). Although Oliver chided him for being historically inappropriate, i thought it was a poignant reminder of the level of both state and personal insecurity that exists today for a sizable portion of Africans.

Based on my knowledge of Africa - feel free to fact check - i came up with this list of countries which are either having a civil war or significant ethnic/religious violence, have recently had a coup and it's hard to say how long things will remain 'stable', or have experienced measurable political unrest in the past, let's say 2-3, years.

Central African Republic
Nigeria
Chad
Sudan
Angola
Rwanda
Uganda
Somalia
Eritrea
Zimbabwe
Democratic Republic of Congo
Kenya
Western Sahara
Mauritania
Algeria
Cote d'Ivoire
Guineau-Bissau
Liberia
Madagascar

It's worth noting that 3 of these countries share a border with Kenya, so on top of having to deal with up to 300.000 of its own internally displaced people, Kenya is also providing a haven for 265.000 refugees (2007 figures from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Norwegian Refugee Council). Large numbers of refugees of course contribute to any political instability already fomenting. For those of us living in countries with at least moderate functionality and security, the comparison to Africa should have a calming effect even if it's not enough to keep you from running to the prescription counter every time the price of fuel or fajitas goes up.

Going back to the Ambassador's comments, it's hard to say whether acceptance of Bush for a full 8 years is a sign of national stability or national apathy. i'm going for Door #2 on this, as i think that while there is a rich and colorful history of protest movements in the US, there isn't much of a revolutionary history (and no, don't say the War Between the States was an attempted revolution because it wasn't; it was a war of secession that accepted the US government for what it was). It's hard to imagine the Congress and White House being stripped of their powers by anyone other than the US military; i can't think of anyone i've personally known who would torch the US Constitution, and i've met some pretty anti-government kinds of people. American Indians - probably the most likely candidates for wanting to see the US govt dissolved - are well-versed in treay law and continue to demand the US be respectful of the same, as is required by.... its constitution.

Well, now there's Obama and a new day is a-dawnin' - however poorly stimulated. Where i live, people are a lot happier thinking about President Barack (translated into hungarian, the name with this spelling means 'peach') than their own no-win elections coming up in 2010. Contemplating the Congo is not going to make them feel lucky - not by a long shot. Thankfully, there is now a Comedy Central/Hungary to help ease both disgust and apathy.

Nepalese Westerns, hot damn!

i know writing about Kate Winslet would get my blog listed in google's hot topics, but haunted nazi prison guards just aren't as exciting as Nepalese cowboys. It's that simple. This is a trailer for Jhankri, by Amrit Lama, now added to my 'must see' film list.

Hungarians and expats alike joke about the little language glossaries found in the back of tourist guides, which invariable contain inquiries like 'Can i have your phone number?' 'Do you have any condoms?' and 'How much does a room cost per hour?' Indeed, the reputation of hungarian girls as aspiring porn queens is well-established throughout Europe and beyond; i've had more than a few escapees from the Iraq war zone comment that the best thing about this country are its uninhibited females (yes, definitely paraphrasing). i also hear over and over how low salaries are for public employees and especially teachers, probably because, being a teacher myself, i tend to meet people involved in education. Put these two things together and it's hardly a surpise to discover that teachers are advertising their sexual talents on the internet. Is this a scandal? Should teachers be fired for using sex to augments their measley incomes? It may be tasteless, but as long as it's not illegal... if schools start patrolling the internet in search of naked educators, how far away are we from seeing them fired for being gay or recreational drug users or whatever else doesn't fit the prevailing social norms?

The Chaser's War Is Back!

If you aren't familiar with the australian prankster show, The Chaser's War on Everything, you've been missing some good art imitating life and vice versa comedy. Hopefully the new season will be streamable from this website (it seems that G4TV has bought the rights from Australian Broadcasting Corp), as the ABC site was a buffering nightmare.

US to UK: Remember, you guys are the poodles

Not sure why, but i found this story somewhat shocking. In order to squash being outed on all the nasty torture techniques they've used in Guantanamo, the US has actually blackmailed the UK by threatening to break off security-intel cooperation. The context is the legal case of Binyan Mohammed, a british resident who got the full rendition tour: kidnapped in Pakistan, moved to Morocco, back east to Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo. At issue is whether there is sufficient cause to allow him to return, unshackled, to the UK.

Snippet of a snippet from the judges' ruling:

"Moreover, in the light of the long history of the common law and democracy which we share with the United States, it was, in our view, very difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters.

"Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials ... relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be."

Given all that's been released already about torture at Guantanamo, i'm at a loss in imagining what new revelations the US military has to fear, i.e. how much worse could it possibly get? The only thing i haven't heard about that totally makes my skin crawl is drawing and quartering, but i'm fairly confident we would've known about it if the marines and CIA had gone that far out of bounds. Either the British government is concocting this in order to hide their own culpability, or the US under the new administration made a conscious decision to remind the brits who is master of the enemy combatant universe.

On another note, found this set of articles about the murder of India's anti-terror chief. Interesting reading if you're looking for a slight change from Dan Brown.

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) lists 29 official restrictions currently effecting women in their country, including bans on cosmetics and even entering any sports clubs, let alone participating in sports-related activities. So who can say what was going through the mind of the US Army personnel who thought up the idea of bringing cheerleaders into Afghanistan to entertain the troops. Someone in charge of these decisions must have recently seen the uncut version of Apocalypse Now and liked the tertiary plot of playboy bunny heroin addicts keeping the soldiers entertained (?) during monsoon season. Is this why more troops are being sent there, to protect american cheerleaders from being stoned to death?

Dear BBC: Is it really necessary to provide this kind of graphic imagery? Can't you just stick to electron micrographs or advice on how not to have 6 babies in one go? Really. Now i'm gonna be imagining blackened gall bladder regurgitations for the rest of the day. Thanks for nothing. Yes, ignorance can be bliss.

Never too late to dig up conspiracy theories

New evidence, in the form of a supposed contract killer's diary, indicates that Tycho Brahe may have been poisoned with a heavy dose of mercury by a cousin in employ of the Danish king. Modern forensics can now do the magic required to prove whether this was the case. Brahe the alchemist would likely appreciate that fact and not bring down the wrath of a supernova upon those who would dare to disturb his bones. i'd love to buy the rights to this story, because you just know that if it turns out there actually was a state conspiracy to murder him, all the major studios will want to recreate it in celluloid. Long-suspected assassin Johannes Kepler could be played by Alan Rickman, the demented king by Clive Owens and in the leading role, how about Anthony Hopkins? (There just aren't that many older actors who could pull off the wooden nose, and anyway, it'd be a great part for him.)

The Prague Post (2.2.09) reports:

A Danish-led team of archaeologists and forensic experts have filed a request to exhume the remains of 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe from an ancient vault in Prague's Týn Church... Researchers have new evidence that the astronomer was poisoned to death with mercury in 1601 on orders of King Christian IV of Denmark.

Evidently the young king suffered from severe Oedipal paranoia: he feared his father may in fact have been the astronomer rather than papa king and, if the truth came out, he would lose his throne. He had Brahe's great island observatory, Uraniborg, totally dismantled, and basically drove the great (albeit heretical) star-gazer to seek refuge in the Prague court of Emperor Rudolf II.

Schematic of Uraniborg, pulled off Der Spiegel's website.

The Danish request is now being considered by the Archdiocese of Prague. They are 'not keen on the exhumation,' though the reason for this is not made very clear. Brahe died on 24 October 1601. His bones have been sitting behind a stone slab in the Tyn for over 400 years; does the archdiocese expect to find something other than bones, and if so, what? Do they fear his ghost will escape and haunt the church as payback for their once accusing him of heresy? Naturally, the Czech antiquities department will have to weigh in as well; the tomb is made of granite and elaborately carved, truly among Prague's national treasures and definitely on par with the other cryptic sites Dan Brown has so lucratively expounded on. Cracking the stone in order to crack this conspiracy is probably not worth it. If we can live without knowing who really killed Kennedy, what was on those 18 minutes of Nixon's tapes, and whether Dick Cheney had once gone hunting with Mohammed Atta, i think we can live without knowing the truth about a bygone disfunctional family.