It has been ages but at least I'm back with good news from the Associated Press.
Although fundamentally I'm opposed to the death penalty, this sonofabitch Reza Khan deserved to die, gunned down like a dog by Afghan soldiers in a dusty prison courtyard.
I wait for similar news about the other two animals involved in the murder of my mate Harry, and his travelling companions Maria, Azizullah and Julio nearly six years ago (as well as the masterminds of the Bali bomb now sitting on deathrow here in Indonesia).
15 executions break Afghan moratorium
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer
Mon Oct 8, 3:35 PM ET
Ending a three-year moratorium on the death penalty, Afghanistan executed 15 prisoners by gunfire, including a man convicted of killing three foreign journalists during the U.S.-led invasion, the prisons chief announced Monday.
The United Nations protested the executions, which could complicate the missions of some NATO nations here.
The mass execution took place Sunday evening according to Afghan law, which calls for condemned prisoners to be shot to death, said Abdul Salam Ismat, who oversees Afghanistan's prisons.
The crimes committed by those executed included murder, kidnapping and armed robbery, but officials said no Taliban or al-Qaida fighters were among the prisoners.
Until it was ousted in late 2001, Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban regime carried out executions in public, many of them at the Kabul stadium. The new government pledged to the international community it would halt executions, and had carried out only one previously, in 2004.
The 15 deaths could complicate relationships between the government and some NATO countries with military forces here. Foreign troops often hand over captured militants to the Afghan government, raising the question of whether countries that do not use the death penalty might stop surrendering prisoners.
The Netherlands was one of the first to criticize the Afghan announcement, calling the executions "extremely unwelcome." But it also said Dutch troops would continue to transfer militants to the Afghan government, saying it had an agreement protecting those prisoners from execution.
Anger over the executions also could prove a snag for NATO's efforts to get its member nations to send more troops to Afghanistan. NATO has some 40,000 soldiers here but commanders complain they need more helicopters, mobile troops and instructors to train the Afghan army.
"The fact that we have not fully been able to live up to the promises that nations have made is a point of concern for me," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Monday in Denmark before the executions were announced.
Among those executed was Reza Khan, who was convicted of adultery and the murder of one Afghan and three foreign journalists in 2001. The four were pulled from their cars, robbed and shot near the eastern city of Jalalabad while driving toward Kabul six days after the Taliban abandoned the capital under heavy U.S. bombing.
The four were Australian TV cameraman Harry Burton, Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari of the Reuters news agency, Maria Grazia Cutuli of Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and Julio Fuentes of the Spanish daily El Mundo.
Also executed was Farhad, who is also known as Pahlavan and like many Afghan used only a single name. He was involved in the 2005 kidnapping of Italian aid worker Clementina Cantoni; she was freed after three weeks.
Tom Koenigs, head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, said the U.N. had expressed its concern over the use of the death penalty many times in the past.
"The United Nations in Afghanistan has been a staunch supporter of the moratorium on executions observed in Afghanistan in recent years," Koenigs said. "I expect Afghanistan to continue working towards attaining the highest human rights standards and ensuring the due process of law and the rights of all citizens are respected."
The government's official announcement of the executions came on state television Monday evening, saying said Karzai ordered the executions following a decision by a special commission he set up to review rulings by the Supreme Court.
"After all the discussions and after looking back over the cases ... in order to prevent future crimes, such as murders, armed robberies, kidnappings, and to maintain the stability of the country, (Karzai) approved the prisoners' death sentences," a statement read over the news said.
Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, had told The Associated Press last week that Karzai was taking "extreme care in execution cases."
"He has been holding on to these cases because he wants to make sure that the justice is served and the due process is complete. He personally does not like executions, but Afghan law asks for it, and he will obey the laws," Hamidzada said.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry expressed distress at the executions.
"For the Netherlands, the abolition of the death penalty is one of our priorities in terms of international human rights policy," spokesman Bart Rijs said. "We had understood there was a moratorium on the death penalty in force."
Rijs said Dutch troops would continue to hand over prisoners because the Netherlands had signed a memorandum of understanding with Karzai's government guaranteeing those inmates would not be executed. Rijs said there were 10 such prisoners and all were believed in good health.
Amnesty International said six countries were responsible for 91 percent of all known executions worldwide last year: China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and the United States. Eighteen other countries also carried out executions, the group said.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
The True North, Stoned and Free
The Globe and Mail
July 16, 2007
Listen, Canada, we need to talk.
It's about your little pot habit.
Just look at these numbers from the United Nations. More people smoke in Canada than in nearly every other country. More than Jamaica. More than the Netherlands.
Dude, that has to tell you something.
Do you want to end up like Papua New Guinea or Micronesia?
Stop giggling. They are too real countries.
Sigh. For the last time, no, it's not 4:20 yet.
Canada is a nation of stoners.
According to the United Nations' 2007 World Drug Report released last week, Canadians lead the industrialized world in marijuana smoking. Canadians are four times more likely to have smoked pot in the past year than residents of nearly every other country: 16.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 64 use marijuana, compared to a global average of 3.8 per cent.
Why so high?
While experts aren't concerned about Canadians' pot-smoking habits – they worry about abuse, not recreational use – they agree that the country's fondness for weed says something about our national character.
But opinions vary widely on what, exactly, it says.
“That's a reflection on our national accountability,” says Albert de Goias, director of the Toronto-based Prometheum Institute, an addiction counselling centre.
Dr. de Goias says the pot-smoking rates don't bother him, and he rarely sees people seeking treatment for marijuana dependence. But he thinks it's symptomatic of a collective lack of ambition.
“We have a very progressive economy, and a tendency to be overprotective of personal rights, much more so than other countries. We have a tendency to feel we have a right to get everything without really having to earn it.”
Some pot smokers, however, say Canada's high rate of recreational use is not because we're a nation of slackers, but merely a side effect of the country's go-getter work ethic. Canadians work hard and, unlike Europeans, don't get 10 weeks of vacation or two-hour lunches – so we find other ways to unwind.
“You're putting in way too many hours at work, you just want to go out and relax,” says one recreational user, a business owner and married father of three who smokes pot several times a month. Marijuana, he explains, allows busy professionals to “maximize your leisure time.”
“You go to a bar, you're hanging out with friends – if you're stoned, everybody's funnier,” he says. “If you're not sure about a movie? Get high, you'll like it better.”this is notes
Pot's mainstream popularity shows how far Canada has progressed (or drifted, depending on your perspective) from its strait-laced roots. While still illegal, marijuana has gained widespread social acceptance in Canada.
“Canadians have come far and fast from the kind of pasty white Protestant culture of the early post-War period to a much more diverse society founded on individual freedom,” says Rudyard Griffiths, co-founder of the Dominion Institute. “Soft drugs are probably part of that.”
In 2001, Canada became the first country to legalize medical marijuana. In 2003, Jean Chrétien's Liberals tabled a bill to decriminalize marijuana possession, but the legislation died in 2006.
Still, 55 per cent of Canadians believe marijuana should be legal, according to an Angus Reid poll conducted this June.
And many smokers aren't letting the current laws stop them.
Canadians are more likely to smoke pot than people in the Netherlands, where cannabis is legal yet only 6.8 per cent of the population had used it in the past year. The only countries more likely to spark up are Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, Ghana and Zambia.
Canadians are no slouches when it comes to other mind-altering substances, either. Alcohol use is 30 per cent higher than the global average, and Canada ranks fourth, after Spain, England and the United States, for cocaine use – 2.3 per cent of the population tried cocaine in the past year.
But Canadians' laissez-faire attitude has limits, Mr. Griffiths says. For example, attitudes about pornography are much more conservative here than in Europe. And lighting a tobacco cigarette earns you more dirty looks in some circles than lighting a joint.
“I don't think we're slouching toward Gomorrah,” Mr. Griffiths says.
While some pin Canada's penchant for pot on social liberalism, others say it's just the opposite – the illegality of marijuana actually boosts its appeal.
“The more something is prohibited, the more it becomes appealing to some people,” says Benedikt Fischer, a drug policy expert at the University of Victoria and a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
He cautions that patterns of use are more significant than one-time use, and he notes that the U.N.'s method of counting anyone who's smoked pot in the past year casts a very wide net. He's not surprised Canada's numbers are so high.
“We're a very prohibitionist society when it comes to psychoactive drugs, or fun, or anything that has a flavour of immorality,” Dr. Fischer says. “This is a cultural knee-jerk reaction, the rejection of unaccepted norms.”
Robin Ellins, proprietor of the Friendly Stranger, a head shop in Toronto, agrees.
“Consumption would go down if it was legal,” he says, as shoppers browse among ornate bongs and hemp clothing. “That's definitely a big part of the attraction.”
Mr. Ellins thinks Canada's commanding lead in the global drug survey might be traced to a positive national trait: honesty.
Whereas some countries keep their reefer madness quiet, Canadians are proud pot smokers.
“We have a willingness to admit that we actually do partake,” he says.
July 16, 2007
Listen, Canada, we need to talk.
It's about your little pot habit.
Just look at these numbers from the United Nations. More people smoke in Canada than in nearly every other country. More than Jamaica. More than the Netherlands.
Dude, that has to tell you something.
Do you want to end up like Papua New Guinea or Micronesia?
Stop giggling. They are too real countries.
Sigh. For the last time, no, it's not 4:20 yet.
Canada is a nation of stoners.
According to the United Nations' 2007 World Drug Report released last week, Canadians lead the industrialized world in marijuana smoking. Canadians are four times more likely to have smoked pot in the past year than residents of nearly every other country: 16.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 64 use marijuana, compared to a global average of 3.8 per cent.
Why so high?
While experts aren't concerned about Canadians' pot-smoking habits – they worry about abuse, not recreational use – they agree that the country's fondness for weed says something about our national character.
But opinions vary widely on what, exactly, it says.
“That's a reflection on our national accountability,” says Albert de Goias, director of the Toronto-based Prometheum Institute, an addiction counselling centre.
Dr. de Goias says the pot-smoking rates don't bother him, and he rarely sees people seeking treatment for marijuana dependence. But he thinks it's symptomatic of a collective lack of ambition.
“We have a very progressive economy, and a tendency to be overprotective of personal rights, much more so than other countries. We have a tendency to feel we have a right to get everything without really having to earn it.”
Some pot smokers, however, say Canada's high rate of recreational use is not because we're a nation of slackers, but merely a side effect of the country's go-getter work ethic. Canadians work hard and, unlike Europeans, don't get 10 weeks of vacation or two-hour lunches – so we find other ways to unwind.
“You're putting in way too many hours at work, you just want to go out and relax,” says one recreational user, a business owner and married father of three who smokes pot several times a month. Marijuana, he explains, allows busy professionals to “maximize your leisure time.”
“You go to a bar, you're hanging out with friends – if you're stoned, everybody's funnier,” he says. “If you're not sure about a movie? Get high, you'll like it better.”this is notes
Pot's mainstream popularity shows how far Canada has progressed (or drifted, depending on your perspective) from its strait-laced roots. While still illegal, marijuana has gained widespread social acceptance in Canada.
“Canadians have come far and fast from the kind of pasty white Protestant culture of the early post-War period to a much more diverse society founded on individual freedom,” says Rudyard Griffiths, co-founder of the Dominion Institute. “Soft drugs are probably part of that.”
In 2001, Canada became the first country to legalize medical marijuana. In 2003, Jean Chrétien's Liberals tabled a bill to decriminalize marijuana possession, but the legislation died in 2006.
Still, 55 per cent of Canadians believe marijuana should be legal, according to an Angus Reid poll conducted this June.
And many smokers aren't letting the current laws stop them.
Canadians are more likely to smoke pot than people in the Netherlands, where cannabis is legal yet only 6.8 per cent of the population had used it in the past year. The only countries more likely to spark up are Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, Ghana and Zambia.
Canadians are no slouches when it comes to other mind-altering substances, either. Alcohol use is 30 per cent higher than the global average, and Canada ranks fourth, after Spain, England and the United States, for cocaine use – 2.3 per cent of the population tried cocaine in the past year.
But Canadians' laissez-faire attitude has limits, Mr. Griffiths says. For example, attitudes about pornography are much more conservative here than in Europe. And lighting a tobacco cigarette earns you more dirty looks in some circles than lighting a joint.
“I don't think we're slouching toward Gomorrah,” Mr. Griffiths says.
While some pin Canada's penchant for pot on social liberalism, others say it's just the opposite – the illegality of marijuana actually boosts its appeal.
“The more something is prohibited, the more it becomes appealing to some people,” says Benedikt Fischer, a drug policy expert at the University of Victoria and a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
He cautions that patterns of use are more significant than one-time use, and he notes that the U.N.'s method of counting anyone who's smoked pot in the past year casts a very wide net. He's not surprised Canada's numbers are so high.
“We're a very prohibitionist society when it comes to psychoactive drugs, or fun, or anything that has a flavour of immorality,” Dr. Fischer says. “This is a cultural knee-jerk reaction, the rejection of unaccepted norms.”
Robin Ellins, proprietor of the Friendly Stranger, a head shop in Toronto, agrees.
“Consumption would go down if it was legal,” he says, as shoppers browse among ornate bongs and hemp clothing. “That's definitely a big part of the attraction.”
Mr. Ellins thinks Canada's commanding lead in the global drug survey might be traced to a positive national trait: honesty.
Whereas some countries keep their reefer madness quiet, Canadians are proud pot smokers.
“We have a willingness to admit that we actually do partake,” he says.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Tangled up in Seuss: Grinch Strikes Back
When a musician recorded "Green Eggs and Ham" in the voice of vintage Bob Dylan and posted it online, the Grinch estate promptly replied: One fish, two fish, cease and desist.
By Dan Brekke
Apr. 13, 2007 | Kevin Ryan doesn't want to talk about his recent fling with Web stardom. He's a bit rueful and more than a little nervous about it, in fact, and wishes the whole thing would just go away.
If you missed his star turn, here's what happened: Ryan, a 33-year-old Houston music producer and author, went into his home studio and engineered a sort of retro mash-up of two of his favorite artists, Bob Dylan and Dr. Seuss.
Ryan took the text from seven Seuss classics, including "The Cat in the Hat" and "Green Eggs and Ham," and set them to original tunes that sounded like they were right off Dylan's mid-'60s releases. He played all the instruments and sang all the songs in Dylan's breathy, nasal twang. He registered a domain name, dylanhearsawho.com, and in February posted his seven tracks online, accompanied by suitably Photoshopped album artwork, under the title "Dylan Hears a Who."
"Green Eggs and Ham" was set to a tune and arrangement somewhere between "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Subterranean Homesick Blues," complete with Dylan's rushed, occasionally sneering phrasing. Familiar passages are run together in impatient run-ons:
Would you eat them in a box?
Would you eat them with a fox?
Not in a box not with a fox
Not in a house not with a mouse
I would not eat them here or there
I would not eat them anywhere
All this accompanied by an up-tempo electric band, complete with the jaunty skirling of a Hammond organ.
It was clever and delightful. Ryan had immersed himself so fully in Seuss' words and Dylan's style that he managed to merge two quite different creative intelligences. Many who have heard the tracks come away convinced they're really listening to Bob Dylan.
Reached in Houston, Ryan confirmed the work was his but declined to speak about it on the record except to say he never expected it to attract any attention. Instead, "Dylan Hears a Who" was quickly picked up by bloggers and the popular Web site BoingBoing and went viral, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Then Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the La Jolla, Calif., firm that publishes the works of the late Theodor Geisel, heard "Dylan Hears a Who." Only two weeks after word of the site began spreading, Ryan got a cease-and-desist demand from the Seuss lawyers, who said the site and songs infringed the company's copyrights and trademarks. Ryan complied quickly and quietly. Instead of the Dylan/Seuss tracks, visitors to dylanhearsawho.com find a brief message saying the site has been "retired" at the request of Dr. Seuss Enterprises.
If you were caught up in the momentary wonder of how someone could execute such an ingeniously perfect blending of period musical style, '60s attitude and loopy storytelling, it was tempting to see all of this as just another case of a heavy-handed corporate copyright holder -- a master of copyright war, to call on the old Dylan oeuvre -- sticking it to the little guy.
Ryan -- best known as the coauthor of "Recording the Beatles," a meticulous investigation of every track, take and song the group committed to vinyl -- was face-to-face with a company that zealously guards its intellectual property. Losing a copyright-infringement case can be extremely expensive. In addition to the federal law's $150,000 maximum in statutory damages, defendants can find themselves on the hook for the plaintiff's legal fees. (Dr. Seuss Enterprises declined comment on "Dylan Hears a Who," questioning why it was even a subject of interest. Dylan's attorney did not return a call for comment on Ryan's work.)
As it happens, if Ryan was going to get into a fight over the legal limits of parody, he couldn't have run into a better-prepared opponent than Dr. Seuss Enterprises. The company helped write an important chapter in current case law regarding what is and what isn't parody for purposes of fair use. In 1996, Dr. Seuss successfully sued Penguin Books to stop publication of "The Cat NOT in the Hat," a send-up of the O.J. Simpson murder written and illustrated in the Seuss style.
Still, the Copyright Law of the United States was put on the books by the very first Congress not to secure the intellectual property rights of the corporate few, but to "promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts" -- even when that progress involves a writer, artist or musician lifting words, images or melodies from one source as part of making something new.
So if there was a legal defense for Ryan using Dr. Seuss' words and images -- and Dylan's name and likeness, for that matter -- it probably lay in the Copyright Law's "fair use" exception. The provision, which reaches back at least to early 18th century English law, allows "the fair use of a copyrighted work ... for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching ... scholarship, or research."
What does that mean when it comes to the unlikely trio of Dylan, Seuss and Ryan?
I asked Jennifer Rothman, an assistant professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis who specializes in intellectual property, entertainment law and the First Amendment. Her take surprised me, coming from someone who said she's on the side of small creators vs. corporate intellectual property interests.
"There's no question that big intellectual property holders are intimidating small-time players with cease-and-desist letters and unreasonable I.P. claims and that the small players often buckle under," she said. "This does chill speech."
But the general climate aside, she said Ryan "is not standing on solid ground. If I were him, I wouldn't want to litigate this because most courts would likely find he violated current I.P. law."
Then she walked me through her reasoning, using as a primer Campbell v. Acuff-Rose, the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous 1992 ruling that found 2 Live Crew's smutty, suggestive and sophomoric take-off on Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" deserved fair-use protection as parody.
The key to the court's finding was that Luther Campbell, the author of the 2 Live Crew work, did more than grab snippets of the original lyrics and sample portions of the song's instrumental track. In the language of fair use, Campbell's version was a "transformative" new work.
"While we might not assign a high rank to the parodic element here, we think it fair to say that 2 Live Crew's song reasonably could be perceived as commenting on the original or criticizing it, to some degree," Associate Justice David Souter wrote for the court. "2 Live Crew juxtaposes the romantic musings of a man whose fantasy comes true, with degrading taunts, a bawdy demand for sex, and a sigh of relief from paternal responsibility. The later words can be taken as a comment on the naivete of the original of an earlier day, as a rejection of its sentiment that ignores the ugliness of street life and the debasement that it signifies."
However, whether a work is "transformative" in going beyond an original with "new expression, meaning, or message," is just one of the factors courts must consider when assessing fair use. Judges must also weigh whether a new work is created for profit; whether the original work merits protection from copying; how much of the original was appropriated to make a new work; and what market impact the appropriation might have on the original work.
In Rothman's opinion, Ryan's work flunks two essential tests.
First, it fails to be a transformative work in that there's no clear comment on or criticism of the Seuss original. "I think he's not even close to the line on this. He's far in the infringing camp," Rothman said.
Second, "Dylan Hears a Who" appropriates too much of the original material. "It takes the entire Dr. Seuss material; it's not like taking just a few lines to make a point," Rothman said. "One question a court would ask is, Did the defendant take more than was necessary for a parody? and here I think the answer is clearly yes." The one factor that might weigh in Ryan's favor, Rothman said, is that "Dylan Hears a Who" did not appear to be commercial.
I asked Rothman to back up for a moment and consider an argument that went like this: By inserting Dr. Seuss' words into a novel context, specifically, the voice and style of a radical 1960s troubadour, the "Dylan Hears a Who" project comments on the original work by exposing a sly, rebellious, countercultural dimension to his work that has remained hidden. At the same time, it exposes a playful though pointed creative intelligence shared by two of the most important figures of the 1960s.
Rothman said that wasn't a bad stab at a defense, but didn't think a court would buy it. "It's too obvious that the point of the site is, Wouldn't it be fun to sing Dr. Seuss in a Dylan voice? And that's not something most courts would be sympathetic to."
Ryan himself -- speaking, of course, after he heard from Seuss' lawyers -- seems to confirm Rothman's judgment when he wrote in an online forum that "Dylan Hears a Who" was merely "a fun little project." Having fun doesn't make it impossible to produce parody, but to have a ghost of a chance of prevailing in a fair-use dispute, you need some serious justification and the ability to demonstrate it. In a sense, Ryan undid his most serious defense by admitting he used someone else's protected material just for fun.
Ryan's work aside, Rothman said the current copyright regime is an increasing burden to artists and one that, the three-century history of fair use notwithstanding, is drawing an ever tighter circle around the choices of writers, musicians, filmmakers and creators of all stripes.
A case in point is an often-cited incident involving filmmaker Jon Else and his 1999 documentary "Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle." As detailed in "Free Culture," by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, Else shot a scene of stagehands playing checkers. In the background, "The Simpsons" was on TV. Else wanted to use a four-and-a-half-second shot that included the cartoon, which was incidental to the scene. It was probably a case of fair use, but he sought permission from the copyright owners. Fox said Else could use the 4.5 seconds at its educational rate: $10,000. Dismayed by the cost and the prospect of costly and time-consuming litigation to keep the shot intact, the filmmaker dropped his request and wound up digitally substituting a documentary he owns the rights to onto the TV in the scene.
"In theory, fair use means you need no permission," Lessig concludes. "The theory therefore supports free culture and insulates against a permission culture." But summarizing Else's experience, he says, "The fuzzy lines of the law, tied to the extraordinary liability if lines are crossed, means that the effective fair use for many types of creators is slight. The law has the right aim; practice has defeated the aim."
So is there hope for daring creators? Even those who, like Ryan, make something remarkable on a lark? Rothman points to efforts such as the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, set up by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and law clinics at Harvard, UC-Berkeley, Stanford and several other universities to help pool information on copyright issues and advice for artists facing cease-and-desist demands.
But she also suggests that the most effective response might be fighting fire with fire: being prepared to go to court to fight unreasonable intellectual property demands from corporations. Of course, a movement like that would need deep pockets, and Rothman says some have arrived on the scene: Google, for instance, which has seen copyright law become a major factor in many of its activities.
"We're just starting to see a movement to push back," she said. "I and other I.P. scholars are saying we need more litigation of these questions."
In the meantime, "Dylan Hears a Who" lives on, even if Ryan's site is shut down. The songs were online long enough for music fans to do what fans do on the Web: copy the songs and repost them. Despite the fumings of the intellectual property grinches, Bob Dylan's gig with Dr. Seuss is guaranteed a long run.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/04/13/dylan_seuss/print.html
By Dan Brekke
Apr. 13, 2007 | Kevin Ryan doesn't want to talk about his recent fling with Web stardom. He's a bit rueful and more than a little nervous about it, in fact, and wishes the whole thing would just go away.
If you missed his star turn, here's what happened: Ryan, a 33-year-old Houston music producer and author, went into his home studio and engineered a sort of retro mash-up of two of his favorite artists, Bob Dylan and Dr. Seuss.
Ryan took the text from seven Seuss classics, including "The Cat in the Hat" and "Green Eggs and Ham," and set them to original tunes that sounded like they were right off Dylan's mid-'60s releases. He played all the instruments and sang all the songs in Dylan's breathy, nasal twang. He registered a domain name, dylanhearsawho.com, and in February posted his seven tracks online, accompanied by suitably Photoshopped album artwork, under the title "Dylan Hears a Who."
"Green Eggs and Ham" was set to a tune and arrangement somewhere between "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Subterranean Homesick Blues," complete with Dylan's rushed, occasionally sneering phrasing. Familiar passages are run together in impatient run-ons:
Would you eat them in a box?
Would you eat them with a fox?
Not in a box not with a fox
Not in a house not with a mouse
I would not eat them here or there
I would not eat them anywhere
All this accompanied by an up-tempo electric band, complete with the jaunty skirling of a Hammond organ.
It was clever and delightful. Ryan had immersed himself so fully in Seuss' words and Dylan's style that he managed to merge two quite different creative intelligences. Many who have heard the tracks come away convinced they're really listening to Bob Dylan.
Reached in Houston, Ryan confirmed the work was his but declined to speak about it on the record except to say he never expected it to attract any attention. Instead, "Dylan Hears a Who" was quickly picked up by bloggers and the popular Web site BoingBoing and went viral, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Then Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the La Jolla, Calif., firm that publishes the works of the late Theodor Geisel, heard "Dylan Hears a Who." Only two weeks after word of the site began spreading, Ryan got a cease-and-desist demand from the Seuss lawyers, who said the site and songs infringed the company's copyrights and trademarks. Ryan complied quickly and quietly. Instead of the Dylan/Seuss tracks, visitors to dylanhearsawho.com find a brief message saying the site has been "retired" at the request of Dr. Seuss Enterprises.
If you were caught up in the momentary wonder of how someone could execute such an ingeniously perfect blending of period musical style, '60s attitude and loopy storytelling, it was tempting to see all of this as just another case of a heavy-handed corporate copyright holder -- a master of copyright war, to call on the old Dylan oeuvre -- sticking it to the little guy.
Ryan -- best known as the coauthor of "Recording the Beatles," a meticulous investigation of every track, take and song the group committed to vinyl -- was face-to-face with a company that zealously guards its intellectual property. Losing a copyright-infringement case can be extremely expensive. In addition to the federal law's $150,000 maximum in statutory damages, defendants can find themselves on the hook for the plaintiff's legal fees. (Dr. Seuss Enterprises declined comment on "Dylan Hears a Who," questioning why it was even a subject of interest. Dylan's attorney did not return a call for comment on Ryan's work.)
As it happens, if Ryan was going to get into a fight over the legal limits of parody, he couldn't have run into a better-prepared opponent than Dr. Seuss Enterprises. The company helped write an important chapter in current case law regarding what is and what isn't parody for purposes of fair use. In 1996, Dr. Seuss successfully sued Penguin Books to stop publication of "The Cat NOT in the Hat," a send-up of the O.J. Simpson murder written and illustrated in the Seuss style.
Still, the Copyright Law of the United States was put on the books by the very first Congress not to secure the intellectual property rights of the corporate few, but to "promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts" -- even when that progress involves a writer, artist or musician lifting words, images or melodies from one source as part of making something new.
So if there was a legal defense for Ryan using Dr. Seuss' words and images -- and Dylan's name and likeness, for that matter -- it probably lay in the Copyright Law's "fair use" exception. The provision, which reaches back at least to early 18th century English law, allows "the fair use of a copyrighted work ... for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching ... scholarship, or research."
What does that mean when it comes to the unlikely trio of Dylan, Seuss and Ryan?
I asked Jennifer Rothman, an assistant professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis who specializes in intellectual property, entertainment law and the First Amendment. Her take surprised me, coming from someone who said she's on the side of small creators vs. corporate intellectual property interests.
"There's no question that big intellectual property holders are intimidating small-time players with cease-and-desist letters and unreasonable I.P. claims and that the small players often buckle under," she said. "This does chill speech."
But the general climate aside, she said Ryan "is not standing on solid ground. If I were him, I wouldn't want to litigate this because most courts would likely find he violated current I.P. law."
Then she walked me through her reasoning, using as a primer Campbell v. Acuff-Rose, the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous 1992 ruling that found 2 Live Crew's smutty, suggestive and sophomoric take-off on Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" deserved fair-use protection as parody.
The key to the court's finding was that Luther Campbell, the author of the 2 Live Crew work, did more than grab snippets of the original lyrics and sample portions of the song's instrumental track. In the language of fair use, Campbell's version was a "transformative" new work.
"While we might not assign a high rank to the parodic element here, we think it fair to say that 2 Live Crew's song reasonably could be perceived as commenting on the original or criticizing it, to some degree," Associate Justice David Souter wrote for the court. "2 Live Crew juxtaposes the romantic musings of a man whose fantasy comes true, with degrading taunts, a bawdy demand for sex, and a sigh of relief from paternal responsibility. The later words can be taken as a comment on the naivete of the original of an earlier day, as a rejection of its sentiment that ignores the ugliness of street life and the debasement that it signifies."
However, whether a work is "transformative" in going beyond an original with "new expression, meaning, or message," is just one of the factors courts must consider when assessing fair use. Judges must also weigh whether a new work is created for profit; whether the original work merits protection from copying; how much of the original was appropriated to make a new work; and what market impact the appropriation might have on the original work.
In Rothman's opinion, Ryan's work flunks two essential tests.
First, it fails to be a transformative work in that there's no clear comment on or criticism of the Seuss original. "I think he's not even close to the line on this. He's far in the infringing camp," Rothman said.
Second, "Dylan Hears a Who" appropriates too much of the original material. "It takes the entire Dr. Seuss material; it's not like taking just a few lines to make a point," Rothman said. "One question a court would ask is, Did the defendant take more than was necessary for a parody? and here I think the answer is clearly yes." The one factor that might weigh in Ryan's favor, Rothman said, is that "Dylan Hears a Who" did not appear to be commercial.
I asked Rothman to back up for a moment and consider an argument that went like this: By inserting Dr. Seuss' words into a novel context, specifically, the voice and style of a radical 1960s troubadour, the "Dylan Hears a Who" project comments on the original work by exposing a sly, rebellious, countercultural dimension to his work that has remained hidden. At the same time, it exposes a playful though pointed creative intelligence shared by two of the most important figures of the 1960s.
Rothman said that wasn't a bad stab at a defense, but didn't think a court would buy it. "It's too obvious that the point of the site is, Wouldn't it be fun to sing Dr. Seuss in a Dylan voice? And that's not something most courts would be sympathetic to."
Ryan himself -- speaking, of course, after he heard from Seuss' lawyers -- seems to confirm Rothman's judgment when he wrote in an online forum that "Dylan Hears a Who" was merely "a fun little project." Having fun doesn't make it impossible to produce parody, but to have a ghost of a chance of prevailing in a fair-use dispute, you need some serious justification and the ability to demonstrate it. In a sense, Ryan undid his most serious defense by admitting he used someone else's protected material just for fun.
Ryan's work aside, Rothman said the current copyright regime is an increasing burden to artists and one that, the three-century history of fair use notwithstanding, is drawing an ever tighter circle around the choices of writers, musicians, filmmakers and creators of all stripes.
A case in point is an often-cited incident involving filmmaker Jon Else and his 1999 documentary "Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle." As detailed in "Free Culture," by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, Else shot a scene of stagehands playing checkers. In the background, "The Simpsons" was on TV. Else wanted to use a four-and-a-half-second shot that included the cartoon, which was incidental to the scene. It was probably a case of fair use, but he sought permission from the copyright owners. Fox said Else could use the 4.5 seconds at its educational rate: $10,000. Dismayed by the cost and the prospect of costly and time-consuming litigation to keep the shot intact, the filmmaker dropped his request and wound up digitally substituting a documentary he owns the rights to onto the TV in the scene.
"In theory, fair use means you need no permission," Lessig concludes. "The theory therefore supports free culture and insulates against a permission culture." But summarizing Else's experience, he says, "The fuzzy lines of the law, tied to the extraordinary liability if lines are crossed, means that the effective fair use for many types of creators is slight. The law has the right aim; practice has defeated the aim."
So is there hope for daring creators? Even those who, like Ryan, make something remarkable on a lark? Rothman points to efforts such as the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, set up by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and law clinics at Harvard, UC-Berkeley, Stanford and several other universities to help pool information on copyright issues and advice for artists facing cease-and-desist demands.
But she also suggests that the most effective response might be fighting fire with fire: being prepared to go to court to fight unreasonable intellectual property demands from corporations. Of course, a movement like that would need deep pockets, and Rothman says some have arrived on the scene: Google, for instance, which has seen copyright law become a major factor in many of its activities.
"We're just starting to see a movement to push back," she said. "I and other I.P. scholars are saying we need more litigation of these questions."
In the meantime, "Dylan Hears a Who" lives on, even if Ryan's site is shut down. The songs were online long enough for music fans to do what fans do on the Web: copy the songs and repost them. Despite the fumings of the intellectual property grinches, Bob Dylan's gig with Dr. Seuss is guaranteed a long run.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/04/13/dylan_seuss/print.html
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Science Confirms Grinch Virile, Studmuffin
The Grinch had another one of those eye-opening (slap-head, surely!) moments last week, blundering into a situation that could very easily have snuck up and bit his furry green butt rather mightily. Yes, weighing the consequences has never been his strong suit and the visit to the fertility specialist did not fail to entertain.
As noted in an earlier post, our Grinch is no spring chicken. Give the powerful desire for pups – and the unspoken wishes of the Missus - it was felt that a visit to the vet might be in order. A quick exam would ensure all the plumbing is behaving as it should, that decades of late nights, whiskey and cigarettes combined with chronic self-abuse had not critically abraded his ability to procreate.
Who knows what form these kinds of examinations take in the real world but the Grinch had naively thought the physician (who enjoys the mate’s complete confidence) might have a few questions. No so.
Here in Indonesia – where lotions and potions for all that ails ya are available on every street-corner and matters of conceptual prowess are a constant source of speculation amongst the chattering classes – he was instead greeted by a smiling, 50-something lab tech lady in the headscarf who kindly provided a specimen cup (plastic double-shot jigger with a yellow cap) and told to make sure it was returned “from home” within 30 minutes of having “provided a sample”.
Now the Grinch is expert in these matters but it struck him that unless his cave were right next door, the chances of that sample making it back to the lab in any condition to provide an accurate gauge of this his fertility were next to zero. Besides, even the Grinch is insufficiently ironic and post-modern to countenance a “post-production” ride in the back of a Silver Bird taxi from boudoir to clinic. Weird and wrong, but in a bad way.
So he carpe-d the diem, seized the sample jigger and disappeared into the heavily mirrored and extremely brightly lit, white-tiled bathroom sans naughty magazines or other visual aids and got busy. Always the consummate solitary professional (ibid: para 2), he was back in 10 minutes (take that, Dominos!): the head-scarved techie said it would only take a few minutes to analyze the sample.
And with those words, the oddest thought, something that might have been hovering, maddeningly and unidentified about the periphery of his consciousness, popped into full view: what if decades ingesting nasty chemicals HAD made an impact? What if the Grinch were to learn that no amount of spinach and prayer would produce a natural heir?
It had never really occurred to the Grinch that this might be the case. Not that there is a lack of evidence that infertility exists. In recent years several individuals in his immediate realm have discovered they are unable or highly unlikely to sire and have fallen back on adoption or in-vitro efforts, both emotionally fraught, time-consuming and expensive measures with no guarantee of success.
Though blessed with foster siblings, the Grinch is the last in his line. A failure to reproduce dooms one fragile genetic strand and its traits real and imagined (blue eyes, athleticism, long-windedness, appreciation for Spreyside single malts) to oblivion. It would be a lie to say that these issues keep the Grinch awake nights – there’s no crew filling these kinds of potholes on life’s road – but the possibility still elicits a visceral (genetic?) negative reaction that’s fodder for a robust nature/nurture argument at some point in the future.
For several minutes he sat shrouded in a dull mist on the outside the lab, considering for the first time what exactly was at stake, a leaden weight growing in my stomach. Because surely if anyone was going to be blindsided by a psychic roundhouse kick to the head it is your long-suffering Grinch, right?
A blue headscarf bobbed into view.
“Would you like to take a look,” she inquired, smiling?
“Huh?”
“A look in the microscope…?”
So he followed her into the lab greeted by half a dozen beaming techies in white lab coats. His mind accelerated… What do those smiles mean? Are these “So, the green fella’s the Kentucky stud farm breeder” smiles? Or are they “my village has been leveled by an earthquake and my entire family is dead” smiles? In Java one just never knows.
The microscope looms large. Ms Headscarf points to the barrels on either side to adjust focal lengths and angles… Her eyes are closer together than his so the first view was nothing but black.
When things cleared up the Grinch was privy to a bright, mottled universe populated by what appeared to be thousands of wriggling larvae, all busily going about the business of trying to get somewhere without any clear idea about where exactly “somewhere” might be. With apologies to Monty Python, a “100 Meter Dash for Tadpoles With No Sense of Direction.”
And the bulb literally snaps on.
“Holy smokes,” he thought, “they be Me! Or at least, part of Me. And look how many of Me there are! Swarms of little swimming, writhing Me’s all busily, mindlessly, fruitlessly trying to decide which way to go.”
Wrapped up the moment, the headscarf lady gave her thumbs-up.
It felt like the whole room was going to burst into applause (which would have been appropriate after all); certainly there was a conspicuous exhale, a decompression. The Missus confirmed matters for her own peace of mind, but talked the Grinch out of inviting the entire office in for a view, maybe selling tickets, doing a few interviews etc.
So the good news is that the Grinch’s status as a virile stud-muffin remains intact. Whether he’s actually learned anything from all this is up for debate. It seems likely he’ll continue to blithely blunder into these emotionally charged, potentially life-changing events clear-eyed and unreflective, almost childlike in his ignorance.
As noted in an earlier post, our Grinch is no spring chicken. Give the powerful desire for pups – and the unspoken wishes of the Missus - it was felt that a visit to the vet might be in order. A quick exam would ensure all the plumbing is behaving as it should, that decades of late nights, whiskey and cigarettes combined with chronic self-abuse had not critically abraded his ability to procreate.
Who knows what form these kinds of examinations take in the real world but the Grinch had naively thought the physician (who enjoys the mate’s complete confidence) might have a few questions. No so.
Here in Indonesia – where lotions and potions for all that ails ya are available on every street-corner and matters of conceptual prowess are a constant source of speculation amongst the chattering classes – he was instead greeted by a smiling, 50-something lab tech lady in the headscarf who kindly provided a specimen cup (plastic double-shot jigger with a yellow cap) and told to make sure it was returned “from home” within 30 minutes of having “provided a sample”.
Now the Grinch is expert in these matters but it struck him that unless his cave were right next door, the chances of that sample making it back to the lab in any condition to provide an accurate gauge of this his fertility were next to zero. Besides, even the Grinch is insufficiently ironic and post-modern to countenance a “post-production” ride in the back of a Silver Bird taxi from boudoir to clinic. Weird and wrong, but in a bad way.
So he carpe-d the diem, seized the sample jigger and disappeared into the heavily mirrored and extremely brightly lit, white-tiled bathroom sans naughty magazines or other visual aids and got busy. Always the consummate solitary professional (ibid: para 2), he was back in 10 minutes (take that, Dominos!): the head-scarved techie said it would only take a few minutes to analyze the sample.
And with those words, the oddest thought, something that might have been hovering, maddeningly and unidentified about the periphery of his consciousness, popped into full view: what if decades ingesting nasty chemicals HAD made an impact? What if the Grinch were to learn that no amount of spinach and prayer would produce a natural heir?
It had never really occurred to the Grinch that this might be the case. Not that there is a lack of evidence that infertility exists. In recent years several individuals in his immediate realm have discovered they are unable or highly unlikely to sire and have fallen back on adoption or in-vitro efforts, both emotionally fraught, time-consuming and expensive measures with no guarantee of success.
Though blessed with foster siblings, the Grinch is the last in his line. A failure to reproduce dooms one fragile genetic strand and its traits real and imagined (blue eyes, athleticism, long-windedness, appreciation for Spreyside single malts) to oblivion. It would be a lie to say that these issues keep the Grinch awake nights – there’s no crew filling these kinds of potholes on life’s road – but the possibility still elicits a visceral (genetic?) negative reaction that’s fodder for a robust nature/nurture argument at some point in the future.
For several minutes he sat shrouded in a dull mist on the outside the lab, considering for the first time what exactly was at stake, a leaden weight growing in my stomach. Because surely if anyone was going to be blindsided by a psychic roundhouse kick to the head it is your long-suffering Grinch, right?
A blue headscarf bobbed into view.
“Would you like to take a look,” she inquired, smiling?
“Huh?”
“A look in the microscope…?”
So he followed her into the lab greeted by half a dozen beaming techies in white lab coats. His mind accelerated… What do those smiles mean? Are these “So, the green fella’s the Kentucky stud farm breeder” smiles? Or are they “my village has been leveled by an earthquake and my entire family is dead” smiles? In Java one just never knows.
The microscope looms large. Ms Headscarf points to the barrels on either side to adjust focal lengths and angles… Her eyes are closer together than his so the first view was nothing but black.
When things cleared up the Grinch was privy to a bright, mottled universe populated by what appeared to be thousands of wriggling larvae, all busily going about the business of trying to get somewhere without any clear idea about where exactly “somewhere” might be. With apologies to Monty Python, a “100 Meter Dash for Tadpoles With No Sense of Direction.”
And the bulb literally snaps on.
“Holy smokes,” he thought, “they be Me! Or at least, part of Me. And look how many of Me there are! Swarms of little swimming, writhing Me’s all busily, mindlessly, fruitlessly trying to decide which way to go.”
Wrapped up the moment, the headscarf lady gave her thumbs-up.
It felt like the whole room was going to burst into applause (which would have been appropriate after all); certainly there was a conspicuous exhale, a decompression. The Missus confirmed matters for her own peace of mind, but talked the Grinch out of inviting the entire office in for a view, maybe selling tickets, doing a few interviews etc.
So the good news is that the Grinch’s status as a virile stud-muffin remains intact. Whether he’s actually learned anything from all this is up for debate. It seems likely he’ll continue to blithely blunder into these emotionally charged, potentially life-changing events clear-eyed and unreflective, almost childlike in his ignorance.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Aceh Police Sexually Assaulted Gay NGO Workers - AHRW
The Grinch has no way of confirming the details of this case though it was brought to his attention about six weeks ago. Asian HRW (who produced the story below on their website) is a reputable organization that doesn't make specious accusations.
These allegations emerge four months into a three-year, multi-million dollar police training program in Aceh designed to improve police awareness of human rights and community policing among the province's 11,000 police officers.
The same week the training program was launched, a group of uniformed police beat to death - outside the offices of the chief of police in downtown Banda Aceh - a young secuity guard who mistakenly flew the Indonesian flag upside-down outside a government building.
BANDA ACEH, March 17, 2007 – A 32-years-old NGO worker and his same-sex partner were allegedly brutally tortured and sexually abused by the Banda Aceh police while in custody in January, the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has revealed.
AHRC has named the NGO official as Mr. Hartayo and his partner as “Bobby”.
The alleged underlying motive behind the detention, torture and sexual abuse of the victims is because they are homosexuals, AHRC says in an ‘urgent action’ appeal.
“We were also informed that the police made the victims to sign a statement to the Village Head Chief not to indulge in homosexual actions again,” the appeal says.
“The AHRC is deeply concerned that such brutal violence against the victims was committed without hesitation not only by the civilian attackers but also by the police whose mandate is to protect the rights of people.”
On January 22 at around 11:30pm, the victim, Mr. Hartayo, a 32 year-old NGO worker in the Aceh province, was at home with his partner, Bobby, when two men, one of whom the victims identified as an employee of the local Pesona cafe below his boarding house, kicked down his front door and barged into his home, and proceeded to vandalize the property before assaulting both Mr. Hartayo and his partner.
Mr. Hartayo and Bobby were then forced out of their home and ordered to go outside by their attackers, where a crowd of some 15 people had gathered. The beatings and verbal abuse continued. Mr. Hartayo specifically recalled the words of one of his attackers: “You outsiders slander us; you soil our place with your filthy tricks.”
Mr. Hartayo was then ordered to immediately vacate the boarding house, and was marched back to his room to pack his belongings. His ID card and wallet were taken from him, and he was then made to squat on the ground with his partner, while his attackers deliberated on what to do next. They eventually decided to inform the local police authorities.
Four police officers arrived at the scene about 1.30am in an official police vehicle. Mr. Hartayo and Bobby were then taken to the Banda Raya police station.
There, both men were allegedly made to strip down to their underwear, and were then viciously beaten and verbally abused by the officers.
In his testimony, Mr. Hartayo alleges that the officers sexually abused him and then forced his partner to perform oral sex on him. Mr. Hartayo started weeping and attempted to push his partner away, only to be kicked and scolded by the officers who took some perverse “enjoyment” out of their humiliation.
The victims were then dragged to the police station courtyard where they were made to squat on the ground in their underwear. Officers then sprayed them with ice-cold water from the courtyard hosepipe. At this point, Bobby asked the officers for permission to go to the toilet. The officers refused, and instead forced him to urinate on Mr. Hartayo's head.
Mr. Hartayo and his partner were then taken to a police cell, where they were detained until the morning. Mr. Hartayo requested several times to contact his family to inform them of what had happened, a basic human right when facing criminal detention. Each time, his request was denied.
While in the police cell, Mr. Hartayo was instructed by the officers to introduce himself to the detainee who already occupied the cell. When Mr. Hartayo innocently stated that he was a homosexual, an officer entered the cell and severely beat him.
According to Mr. Hartayo, he was treated with complete contempt by all the officers he encountered during his detention.
At around 9:00am on January 23, Mr. Hartayo was finally allowed to speak to his fellow NGO co-workers, although for not longer than five minutes. Both Mr. Hartayo and Bobby were asked by representatives from the Aceh NGO Coalition whether they wanted to file a formal complaint.
Physically and mentally exhausted, both men decided not to pursue the case, and were then made to sign a statement to the Village Head Chief not to indulge in homosexual actions again.
“I felt that my dignity as a human being had been trampled,” Mr. Hartayo told the Aceh NGO Coalition.
These allegations emerge four months into a three-year, multi-million dollar police training program in Aceh designed to improve police awareness of human rights and community policing among the province's 11,000 police officers.
The same week the training program was launched, a group of uniformed police beat to death - outside the offices of the chief of police in downtown Banda Aceh - a young secuity guard who mistakenly flew the Indonesian flag upside-down outside a government building.
BANDA ACEH, March 17, 2007 – A 32-years-old NGO worker and his same-sex partner were allegedly brutally tortured and sexually abused by the Banda Aceh police while in custody in January, the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has revealed.
AHRC has named the NGO official as Mr. Hartayo and his partner as “Bobby”.
The alleged underlying motive behind the detention, torture and sexual abuse of the victims is because they are homosexuals, AHRC says in an ‘urgent action’ appeal.
“We were also informed that the police made the victims to sign a statement to the Village Head Chief not to indulge in homosexual actions again,” the appeal says.
“The AHRC is deeply concerned that such brutal violence against the victims was committed without hesitation not only by the civilian attackers but also by the police whose mandate is to protect the rights of people.”
On January 22 at around 11:30pm, the victim, Mr. Hartayo, a 32 year-old NGO worker in the Aceh province, was at home with his partner, Bobby, when two men, one of whom the victims identified as an employee of the local Pesona cafe below his boarding house, kicked down his front door and barged into his home, and proceeded to vandalize the property before assaulting both Mr. Hartayo and his partner.
Mr. Hartayo and Bobby were then forced out of their home and ordered to go outside by their attackers, where a crowd of some 15 people had gathered. The beatings and verbal abuse continued. Mr. Hartayo specifically recalled the words of one of his attackers: “You outsiders slander us; you soil our place with your filthy tricks.”
Mr. Hartayo was then ordered to immediately vacate the boarding house, and was marched back to his room to pack his belongings. His ID card and wallet were taken from him, and he was then made to squat on the ground with his partner, while his attackers deliberated on what to do next. They eventually decided to inform the local police authorities.
Four police officers arrived at the scene about 1.30am in an official police vehicle. Mr. Hartayo and Bobby were then taken to the Banda Raya police station.
There, both men were allegedly made to strip down to their underwear, and were then viciously beaten and verbally abused by the officers.
In his testimony, Mr. Hartayo alleges that the officers sexually abused him and then forced his partner to perform oral sex on him. Mr. Hartayo started weeping and attempted to push his partner away, only to be kicked and scolded by the officers who took some perverse “enjoyment” out of their humiliation.
The victims were then dragged to the police station courtyard where they were made to squat on the ground in their underwear. Officers then sprayed them with ice-cold water from the courtyard hosepipe. At this point, Bobby asked the officers for permission to go to the toilet. The officers refused, and instead forced him to urinate on Mr. Hartayo's head.
Mr. Hartayo and his partner were then taken to a police cell, where they were detained until the morning. Mr. Hartayo requested several times to contact his family to inform them of what had happened, a basic human right when facing criminal detention. Each time, his request was denied.
While in the police cell, Mr. Hartayo was instructed by the officers to introduce himself to the detainee who already occupied the cell. When Mr. Hartayo innocently stated that he was a homosexual, an officer entered the cell and severely beat him.
According to Mr. Hartayo, he was treated with complete contempt by all the officers he encountered during his detention.
At around 9:00am on January 23, Mr. Hartayo was finally allowed to speak to his fellow NGO co-workers, although for not longer than five minutes. Both Mr. Hartayo and Bobby were asked by representatives from the Aceh NGO Coalition whether they wanted to file a formal complaint.
Physically and mentally exhausted, both men decided not to pursue the case, and were then made to sign a statement to the Village Head Chief not to indulge in homosexual actions again.
“I felt that my dignity as a human being had been trampled,” Mr. Hartayo told the Aceh NGO Coalition.
Another One Bites The Dust
The Grinch's 42nd birthday winked by over the weekend, conveniently and perpetually stapled onto the St. Patrick’s Day excesses so no one can claim I’m grandstanding when I call up asking about their plans for the 17th.
Managed to lasso several people into meeting for commemorative post-magrib Irish Coffees at the Waterfall Bar in the Hyatt in central Jakarta. Commemorative in as much as St. Pats will always be the object of deliberate situational irony: I converted to Islam on the same date in 2004 – it is illegal to perform inter-religious weddings in Indonesia – and made a bee-line from the mosque to the Hyatt (2005 photo above) to mark the holiday. As I’ve been bottled up in Aceh the past two years it seemed appropriate to mark the first post-tsunami Jakarta anniversary of – as one close family member described it “my apostasy” – in similarly irreverent fashion.
Later we retired to the salubrious confines of a dime-a-dozen “Irish” pub in a second Western hotel for multiple refreshing Guinni and fish n chips, where I won a draw for a Rupiah 150,000 (Can $20) voucher to yet another hotel bar – famed for the youth and relative health of its female patrons (known locally as ‘ayam’ or ‘chicken’) – which is sufficient funds to get a fine glow-on.
I had one of “those” conversations about aging with some hanger-on though predictably the perspectives are quite different on account of this Grinch’s legendary constitution, anticipated late punch-out date and numerous inebriated promises not to die before people several decades his junior.
I believe we broke much new ground, concluding among other things that:
1. Youth is wasted on the young.
2. The worst performance of Led Zeppelin’s career still totally kicks the ass of any rock band currently in existence.
3. The female of the species only truly starts to bloom at 40. (Editors Note: Article 4 revised up from 35, 30, 25, 20 and 18 over past two and a half decades. See Grinch Archives).
4. Drivers licenses should only be issued to people over 30 (with exceptions made for under-30s driving agricultural vehicles providing they are restricted to tertiary roads and farms.)
5. Anyone between the ages of 18 and 40 with a barbed wire tattoo who has not served time in a federal penitentiary should be immediately incarcerated.
6. Brittany Spears and her ilk are a bad influence.
7. Life becomes more valuable as you get older because young people are stupid.
8. Its hard to understand why yoots don’t ask their parents for advice about things like sex, alcohol and peer-pressure. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that they were in the same position, right?
9. Is it just me or is the music in here too loud?
10. Larry King’s interviews with Red Buttons and Angie Dickenson really crackle.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Last Rites
It has been a crappy week.
We went over to Liz’s place last Wednesday to find husband Wayne grey and wounded. A decent, decent fellow with a nine-month-old daughter suddenly widowed in the most tragic and public of circumstances.
Situation worsened by the fact that until Sunday there was no official confirmation of the identities of several of the most damaged remains which had been subjected to two hours in an aviation-fueled inferno. Then there’s the unasked question hovering about the periphery about whether our friends suffered, whether they were still conscious, pinned into their business-class seats by the force of the impact as the fire tore through the aircraft.
My understanding is that several survivors indicated the foreigners in the front of the plane was critically injured and likely not aware of the evacuation going on behind their heads. A small blessing.
We brought Wayne a few memories and laughs. Recalled how hard it was for Liz to lay off the wine at the New Years 2005 dinner (the photo above) we had together just weeks after learning she was pregnant; Liz sounding off at (cowering) Indonesian police for kicking ABC Australia’s satellite rig in the minutes after the Embassy 2003 bombing; Liz telling Wayne how she planned to attend an embassy planning meeting at “not say a thing”, a pledge she was incapable of keeping under any circumstances.
Knee-high Lucy is the spitting image of her mother, bold, anxious to walk unaided, unafraid of adults; a zero-maintenance baby that provide itself hours of amusement. By the weekend visitors detected a shift. She is searching women’s faces, squirmy and crying long and loud for no apparent reason.
Sunday there was a drinks memorial for Australian Financial Review correspondent Morgan Mellish at the unofficial Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club (JFCC) press club, the same Indo-Thai restaurant where I proposed to Jihan etc. The last time I saw him was at the bar’s 10th anniversary two weeks earlier, one of the best nights out we’ve had in a long time. Mohitos and ales flowing, plenty food and good music. All in the best of humor, unnatural couplings (and subsequent horror!) the order of the night; table dancing, the staff fully part of the celebrations. Think we poured ourselves through the gate at 430 a.m.
The memorial was pretty laid back event, not nearly as maudlin as these things can be. Several journo friends have flown in from Australia, Singapore and elsewhere to cover the story. There is sense of community that one only ever feels at these all-too-frequent events, the commemoration of an untimely and unexpected death. Quite a number of embassy staff also attended so for a brief while the walls were down.
Morgan’s mum Dawn and sister Caroline were there. The family set up a blog for the occasion (http://www.morganmellish.blogspot.com) that contains dozens of photos of Morgan that really tell you a story.
A clear-eyed Dawn told me she felt that his time had come. There were at least three opportunities for Morgan to avoid being on the doomed plane, she said. I understand he got a ticket from Liz on Flight GA-200 at the very last minute, neglecting to mention to his traveling companion on another airline that they wouldn’t be flying together.
She said her son dreamed of three things: working for the AFR, working as a foreign correspondent, and winning a Walkley Award (Australian journalism gong) all of which he’d accomplished. I don’t know what her demeanor was like when alone, but she struck me as a most extraordinary woman.
Liz, Morgan ad the bodies of three other Australians who died in the crash were flown out of Yogyakarta aboard an Australian Air Force C-130 yesterday, for a ceremony Wednesday in Canberra.
We went over to Liz’s place last Wednesday to find husband Wayne grey and wounded. A decent, decent fellow with a nine-month-old daughter suddenly widowed in the most tragic and public of circumstances.
Situation worsened by the fact that until Sunday there was no official confirmation of the identities of several of the most damaged remains which had been subjected to two hours in an aviation-fueled inferno. Then there’s the unasked question hovering about the periphery about whether our friends suffered, whether they were still conscious, pinned into their business-class seats by the force of the impact as the fire tore through the aircraft.
My understanding is that several survivors indicated the foreigners in the front of the plane was critically injured and likely not aware of the evacuation going on behind their heads. A small blessing.
We brought Wayne a few memories and laughs. Recalled how hard it was for Liz to lay off the wine at the New Years 2005 dinner (the photo above) we had together just weeks after learning she was pregnant; Liz sounding off at (cowering) Indonesian police for kicking ABC Australia’s satellite rig in the minutes after the Embassy 2003 bombing; Liz telling Wayne how she planned to attend an embassy planning meeting at “not say a thing”, a pledge she was incapable of keeping under any circumstances.
Knee-high Lucy is the spitting image of her mother, bold, anxious to walk unaided, unafraid of adults; a zero-maintenance baby that provide itself hours of amusement. By the weekend visitors detected a shift. She is searching women’s faces, squirmy and crying long and loud for no apparent reason.
Sunday there was a drinks memorial for Australian Financial Review correspondent Morgan Mellish at the unofficial Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club (JFCC) press club, the same Indo-Thai restaurant where I proposed to Jihan etc. The last time I saw him was at the bar’s 10th anniversary two weeks earlier, one of the best nights out we’ve had in a long time. Mohitos and ales flowing, plenty food and good music. All in the best of humor, unnatural couplings (and subsequent horror!) the order of the night; table dancing, the staff fully part of the celebrations. Think we poured ourselves through the gate at 430 a.m.
The memorial was pretty laid back event, not nearly as maudlin as these things can be. Several journo friends have flown in from Australia, Singapore and elsewhere to cover the story. There is sense of community that one only ever feels at these all-too-frequent events, the commemoration of an untimely and unexpected death. Quite a number of embassy staff also attended so for a brief while the walls were down.
Morgan’s mum Dawn and sister Caroline were there. The family set up a blog for the occasion (http://www.morganmellish.blogspot.com) that contains dozens of photos of Morgan that really tell you a story.
A clear-eyed Dawn told me she felt that his time had come. There were at least three opportunities for Morgan to avoid being on the doomed plane, she said. I understand he got a ticket from Liz on Flight GA-200 at the very last minute, neglecting to mention to his traveling companion on another airline that they wouldn’t be flying together.
She said her son dreamed of three things: working for the AFR, working as a foreign correspondent, and winning a Walkley Award (Australian journalism gong) all of which he’d accomplished. I don’t know what her demeanor was like when alone, but she struck me as a most extraordinary woman.
Liz, Morgan ad the bodies of three other Australians who died in the crash were flown out of Yogyakarta aboard an Australian Air Force C-130 yesterday, for a ceremony Wednesday in Canberra.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Untimely Deaths in the Heart of Java
We received confirmation in the past few minutes that two Australian friends are among those killed in this morning's Garuda plane crash in Yogyakarta.
Australian embassy public affairs officer Liz O'Neill (above, 31/12/05) was a new mum, wife to Wayne and a regular at various expat social & sporting events. We spent New Years 2005 with the pair of them and friends Tim and Sian. Liz organized the first media v Embassy staff tennis tourney a couple of years back and J and I were sitting in her backyard drinking wine back in Dec 2004 when we learned that our closest friends here has given birth to a baby boy (now my Godson). She was chatty, opinionated Australian patriot.
Morgan Mellish was the Australian Financial Review correspondent who replaced our good friend Andrew Burell last year. Although I can't say I knew him very well, we spoke professionally on a number of occasions when he was looking for information about Aceh, and chatted over beers a couple of times here in Jakarta.
I understand they were sitting together in business class when the plane landed in Yogya, bursting into flames. Passengers fleeing the aircraft – which was completely destroyed by the fire – said they were critically injured and unconscious before the catastrophic fire broke out.
There are still several unidentified bodies in the morgue at Yogyakarta's main hospital. We believe several of them are diplomats and Australian federal police who like Liz and Morgan, had traveled to Central Java to follow Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's trip to the area.
The final death toll remains unclear, somewhere between 22 and 49 of the 140 passengers and crew are reported to have died. We recognize a number of Indonesians who survived but will wait for the final names to be released before allowing ourselves to exhale.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Been a terrible time for most of Jakarta’s poorest residents as decades of poor urban planning combined with heavy rains and the endemic evil of the local government to produce the worst floods in memory.
I recall the Feb 2002 floods here as being pretty amazing. Then as now our little kampung escaped the worst even though we’re just 100 m from the Kalibata canal whose waters are among the first over the banks. We remain “fortunate” that the opposite bank of the canal is several meters lower than our side so when the spill gates were finally opened 10 days ago the water poured over berms in streets below Landmark Place opposite rather than towards our home.
We drove though a tunnel there at about 4 a.m. on a Saturday on the way back from the Shangri-la hotel. By noon the following day the tunnel was completely submerged.
At the height of the flood last week there were 400,000 people out of home. Roughly 80 drowned or were electrocuted something I witnessed first hand in 2002 when a young man was fatally zapped in front of Sarniah department store just moments before I arrived.
It has taken five days for the levels to drop to the point where the majority of people can return to their stinking muddy homes and begin the painful period of clean-up. The total bill for the floods doubled to just shy of $800 million.
Classic responses from local power-brokers included the People’s Welfare Minister (a top industrialist who really feels the poor’s pain from behind the tinted windows of his 500 Series) Aburizal Bakrie telling the press that the floods were exaggerated and that everyone he saw on TV was laughing and playing in the (oily brown soup) rising waters. Not to be outdone, Jakarta’s governor locked himself in this office and refused to emerge for a week, at which time he denied all responsibility for failing to learn a damn thing from the experience five years ago.
The are any number of culprits and as much as you’d like to be able to point the finger at a specific single issue, the Jakarta floods are caused by issues environmental and manmade that defy the quick-fix.
To begin with, 14 rivers converge in Jakarta. The area’s reputation as a malarial tidal basin prone to floods, catastrophic epidemics and consequent die-offs were recorded even as the mallet-headed Dutch were busy constructing their VOC commercial base (ultimately renamed Batavia) into the swamps south of Sunda Kelapa port in the mid-17th century.
By building high to the water’s edge, clear-cutting vast stands of mangrove, paving the city’s natural catchment basins to build sparkly new shopping centres and doing virtually nothing to maintain and/or expand the city’s network of Dutch-era canals, the water has nowhere else to go.
Combine this with continuing clear-cutting of the Bogor hills south of the city – yes, Jakarta is in fact a mountain-ringed little jewel on the three days per year that the smog lifts sufficiently to see ‘em – to build luxury getaways for the elite, the vast qualities of raw garbage in the form of plastics that individuals and communities dump every day that foul the floodgates and merge to create vast woven rafts of debris, and you’ve got a recipe for (un)natural disasters.
Also fair to mention that few cities have the capacity to deal with seven consecutive 100 mm rain days without someone getting wet.
So we’ll see a few weeks of finger-pointing and moral outrage and then Indonesia will move on the next crisis. And the meantime the urban poor of Kampung Melayu and Bidara Cina will be cut loose to rebuild on their own. Until the next time.
I recall the Feb 2002 floods here as being pretty amazing. Then as now our little kampung escaped the worst even though we’re just 100 m from the Kalibata canal whose waters are among the first over the banks. We remain “fortunate” that the opposite bank of the canal is several meters lower than our side so when the spill gates were finally opened 10 days ago the water poured over berms in streets below Landmark Place opposite rather than towards our home.
We drove though a tunnel there at about 4 a.m. on a Saturday on the way back from the Shangri-la hotel. By noon the following day the tunnel was completely submerged.
At the height of the flood last week there were 400,000 people out of home. Roughly 80 drowned or were electrocuted something I witnessed first hand in 2002 when a young man was fatally zapped in front of Sarniah department store just moments before I arrived.
It has taken five days for the levels to drop to the point where the majority of people can return to their stinking muddy homes and begin the painful period of clean-up. The total bill for the floods doubled to just shy of $800 million.
Classic responses from local power-brokers included the People’s Welfare Minister (a top industrialist who really feels the poor’s pain from behind the tinted windows of his 500 Series) Aburizal Bakrie telling the press that the floods were exaggerated and that everyone he saw on TV was laughing and playing in the (oily brown soup) rising waters. Not to be outdone, Jakarta’s governor locked himself in this office and refused to emerge for a week, at which time he denied all responsibility for failing to learn a damn thing from the experience five years ago.
The are any number of culprits and as much as you’d like to be able to point the finger at a specific single issue, the Jakarta floods are caused by issues environmental and manmade that defy the quick-fix.
To begin with, 14 rivers converge in Jakarta. The area’s reputation as a malarial tidal basin prone to floods, catastrophic epidemics and consequent die-offs were recorded even as the mallet-headed Dutch were busy constructing their VOC commercial base (ultimately renamed Batavia) into the swamps south of Sunda Kelapa port in the mid-17th century.
By building high to the water’s edge, clear-cutting vast stands of mangrove, paving the city’s natural catchment basins to build sparkly new shopping centres and doing virtually nothing to maintain and/or expand the city’s network of Dutch-era canals, the water has nowhere else to go.
Combine this with continuing clear-cutting of the Bogor hills south of the city – yes, Jakarta is in fact a mountain-ringed little jewel on the three days per year that the smog lifts sufficiently to see ‘em – to build luxury getaways for the elite, the vast qualities of raw garbage in the form of plastics that individuals and communities dump every day that foul the floodgates and merge to create vast woven rafts of debris, and you’ve got a recipe for (un)natural disasters.
Also fair to mention that few cities have the capacity to deal with seven consecutive 100 mm rain days without someone getting wet.
So we’ll see a few weeks of finger-pointing and moral outrage and then Indonesia will move on the next crisis. And the meantime the urban poor of Kampung Melayu and Bidara Cina will be cut loose to rebuild on their own. Until the next time.
Monday, February 05, 2007
The lazy days of the unemployed…
Let’s see what’s been accomplished in the two weeks since my return to Jakarta from the land of snow and ice (perhaps land of winter golf and 12C January days might be more appropriate moniker):
- a single blog, a single movie in the cinema and a dozen catch-up emails;
- head shaved & moustache and goatee shorn for first time in seven years (no one is gonna take Bongo the Moonfaced Boy seriously);
- first steps made towards sorting a new passport and visa, sleeping virtually every day till 1030 and watching far too much TV;
- several boozy nights including Friday and Saturday extravaganzas with visiting former workmates that seemed to get weirder and weirder as time passed;
- Rp 340,000 (US $40) worth of DVDs (about 50 discs) purchased along with a new Queens-sized Serta bed that cost roughly more than a lot of cars I’ve owned;
- new home office set up – and plans in the works for another capital outlay on a 20” iMac to supplement this beaten up PowerBook;
- one nasty day of flooding dealt with – foul waters throughout the living room, kitchen and bedroom – and nothing to complain about as the city copes with huge flooding that has displaced 320,000 people throughout the Greater Jakarta area with no sign that the situation is going to improve anytime soon;
- a dozen magazines and at least four books consumed including latest installments of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series about the exploits of a British soldier in the Napoleonic wars, and a parallel novel – part of the series that was represented in Master & Commander – about the exploits of a British naval officer during the same period. Both definitely ‘boy books’ but hugely entertaining. Ate Cormac McCarthy’s latest apocalyptic vision, The Road, in three sittings, including a marathon last Thursday that kept me up till nearly 4 a.m. And there’s more waiting in the wings including: Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama, The Face of Another by Kobo Abe, Jose Saramago’s Journey to Portugal comes highly recommended; picked up Annie Proulx’s Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 for $6.99 at Chapters in Vancouver, and on principal I’ve gotta re-read Ryszard Kapuscinski’s The Soccer War following his unfortunate death last week at the age of 74.
So the bottom line is that there is much lazing yet to do so I’d best not waste time on quasi-useful things like writing blogs.
Let’s see what’s been accomplished in the two weeks since my return to Jakarta from the land of snow and ice (perhaps land of winter golf and 12C January days might be more appropriate moniker):
- a single blog, a single movie in the cinema and a dozen catch-up emails;
- head shaved & moustache and goatee shorn for first time in seven years (no one is gonna take Bongo the Moonfaced Boy seriously);
- first steps made towards sorting a new passport and visa, sleeping virtually every day till 1030 and watching far too much TV;
- several boozy nights including Friday and Saturday extravaganzas with visiting former workmates that seemed to get weirder and weirder as time passed;
- Rp 340,000 (US $40) worth of DVDs (about 50 discs) purchased along with a new Queens-sized Serta bed that cost roughly more than a lot of cars I’ve owned;
- new home office set up – and plans in the works for another capital outlay on a 20” iMac to supplement this beaten up PowerBook;
- one nasty day of flooding dealt with – foul waters throughout the living room, kitchen and bedroom – and nothing to complain about as the city copes with huge flooding that has displaced 320,000 people throughout the Greater Jakarta area with no sign that the situation is going to improve anytime soon;
- a dozen magazines and at least four books consumed including latest installments of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series about the exploits of a British soldier in the Napoleonic wars, and a parallel novel – part of the series that was represented in Master & Commander – about the exploits of a British naval officer during the same period. Both definitely ‘boy books’ but hugely entertaining. Ate Cormac McCarthy’s latest apocalyptic vision, The Road, in three sittings, including a marathon last Thursday that kept me up till nearly 4 a.m. And there’s more waiting in the wings including: Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama, The Face of Another by Kobo Abe, Jose Saramago’s Journey to Portugal comes highly recommended; picked up Annie Proulx’s Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 for $6.99 at Chapters in Vancouver, and on principal I’ve gotta re-read Ryszard Kapuscinski’s The Soccer War following his unfortunate death last week at the age of 74.
So the bottom line is that there is much lazing yet to do so I’d best not waste time on quasi-useful things like writing blogs.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Welcome to 2007.
Much has happened in the past six weeks. To be frank I just didn’t have the energy or inclination to put any of it down during the holidays: time was not an issue. The weight of that decision now bears down and I’ve truly no idea where to start.
When last I wrote I was working through the shock of learning that my contract was not to be renewed through 2007, something I had secretly taken for granted based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback since I first transited from journalism to the Dark Side in the weeks immediately after the Asian tsunami.
Nearly two months removed from hearing that I would find myself unemployed on Jan 1, I’m still pretty angry. I used to wake up every morning with a knot in my stomach and a red mist behind my retinas which mercifully has disappeared. Also fair to say that I am not happily transitioning through the various stages of grief that Oprah holds so dear. No, I’m pretty much stuck on anger and enjoying the sensation.
At the same time I’m trying to be smart about it. The community is small and the future, long, and having invested so much in the process I am loathe to detonate around those who might one day be
of use. In my dealings with the agency that employed me I have been unfailingly polite, even during those times when I was having trouble breathing.
Most recently it has involved my not being compensated for a raise I was due last February. The Old Boss now says that since the books on fiscal 06 are closed the only way to make it happen is if they put together a short term contract and that I actually produce something. This despite my having raised the issue in plenty of time for them to process it last year. I await the calculation of what I am entitled to before agreeing to anything.
The individuals who, through their incompetence and financial mismanagement are directly responsible for my current situation, are sufficiently buffered by a combination of ignorance and ego that no words or actions on my part are going to reach them. So the Grinch confines himself to confiding in people who’ll isten to the rant without feeling the need to dish up some New Age pap or hackneyed ‘every cloud has a silver lining…’ nonsense.
The upside to all this – and there is an upside – is that the bank account is sufficiently fat that there’s no immediate need to look for work which squares quite nicely with the fact that I’m tired at some sub-atomic level and more than happy to chill out for a couple of months. I’d like to work on my backhand, lose the paunch that is the legacy of two years of 12-15 hour work days, get ripped before I’m too old to do so – something about the quality of the connective tissues degrading after 40 making it more difficult to be toned up and fit – quit smoking (never a problem… staying quit is the issue!) and spending some quality time with my PowerBook writing about stuff. All the while focusing on producing a first litter with the missus. If my experiences over the years in a multiplicity of countries are any indication, now that we are both unemployed, overweight and somewhat bored, procreation should be a slam-dunk.
We’ve only just returned from a month in the Great White North. More on that later.
Much has happened in the past six weeks. To be frank I just didn’t have the energy or inclination to put any of it down during the holidays: time was not an issue. The weight of that decision now bears down and I’ve truly no idea where to start.
When last I wrote I was working through the shock of learning that my contract was not to be renewed through 2007, something I had secretly taken for granted based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback since I first transited from journalism to the Dark Side in the weeks immediately after the Asian tsunami.
Nearly two months removed from hearing that I would find myself unemployed on Jan 1, I’m still pretty angry. I used to wake up every morning with a knot in my stomach and a red mist behind my retinas which mercifully has disappeared. Also fair to say that I am not happily transitioning through the various stages of grief that Oprah holds so dear. No, I’m pretty much stuck on anger and enjoying the sensation.
At the same time I’m trying to be smart about it. The community is small and the future, long, and having invested so much in the process I am loathe to detonate around those who might one day be
of use. In my dealings with the agency that employed me I have been unfailingly polite, even during those times when I was having trouble breathing.
Most recently it has involved my not being compensated for a raise I was due last February. The Old Boss now says that since the books on fiscal 06 are closed the only way to make it happen is if they put together a short term contract and that I actually produce something. This despite my having raised the issue in plenty of time for them to process it last year. I await the calculation of what I am entitled to before agreeing to anything.
The individuals who, through their incompetence and financial mismanagement are directly responsible for my current situation, are sufficiently buffered by a combination of ignorance and ego that no words or actions on my part are going to reach them. So the Grinch confines himself to confiding in people who’ll isten to the rant without feeling the need to dish up some New Age pap or hackneyed ‘every cloud has a silver lining…’ nonsense.
The upside to all this – and there is an upside – is that the bank account is sufficiently fat that there’s no immediate need to look for work which squares quite nicely with the fact that I’m tired at some sub-atomic level and more than happy to chill out for a couple of months. I’d like to work on my backhand, lose the paunch that is the legacy of two years of 12-15 hour work days, get ripped before I’m too old to do so – something about the quality of the connective tissues degrading after 40 making it more difficult to be toned up and fit – quit smoking (never a problem… staying quit is the issue!) and spending some quality time with my PowerBook writing about stuff. All the while focusing on producing a first litter with the missus. If my experiences over the years in a multiplicity of countries are any indication, now that we are both unemployed, overweight and somewhat bored, procreation should be a slam-dunk.
We’ve only just returned from a month in the Great White North. More on that later.
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