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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Decisions, decisions....
Today was election day in Aceh. Early accounts suggest voter turnout was in the high 70s but little solid news on numbers till the first exit polls are released at 8 pm local.
The world's press are scuttling about analyzing the heck out of the situation and trying to figure out What It Means if the GAM slate comes out on top.
Quite extraordinary past few days, scenes unimaginable in Dec 2004 - driving home late Saturday, a light red wine buzz on smoking a #3 Romeo & Juliet with Herbie Hancock lowering the bass-line boom out the back of our midnight blue Kijang, the streets choked with young people on motorcycles doing what young people do; looking for dark corners to smoke and canoodle while dodging the authorities, in this case the religious police; the roadside burger stands packed to capacity with anxious, chain-smoking boys in prized Heavy Metal t-shirts eyeing girls backing 28" rear-ends into 24" Levis; families gathered in Banda Aceh back road kampungs to chat and swat mosquitoes, Mums heaping plate-loads of food in front of disinterested yoots; cops lounging, knee high faux-leather biker boots atop the handlebars of the their motorcycles looking for reasons ignore traffic infractions; tiny shop-house grocery-caves ablaze in kerosene light where the local power has died yet again while smoke coils from a hundreds small garbage fires.
I'm exhausted and exhilarated. Two months of seven-day weeks planning for the year-end came down to last week and this. Juggling journos and job interviews, starting the process of packing two years of my life into plastic boxes, finalizing all the paperwork debts and dues. Today was a bit of an off day on account of the elections so I started shutting down my office. There's already two large cardboard boxes loaded with papers and junk waiting for the tip tomorrow. My drawers are empty of all but a couple of paperclips, an orange highlighter and a shell I picked up in Lhokna that doubles as an ashtray. All my travel claims are ready and by tomorrow I'll have all the security guard declarations completed and it'll be time to tackle the filing cabinet.
The Han and I are scheduled to leave for the Great White North on the 20th or 21st for about a month. Do some skiing, catch the Habs live, maybe check out the Grinch's new cave if there's time. Then back to the Big Durian to sort out the next phase of our lives.
I'm feeling like a third party observer to my own life at the moment, utterly detached but living in the anger. Almost manic, cracking jokes, entertaining and no one but me can hear the fuse slowing burning. I have to keep moving. The rage still keeps me up nights: Black Label blunts it but I'm no child and that's a hell of a way to go.
There's rumors of a reprieve but frankly it would be better if I were not presented with that option. Folks seem to think that if a call comes from the warden at midnight on Dec 31st that I'm going to do cartwheels. And it is just not the case. Right now, staying with this outfit will be far harder than leaving for good.

Weirdness
Two items cropped up in my screen in the past 24 hours, further signs that the world has gone crazy.
Reuters is carrying a photo with the following capiton: Brazilian student Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, holds her cat Mimi together with what Cassia claims are Mimi's own offsprings born with dog traits last Friday, three months after mating with a neighbour's dog, in the southern Brazilian city of Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul state, November 15, 2006. A geneticist from the Passo Fundo University plans to take blood samples from the animals to verify the claim by Cassia and her husband Rogerio that the puppies are part of Mimi's litter of six, of which the three that were born with cat features died soon after birth, leaving the surviving three dog-like offsprings.
Dogs and cats successfully breeding together? Say what?
The second image is a satellite image of an 87,500 sq ft Colonel Sanders, the mascot of U.S. fried-chicken restaurant chain KFC, in the desert in Nevada. KFC claims it is the first brand visible from space.

UNEMPLOYED!
Just found out my contract is not going to be extended beyond Dec. 31. 13th floor Jakarta called earlier to break the news.
22 months of 60-hour weeks (minimum) in Aceh, and words like "exceptional contribution" thrown around like horseshoes, and no job for 2007.
Particularly ironic as 'Dutch', the new BA boss - who was as surprised as me about the news - has managed to piss off all his senior staff who are literally burning up the wires trying to find work elsewhere.
Damn.

Reaction to Aussie Imam's Rape Comments Heats Up
It is a long way from the shore of Aceh, but the controversial comments by an Australian imam are creating heat across the Islamic world. It remains to be seen if this will this evolve into another 'cartoon controversy'.
The commentary below appeared in the Nov. 3 issue of The Herald newspaper in Australia. It is a strongly-worded analysis of the reaction within that country's Muslim community to some exceedingly offensive statements made by a leading Mufti.
Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly in a recent address to the faithful likened immodestly dressed women to "uncovered meat" inviting assault.
The comments come several months after a series of virulent, tit-for-tat bashing incidents between 'white' men and Lebanese-Australians that began when a drunken mob of Australia-first thugs swarmed dozens of non-Caucasian men, and two highly-publicized gang rapes by men of Paksitani and Lebanese descent.
Beneath the story I have included a large portion of the transcript of what the Mufti actually said. It comes during an obtuse and rambling lecture about the nature of God and punishment that includes the statement - that for some reason the press has not picked up on -that "behind every man who is a thief, a greedy woman. She is pushing him. Not our women in Australia, the women of Canada... And no matter how much he brings her, she wants more. She wants to change the car, and change... Of course, the woman keeps demanding from her husband more than his ability. Either she will tell him to go and deal in drugs, or to go and steal."


Backing a bigot
Andrew Bolt
November 03, 2006
Excuses over. The disgraced mufti of Australia set Muslims a test last month and they failed. That test couldn't have been easier: make Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly pay for preaching that unveiled women invited rape. Prove that Muslims can't be led by a man who says raped women must be "jailed for life". Prove we have nothing to fear from your faith.
Simple? Yet yesterday 34 Muslim groups signed a petition backing this bigot, while others plan a big rally for Sydney tomorrow, denouncing not Hilaly but the non-Muslims who criticise him. The results are in: Islam here -- as represented by many of its leaders -- is now a threat. What's more: our culture of self-hate makes us too weak to properly resist. I know saying such things is hard on the many moderate Muslims I keep insisting are out there. I am sorry for that, but where in God's name are those people? How much longer must we wait for them to speak?
For more than 20 years they said nothing as their most prominent imam, in their biggest mosque, damned Jews as perverts, called suicide bombers heroes, praised terror groups, vilified non-Muslims and hailed the September 11 terror attacks on the United States as "God's work against oppressors".
They said nothing as he gave the run of his mosque to a pro-bin Laden youth group and hired one of its translators as his spokesman. For years they let this man, their mufti, represent Islam in this country, whose language he never really bothered to learn in nearly 30 years of living here.
But I never lost hope, and so for a few days last week thought . . . at last! At last we heard Hilaly being damned by Muslims, too -- by women's groups, a Melbourne University academic and even the Islamic Council of Victoria, which had foolishly helped to make this Egyptian the mufti so no government would dare deport him.
At last Muslims were disowning this man. He was disinvited from a Brisbane festival. There was talk of stripping him of his title. The Lebanese Muslim Association, which runs the Lakemba mosque, even debated sacking him as imam, before banning him from preaching for three months. No, this wasn't much, but many in the media grabbed it hungrily. We badly want to find Muslims who'll renounce the values of the hate-preachers, to show that it's not us against Islam. Mind you, we shouldn't have had to be so pathetically grateful.
What sane person could want a woman jailed for being raped? But we should have known already this was a bigger problem than just Hilaly. Last year Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed also gave a speech in Sydney, which said raped women had themselves to blame. And which of the 500 men who heard Hilaly say the same at his sermon complained? Only when it was reported in the English-speaking press did some concede Hilaly had gone too far.
Yet even then supporters sent him vanloads of flowers, and when he returned to his mosque last Friday he was greeted "like a rock star", said one paper, by an adoring crowd of 5000.And that criticism of him? It faded away.
Now the Lebanese Muslim Association isn't so ashamed of him, after all: "We did accept his apology and we want to move on." The Muslim Women's Association, which first admitted to being "shocked" by Hilaly's sermon, now said he was "very good to all Muslim women".
Said founding president Aziz El Saddik: "Those who say bad things about him, they have very bad manners."
His sermon on rape was for Muslims only. Not our business. But we can't afford to believe that any more.
They weren't Muslim women, after all, who were raped by a Lebanese gang in Sydney, which called them "sluts" and "Aussie pigs". It wasn't a Muslim teenager who was pack-raped in Sydney by Pakistani brothers, whose father told the court: "What do (the victims) expect to happen to them? Girls from Pakistan don't go out at night."
When Hilaly preaches excuses for such rapes, that concerns us all. Very much.
But it is true that not all those defending Hilaly like what he said. The people behind tomorrow's rally say, rather, that our criticism of him has degenerated into just Muslim-bashing. Yesterday's statement by 34 Muslim groups -- most representing Islamic colleges and students, or the Muslims of tomorrow -- says the same, even as it confirms something far more scary.
"We believe that the public scrutiny of this matter should have ended with the sheik's apology," it says. "We believe that the Muslim community should be allowed to deal with the ramifications of the incident without interference from people who only wish to promote hostility and incite hatred towards our community. Finally, we consider this matter to be closed."
Closed? In fact, Hilaly has not retracted a word of what he said. If this matter is "closed" then he has won. But what is most frightening is not that he's won, but how. Both this statement and the rally show he's won because even educated Muslims, born right here, think it's better to defend a Muslim bigot than to have him criticised by infidels.
It's the code of the tribe: the worst of us is better than the best of you. It's a closed community speaking -- a paranoid one that sees itself at war even with people whose only worry is that their preacher excuses rapists. And menace is in the air.
What other congregation at prayer needs to be reminded -- as Hilaly reminded those at his mosque last week -- not to punch people on the way out? Which other rally for a religious leader needs to be warned -- as the NSW Police Minister warned this week -- that police would not tolerate any violence?
I'm not surprised one of Hilaly's former advisers, Jamal Rifi, warns that if he hangs on as Lakemba's imam he may trigger "racial tensions, much bigger than what we had over the Cronulla riots".
But what are we doing to help Muslims to break from him and leave this cultural ghetto, this encampment, before things get truly ugly? Not enough.
For a start, we make too many excuses for the Hilalys, as if they were mere children, or Australia the real villain. Yesterday Suzanne Bassette, national secretary of the Australian Democrats, even said: "I'm willing to stand up with anybody else in this country who happens to agree with Sheik Hilaly's sentiments . . . Unfortunately, how a woman dresses does affect her level of likeliness to be chosen." She said the "real lesson" from this fuss was this "latest opportunity to get angry".
The problem wasn't the mufti who wants to jail raped women, but his critics. Bassette wasn't alone. The Age ran a big cartoon likewise blaming sluttish white girls for putting themselves in danger, and federal Labor's Peter Garrett, the former singer, said Hilaly's comments were terrible, but "at the same time, the levels of violence against Australian women is something happening in the bars, in the clubs, in the bedrooms, in the boardrooms".
Again, we are the truly wicked. Leave Hilaly alone.
How can a culture so sick of itself resist the kind of challenge that Hilaly and his angry supporters represent? How can it inspire young Muslims to side not with him but with us? I don't know, when we teach the young we are a country of child-stealing, land-raping, Muslim-murdering, Yank-licking, gas-belching vandals. Until that changes, expect the traffic to flow more into Hilaly's ghetto than out of it.
Just consider the radical mother of two of the Australian Muslims arrested in Yemen last week on terrorism charges, and accused of ties to al-Qaida -- a so-called former "hippy chick" from Mudgee, who found in Islam what she couldn't in the society that raised her.As I said: Muslims have failed. But so have we all. We now have urgent work to do, if we want to save ourselves from far more strife than we dare yet imagine or say.

Portion of Transcript of Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly's comments
But in the event of adultery, the responsibility falls 90% of the time with women not men.
Why? Because the woman possesses the weapon of seduction. She is the one who takes her clothes off, cuts them short, acts flirtatious, puts on make up, shows off, and goes on the streets acting silly.
She is the one wearing a short dress, lifting it up, lowering it down... then a glance, then a smile, then a word, then a greeting, then a word, then a date, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay Jail, (laughs - one word not clear), then comes a merciless judge who gives you 65 years.
But the whole disaster, who started it?
The Al-Rafihi scholar says in one of his writings, he says: If I receive a crime of rape - kidnap and violation of honour - I would (...) the man and teach him a lesson in morals, and I would order the woman be arrested and jailed for life.
Why, Rafihi? He says, because if she hadn't left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn't have snatched it.
If you take a kilo of meat, and you don't put it in the fridge, or in the pot, or in the kitchen, but you put in on a plate and placed it outside in the yard.
Then you have a fight with the neighbour because his cats ate the meat. Then (...). Right or not?
If one puts uncovered meat out in the street, or on the footpath, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover... then the cats come and eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat?
The uncovered meat is the problem! If it was covered the cat wouldn't have... it would have circled around it and circled around it, then given up and gone.
If the meat was in the fridge and it smelled it, it can bang its head as much as it wants, but it's no use.
If she was in her room, in her house, wearing her hijab, being chaste, the disasters wouldn't have happened.
The woman possesses the weapon of seduction and temptation.
That's why Satan says about the woman, "You are half a (...). You are my messenger to achieve my needs.
You are the last weapon I would use to smash the head of the finest of men.
There are a few men that I use a lot of things with, but they never heed me.
But you? Oh, you are my best weapon.

Draw your own conclusions about this but I'm thinking at the very least there should be some sort of licensing procedure for all those 'weapons of seduction'!

Abundant Ales and Agro Elephants
Just back in Banda Aceh after a week's running around Java. Spent a full day in Yogyakarta for the first time since the I left in early June, a week after the earthquake. Still 800,000 people without decent place to live and the rainy season approaching. The government's position seems to be embodied by "Crisis? What Crisis?" Wait till the vast chickencoops (yes, literally raised wooden chickencoops 120 m long) crowded with birds and homeless families brew up a nasty Avian flu cocktail and maybe that'll get someone's attention.
Stayed in Jakarta for the Eid, had the best visit yet with the in-laws who are doing some renos in defiance of the floodwaters that seem to seep through the foundations twice a year. There was a calm there I'd not seen before which gives me hope.
Mixed business with pleasure. Briefed out some journo friends about how things are progressing in Aceh and actually spending time with 'my staff' in the office - something that happens every two months, so infrequently that the graphic designer breaks out in a sweat every time I walk into the room - while eating fabulous Thai and Indian food and getting completely hosed three consecutive nights at the Face Bar and The Oriental, something I rarely do up here.
The Evil Thieving Ex-Security Guard has vanished from immediate view though he may simply be saving up his energy to take another run at us now that the fast is over. My housekeeper, The Mouse, had a family tragedy to attend to in far-off Tapaktuan (Dad's in a coma and fading) leaving roomie El Gordo to his own devices while I was away. Won't say he's any worse than me in similr circumstances but the litter of dead cockroaches in the kitchen and the empty fridge testified to his sloth.
Learned yesterday that my old driver, Wally, is dealing with a nasty bit of business as well. His young son fell out of the back of a minibus and cracked his head on the pavement three days ago. Apparently in quite serious shape in Harapan Bunda hospital in Banda so I'll visit later today.
Seems there's a never ending series of tragedies here. Young security guard was beaten to death by a couple of cops for unknowingly raising the Indonesian flag upside-down. Dozens of road death here over the holiday period and further rumblings of discontent within the GAM ranks.
Today I stumbled across the story below filed out of South Sumatra. Not an uncommon occurance there and further north in Aceh. Villagers v Starving Elephants is always going to end badly.
And so it goes.
Starving elephants kill Indonesia farmer
Tue Oct 31, 1:32 AM ET
Starving wild elephants trampled a farmer to death and destroyed several houses in a rampage in a village on Indonesia's Sumatra island, witnesses said Tuesday.
The people of Lubuk Embut, a village on Riau province 600 miles northwest of the capital, Jakarta, have been terrorized by a herd of around 20 elephants in search of food, said Jayok, a village chief who goes by a single name.
Sumatra's elephant habitats are quickly shrinking due to illegal logging and land clearing. About 2,500 are believed to live in the wild on the island, Indonesia's largest.
"We cannot sleep at night and are scared in the day by the sound of trumpeting elephants," Jayok said.
The head of the Riau province's nature reserve, Nafsir Siregar, said scores of wild elephants have also vandalized the nearby villages of Siak and Balairaja, about 90 miles northwest of the regional capital, Pekanbaru.
Siregar said there were insufficient funds to relocate the endangered Sumatran elephants to a protected area where they won't pose a threat to people.

Mr. Gloom & Doonesbury

I was going to put a few words together about how the political in-fighting within the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has reached a head in recent days and the Old Guard loyalists to the Swedish and Malaysian exiles are now on a collision course with the Young Guard, the guys who didn’t run but stuck it out here through decades of bloodshed and repression.
Sounds vaguely familiar: I’m no expert bit I don’t know a post-conflict situation where similar schisms haven’t emerged.
I was going to write about how there has been a marked increase in shakedowns, truck-jackings and robberies and how guys with handles like Rambo and Deadheart are unwrapping their oiled and cached weapons – by some estimates as many as 1,200 were not decommissioned post-peace deal – and running amok with the tacit support of their commanders while the European Union organ AMM works diligently to whitewash the whole situation in the interests of personal and professional expediency.
I was going to write about how on the eve of the elections (that among other things will set the two GAM factions against one another for the governor’s job much to the glee of the existing power structures) all the prerequisites are in place for the emergence of the perfect storm: the hot winds of a fragmented, armed independence movement colliding with the cooled expectations of homeless, unemployable, landless and poorly represented populations (who may or may not be who they claim-plenty fraud out there) two years after the tsunami.
But I’ll leave further explorations of that gloomy prospect for another night. For now, I’ll direct you to The Sandbox, (http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox) a creation of Doonesbury illustrator Gary Trudeau, a forum not unlike a blog, where ordinary US servicemen and women can post their thoughts and experiences.
Today’s postings include one soldier’s description of being mortared while on guard duty in Iraq; an American soldier in Afghanistan writes about his admiration for his civilian translators and an officer stateside contrasts Cheney’s visit to his base with his job at the time, packing the worldly possessions of a dead 23-year-old female soldier into boxes to be sent to her family.
Gripping stuff.

Sexy SI Bikini Girls Oil Up In The Tsunami-Zone?
Grinch’s spies report the arrival in Banda Aceh of supermodel tsunami-survivor Petra Nemcova in with a support gaggle of stork-legged young belles and enough camera gear to outfit a small nation.
The Czech 2006 Sports Illustrated Magazine covergirl was vacationing in Phuket, Thailand, when the tsunami struck. Her boyfriend photographer was among those killed. She suffered a broken pelvis and spent several hours in a tree before being rescued.
So will the lovely Perta and chums oil up for a shoot aboard the beached PLN Electrical barge, among survivors at a local barrack or perhaps in the ruins of mosque? All enquires should be directed to you friendly, neighborhood Syariah law enforcement unit because her personal soft-porn website has very little information.
Aceh has seen its fair share of celebs since Dec. 2004 though mercifully aging opportunists like boy-toy Ricky Martin gave us a wide berth. I seem to remember ManU football star Chrisiano Ronaldo swunf by on a three-hour whistle-stop pausing long enough for the cameras to catch him kicking around a soccer ball with a select group of kids before jetting off to Bali to shoot a Powerdrink commercial.
Nemcova has created a fund-raising organ called the Happy Hearts Fund which, if I understand the hype, is administered by a charity called Give2Asia (which I’ve never heard of) but apparently was created by The Asia Foundation. Hmmm. Wonder if they’re the one’s organizing this trip?
The HHF’s focus is “to aid children who have suffered from natural disasters”. They held a fundraiser last week in the US (gimped tennis diva Serena Williams etc) around the release of a coffee table book called the Big Red Book, which is described thus: ... features iconic personalities and ordinary people who have made extraordinary contributions. The coffee table book has been photographed by well-known photographers that use the thematic exploration of the color red via poetry, photography and art.
Huh?
HHF claims to have donated $130,000 to a Thai foundation that built a dorm for 80 school kids, another $38,000 to a Thai university “for psychological and emotional programs for children in tsunami-affected areas”n and $12,000 for Orphan Aid (whozat?) to support 20 kids.

Samaritan's Purse Orders Out of North Sumatra
Medan, North Sumatra, Oct 3 (ANTARA) - Indonesia`s social affairs minister has issued an instruction asking a foreign non-governmental organization (NGO), Samaritan`s Purse, to immediately leave North Sumatra, for illegal practice of converting people`s faith in the province.
"The social affairs minister has issued an order for Samaritan`s Purse to leave immediately and stop operating in North Sumatra," Raden Muhammad Syafi`i, chairman of the Reform Star Party (PBR) faction at the North Sumatra regional legislative council (DPRD), said here on Tuesday.
Syafi`i said that he got the information about the instruction from the ministry`s director general for social development, Gazali H. Situmorang, when they met in Jakarta, last Saturday (Sept 30).
"So, in the future, Samaritan`s Purse is allowed to operate only in East Nusa Tenggara," he said. The US-based NGO has been spreading certain religious teachings under a disguise of humanitarian mission, he said. Syafi`i was of the view that a number of foreign NGOs operating in Indonesia had claimed that they were on humanitarian mission, while they were actually bringing other missions. "They are also loaded with certain missions, including converting people to a particular belief, as what have allegedly done by 12 foreign NGOs in Aceh," he said.
The North Sumatra DPRD called managers of Samaritan`s Purse last September 18, 2006, following complaints by some people on the activities of the NGO.

If true, this story carried by the national news wire Antara is significant as it is the first time I am aware of of a foreign agency being thrown out of N Sumatra province for preaching since the tsunami. SP is working on Nias island - which is predominantly Christian/animist - and has operations in Meulaboh, Aceh Barat and several other districts here in Aceh province. If they are being tossed out of Nias then one has to wonder how long they'll be allowed to remain in Aceh, which as we all know is 99 percent Muslim. I understand they make a mean cheese-cake and pizza at the Meulaboh office.
Also significant as SP has connections at the highest levels in Washington- headed by Franklin Graham (son of presidential confessor Billy) who is perhaps best known outside Evangelical circles for popping out of his hole long enough to describe Islam as a "very evil and wicked religion".
Actually, the full quote is: "We're not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."
I was a little surprised they are allowed to stay this long but the tsunami did attract a diverse set of characters. I have had a few peripheral dealings with SP, particularly in Nias where their chopper was instrumental in providing medical services to remote areas in the wake of the March 2005 earthquake. No doubt they saved lives.
At the same time, if the allegations of proselytizing - a criminal offence in Indonesia that mobs have used to rationalize violent attacks on minority Muslim sects - are true it is extremely serious. Plays into the hands of the hardcore minority who see the 'defence of Islam against Crusader influences' as Job One.
More as events unfold.

Creepy Dead Baby Recruitment Efforts
The following item from The Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2387589,00.html) must qualify as the creepiest item of the day:
THE Pope will cast aside centuries of Catholic belief later this week by abolishing formally the concept of limbo, in a gesture calculated to help to win the souls of millions of babies in the developing world for Christ.
All the evidence suggests that Benedict XVI never believed in the idea anyway. But in the fertile evangelisation zones of Africa and Asia, the Pope — an acknowledged authority on all things Islamic — is only too aware that Muslims believe the souls of stillborn babies go straight to Heaven. For the Church, looking to spread the faith in countries with a high infant mortality rate, now is a good time to make it absolutely clear that stillborn babies of Christian mothers go direct to Heaven, too.
The Pope is expected to abolish only “limbus infantium”, where the souls of unbaptised infants go. The precise status of “limbus patrum”, where the good people went who lived before Christ remains . . . well, in limbo.
Is it just me or is the competition for savable souls getting just a wee bit wacky? What next, microwave ovens and redeemable frequent flier miles for new converts?
This will presumably provide fertile ground for comic relief but there's at least one prankster out there who'll have to give this one a close look. In his seminal album - yes, ALBUM... black disky containing recorded data - Class Clown, George Carlin riffs on Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and Limbo. This a few tracks after The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television, which to this day I can (and do) quote chapter and verse. It all seems so genteel now but back in the 70s - when attending a Life of Brian matinee (We-wees Wodewick!) was considered grounds for excommunication - Carlin, Richard Pryor and other graduates of the Lenny Bruce school of social criticism were considered dangerous men.
If the Pope really wants to ramp up the numbers in developing countries he might consider lowering the conversion bar. Most Evangelists just wanna dunk people, the conversion to Islam is only slightly more difficult than getting a video membership card (Recite the Testament of Faith in Arabic before a cleric and it's 'Welcome Aboard'), and Mormons will do for you retroactively after you - and your entire line - are centuries dead.
I recommend drive-through conversions tied into an election-registration program. Resign yourself to a certain vision of the thereafter and take a degree of control over the here-and-now at the same time.
Forgive me, I'm ten days into the fast and feeling a bit lightheaded. Monday was tough; pretty much ready to chew through my seatbelt on the drive to Pizza House (a straight rip-of of Pizza Hut located in the centre of Banda Aceh) to break the fast with a large House Pepperoni with extra-cheese and strawberry milkshake. I really feel for the kids who work there. How tough is it to be preparing food when you haven't had a thing since 430 am?
Word @ Pasar Aceh
- Talk on the street is that the Shariyah enforcement androids want to close down Caswells sandwich shop, one of only two places where the infidels can eat during daylight hours.
- Our lovely cleaning lady at the Banda Aceh office lost her husband yesterday. He was helping a neighbor work on the house and somehow electrocuted himself. She's got four kids under the age of 16.
- Will break fast at the office in 48 minutes and 23 seconds, 22 seconds, 21 seconds... as one of our international staff is returning to Japan. Then off the Italian restaurant for overcooked linguini.
- Grinch Lair has been rewired for wireless Internet. Boys climbed up the mast outside the kitchen (dead owner, the former Regent of North Aceh, was a ham radio nut) and now we've got better connection speeds than folks in Singapore. Full package costs about $90/month. Joy. No excuse not to work 24/7 now.
- Alerted teman-teman in bulk e-mail that the Blog is alive. Also advised about the following Grinch cameo appearance: Earlier this year I helped the folks at a London production house shoot a reenactment for the show ‘Seconds From Disaster’. My role as 'Anonymous Technician #2: Guy with Measuring Tape’ is being described as "a gripping tour-de-farce" – MSNBC; "complex… allegorical" - S Hawking; "Reminiscent of Brando and other complicated fat guys.." – The Drudge Report; "Hoo-Mammy-Tsunami!!!" - Hollywood Insider.
‘Asian Tsunami’ is going to air on National Geographic Channel in the US on the 25th October at 9pm, and again on the 28th October at 3pm. No word on broadcasts north of the 49th parallel or abroad.

Ex-Guard Begging Whup-Ass: Redux

As expected, the saga of the thieving guard drags on.
Only in Indonesia (or in this case Aceh) does a guy who is paid to protect your home and then turns around and thieves from you, charge you with slander after he is fired.
Rommie got notice a short while ago that he's expected at Banda Aceh headquarters to answer slander charges.
I suppose we can look forward to further fun and games in coming weeks including a possible summons to the Grinch. Yeah Baby! Pic on the front page of the newspaper! Check here for further updates...
All pales in comparison to news from abroad about the psycho who barricaded himself in a single-room Amish schoolhouse and sharted executing girls aged eight-12. A dozen children in hospital, four dead along with the suspect, a milkman described as a "quiet man" and "a good father."
This is the third school shooting in the States in the past ten days. Last week in Colorado a guy did the same thing but molested the girls first. One teen and the gunman dead when cops burst through the door.
Meanwhile the Repubican congressman who co-chairs the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, has resigned for sending explict emails and sms' to teenage pages at his office. He claims he is a depressed alky and has checked into rehab. His former colleagues are putting as much daylight as possible between themselves and Mark Foley saying they had no idea. Presumably they did know he was an alcoholic but that it wasn't serious enough to effect his performance as a lawmaker for the past 12 years.
One day it's all gonna be too much and I'm going to leave the news behind. The psychic weight is becoming unbearable. Now that I've got my country bolthole - five acres and love shack in coastal BC signed, sealed and delivered Sept 1 - it is even more do-able.