Palau

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, washed the t-shirt 23 times, threw the t-shirt in the ragbag, now I'm polishing furniture with it.

When Hypnotists Attack!

Australasia, Crime, Funny
Published on

From news site NineMSN.com.au:

Two Indonesian job seekers have been fooled into having their faces tattooed in order to receive non-existent government jobs.

The pair had their faces permanently inked after village chief Sawiyono told them he had received a text message from a government official offering them work as Jakarta intelligence officers.

The official, who said it was a job requirement to have their faces tattooed with dragons, was later discovered to be a hoaxer — but not before Nanang, 30, and Bambang, 40, had already undergone the painful and disfiguring procedure.

The three men believe the anonymous trickster was a kind of “mystic”, as they didn’t feel in control of their actions when following his strange instructions.

“I was half conscious when the shop owner tattooed my face, and didn’t think it was a con,” victim Bambang said.

More…

I wonder if that Paul McKenna‘s on holiday anywhere nearby?

Sunday Morning Breakfast Read

'08/12 Election, Climate change, Food, US politics
Published on

The New York Times’ Sunday magazine big feature today is indeed a big read – it’s a 9-page letter on food and agricultural policy by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, addressed to the incoming US President

It’s a lot of blocktext for sleepy eyes to wake up to but stick with it: this big epistle makes absorbing if frightening reading:

…with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

The impact of the American food system on the rest of the world will have implications for your foreign and trade policies as well. In the past several months more than 30 nations have experienced food riots, and so far one government has fallen. Should high grain prices persist and shortages develop, you can expect to see the pendulum shift decisively away from free trade, at least in food. Nations that opened their markets to the global flood of cheap grain (under pressure from previous administrations as well as the World Bank and the I.M.F.) lost so many farmers that they now find their ability to feed their own populations hinges on decisions made in Washington (like your predecessor’s precipitous embrace of biofuels) and on Wall Street. They will now rush to rebuild their own agricultural sectors and then seek to protect them by erecting trade barriers. Expect to hear the phrases “food sovereignty” and “food security” on the lips of every foreign leader you meet.

Read whole thing

And what are Zimbabweans eating right now? Nothing, it seems. But the starving in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia and the Sudan are easy to ignore, as are food riots in the Phillipines and India; out of sight etc.

But food insecurity is getting closer to home all the time. I’ve been wondering what the hell the Icelanders are going to eat next year when much of their food is imported and they have no money to pay for it…

Who me, say ‘I told you so’? For the past few years I’ve been banging on about how horribly unprepared people are for the inevitable food shortages and poverty that will follow the world’s bigger nations’ disastrous policies.

I will be enjoying my coffee and bacon while I still can, but in the meantime I’m stockpiling oatmeal and potatoes and re-reading all my Marguerite Patten WWII cookbooks. Just in case.

What The World Needs Now..

General goshdarned cuteness
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Is distraction by cute fluffiness:

The Sun: Loving Anjana cradles the white tiger cub after acting as surrogate mother to him and his twin brother. And the two-year-old chimpanzee clearly isn’t monkeying around, she has also raised LEOPARDS and LIONS.

Yeah, I know it’s a Murdoch rag but in depressing times you just have to go with teh cuteness now and then.

John McCain’s Scarlet Letter

'08/12 Election, Culture, Election Skullduggery, Race, US politics
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John McCain thinks ‘Arab’ is an insult…

I really do fail to see how McCain can still insist he’s not a racist demagogue when he keeps doing and saying racist demagoguey things. From Politico:

Crowd boos after McCain says Obama not ‘an Arab’By JONATHAN MARTIN & AMIE PARNES | 10/10/08 9:19 PM EDT

Fearing the raw and at times angry emotions of his supporters may damage his campaign, John McCain on Friday urged them to tone down their increasingly personal denunciations of Barack Obama, including one woman who said she had heard that the Democrat was “an Arab.”

Each time he tried to cool the crowd, he was rewarded with a round of boos.

“I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States,” McCain told a supporter at a town hall meeting in Minnesota who said he was “scared” of the prospect of an Obama presidency and of who the Democrat would appoint to the Supreme Court.

“Come on, John!” one audience member yelled out as the Republicans crowd expressed their dismay at their nominee. Others yelled “liar,” and “terrorist,” referring to Barack Obama.

McCain passed his wireless microphone to one woman who said, “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s not he’s not uh—he’s an Arab. He’s not—” before McCain retook the microphone and replied:

“No, ma’am,” the Arizona senator assured. “He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].”

More…

What he should have added was “…not that there’s anything wrong with that”. But he didn’t.

And since when has the the description ‘Arab’ been an accusation? Surely McCain must think there’s something wrong with being an Arab in the first place if he thinks it’s a deadly insult.

That won’t go down well with a number of his own party – or the Saudis… or the Iraqis or the Palestinians or the Kuwaitis, or anyone else for that matter. This isn’t just McCain demonstrating his own nasty brand of petty racism against Obama; this kind of ingrained bigotry has international, strategic implications.

Not only has this presidential candidate insulted a whole 1.2 million-strong ethnic group at home and untold millions abroad, by showing that he sees the mere description ‘Arab’ as a deadly insult – but by also clearly implying that Arabs are not decent family men and citizens, he’s just killed any possibility of a future McCain presidential middle-east peace deal. People tend not to want to negotiate with someone who demonstrates such open contempt for them.

But then again, did McCain ever want a middle-east peace deal in the first place? His selection of the dominionist and end-times believer and rabble rouser Sarah Palin as running mate emphatically says not (and also raises the spectre of a future religiously-motivated nuclear war).

So there’s a lot more to McCain’s public acts of petty racism and intolerance than is initially apparent. If he’s elected and his administration’s acts are motivated by that same ingrained bigotry, then McCain’s scarlet ‘a’ could stand for ‘apocalypse’.