Gogol Would Be Proud: Russian Bureaucracy Hasn't Changed

Techdirt writes:

Reader Wesha sends in the news that the band Deep Purple has been fined for performing its own songs in Russia without first getting a license from the Russian Authors' Society (NGO). And it wasn't a small fine either, approximately $1,000 per song. Oh, but wait, it gets better. According to one news organization, the money will be passed along to the victim, a band called... Deep Purple. Yes, that's right. Apparently, the band needs to pay a fine for performing the songs without properly licensing them from itself... so now it'll pay the fine and the fine will be given to the band (minus a commission to the Russian Authors' Society, of course.) Common sense just died.

link: From Russia, With Stupidity: Band Must Pay Fines To Itself | Techdirt

The Chimp Child: Human Brains and "Humanzees"

Charles Siebert writes:

We humans, in other words, are not merely 99 percent the same as chimps. We may well owe our very existence to primeval intercourse with them, something we've been reenacting, in both mythology and reality, ever since. The Dionysian chimp-human satyrs of ancient lore are, it seems, not so much a willful conceit as a deep cellular memory. Actual sex with apes, meanwhile, while not generally a matter of public record, has gone on for ages, from palm oil plantation workers currently raping orangutans in the jungles of Borneo and Malaysia, to long-ago and elaborately staged acts of public bestiality featured in Roman games and circuses, "events" involving a range of creatures from leopards and wild boars to jackasses, dogs, and finally apes. Typically mandrills or baboons, they would be made drunk with wine and then loosed upon groups of young girls, most often virgins, whose genitals had been soaked with the female urine of either a mandrill or a baboon.

As for the possibility of a human impregnating a chimpanzee (or vice versa) and producing a viable offspring, the chances are greatly complicated by the discrepancy in the number of chromosomes between the two species, chimps possessing 24 pairs and humans 23. Still, a chimp-human hybrid, though likely to be sterile, is biologically feasible, and there has been all manner of speculation and lurid lore over the ages about the existence of actual "humanzees" or "chumans" or "manpanzees."

link: I'm tired of just being a man | Salon

Legacy of Bush: "Massive Illegal Surveillance"

A congressionally-mandated report by Inspectors General of five separate intelligence agencies confirms that the Bush administration carried out “unprecedented,” massive surveillance activities beyond the warrantless wirteapping program that had previously been revealed. The Bush administration authorized the program without fully notifying Congress:

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., told The Associated Press she was shocked to learn of the existence of other classified programs beyond the warrantless wiretapping.

Former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made a terse reference to other classified programs in an August 2007 letter to Congress. But Harman said that when she had asked Gonzales two years earlier if the government was conducting any other undisclosed intelligence activities, he denied it.

“He looked me in the eye and said ‘no,’” she said Friday.

link: Think Progress » Home Page

Terry Eagleton and God

Laurie Taylor interviews Terry Eagleton:

"It was a time when the Church was going through a massive renewal. It was called the new theology and it gave me good reasons to stay in the church when most right, decent people would have left in disgust. I was challenged head-on by a number of Dominican clergy who would say, 'Okay, so you're joining the International Socialists. Okay, so we quite agree with that revolutionary project. But it's just that Christianity from within its own revolutionary perspective can see that that project has certain limits to it.' For the first time I was not only hearing an intellectually persuasive interpretation of Christianity but also one that made sense politically to me."

Memories like this constantly inform Eagleton's passionate criticism of the "New Atheists". Whereas he has spent months and even years of his life debating theology with clever believers, the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens suddenly arrive on the scene and sweep away the entire philosophical content of religion with a derisory wave of the hand. Eagleton might now be ready to talk of religion as an allegory and to question along with Dawkins and Hitchens the literal truth of the Bible. But what he can never overlook in his opponents is their failure to ever engage in intellectual debate with the likes of the Dominicans who changed the course of his own life at Cambridge. It is because they never exposed themselves to this type of theological debate that they can now be indicted for having "bought their atheism on the cheap". They are, in the equally scathing words of other Eagleton enthusiasts, nothing more than "discount store atheists" or even "schoolyard atheists".

link: Tragic hero: Laurie Taylor interviews Terry Eagleton | New Humanist

More Trouble in Pakistan

TURBAT, Pakistan — Three local political leaders were seized from a small legal office here in April, handcuffed, blindfolded and hustled into a waiting pickup truck in front of their lawyer and neighboring shopkeepers. Their bodies, riddled with bullets and badly decomposed in the scorching heat, were found in a date palm grove five days later.

Local residents are convinced that the killings were the work of the Pakistani intelligence agencies, and the deaths have provided a new spark for revolt across Baluchistan, a vast and restless province in Pakistan’s southwest where the government faces yet another insurgency.

Although not on the same scale as the Taliban insurgency in the northwest, the conflict in Baluchistan is steadily gaining ground. Politicians and analysts warn that it presents a distracting second front for the authorities, drawing off resources, like helicopters, that the United States provided Pakistan to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

link: Another Insurgency Gains in Pakistan, Stirred Up by Local Killings - NYTimes.com

Fragile Fence: Photography from Africa by Jessica Hilltout

Jessica Hilltout | Photography

Photojournalism: Timothy Allen

Timothy Allen. Photographer, Human Planet

Photojournalism: Brent Stirton

Brent Stirton » Photojournalist