Live chickens? Do not blow at their anuses.

Avian flu: how to avoid. For your consideration:

• When buying or handling live chickens, try not to touch them or their droppings. Do not blow at their anuses.
• Egg shells may have been contaminated with bird faeces. Wash the outside of eggs and wipe them dry before putting into the refrigerator for storage.
• Observe food hygiene when cooking live chickens and eggs.
• Always wash your hands thoroughly with liquid soap and water after handling live chickens and eggs.

Those bullet points are from one section of the very excellent Hong Kong Government Centre for Health Protection Avian Flu FAQ. But it is that first bullet point that has got me puzzled. Any chicken experts out there? I am sure there must be a good reason. Does it chill out an anxious chicken? Why would anyone want to 'blow at their anuses'? Please tell. Thank you.

Society for Truth and Light

Hong Kong's Society for Truth and Light made the local headlines, yet again, when it was announced this week that the Christian anti-gay group has won a Hong Kong government contract to advise teachers on how to teach 'human rights and anti-discrimination' in the classroom.
Yes, you read that right.
Amnesty International, Hong Kong branch, has now written to Hong Kong Government and asked for a detailed explanation: AI's letter.
This is not the first time the Christian lobby group has made the headlines.
Legalized prostitution? They're against it. (Much better to leave the business to the criminal element to run and profit from.)
Legalized betting on football matches? They're against it? (Much better to leave the business to the criminal element to run and profit from.)
Same-sex sex? What do you think? Yes, they're against it. (See Stephen Vines' opinion piece of 7 October 2005 in [Hong Kong] Standard).
Under the Brits, the Catholic church and a gaggle of Protestant churches ran and operated many of the primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. (Hence the Victorian morals of many of the locals.)
The establishment about ten years ago of the Society of Truth and Light was a new development, however. And it looks like it has since adopted a strategy previously elaborated by the Christian Right in the freedom-lovin' USA: lobby; produce opinion polls; be media-friendly; and sit on Government committees. Like this one in 2002: Legislative Council Bills Committee on Prevention of Child Pornography Bill.
Like their American bretheren, this local Christian lobby is always ready with a dial-a-quote. That's not so surprising when you know this Christian lobby group is headed by Choi Chi-sum (蔡志森). Its general secretary, Mr Choi's previous work experience was in print and TV. Currently, Choi is also consultant of the Hong Kong Journalists' Christian Fellowship; Executive Committee Member of the Hong Kong Press Council; School Manager, China Holiness Church Living Spirit College. That's if the Hong Kong Baptist University-hosted website for the Hong Kong Association of Media Education (HKAME) is at all up-to-date.
Truth and Light has its own website. Sadly, it wouldn't let in Mister Bijou, and the Google cache was not forthcoming either. Go figure.
Mister Bijou is not surprised the Christian lobby group got the contract. It has friends in high places: Hong Kong's new Chief Executive, Donald Tsang Yam-yuen. A devout Catholic, Tsang, soon after taking office, expressed his displeaure that TV coverage of local horse racing was provided by the local government service, Radio Television Hong Kong. And soon after that, it was announced that RTHK would drop the horses.
Stay tuned!

React, rebend, reshape

Postings have been thin these past few days.
Why?
Everything is going swimmingly, and then: WHAM!
Nothing Life Threatening.
Just a major upheaval in the offing.
Damn.

Hong Kong activists appropriate Li Ka-shing's airwaves

Hong Kong activists have defied the law by airing a pro-democracy unlicensed broadcast in a bid to counter what they see as the loss of media freedom in the Chinese territory.
Citizens' Radio, run by a group of 10 activists, broadcast a trial program on Monday evening on the same frequency as that used by a radio station owned by local tycoon Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠).

More? Taipei Times.

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

His face now enters the pantheon of stars whose charisma transcends speech. Keaton, Chaplin, Garbo - let them now make room for Gromit.

Double thumbs-up review of the Wallace and Gromit (click image to enlarge), New York Times (reg. required).

Magnum In Motion

From the people at Magnum: audio, text and, of course, photos.
Thanks, Gavin!

Allen Ginsberg's Howl

Brothers and sisters, coming up is the 50th anniversary of the first public performance by Allen Ginsberg of his loooong poem, Howl. That was 7 October, 1955 at the Six Gallery in San Francisco.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix

A poem that is probably more talked about than read, to my mind Howl is actually better said than read. Still, if you want to read the poem: Howl + Ginsberg's Footnote to Howl.
Better yet, listen to Ginsberg give a bravura performance: go here, then click to download. The mp3 features Chogyam Trungpa, rinpoche; Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg. Recording made, date disputed, at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute, Boulder, Colorado. The file is biggish (87.8M zip file), so it takes a bit of time to download. Ginsberg starts 40 mins into the recording...

1966: Chairman Mao is the Red Sun of Our Hearts

This day, 1 October, mainland China celebrates the formal establishment, in 1949, of the People's Republic of China. No public holiday hereabouts -- remember: one country, two systems -- although [I sit corrected, it's National Day -- PRC flags] and red lanterns do bedeck a little island in the South China Sea's dai pai dongs, the civic waterfront and several squares.
The public square just away from the ferry terminal has almost everything in place for some sort of official flag-raising ceremony, including two flagpoles. Most likely, the PRC flag hauled up the taller one, Hong Kong's Bahunia flag fluttering from the short. No doubt new-found patriots of the motherland will be much in view.
Mister Bijou, who was once, briefly, a member of a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist London-based groupuscule, has fond memory of his invitation and visit in 1969 to the Chinese Embassy in London's Portland Place. As Comrade Mao said: "Imperialism and All Reactionaries are Paper Tigers". But that was so 20th century. In the freedom-lovin' 21st, Mister Bijou thinks it would be inelegant to brandish his Little Red Book during today's ceremony.

The subterraneans

Everything you ever wanted to know, but were too afraid to ask... about the world's metros, subways, undergrounds, U-Bahns or T-Banas. Maps. Photos. Metros with a View. Left or Right? Metro Bits.

Postscript: M Scott Peck

The Daily Telegraph obituary of M Scott Peck, linked in the previous post, generated some email -- for and against the Telegraph's somewhat harsh, irritable tone. For a more anodyne obit, try the New York Times (reg. required). Thanks, Mike B!
The Telegraph obit also generated email pointing out that though a messenger may have lived a less than wholesome life, the message was still valuable.
The example given? Tibetan rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa. who founded the Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, in 1974. In the years prior to his death (1986) Trungpa became an "alcoholic, a smoker and slept with his students. He was an artist and a poet, the man was also a wonderful conduit for Buddhist teaching. Go figure." Trungpa helped a lot of people.
Which got me thinking further. About psychiatrist R D Laing. And Alan Watts. Laing helped many people (including Mister Bijou) through his professional work and his writings (The Divided Self; The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise; Knots). Separately, Watts explained Buddhism and, later, Taoism (The Way of Zen; Tao: the Watercourse Way). Both Laing and Watts ended up terminal alcoholics. Yet their works continue to have merit. So, the conundrum remains: how important is knowledge of a person's private life in assessing their published work?

M Scott Peck

M Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Travelled (the title comes from a line in a Robert Frost poem) just went and died. As penance for past sins, Mister Bijou actually read that book some time in the early 1990s... oh, well. The UK's Daily Telegraph obituary is an absolute corker:

Latterly he suffered from impotence and Parkinson's Disease and devoted himself to Christian songwriting, at which he was not very good.

He married Lily Ho in 1959; they had three children, two of whom would not talk to their father. She left him in 2003. He is survived by his second wife, Kathy, an educationalist he picked up, while still married, after a lecture at Sacramento, and by his children.

Read more? Daily Telegraph demolition job.

Bob Dylan: watch the parking meters

How Bob Dylan beat the press: AlterNet
How did it feel? Guardian Culture Vulture Blog
Bob Dylan: How [Andy Kershaw] found the man who shouted 'Judas' Independent
Series Of Clichés: The American Prospect
Like A Rolling Stone: lyrics

Mary Gauthier: Mercy Now

Mercy Now, by Mary Gauthier.
Beautiful, beautiful... oh, yes...
To listen, please go to Mary Gauthier's website and then click on Mercy Now (streaming audio).
Thanks, Gavin!
For more info about Ms Gauthier, try here.

Hong Kong People's Alliance on WTO

The local organizing body for NGOs and other grassroots organizations which are coming to Hong Kong for the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (13-18 December 2005) is the grandly titled Hong Kong People's Alliance on WTO.
Mister Bijou has looked high and low for a website with the same-name Hong Kong People's Alliance on WTO, to no avail. The closest Mister Bijou can come is the Hong Kong People's Alliance rather threadbare website.
Still, one website can lead to another. In this case, the Hong Kong-based Asian Migrant Centre. That organization's Hong Kong Declaration on WTO, Development and Migration (July 2005) makes for interesting reading.
Further recommendations? Founded in 1976 and still going strong: Hong Kong-based Asia Monitor Resource Center.
Stop corporate globalization? Our World Is Not For Sale.
Like to breathe fresh air? English/Chinese Greenpeace.
Agit-prop films? HKFS Social Movement Resource Centre: Wednesday Night Film Series.
Fancy bureaucratic bells and whistles? For that, there is the altogether flashier Hong Kong Government WTO website. Which has some useful bits and pieces such as What is the WTO? But the website is so flash that some of the mind-numbingly lame 30-second videos of Hong Kong Government Public Announcements about 'free trade' (aired on TV) in the Video Gallery (Flash required) don't seem to work with Mister Bijou's cookies-off Firefox browser (my mum counseled me to never accept cookies from strangers)...

Hong Kong To Stock Chemical Antidotes For WTO Meeting

Looks like Hong Kong government is working itself up into a panic-mode frenzy. As well as bulk-buying rubber bullets:

The Hong Kong government has ordered hospitals to stock up on antidotes to cyanide and insecticide in preparation for chemical attacks during the World Trade Organization meeting in December, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Hong Kong's Hospital Authority is checking stocks of the chemicals sodium nitrite, sodium thiosulphate, hydroxocobalamin and pralidoxime - antidotes to cyanide and insecticide - the Ming Pao Daily News reported Sunday, citing unidentified sources.

More? Dow Jones Newswire via Nasdaq.

For weeks now there have been regular 'scare' stories appearing in the local Chinese-language press -- like the one from the Ming Pao Daily News. And they all seem to usually cite one of those 'unidentified sources'.
Well, freedom lovers, Mister Bijou is old enough to remember when governments were getting their knickers in a twist and saying: 'hippies plan to drop LSD in the water supply'.
Camarades: Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose.
What we have here is government black propaganda to create dis-ease and antipathy locally to anyone who has anything critical to say about what is going to be discussed and decided at the WTO meeting. What is going to be discussed and decided? So far, there has been nothing about that in the mainstream media. In such absence, Mister Bijou is going to step forward and elucidate...

Postscript: Typhoon Damrey

Having caused much havoc on Hainan Island (satellite image), Typhoon Damrey became Severe Tropical Storm Damrey as it crossed the Gulf of Tonkin before making landfall in northern Vietnam. Damrey -- which Mister Bijou now knows is the Cambodian word for elephant -- is now heading for northern Laos.
That activity on the right is Typhoon Longwang, currently about 370km south-southwest of Iwo Jima (to enlarge, click map). Longwang is forecast to move west at about 15km/hr across the western North Pacific.
According to an unlinkable, javascript page at Hong Kong Observatory, Longwang is the Putonghua for Dragon King, the God of Rain in Chinese mythology. Just so you know.

US army plans to bulk-buy anthrax

NewScientist.com news service.

Kate Bush

King of the Mountain, single, Mp3 (direct link, won't last long). From the 2-cd to be released 7 November 2005. First new Kate Bush material in 12 years...

NOLA: killings, rapes and mayhem that never happened

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the [Super] Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.
"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.
The real total was six, Beron said.
Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

The rapes? Shootouts? Rampant violence? Never happened. Read more? New Orleans' online Times-Picayune.

Yangjiang, China, to go nuclear

News that construction of a nuclear power plant in Yangjiang, a port city in south China's Guangdong Province, is expected to begin early next year, and that it will be the largest nuclear power plant in China, got Mister Bijou googling...
Yangjiang? It's 250km southwest of Macao (to enlarge, click map). According to Yangjiang government website, it is "an uprising city by the South China Sea." I think they mean "up and coming", but hey! full marks for having (a) a website in English; (b) loads of pages about a place that looks real interesting. On yet another website , Mister Bijou learned that Yangjiang City has a population of 2.6 million. Who knew? That there are beautiful beaches, islands and greenery in the locality. And that the place is a seriously major manufacturer of knives and scissors. Sort of a Chinese Sheffield in the sub-tropics. The 21st century? Live and learn.