Amy's Robot

Just like French champagne and Neapolitan pizza, the EU protects Portuguese port by requiring that all wines labeled as "port" be from Portugal. Two years ago, the US signed a "wine accord" with the EU, stating that American wineries couldn't label any new wines with geographic names like port, champagne, or chablis.

So one clever winery from California decided to target the segment of the geek market that also likes deliciously heavy fortified wines by naming their new non-Portuguese port USB.

The Treasury Department's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved the label, after much deliberation. Note the binary code forming the tree, and the USB-symbol roots.

We should make sure no European wineries are marketing their lighter, sweeter, screw-cap wines with American geographical names. Like Boone's Farm.

I think we should just start assuming that every aspect of China's Olympics is, to use Wonkette's phrase, an elaborate fake.

We were already taken in by the fake fireworks, the fake little singing girl, and the fake gymnasts' passports. But today's revelation is the best one yet: the Chinese government is allowing protesters to demonstrate in designated "protest zones" during the Olympics, as long as they apply for permits.

So 77 people obediently went and applied for protest permits. How many got them? Zero! And what happened to at least 6 of the applicants when they went to the Public Security office to try to apply? They got arrested! And sent off for "re-education through labor". Shooting fish in a barrel, people.

This clever plan to make the government look like it allows civil dissent while using the fake permit system to detain would-be dissenters hit the press today when two elderly women were sentenced to a year of re-education for applying for protest permits. These ladies probably won't be sent off to break rocks, but could be detained and, as the Times says, "forced to confess their transgressions."

In better news, there are two great sets of photos from today's games in the Times, especially this one of the US men's volleyball team after they beat Serbia, and the one below of Canadian synchronized swimmers.

Today's Times asks tourists visiting New York from the US and around the world what aspects of the city surprise them the most. I don't know if it's because of how the question was asked, but most tourists took the opportunity to make little subtly bitchy comments about how day to day life in New York seems different from how things are where they're from. Because for many people, especially when they're far from home, "different" means "I hate it".

Actually, there are a few positive comments about the city from visitors, such as Michael McIsaac from London who loves our outstanding unlimited coffee refills, and Rhona Ciolek from California who marveled at our impressively gigantic piles of trashbags on curbs. An enthusiastic Spanish women notes, "There are a lot of men here that are really muscular!" And I completely agree with some valid complaints, like a Swede who points out that our waterfronts are in shambles.

But most things that surprise tourists seem to be things they don't much like. And some of their comments say more about their home countries than anything else.

So here you go: Helpful clues about what life is like in tourists' home countries, as revealed by their complaints:

Comment from a Spanish tourist: "In Spain we drink coffee in little cups."
Translation: Spanish cafes may be stingy.

Comment from a London tourist: "[New Yorkers] will not tolerate bad service."
Translation: British people suffer in silence.

Comment from a German tourist: "In the ladies' toilets you can see people's feet. Where I'm from we have full doors on the bathrooms."
Translation: It may be harder to solicit anonymous sex in public bathrooms in Germany, a la Larry Craig, but it's probably easier to actually have anonymous sex or engage in any other illicit activities.

Comment from a French tourist: "You are always served very quickly here, even in a nice restaurant. Here it's quicker, you don’t have time. In Paris you get a lot of time before your food comes."
Translation: French service is slow. Also, wow: this guy actually found a way to be snotty about New York restaurants having good service.

Comment from a Saudi tourist, looking at the lights of Times Square: "I thought it would be more realistic."
Translation: Saudis have interesting, sort of postmodern ideas about what reality is and what it should look like when it's actually in front of you in three-dimensional space.

If you watched MTV in August 1989, you probably remember all the news reports about the Moscow Music Peace Festival, or in the words of Sebastian Bach, "Rocknost". The concert, which happened just a few months before the Berlin Wall came down, was the first huge western rock concert in the Soviet Union and represented its unstoppable shift toward democracy and cultural freedom.

Of course, it was a metal concert. The bands included Motley Crue, Cinderella, Ozzy Osbourne, Bon Jovi, and Skid Row, and showed that the great unifier that spanned the Iron Curtain was big hair and guitar solos. Ironically, the supposed message of the concert was the war on drugs, which wasn't exactly reflected in the bands' behavior. Ozzy says that it was after this concert that he got so drunk that he famously tried to kill his wife, Sharon.

But the legacy of cultural and political change through music remains. A few years ago, Lionel Ritchie did a concert in the newly pro-Western Libya. In an interview, he shared his belief that music can be a more powerful force than diplomacy in mending political differences:

Lionel Ritchie is apparently also huge in Iraq: "Iraqis who do not understand a word of English can sing an entire Lionel Richie song."

So now Iran, a country in which all Western pop music with lyrics is banned and the government censors Iranian albums before they're released, has agreed to host a concert with Western artists. Who is going to represent freedom and democracy at this pivotal cultural event, our decade's Rocknost?

Chris de Burgh. The man who gave wretched life to a leading contender for the Worst Song Ever, "Lady in Red", will perform later this year at a stadium in Tehran, with an Iranian band. Apparently he's very popular.

Despite this devastating blow to the prospect of mutual understanding between the East and the West, I think the concept still holds promise. While Chris de Burgh is obviously a terrible choice for this Iranian concert, other artists could make some real progress in bridging our differences. Metal is universally and timelessly loved by teens around the world, especially kids who live in an oppressive political environment that's on the verge of a huge cultural shift. Basically, if the US considers a country our enemy, then that nation's kids are the world's biggest metal fans.

Slate has an article today ("Rock the Mullahs") about metal in the Islamic world, featuring videos by hard rock and metal bands from Morocco to Israel to Iran. A new book by political historian and metalhead Mark LeVine, called Heavy Metal Islam, demonstrates that just like Soviet teens in the '80's, the pissed-off kids in Muslim countries who want their world to change are the ones in Mastodon t-shirts:

The photo above of a so-called "Muhajababe" is from a good NPR story about LeVine's book and the Middle Eastern metal scene.

Ahmadinejad may welcome Chris de Burgh with open arms, but it sounds like he'd have better ticket sales with Ozzfest. Or go local-- Acrassicauda, Iraq's biggest metal band, is the subject of a new documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad.

This afternoon, Turkey plays Germany in a semi-final game of the Euro Cup. I really love the added political drama of international sports when one country plays its own former colony, like when Senegal trounced France in the very first game of the 2002 World Cup. Games like that don't happen much in the Euro Cup, but the long and mostly exploitative relationship between Turkey and Germany means this game is going to be a good one to watch, even if Turkey doesn't have the greatest chance of winning.

I happened to go see Fatih Akin's great new movie The Edge of Heaven last night at Film Forum, and it's all about messy interactions between Turks and Germans. His earlier movie, Head-On from 2005, was incredibly good; this one deals with some of the same difficulties of the Turkish population living in Germany, but gets into even better stuff about parents and children, the things people will do to try to take care of each other, and the unlikely connections that can form between people from different worlds. It was fantastic, but way too complicated for a brief summary.

The Edge of Heaven's original title in German translates to On the Other Side, which is better. Here are a few glowing reviews, from A.O. Scott, Roger Ebert, and the Guardian.

(One note about the cast--the most famous actor in the movie is Hannah Schygulla, who was in a bunch of Fassbinder movies in the '70's, and played the title role in The Marriage of Maria Braun. She's still awesome.)

Germany's Ulrich Schnauss also played a free concert at the World Financial Center last night--I caught most of it. Now I just gotta get some stuffed eggplant and shish kebab and get ready to watch Turkey face Germany starting at 2:45.

In case you're interested, here's some background on the Turkish population in Germany. The short version: Germany invited Turks to come into the country after WWII because they needed cheap labor. Loads of Turks came over, and today make up the largest minority population in Germany, but weren't given citizenship. Most children of immigrants aren't citizens either. So today, there are millions of Turks in Germany, many of whom are 3rd generation residents and may have never been to Turkey, but aren't citizens. It sucks.

Starting in 2000, Germany allowed children of foreigners born in Germany the possibility of citizenship, so maybe things are changing.

UPDATE: Germany won, barely. They pulled out a winning goal in the last minute of the game, plus the whole world missed Turkey's surprise last goal because of satellite broadcasting problems. Bleegh.

That title was coined by a friend, T-Rock, when reports of growing obesity rates in developing countries emerged a few years ago.

But now it relates to Bush's recent explanation for why we are in the middle of a global food shortage--people in poor countries are eating too much.

This is incredible: in talking about the food crisis, Bush referenced India and its growing middle class. "When you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up."

High demand for food is because of India? So if all those people in India would just stay poor and malnourished, there would be plenty of food to go around! Wow.

A representative from a poverty research institute in India hit back, and is quoted by the Times as saying:

Americans eats an average of 3,770 calories a day, which is more than anyone else in the world according to the UN, and 50% more than what the average Indian eats per day.

Maybe Bush is coming down on India for being such greedy snack-hogs because they've ignored his recent request to stop their plans to pipe gas into their country from Iran. Of course, they'll probably just use the pipeline to blast in more delicious Iranian cakes and halva and kebabs, those piggies!

Life's been tough in Gaza lately. The people are ruled by a militant regime, there's at least 50% unemployment, and even if you have some money it's hard to buy food, medicine, gas, appliances, and pretty much everything else you would want.

Which is why it's been nice to see the tens of thousands of Palestinians flooding across the breached border into Egypt yesterday and today in an unbridled frenzy of consumerism. An economic analyst quoted by AP estimates that Gazans have spent $130 million in Egypt since Wednesday.

Egypt is moving toward controlling the shoppers eager to buy anything local vendors have to offer, but news reports suggest that until tonight, no one was doing much to stop them from coming in, and Hamas isn't taxing any goods they bring back. One Egyptian official estimates that 120,000 Palestinians are in Egypt, buying all the TVs, cigarettes, goats, generators, and potato chips (with special inflated prices) they can carry from the Egyptian border town they're temporarily being allowed into.

But of course, some resourceful Palestinians are taking this opportunity to experience other aspects of urban life they don't usually have access to. The Times interviewed Muhammad al-Hirakly, 22, while he was in line to ride the bumper cars at an amusement park. He and his friends were going to try to get all the way to Cairo, "to see the big city and our family there, and also the girls," he said. "It's the most fun we've had in years."

An older visitor took a more philosophical view of his moment of freedom:

Olmert and Abbas are meeting this weekend, and there are rumors that Israel might let the Palestinians take control of the Gaza borders, which have been pretty much totally closed since June. After seeing how happy a brief, overpriced shopping spree can make residents of Gaza, I hope the Israelis can recognize that despite our differences, we're all consumers at heart.

“Long live Spain!” the four-verse anthem begins. “Let us all sing together with different voices and a single heart! Long live Spain! From the green valleys to the vast sea.”

“It’s absolute drivel,” said Josep Ramoneda, director of the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona. “It could be about any country: Belarus, Lithuania, Spain.”

“It would make a good theme tune for the Eurovision Song Contest,” he added, referring to Europe’s annual pop music gala.

It reminds me of the Welsh anthem, sample quote:

O land of the mountains, the bard's paradise,
Whose precipice, valleys lone as the skies,
Green murmuring forest, far echoing flood
Fire the fancy and quicken the blood

This is a picture of Argentina's president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, at a graduation event at a military school outside Buenos Aires.

Look at her. That fan, the pose, the exposed thigh.

Now think about Hillary Clinton, and to what lengths she would go to make sure that no picture of her sitting like this while holding a fan at a state function ever surfaced.

Like Clinton, Kirchner is the wife of a former popular president, to whom she owes pretty much all of her political success. Nestor Kirchner stepped down from the presidency earlier this year so that she could run. She won easily, all the while wearing gobs of mascara and flashy suits and loud jewelry.

As the Times of London wrote in comparing the two women, "While every fashion move that Clinton makes is relentlessly analyzed for its potential impact on voters in Iowa – from her latest hair-style to whether or not she laughs too loudly - Kirchner has gaily shrugged off accusations that she is 'frivolous'."

In keeping with her usual aesthetic, which my friend Trash Rock describes as "retired cheerleader", Kirchner wears suits like this:

and adopts poses like this in TV interviews:

And nobody cares! Can you IMAGINE Hillary Clinton with this body language, looking all languorous and kittenish on the air? Americans would flip out. Sure, Kirchner got elected mainly because voters assume that her policies will be nearly identical to her husband's, but many Clinton supporters probably feel the same way.

The problem is, American campaign strategists seem sure that if Hillary looks good on purpose, she opens herself up to criticism and stereotyping. Obama looked great on the cover of GQ, and I would have been glad to see Hillary in that non-dowdy Vogue photo shoot she backed out of last month. You can bet she would have gotten shit for it, even without holding a fan. Poor Hillary, stuck with her pantsuits.

Yesterday at the inquest into the death of Princess Diana, one of her close friends revealed that she could not have been pregnant.

"While we were on this boat she had her period and that was just ten days before she died."

AP tells us today that our national debt is growing by $1 million every minute. This rate is so fast that about a year from now, the debt clock pictured above that used to be on West 43rd St (it was moved recently to make way for fancy new green building One Bryant Park) won't even have enough digit spaces to express the whole number.

That's $10 trillion! $10,000,000,000,000.00! God bless America.

Since we're obviously a totally irresponsible bunch of financial reprobates, and considering that rising interest rates are only going to make things worse, this makes me wonder: What kind of idiot is still willing to lend us money?

According to AP, part of our debt is held by U.S. citizens who live here and read the paper every day and still think that buying government bonds is a good investment. But a lot of investors are foreign: 44% of our publicly held debt we owe to foreign governments and investors. Japan has the biggest share.

Former Congressional budget anaylst Stanley Collender is concerned. "The first day the Chinese or the Japanese or the Saudis say, 'we've bought enough of your paper,' then the debt — whatever level it is at that point — becomes unmanageable," he says.

Our individual debt allocations are already $30,000, so what the hell--we might as well be patriotic consumers and start buying as many products as possible directly from the countries that our government owes money to. Go ahead and stand in the huge, crazy line that forms outside the Nintendo store at Rockefeller Center at 7:30 AM every time they get a new shipment of Wii consoles in. It's good practice for the bread lines we'll all be standing in when we're old and Social Security is a distant memory.

And while you're at it, support our nation's fiscal philosophy and get some new credit cards. With a few more big credit limits, your salary is doubled!

Reuters had an article yesterday on the trend of older white English women going on vacation in Kenya, and while there, taking out hot young men, buying them clothes and expensive dinners, and having sex with them.

Apparently the negative is that a lot of hotel managers and members of the Kenya tourism board are lumping these women in with other sex tourists who come to Kenya to pay 12 year-old girls or boys for sex.

Which is nuts. Old, wealthy sugar daddies everywhere have long enjoyed taking much younger women out, showering them with gifts, and having sex with them. Some might go so far as to marry them (Billy Joel, Donald Trump, Fred Thompson, Ben Kingsley, Les Moonves, I could go on all day) but plenty more just enjoy the arm candy for a while then drop them (George Soros).

At last, young men from poor countries with little opportunity for living in economic security get to enjoy the same temporary access to nice clothes and fancy dinners that young American women have been hustling to get their hands on forever! Why should sex-for-goods be exclusively a rich man/poor woman transaction? I'm so glad to see these enterprising young African men are finally able to exploit their youthful hotness with all the savvy of a midwestern high school dropout draping herself over aging producers at Hollywood parties.

22 year-old Joseph, a Kenyan man who says he has slept with over 100 white women, says:

He could be half the girls in their early 20's who hang out at expensive Tribeca bars hoping to snag free drinks from an investment manager.

The movie Heading South came out in 2006 and featured Charlotte Rampling (in the photo above) traveling to Haiti to have sex with young men in the 1970's. A long article about the movie goes into all these complicated arguments about sex, economics, political power, gender roles, exploitation, and on and on.

Seems like the only new or interesting thing happening here is that the older, richer person in the dynamic is female and they have to go to other countries to find young men willing to do what many young women in rich countries have done basically forever. Yawn.

Over the weekend in the suburbs of Paris, two Arab boys riding a motorbike were hit and killed by a cop car. Less than an hour later, crowds of people had set fire to four buildings, torched 28 cars, and started throwing rocks at riot police. Today, they were still going, setting gas tanks on fire while cops fired rubber bullets and threw tear gas.

This is pretty much exactly what happened two years ago. Those clashes lasted for three weeks and resulted in thousands of cars and buildings getting destroyed [details on Wikipedia]. Not may people got hurt, though. This time, 25 cops have already been injured, one with a punctured lung.

Here's another difference: the interior minister who in 2005 referred to the rioters, mostly the children of Arab or African immigrants, as "scum" is now the President. The unemployment rate for young black men is still about 40%.

It's looking like the boys that were killed this weekend were mostly at fault for the accident: they weren't wearing helmets, the bike was stolen, and they cut off the car while traveling at full speed. So the violence of the last two days seems to be more in response to ongoing discrimination against immigrants and pretty much anyone who isn't white in France, not so much this particular incident. The chief of the Paris police union says, "We’ve been saying for eons that we’re sitting on a powder keg."

UPDATE: Sounds like the violence got worse last night: 82 cops injured, some with buckshot fired from hunting shotguns (kids in the French ghetto have hunting shotguns?!), more buildings set on fire, and over 60 cars torched. This is looking bad. I think the people in charge over there need to realize that they have major problems on their hands: several generations of pissed off poor young people who are technically citizens, but are systematically treated like they have no right to live there.

Here's a quote from a local resident, Boniface Gabo, talking about the housing project he lives in: "This is no place for human beings to live. Make no mistake, every hundred kids who grow up here are a hundred lost kids."

Above is a picture of your basic, ugly NYC manhole cover.

Now check out this array of beautifully-designed manhole covers from Japan that Wired linked to today:

Each Japanese prefecture makes its own unique manhole covers, many of which are brightly colored and feature cute dancing crabs, frogs, and aliens.

Meanwhile in our own country, the most interesting things our manhole covers do are burn or electrocute people.

And in the larger world of American public works, if the city that you live in hasn't had a major road explode, a bridge collapse, a retaining wall crush rush-hour traffic, or run out of water, you should consider yourself lucky.

Gap just can't seem to shake its problem with child labor. The UK's Observer reported over the weekend that an Indian subcontractor producing Gap's line of clothing for children was using children, purchased as slaves, to make the clothes. What a coincidence!

Children as young as little Abigail Breslin, Gap model, were found working at a sweatshop in New Delhi making girls' embroidered tops. And: they weren't getting paid. From AP: "The Observer quoted one boy identified only as Jivaj as saying that child employees who cried or did not work hard enough were hit with a rubber pipe or had oily cloths stuffed into their mouths."

Rather than claim this as part of an innovative approach to developing new markets for its children's products, Gap said it has no idea, finds the allegations "deeply upsetting", and is investigating.

The Observer also reports that India is the child labor capital of the world: "According to one estimate, more than 20 per cent of India's economy is dependent on children, the equivalent of 55 million youngsters under 14."

Even though they've been through the ringer over unscrupulous labor practices before, Gap keeps manufacturing its clothes in India when it knows that child labor is a common occurrence there. It's this kind of indifference to human rights that makes the company's attempt at social responsibility via its (PRODUCT) RED campaign so transparent and phony. [note: clothes for the RED campaign are made in Africa, not India. That doesn't let them off the hook. It's the principle of the thing.]

Can one kid change the world? Sure, but not by manufacturing an embroidered blouse, and sure as hell not by buying a red t-shirt.

Remember when campaigns trying to get people to Buy American were mostly Wal-Mart territory and made you think of eagle-emblazoned sweatshirts and visors with flags on them?

Today, the NY Times tells us that the fashionable liberal elite has embraced Made in USA products. The local food movement, the high carbon footprint generated by buying European bottled water, and toxic Chinese toys have all inspired the urban cognoscenti to start supporting some domestic companies, particularly when their products are more expensive than foreign ones.

Price seems to be the determining factor when wealthy people decide it's cool to buy American; as the Times says, "It is hard to imagine, say, that people who tote reusable cotton bags to Whole Foods will ditch their beloved Saabs for an American-made Chevrolet Cobalt." But $1,250 custom-made bikes, designer t-shirts with flags on the tags, or top of the line New Balance sneakers with big USA logos? Sold! Conspicuous consumers are suddenly turning into a bunch of flag-waving patriots.

But this is still a pretty recent demographic shift for the Buy American market. Many products that proudly display their Americanness might be a little too patriotic for those who are really just "people wanting to have guilt-free affluence,” as Alex Steffen, editor of a sustainability website, calls them.

Yes, the less prestigious side of "Made in USA" is still with us--it's not all hand-painted sustainably-harvested wooden toy trucks. You can still be outrageously tacky while spending an assload of money on showing the world that your purchases are not just more mass-market knockoffs from China:

Hyper-patriotic car:

Flag gown:

Flag iPod case:

Flag jewels:

America, fuck yeah!

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has had a rough few years. It probably hasn't been easy reforming his nation while fighting off political adversaries who poisoned him with dioxin back in 2004 and then led to several disintegrations of his government. And even though the scarring of his face from his near-death experience made him look scary and Frankensteiny, did that hold him back? No it did not!

And just because his arch-enemy Vladimir Putin is posing around for the media flexing his saggy man-boobs, in my opinion he's no match for good old Yushy Craterface.

Here he is "personally taking control of firefighting" in Ukraine, where forest fires have been burning for a few days.

OK that's it. No more mean jokes.

A Reuters photo from the security area of the customs hall at the border between Gaza and Egypt.

Yikes. I'm guessing that you don't have to worry about packing your shampoo in a 3 oz. bottle when you run your bags through this scanner.

Meanwhile, one man living in Gaza takes an ambivalent, and depressingly pragmatic, approach to the new local bosses. "Today everybody is with Hamas because Hamas won the battle. If Fatah had won the battle they'd be with Fatah. We are a hungry people, we are with whoever gives us a bag of flour and a food coupon," said Yousef, 30. "Me, I'm with God and a bag of flour."

Well, Bob Geldof's pissed.

Another G8 summit meeting of the leaders of the world has come and gone with the usual ambitious goals, legions of protesters, and meetings with Bono. Here's what they accomplished this year:

The countries promised to spend $60 billion to fight AIDS, malaria, and TB in Africa. Spread out over "the coming years" with no actual timeframe. And also, that money was already pledged two years ago at the 2005 G8 summit.

Also, they pledged $25 billion in aid to Africa over the next 10 years. But they'd already made that same pledge, also in 2005, and apparently have already fallen behind on promised payments.

Some other accomplishments:

• The countries issued a "message of firmness" to Iran that it had better stop enriching uranium, or else!
• They agreed to "seriously consider" trying to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. By 2050. Which is over FORTY YEARS from now.

Wow! Global leader in bottomless frustration Bob Geldof called the summit "a pantomime": "Do me a favor, get serious guys, get serious," he said. "This wasn't serious. This was a farce. A total farce."

Sure, he's right. It's a disgrace. But after I saw some sort-of cute photos of Bush, Blair, Merkel, and other frequently loathsome world leaders sitting around in the sun having a few drinks, it was hard to stay too mad at those crazy kids.

Come on, Bob, sit down, have a beer! Relax, man. They can always pledge another $100 billion next year.

Yesterday's New York Times had an article on the popular recreational usage of Viagra among Spanish men, with a surprisingly Post-y headline:

"Spain Says Adiós Siesta and Hola Viagra"

Some old favorite Post headlines celebrating our Spanish-speaking brethren include a culturally sensitive piece on Bloomberg's efforts to learn Spanish:

And the questionable announcement of Bill Richardson's plans to run for President:

NM Governor Throws Sombrero Into Ring.

Nothing wrong with using a few universally familiar Spanish words in a headline, but the subject matter of the Times article makes it sound sort of like an ad in the back of a magazine guaranteeing the erotic delights of spanish fly. The piece discusses how cultural shifts have affected the sexual habits of all those fiery, macho Spaniards, leading to increased popularity of... ok, I don't know if they made this up, but they claim that Spanish people call it "sexo azul":

And how about the señoritas? Turns out they're a bunch of insatiable hot tamales, too.

Whoa. Or, ¡Whoa!

The best Times articles are often the non-news features about some weird practice going on out in the world somewhere that has no bearing whatsoever on life as we know it. Today we've got the illegal but popular sport Russian dog fighting; lots of crazy, bloody details that show what a bizarre place Russia is these days.

The sport involves massive, thick-headed breeds, including Central Asian shepherd dogs and Caucasian ovcharka, bred by livestock herders across the continent to defend sheep and cattle in the mountains and on the steppe. Collectively the dogs are called volkodavs, the wolf-killers.

While most of the day’s more than 10 matches drew little blood, this one was different. Jack and Sarbai tore each other’s mouths with the first bites. Blood flowed, staining the dogs’ faces and flanks.

Between Sarbai and Jack’s rounds, other dogs fought. One was called Koba, the nickname used by Stalin. He won.

Another was named Khattab, after a Jordanian-born terrorist who fought in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya before Russia’s intelligence service killed him with a poison-soaked letter in 2002. (!!!) He won, too, in the junior middleweight class, extending his undefeated record to eight wins.

Each fight lasts until one dog shows fear or pain — by dropping its tail, squeaking, whimpering, refusing to fight or snapping its jaws defensively, all grounds for instant disqualification. There is no scoring. There are only winners and losers or, in fights that continue for three rounds without an animal yielding, draws.

Many dogfights in Russia are said to be tainted, with steroid-swelled dogs, or animals smeared with wolf fat to confuse or intimidate their foes, or dogs’ mouths injected with Novocain to make them fight without hesitation.

And a wonderful quote that echoes Borat's "we say in Kazakhstan that horse is like man" speech:

"The dogs teach us," he said. "You cannot look at a dog and tell who it is. The dog is on the inside, not on the outside. It is in his spirit."

"It is the same with people," he added, and lifted his glass.

We've been following the political career, and the dioxin-related skin problems, of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko since the near-deadly post-election poisoning/bad sushi scandal. And I'm glad to say he's looking very handsome and un-Creature-like these days while swimming in a pore-evaporatingly cold Kiev lake as part of an Epiphany ceremony.

Here's a before and after shot from right after the poisoning:

Related: Dioxin: The Modern Prometheus; Look out, Condi!; Robert Redford Syndrome; greatest Low Culture caption of all time.

Today German tabloid Bild published photos that they claim were taken in 2003, of some German soldiers in Afghanistan clowning around with a human skull.

The photos are pretty typical of what we in America are no longer so surprised to see from our soldiers in the War on Terror: shots of a soldier posing with the skull, positioning the skull as the hood ornament of their Jeep. One creative soldier, in a reversal of the pointing at the prisoner's penis pose that Lynndie England made famous, took out his own penis and photographed it next to the skull.

Here's the Bild article in German and translated.

Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said, "These pictures revolt and mystify me. It is clear that such behavior cannot be tolerated from German soldiers. It runs counter to the values and codes of conduct we try to instill in our soldiers."

Posing for pictures with a skull that military sources say may have come from a mass grave is certainly not as bad as posing with actual live, tortured prisoners, like some U.S. soldiers did. The German pictures probably are revolting, as the Minister says, but after Abu Ghraib, how mystifying can they really be? "We must investigate exactly how such degeneration and misbehaviour can happen despite good training and good supervision," said Bernhard Gertz, who represents German troops.

Bernhard: this behavior happens because of the training, the supervision, and the entire approach that our countries have taken to this war.

The NY Times today has a pretty standard piece on men who buy wives for themselves through internet "don't call it mail-order" dating/marriage sites. As if not being able to get anyone in your own country to marry you weren't bad enough, these guys are suffering through some added inconveniences at the hands of their own government.

Congress created the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act, or Imbra, in March. The legislation "is intended to give foreign women and the American government more information about the men who seek so-called mail-order brides." In other words, Congress recognized an alarmingly fast rise in reports of abuse from women who came to the US to marry guys they met online. So they made a law that gives these women more information about the criminal record and marital history of their future husbands before they pack their bags and become legally bound to a man who has gone out of his way to find a wife who has no way of knowing any objective information about him. Men must now also provide this information to the government when applying for a fiancée visa. Sounds like a great idea, right?

Not so, according to the buyers. The customer is always right, and that should extend to spousal transactions, say purchasers of foreign brides. “We should have the right to correspond with, date and marry the person of our choosing,” said David Root, who has been involved with many women from the former Soviet Union in the past decade but has not married any of them. “The government shouldn’t interfere in this.”

He may have a point--Americans can indeed marry whomever they please. And it's not like they're forcing these women to leave their homes for a lifetime of marriage to a man who is often, let's face it, a total stranger. The man that the NY Times story follows, Adam Weaver, sounds like a nice enough person who was seeking an "old-fashioned girl", and now just wants to marry his Colombian fiancée (she's 17 years younger than he is, does that mean she qualifies as a "girl"?) without a lot of delays.

But some men who get into foreign marriage services clearly are delusional: there's a hilarious example in Sam Smith, who owns a company called I Love Latins, based in Houston [site not really safe for work]. In explaining the appeal of his service, he says, “It all started with women’s lib. Guys are sick and tired of the North American me, me, me attitude.”

"Me, me, me", huh? And what kind of attitude is it that compels a wealthy American man to search for another human being on a shopping site using criteria like age, weight, height, religion, and command of English, and then pay thousands of dollars for this probably low-income person from a poor country with few or zero opportunities for a stable life to leave their home and enter into a legally-binding contract with them that allows that person to live legally in the US only if they remain married? That's altruism! Right, Sam Smith?

Vladimir Putin was given a very thoughtful and personal gift from Bavaria's Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber last night during his formal visit to Germany: a traditional Bavarian gun! How considerate of those Germans. Especially considering the event that dominated Putin's visit to Germany and probably many other aspects of his life this week: Saturday's murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

A NY Times editorial on the murder says she was killed at her apartment by one shot to her heart, and three to her head. Politkovskaya, a long-time vocal critic of Putin's administration, was most recently working on an article, with photos, about torture in Chechnya.

Bush asked Putin about the murder when they spoke recently about North Korea, and Putin said her death was "a blow to Russia" and promised an investigation. Putin also he had also "not forgotten" the case of Paul Klebnikov, an American who was editor of Forbes Russia when he was shot to death two years ago.

Still no news on who shot Andrei Kozlov, a Russian central banker who was trying to reform the corrupt banking system, a month ago. Or, probably, on any of the 13 other journalists that have been murdered in Russia since 2000, when Putin came into power.

The coup in Thailand: a politically confusing pro-democracy military ousting of a democratically-elected (though potentially corrupt) government, or fashion photo shoot opportunity? Both!

This Bangkok fashion student takes her inspiration from the military's stylish uniforms as they guard the government buildings they raided just last night.

Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra spoke yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations here in New York, and discussed his country's sometimes rocky experiences with democracy. He also answered questions about the recent violence involving Muslim separatists in the south, and personal charges of corruption.

Apparently he finds it useful to compare the government he leads to a baby, because he used two different baby metaphors to describe the young democracy:

But when the cat's away... the tanks come in. A military group calling themselves the Council of Administrative Reform seized power tonight, surrounding government buildings with tanks, and have suspended the constitution and declared martial law. It's the first coup in Thailand in 15 years.

Good timing on the part of the military, waiting until the controversial leader is out of the country to take over. Must have been like taking candy from a baby.

Slough Trading Estate is the home of "The Office"'s fictitious Wernham Hogg paper company. Like its analog on the US version of the show, Scranton, PA, Slough is accurately depicted as a soul-crushingly dull and ugly place.

It's also where British police just raided two internet cafes in connection with last week's foiled plan to blow up a lot of planes.

Terrorist cells might even be a step up for Slough's public image, based on David Brent and John Betjeman's 1937 poem ("Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough".)

How about if this year, we forget about all those lazy sports journalists and commentators out there who every 4 years come out with the same old "why don't Americans care about soccer?" routine that is increasingly tedious and inaccurate.

Thankfully, New York media isn't falling into that trap. The Post has a feature on where you can watch World Cup matches, which start this Friday, with a good list of names and addresses. Little Brazil (46th St between 5th and 7th Aves) is going to have a lot of options, including Ipanema and Brazil Brazil. Hallo Berlin, the friendly German beer and sausage hall on 10th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen is going to be serving sausage breakfast sandwiches, and has gotten 3 more TVs installed.

And you've probably already seen groups of really hammered English guys smoking outside Nevada Smith's on Sunday afternoons year-round: they'll be there when the bar opens at 7:00 AM this weekend. The 11th Street bar (11th between A and B) and Baker Street Pub (First Avenue and 63rd) will also likely be popular with England fans. Novecento on Broadway in SoHo is for Argentina fans. Or go to pretty much any bar or restaurant in Astoria, and you'll probably find people watching.

You should watch the games at the ESPN Zone in Times Square only if you want to be surrounded by the kind of people who constantly ask "why don't Americans care about soccer?"

The Daily News has a great piece on the Trinidad and Tobago Soca Warriors, who are in the World Cup for the first time ever this year; much of the Caribbean population of Brooklyn is beside itself with excitement. Caribbean businesses around Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Fort Greene will definitely be showing the games, and probably hosting giant Carnival-like parties for the next month.

And the NY Times offers a helpful rundown of the 10 teams that stand a decent chance of winning. It's a useful summary of how the teams have been doing lately, and offers updates on Wayne Rooney and Francesco Totti's broken limbs.

Meanwhile, in Poland they're celebrating by putting miniature soccer pitches in their urinals.

Some countries' governments still get into fist-fights during their parliamentary sessions.

From Reuters: "Communist deputies scuffle with members of parliament loyal to President Viktor Yushchenko before the president's annual State of the Nation address to the chamber in Kiev, February 9, 2006. Yushchenko proposed breaking a legal logjam with parliament by creating a commission to draft a new version of the constitution to be submitted to a referendum."

OK, Congress, let's see a few flying fists on the red carpet at next year's State of the Union. Anyone who knocks the wind out of Rick Santorum gets a free pizza.