assorted hallucinations

Oh PLEASE click HERE for a wonderful music video. In Disney's "Dumbo," nasty circus people have spiked the baby elephant's water with liquor, and he hallucinates the famous Pink Elephants. It's one of the greatest moments of animation, but this remix features the cover by the remarkable jazz musicians from Saturn, Sun Ra and His Arkestra.

Pink Elephants On Parade

from the Walt Disney
animated feature "Dumbo" (1941)

lyrics: Ned Washington

Look out! Look out!
Pink elephants on parade!
Here they come!
Hippety hoppety

They're here and there
Pink elephants ev'rywhere
Look out! Look out!
They're walking around the bed
On their head
Clippety cloppety

Arrayed
In braid
Pink elephants on parade!
What'll I do?
What'll I do?
What an unusual view!

I could stand the sight of worms
And look at microscopic germs
But Technicolor pachyderms
Is really too much for me!

I am not the type to faint
When things are odd
or things are quaint
But seeing things you know that ain't
Can certainly give you an awful fright!
What a sight!

Chase 'em away!
Chase 'em away!
I'm afraid!
Need your aid!
Pink elephants on parade!
Pink elephants!
Pink elephants!

==========

I'm a little long-winded, so maybe The Columbus Dispatch might not run my Letter to the Editor.

Sue me. Read it on Vleeptron.

==============

Letters to the Editor
The Columbus Dispatch
Columbus, Ohio USA

To the Editor:

Of all the tasteless and insensitive things I have ever read in a newspaper, your public humiliation of Professor John Burnham of Ohio State University, by running his column "Former Drug Czars Believe Their War Has Been Won" (30 June), is surely the most shameful.

Professor Burnham is clearly suffering from the most virulent hallucination I have ever witnessed, with or without LSD or liquor's pink elephants. He's convinced 35 years of America's War On Drugs have achieved Victory.

In 1965, when I graduated from high school, I had never met a human being who had ever smoked marijuana. I couldn't have found any marijuana, heroin or cocaine if I'd waved a hundred-dollar bill all over my large city for a week.

Now, with Victory achieved, these substances, plus methamphetamine and ecstacy, are a phone call or a 24/7 open-air drug market away throughout America, at prices to fit any teenager's allowance. (Legal, taxed, government-supervised alcohol is far more difficult for teens to obtain.)

I feel such sympathy for Professor Burnham's inability to notice the reality nearly every American, urban or rural, can see and, by gunshots in the night, hear.

The Nutty Professor looks back on America's 14 years of Alcohol Prohibition and concludes:

"Historians have established that the 1920s experiment in alcohol prohibition was successful and was repealed in 1933 only because of a massive, well-financed propaganda campaign."

In other words, Professor Burnham believes that if America had Done The Right Thing, it would still be a crime for an adult to drink a beer or a glass of wine. Franklin D. Roosevelt was an evil drug legalizer.

America's Drug War has achieved one Victory. Led by these remarkable Drug Czars, a bipartisan political emphasis on police, prosecutors and prisons has made my Land of the Free the world's largest prison system.

When I was growing up, this distinction belonged to the Siberian Gulags of the Soviet Union, and before that, to Nazi-occupied Europe. In 2000, under the leadership of Czar and former Army general Barry McCaffrey, this pathetic Gold Medal passed to the USA, and we now boast 2,300,000 children, women and men behind bars. We're Number One!

Stop shaming this troubled man and enabling his problems. Get the guy -- and the USA -- some help immediately!

Robert Merkin
Northampton, Massachusetts

*******************

Friday 30 June 2006
Columbus Dispatch (OH)
Copyright 2006 The Columbus Dispatch
Contact: letters@dispatch.com
Website: http://www.dispatch.com/
Author: John C . Burnham
Note: John Burnham is research professor of history at Ohio State University, where he specializes in the history of medicine and American social history.

FORMER DRUG CZARS
BELIEVE THEIR WAR
HAS BEEN WON

The United States has won the war against illegal drugs. That was the conclusion of a unique gathering on June 17, which marked the 35th anniversary of the war's beginning in 1971 with the appointment of Dr. Jerome H. Jaffe, a psychiatrist, as the first White House drug czar.

Jaffe was joined at the the anniversary gatheing in by six other former czars, Dr. Robert L. Du Pont, Dr. Peter G. Bourne, Lee I. Dogoloff, Dr. Donald Ian Mac-Donald, Lee Brown and retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey. Also attending were 20 former staff members and a handful of experts, including me, a specialist historian.

The meeting, sponsored and hosted by the University of Maryland, was held for the purpose of making a historical record.

The seven former czars and former staff members held remarkably unanimous views, though they come from a variety of backgrounds and included Democrats and Republicans who worked for five very different presidents. And what they had to say was often surprising.

The main conclusion that we won the war on drugs was the biggest surprise, because advocates of illegal drugs have in recent years filled the media with rhetoric about "the failed war on drugs." The czars' straightforward conclusion may come as a shock, but, as they outlined what the war was about, what they had to say made a lot of sense.

Thirty-five years ago, the big worry was the veterans who were returning from Vietnam who had been using illegal drugs. And the drug causing overwhelming concern was heroin. A hard-headed public-health approach showed an alarming number of deaths directly related to heroin, not to mention crimes committed by addicts. As the veterans showed that their use did not continue after their return to the United States, and as methadone-maintenance programs came into place, along with enforcement and education, heroin use declined, and even more dramatic was the decline in heroin-related deaths. This was the great victory of the war on drugs. A recent small uptick in illegal drug use is remarkably insignificant compared with the original problem.

Only in the 1980s, when the price of cocaine, in the form of crack, went down did that drug become a significant public-health problem. But what about marijuana? At that time, the serious effects of pot smoking were largely unknown. But in the late 1970s, the parents movement developed parents who had seen what happened when their kids got addicted to marijuana and their young brains got fried. This was a huge group of very angry people, and they were political dynamite.

The main tension in the office of drug czar was between enforcement and treatment. Congress would fund enforcement but did not like treatment, although one czar told of taking a couple of reluctant members of Congress to view a treatment center and see how much money treatment was saving the public as addicts, often under court coercion, were enabled to work productively.

For historians like me, the collective experience of the former czars provides two lessons. The first is unwelcome to extremists of the right and left and their shady commercial allies: Prohibitory laws can work.

Historians have established that the 1920s experiment in alcohol prohibition was successful and was repealed in 1933 only because of a massive, well-financed propaganda campaign.
The leadership of the drug czars in reducing supply and demand of illegal drugs is reflected not only in the public-health statistics. They can also cite public opinion polls. Thirty-five years ago, illegal drugs were usually first or second and no lower than fourth as public concerns. Now the drugs issue trails many other problems.

Everyone at the conference knew that the problem is going to continue for American society, but at a much lower level than 35 years before. That is what laws do: They attempt to control problems, not bring perfection. Laws against murder provide hope to control the problem, not abolish murder.

The second lesson is more subtle. The title czar was ironic, because the appointees had no direct, executive power. Instead, they coordinated the many federal and local agencies dealing with aspects of the drug problem and drug-law enforcement. The czars used persuasion. They got a drug detection and treatment system into the armed services, where the programs served as models for private businesses and other units. When new substances of abuse came along, often the czar was able to get officials and private businesses, especially pharmaceutical companies, to get one substance or another restricted before it became a major problem.

So what if the amusingly designated czars had no real power? They proved that in American government, there can be impressive leadership beyond formal power.

2 poems; & what happened to the poet when he tried to go home

Tenzin Tsundue, Tibetan

poet in exile in India

NGO Vleeptron
Preliminary Report
on Global Terrorism

In the view of the government of the Peoples Republic of China, any Tibetan who objects to China's military occupation of Tibet is a terrorist.

In the view of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, any American who objects to Britain's military occupation of Britain's American colonies is a terrorist.

Well, after Americans defeated the British Army and won their independence, Britain doesn't think George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are terrorists anymore. They're ... well ... okay, if Britain can't bring itself to call these ex-terrorists freedom fighters or liberators, they're, uhhh, political leaders of a new, recognized sovereign nation. We exchange ambassadors now, and Britain doesn't try to hang our leaders or line them in front of a firing squad anymore.

This article about the exiled Tibetan poet Tenzin Tsundue is from the Belfast Telegraph in Northern Ireland. In the view of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, any Irish person who objects to Britain's military occupation of any part of the island of Ireland is a terrorist.

Well, after the British recognized the southern counties as the independent Republic of Ireland, the British government doesn't think the Irish freedom fighters were terrorists anymore.

In the view of the government of Israel, any Palestinian who objects to Israel's military occupation of the West Bank is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, any Jew who objects to Britain's military occupation of Palestine is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, any Egyptian who objects to Britain's military occupation of Egypt is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, any Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist who objects to Britain's military occupation of its empire in the Indian subcontinent is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of the United States of America, any Filipino who objects to the US military occupation of the Philippines is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of the Soviet Union, any Afghani who objects to the Soviet Union's military occupation of Afghanistan is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of Myanmar, any Burmese who objects to the military junta which ignores, by force of arms, the overwhelming vote of the Burmese people to have a democratic government is a terrorist ...

Where the hell do all these fucking terrorists come from???????????

And how do so many of them end up as the political leaders of new sovereign nations? How do so many of them end up on currency and postage stamps?

And why do those damn Scandinavians keep awarding so many terrorists the Nobel Peace Prize?

====================

THE TIBETAN IN MUMBAI

by Tenzin Tsundue

The Tibetan in Mumbai
is not a foreigner.

He is a cook
at a Chinese takeaway.
They think he is Chinese
run away from Beijing.

He sells sweaters in summer
in the shade of the Parel Bridge.
They think he is some retired Bahadur.

The Tibetan in Mumbai
abuses in Bambaya Hindi,
with a slight Tibetan accent
and during vocabulary emergencies
he naturally runs into Tibetan.
That's when the Parsis laugh.

The Tibetan in Mumbai
likes to flip through the MID-DAY,
loves FM, but doesn't expect
a Tibetan song.

He catches the bus at a signal,
jumps into a running train,
walks into a long dark gully
and nestles in his kholi.

He gets angry
when they laugh at him
'ching-chong-ping-pong'.

The Tibetan in Mumbai
is now tired,
wants some sleep and a dream.
On the 11pm Virar Fast,
he goes to the Himalayas.
The 8.05am Fast Local
brings him back to Churchgate
into the Metro: a New Empire.

================

TERRORIST

by Tenzin Tsundue

I am a terrorist.
I like to kill.

I have horns,
two fangs
and a dragonfly tail.

Chased away from my home,
hiding from fear,
saving my life,
doors slammed on my face,

justice constantly denied,
patience is tested
on television, battered
in front of the silent majority
pushed against the wall,
from that dead end
I have returned.

I am the humiliation
you gulped down
with flattened nose.

I am the shame
you buried in darkness.

I am a terrorist
shoot me down.

Cowardice and fear
I left behind
in the valley
among the meowly cats
and lapping dogs.

I am single,
I have nothing -
to lose.

I am a bullet
I do not think

from the tin shell
I leap for that thrilling
2-second life
and die with the dead.

I am the life
you left behind.

================

Belfast Telegraph
Monday 3 July 2006

Tibetan dissident
to accuse Chinese
of torture and genocide

by Clifford Coonan

Tenzin Tsundue, a Tibetan poet and activist, takes his fight to Britain today when he files a sworn testimony detailing atrocities he says he saw and experienced while in prison in the remote Himalayan region.

Mr Tsundue’s testimony is a stark litany of beatings and torture doled out during his imprisonment without trial in 1999, and will be submitted today to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office legalisation office, where it will be officially notarised.

The testimony is for a criminal suit filed in Spain’s High Court by three Tibet support groups accusing former president Jiang Zemin and ex-parliament chief Li Peng, both of whom retired in 2003, of committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Tibet.

"Many European countries speak of peace and human rights and harmony. But on business they all cosy up to China, it’s hypocritical. Through asking for justice in an international court I hope they will have second thoughts," Mr Tsundue said. "The Tibetan people should have the right to run their own country, not the Chinese people," he said. The case accuses the retired leaders, who were in office during the 1980s and 1990s, of authorising massacres and torture in Tibet. The court could call for the Chinese government to arrest those accused of human rights abuse -- and even impound their property.

Tibet has been under the control of China since 1950 when the People’s Liberation Army marched into Tibet. Less than a decade later the Himalayan region’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled [to India] after a failed uprising. Tales of torture and abuse have abounded over the past four decades.

China has condemned the lawsuit, calling it absurd, and Beijing has accused Madrid of meddling in its affairs. Madrid is also investigating charges of genocide against the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Emilie Hunter, a spokesperson for the Madrid-based Friends of Tibet Committee, said she hoped that the effect of filing the testimony in Britain would be to stimulate broader government and public interest in the issue.

The lawsuit coincides with the opening of a hi-tech train line between Beijing and Lhasa, which the Chinese say will give Tibet an economic boost, but which Tibetan activists fear will lead to a dilution of Tibetan culture.

"This is one way to fight Beijing -- they may not listen to us Tibetans but this is a way to speak to Beijing non-violently with law and show this is injustice and we want them to address this," Mr Tsundue said.

The activist lives, along with approximately 110,000 other Tibetans including the Dalai Lama, in Dharamsala, close to the border with India. He was arrested in 1999 while crossing into Tibet at Ladakh and held for three months in two prisons. Here he says he experienced, and witnessed, the treatment of Tibetans who had been jailed for "counterrevolutionary" crimes.

"Over three months I was beaten, starved, became infested with lice and had a red-hot poker brandished in front of my eyes. For me, those long sessions of interrogation were so intimidating, humiliating, and disturbing that many times I found myself crying in the middle of night in my dark prison cell," he said.

He said he fears for the life of one political prisoner, Dawa Gyaltsen, who was arrested in 1996 and sentenced to 18 years in prison for designing and distributing "free Tibet" posters. He is now being held in Lhasa’s notorious Drapchi prison.

Mr Tsundue’s views are more extreme than those of the Dalai Lama, whom the Chinese view as a dangerous separatist who wants to wrest control of Tibet away from China. Beijing accuses him of continuing to spark independence movements among the 2.7 million Tibetans and refuses to allow him back inside its borders.

For his part, the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, insists he is a moderate who preaches a "middle way," which seeks special autonomy for Tibet within China, not independence.

Many Tibetans, include Mr Tsundue, remain fiercely loyal to the figure they regard as a god-king. "For us Tibetans the Dalai Lama is our leader and he is our Buddha," Mr Tsundue said. "He has an immense sense of compassion and forgiveness. I don’t have the power of the Buddha to compromise on independence.

"On the political front I ask for independence for Tibet. The Tibetan people should have the right to run their own country and not China," he said.

- 30 -

© 2006 Independent News and Media (NI)
a division of Independent News & media (UK) Ltd

Tsundue’s testimony

My name is Tenzin Tsundue. I am a Tibetan born and brought up in India. On 4 March 1997, I walked across the India-Tibet border. I was apprehended at Cha-gang by border police. For eight days I was interrogated every morning for many hours and throughout these interrogation sessions, they kept asking me who sent me, who backed me in my mission, what was it about, who I was meeting in Tibet -- the interrogators, who were mostly Tibetans, would kick me, punch me in the chest and often slapped my face -- Sometimes, after a hard slap I would almost go deaf, and for a long time I remained dazed. These sessions of interrogation were very intimidating, humiliating and mentally so traumatising that sometimes in the middle of the night in my cell, I found myself crying -- I was never produced before any court nor given any opportunity for legal support. In the jail, the food was poor and served only twice a day, leaving us starved all the time.

===============

Friends of Tibet (INDIA)

Dear friend:

Friends of Tibet (INDIA) is an effort by individuals from India to help, preserve and spread awareness about the issue of Tibet and the unique cultural and religious identity of the Tibetan people.

Tibetans living in exile are spread across more than ten countries. Although faced with unforeseen problems and unpredictable circumstances beyond their control, they have held together as a community and kept alive their national identity. Also very much alive is their yearning to return to their homeland. Even among the fourth generation in exile they have successfully preserved their language, their culture and their religion.

Friends of Tibet (INDIA) was formed on March 9, 1999, at Dharamshala, and its website was inaugurated by Ven. Yeshi Togden, president of Gu Chu Sum Movement of Tibet

Sadly, the same cannot be said about the situation inside Tibet. Throughout the early decades of the occupation tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed and many more sent to prisons and concentration camps. During this period more than 6,000 temples and monasteries -- including vast Buddhist universities and ancient libraries were looted, burned and destroyed. Even today, despite some cosmetic changes, largely for the benefit of tourists or visiting dignitaries; Tibetan religion and culture has not recovered from the decades of suppression and continues to suffer from neglect and discrimination. Rampant and indiscriminate exploitation of Tibet's vast natural resources is also threatening the fragile ecological balance of the Roof of the World. However, the single biggest threat to the survival of the Tibetan people is China's policy of population transfer aimed at reducing Tibetans to an insignificant minority in their own country by sending in millions of landless and jobless Chinese.

The distinct cultural ties between India and Tibet, the most obvious being the spread of Buddhism from India to Tibet in the seventh century, is perhaps too well known to bear repeating here. The trade and economic ties between the two countries is perhaps even older. It is equally important to remember that India maintained independent relations with Tibet throughout our shared history. Never, until China's military occupation of Tibet after 1949, has India ever shared a common border with China. Today India spends more money to defend our northern border with Chinese-occupied Tibet than we do to protect our border with Pakistan. Even in the case of our western border, much of the problem is linked to the political, economic and the military support that China gives to Pakistan.

Joined together by almost the entire length of the mighty Himalayan range -- India and Tibet are also inseparably linked in a physical sense. With such an extensive common frontier, the environmental changes on one side inevitably affects the other. It is for this reason that China's destruction of Tibet's fragile environment not only through indiscriminate deforestation and mining but also by dumping nuclear and other toxic wastes -- should be a major concern to every Indian. It is no longer just a question of helping an oppressed people and supporting a peaceful and friendly neighbour. Today the question of Tibetan independence is inseparably linked to India's long-term future. The implications of having China as our permanent northern neighbour or even the single issue of any of the rivers flowing from Tibet to India becoming polluted by toxic waste is too serious to be left to chance.

We believe that all the issues raised above are of a global nature not only in terms of the principles involved but also in terms of their impact. We, therefore, call upon freedom-loving people everywhere to join hands with the Tibetan people. We believe that Tibet Can and that Tibet Will Be Free. So join us by sharing your ideas, your time and your talents. Together we can make a difference to the lives of our Tibetan friends and also secure the safety of our future generations. For too long China has taken India and Indians for granted. Let us act now to make Tibet free.

Friends of Tibet (INDIA) believe that all the issues raised above are of a global nature -- not only in terms of the principles involved but also in terms of their impact. We, therefore, call upon freedom-loving people everywhere to join hands with the Tibetan people. With your help

‘Tibet Can and Tibet Will Be Free.’

Regards,

Sethu Das

(President, Friends of Tibet INDIA)

[photo:] Friends of Tibet National Committee with His Holiness the Dalai Lama

stoned California pelican attacks car, detained

domoic acid





The Los Angeles Times (California USA)
Saturday 24 June 2006

Plastered Pelican
in Detox After Flying
Through Windshield

Domoic acid in algae is the likely
cause for inebriated seabirds

by Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer

Four pelicans were being detained in an animal drunk tank Friday on suspicion of public intoxication, authorities said.

One of the birds was in guarded condition after allegedly flying under the influence Thursday and crashing through the windshield of a car on Coast Highway in Laguna Beach.

The driver was rattled but uninjured.

The other California brown pelicans [Pelecanus occidentalis californicus] were nabbed in backyards or wandering local streets in a daze.

Although toxicology tests aren't complete (there are no bird breathalyzers), such behavior usually signals domoic acid poisoning from eating algae, said Lisa Birkle, assistant wildlife director at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, which is caring for the pelicans.

Domoic acid was also the likely culprit behind a 1961 seabird invasion that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film "The Birds."

According to news reports, thousands of befuddled birds rained down on Northern California towns in August 1961, slamming into buildings and even pecking eight humans.

Nobody is predicting a Hitchcockian invasion here, but Birkle urged Southern California residents to be on the lookout for pelicans acting disoriented or turning up in unusual locations.

In the last week, the wildlife center fielded 16 calls of suspicious bird behavior. And more incidents are likely because ocean waters south of Los Angeles Harbor have tested positive for the poisonous algae, Birkle said.

The pelican that collided with the car is recovering from surgery for a broken foot and a 4-inch gash in its pouch.

"She's hanging in there," Birkle said. On Friday, the heavily sedated bird began eating on her own, a good sign for full recovery.

Blood tests for domoic acid will take about three weeks, but Birkle said she's never heard of a sober pelican crashing into a car.

The birds have phenomenal eyesight, she explained, noting that from high above the ocean, they are able to spot fish.

After the pelicans being held in Huntington Beach have sobered up, they will be released on their own recognizance.

Copyright © 2006, The Los Angeles Times

=========
from Wikipedia:

Domoic acid

Domoic acid, which causes amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP), is an amino acid phycotoxin (algal toxin) found associated with certain algal blooms [1].

In 1958, domoic acid was originally isolated from the red alga called "doumoi" or "hanayanagi" (Chondria armata [2]) in Japan. "Doumoi" is used as an anthelmintic [?] in Tokunoshima, Kagoshima.

Domoic acid is also produced by diatoms of the genus Pseudo-nitzschia [3][4]. The chemical can bioaccumulate in marine organisms that feed on the phytoplankton, such as shellfish, anchovies, and sardines.

In mammals, including humans, domoic acid acts as a neurotoxin, causing short-term memory loss, brain damage, and death in severe cases. Red tides are associated with the phenomenon of ASP. Considerable recent research has been carried out by the Marine Mammal Center and other scientific centers on the association of red tides to domoic acid and to resulting neurological damage in marine mammals of the Pacific Ocean.

In the brain, domoic acid especially damages the hippocampus and amygdaloid nucleus. It damages the neurons by activating AMPA and kainate receptors, causing an influx of calcium. Although calcium flowing into cells is a normal event, the uncontrolled increase of calcium causes the cell to degenerate.

On June 22, 2006, a California brown pelican, possibly under the influence of domoic acid, flew through the windshield of a car on the Pacific Coast Highway. The acid is found in the local seas.

Domoic acid poisoning was the most likely cause of a 1961 invasion of thousands of frantic seabirds in Northern California that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds.