Follow Me Here will be on vacation until Labor Day weekend as my family and I set off for parts unknown. Please frequent your favorite independent content provider in the meanwhile. Consider the sites in my sidebar to the left. Enjoy the rest of your summer and thanks for your continued support.

Men Cut Off Fingers in Protest

Twenty South Korean men chopped off their little fingers on Monday in a macabre public protest hours before Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited a Tokyo shrine to war dead.

Standing in pouring rain in front of the Independence Gate in Seoul, the men took it in turns to chop off their fingers with small guillotines laid on the ground after shouting slogans against Koizumi’s plan to visit the Yasukuni Shrine.

The burly men, wearing black tee-shirts and headbands declaring they were “prepared to die to save the country,” laid their severed digits in a South Korean flag which was wrapped and then tied in a knot.

Their maimed hands tended to and bandaged — each man cut off one finger — the men again shouted slogans without showing any sign of pain.

A reporter for South Korea’s YTN television said the men identified themselves as members of a martial arts group.

But Korean martial arts authorities said they had not heard of the group and local news photographers who witnessed the incident told Reuters the men appeared to be gangsters, identifiable by their short-cropped hair and language.

Cutting off a little finger is a method Japan’s “yakuza” mobsters use to atone for mistakes.

The protest, triggered by Japan’s war-time atrocities in occupied Korea, failed to stop Koizumi from paying homage at Yasukuni. The shrine honors Japanese war dead, including convicted war criminals from World War Two. excitenews

Maker Chose Not to Act to Reduce Abuse of OxyContin: “The maker of the widely abused

narcotic painkiller OxyContin knew

that other companies had used a chemical

safeguard to reduce misuse of their products but decided not to take

similar steps before marketing the drug, company officials said

yesterday.” New York Times

Quintessential cool: “In the world of music, here’s what it is, who’s got it and who needs it.” SF Chronicle