The Opposite End of China || Xinjiang & Northwest China Blog (中国的另一端 || 新疆 & 中国西北博客): Mmm, Brains.

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October 28, 2008

Mmm, Brains.

Delicious sheep brains for sale. Kuqa, Xinjiang.

And a larger version:

posted October 28, 2008 at 07:54 PM unofficial Xinjiang time | HaoHao This!

Comments

I don't dare to eat this.

The comment above was posted by miloservic at October 28, 2008 11:52 PM unofficial Xinjiang time.

Can you elaborate? I see skulls, what animals are they from? Are there brains inside? Do you point out one skull and say “I want this?”. How is the brain cooked, seasoned? Do you get to take the skull home as a trophy?

The comment above was posted by Tong at October 29, 2008 02:46 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

I hear the curtains drawing on this site.

The comment above was posted by BJD at October 29, 2008 02:57 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

brains are delicious!

mexicans use it to prepare burritos. sort of egg rolls using brain instead of meat.

my only qualm about it is cholesterol. so it is an "once in a long while" thing.

the simplest way to prepare is:
1. remove the veins first by rolling toothpicks along side the veins. (veins are hard to chew after cooking)
2. sprinkle a little salt
3. put it in a bowl and get it ready to be steamed
4. some ginger can enhance the flavor
5. don't have to over steam it

you can eat the brain with your favorite wine!

"bon appetite" as Julia Child likes to say.

The comment above was posted by Jonathan at October 29, 2008 03:21 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

BJD: Off-topic. Another brainless comment.

The comment above was posted by Jimba at October 29, 2008 05:52 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

Closing the doors on Gitmo

A combination of diplomacy, transfers and prosecutions can help end this debacle.

The Philadelphia Inquirer
By David H. Schanzer
Head of the Duke-UNC Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security
Posted on Tue, Oct. 28, 2008

President Bush said last year that "it should be a goal of the nation to shut down Guantánamo," the offshore prison for foreigners accused of terrorism. But now it seems this goal will remain unfulfilled when the president leaves office.
Bush's recent decision to keep Guantánamo Bay open is regrettable. It represents a victory for Vice President Cheney, who, according to reports, believes it will "validate" Bush's detention policies if the prison is still open under a new administration.

But there is no redeeming the detention and prosecution system at Guantánamo - a system that has produced only two convictions in seven years, has been rebuked by the Supreme Court three times, and has caused four military prosecutors to step down in disgust. Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has properly urged that this symbol of injustice be shut down "this afternoon."

The next president will need new strategies for dealing with the three categories of detainees at Guantánamo:

Where sufficient evidence exists that a detainee has committed a war crime, court-martial proceedings should begin immediately. Those charged under this system and ultimately convicted can be detained in military jails inside the United States.

The military-commission system has failed miserably and should be scrapped. The well-regarded military-justice system, on the other hand, will gain us greater international respect, reduce delays and eliminate the possibility of convictions being overturned because of constitutional defects.

A second group consists of detainees who, according to our military, present no danger but have not been released because we cannot find a country that will take them. The new president will have to expend some diplomatic capital on persuading allies to share the burden of closing Guantánamo by taking custody of these individuals.

For this mission to succeed, however, we will need to avoid a recurrence of what happened earlier this month, when a State Department effort to place 17 Uighur detainees - members of an ethnic minority in China - was undercut by Justice Department statements calling them extremely dangerous.

The most difficult challenge is the group of detainees the government deems dangerous but cannot prosecute because it lacks admissible evidence. The Supreme Court has held that we may detain unlawful enemy combatants captured in battlefield circumstances until hostilities have ended. The court's most recent ruling, however, gives detainees the right to challenge their status as unlawful combatants in federal court.

The best way to get out of this legal hole is to transfer these detainees to their home countries, provided we are assured they will be kept in custody and treated humanely. Recent negotiations to transfer a large number of detainees to Yemen, for example, need to be brought to a speedy conclusion.

The remainder of the detainees should be transferred to high-security military facilities inside the United States. The government has resisted taking this step because bringing the detainees here may give them additional rights when challenging their detentions in court. It also would increase the possibility that a judge could order detainees released inside the United States, as one recently did in the case of the Uighurs. (That ruling is being appealed.)

These are low-level risks worth enduring for the sake of closing Guantánamo. The likelihood that detainees would be let go in the United States is minimal.

Even if a court rules that continued military detention is unlawful, the detainees have no right to be in the United States. They could be placed in custody as illegal immigrants until we find a country to accept them. Congress has robust authority over immigration matters, and it would no doubt intervene if the courts tried to release detainees into our civilian population.

Some members of Congress have presented another obstacle by saying they would oppose placing dangerous terrorists in prisons in their districts. This kind of demagoguery simply will have to be ignored. Our prisons hold mass murderers and serial rapists; surely they can prevent the escape of the Guantánamo detainees as well.

This combination of prosecutions, diplomacy and transfers will not resolve all our legal difficulties. But at least it would bring the Guantánamo debacle to an end.

The comment above was posted by spec at October 29, 2008 05:59 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

I would be willing to try, provided it was cheap. But brains are very bad for you, and not just in cholesterol. They swarm with disease.

The comment above was posted by Taiko at October 29, 2008 10:01 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

These are sheep brains. The water bottle on the table contains a mixture of salt, pepper, and cumin.

And BJD may be a jerk, but he's right... I haven't had the energy or compulsion to keep this site going very strong lately. But I'm off to Xinjiang next week for a visit, so maybe that will re-energize things.

The comment above was posted by michael at October 29, 2008 10:45 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

Not only brains, but ears, eyes, tongue, skin... mmm, delicious:)) I am a specialist of ship head singe by a blow-torch:)))

The comment above was posted by chon_dada at October 29, 2008 12:01 PM unofficial Xinjiang time.

...the water bottle contains what... salt, pepper and...? Well, that explains the look on his face.
Picking my mind up from the gutter, safe-travels Michael.

The comment above was posted by Jimba at October 29, 2008 12:29 PM unofficial Xinjiang time.

central nervous tissue is one thing i simply won't eat. the likelihood of something bad happening as a result is too high. what taiko said.

The comment above was posted by kellen at October 29, 2008 09:01 PM unofficial Xinjiang time.

Probably the best head you'd get in China.

The comment above was posted by Kelvin at October 30, 2008 06:23 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

brians, breains, brains.

The comment above was posted by roebuck at October 30, 2008 10:02 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

brains are safe to eat as long as they are properly cooked or steamed. germs or bacteria can not stand temperatures. by the same token surgical instruments always get reused through autoclaves.

as a matter of fact american automobile association recommends its members to eat chinese food in chinese restaurants while traveling
because they are always cooked.

The comment above was posted by Jonathan at October 30, 2008 10:49 PM unofficial Xinjiang time.

Jonathan: just to rain on your parade, prions are most likely to occur in nerve tissue and shrug off heat and chemicals with impunity:

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~mow/prion.html

"The abnormally shaped prions are resistant to most heat and chemical treatments"

Prion-based diseases are also nastier than a day or two of the runs...

The comment above was posted by laghman at October 31, 2008 12:14 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

thanks for your info, laghman!

The comment above was posted by Jonathan at October 31, 2008 02:45 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

laghman, i also found this address

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/prions/

it relates to the infamous new guinea's "kuru" disease.

i am shaking already, i am going to sh....sh.....

The comment above was posted by Jonathan at October 31, 2008 03:15 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

the following address is very very informative;

http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant570/Papers/McGrath/Mcgrath.htm

note that "The most common form of prion disease is scrapie, expressed in sheep and goats (Prusiner, 1995)"

don't be scared! ha!ha!ha!@?#@!?!

The comment above was posted by Jonathan at October 31, 2008 08:53 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

BTW, the notorious "mad cow disease" is one form of prion disease.

The comment above was posted by Jonathan at October 31, 2008 10:40 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

NO CHARGES BUT US MAY NEVER RELEASE GUANTÁNAMO CHINESE

Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian
Saturday November 1 2008

Seventeen Chinese prisoners who have been held for nearly seven years in Guantánamo Bay will be informed on Monday that they could spend the rest of their lives behind bars, even though they face no charges and have been told by a judge they should be freed.

No country is willing to accept them and the US justice department has now blocked moves for them to be allowed to go to the US mainland, where they had been offered a home by refugee and Christian organisations.

The men's lawyer, Sabin Willett, is flying to Guantánamo Bay this weekend to break the news to the men, who are members of the Uighur ethnic group seeking autonomy from China. In a blunt and angry letter to justice department lawyers, Willett spelled out what he thought of the way the men had been treated.

"After years of stalling and staying and appellate gamesmanship, you pleaded no contest - they are not enemy combatants," Willett has written. "You have never charged them with any crime."

Last month a federal judge ruled that the men should be freed. "They were on freedom's doorstep," said Willett. "The plane was at Gitmo. The stateside Lutheran refugee services and the Uighur families and Tallahassee clergy were ready to receive them." However, the justice department appealed against the ruling and Willett claims this will put the men into a potentially endless limbo.

Yesterday Willett said his clients were "saddened" by the latest events. The men, who are Muslims, were in Afghanistan in 2001 and were captured by Pakistani troops and handed over to the US. So far, more than 100 countries have been asked to take them as refugees but none have agreed. Willett blamed US authorities for incorrectly describing them as terrorists.

According to the US justice department, the men "are linked to an organisation that the state department has labelled to be a terrorist entity, and it is beside the point that the organisation is not 'a threat to us' because the law excluding members of such groups does not require such proof."

Willett is also angry the defence department will not agree to let him meet his clients unless they are chained to the floor. He called for this restriction to be lifted: "Just permit these men one shred of human dignity." He added: "Americans are not supposed to treat enemy prisoners of war this way under the service field manuals, or the Geneva conventions - if anyone paid attention to the field manuals or the Geneva conventions anymore."

The comment above was posted by spec at November 3, 2008 07:15 AM unofficial Xinjiang time.

The title made me think of a Misfits song...still thinking about Halloween I guess.

Interesting photo. I didn't see anything quite like this in my travels through Xinjiang. Also don't think my wife would let me eat it...though I probably wouldn't want to.

The comment above was posted by China-Matt at November 3, 2008 12:17 PM unofficial Xinjiang time.

Cow brain [and lots of other offal] used to be very popular here, in the the N.of England,until the government made it illegal to sell stuff like that for human consumption.

October 28, 2008

Mmm, Brains.

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