This is one of the most amazing, and most unexpected, stories about cross-cultural experiences I’ve ever heard of, not to mention a glimpse at just how deeply our pop culture penetrates throughout the world. Following is an excerpt from New York Times reporter David Rohde, who was kidnapped and held captive for 7 months by the Taliban:

"When we were alone with the guards who lived with us, moments of levity emerged.

"They searched for ways to break the monotony. After dinner on many winter nights, my guards sang Pashto songs for hours. My voice and Pashto pronunciation were terrible, but our guards urged me to sing along. The ballads varied. On some evenings, I found myself reluctantly singing Taliban songs that declared  that 'you have atomic bombs, but we have suicide bombers.'

"On other nights, at my guards’ urging, I switched to American tunes. In a halting, off-key voice, I sang Frank Sinatra's version of 'New York, New York' and described it as the story of a villager who tries to succeed in the city and support his family. I sang Bruce Springsteen's “Born to Run” and described it as a portrayal of the struggles of average Americans. . . .

"I intentionally avoided American love songs, trying to dispel their belief that all Americans were hedonists. Despite my efforts, romantic songs — whatever their language — were the guards’ favorites.  The Beatles song 'She Loves You,' which popped into my head soon after I received my wife’s letter from the Red Cross, was the most popular.

"For reasons that baffled me, the guards relished singing it with me. I began by singing its first verse. My three Taliban guards, along with Tahir and Asad, then joined me in the chorus. 'She loves you — yeah, yeah, yeah,' we sang, with Kalashnikovs lying on the floor around us."

First things first: The two South Carolina Republican county chairmen who praised Sen. Jim Demint by comparing him to penny-pinching Jews apologized yesterday for the ethnic slur. Seems that these days you can say almost anything and, as long as you apologize for it quickly, everything’s OK. So, here’s a big thank you for the apology to Edwin Merwin and James Ulmer, you knuckle-dragging shitkickers. Oops, so sorry.

Second things second: Sen. Richard Burr kept on digging his political grave yesterday as he responded to criticism of his vote against a ban on giving federal funds to companies that require arbitration in sexual assault cases. Incidentally, all four GOP U.S. senators who are women voted for the ban. When N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, a probable contender for Burr’s Senate seat next year, lambasted the senator for “voting against protecting rape victims working for contractors in Iraq,” Burr lashed back. Through a spokesman, Burr said the amendment “does  not protect women” (huh?), and besides – I swear this is an actual reason they gave for voting against the ban – it “prevents contractors from getting paid.” Like we should give a damn if a contractor that treats women the way KBR treated Jamie Leigh Jones gets paid.

Burr’s spokesman also said the arbitration agreements are nonbinding in criminal acts, and the government could still prosecute sexual assault suspects. So, Richard, you're saying it’s OK for taxpayer-funded contractors to force employees who've been raped to go through an arbitration process, because “the arbitration agreements are nonbinding in criminal acts”? And then what? After the arbitration process, they should go to a policeman and have the rapists arrested, and then go through a whole other trial “process”? I guess as long as the contractors are getting paid, it's OK to put women through an extra layer of hell. You’re not making sense, senator, and frankly, it’s hard to fathom how a politician could be this tone-deaf.

• Jamie Leigh Jones testifies before Congress

Deliver Us From Weasels, a collection of 50 of John Grooms' best columns and articles, will be published in November by Main Street Rag Press. The book will cost $14.95, but it can be purchased in advance through Oct. 26 for $10 including shipping at> www.mainstreetrag.com/store/ComingSoon.php

At its meeting on Thursday, the FCC is expected to finally — finally — take a big step toward making net neutrality the law of the land. In case you haven't been following the issue, net neutrality is a really big deal. The term is used to describe the Internet system we more or less have now, a central principle of which is that all users have equal access to phone lines, and providers can't give any users special treatment, even at a price. Network neutrality has been so fundamental to the success of the Internet, even former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who usually sided with big business interests, described it as one of the basic rules of "Internet freedom" and the reason the Web has nurtured so much technological creativity.

For the past three or four years, a mix of communications mega-corporations, largely led by AT&T, wanted to change the Internet to a “tiered access” system, in which Web site owners would have to pay extra for fast connections. It’s a policy that would turn what used to be called the information superhighway into a toll road, giving critical advantages to big-buck corporations.

If that happens, sites with a big bankroll (say, www.target.com) would get super-fast connections, while small-fry sites that couldn't pay the toll would chug along at a sluggish pace. This is so obviously unfair, you wonder where the AT&Ts of the world get the nerve to propose it. As technology writer Annalee Newitz suggests, "It would be like letting an electricity company cut a deal with GE so that only GE appliances got good current."

One of the best things about the Internet is its wide-open creativity, as well as the fact that Joe Citizen's little Web site has the same access to phone lines as a behemoth like www.walmart.com. Over the past decade-plus, that egalitarian quality has allowed formerly small start-up sites such as Salon, YouTube, MySpace and hundreds of others to flourish and become part of our lives.

The new FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, strongly favors net neutrality, unlike his predecessor, Kevin Martin, of Charlotte. The Thursday FCC meeting will release a “notice of proposed rulemaking on open Internet access,” at which time the proposed regulations will go up for comment. Big communications corporations are still pitching a fit about the issue, but it looks as if years of activism by the likes of the Open Internet Coalition have paid off.