phonstance

two things happened in may that made me start liking phayao. 1) i got a moto, and 2) the monsoon started (which put out the forest fires and brought back the mountains).

now i can explore sunsets. and jungles. and listen to wilco's summerteeth while riding through the afternoon rice paddies. and okkervil river on moonlight dashes around the lake. and (unreleased) paul banks every other time. and simply indulge every impulse of exotic wander-y adventurism i have.

it really is happiness on wheels. and it was enough to get me back for a second year.

anyway, the point is.. con thinks we look like:

Design Flaw

Giant Thai Things

we live in a jungle.

(that's a king cobra)

Where we'll be:

Aug 30–Sept 3: San Francisco, Sexy Rexy, etc.
Sept 4–8: Yosemite, Death Valley, Vegas, Sedona, Marfa
Sept 9–14: Dallas
Sept 15–Oct 1: Austin
Oct 2-4: Colorado
Oct 5–12: Austin
Oct 13–18: Houston/College Station

Then.. possibly California again, before Thailand No. 2 at the end of October.

We want to see you. Yes, you.

Eight days

Last week of Thailand Round No. 1.

I haven't blogged in months, so it's time to do so with fury.

Here is a video we made once on the Great Wall of China:

Sexy Rexy!

Rex David Kilbride. "The Psalmist." I'm an uncle.


Alright Emmy and Justin!

Where's Lorne?

Lorne (our friend from Texas) is in Thailand, and everyone thinks he's Thai. Odd, since he clearly looks more like a younger Ho Chi Minh. Still, he just blends in, and it's endless fun.

What's this?...

... found him!

Fight Night

Con (read her more thoughtful account here) declared it our best night in Phayao. Watching 12 year-old kids hit and kick each other—and grown-ass men making rice whiskey-fueled bets on said hitting and kicking kids—I entirely agreed.




Also learned how little we know about the sport...

During the [above] title fight, we assumed red shorts was winning, although probably only because he had a cooler back tattoo. So when—in the fifth and final round—they began dancing and mocking their way around the ring instead of fighting (reminded me of wrestling video games), indicating an inevitable split decision, the extent of my lame ignorance was hammered home. Sure enough:

Tuesday!

Brooks on Fallows on China

I admire both the NyTimes' David Brooks and The Atlantic's James Fallows for similar reasons. Both guys seem to enjoy posing questions and exploring ideas more than arguing sides, and both seem to write with humility and openness about their own opinions. Both seem willing to be wrong, and willing to give credit where credit is due. Both are refreshing voices in our current information age gone wrong.

So.. I was happy today to read Brooks about a debate about China featuring Fallows (where he lived for several years, and about which he's written a series of very illuminating stories).

Fallows pointed out that there is no one thing called “China” or “the Chinese,” and that many of the most anti-American statements from Chinese officials are made to blunt domestic anxiety and make further integration possible. That integration, Fallows continued, is deep and will get deeper. Many, many Chinese leaders were educated in the U.S. and admire or at least respect it. If you go to cities like Xian, you find American and European aviation firms fully integrated into the commercial fabric there.

Fallows’s main argument, though, was psychological. When he lived in Japan in the 1980s, he said, he sometimes felt that the Japanese had a chip-on-their-shoulder attitude in which their success was bound to U.S. decline. He says he rarely got that feeling in China. Instead, he has described officials who are thrilled to be integrated in the world. Their mothers had bound feet. They themselves plowed the fields in the Cultural Revolution. Now they get to join the world.

Some of the officials interviewed by Fallows believe the U.S. is following unsustainable fiscal policies that will lead to decline, but they view this with frustration, not joy. Fallows doesn’t know what the future will hold, but he believes that Chinese officials still see the dollar as their least risky investment. Domestically, China will not turn democratic, but individual liberties will expand. He agreed that China and the U.S. will dominate the 21st century, but he painted the picture of a more benign cooperation.

I post this because the biggest question that I went to China with—and I think, one that is going to be asked endlessly in the coming years—is what does China's inevitable rise mean for America? Will America respond out of undue fear or proper caution? Does one superpower's rise require another to fall? To what level will we tangle over resources? Can we commend and encourage the miraculous, rapid evaporation of Chinese poverty without abandoning our own human rights principles?

Seems like it's the geopolitical relationship that will matter more than any other over the next 100 years. Glad I got a glimpse.

Losing Face

Tienanmen is a sensitive issue here. So we mocked it.

All walls are great if the roof doesn't fall..

.. (Thom Yorke shouldn't always be taken literally).

The Great Wall "experience" reminded me a bit of the Grand Canyon. I'm always a bit ho-hum about going to super-famous, fanny pack-friendly places I've seen over and over in pictures... and then I'm always pleasantly surprised when the place is pleasantly, surprisingly spectacular. It almost works better that way.

The GW really is that stunning. Geesh it's stunning.

Joyce drafts me into the PLA.

the view from the countryside

(and... communists make good art).

Beijing is America (and so can you).

the view from our window

xuanwumen, beijing, prc

Beijing.

sucks to your swine flu.

Adam

Adam is my friend. I've lived on his couch a lot. He's currently one of the leaders in this contest to win a social media job at a winery in Healdsburg, California (the same Healdsburg where my sister and brother-in-law got engaged).

So.. go to this site, watch his video, and then vote for him. Cmon. Cmon.

He's been on the cusp of a spot in the top five almost perpetually, and while most votes doesn't necessarily equal winning, it does show his ability to mobilize the masses.

More Like Boooor-antine.

We're flying to Beijing on Wednesday, but I'm not sure we're going to get to see much of it. Here's why: I'm fairly (47 percent) certain that we'll be quarantined.

My concern started sometime last week, when swine flu flared up in some of the beach towns in Southern Thailand. I figured that one would soon mean two would soon mean a couple hundred would soon mean (probably) alarmist headlines like this one:

"10,000 Could Catch Swine Flu."

Flying in at the height of Thai flu panic, we'd be obvious targets. So I started looking for stats or stories about how many people were getting whisked away in Beijing. Turns out everyone capable of getting sick is an obvious target these days (although we still have a higher risk of being on the same flight as someone infected)... and turns out a bunch of people have written about it.

Here's a blog from a guy:

It goes something like this: the flight lands, taxis, and stops at the gate. Along the way, passengers are told to remain in their seats and not . A moment or two later, in a scene reminiscent of the opening moments of Star Wars (when stormtroopers burst into the rebel craft, firing lasers, followed by Darth Vader), teams in biohazard suits emerge at the front of the plane, and work the aisles, firing laser thermometers at the foreheads of seated passengers...

Last night, I was seated in 13G. Next to me, in 13F, was a thirty-ish Chinese man. A woman in a biohazard suit fired her laser at my forehead (normal), and then his. “Thirty-seven-point-three,” she announced to the person in the biohazard suit behind her (that’s 99.14° F). ... At this, the two biohazard suits waved at a taller biohazrd suit in the other aisle, and the three parties retreated to the front of the plane....

Meanwhile, I couldn’t help but notice the disdainful and frustrated looks of nearby passengers who couldn’t see 13F, but who could surely see me – Mr. 13G in the aisle seat. All in all, not an entirely pleasant sensation, being mistaken for a Plague Carrier. As for 13F – he wasn’t commenting. I tried.

Mr. 13F apparently didn't have swine flu, because Mr. 13G wrote this atop the Great Wall (or somewhere equally as non-quarantine-y).

But this next guy wasn't so lucky. Someone three rows from him on his flight had it, and after a day or two at a swank Beijing Westin hotel, the state came looking for him. Now, even though he hasn't shown a single flu symptom, he's stuck in quarantine for a week. Luckily, he's stuck with internet access. From his blog (here also is his twitter feed):

"Much like prison, the standard greeting is “how long you been here?” (we’ve dispensed of “what are you in here for”). Another great conversation starter is “so, how’d they find you?”. Otherwise, there’s really not that much else particular to the culture here. Handshakes are not allowed. In fact, greetings, in order of preference, are:

Handshake < high five < fist bump < nod"

Still.. quarantine for him means means a converted 3-star hotel with internet, decent enough food (can even order out to Pizza Hut), and Tai Chi classes—facts I'm glad to learn, because if quarantine means getting strapped down in a hospital bed in some faceless, Soviet-era (uh.. all communism is the same, right?) hospital, then I don't think I could convince Con to take the risk.


But at least he seems to be taking it with a sense of humor about (also read his wickedly funny "7 People You Meet in Quarantine"). Here's a different take from one more—a quarantined (alongside New Orleans/Chocolate City mayor Ray Nagin—Ha!) Chinese-American who considered herself a believer in the great Chinese experiment. Now she ties quarantine back to the dangers, arrogance and slippery slope of an authoritarian state:

Out of frustration, I complained that I was being treated unfairly. I spoke my mind and said that I felt as if my rights were being violated by the Communist government. When I said this, I sent my jailers into a frenzy, "Don't criticize China! Do not criticize China!" Those of you who know me know that in the past, I've always tended to defend the Chinese government. Yes some of their measures were draconian but they were also efficient and effective, I said. And at the time, I truly believed that it was a fair tradeoff. Fewer rights for faster outcomes.

I take all of that back. I rarely get angry but I am so angry now. I've never felt so keenly the disadvantages of living under a government that does not recognize the concept of personal rights. Some of that anger is personal, no one wants to spend most of their vacation alone and enclosed. But the deeper anger is directed at my sense of helplessness. I cannot do anything to extract myself from a nightmare that is out of my control and blown way out of proportion. I have no way of defending myself and have not come up with any logical justifications to soothe my anger. I am being treated courteously by the staff here but it still feels like being in prison.

Since I have infinite time on my hands, I've been watching a lot of Chinese television. The official state media is filled with reports of the dangers of H1N1. Yesterday, an entire talk show was devoted to interviewing a healthy Chinese woman studying abroad who is refusing to visit her family in China this summer because she did not want to risk infecting them with the disease. Reporters and officials in her hometown praised her sense of "civic responsibility" and "patriotism". The piece concluded with words to the effect of, China welcomes and embraces all of her children from around the world.

While this type of blatant propaganda would have amused me even a week back, watching it yesterday made me sick. I've been asked multiple times to provide the names of anyone I came in contact with during my 24 hours of freedom (friends, taxi drivers, cashiers, and waitresses...). I've refused so good luck finding them and the thousands of other people "exposed" to my presence in the city. Call me a horrible person but I refuse to help the "glorious cause".

Although the context is different, the political puppet show that is the H1N1 witch hunt has given me glimpses of the emotions and irrationalities which allowed the CR to happen only 40 years ago. If I had any illusions about what the government of this country will or will not do, I've been disabused of those notions. I feel sorry for the Chinese people who from watching the Chinese news, live in fear of being swamped by a deadly outbreak of H1N1 or other new forms of flu sure to arise in the future. I can no longer defend the actions of this government or look forward to living in a country where the precautionary response to H1N1 is the benign tip of the iceberg.

Anyway.. we'll see. Either way, I'm expecting this trip to be thoroughly enriching. Everyone should wrestle with the bureaucratic tentacles of a communist superstate once in their life, right? (Con loves it when I think like this...).

Somewhere in South Asia...

.. a year ago.

I promise to do whatever's necessary to help you...

– To see beauty where you otherwise do not.
– To embrace sadness around us.
– To see the art of the design of the world.
– And to grow in the confusion.

I promise to encourage you...

– To embrace transformation.
–To love grace, to think in God's rhythms, to breathe in abundance.
– To... [something surely profound, cept I was nervous and giddy and shaking while writing these on a napkin in the hallway before our wedding (like a true elopement), and couldn't read my own handwriting. It was probably about her hair. I love, love, love her hair. Or maybe her laugh, or her tenacity. Roll that word around on your tongue—her ethereal tenacity. Those words don't even go together, but it's her.]
– To strive hard after that which about us is our best.
– I promise to die every day so that we may live .
— You and me, side by side, knowing that I am more alive with you as my wife. These are my sexy* vows.

*sexy** is the new solemn.
**we made mike say this.

The link.

Somewhere in Middle America..

The Texas baseball team is going to the College World Series for the 33rd time this weekend (for those counting, that's 10 more appearances than the next closest college, or 8.25 x the Aggies—whichever is easier to understand).

I got to cover Omaha in 2004, and every year around this time I wish I could go back. Beautiful weather. No pro contracts. Fans from eight schools. It really is baseball at its best.


My dad drove up with a friend and watched four games with me, fulfilling a sort of dream we had. The day he arrived, it was 40 degrees and raining. My future wife (I think we had met the day before—she likes to establish her authority quickly) had told me it was silly to pack a sweatshirt in June. She's hot and I "don't get cold," and my dad rescued me with a jacket, fulfilling his own dream of proving that I "still need his advice"... and credit card.

Another writer at my paper drove up with me (who later became one of two writers we had that would get drafted by foreign militaries—he's somewhere near the Korean DMZ). We spent the two weeks there playing golf, doing the best writing of our young careers, draining half (no exaggeration) of our department's travel budget for the year, and playing Hunter S. Thompson in the seedy underworld of Omaha, Nebraska (something involving a skunk, a used car lot, three Koreans, and the Council Bluffs, Iowa police department..).

Texas, meanwhile, steamrolled through to the finals, allowing us to stay long past the opening weekend that had sent most of the SEC fans moping home. The Omaha paper called that Texas team the best it had ever seen. I'd discreetly wear a Texas baseball t-shirt underneath my neutral pressbox yellow, and was planning my victory column well in advance.

But then an amazing thing happened. Texas lost, inexplicably blowing leads to Cal St. Fullerton in two consecutive games despite having the two future first-rounders in the bullpen (including the following year's AL Rookie of the Year). A few unlucky bounces, a few bad pitches, a very, very good Fullerton team (albeit one Texas had pasted earlier in the season)—it just happened. Baseball at its best.

Following the game, Texas failed to show up for the second place trophy ceremony. Apologetic Longhorn coach Augie Garrido attributed it to a communications error (I believed him, and was one of the few people publicly defending Augie in this article). Most of the rest of the media there attributed it to simple, indefensible sore loser-ness.

The team had also wrongfully cut media access short—denying reporters a chance to explore what happened—so the pressbox was left alone to stew and work itself into a tizzy on deadline, throwing unverifiable rumors around with an appalling lack of professionalism and restraint. I might've been naive in my caution, and simply loathe to criticize "my team." But you could feel the press getting angry and vindictive, and sure enough the next day sportswriters from across the nation published columns calling for blood—including one from an uninformed twit at my own paper.

Mob mentality over a sports issue that simply did. not. matter.

Last one in said press box, writing my non-victory column.

Overall, Omaha was everything fantastic about baseball, summertime and college sports—and it convinced me that I really, really didn't want to be watching from the same pressbox ten years later.

And that's how I ended up a career-less (hire me) journalistvagabond in Thailand. Go Horns.

This American Life

how to cope with the economy: burmese beer and cigarettes.

If you don't already listen, This American Life is this fantastic podcast about (wait—guess first.. yeah. no.. no.. yes.. ok.) America. They do these wonderful stories about random people doing surprisingly interesting, mundane things (in America).

But they also join NPR* now and then to do shows about the economy, cutting through media clutter to make wonkish, complex things you read about in the news jargon-free and easily understandable (and remarkably captivating) via a mix of plain language interviews and anecdotes. The reporters are curious, humble, thorough, non-partisan and appropriately exasperated.

This week's is about the collapse of the regulatory system over the past few years—specifically, the failure of federal regulators with AIG, and the over-reliance and poor design of credit ratings agencies like Standard and Poors.

I feel like I'm a fairly smart guy who reads a lot, but I'd be much much much more confused without these shows. They're simply enriching. You can only download the current week's show for free, so I recommend you do it quickly (they post a new show each Sunday).

*They also have a thrice-weekly NPR podcast called "Planet Money," that does essentially the same thing in shorter, somewhat less-produced shows.

Art and War

I found this instillation at an art museum in Colombo—several hundred drawings by young Sri Lankans from around the country, depicting (I think, from what one guy there told me) what they hoped the island nation would look like for the new year.

Almost all of them featured some combination of trees and rivers and people holding hands under the sun—cute and uninteresting.

But... there were also just a dozen or so that provided glimpses of life in war, and these I loved. You read a lot about hospitals and rehab centers using art therapy as ways to reach kids, and find out what they're truly experiencing. And in the middle of a war-fueled propaganda battle, these little bits of truth are gold.

A bunch showed life in UN tents—the hope for 2009 is a tent for every refugee?

Some depicted actual fighting—stuff they'd seen? Or just 10 year old boys making similar drawings to ones I did in third grade?

the tamil tigers are an attacking chicken?

A bunch showed life with an enemy:


A Tamil Tiger about to pounce? Maybe.. but that deer looks evil.


And some, I thought, were just intense and beautiful:

I did it?

the tuktuks rejoice.

"Farther away were the wars of terror, the gunmen in love with the sound of their shells, where the main purpose of war had become war."– Michael Ondaajte, again.

The Sri Lankan government has been fighting the Tamil Tigers for 26 years. I'm 26, and showed up in Colombo last week. The war ended Sunday. I'm just saying...

But no really—what a wonderful and terrible time to be there.

In reality, wars don't truly end until power incentives dictate that peace deals are signed, and this government military victory has done nothing to ease ethnic tensions. The Tigers who escaped the war zone will still probably carry out a protracted terrorism and guerrilla warfare campaign (see the angry reaction from Tamils all over the world—also check out M.I.A.'s happy twitter stream).

And this victory cost of thousands and thousands of innocent lives, and highlighted the dangers of an administration unwilling to work with NGOs and the press (notice the non-Sri Lanka datelines on all NY Times stories, and the non-byline at the bottom of this one). Most of the aid workers I talked to think the island has bigger problems still ahead, and war crimes investigations might re-inflame tensions as atrocities are exposed.

But the end of fighting is good for everyone for now, and more than 60,000 innocents can finally stagger out of the war zone. I think that's worth celebrating.


On Saturday, the president declared victory on Saturday, but things in Colombo still just seemed more tense than anything. I think a lot of people were probably expecting reprisal suicide attacks.

But, on Sunday, when the Tigers announced that they were "laying down our guns," the city erupted into street celebrations. And by Monday and Tuesday, when the rumor that Tigers leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran had been killed had fully spread, things really got fun. Flags on every bus and tuk tuk. Fireworks stopping traffic right and left. Choppers and fighter jets buzzing my 16th floor hotel room.



This sort of tiered unfolding of relief makes sense. A huge part of every war is a protracted propaganda fight, and the Tigers admitting even limited defeat (without threatening immediate retaliation) prolly had a much bigger impact than anything the president declared.

But more so, while war affects everyone in a nation, conventional fighting never took place in the capital. So the main fear was terrorism and assassination, with which the Tigers had given Colombo a lion's share (get the pun?!!). So winning a conventional war in a more distant place itself was probably less important than crippling the terror capabilities of the Tigers and knocking off their messiah-like leader.


Today was declared a national holiday. I wish I could've stayed one more day to see it, even if celebrating a war won with atrocity and a victory that will do little to win peace seems uneasy at best—even if the purpose of celebrating war is to ignore it.

Here's a timeline and a Q&A about it all.

Galle Face Empathy

"I want you to understand the archaeological surround of a fact. Or you'll be like one of those journalists who files reports about flies and scabs while staying at the Galle Face Hotel. That false empathy and blame." – from this fantastic novel.

I read this while on a veranda overlooking a roaring stretch of Indian Ocean at the Galle Face Hotel.

This is sort of an odd trip. I'm in a place that's dominating the global headlines with a massive unfolding catastrophe, but have no capacity to really understand what's going on or to contribute to any sort of solution. I'm here, essentially then, to sight see–but due to security and scheduling conflicts, I can't really travel to anywhere worth seeing.

So.. I'm just here at a terrible and historic moment, reading novels on the perfect Galle Face veranda, talking to tuk tuk drivers about their families, and having long, late-night conversations with a handful of USAID workers here doing the dirty work. In other words... feigning empathy and blame.

Observations:

– Inside the Colombo airport, there are no less than 35 shops selling washing machines and refrigerators. This says something severe about the culture.. but I'm not sure yet what.

– It's so much of what I loved about India. Technicolored temples. Awkward young men in pants and button-downs cuddling in public places and oppressive heat with young loves. Soldiers holding hands. Head wobbles and sing-song. Color and more color and life. Wonderful food. KFCs on every corner.

– The weather reminds me most of Monrovia. Just a flattening, heavy, salty humidity.

– Huge, huge military presence. Soldiers on every bridge. Checkpoints after checkpoints. Bunkers and anti-aircraft guns all over. It's nothing more than a minor inconvenience for me (I think everything is interesting), but I imagine it's less fun for the 200,000 ethnic Tamils here in the city.
– I've sensed feelings of tension, fear of terrorism, optimism/relief from the ethnic Sinhala, anger/marginalization from the Tamils, embarrassment from all that the country's reputation is getting skewered by the international press. Every westerner I've met describes it differently... and I wonder how much is just what I want to be sensing.

– I've decided, in indulgent over-generalization, that Thais are more polite and less friendly than South Asians. Waiters/shopkeepers/etc here sort of sneer when I walk in, before asking 20 minutes of questions about my love marriage and hair products. I've gotten into almost as many random conversations with strangers in three days here as in seven months in Thailand. I've missed this.

God loves a free and independent press

From the BBC:

New satellite images appear to show evidence of recent heavy shelling in a government-designated civilian safe zone in Sri Lanka, a rights group says.

The images show crater marks and considerable population displacement between 6 and 10 May.

Human Rights Watch says the images and witness testimony they have gathered contradict troops' claims that they are not using heavy weaponry.

From a newspaper I found here:

Security Forces on the verge of completing the humanitarian operation in the Vanni have confined the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) to one square kilometre in the battlefield.

The fight against terrorism is going on successfully.

In Sri Lanka

It's actually desperately sad here. And the more I travel the more I sometimes hate the world.

But everything is still beautiful...

How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People

I enjoyed this:

Freelancing and Feminine Hygiene

One of the real joys of freelancing (hire me) is the diverse and delicious number of topics you get to research—especially for wiki-addicts like myself. In the past two months, I've written about (among other topics):

– Seawater air conditioning
– Balinese boutique resorts
– Fuel cell energy storage
– And.. the cold, deadly and cyclically impoverishing effect of misinformation about feminine hygiene in Africa. Fun huh.

From Kristof's blog last week:

Over the last decade or so, it has become increasingly evident that one reason girls in Africa drop out of school is menstruation. They don’t have hygiene supplies, and they’re embarrassed about what might happen during their periods, so they stay home. That leaves them more and more behind, and eventually they drop out.

This is an unmentionable, and so it hasn’t been much discussed and I haven’t seen hard data on it, but I’ve heard it whispered about all across Africa. Some aid groups, such as the Campaign for Female Education, now distribute pads and underwear to girls as part of the effort to increase female attendance in high schools. But pads are expensive and there are issues with disposal of them, partly because of taboos about blood.

Clearly equipped with empathetic expertise, I got to help write a chapter about this very same (female) subject for a book, which will be published this fall in conjunction with the fantastic NGO CARE. It makes sense. I'll post details when it comes out..

It happens in America pt. II

From Kristof:

Jasmine Caldwell was 14 and selling sex on the streets when an opportunity arose to escape her pimp: an undercover policeman picked her up.

The cop could have rescued her from the pimp, who ran a string of 13 girls and took every cent they earned. If the cop had taken Jasmine to a shelter, she could have resumed her education and tried to put her life back in order.

Instead, the policeman showed her his handcuffs and threatened to send her to prison. Terrified, she cried and pleaded not to be jailed. Then, she said, he offered to release her in exchange for sex.

Afterward, the policeman returned her to the street. Then her pimp beat her up for failing to collect any money.

“That happens a lot,” said Jasmine, who is now 21. “The cops sometimes just want to blackmail you into having sex.”

I’ve often reported on sex trafficking in other countries, and that has made me curious about the situation here in the United States. Prostitution in America isn’t as brutal as it is in, say, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Cambodia and Malaysia (where young girls are routinely kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured by brothel owners, occasionally even killed). But the scene on American streets is still appalling — and it continues largely because neither the authorities nor society as a whole show much interest in 14-year-old girls pimped on the streets.

Americans tend to think of forced prostitution as the plight of Mexican or Asian women trafficked into the United States and locked up in brothels. Such trafficking is indeed a problem, but the far greater scandal and the worst violence involves American teenage girls.
....

Solutions are complicated and involve broader efforts to overcome urban poverty, including improving schools and attempting to shore up the family structure. But a first step is to stop treating these teenagers as criminals and focusing instead on arresting the pimps and the customers — and the corrupt cops.

“The problem isn’t the girls in the streets; it’s the men in the pews,” notes Stephanie Davis, who has worked with Mayor Shirley Franklin to help coordinate a campaign to get teenage prostitutes off the streets.

Great Americans

Banksy

My friend Paul, who is good at band and played at my elopement party, got videoed by Athens Soundies (a site I like that makes "soundies" of indie bands worth listening to playing acoustic sets in random places) during SXSW.

Paul Banks: Life for the Charm
by eikonproductions

Paul Banks: The World
by eikonproductions

Paul and his fantastic band (The Carousels) play all over Texas (including Dallas this Thursday), and they just keep getting better and better, so... go see him sometime if they're in your town.

Here is his myspace.

Here is a picture of us when we were still young:

Obama. Complexity. Doing. Etc.

Following this post the other day about my own muddle-headedness, I re-stumbled across this old David Brooks column about Obama when his candidacy was just getting going.

There are a thousand things to potentially disagree with this administration about. But Obama's ability to "get" or just better express that he "gets" that the U.S. can be both humble and bold about our place in the world—and that the world is complicated and ridiculous and not always a matter of good v. evil—is welcome relief (even if obvious), and why he gets people to listen (especially the enormous audiences abroad—he speaks to them as if they were adults). Brooks, a conservative-ish, certainly gives him the same respect:

Yesterday evening I was interviewing Barack Obama and we were talking about effective foreign aid programs in Africa. His voice was measured and fatigued, and he was taking those little pauses candidates take when they’re afraid of saying something that might hurt them later on.

Out of the blue I asked, “Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?”

Obama’s tone changed. “I love him. He’s one of my favorite philosophers.”

So I asked, What do you take away from him?

“I take away,” Obama answered in a rush of words, “the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away ... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism.”

My first impression was that for a guy who’s spent the last few months fund-raising, and who was walking off the Senate floor as he spoke, that’s a pretty good off-the-cuff summary of Niebuhr’s “The Irony of American History.” My second impression is that his campaign is an attempt to thread the Niebuhrian needle, and it’s really interesting to watch.

On the one hand, Obama hates, as Niebuhr certainly would have, the grand Bushian rhetoric about ridding the world of evil and tyranny and transforming the Middle East. But he also dislikes liberal muddle-headedness on power politics. In “The Audacity of Hope,” he says liberal objectives like withdrawing from Iraq, stopping AIDS and working more closely with our allies may be laudable, “but they hardly constitute a coherent national security policy.”

At the time, in a failed experiment with my own human nature, I had decided to see if I could truly stay mentally uncommitted to a candidate until the last week of the election. But it was stuff like this that made Obama wildly compelling—and to me made his unconventional youth in places like Indonesia and Pakistan an enormous asset.

Thoughts?

Trafficking

It.
Happens.
In.
The.
Bible Belt.

Still.. nice to see functioning law enforcement and judicial systems (although.. only 13 years?). Here officials own brothels. I'm trying to figure out how to measure what faith/distrust in the system does for societies.

photos of the sky

Back in January, a few months into dry season here, every rice farmer/mushroom harvester/trash creator in the north was setting fires. Soon sunsets, mountains and the general existence of color (despite the red/yellow Bangkok protests) were all gone (as I've relentlessly documented/complained about). Then it started raining again earlier this month, jacking up humidity levels but returning the general visual vibrancy that makes this place so livable.

Good story huh.

Pictures!:

Liberia Day (updated)

Jon Stewart had Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf on yesterday. I wish Stewart had let her talk more, but she's a remarkable woman doing an impossible job as Liberia rebuilds after decades of war, and worth listening to (as I got to do each morning on UN radio during my short trip there last year).

She's the first female president in Africa. More and more and more I'm seeing that it's women who are best equipped to lead desperate communities/countries to better futures.

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Here's The Economist on the book she just wrote (plus an update on her performance so far).

Also—looks like a story I wrote about that Liberia trip got picked up by a literary journal. Neat huh? Details soon..

Update: Ha. Also... Former Thai PM/polarizer/"Great Satan" Thaksin Shinawatra is apparently exploring investment opportunities in Liberia this week.

Darfur. Giving. Complexity. Etc.

Good intentions don't always work with reality (and sometimes make things worse), and I find that fact simply, increasingly, terribly paralyzing.

William Easterly—whose excellent blog I mentioned in this post and who's made a career out of highlighting how aid is often misguided—writes this post about a book about some well-intended NGOs (possibly) making things worse in Sudan:

In brief, he accuses advocacy campaigns like Save Darfur of making the achievement of peace in Darfur more difficult by portraying the conflict simplistically between “bad Arabs” and “good Africans,” and by advocating foreign military intervention.

I’ll repeat just a few points from Mamdani that stuck in my mind, but I encourage you strongly to pick up the book.

• The Save Darfur campaign repeatedly ignored and distorted the facts on the ground.


• Darfur is an insurgency and an extremely vicious counter-insurgency, but there was never the intent to eliminate any specific group and so the word “genocide” is inappropriate. But the word “genocide” gave the West and the UN a free hand to intervene.


• The prospect of foreign military intervention encouraged the rebels to hold out rather than agreeing to a peace deal, while hardening and attracting additional support for the position of the government to “defend national sovereignty.”


• There were also terrible atrocities on the “good African” side.


• The “good African” side includes one key player, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), that is an opposition Islamist movement that was previously on the “bad Arab” side in the North-South civil war (note: disconcerting, especially if you've read this book) between “bad Arabs” and “good Africans.”


• There was a sharp decrease in violence after 2005 just as the Save Darfur campaign picked up steam.


• The ICC is not credible to much of the non-Western world as a judge of war crimes since the US itself does not subject itself to the ICC, and since the ICC seems to selectively prosecute US enemies and turn a blind eye to war crimes by US allies.


• The Western pressure based on distorted facts has set back attempts within Sudan and within Africa to reach a peace settlement in Darfur, which is the only way the tragedy will end.

None of this is to deny the enormous human tragedy in Darfur. But Mamdani’s analysis makes one wonder: is it possible that ill-informed outsiders with the threat of military power on their side can make things worse rather than better?

Anyone who knows care to comment?

This nothing new—on all levels of aid—even without getting into military complications. Kipling called the worst forms of it the "White Man's Burden." We've met more than one pastor who steals from his own orphanage, and there's a long sad history of governments creating dependent, depowered (it's a word) poor communities. Most of the beggar kids here have pimps watching nearby.

Seems like the world just exploits the human attraction to good v evil, the tendency to reduce things to that which we can understand and act upon, and really horrible realities on the ground that a still, in fact, dying for assistance.

So... how to help when so much aid is ineffective and some runs the risk of impeding progress?

Nick Kristof, on cue, offers encouragement in a recent column about giving. :

Many people doubt the effectiveness of foreign aid, and a new best-selling book called “Dead Aid” by an African finance expert, Dambisa Moyo, even argues that government-to-government assistance is often harmful to recipient countries. It’s true that aid of all kinds is harder to get right than people usually assume, but the kind that has the best record is grass-roots investment — with strong local buy-in — in health, education, agriculture and microfinance. I’ve repeatedly seen these kinds of programs transform families and communities, from Africa to Afghanistan.

Frankly, this kind of aid is also pretty beneficial to the donor. For my part, I gain far more than $24 a month in psychic value from sponsoring Yuneiris, and my family’s tiny foreign assistance projects also remind my own kids that there is a world out there in which children have needs greater than the latest iPod.

Will my dollars and letters utterly transform Yuneiris’s life? Probably not. Will they make a significant difference? Probably yes. Is it worthwhile? For me, absolutely!

So, I guess... give in faith and obedience and a belief in sovereignty, give with due diligence, give with the right motives, give with realistic expectations about effectiveness, and give in the realization that we're not called to save the world. But... regardless... give, especially where you can't serve (the worst problems in the world, I'm increasingly deciding, are all fueled by and fought with the bottom line).

Thoughts?

Read Con's sorta-similar post (featuring Bono!) here.

Be gentle... I bleed.

Just curious what everyone did to celebrate World Hemophilia Day on Friday.



*First person to explain the title reference gets a prize (your choice between 49 U.S. Military "Saddam Playing Cards" I bought in Burma... and a severed goat head).

In conclusion..

.. (for now):



Think I'm going to miss Tony Cheng.

Anyway.. BBC has an extraordinary summation, that also explains a lot of the background better than I ever did. If you're confused and curious, read the whole thing:

Three years of intractable political conflict are taking a debilitating toll on Thailand. Emotions are now very raw.

Some of the ugliest scenes in recent days did not involve the army; they occurred when local residents came out to confront the rampaging red-shirts. Shots were fired, two people died, and some were savagely beaten.

It is difficult to explain why Thailand, a country once seen as a paragon of stability and social harmony, has become so polarised.

The division between Red and Yellow cuts across many lines; it is not simply just rural-versus-urban, or poor-versus-rich. Spend long enough with either group and you meet people from very varied backgrounds.

....

[But...]

Go to a red-shirt rally and you will hear the same mantra; "We are grass-roots people, fighting for democracy, against the ruling class".

Go to a yellow-shirt rally and you will almost inevitably hear a different mantra; "We are educated people, fighting against corrupt politicians who abuse democracy".

There appear to be no towering, Obama-like figures in Thailand, who can win the respect of both camps. Certainly not [Prime Minister] Abhisit, who often looks uncomfortably out of place in the rural, red heartlands of the north and north-east.

How he deals with the leaders of the "red uprising" now - and how that compares with the treatment given to last year's "yellow uprising" - will be an important test of his promise to uphold the rule of law impartially.

So the conflict which erupted so spectacularly in Bangkok and Pattaya over the past week will probably rumble on, steadily eroding the confidence of investors, tourists and the Thai people, in a stable future for their country.

Redshirts jump the shark?

ny times: people fight back (click for slideshow).

(update: This blog, which I like, says pretty much the same thing, except with a twist — "But, as Abhisit knows better than anyone else, the royal yellow lesson from 2008 is that thuggery, violence and provocation can reap rich political rewards." — and has a bunch of thoughtful comments that disagree.)

I wonder about how much hearts and minds matter here.

Back in October, during the PAD protests, I was skeptical of what the yellow shirts were demanding, but supported their right to protest. Then they became increasingly radicalized, culminating in the airport sieges that crippled the Thai economy, shutting down the tourism industry during the high season and hurting regular people. I heard from several people who quit supporting the PAD (although I don't really know — they could still be wildly popular).

This seemed to put the red shirts in position to take the high road, and — except for a couple minor instances — they did, putting on massive, peaceful protests and then going home after a day or three. Massive changes are coming in Thailand, and eventually there will be elections again, and the red shirts seemed primed to benefit. I think most democracy-minded Americans would at least tepidly agree with the reds' demands.

But then they started crippling Bangkok by abandoning their taxis at traffic choke points, attacking politicians, (literally) crashing the ASEAN summit, hijacking and threatening to blow up gas trucks in residential areas, and then — last night — allegedly attacking a mosque and opening fire on a group of angry citizens at a market, killing two.

So today the headlines have switched from stuff like "Government fires on protesters" to things like "U.S. condemns red shirt mob violence." A shift in popular opinion? A couple of red shirt leaders turned themselves in this morning, after encouraging protesters to disperse. Prime Minister Abhisit seems to be staging a remarkable (didn't think he'd last until the end of the month two days ago) comeback, and the government might just emerge from all this in tact.

The red shirts don't have the backing of the military and other elite, entrenched power centers like the yellows. So it seems like the only way they'll ever regain power is through popular support — and, as such, should be doing everything they can to hold on to it. It's unfair (and the source of their anger/frustration), but reality. Ghandi and MLK knew what they were doing.

Anyway.. I ask the question because I'm very much on the outside of all this, and am curious how this kind of thing looks for regular, unaffiliated Thais. (I'm not Thai and I'll prolly be gone in two years, but—on some level—someone unaffiliated and limited in understanding, albeit curious like me can be a decent gauge for how well a group's PR efforts are working).

Regardless, it's clear that violence breeds violence, and absolutist mob behavior (whether red, yellow or American partisan) is simply a part of human nature.

Thoughts?

--------------

Here are videos from yesterday. Watch the molotov cocktails, and then the taxi crash through the army line in this one:



And two from Al Jazeera — my new favorite news station:

backstory

Backstory (way way oversimplified, leaving the reasons for each side's protests somewhat out of it):

The reds (more democratically numerous) were in power. The yellows (more powerful) launched a non-violent military coup in 2006 to remove them. The reds (with hints of corruption) democratically regained power at the end of the year-long coup. The yellows started mass protests shortly before we arrived here in September, taking over the government house — essentially the White House without the a residence for the PM. Protests escalated (including the big one where Con got hit), and eventually the (increasingly fanatical and cultish) yellows shut down both Bangkok airports, crippling the Thai economy but making their point. The courts responded by booting out the (almost visibly relieved) red PM (who visited us in the hospital) on corruption charges ushering in a new yellow PM (who seems competent, but obviously gained power under dubious circumstances).

The reds regrouped and started mass protests around New Years. Then, following events I don't really understand, the protests escalated this past week, demanding the removal of the current PM.

There's been like 23 coups since 1900, or something. So this is just the latest in a long complicated history of sorta-instability (would rather have this than what's happening in Burma).

If anyone who knows wants to fill in holes or tell me I'm wrong.. feel free.