Getting along.

Bangkok finally blew up again today. We're here, and fine. Life seems normal on the streets outside our hotel (except for pickups full of flag-waving redshirts rolling by, cheering as if they won something today). And I thought Shutter Island (watched today while "stuck" in a high-end mall after the redshirt protestors forced the closure of the Skytrain) was pretty decent.

But 21 (and climbing) protestors, police and soldiers died, including one Reuters journalist, and another 900 were treated in hospitals for injuries. Both sides are firing live rounds, and it seems like it will get worse before better. And it's all just sickeningly unnecessary.

I've actually been able to follow the day-to-day aspects of the protests pretty closely (thanks to Twitter and Google Maps, I've realized it's remarkably easy to keep a close eye on where protestors or police are gathering at any specific moment, allowing us to blithely gallivant around town). And, as result, I've gotten steady translations of the rhetoric coming from the leaders of both sides.

So beyond a government willing to use live rounds on its own people, the maddening dynamic—from my limited scope—boils down to this:

It's a lot of people with legitimate fears/grievances (the redshirts have a history of getting democratically screwed), and self-serving idiots with microphones on the protest stages exploiting those fears/grievances with willful distortions of the truth, oversimplified, frenzy-whipping rhetoric, and demonization of those of disagree. Don't educate; inflame. Don't think; yell. For this, they solidify their own statuses as political heroes, media kings (many have talk radio and cable news shows), and reliable minions for the real powers duking it out behind the scenes. The yellowshirt protests a year and a half ago had very much the same drumbeat.

Sound familiar?

Update—Here's some footage:

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.

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.

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.