Monthly Archives: August 2006

All About the Vietnam Visit

Just back in from a visit with Frisbee Girl, who just returned from a long journey through Vietnam. Tonight was one of those, dinner, wine, and looking at photos that each have a story.

Of course I’ve always been fascinated by Vietnam, especially considering all the destruction that war brought that country only a few decades ago. But also because it is technically run by a communist government, though in this day-in-age, no communist government is really very communist. But let’s leave that discussion for another day.

Listening to FG’s stories and looking at these photos, I was amazed at the bustling life and beauty that seemed to fly out of every image. I’m talking not only of the beautiful nature, but also of the Vietnamese people and their amazing ways of doing things.

In looking at these photos and the background in each one, I saw very little signs of desperate poverty, as is sometimes assumed of this region of the world. I asked FG if she had noted widespread poverty, and she informed me that she had noted no such thing. Instead, she talked about how there weren’t people starving in the streets or begging every tourist for some money. She spoke and presented photos of the neverending amounts of trade and bartering that seemed to go on, fruit traded for fruit. Fish dried into paste. Rice cooked into puffed rice. Bananas grown into… bananas. In so many different regions she visited, the one thing I noted was that each one featured a large amount of people doing some sort of economic activity that involved the land or the sea.

Naturally I didn’t see these things first hand. And of course one person’s impression is not always the whole story. But i think there is something to be said for the quality of life Vietnam has achieved, especially having been bombed into the stone age, not so long ago.

I also came to another conclusion. With all the regional and international trade deals their government is starting to move towards, now is the time to go to Vietnam… before the global market turns it into a brave new world of mcdonalds, starbucks, and kfc.

Bonus: Went seeking a Vietnam based blog, found – Our Man in Hanoi.

Experimenting

Im experimenting with some new looks this morning… maybe shield your eyes. Should be back to normal shortly.

I’m Done With Ray Nagin

You remember Ray Nagin right? The mayor of New Orleans during the largest humanitarian crisis in the history of the United States? The guy who you hear in that radio clip where he starts crying and yelling at the rest of the country for not doing anything while people were dying while staring up at the sky begging for help. Her earned alot of respect for his directness and honesty during that disaster. Hell, I respected him for it.

Of course that was before I knew more about the man and what he had done with the city. Mostly nothing if you don’t count fostering curruption and fiscal irresponsibility. But still I held out hope that Nagin might be a changed man, having seen bodies of his own voters floating around face down throughout his streets. I still wanted to cheer for him… until now.

I’m done with Ray Nagin. Besides the numerous episodes that had shown he was two faced and a typical wishy washy politician, this latest appearance on Meet the Press did me in… or rather.. him in.

Anytime the man was asked if the federal government had failed him, a government that took over a week to respond, and when they finally did it consisted mostly of private contractors and overzealous military police, he refused to acknowledge it. As if someone is pulling his strings or controlling his speech, he refused to admit the the US government has a double standard when it comes to saving the lives of black people. To his credit, he did acknowledge it was a matter of class. Still, a man who once sounded unafraid to speak his mind and admit what a disaster his city had become, now he chose his words carefull, dodged criticizing anyone in particular, and pretended his city was doing rather well in terms of recovery.

Sorry Ray, you’re pathetic and I’m over you. I hope you fall into obscurety after serving your zillion terms as mayor of a city that will never recover, and will never have a leader who will push for a true investigation and trial for the crimes against humanity resulting from the neglect of the federal government, as well as that of the state and local governments.

About the only cool thing I could find in his whole interview, was when he called the site of the former WTC in NYC, a big hole in the ground and Tim Russert got all preachy and bitchy like it was a sin to say so. Of course he backed down on that one too, even though it is, when it comes down to it, a big hole in the ground.

Poor New Orleans. First Katrina. And then this fakester gets re-elected.

The Night Before the American Invasion

They’re coming.

They’re using planes as their method of transportation.

They leave from various US cities, often travelling alone or in groups of 2 or 3.

They travel with a great deal of electronics, mostly ipods, laptops, and other personal devices.

They are very well financed, with enough money to run their operations in Europe for at least 5 months.

They tend to look suspicious, easily identified by speaking loudly in their distinct accent.

And they will stop at nothing, until they can move into our neighborhoods, put up some posters of the icons their worship, and infiltrate our higher education system, posing as students.

… They are the American exchange students. And they arrive in T-Minus 9 hours.

My mission, which few would be brave enough to accept (I need the money and I’m mentally unbalanced), is to assist in this process. I must not show signs of weakness if they complain or make demands of me. I must be stoic and in control. Although they may be determined to disrupt my freedom and way of life, I must meet them head on, for my mission is noble and I will not give in to their desctructive, my-closet-isn’t-big-enough ideology.

What About Tasini

Today I’m coming to you from the suburbs of Brussels, Belgium, where I’m staying this weekend in celebration of my godson’s 12th birthday. But now onto more serious matters:

I tend not to talk about US senate races and republicans versus democrats and crap like that. Mostly because there are a zillion blogs working for either party fulltime, so why bother further beating one very dead horse.

Yet for all the bla bla bla about this guy named Lieberman who is a disgrace of a human being even though all the haters voted for him oh-so-often, and how he was beaten thanks to the internets, you don’t hear much about one Jonathan Tasini. Even though he puts the small d back in democrat.

Honestly, I could care less if the democrats take back the senate or the house, as they are as guilty of being the architects of all the death, destruction, and decieving as their republican counterparts. But when it comes to upsurping the comfy two faced democrats who think they’re going to cruise to victory just for having the big D next to their names, I’m all for that.

But what I really wish is that more people took Jonathan Tasini seriously. Who you ask? Jonathan Tasini.. former leader of the National Writers Union, who is running against Hillary Clinton for the democratic nomination in the state of New York. It should be a “slam dunk” for Tasini, since he’s running against a senator who supported the war in Iraq, and has generally betrayed the principals of civil liberties, human rights, and international law, since the day she got into office. Hillary Clinton hasn’t respected democracy or the values of a real “Democratic” party since her early days as the first lady. She is fake as fake can be, and lets be honest, her speeches have that terrible tone like listening to someone scrape their nails against a blackboard.

Yet the bloggers aren’t talking much about Tasini’s challenge. They’re too scared to attack their most well known senator… everyone knows the name Hillary Clinton. So much for independence and the freedom to be critical on the blogosphere.

Therefore I’m delving into the senate races from now on, to give much deserved attention to senators who need to be sent packing. And I’ll be very busy, since an overwhelming majority need to be replaced.

No Arms No Legs, Now Swim

Tomorrow is an insanely big day for interviews on the podcast. I’ve got three lined up. Two I’ll leave as a surprise, though I’ve mentioned them before. The other is the interview with a very interesting Afghani doctor who works with the US military in Afghanistan. Which means I need to get to sleep to be fresh and alert when I make that call first thing in the morning.

But before I go off to bed. Today I was catching up on Ha’Aretz articles from the past few days. I really appreciate the reporting in that paper, though Im sure some would scoff at its plethora of opinions and open criticism of the *gasp* Israeli government, which apparently not far from calapse, oddly enough.

In particular today, there is one article that embodies the rediculousness and the iron fisted destructiveness of the Israeli military actions in Gaza, which in theory they pulled out of a while back. This story was about the most modern power station in the middle east, which had been built by a cooperation involving Enron (haha). Back in June the Israeli military bombed the power station, effectively cutting off 60% of Gaza’s energy. The bombing was said to be in response to Hamas militants kidnapping the Israeli soldier. Either that or it was punishment for the citizens having elected Hamas. Even more bizarre, the remaining 40% of electricity for the terroritory is purchased from Israel!

Imagine. Your country/land is crippled by the very government you have to then turn to and pay for electricity which they in effect deprived you of to begin with. Must be a strange purchase to make, maybe no one looks anyone in the eye and they try to forget the exchange after its over.

Also according to the article, Israel could have paralyzed the station simply by withholding fuel; yet for some reason they chose to destroy it. And then we hear about governments blaming the Palestinian Authority for not having control over what people and militants do in their terroritory. They call them ineffective and use violence to inflict collective punishment. Then to add further insult, you had the western nations declaring sanctions against the Palestinian government, which then means they can’t pay the salaries of their employees and YES military. Who then get angry and desperate, and eventually resort to violence.

People always take the cop out and call it a big mess. Everyones fault, they’ll say. Makes it easier to talk about Israel and Palestine that way, you blame everyone and ignore it, that way no one can accuse you of taking sides and there’s no need to pay attention to facts.

Once again that quote I mentioned last week, comes to mind, “It is as if you cut off my arms, chop off my legs, throw me in the ocean, and then ask – why can’t you swim?”