tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62198500075222627672024-03-14T06:18:55.455+07:00scratchindog pisses on a treeto create the habit of writing, irregardless of qualityScratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-72009319218918126062015-07-13T12:20:00.001+07:002015-07-13T12:38:45.971+07:00Monty Hall at War<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rCaFqsLYqeU/VaNODX4SxbI/AAAAAAAAA3Y/GaRLCZdRzeA/s1600/monty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rCaFqsLYqeU/VaNODX4SxbI/AAAAAAAAA3Y/GaRLCZdRzeA/s320/monty.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I am unsatisfied by my previous understanding of the Monty Hall dilemma. I can understand why the solution I put forth (not my own, but someone else's) is correct, but I don't clearly understand why common intuition is so wrong on this point. My concern is, if faced with a similar dilemma, I would not be able to convince myself or anyone else that common sense was, in this case, wrong.<br />
<br />
So I'm going to re-work the problem using a slightly different metaphor.<br />
<br />
During the American-Vietnam war, there was a village in South Vietnam called Lưu Nó. They receive a message saying the B52s are on their way and that they have to evacuate. There are three paths out to other villages: A, B and C. They know that two of the paths out of town are heavily mined, and one is free of mines. They don't know which one is free of mines. They hastily call a village meeting to decide which path to take. Given their lack of knowledge, the choice is for all intensive purposes is random - let's say A.<br />
<br />
Given what they know, they have a one in three chance of getting out alive (staying in the village gives zero chance of living). Suddenly one villager remembers they have a radio with which to call central command. Perhaps they have more information about where the mines are?<br />
<br />
Option 1: They radio central command, and a nice, but not well informed minion informs them that he knows path A is mined. He has no information about the other two paths. The villagers have gone from certain death, to a 50/50 chance of death. (They know either B or C is mined, but not which one.) If this minion had informed them that either B or C were mined (but had no further information) they would have gone from having a 1 in 3 chance of survival to a 1 in 2 chance.<br />
<br />
Option 2: They radio central command, and a completely informed minion answers, but he is a dickhead. He knows exactly which roads are mined, but doesn't want to tell them. But like most dickheads, he is also a smart arse. He knows they have chosen path A, and let's them know that he won't provide any information about that path. However, he does say, "I can tell you that path B is mined." The villagers know two two things: i) path B is bad, and ii) the minion is a dickhead and knows the situation about path A, but is not going to tell them.<br />
<br />
They call another meeting. Someone stands up and says, well, we know B is bad, and that leaves A or C. It's a 50/50 choice, so let's go with what we decided upon. But then the local school teacher stands up and says, hold on! Before we had three choices, one path, A, B, or C was safe - each equally likely. That dickhead knows which is safe, but isn't going to tell us about the state of path A. That gives us some leverage.<br />
<br />
If A is safe (1 in 3 chance before we called the dickhead), he would have told us either B or C was dangerous (though both would be dangerous)<br />
If A is not safe (2 in 3 chance before we called the dickhead), he would have to tell us that B was not safe either, and by default, that C IS safe.<br />
<br />
Given the above, C is dangerous 1 in 3 three times, and safe 2 in 3 times!<br />
<br />
The school teacher, though not quite sure of her logic, walked along path C with her students, and by chance had it, survived. The rest of the villagers being stubborn, walked along path A and were never heard of again.<br />
<br />
The moral of the story is, always listen to dickheads. They give stuff away by being smart arses.</div>
Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-4950287341839790602015-07-13T01:37:00.002+07:002018-05-04T12:23:18.516+07:00Why history matters (part 2)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hSmHHNYHw4s/VaK0-r1V--I/AAAAAAAAA3E/cn2BU6l1WGE/s1600/labyrinth_puzzle.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hSmHHNYHw4s/VaK0-r1V--I/AAAAAAAAA3E/cn2BU6l1WGE/s320/labyrinth_puzzle.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
As is my wont, I drank a bottle of wine and went to bed. And yet, I could not sleep. And it was because of something I read called the Monty Hall dilemma. Here is the summary:<br />
<br />
You have three doors to choose from. One to freedom, two to certain death. You must choose. However, after you have chosen, your tormentor opens one of the remaining doors unto certain death and asks, 'Do you want to keep your initial choice or change?' You now have two choices left, the one you picked, or the other door.<br />
<br />
Common intuition says that originally you had a one in three chance of choosing the right door. Then, after the tormentor's intercession, you have a one in two chance - the door you picked, or the other door. In other words, 50/50.<br />
<br />
It turns out that this is not the case. You are much better off switching your choice to the other door. That has kept me awake tonight. What is going on?<br />
<br />
The first assumption is correct. You have a one in three chance of choosing the correct door when the 'game' begins. However, by making your choice, you force your tormentor into a tricky position.<br />
<br />
There is a 1/3 chance that you chose the right door to start with. If that is the case, your tormentor can open either of the other doors and if you choose to switch, to your death you go. That is, there is a 1 in 3 chance that you chose correctly, and changing your choice will send you to the pits of hell.<br />
<br />
However, there is a 2/3 chance that you chose the wrong door to start with. If that is the case, your tormentor has given you the path out by eliminating the only remaining path to death. That is, if you switch, the only choice is life.<br />
<br />
Therefore, given the choice, you should change doors. You have a 2/3 versus 1/3 chance of survival by doing so.<br />
<br />
History is important. The rules of the game are important. By only looking at the choices in front of you now, you can be gamed. By looking at how you got here, you can make a wise choice. (Somewhere in the back of my mind, this seems to relate to Greece at the moment.) Perhaps I can sleep now?<br />
<br />
I'm sure when I awake in the morning this will confuse me again. But now, I'm high on Limoncello and it all makes sense. Except the bit as to why it doesn't make sense without thinking and drinking about it to excess.<br />
<br />
Such is life. Good night. And Greece - tell em' to fuck off. They are bad playmates. You'll get over it before they do.</div>
Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-22878265754294438812015-07-02T12:43:00.001+07:002015-07-02T12:43:45.220+07:00Transcript of interview between Noam Chomsky and Andrew Marr (Feb. 14, 1996)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Recently I had reason to watch a 1996 interview of Noam Chomsky by Scottish reporter Andrew Marr. I started making notes on the interview, which expanded into extended quotes, and ended up becoming a full transcript. I thought I would post it here for somewhere to post it, and on the chance that it may be of some use to someone else who prefers to read rather than listen. I found it quite amusing...<b> </b>(Chomsky to Marr: "I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying.")<br />
<br />
While I try to be pedantic, all mistakes in the text below are mine. <br />
<br />
<b>Title: Noam Chomsky on Propaganda - The Big Idea - Interview with Andrew Marr </b><br />
<b>Date</b>: Feb. 14, 1996<br />
<b>Source</b>: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjENnyQupow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjENnyQupow</a><br />
<b>Length</b>: 30:17<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GjENnyQupow/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GjENnyQupow?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<b>Transcript</b></h2>
<b>Introduction by </b><b><b>Andrew Marr </b>[Begins: 00:27]</b><br />
<br />
“Do you believe what you read in the media? I’m not talking about Di and Fergie, but about the important stuff, politics and economics. Has it ever occurred to you that it could be a system of propaganda designed to limit how you imagine the world? Well, that’s the view of Noam Chomsky, whose been teaching here in Boston for the last 30 years. Described as American’s leading dissident, he’s based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where although it’s very cold, it isn’t exactly the Gulag Archipelago. As a working journalist myself, I’ve come to talk to Professor Chomsky about bias in the media.”<br />
<br />
“Orwell’s nightmare. A place where propaganda rules. Where thought is controlled. [Except from the film 1984<sup>1</sup>: “Comrades attention! Here is a special bulletin from the Ministry of Peace”] It’s now a familiar, if chilling, Cold War fable. Most of us would say it’s old hat. But is it?” [Except from the film 1984: “The Thought Police are joining you”]<br />
<br />
[Excerpt from a B/W film reel on Fleet Street: “The chief job of a newspaper is to inform. To tell people…] For decades freedoms of thought and expression have been central to western democracy. The media sees itself as free, fearless, stroppy, and for many in power the press are too strong. So the idea that Orwell’s warning is still relevant may seem bizarre. But not to Noam Chomsky, who thinks the image of a true seeking media is a sham. Chomsky’s devoted his life to questioning western state power.”<br />
<br />
“Having virtually invented modern linguistics by the age of 30, Chomsky joined the gathering swirl of protests in the 60s. [Early recording of Noam Chomsky: “I’m Noam Chomsky and I’m on the Faculty of MIT, and I’ve been getting more and more heavily involved in anti-war activities for the last few years.”]<br />
<br />
“Since then, Chomsky has championed a brand of anarchism, becoming deeply hostile to established power and privilege. And in recent years he’s refined, what he calls, the propaganda model of the media. He claims that the mass media brainwash under freedom. Not only do the media systematically suppress and distort, when they do present facts, the context obscures their real meaning.”<br />
<br />
“The invasion of East Timor by the Indonesian army caused indescribable slaughter. Hundred’s of thousands died. But it was more or less ignored by the main stream western media because, Chomsky argues, we were selling arms to the aggressors. But wars where the west’s interests are directly involved get a different treatment. For Chomsky, coverage of the Gulf War was servile, trivial criticisms were aired, fundamental ones were ignored.”<br />
<br />
“Naturally Chomsky has numerous critics. Is the media so influential? Have dissident views really been excluded in an age of relative media diversity? In the age of the Internet? What about Chomsky’s own access? What about this very program?”<br />
<br />
<b>Interview [Begins 04:23]</b><br />
<br />
Marr: “Professor Chomsky, can we start by listening to you explain what the propaganda model, as you call it, is? For many people the idea that propaganda is used by democratic rather that merely authoritarian governments will be a strange one.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Well, the term propaganda fell into disfavour around the Second World War, but in the 1920s and 1930s it was commonly used. And in fact advocated, by leading intellectuals, by the founders of modern political science, by Wilsonian progressives, and of course by the public relations industry as a necessary technique to overcome the danger of democracy. The institutional structure of the media is quite straight forward, we’re talking about the United States, but it’s not very different elsewhere. The major - there are sectors - but the agenda setting media, the one’s that sort of set the framework for everyone else, like The New York Times and The Washington Post and so on, these are major corporations, parts of even bigger conglomerates. Like other corporate institutions they have a product and a market. Their market is advertisers, that is other businesses, their product is privileged, relatively privileged audiences. More or less…”<br />
<br />
Marr: “Their selling audiences to corporations.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Their selling privileged audiences. These are big business, big corporations selling privileged audiences to other corporations. Now the question is, what picture of the world would a rational person expect to come out of this structure? Then we draw some conclusions about what you would expect, and then we check, and yes, that’s the picture of the world that comes out.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “And is this anything more than the idea that basically the press is relatively right wing with some exceptions because it’s owned by big business? Which is a truism, is well know.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Well I would call the press relatively liberal. Here I agree with the right wing critics. So especially The New York Times and The Washington Post, which are called, without a trace of irony, The New York Times is called the ‘establishment left,’ in say, major foreign policy journals. And that’s correct, but what’s not recognised is that the role of the liberal intellectual establishment is to set very sharp bounds on how far you can go. This far, and no further.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “Give me some examples of that.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Well, let’s take say the Vietnam War. Probably the leading critic, and in fact one of the leading dissident intellectuals in the main stream is Anthony Lewis of The New York Times. Who did finally come around to opposing the Vietnam War about 1969. About a year and a half after corporate America had more or less ordered Washington to call it off. And his picture from then on is that the war as he put it began with blundering efforts to do good, but it ended up by 1969 being a disaster and costing us too much. That’s the criticism.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “So what would the non-propaganda model have told Americans about the Vietnam War at the same time?”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Same thing that the main stream press was telling them about Afghanistan. The United States invaded South… had first of all in the 1950s had set up a standard Latin American-style terror state which had massacred 10,000s of people, but was unable to control local, a local uprising and everyone knows, at least every specialist knows that what is was. And when Kennedy came in 1961 he had to make a decision because the government was collapsing under local attack so the US just invaded the country. In 1961 the US air force started bombing South Vietnamese civilians, authorised napalm, crop destruction. Then in 1965, January-February 1965, the next major escalation took place against South Vietnam. Not against North Vietnam, that was a side-show. That’s what an honest press would be saying, but you can’t find a trace of it.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “If the press is a censoring organisation, tell me how that works. Is it… You're not suggesting that proprietors phone one another up [Chomsky: No] Or that many journalists get their copies spiked as we say?”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “It’s a, well actually, Orwell you may recall has an essay called ‘Literary censorship in England’, which was supposed to be the introduction to Animal Farm except that it never appeared. And which he points out, look, I’m writing about a totalitarian society but in free democratic England it’s not all that different. And then he says, unpopular ideas can be silenced without any force. [Marr: How? {inaudible}] He gives a two sentence response, which is not very profound, but captures it<sup>2</sup>. He says two reasons, first the press is owned by wealthy men who have every interest in not having certain things appear, but second the whole educational system from the beginning on through just gets you to understand that there are certain things you just don’t say. Well, spelling these things out, that’s perfectly correct. I mean, the first sentence is what we expanded on…”<br />
<br />
Marr: “This is what I don’t get, because it suggests that - I mean I’m a journalist - people like me are self-censoring.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “No, not self-censoring. You’re, there’s a filtering system, that starts in kindergarten, and goes all the way through, and it’s not going to work 100% but it’s pretty effective. It selects for obedience, and subordination, and especially I think… [Marr: So stroppy people won’t make it to positions of influence] There’ll be behavioural problems. If you read applications to a graduate school you’ll see that people will tell you, he’s not, he doesn’t get along too well with his colleagues, you know how to interpret those things.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “I’m just interested in this because I was brought up like a lot of people, probably post-Watergate film and so on to believe that journalism was a crusading craft and there were a lot of disputatious, stroppy, difficult people in journalism, and I have to say, I think I know some of them.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Well, I know some of the best, and best known investigative reporters in the United States, I won’t mention names, {inaudible}, whose attitude towards the media is much more cynical than mine. In fact, they regard the media as a sham. And they know, and they consciously talk about how they try to play it like a violin. If they see a little opening, they’ll try to squeeze something in that ordinarily wouldn’t make it through. And it’s perfectly true that the majority - I’m sure you’re speaking for the majority of journalists who are trained, have it driven into their heads, that this is a crusading profession, adversarial, we stand up against power. A very self-serving view. On the other hand, in my opinion, I hate to make a value judgement but, the better journalists and in fact the ones who are often regarded as the best journalists have quite a different picture. And I think a very realistic one.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are..”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “I’m not saying your self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “We have a press, which has, seems to me, has a relatively wide range of views… There is a pretty small ‘c’ conservative majority, but there are left wing papers, there are liberal papers and there is a pretty large offering of views running from the far right to the far left for those who want them. I don’t see how a propaganda model can…”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “That’s not quite true. I mean there have been good studies of the British press and you can look at them, by James Curran<sup>3</sup> is the major one, which points out that up until the 1960s there was indeed a kind of a social democratic press which sort of represented much of the interests of working people and ordinary people and so on, and it was very successful. I mean in the Daily Herald, for example, had not only more… it had far higher circulation than other newspapers, but also a dedicated circulation, furthermore the tabloids at that time, The Mirror and The Sun, were kind of labor based. That, by the 60s, that was all gone. And it disappeared under the pressure of capital resources. What was left was overwhelmingly the sort of center-to-right press, with some dissidents, it’s true.”<br />
<br />
Mann: “I mean, we’ve got, I’d say a couple of large circulation newspapers which are left-of-center. Which are, which are, you know putting in neo-Keynesian views which the, you call the elites, are strongly hostile to.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “It’s interesting that you call neo-Keynesian left-of-center, I would just call it straight and center. The… I mean left-of-center is a value term. [Marr: sure] But there’s, there’s… there are extremely good journalists in England. A number of them write very honestly, and very good material, a lot of what they write couldn’t appear here. On the other hand, if you look at the question overall I don’t think you are going to find a big difference. And the few, there aren’t many studies of the British press, but the few that there are have found pretty much the same results and I think the better journalists will tell you that. In fact, we, what you have to do is check it out in cases. Let’s take what I just mentioned, the Vietnam War. The British press did not have the kind of stake in the Vietnam War that the American press did, because they weren’t fighting, but just check sometime and find how many times you can find the American war in Vietnam described as a US attack against South Vietnam, beginning clearly with outright aggression in 1961 and escalating to massive aggression in 65. If you can find .001% of the coverage saying that you’ll surprise me. And in a free press a 100% of it would have being saying that. Now that is just a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with left and right.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “Let me come up to a more modern war, which was the Gulf War. Which again, you know, looking at the press in Britain and watching television, including some American television. I was very very well aware of the anti-Gulf War dissidents. [Chomsky: ‘Were you?’] The ‘No Blood for Oil’ campaigns. [Chomsky: ‘That’s not the {inaudible}. That’s not the dissidents.’] ‘No Blood for Oil’ isn’t the dissidents?’<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Saddam Hussein’s attack on Kuwait took place on Aug. 2nd. From August, within a few days the great fear in Washington was that Saddam Hussein was going to withdraw and leave a puppet government, which would be pretty much what the US had just done in Panama. The US and Britain therefore moved very quickly to try to undercut the danger of withdrawal. By late August, negotiation offers were coming from Iraq calling for a negotiated Iraqi withdrawal. The press wouldn’t publish them here, they never published them in England. It did leak, however… [Marr: There was a great debate about whether there should have been a negotiated settlement.] Sorry, no, there was not a debate. There was a debate about whether you should continue with sanctions, which is a different question. Cause the fact of the matter is we have good evidence that by late, by mid-or-late August that sanctions had already worked. Because these stories were coming from high American officials in the State Department, former American officials like Richard Helm. They couldn’t get the main stream press to cover them, but they did manage to get one journal to cover it – Newsday – that’s a suburban journal in Long Island, the purpose obviously being to smoke out The New York Times, as that’s the only thing that matters. It came out in Newsday, and this continued, I won’t go through the details, but this continued until January 2nd. At that time, the offers that were coming were apparently so meaningful that the State Department, that State Department officials were saying that, look this is negotiable, meaningful, maybe we won’t accept everything but its certainly a basis for a negotiated withdrawal. The press would not cover it. Newsday did, a few other people did, I have a couple of Op-Eds on it, and to my knowledge, you can check this, the first reference to any of this in England is actually in an article I wrote in the Guardian which was in early January. You can check and see if there is an earlier reference.<br />
<br />
Marr: “OK, let’s look a one of the other key examples which you’ve looked at too which would appear to go against your idea which is the Watergate affair.<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Watergate is a perfect example, we’ve discussed it at length in our book in fact and elsewhere. It’s a perfect example of the way the press was subordinated to power.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “But this brought down a president!”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Let me give you a… Just a minute, let’s take a look. What happened there… Here it’s kind of interesting, because you can’t do experiments in history, but here history was kind enough to set one up for us. The Watergate exposures happened to take place at exactly the same time as another set of exposures, namely the exposures of COINTELPRO.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “Sorry, you’ll have to explain that.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “It’s interesting that I have to explain it because it’s vastly more significant than Watergate. That already makes my point. COINTELPRO was a program of subversion, carried out, not by a couple of petty crooks, but by the national political police, the FBI, under four administrations. It began in the late Eisenhower administration, ran up till…”<br />
<br />
Marr: “This is aimed at the Socialist Workers Party…”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “The Socialist Workers Party was one tiny fragment of it. It began… By the time it got through, I won’t run through the whole story, it was aimed at the entire New Left, at the women’s movement, at the whole black movement. It was extremely broad. It’s actions went as far as political assassination. Now what’s the difference between the two? Very clear. In Watergate, Richard Nixon went after half of US private power, namely the Democratic Party. And power can defend itself. So therefore that’s a scandal. He didn’t do anything, nothing happened. I was on Nixon’s enemies list. I didn’t even know, nothing ever happened. <br />
<br />
Marr: “Nonetheless, you wouldn’t say it was an insignificant event?”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “It was a case where half of US power defended itself against a person who had obviously stepped out of line. That’s… So, and the fact that the press thought that was important shows that they think powerful people ought to be able to defend themselves. Now whether there was a question of principal was involved happens to be easily checked in this case. One tiny part of the COINTELPRO program was itself far more significant in terms of principal that all of Watergate. And if you look at the whole program, I mean it’s not even a discussion. But you had to ask me what COINTELPRO is, you know what Watergate is. There couldn’t be a more dramatic example of the subordination of the educated opinion to power here in England as well as in the United States. <br />
<br />
Marr: “I know you’ve concentrated on foreign affairs and some of these key areas. [Chomsky: I’ve written a lot about domestic politics.] But, well I’ll later come onto that. But it still seems to me that on a range of pretty important issues for the establishment there is serious dissent. [Chomsky: That’s right] Gingrich and his neoconservative agenda in America has been pretty savagely lampooned. The apparently fixed succession for the Republican candidacy at the presidential election has come apart. Clinton, who is a powerful figure, is having great difficulty with Whitewater. Everywhere one looks, one sees disjunctures, openings…”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Within a spectrum so narrow that you really have to look hard to find…<br />
<br />
Marr: “Let me, can I just stop you there, because you say the spectrum is narrow, but on the one hand… [Chomsky: Can I illustrate? May I illustrate?] you have flat-tax Republicans right the way through to relatively big state Democrats. <br />
<br />
Chomsky: Find one, find a big state Democrat. The position now is exactly what Clinton said. The era of big government is over, big government has failed, the war on poverty has failed, we have to get rid of this entitlement business. That was Clinton’s campaign message in 1992. That’s the Democrats. The difference… What you have now is a difference between sort of moderate Republicans and extreme Republicans. Actually it’s well known that there has been a long standing sort of split in the American business community, it’s not precise but it’s sort of general, between high-tech, capital intensive, internationally orientated business which tends to be what’s called liberal, and lower-tech, more nationally orientated, more labor-intensive industry which is what’s called conservative. Now between those sectors there have been differences and in fact if you take a look at American politics it oscillates pretty much between those limits. There’s good work on this incidentally, the person whose done the most extensive work is Thomas Ferguson<sup>4</sup> whose a political scientist here.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “One more example which will have some resonance in Britain and Europe is the great argument over the North American Free Trade Association, the NAFTA argument [Chomsky: Interesting] If there is something that one could describe as a global opposition movement, that is, trade union, environmental, community-based then it was certainly present in the anti-NAFTA. [Chomsky: Shall I tell you what happened? Shall I tell you what happened?] All I was going to say is that those arguments were well, we were well aware of those arguments.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “No. That is flatly false. They were not permitted into the press and I’ve documented this. I’ll give you references if you like. [Marr: We read all about it in Britain is all I would say] No you did not. [Marr: Sorry, yes we did, yes we did!] Well I’ll ask you, did you read the report of the Office of Technology Association of Congress? Sorry. Did you read the report of the Labor Advisory Committee? [Marr: Well, I don’t get these reports.] Sorry. [Marr: I read many articles about the anti-NAFTA argument] I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you. [It’s very interesting stuff?] I’m sorry. If you are interested in the facts, I’ll tell you what they are and I’ll even give you sources. The NAFTA agreement was signed, more or less in secret, by the three Presidents in mid-August, at the time of the, right in the middle of the presidential campaign - in mid-August. Now there’s a law in the United States, 1974 Trade Act, which requires that any trade related issue be submitted to the Labor Advisory Committee, which is union based, for assessment and analysis. It was never submitted to them. A day before they were supposed to give their final report in mid-September it was finally submitted to them. They were infuriated, the unions are very, are pretty right-wing, but they were infuriated. They had never been shown this. They had strong… Even at the time they had to write the… They had 24 hours to write the report. They hadn’t even looked at the text. Nevertheless they wrote a very vigorous analysis of it with alternatives presented saying, look we’re not against NAFTA, we’re against this version of it. They gave a good analysis, happened to be very similar to one that had been given by the Congressional Research Service, the Office of Technology Assessment. None of this ever entered the press. The only thing that entered the press was the kind of critique that they were willing to deal with. Mexico bashing, right ring nationalism and so on, that entered the press, but not the critical analysis of the labor movement.<br />
<br />
Marr: “Well somehow by some process of osmosis or something I picked up quite a lot of [Chomsky: No you didn’t] anti-NAFTA arguments, on the basis of worker protection, environmental degradation…”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “May I continue? This goes on in the press right until the end… By the end… There were big popular movements opposing it, it was extremely hard to suppress all of this. To suppress everything coming out of the labor movement, out of the popular movements and so on, but they did. At the very end it had reached such a point that there was concern that they might not be able to ram this through. Now take a look at The New York Times and The Washington Post, say the liberal media and the national ones in the last couple of weeks. And I’ll tell you about it, I’ve written about it and I’ll tell you what you find. What you find is 100% support for NAFTA, refusal to allow any of the popular arguments out, tremendous labor bashing…”<br />
<br />
Marr: “Can I come back to make sure that I understand the point about the liberal press as against the conservative press, because in Britain over the last two years, politicians I come across are deeply irritated ranging on furious about attacks on them in the press, day after day, on issues which have come to be known as ‘sleaze’. [Chomsky: “That’s right”] They feel that they are harassed, they are misunderstood and that the press has got above itself, is uppity and is destructive. That’s the message that they are giving to us. Now are you saying that that whole process [Chomsky: That’s true] doesn’t matter? As it were because it’s all part of the same…”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “I mean when the press - the same thing is true here - when the press focuses on the sex lives of politicians reach for your pocket and see whose pulling out your wallet. I mean, because those are not the issues that matter to people. I mean they are of very marginal interest. The issues that matter to people are somewhere else. So as soon as you hear the press and presidential candidates and so on talking about values, as I say, put your hand on your wallet. You know that something else is happening.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “But it’s been much more than, certainly with us, its been much more than bed hopping. It’s also been about taking money from [Chomsky: corruption] corporations, paying for political parties [Chomsky: corruption, corrupt judges, fine topic] corrupt politicians… [Chomsky: corrupt party…]<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Big business is not in favour of corruption, you know. And if the press focuses on corruption, Fortune Magazine will be quite happy. They don’t care about that. The don’t want the society to be corrupt, they want it to be run in their interest. That’s a different thing. Corruption interferes with that. So for example, when I was, I just happened to come back from India, the Bank of India released an estimate, economists there tell me its low, that a third of the economy is black, meaning mostly rich business men not paying their taxes. Well that makes the press, because in fact certainly transnationals don’t like it. They want the system to be run without corruption, robbery, bribes, and so on, just pouring money into their pockets. So yes, that’s a fine topic for the press. On the other hand the topics I’ve talked about are not fine topics because they’re much too significant. <br />
<br />
Marr: “What would a press be like do you think without the propaganda model. What would we be reading in the papers that we don’t read about now?”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “I’ve just given a dozen examples. On every example that incidentally you’ve picked, I haven’t picked, I mean I could pick my own, I’m happy to let you pick them. On every one of those examples I think you can demonstrate there has been a severe distortion of what the facts of the matter are. This has nothing to do with left and right as I’ve been stressing, and it has left the population pretty confused and marginalised. A free press would just tell you the truth. This has nothing to do with left and right.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “And given the power of big business, the power of the press, what can people do about this?”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “They can do exactly what people do in the Haitian slums and hills - organise. In Haiti, which is most, pick that, which is the most poorest country in the hemisphere they created a very vibrant, lively civil society. In the slums, in the hills, in conditions that most of us can’t even imagine. We can do the same much more easily.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “You’ve got community activists in American [Chomsky: Yes, we do] You’ve got… I’m not talking about the so called Communitarian movement, but I’m talking about the local community activist writers all over the place…”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “All over the place. Take a city like Boston. All sorts of people, they don’t even know of each other’s existence. It’s… There’s a very large number of them. One of the things I do constantly is run around the country giving talks. One of my main purposes, and the purpose of the people who invite me, is to bring the people together, people in that area, who are working on the same things and don’t know of each other’s existence. Because the resources are so scattered, and the means of communication are so marginal, there isn’t just much they can do about it. Now there are things, plenty of things that are happening. So take say community based radio, which is sort of outside this {inaudible} <br />
<br />
Marr: “I was going to ask you about that and the Internet which has certainly got pretty open access at the moment.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Well the Internet is, like most technologies, is a very double-edged sword. It has like any technology, including printing, it has a liberatory potential, but also has a repressive potential, and there’s a battle going on about which way it’s going to go as there was for radio and television and so on…<br />
<br />
Marr: “About ownership and advertising…”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “Right, and about just what’s going to be in it, and whose going to have access to it. Remember incidentally that the Internet is an elite operation. Most of the population in the world haven’t even made a phone call, so they’re certainly not on the Internet. But nethertheless, it does have a democratising potential, and there’s a struggle going on right now as to whether that’s going to be realised or whether it will turn into something like a home marketing service, and a way of marginalising people even further. That discussion went on in the 1920s over radio and it’s interesting how it turned out. It went on over television, it’s not going on over the Internet. And that’s a matter of popular struggle. Look, we don’t live the way we did 200 years ago, or even 30 years ago. There’s been a lot of progress. It hasn’t been gifts from above. It’s been the result of people getting together and refusing to accept the dictates of authoritarian institutions. And there’s no reason to think that that’s over.”<br />
<br />
Marr: “You been portrayed, and some would say occasionally portrayed yourself as a lonely dissident voice. You clearly don’t feel lonely at all.”<br />
<br />
Chomsky: “I say nothing like that. I certainly do not portray myself that way. I can’t begin to accept a fraction of the invitations from around the country. I’m scheduled two years in advance. And of that I’m only selecting a fraction of [Marr: And you’re speaking to huge audiences] huge overflow, huge audiences. And these are not elite intellectuals either, these are mostly popular audiences. I probably spend 20 or 30 hours a week just answering letters from people all over the country and the world. I wish I felt a little more lonely. I don’t. Of course I’m not on NPR, I wouldn’t be in the main stream media, but I wouldn’t expect that. Why should they offer space to somebody whose trying to undermine their power, and to expose what they do? But that’s not lonely. <br />
<br />
Marr: “Professor Chomsky, thank you very much.”<br />
<br /></div>
<br />
<hr />
<sup>1</sup> I think the film snippets come from the 1956 version of “1984”. Full movie
available here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZBnUt6rZ0" target="new">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZBnUt6rZ0</a>]<br />
<br />
<sup>2</sup> The full text of Orwell’s preface (actually called 'The Freedom of the Press') can be found here: <a href="http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go" target="new">http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go</a><br />
The paragraph that contains the sentiments Chomsky is referring to is:<br />
“Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.”<br />
<br />
<sup>3</sup> A partial bibliography of Curran’s post-2002 work can be found here: <a href="http://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/curran/#tabs-3" target="new">http://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/curran/#tabs-3</a>]<br />
<br />
<sup>4</sup> A very limited selection of Ferguson's works are referenced on his Wikipedia page, and also a note attributed to Noam Chomsky of Ferguson being threatened at MIT for his political theories. Link: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ferguson_%28academic%29" target="new">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ferguson_%28academic%29</a>]</div>
Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-89389760099817101782013-08-19T01:18:00.002+07:002013-08-19T01:18:47.653+07:00Why I am awake when I shouldn't be (or why coups should be called coups, and killing is wrong whatever way you spin it)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
[When I started this blog, the byline was 'to create the habit of writing, regardless of quality'. What a bunch of shit. I was too precious. That was why the blog ran dry. Let's start again. Here is some ranting, without precious editing, before sobering up. Let's start pissing on trees for real this time.]<br />
<br />
I am angry. Mad as a cut snake, they used to say.<br /><br />I have an important meeting tomorrow morning, it is now 2am, and I cannot sleep. Because I'm furious. Mad at a bunch of dumb monkeys (that is, humanity), at the mass media (with a few notable exceptions), and at the blood lust that money carries with it.<br /><br />I've been reading the coverage of the massacres in Egypt. This is a difficult one for me to talk about. Why? Well, I've never been to Egypt - and it is hard to talk meaningfully about a place you've never been, whose language you don't speak, whose history you have a marginal knowledge of. Many would say that disqualifies me from meaningful comment, but they are wrong. Let me try to explain why...<br /><br />I have a simple morality. I am against killing and injury and suffering. I don't really care your politics, religion, sex or creed - if you kill, injure or cause suffering you are pretty much in the wrong. I understand the anger that brings about these events - I am experiencing it right now - but stop it. Just fucking get a grip and stop.<br /><br />Above I react out of emotion, out of empathy, but let us just talk rationally for a second. There are us, individuals, and there is the state, the nation state (I will not here get into corporatism). And let me tell you, in this day and age, they are just gagging for those who oppose them to use violence. Because the state are the ones with the police, army, the guns (and bullets) and tanks and all the 'crowd dispersal' techniques that are labelled as non-lethal, but somehow seem to kill. And they are just waiting for the excuse of violent opposition to use them.<br /><br />We have banners, linked arms, feeble news networks, words (and justice - if not the law) on our side. The first rock thrown gives them the excuse (law and order) to crush us with their armaments. If we are strong, and maintain peaceful passive resistance, they have the agent provocateurs, the surveillance state, the pliant mass media to use against us. If all else fails, they simply attack and blame 'terrorists' and blatantly lie. It is hard to expose the lie from a hospital bed, let alone the grave.<br /><br />I have watched the blood baths in Egypt in the media - like I did over two years ago. Like I did in Yemen (except I was in Yemen then, so actually know of what I talk of). <br /><br />Here are a few general notes I would like to make.<br /><br />When Saudi Arabia come out in support of the Egyptian military, you know something is wrong. When you watch the US wringing their hands, slightly, mildly, you know there is something wrong. When the EU wring their hands slightly more, but do nothing, you know something is wrong. When the US can't utter the word 'coup' when the military overthrows a popularly elected government, you know something it wrong. When the popular opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood resign their positions from government, and are then never heard about again in the international media, you know something is wrong.<br /><br />The answers, my friends, enemies, and those who haven't read this far is simple. Money. Or if you like, power. But the two in these times are almost synonymous.<br /><br />The US cannot call it a coup, because they have 1.2 billion dollars in 'aid' to the Egyptian military. Money that by their own laws cannot be given, if they say the word 'coup'. That is (for the mathematically challenged) 1000 times 1.2 million dollars. You and I are unlikely to earn a million dollars in our life. Your life earnings, times by a thousand, every year, to the military to buy weapons of death, which are now being used against the civilians in that country. The military that is supposed to protect all the citizens of that country, but have conveniently labeled a subsection of that citizenship 'terrorists' who can be killed. 1,000 killed, more? Let's put that in perspective. I am a reasonably sociable person. That is more than the entire number of people who I have met and remembered in my entire life so far (I am 41). Killed in a few days.<br /><br />Here is another inconvenient fact. That 1.2 billion dollars is given to the Egyptian military. They then give it back to the US to purchase weapons. So the money comes from the US government (that is, tax payers), to Egypt, back to US arms manufacturers, to supply weapons of death. It is a simple, clean transfer of money from US taxpayers, to the US arms industry. Money that could have been used for education, health, infrastructure - hell - all kinds of things. However, it is passed overseas, and through a few thousands deaths, funneled back to people who make a profit out of making killing machines. Yeah - sure - they employ US citizens. Perhaps that same money could be used to employ US citizens without being funneled through death, injury and enrichment of the already bloated rich? But it isn't. At least some of that money makes it back through the US congress to fund the political campaigns of those who vote for this kind of international military bribery. Be proud America. You murdering bastards.<br /><br />Sorry - that was a little convoluted. US gives money to foreign military, the military gives it back to US companies who make killing machines, those companies give some pittance to politicians in the US government, those politicians make sure the aid continues. Is that circle simple enough? Or do you want me to paint a cluster-fuck picture with you and Bushes/Obama in the middle with their dicks up your arse? I have many impoverished artist friends who would be happy to draw you a picture if you send in your photo.<br /><br />And what bugs me most - what drives me mad - is that we seem to still live in a world where we think one side is right, the other wrong. You think I actually give a shit about the Muslim Brotherhood? Hell know! Let's lay it down on the line. You believe in God(s) - that is your problem. Even on my heaviest drug/alcohol binges I never thought there was an imaginary being controlling the world and myself. The only thing worse to me that worshiping a god, is worshiping money. Both are insane, but the latter can get you a lot further. And thus is more evil. I think the Muslim Brotherhood fucked themselves up badly - by being exclusive. That does not justify a coup. That does not justify the killings. They were elected - remember - democracy? The 'liberals' who opposed Morsi were sucked into a simple dumb arsed plot to put the ruling elite back into power. You dumb fucks. And you will pay for that mistake. (I won't make you pay of course, I have no power, you just get another Mubarak. Well done boys and girls).<br /><br />Take a little look at who controls 10-30% of the economy in Egypt. Would that be, oh, the military? And without fail, ever, in the history of mankind, when you threaten to take money away from the powerful, what do they do? They use that money to undermine you, control you, kill you. They are even smart enough to let their hired thugs (neither police or the army) do most of the violence. When not the thugs, the police (who nobody respects anyway), whilst the 'pure' army sit on the sidelines until absolutely necessary.<br /><br />But I already read the spin the press. The mainstream US press are as compliant as the Egyptian mainstream press. The Australian press are not far behind. Remember - I don't care for the Muslim Brotherhood at all - but I have some fondness for fair elections and elected governments. Like when Hamas was elected in an election seen as fair - but then rejected by the US (and of course Israel) because they were not the 'right' winners. Hell - I don't like Hamas anymore than I like anal examinations - but they won. If they are that fucked, let them get voted out next time. But that isn't good enough for our imperial overlords.<br /><br />Enough! The whiskey is running dry, it is now 3am, and that meeting still looms tomorrow morning. I guess some of the anger has been blown on typing exhaustion. Whatever. Please have a lovely day, enjoy yourself, don't hurt anyone. No, really, don't hurt anyone. Is that so hard?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-9747332862454193052010-07-26T02:17:00.001+07:002010-07-26T02:19:16.679+07:00Dark Brown ThoughtsGordon Brown has just given his first major speech since loosing the UK elections. He was speaking in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, and was pumping up the future of Africa. In an attempt at self-depreciating humor he said he "spent some time as a politician before becoming a community organizer." This sent a little shiver down my spine - a community organizer? He goes on to say that he wishes to see the creation of an "African century".<br /><br /><blockquote>"Future growth in the world economy, and future jobs in the developing world, will depend on harnessing both the productive potential and the pent-up consumer demand of this continent."<br /><br />"There is an alternative to a decade of low global growth which would fail to meet both the development needs of Africa and the growth needs of Europe and America."</blockquote><br />There is an underlying assumption here - an assumption that lies at the very heart of capitalism. Continual economic growth. In this case 'world' economic growth and the 'growth needs of Europe and America." These are linked to the "development needs in Africa." To the naive cynic this might imply that if Africa's development needs are to be addressed, we better make sure that the economies in Europe and America continue to grow. Otherwise the aid tap may be turned off and Africa can go fend for itself.<br /><br />Perhaps I am being too cynical, for Mr Brown also addresses development in his speech. I shall quote verbatim from the BBC (link provided at the bottom):<br /><br /><blockquote>Turning his attention to the developmental aid given to Africa, he said this needed to increasingly focus on private sector wealth creation, and not just providing services for the poor.<br /><br />"The job of aid is to kick-start business-led growth and not to replace it," he said.<br /><br />"And so I believe we need to focus not just on poverty, but on wealth."</blockquote><br />Not <i>just</i> providing services for the poor, hey? Is that because we have dealt with that problem already? And the job of aid is to kick-start business-led growth? Is that where I should presume my donations are going? I'm not against business per se, but there is business and there is business. Are we talking about business that is started at the grass roots level? One that employs local people at decent wages and provides benefits and profits that feed back into local communities? Or are we talking big business? American and European business that can fly in, charge a lot of money, hire 'expertise' from overseas, and send the profits back outside of Africa? They may, almost as a side-effect, leaving something useful behind. They may, or they may not. What they leave behind is not the main point of the exercise. The extraction of profit is.<br /><br />One of the suggestions Mr Brown had was "the rapid expansion of internet access in Africa". I presume that would have to be provided by European and American companies, as only they have the expertise and size to enable such a grand plan. I guess that internet surfing would distract people from the lack of infrastructure, health, education, electricity and water that so many suffer in Africa. It could distract them if they could find somewhere to plug their non-existent computers in. I love the Internet. It teaches me countless things, and wastes countless of my hours. I do prefer, however, safe drinking water, access to food, access to health services, and a whole raft of other things I have come to take for granted. Once those have been provided across the African continent, I'll be the first to say "Let them surf!"<br /><br />The corner-stone of modern capitalism is perpetual growth. Perpetual growth allows for profit, that can be reinvested to maintain growth. Some of the profit, of course, also goes into private hands to maintain lavish lifestyles. A little bit of it even goes into paying the workers who underpin the whole structure, so they can maintain their basic lifestyles - if they are lucky. The central contradiction in modern capitalism is that it is occurring within a strictly finite system. Finite resources. At some point perpetual growth bangs up against finite resources. You can delay the moment - and we do - with technological innovation. Yet that is a delaying tactic, not one that solves the underlying contradiction. And that contradiction is already becoming very obvious in the effects of climate change and resource conflicts.<br /><br />The problem is not that there is not enough money in the world. It isn't that there is not enough food, or water, or land in the world. The problem is in the distribution of those resources. The current world economic system is primarily designed to funnel money from the masses to the minority elites. From public funds to private funds. Those in the elite will always be able to buy access to dwindling resources, whilst the rest can fend for themselves (or more often than not, fail to fend for themselves and suffer the consequences). I have heard the catch-phrase 'sustainable growth' and it is a good idea. If it was taken seriously. A better phrase would be 'sustainable practices'. I have a feeling that the 'growth' in 'sustainable growth' is only there to make it palatable to modern capitalism - for its underlying assumption is growth - and any cost.<br /><br />Let's slip in to la-la-fantasy land for a while. Let's say an evil terrorist virus infected the whole world. It made world leaders throw up their hands and say: 'Terrorism has won. We give up. We are going to stop all funding of anti-terrorist activities and put that money into something useless, like meaningful development aid'. That money is more than enough (if wisely spent) to meaningfully tackle the most common killers in the world. Provision of clean water for all. Provision of adequate food for all. The eventual eradication of water borne diseases, malaria, HIV, tuberculosis to name but a few. The provision of basic health care and education for all. All those silly little things referred to in the UN Declaration on Human Rights.<br /><br />Of course the terrorists would take their cue and started killing indiscriminately across the globe. Because that's what terrorists do, right? Thousands, tens of thousands would be slaughtered now our security services were not looking after us. It would almost be enough to distract us from the millions and tens of millions that were being saved by our silly little development projects. Some brave journalist might even say the obvious. "Look, its nice that all those people are being saved from ignoble deaths, but they are the wrong people. Look at all all those people dying from terrorism in the West!'<br /><br />Let's go further into la-la-land. If there was a meaningful redistribution of wealth and resources, such that everybody had access to the basic needs of life and liberty, would there still be such an motivation for terrorists. If everyone had the access to those things required for a life with dignity, including the freedom to practice their own religion, would there be as much support for terrorist activities? For terrorism, like all highly organized groups, requires the support of people. And if the support is not there - they have a hard time getting anything done. <br /><br />OK - time to wake up. The fight against terrorism is not going away - it is far too profitable (for some). It also directs money away from development aid - which is not as profitable. Politicians and the Business behind them are going to continue supporting the main tenant/contradiction of perpetual growth until something snaps. And then those with the money and power will look after their own interests - and the fluffy talk of democracy and human rights will fade into the background as 'tough decisions' are made.<br /><br />Why did I wake up with such dark brown thoughts today?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10750077" target="_blank">Brown says global economy reliant upon growth in Africa</a>Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-78228628019350284552010-03-26T15:34:00.005+07:002010-05-10T21:59:35.365+07:00Reading habits, writing non-habitFor a while I have been suffering from literary constipation - nothing coming out. I am thinking of changing my blog's subtitle 'To create the habit of writing, irregardless of quality' to something that more clearly reflects the realities of my writing habits. It seems I am stuck between two bad ways of thinking. One has been previously described by Henry Miller - the desire to write <span style="font-style:italic;">literature</span>. That is, to write something of the quality of the writing of authors I admire. The second is to write accurately - to write non-fiction that has been researched to the level of good journalism. Both reflect a failure to write because I don't think I am good enough (in terms of either quality or accuracy). In short - I lack faith, I am fearful of criticism, I lack motivation. Objectively I recognize both these bad habits, and that they should not stop me from posting blog entries. Just reading other blogs is enough to see that there are many who disregard such concerns with abandon. Unfortunately, I am not currently among them.<br /><br />Constipation can occur because nothing for a long time is going in, or despite something going in, nothing is coming out. My affliction is definitely the latter. So much goes in. I am given a mild boost in the knowledge that my head churns, gurgles, even seethes with sentences, metaphors, starting paragraphs etc… Now and then are short explosions where a few paragraphs are expelled - written down and saved but never published. Literary flatulence. <br /><br />Just over a year ago (12 March 2009) I posted a list of books I had read whilst in Vietnam. For the sake of my own memory, I thought I should update the list to include those I have read since then. I have missed many out - having been returned to their rightful owners or just forgotten for the moment. I also also spent a lot more time this year reading online news, blogs and marginalia of the web - which has cut into my 'real' reading time more than I would have wanted. Still, I feel blessed to have had the time to read so many good (and a few awful) books. These are listed in no particular order:<br /><br />The Pornographer's Poem - Michael Turner<br />Hospital - Toby Litt<br />In Defence of Food - Michael Pollan<br />Good Germs, Bad Germs - Jessica Snyder Sachs<br />The Botany of Desire - Michael Pollan<br />Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan<br />Tropic of Cancer (reread) - Henry Miller<br />A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro<br />A Personal Matter - Kenaburo Oe<br />The Silent Cry - Kenazburo Oe<br />First Abolish the Customer - Bob Ellis<br />Common Wealth - Economics for a Crowded Planet - Jeffrey D. Sachs<br />The End of Poverty - Jeffrey D. Sachs<br />Economics Explained - Robert Heilbroner & Lester Thurow<br />Naked Lunch (reread) - William S Burroughs<br />Footsteps - Pramoedya Anata Toer<br />House of Glass - Pramoedya Anata Toer<br />The Great War for Civilisation - Robert Fisk<br />Middle East Illusions - Noam Chomsky<br />Rogue State - William Blum<br />Perfect Spy - Pham Xuan An<br />Bias - Bernard Goldberg<br />The Political Mind - George Lakoff<br />Lipstick Jihad - Azadeh Moaveni<br />Requiem for the Sudan - J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins<br />What is the What - Dave Eggers<br />America Town - Mark L. Gillen<br />Ghost Wars - Steve Coll<br />The Road of Lost Innocence - Somaly Mam<br />The Fugitive - Pramoedya Anata Toer<br />All That is Gone - Pramoedya Anata Toer<br />The Wisdom of Whores - Elizabeth Pisani<br />The Great White Shark Hunt (reread) - Hunter S. Thompson<br />Pathologies of Power - Paul Farmer<br />Where the Ashes Are - Nguyen Qui Duc<br />Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer<br /><br />Currently Reading:<br />The Hidden Connections - Fritjof Capra <br />The Giants - J.M.G Le Cleszio <br />The Slap - Chirstos Tsiolkas <br />Philosophical Investigations (rereading) - Ludwig WittgensteinScratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-5042347701573359632009-10-22T17:55:00.002+07:002010-05-22T18:29:06.461+07:00cassowary and suicide on holiday<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/5583937/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/3/5583937_83113aa736_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/5583937/">contemplating suicide</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/rwest/">Scratchin Dog</a>. </span></div>"<i>Perhaps he found what he came here for, but the odds are huge that he didn't. He was an old, sick and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him... So finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun.</i>"<br />'What Lured Hemingway to Ketchum?', pg. 395 in "The Great Shark Hunt" by Hunter S Thompson<br /><br />So Hunter finished his piece about Ernest Hemingway's final days in Ketchum, Idaho. He could well have been writing about himself. On February 20th 2005 Hunter shot himself in the head at his home 'Owl Farm' in Woody Creek, Colorado. I have just finished rereading the long and rabid collection of his early work "The Great Shark Hunt" and it has sent me back to that hot summer holiday in Australia when I first heard the news of his death.<br /><br />We flew into Cairns in mid-Feb 2005. A smart beautiful English mathematician I used to live with was visiting Australia and we took this opportunity to stay in a friend's holiday house on Etty Bay. From the airport we picked up a small red rental car and headed south through the flat stretches of sugar cane country. The heat of Tropical North Queensland shimmered over the roads creating mirage pools of water ahead that you never arrived at. Along the dust at the side of the roads were numerous stalls offering every kind of tropical fruit imaginable. Just past Innisfall we took a left and headed for the ocean and soon wound our way down to an arc of sand surrounded on all sides by dense tropical vegetation. There was not much there - a small shop and a surf club. At the shop we picked up the keys from a one armed man with leathery skin and perpetual squint. He pointed us towards a gap in the trees and up a short steep dirt road we found our holiday house - a squat concrete building with cyclone shutters pulled down over two sides. It hunkered down amongst a fecund, almost threatening abundance of plant life. <br /><br />Inside was a basic beach house with a main room that could be opened to the elements by rolling up the shutters, a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom. The floor was tiled and designed to be hosed out when too much sand had been walked inside. Across the ceiling were lines of meandering dots where vines had grown in and attached their roots before being pulled away. The air was full of insects and the noises of insects and other creatures unseen. We dumped our gear into the house and changed for the beach. It was off season, so the beach was practically deserted of people. Warning signs, however, were plentiful. There was a large rectangular swimming zone surrounded by nets that were meant to keep stingers at bay. A variety of poisonous jellyfish are populous in these waters - the stings ranging from irritating, through painful to deadly. A plastic bottle of vinegar is permanently placed below the life saving ring at the top of the beach as a first treatment for stings. The nets also help keep out sharks, and caution was to be taken at the creeks at each end of the beach where crocodiles were not unknown. Poisonous spiders and snakes were also common, though those at least, I was used to.<br /><br />What I was not used to was the cassowary - a couple of which we immediately met in the car park on the way to the beach. These are a huge kind of flightless bird - the third largest, and second heaviest in the world. The kind of bird you only usually experience in nightmares or whilst caught on acid in a turkey pen. They can stand up to 2m tall and weight 70kg. Their long necks are a violent blue and they sport a thick bony horn like protrusion on their head above their thuggish red eyes. Their feet are composed of three large claws - the middle one particularly savage - which they can use to disembowel whatever they find threatening and in their way. And the problem is whilst they are physically huge, their brains are very small, mean and vicious. Very much like that of inbred conservative politicians in remote country areas where unwary travelers can disappear without a trace. It is the same kind of glazed dumb eyes that assess the world in terms of food, fuck, fight or flight - and when I gazed into those eyes I backed away and didn't even try to get the camera out. They unnerved me - monster mutant chickens with a chip on their shoulder about every mcnugget that has ever been eaten. <br /><br />Yet the sand was white and clean, the water near body temperature which is the only way I like it. I floated, and swam to the nets and back, and floated more and let the summer Queensland sun lick my arc-light-white body into redness. On the walk back to the house was a stretch of road where the trees on each side made a canopy overhead and a stagnant creek ran along the side. We soon discovered that it was a mosquito infested tunnel of hell where walking would guarantee you at least a dozen bites. There was no option but to wrap a towel around as much exposed flesh as possible and run like buggery to get back into the light where you could slap yourself all over in some fiendish high-speed mockery of an Austrian dance. I soon found it also helped to keep your blood alcohol level as high as possible to potentially stun the evil fuckers once they took their first sip of blood. Once back at the house, however, with the mosquito repellant on, mosquito coils burning, and thick clouds of intoxicating smoke spiraling around your head, it was possible to relax reading books until the tiredness came upon you and you slept the sweat drenched tropical sleep of the Heart of Darkness.<br /><br />Each night it was important to take the rubbish of the day down to the sealed bin in the car park. If you didn't, the whole thing would be ripped apart in the night by possums, rats, bush turkeys and a dozen other denizens of the night that you could hear, but not see until you came face-to-face with them on the kitchen counter. And whilst possums look cute in daylight, something about stumbling out bleary eyed to face off with a arrogant marsupial making devil noises through its yellow teeth at 2am isn't worth encouraging. So on the third night I dosed myself with repellant, finished my joint and picked up the rubbish to make the dash through the mosquito corridor. The corridor was only about 40m long and straight - but very dark and totally infested. I picked my way over the rocks and around the curve to the beginning of the straight, then broke into a fast run. About two thirds the way along I collided heavily with something solid, soft and covered in course feathers. For the next long 5 seconds the world was nothing but my screaming mixed with a high pitched banshee squawking and a rain of garbage coming down as both me and the cassowary ran randomly around in the dark finding anyway away from each other. I heard it crashing into the foliage of the creek as I rounded the bend back to the house. That garbage had made it far enough that night and it took much scotch and sedative smoking before I regained any semblance of control which was mostly hysterical hyper-ventilating laughter. <br /><br />We had brought no laptops or music systems and had to make to with the local radio station which played the usual round of cheap music and adverts for agricultural suppliers. The band Green Day had just released their latest hit 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' and it was being played on high repeat - it seemed once for every four other songs. Despite not even liking the song, it became the defacto anthem of the trip through repetition. We would start singing along with it without even thinking... "I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known. Don't know where it goes, but it's home to me and I walk alone." And I think it was after one such playing that the news came on and delivered the news of Hunter's suicide. The pithy words of the song for a moment seemed to hold some meaning, though of course they didn't, and I was thrown into contemplation of the death of a literary hero of mine. I cannot remember exactly what I was thinking back then, but having just finished 'The Great Shark Hunt' again, I have been drawn back into contemplation of what I think of him, his mythical persona and his writings.<br /><br />And a week later, with copious notes and hours spent mulling what I think I am no closer to finishing this damn blog entry. One thread follows the style of writing where the journalist is a character in his own work. The role is made explicit - and with Hunter - even mythical. The style is in opposition with 'objective' reporting that still makes up the mainstream of contemporary journalism - a style dedicated to 'telling it how it is' or 'just the facts'. The years I have spent contemplating the more corrosive side of philosophy (corrosive to the concept of attaining simple value-free 'facts') have made me wary of this style of journalism. 'Objectivity' too easily is a cover for unstated bias and subjectivity. The value of injecting the journalist into the story explicitly is that usually you can tell from what perspective the story is being written from. Did anyone ever wonder what Hunter really thought of Richard Milhouse Nixon? Philosophically speaking - I see no problem with subjectivity - especially when it is explicit. Partly related is Hunter's use of his contacts. He knew many people, from all walks of politics, and was not afraid of quoting them verbatim (nearly always taping his interviews) and naming his sources. Every second opinion or 'quote' in today's papers are from unnamed or anonymous sources - with all the abuse to truth and accountability that comes with that. However, I have not been able to expand upon this thread coherently.<br /><br />Another thread concerned a corollary of injecting yourself into a story - that you end up writing about yourself. I think most people would concede that writing objectively about yourself is nearly a contradiction in terms. Our everyday lives involves projecting a persona into the world, and writing about yourself is projecting yet another persona. In this sense Hunter reminds me of another two authors I respect, Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski. In each of their works - the author is loosely represented through a persona that is a hyper-real fictionalization of themselves. Miller hams up the sex in his works, Bukowski the alcoholism, Hunter the drugs and violence. Each is deeply concerned to project the individualist freedom of their self-characters. And in each case they were criticized for 'making stuff up' about themselves. And in each case, they experienced problems when people expected them as people to confirm more to their fictional characterizations of themselves. I remember the photos run by Playboy of an elderly Miller playing ping pong with a naked buxom young woman. Photos of a over-weght Bukowski climbing into a box car to represent his homeless drifting (though he never rode in a boxcar) and his famous acting the belligerent buffoon at university readings. In a 1978 interview with the BBC Hunter said: "I'm never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict - most often, as a matter of fact. ...I'm leading a normal life and right along side me there is this myth, and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be."<br /><br />And yet - when they were not writing about themselves - there seems to be a honesty of purpose or truthfulness running through-out their work. Each in their own way writes in a humanitarian way that seems counter the male-centric bravado of their personas. And perhaps the key to this seeming conflict of perspectives is the fierce anti-authoritarian that each author espoused. In siding against authority, they tended to side with those who are the natural enemy of authority. Those without power or position, the poor, the oppressed, those that want to be left alone to drink or take drugs without harassment. I wouldn't want to draw too many parallels between these authors on this thin thread. Many would contest my opinion of Miller or Bukowski as humanitarian writers - there are plenty who would write both off as misogynists and leave the argument there. Being labeled a misogynist is like being labeled a racist, or anti-semite - in some circles it is case closed - there can be nothing good about the writer. And I'm too tired to try and fight those battles, too tired to even have a firm opinion on them. I will stand with the anti-authoritarian nature of their writing and leave it there for others to draw conclusions from that. All authors have plenty in their writing to offend you if you are looking to be offended. All I would say is that there is also plenty in their writing to be uplifted by, if you are looking to be uplifted.<br /><br />In contrast to being uplifted, I was also thinking about three books that produced strongly negative reactions in me. I remember reading 'Disgrace' by J. M. Coetzee that put me in a depressive angry funk for a week. The mathematician I went on holiday with highly recommended reading 'Broom of the System' by David Foster Wallace, one of the few books I have hurled across the room after finishing. And finally one of the books I read whilst on that holiday in Queensland, 'Something Happened' by Joseph Heller. Nearly 600 pages of waiting for Something to Happen which it only does in the last 10 pages and leaves a bitter resentful taste in the mouth. Each of these books are rightfully acclaimed as fine pieces of literature - but I hated them at the time and have no desire to return there. Strange how it works... Like how my memory of that holiday long ago as been pinned into my personal chronology with a unusual degree of clarity by the death of Hunter S Thompson.<br clear="all" />Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-71449476482539433302009-05-22T14:27:00.001+07:002009-05-22T14:28:59.305+07:00the big question - why bother?Usually if I post two blogs on consecutive days I feel a sense of achievement. My original excuse for coming to Vietnam was to focus on writing - and writing blog entries minimally fulfills that ambition. However, I did not feel a sense of achievement after the last two postings. They represent the completion of two mini-projects that I had started - both involving the media. The first - the world's response to Haruki Murakami receiving 'The Jerusalem Prize'. The second, to provide the only full online transcript of Hunter S. Thompson's interview with the Australian ABC.<br /><br />The reason for examining the response to Haruki Murakami winning The Jerusalem Prize was a confluence of three things: My liking of Murakami's writings, my following the latest Gaza incursion, and Noam Chomsky's allegation that news that is unfavourable to Israel does not get coverage in the USA. I also wanted to know how Murakami would react to the open letters that encouraged him to boycott the prize. Two examples of such open letters can be found at <a href="http://palestine-forum.org/doc/2009/0129-e.html" target="_blank">palestine-forum.org</a> and <a href="http://0000000000.net/p-navi/info/news/200902122136.htm" target="_blank">here</a>. It took a lot of time to research this question to my own satisfaction. I concluded that with the exception of AFP (whose article was taken up by the Australian ABC) there was no coverage of Murakami receiving or accepting the prize in the mainstream US media. The only main stream coverage in the UK was by the Guardian (but not the BBC). The AFP, the Guardian and the ABC all took their quotes directly from The Jerusalem Post - which I hope I showed were somewhat misleading paraphrases at best. I did find coverage in India, Iran and Israel - and from a host of bloggers around the world. The best coverage indeed came from Israel itself (if not from The Jerusalem Post). I found Murakami's response morally satisfactory. I found the reporting of his response less so. Noam Chomsky's allegation, in this case, seems to be justified.<br /><br />The Hunter S. Thompson piece was a natural confluence of my liking of his work, the fact that he was interviewed by someone in Australia, and my interest in (if not belief in) conspiracy theories. I was surprised at some of the good material that was left out of the aired interview. I don't think this in itself was a conspiracy of some sort. The Media Report obviously focuses on the media - and the interviewer did edit to keep the focus on the US media post 9/11. I just felt it was a pity that parts of the interview that pertained to the Australian media, and the Australian government's position on the yet-to-be-started Iraq war were cut. Some of the more funny parts were cut, parts that dealt in more depth as to why the US media reported the way it does were cut. I feel a slight happiness to be able to provide some of Hunter S. Thompson's views publicly in text form, but given the time it takes to transcribe audio to text, it is a small gain in happiness for a lot of work.<br /><br />The sense of achievement in completing and posting these two mini-projects was small and short lived. I find myself thinking - why bother? It is much easier to write about my dreams, to write personal nostalgic pieces about my past and my failing memory. Why do a lot of work to produce relatively dry pieces that are of little interest to anyone out there? I have yet to come up with an answer to that question yet, and I have no mini-media projects planned for the future. I can only concur with Hunter when he says 'Boy, it really is lonely out here'.Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-73823162259550314872009-05-20T12:39:00.002+07:002009-05-20T12:48:13.456+07:00Hunter S. Thompson interview with Mick O'Regan<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/3328957632/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3609/3328957632_0592e8a469_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/3328957632/">bad reading habits</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/rwest/">Scratchin Dog</a>. </span></div>A really good conspiracy theory has intention going all the way back to the beginning. A true master-mind kind of conspiracy doesn't rely upon accidents happening. I stumbled across the the mother-of-all-contemporary conspiracy theories on the web recently. That the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were master-minded by those within the US administration itself. Note that the official version of 9/11 is already a conspiracy theory. A band of mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists hijacked 4 commercial airliners, with the plan to crash them into 4 buildings (3 carried successfully). This horrendous yet ingenious way to terrorize the American people was all planned and organized remotely by the nefarious Osama bin Laden from his hideout in Afghanistan. This already is a great conspiracy theory that has mesmerized the world. The extension to it is even more fantastic, even more unbelievable. That this first conspiracy is an illusion, that the savage destruction was an inside job.<br /><br />I wasn't looking for this theory. I wanted to read Al Jazeera (English) for my morning fix of international news. But my hands had hangover shake over my bookmarks and I ended at <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/" target="_blank">Dissident Voice</a>. What the hell, I'll read one article. And the comments. Link to <a href="http://www.microcinemadvd.com/" target="_blank">microcinemadvd.com</a>, who had just announced the release date for 'Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup' by Dylan Avery. I checked out the website <a href="http://loosechange911.com/" target="_blank">loosechange911.com</a> then went to youtube to see what I could find. One of Dylan Avery's previous full length documentaries '<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E3oIbO0AWE&NR=1" target="_blank">911 Loose Change</a>' is there. I watched an early edition (nearly 2.5 million views so far) - I haven't yet watched the fully revised over 2 hour version that is now available out there. This made for a fully enjoyable morning of suspended disbelief.<br /><br />But 9/11 conspiracy theories are not what I want to write about today. Up until 7 min 43 seconds into the movie, my paranoid fantasies were accompanied by the regular monotone trance inducing commentary running over the visuals. Then suddenly I was accosted by a nasal Australian twang. An interviewer, following by a guttural laconic American accent that really got into my brain. "American journalism I think was cowed, had been cowed and intimidated by the this massive flag-sucking, this patriotic orgy that the White House keeps whipping up". Click. I knew that husky stop-start way of talking. Hunter S. Thompson. "You sort of wonder when something like that happens, well who stands to benefit? Who had the opportunity and the motive?" This is too good to be true - Hunter S Thompson and 9/11 conspiracy theories. I had to find this interview.<br /><br />It didn't turn out to be that hard. It was an <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2002/659555.htm" target="_blank">interview between Mick O'Regan and Hunter S. Thompson</a> that played on The Media Report, a show on ABC Radio National. It aired 29th Aug 2002. There were links to the audio for this program in a number of places on the web - but the audio file was no longer available from the ABC - only the transcript. I was sad to see in passing that the show ceased being produced in January 2009. I was able to locate the audio file eventually on <a href="http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2002/11/10/hunter_thompson_aug29_2002.mp3" target="_blank">indybay.org</a> (15.2Mb). This appears to be the full interview - not the heavily edited version that was played on the ABC. This phone interview is over 30min and had a lot more content that was available on the ABC transcript. The more I listened, the more I realized what had been cut. Some great stuff. I looked in vain for a transcript of the whole interview - and then decided to sit down and transcribe it myself. The following is the results of that transcript. It isn't perfect - Hunter is not exactly the easiest person to follow at times. I have made corrections to the text where the ABC had transcribed incorrectly, or cleaned it up too much. The red sections roughly show what was kept in the on-air version of the interview. Bits I couldn't figure out I have either labeled 'inaudible' or made my best guess and put it in brackets. It is interesting to see what hit the cutting room floor.<br /><br /><strong>Interview of Hunter S. Thompson by Mick O'Regan</strong><br />The Media Report - ABC Radio National - 29th August 2002<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Unlike Walter Cronkite, Hunter S. Thompson is a stirrer, a deliberately provocative commentator and a freewheeling iconoclast, infamous for his relentless critique of the American government and military.<br /><br />He lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and that's where I found him at the end of a less than perfect telephone line, to ask his opinion of the state of the US media.</span><br /><br />(The version of the interview I downloaded starts here)<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">This first question I had is basically to get from you a sense of how you would rate the American media in their coverage of the event of the attack last September? What's your assessment of how the American media has performed?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Well let's see, 'shamefully' is a word that comes to mind, but that's not true in the case of</span> well it depends you know you have to... the papers... <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">The New York Times, The Washington Post, but overall the American journalism I think was cowed, had been cowed and intimidated by the this massive flag-sucking, this patriotic orgy that the White House keeps whipping up. You know if you criticise the President it's unpatriotic and there's something wrong with you, you may be a terrorist.</span> And I've been (raging) against this from the very beginning, but I don't have much of a (constant) national platform because I've been working on this book The Kingdom of Fear which probably describes what's been going on over here - The Kingdom of Fear.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">So in that sense,</span> Hunter S Thompson <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">there's not enough room for dissenting voices?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">There's plenty of room there's not just enough people who are willing to take the risk. It's sort of a herd mentality, a lemming-like mentality. If you don't go with the flow you're anti-American and therefore a suspect. And we've seen this before, these patriotic frenzies.</span> In wartime they declare... <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">It's very convenient having an undeclared war that you can call a war and impose military tribunals and wartime security and then we have these generals telling us that this war's going to go on for a long, long time. Maybe not so much the generals now, the generals are a little afraid of Iraq, a little worried about it, but it's the civilians in the White House, the gang of thieving, just lobbyists for the military industrial complex, who are running the White House, and to be against them is to be patriotic, then hell, call me a traitor.</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Do you think that most of the American media, or say most of the influential American media has bought that patriotism line, and as a result are self-censoring themselves?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">There you go, self-censorship, yes, that's a very good point. Yes, I would say that. Now there are always exceptions to that but there've been damn few.</span> Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, I'm trying to think of who else, there's not that many of them (at the moment?). And you get that corporate mentality of well what will the advertisers think? You know, in the times against the President therefor we won't advertise in it. A corporate kind of, we're all in this together thinking, so yes the publishers have always been Republicans, and the working press usually are Democratic, the smarter part of them, but not even the Democrats have been very strong on this, Not strong enough to get anyone excited.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">So is it the White House laying down what they think is appropriate journalism, or is it the news media outlets deciding that they have to be patriotic, that they're under some sort of undeclared duty at the moment, to somehow reflect the patriotism of the American public?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Well it goes a little deeper than that, because this Administration is well on the road to seizing power, and Tom Dashell, the Senate Democratic leader the other day accused Bush of trying to seize dictatorial powers. Now that was a big breakthrough, and I'm starting to sense that the tide may be turning against the President; we have to beat this bastard one way or another.</span> And the easiest way to do that is vote. I mean not (going to use) terrorism to beat a little fart like that. Just voting is a... should be sufficient and I have a sense that there is a... some kind of flag of courage of some sort, courage to disagree with the government. And that's what this country's all about really.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Well historically that's obviously hugely important for America that (track breaks up) so your argument at the moment - we're not seeing that (media) coverage of the whole...<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">And the American government is the greatest enemy of freedom around the world that I can think of. And we keep waving that flag, freedom, yes, these people are flag-suckers.</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">What about the language that's being used to describe the so-called undeclared war? I mean there have been criticisms in the mainstream press in Australia that journalists have too readily taken up the language of politicians and bureaucrats, that they have uncritically declared the war against terror without really thinking it through; what's your assessment of the situation in the States?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Well I'm glad to hear that - you're talking about Australian journalists?</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Yes.</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Yes, well that's good. Congratulations boys. There is not much of that in this country yet.</span> The New York Times - the paper of record - has been I think they've pretty courageous in terms of this laying out what is going on. Reading the New York Times for the past year has been like, one funeral dirge, or you know, just one funeral after another. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">This over here is the most paranoid, most insecure country that I've ever lived in, I mean it's the worst this country has been since I have ever seen it.</span> And I've been covering politics for a long time. Henceforth.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: So that's how you'd characterize the popular debate at the moment? That its full of paranoia?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Yeah, but now on the other side we don't have what appears to be just a bunch of half-bright Jesus-freaks. But soon if look at it just a little bit with a different prism this could be a military takeover - could be called that. Have you noticed all the power being centralized in the White House, in Washington. When these super agencies taking over the FBI, the CIA, the super cabinet positions. This little bastard of a President - the goofy child President - I used to call him that but goofy is way too friendly for a President whose been nothing but a... presiding over the looting of the treasury and the looting of people's pension funds. He's done a lot of damage. And he's trying to. And he's trying to... His next step I guarantee is to over-rule the Freedom of Information Act that is key to the survival of journalism in this country.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Do you feel like there's a restriction of media freedom,</span> of the freedom to speak, in the freedom to martial opposition arguments <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">at the moment? Is there a restricted space for media freedom?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well I think what happened... <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">I wouldn't say it's a restricted space, but it's a dark and dangerous grey area to venture into. Several journalists have lost their jobs, columnist Bill Maher on ABC</span> you get these tides of public protest when journalists [inaudible]... <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">but some people were made an example of early on.</span> And then you have this argument, well, you want to criticize like that you're making fun of the victims or people who died in the disasters, the crashes. I'm still not sure who did that. And I think there's a lot more too it that than we've been allowed to know over here. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">The media doesn't reflect world opinion or even a larger, more intelligent opinion over here, it's just this drumbeat of celebrity worship and child funerals and hooded prisoners being led around Guantanamo. No I'm very disturbed about the civil rights implications of this, and everybody should be.</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">So just on journalists who may have lost their jobs, are you saying that people who came out and were fearless in their critique of the government or the government's</span> planning, government's <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">policy, that those people actually lost their jobs as journalists?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Well I can think of two that come to mind right in the beginning. I haven't heard of any since. But I think Bill Maher, there was some kind of rave after 9/11 that all these people, cowards, you know these dirty little bastards, who snuck up on us and pulled off what amounts to a perfect crime really, no witnesses, very little cost; talk about cost-effective, that was a hell of a strike. I'm not sure I'd call them cowards, but that's what Bill Maher said on TV and he said he considered our missile attacks</span> our bombing attacks <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">on unseen victims, wedding parties etc. that that was cowardly. Whacko. Boy a huge tidal wave of condemnation came down on him. And that was the ABC, yeah.</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">So at the moment people don't want to hear that sort of criticism, they want people to rally round the flag and support the military?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">I think that's right, and I think the reason for that is that they don't want to hear it because boy, that's going to be a lot of agonising reappraisal, as they say. What reality is in this country and the world right now. Yes, popular opinion in this country has to be swung over to "the White House is wrong, these people are corporate thieves. They've turned the American Dream into a chamber of looting." It would take a lot of adjustment, mentally.</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">At the moment, even in Australia, the media is preparing for the first anniversary of the attacks in a couple of weeks from now.</span> Can you give me a sense of what is happening in the United States? <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">How is the American media preparing to sort of commemorate the first anniversary of the September 11th attack?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">You would never believe it, it's so insane. This is a frantic publicity. Every day on television the President's on TV at least once a day, and celebrations of the dead, the patriots, exposes on Al Qaida, it's just relentless, in fact 25 hours a day, of just how tragic it was and how patriotic it was, and how much we have to get back at these dirty little swine, and I wouldn't be at all surprised for as hideous and dumb as it sounds, an invasion of Iraq on September 11, yeah I'll get out and take a long shot bet on that.</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">That you think that the occasion might actually be used as a way of using that popular fervour or that popular patriotism as an appropriate day to launch an invasion?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Well it seems like that to me, because that's their only power base really, is that frenzy of patriotism, and it's our revenge strike, you know, Uncle Sam gets even. If that's going to work at all, there would be no time when it would work better when everyone in the country is cranked up into emotional frenzies. I</span> find <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">myself getting a little teary eyed</span> last night <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">watching some CNN special.</span> Anita was crying. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">This reminds me exactly of the month after the attack when there was just drumroll after another. But there is some opposition now popping up in this country, a lot of it.</span> A lot of opposition.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: I would like to come to the opposition in just a moment. But just on your arguments about what would seem to be the manipulation by the media of popular sentiments. At the moment, what do you think the leading media outlets should be doing? Because obviously there is deep feeling within the American community about the attack and the aftermath of the attack which it would seem to me that the media is obviously going to pick up on, but how to they represent that feeling without manipulating it for some other less nobel purpose?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well, the way that (grease) has been manipulated here and turned into a platform for revenge, on who? Osama bin Laden? I wrote on the day after the thing occurred that he was probably dead. (inaudible) trying to write a column for ESPN.com, a sports (thing) and yeah to just assume that first it was Osama bin Laden, and then it was Saddam Hussein. It may be that the secret police, and the intelligence operations of America are so much smarter than we are and knows so much more than we heard and are so much more responsible and effective than we are. That's possible I suppose... It's not possible to me but in theory, but in fact all these agencies have been embarrassed. They've been proven to be buffoons and liars. Some FBI agent lost 700 guns in two years... These agencies are riddled with corruption and it is an unwillingness to challenge the word of authority. That is, you'd think you know (inaudible) an un-American way to lean back and be a sheep and act like a good German. And it just really just a question of authority that I believe is the root of this over here.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: So you would see Hunter S Thompson in recent years there's been a failure to challenge authority so the media is actually buying the government line far to readily?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: No, there hasn't been much challenging of authority for quite a while and this President here, this little bastard, is just a (creation) of his father and Reagan brain-trust and a lot of those people came out of Nixon, it's really like the rebirth of Richard Nixon. Or Nixon lives. But these people make Nixon look like a liberal.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: You would argue that George Bush Junior make Richard Nixon seem like a liberal which is a startling admission from you because of the caustic way you have previously described Richard Nixon.<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Yeah, it shocked me when I said it. But I'll stick with that. In terms of just the programmatic mean greedy tunnel-visioned looter, these people make Nixon look like a statesman.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Now Nixon, of course, was undone by the actions of two members of the press, Bernstein and Woodwood, who doggedly pursued him even though it wasn't initially apparent that that trail would bear fruit. Is there a new generation of that type of investigative journalism in the United States, and is this the moment when it should come forward?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Oh boy, I've been looking for that... the rise of that generation for a long time. You know the... Yeah, Nixon was always convinced of there was a massive liberal conspiracy to get him. Well, he was right. Yeah. And I was part of that. And I'm proud of it.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Now is that, so called, massive liberal conspiracy, is that emerging now in the debate around the potential invasion of Iraq or the conduct of the Bush administration at the moment?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: No, these Jesus-freaks have managed to give the word 'liberal' so a bad name that in this nation now its really a matter of shame to adopt the word 'liberal'. See, I've never been a liberal. I've (been know) to the bastards for years. But liberal, no, there's no ground swell of liberal sentiment driving this questioning of what the administration is doing. Now these people want to go into attack the Arab world, the Muslim world, with no allies except England and Israel...<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: And possibly Australia.<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Oh my god! Don't tell me your god-damned Papist bastards are that off, I thought you were freedom loving (inaudible)?<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Well what's going on here as we record this interview in Australia, there is actually a debate about the degree to which the government has made clear whether it would support a first strike policy by the United States government and the call in Australia is for a much fuller debate both at a parliamentary level and in the media about what the Australian government should do, but the Prime Minister of Australia has reserved his judgement, but he's made it clear that his government is very keen to support the US if called upon.<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well, thats err... that's horrible. Well I guess err... that's right, you people voted that you really are err... you're all subjects of the Queen, didn't you?<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: We voted to not become a republic, that's right.<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: No, no, you re-affirmed the power of the Monarchy as I remember, over you.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: That's right... Look its a digression, but that's right. But just on that... One of things that the media in Australia is really trying to take up I suppose is to draw from the government some clearer position. You know, will Australia support the US, what are the implications of the US striking pre-emptively against Iraq. I'm very interested in your assessment of that debate in the States. I mean, are the particular areas where criticism is coming from?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Let me first say that its very important that you guys get a statement, a clear statement out of the government. And the longer they won't give you one, the more ominous it's going to sound, right? It will be... I mean if they won't tell you they won't support the United States in the event of a first strike, what do you guess their position is going to be?<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Look in Australia Hunter, there's been a policy of bi-partisanship, a history of bi-partisanship, and that's the other thing that's up for grabs at the moment it would seem. Whether the Labor party opposition to the Conservative Federal government is going to sort of strengthen its opposition to any Australian involvement or whether its going to go ahead and support the government as it has done in previous military campaigns. That's a major issue, but its an issue being played our in the press. What I'm interested I'm supposed is your assessment of how that's being played out or not being played out in your own press.<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well we get a lot of encouragement, say from Germany, France, the entire Arab world. I mean, nobodies really in favor of this. I don't know who, I mean if you want to name some people? Who else really wants Saddam Hussein so desperately out of power? I look around, I don't see anyone else waving the hatchet, do you?<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: [Well, no, no. Hunter] <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Could I take you back to September 11th. What I'd really like to know is your reactions. And I know you said you were writing a sports column for ESPN when the planes hit the towers, but could I get you to tell that story of when you found out about it and what you were doing and what your reaction was?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Yeah I was really (inaudible) in a low key way. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">I had in fact just finished a sports column for ESPN.</span> I've forgotten exactly what is was about. It was pretty good. No sooner it had gone over the wire than I was on the phone with John Walt, general editor of ESPN was on the phone saying 'You have to write about this disaster' and as it happened I'd been going to bed after my column, it was late Monday night, I was just going to bed, the TV was still on. I usually have it on just for the news, and I happen to see the first plane hit, and in my fog condition, I'd been up all night writing the column I somehow knew it was real. I don't know why I've seen enough real life... What is that noise? Yeah, there was no mistaking the reality of that. It didn't make much sense. And it still doesn't really, but I, oh here we go, here we go. This is the column I wrote, let's see 09/12/01. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Here it is: 'It was just after dawn in Woody Creek, Colorado when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City on Tuesday morning. And as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant compared to the scenes of destruction and other devastation coming out of New York on TV.'</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">You went on to say in that article, which I have in front of me, that 'even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States.' Do you think that the event completely transformed the way in which Americans see themselves and their own vulnerability?'</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">No, the event by itself wouldn't have done that.</span> I've seen planes hit the Empire State Building before, I didn't go totally out of my mind. People had been killed. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">But it was the way the Administration was able to use that event. And to use it as a springboard for everything they wanted to do. And that might tell you something. I remember when I was writing that column you sort of wonder when something like that happens, Well who stands to benefit?</span> You know, its like murder. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Who had the opportunity and the motive? You just kind of look at these basic things, and I don't know if I want to go into this on worldwide radio here, but -</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">You may as well.</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">All right. Well I saw that the US government was going to benefit, and the White House people, the republican administration to take the mind of the public off of the crashing economy. Now you want to keep in mind that every time a person named Bush gets into office, the nation goes into a drastic recession they call it.</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: It sounds almost like the plot of that film 'Wag the Dog' where film producers sort of concocted a national event to inspire patriotism to take the public's minds of misdemeanors committed by the President. Are you, I mean, <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">It seems a very long bow to me, but are you sort of suggesting that this worked in the favour of the Bush Administration?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I have spent enough time on the inside of, well in the White House and you know, campaigns and I've known enough people who do these things, think this way, to know that the public version of the news or whatever event, is never really what happened.</span> And these people I think are willing to take that even further, so I don't assume that I know the truth of what went on that day, and yeah, I just looking around and looking for who had the motive, who the opportunity, who had the equipment, who had the will. Yeah, these people were looting the treasury and they knew the economy was going into a spiral downward.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: From this distance it does seem extraordinarily conspiratorial that you could sit there and see the hand of the US government in this attack rather than seeing international terrorists bent on somehow hurting America and the American people. What sort of reaction did your views get among your peers or amongst other journalists?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: (laughs) I was greeted universally with a kind of nervousness and almost nobody agreed with me, nobody thought it was the right thing just to answer your question. No it was about 99 to 1, but since then...<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Did you publish those views anywhere?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: I'm not sure if I said that, if I haven't then I meant to. Now let's see...<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: I was going to ask you for the reaction to them because, I don't want to seem Polyannish here, but it doesn't seem an extraordinary conspiracy theory that your putting forward, that your first reaction was somehow implicate the US government in this attack, rather than an enemy of the US government.<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well you want to keep in mind that I have lived, not just through, but very close to a lot of real tragedies in this country, and let me ask you, do you think you know who killed John Kennedy or Robert Kennedy?<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Look I have to say I was a boy at the time, but no, and I haven't read the Warren Commission Report, but it seems to me that that in this case there were so many more people involved it would seem to be much less likely some sort of internal conspiracy.<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well it does, I mean I can see why you are a little edgy accepting this from me and...<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Well let me just ask you on that. I mean you've pioneered a form of journalism called Gonzo journalism, in which it's almost like there's no revision. What you see and feel is what goes down on the page, and it's that first blush, that first image that hits the readership. Does that mean that</span> Hunter S. Thompson that <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">in a way it's hard for you to appear credible within the US media because people would say Oh look, that's just another conspiracy theory from a drug-addled Gonzo journalist like Hunter S. Thompson?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Yeah, that's a problem. I'm not sure if it's my problem or other people's, or their's, but I stand by this column and the one after it. I've been right so often, and my percentages are so high, I'll stand by this column that I wrote that day, and the next one. So what appears to be maybe Gonzo journalism, I'm not going to claim any prophetic powers, but...</span><br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Well one of the things you do say in that first article you wrote, you say, 'It's now 24 hours later, and we're not getting much information about the 5Ws of this thing.' Now by the 5Ws I'm presuming you mean the Who, the What, the When, the Why and the How. Is that still how you feel, that a year later those key questions haven't been answered?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Absolutely. It's even worse though.</span> This is just a suggestion, in 24 hours we were not getting much information about the 5 Ws. Well, how much have we got beyond that? <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">How much more do we have than we had a year ago? Damn little, I think.</span> We know a lot about the firemen who died, a lot about the people who stole money from their charity fund, a lot about the people who donated all that blood and Red Cross had too much of it and had to throw away 5 tons of blood or something like that. That may be an exaggeration. No, I will stand by almost all my, well no no, come on, look, great a grip on yourself Tom, you can't talk like that...<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Hunter S. Thompson, let me ask you about you new book, I mean, The Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Cross Child in the Final Days of the American Dream. It's a very apocalyptic title. Has this book, this new book, has it come off your reflections about September 11th and the way it was handled by the American media?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well it came off of the, yeah, the atmosphere in this country as of September 12. Yeah, Kingdom of Fear. That's the way I see this country. I'm not just writing a long (scree) front-to-back, some kind of a political tract. But, in the book, I've tried to explain a little bit about how I got this way and why you should pay attention to my predictions.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Is this a critical time for the credibility of US journalism? How this current war is being covered, and how it is being reported on, and the sort of public information that the American people get? Is this a sort of critical test of the credibility of US journalism?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: I think definitely, but I'm not sure how much credibility US journalism really has given that we, well let's see, in 5 years we lost two Presidents and 1 civil rights leader to mysterious bombs or assassins or (wicky haired) strangers, and US journalism has never dug out the truth about that. One of my great shames as a journalist is that I still don't know who killed Jack Kennedy and its always bothered me, always haunted me. And no doubt that I don't know, and there's not much doubt that journalism doesn't know. And in a lot of ways, that maybe because we haven't asked. When I say asked, I mean the people who, well, most of the witnesses were killed weren't they?<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: But did that need for certainty, is that what underpins your critique that US journalism has failed to provide in your life the key answers to the key events that you needed answered.<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: I would say that and I would include myself and I worked as hard as anybody. The rules really changed in this country when Reagan came in and started these test invasions of other small nations. And when they decided to test the policy of no more battlefield access for any journalist. Vietnam was totally different and that's why we got that war ended. But (I went to) Grenada and that's in this book too. And you can see it forming right there, I'd never seen it before. I'd never seen journalists beaten up by military police and hogtied in the middle of the road. I'd never had to... I'd always had a press pass and access. But when the military - the Pentagon (inaudible) - they seize the advantage they never give it up. The military is still not allowing anybody else to know what's happening in Afghanistan or wherever they're fighting. It's always, you know, press releases, staged events.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Hunter S. Thompson, do you think that the so called 'Gonzo' style of journalism which you've become famous and some would say notorious, do you think there is a specific legacy that what makes that kind of journalism work makes it more necessary at the moment?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well, I've never properly defined that term even to myself.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: What do you think it does mean?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well, from my point of view it means being very skeptical of the pronouncements of authority, and that as a gambler I would say that its a bit of an even bet that if you question the statements and truths of the white house and the government, more often than not you'll be right. And that you'll... I don't know, I just try to get as close to what I'm writing about as possible in order to find out what's really happening. A lot of times its weirder than it appears in my stories. The truth is usually stranger than fiction. In my life.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Hunter Thompson, will you be at home watching the commemoration programs on 11th September? Will you be among the audience, which I imagine will number tens of millions of people who watch what happens in New York?</span><br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">That's a good point, that's a good question, and yes, it's soon, isn't it? No, I won't. I think I'll grab Anita and take a road trip. We'll just go off and have a little fun. Why sit around and watch that stuff?</span> Now what I'm afraid of see is (inaudible) media cover for a sudden move on Iraq. And that little monster will come on TV and say 'Today the erh...' I can't say allied forces, I can't say coalition forces anymore, he'll have to say yeah 'Today we invaded Iraq'. Now, this seems so impossible I'd be happy to loose money on it. I'd bet on it. But it seems too logical for that kind of tactless thug mind set that this is the time to do it. I can't think of a better time if I was going to do it, I'll put it that way.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Because the nation's effectively distracted by the commemorations in New York that its almost like saying quick while no ones really paying attention let's invade another country.<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Exactly. It's so cynical, and so stupid and so self-defeating in the long run that you'd think that no one in their right mind - or President - would plunge us into a war like that with no allies and... on the other side of the world.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Just out of interest, I mean, for these comments to be broadcast on Radio National in Australia which is part of the ABC - part of the public boardcasting network - it occurs to me that you probably wouldn't hear those sort of comments on the other outlets. In America (inaudible) voice to your conspiracy theories about the role of the US government.<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well I definitely will be when this book comes out in December. Now, unfortunately we're going to have that election up here in November. And that is going to be an extremely key election in time to... if you care about this country to really vote. And I've been working on this book for so long I feel like I've been in a decompression chamber of some kind.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: So obviously these very critical views will appear in your book. I suppose what I'm interested in asking is where else would people hear views like yours. I know their coming out later in the year in your book, but across the US media, radio and television and print where would people be now hearing these very critical comments such as the ones you've been making?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well, heh, where else hey? Where indeed? I know a lot of journalists across the country that would agree with me. But whether their writing this stuff and saying it in public I don't know. You can ask Maureen Dowd and see what she feels if I'm right or wrong. And, I can't really tell you anybody else. (inaudible) Boy, it really is lonely out here.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Hunter S. Thompson, just as a final question and look its a big question but let me ask it anyway. I mean, how do you see from your position as a critic on the left of America journalism, how do you see the future of journalism in your country?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Well, I have a very dim view of it I guess. Yeah, the future of journalism which I really thought was unbounded after Watergate but right now I (don't see any reason) to be optimistic about it. Because of the, erh, no just one huge scam they pulled off here but because of the everyday reality of journalism is celebratory driven. The news over here barely covers. I watched some BBC stuff and then some CNN foreign news - the one that, the world news that doesn't get into this country. I read the Paris Herald Tribune. That kind of news doesn't get through in this country. Now you have to read the New York Times very carefully and to maybe see what they're talking about. But I don't think my views would be seen as crazy or absurd or out of the question in most countries in the world.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Do you ever worry, given the current climate in the United States and the surge in patriotism that's going on that you could be personally at risk from someone that took offense at your critique? That you own personal security might be threatened?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Yeah, yeah I think about it. (inaudible) to be true.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: Have there been occurrences when you've been threatened?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Oh yeah I'm constantly, I have been all my life. Yeah. My kind of journalism that goes with the territory. There are going to be threats, and there are going to be people very unhappy. And, knock knock, I don't think it is a matter of luck I think its a matter that I've pretty well stuck to my battle plan. And, they've tried to come after me, the federal government, all kinds of governments. I've got tons of warrants and courts - I have to keep like four of the finest criminal lawyers in the country on retainer. Yeah, you have to fight for these rights in this country, they didn't come in on any a... the stork didn't bring a bill of rights. A lot of people fought for it.<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: So that's how you'd see yourself as fighting for freedom of speech in America?<br /><br /><strong>Hunter S. Thompson</strong>: Absolutely.<br /><br />(The version of the interview I downloaded ends here)<br /><br /><strong>Mick O'Regan</strong>: <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">US journalist, Hunter S. Thompson with a very personal and idiosyncratic view of September 11.</span><br clear="all" />Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-56037592359612418932009-05-19T15:29:00.005+07:002009-05-20T12:51:41.973+07:00Haruki Murakami and The Jerusalem PrizeA few months back I read on <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/16/2492970.htm" target="_blank">ABC website</a> that one of my favourite authors <a href="http://www.harukimurakami.com/" target="_blank">Haruki Murakami</a> had won "<a href="http://www.jerusalembookfair.com/the_jerusalem_prize.html" target="_blank">The Jerusalem Prize</a>" for literature in Israel. The ABC article makes mention of Murakami's musing as whether he should accept the prize or not - "I asked myself - is visiting Israel the proper thing to do, will I be supporting one side?" The article does not provide an answer to this question - but obviously he did turn up and collect the prize. The article did, however, provide this rather quixotic quote: "If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg, each of us confronting a high wall, the high wall is the system". I was bemused by this quote and wanted to read the transcript of the speech, but at the time I could not find it anywhere on the web. I wanted to know what Murakami had actually said at his acceptance speech in Israel given the deadly incursion into Gaza at the time that left upward of 1300 Palestinians and 13 Israeli's dead.<br /><br />The original ABC article came from AFP, who in turn quoted the <A href="http://fr.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1233304788868" target="_blank">Jerusalem Post</a>. Reading the Jerusalem Post article (which quotes more Murakami that the ABC article) I was not much clearer as to what Murakami had said. If he had given a personal opinion about the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. I got the distinct impression from the article that Murakami had not given a direct opinion, rather had embedded his opinion in an obscure wall / egg metaphor. The title of the Jerusalem Post article was 'Murakami, in trademark obscurity, explains why he accepted Jerusalem award'. The first lines of the article are: "Israel is not the egg. Confused? This might be the only explanation we will ever hear from Japanese bestselling author Haruki Murakami - and in true Murakami style, even it will be somewhat vague." A little later in the article, the author with tongue-in-cheek says "And here Murakami... making a clear statement that left no room of reinterpretation. No time for ambiguity, this." Tongue-in-cheek because he then quotes a slightly extended version of Murakami's wall / egg metaphor. It is not a clear statement.<br /><br />Many weeks later I remembered that I wanted to read that speech and thought perhaps it had now been uploaded. It had been. Here are four places I found the speech:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.47news.jp/47topics/e/93880.php" target="_blank">http://www.47news.jp</a><br /><A href="http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2009/02/20/haruki_murakami/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.salon.com/</a><br /><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064909.html" target="_blank">http://www.haaretz.com/</a><br /><A href="http://fidanuar.blogspot.com/2009/04/murakami-haruki-acceptance-speech-for.html" target="_blank">http://fidanuar.blogspot.com/</a> (contains a Japanese translation)<br /><br />I read the transcript and didn't have that much trouble figuring out what Murakami was saying. He was on the side of the Palestinians. Not that he was anti-Israeli (as people), but he certainly wasn't on the side of the Israeli State (or government). I also realized that the quotes in the paper were not very accurate, in fact they were paraphrasing. I'll take three examples:<br /><br /><strong>Jerusalem Post</strong>: <em>If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg.</em><br /><br /><strong>Transcript</strong>: <em>Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will do it. But if there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?</em><br /><br /><strong>Jerusalem Post</strong>: <em>We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs," he urged. "We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us - create who we are. It is we who created the system.</em><br /><br /><strong>Transcript</strong>: <em>We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, and we are all fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong--and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from our believing in the warmth we gain by joining souls together. Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: we made the System.</em><br /><br /><strong>Jerusalem Post</strong>: <em>When I was asked to accept this award," he said, "I was warned from coming here because of the fighting in Gaza. I asked myself: Is visiting Israel the proper thing to do? Will I be supporting one side?<br /><br />"I gave it some thought. And I decided to come. Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. So I chose to see. I chose to speak here rather than say nothing. </em><br /><br /><strong>Transcript</strong>: <em>A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.<br /><br />The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.<br /><br />Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.<br /><br />Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.<br /><br />And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.</em><br /><br />My apologizes for the long transcript quotes - but it shows clearly how the "quotes" in the newspaper articles were more paraphrases of sentences that occur in different paragraphs. The quotes from the Jerusalem Post are those that were picked up and transmitted around the world via AFP, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/16/haruki-murakami-jerusalem-prize" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, ABC (Australia). <br /><br />And how about the Jerusalem Post's claim of 'obscurity' and 'vagueness' regarding the wall / egg metaphor? Well, let's quote Murakami himself:<br /><br />"<em>What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.</em>"<br /><br />Not the most obscure unpacking of a metaphor I've ever read. If you add the above paragraph with the '<em>I will always stand on the side of the egg</em>' quote - then it isn't hard to say which side of the conflict Murakami's sympathies lie. Murakami then goes on to outline a deeper meaning of the metaphor where we as individuals are the eggs, The System is the wall. "<em>We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System</em>". It would seem to me that his sympathies lie with individuals (regardless of their religion, nationality or race). It wouldn't be too much a stretch to see The System as those institutional structures of State, of Capital, of Church that seem to exist independent of individuals - yet in whose name those individuals suffer war, poverty and intolerance. But that is me putting words into his metaphor now...<br /><br />I think it obvious that the original Jerusalem Post article is deeply misleading - and in as much as it is - the international press that quoted only from the Jerusalem Post is equally misleading. Not all the international press, however, relied upon the Jerusalem Post. Haaretz published the transcript of Murakami's speech on their website. And reports I read in the <a href="http://www.ibna.ir/vdccoxq1.2bqe18y-a2.txt" target="_blank">Iranian press</a> appeared to be able to quote Murakami correctly.<br /><br />Regarding the transcripts of Murakami's speech - I discovered that there were in fact subtle differences in the online versions of the speeches that I came across. Murakami gave his speech in English (though not particularly easy to understand English - see the excerpt on the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhiyrspJ74" target="_blank">youtube video</a>). The Haaretz version of speech was largely re-published word-for-word on Salon.com - though strangely with a noticeable exception. These two paragraphs didn't make it through to the Salon.com version:<br /><br />"<em>This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.<br /><br />It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.</em>"<br /><br />The 47news transcript also misses out the above two paragraphs, and also the following italicized section: "Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. <em>This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation.</em> Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott." <br /><br />What is interesting about the 47news article is the note (in Japanese) from the person who posted it saying that he had edited the official transcript given out by the organizers of the Prize where it differed from his own recording of the speech. And there are a number of places where his transcript does indeed differ from that on the Haaretz site. Here are the main differences I noted (there are other smaller differences):<br /><br /><strong>Haaretz / Salon</strong> - Diplomats and <em>military men</em> tell their own kinds of lies on occasion<br /><strong>47news</strong> - Diplomats and <em>generals</em> tell their own kinds of lies on occasion<br /><br /><strong>Haaretz / Salon</strong> - One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the <em>war</em>.<br /><strong>47news</strong> - One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the <em>battlefield</em>.<br /><br /><strong>Haaretz</strong> - And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today. <br /><strong>47news</strong> - And I would like to express my gratitude to the readers in Israel. You are the biggest reason why I am here. And I hope we are sharing something, something very meaningful. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today. Thank you very much.<br /><strong>Salon</strong> - the whole last paragraph is missing from this version<br /><br />I am not sure what to make of the differences between the transcripts. Is it possible that the organizers added in a couple of paragraphs into the speech to emphasize that Murakami was not making a political message? Was the transcript published by Haaretz the full script provided by the organizers? Was the 47news reporter working from his/her recording not putting in those sentences because they were never said? Or did the 47news reporter take those sentences out of the organizer's transcript by accident or design when editing the script? (However - those same sentences were removed in the Salon.com version which is otherwise near identical to the Haaretz verion). I have some faith in the 47news script in part because it does contain more text in the closing paragraph of the script - 3 sentences are not in the Haaretz version - 3 sentences that even the Jerusalem Post was able to quote almost correctly because they supported its case. Without finding a video or audio recording of the speech (and I have looked for one) I cannot say why these discrepancies have occurred.<br /><br />One thing is for certain - Murakami was not expressing support for Israel's actions in Gaza. He later published an article in a Japanese literary journal <a href="http://www.bunshun.co.jp/mag/bungeishunju/index.htm" target="_blank">Bungei Shunju</a> strongly condemning Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. You can read an article about this at <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3685218,00.html" target="_blank">ynetnews.com</a>. Unfortunately I have not been able to get a hold of this article - and being in Japanese would not be able to read it myself if I could. If anyone comes across a translation of the article - I would like see what he actually said.Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-78955908291032811262009-04-24T14:24:00.004+07:002009-04-24T15:12:12.207+07:00Wedding 2.0At the beginning of the year we went to Japan to get married. In April, we returned to act out the celebration before a cast of dozens - it was a lot of fun. Tick. If you want to know more - go to <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/" target="_blank">flickr</a>. Now back in Hanoi and I have descended back into 'on-line research' whilst continuing my favourite past-time of quitting cigarettes. Extended hours of alcohol fueled mania investigating the news of the world at the moment have ensued - but before we get to that. Book club update:<br /><br /><strong>Whilst in Japan I read:</strong><br /><br /><p><em>Footsteps</em> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pramoedya_Ananta_Toer" target="_blank">Pramoedya Ananta Toer</a></p><br />The last book in the Buru Quartet. I have mentioned this series before - so won't repeat myself here except for this: If you want to be part of a nationalist uprising, or wish to suppress one, you can learn lot from this amazing quartet and its author.<br /><br /><p><em>Perfect Spy - The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An</em> by Larry Berman</p><br />Pham An was a Vietnamese Communist agent, and a reporter for Time Magazine, and this an excellent biography by a historian who sat down and talked with An and had access to his personal collection of documents. One of the things I am interested in is the media. One of the over-whelming messages in becoming a professional reporter is 'objectivity'. Now I believe quite seriously that 'objectivity' is a ideal that cannot ever be reached. My belief in this stems from my previous study in Philosophy of Science - where 'being objective' is taken very seriously, and found to be rather a complicated beast even for the hardest of sciences. In reportage, being objective seems to have various meanings. One meaning is 'balanced'. Another is 'authenticity'. What strikes me about Pham An is that he appears to have been an excellent reporter on many levels, as judged by his fellow (American) reporters, even after he was exposed as having been a Communist agent. He seemed to understand that his cover was based on being authentically good at his cover-story - being a reporter. He wasn't just acting as being a reporter - he was being a really good reporter - and had more reasons to be so than most. And by this account he successfully balanced his nationalistic duties, his reporting duties, and his duties towards his friends. That is quite a remarkable feat. There are many things in this book that made me think - and if nothing else - it is a damn fine spy read - the better for being based on fact. And also the guy was a chain smoker for life - he died of complications from emphysema. In my present state, I give honour to someone who died by these little 'tubes of joy'. (I have a feeling that 'tubes of joy' came from a quote by playwright Dennis Potter - though I am unsure. Watch this section from Dennis' '<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDOe7Npinl4" target="_blank">The Singing Detective</a>' that provides some insight into his view of the medical profession.)<br /><br /><p><em>Bias - A CBS Insider Exposes how the Media Distort the News</em> by Bernard Goldberg</p><br />Whilst in Japan I visited the bookshop Bookoff that has a fine selection of second-hand English language books. I bought four. This was the first that I read. How 'Media Distort the News' - it grabbed my attention - this is what I have been currently interested in. And for only $2! Later when I read the blurbs I was confused... 'Again and again he saw that the news slanted to the left... no one listened. The liberal bias continued'. Hold on, the US TV news, slanted to the left? I needed to read the book to find out why I was so confused about the US mass media - I had always thought it was a little the other way... I read, and the book made me angry. I was also trying not to smoke, which made me angry, so perhaps it wasn't the book's fault? The basic premise of the book - the US mass TV news media slant the news coverage to the left. They continuously promote liberal observations and experts and ignore conservative observations and experts. This slant can be seen in reportage of: affirmative action, homelessness, HIV/AIDS, and men. My observations on objectivity have concluded that objectivity depends on your standpoint. And if you are a patriotic conservative in the mainstream American media - I think Goldberg is right. The media is biased to the left, a liberal bias. If you are a patriotic liberal in the mainstream of American media - I think their observation that Goldberg is a traitor to their efforts is correct. If you are not in the main stream American media - perhaps say in the media outside of the US - or perhaps a foreigner not in the media at all - you can agree with Goldberg that the main stream media in the US is only concerned about making a profit and that motivation seeps into every part of their coverage. Goldberg labels them as hypocrites. Sure. I would just like to extend the term to the 'conservative' section of the main stream US press as well. US main stream media coverage can seem strangely alien to people outside of the US - my guess is it feels the same to many within the US too.<br /><br />The problem I had with the book was that it was purely domestic, aimed at the domestic audience. It barely mentioned the world outside the US. But where it did was instructive - the second last chapter 'Connecting the Dots... to Terrorism' the domestic media is lambasted... 'Why would journalists, so interested in connecting the dots when they thought they led to Rush Limbaugh, be so uninterested in connecting the dots when there might actually be dots to connect - <i>from hateful, widely held popular attitudes in much of the Arab world straight to the cockpits of those hijacked jetliners?</i>' (pg.211, italics in the original). And does this lead to a comment about US foreign policy? No. The dots are not connected from 'widely held popular attitudes in much of the Arab world' to possible reasons why many people may hold those attitudes. Which leads me to the next book I read...<br /><br /><p><em>Rogue State - A Guide to the World's Only Superpower</em> - by William Blum</p><br />This book also made me angry - but more the anger I felt after reading <em>The Shock Doctrine</em> (Naomi Klein) and <em>The Age of the Warrior</em> (Robert Fisk). It is a very dense and concise summation of US Government's sins both overseas (largely) and domestically. If you want to 'connect the dots' here is a good place to start. Blum has been praised by both Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal - so it is easy to see by association whether you want to read this book or not. To me this is a valuable reference book - it has a detailed reference section - unlike <em>Bias</em>. Find the author's (in need of a web designer) site at: <a href="http://www.killinghope.org/" target="_blank">http://www.killinghope.org/</a>. Why not check out his 'Anti-Empire Reports', but beware of liberal bias!<br /><br />At present I am reading Noam Chomsky's 'Middle East Illusions'. What a left wing pinky I must be ;-) Whilst reading these books I have come across a number of strange and interesting websites. This man's blog (<a href="http://billtotten.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Bill Totten</a>) links to many articles from American's not at all happy with where the USA is going. Note - he is based in Japan and has given up his American citizenship to become Japanese. I was surprised to see how many people in the current economic crisis see the seeds of the US downfall (especially see <a href="http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Cluborlov</a>). I do not follow this line of thought. I feel the current economic problems are not accidental, not unforeseen, and are largely used as the instrument to move a lot of public money into private hands. Similar in line to the main thesis espoused by <a href="http://www.naomiklein.org/main" target="_blank">Naomi Klein</a>. I don't see this as the last gasp of capitalism - just another grab - before the next one. For more insight into the US economic crisis check out <a href="http://baselinescenario.com/" target="_blank">The Baseline Scenario</a>. If you are worried about bias in the media - perhaps this is a useful link: <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/" target="_blank">Source Watch</a>.<br /><br /><strong>Onto other things</strong>:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PnYb_ZvMzU" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PnYb_ZvMzU</a><br /><strong>Curing Kleptomania</strong><br />I once worked at a University - and sometime lecturers would want to put up videos of themselves talking about dull subjects - talking heads streamed to your computer. It was widely acknowledged to be a terrible format for educational purposes - but still continues today. Here is a short talking head video whose dull (and problematic in my eyes) subject is enhanced by a few simple cartoons. For any online educational institution that is forced to put talking head videos online - perhaps hire a cartoonist to make them more palatable, even entertaining.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ciachef.edu/" target="_blank">http://www.ciachef.edu/</a><br /><strong>The Culinary Institute of America</strong><br />Perhaps I've been reading too much reactionary material about the exploits of the CIA - but I took a double-look at this site before I could decide it was authentic. Was the web-designer possessed with a rarified sense of irony and humour? (Under Quick Links: Cooking Programs: Boot Camp, Flavors of Latin Cuisine [first 2 listed]). Or watch 'Cooking Secrets of the CIA', a PBS television show. The New Haven Restaurant Institute was created in 1946 as a 'vocational training school for returning veterans of World War II'. The Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947. In 1951 the New Haven Restaurant Institute became the CIA (Culinary Institute of America). One of its notable alumni is Anthony Bourdain, whose book "A Cook's Tour" planted the seed in scratchindog's head all those years ago to move to Vietnam. To the paranoid, there are connections everywhere...<br /><br /><a href="http://royksopp.com/" target="_blank">Röyksopp</a><br /><strong>Music pick of the week</strong><br />I have been killed only once to my knowledge. That is, cut-off so entirely and utterly from another person as to have all the appearances of being a ghost. Not that long ago I quietly and privately held a one year wake of the day I heard the absolute last word from my assassin - 'disappointed'. I deserved the treatment - I was very bad - and the following utter silence was a devilishly successful punishment if that was its intention. Walking around Hanoi with my ishuffle on random - I kept hearing some fantastic music which I couldn't place. I have tracked down who it was from playlists from before my fall from grace. I still mourn the loss of my friend - finding this band is a small bright jewel found in the rubble over a year later. Röyksopp (Norwegian electronic music duo Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge) use a sample in their music (e.g. around 2:04 minutes into the version of 'Röyksopp's Night Out' I have - but also in other tracks) that sounds exactly like the default alert for gchat. It has had me switching windows for days and wondering what the hell is going on. Tricky bastards...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y54ABqSOScQ" target="_blank">Little Red Riding Hood</a><br /><strong>By Tomas Nilsson, music by Slagsmålsklubben</strong><br />Beautiful - but note also <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xhdy9zBEws&feature=related">Röyksopp's similar video concept</a> which is also lovely.Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-49741446192459868622009-04-03T18:57:00.003+07:002009-04-03T19:03:37.756+07:00off to Japan - goodbye web surfingI've been spending an inordinate amount of time internet researching - in other words - web surfing. Whole days slipping into oblivion as I trawl through the endless offerings that are out there. All wasted time, and time away doing nice, lovely things, like writing pithy blog entries.<br /><br />I'm off to Japan in a few hours. A couple of weeks with wonderful distractions to keep me away from both blogging and web surfing. Could be a couple of weeks before I get back to the keyboard. To make up for it, here is a little of what I was wasting my time on before I left...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Media Stuff:</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.projectcensored.org/">http://www.projectcensored.org/</a><br />Project Censored - The news that didn't make the News. My favourite media site of the week. Featuring the top 25 censored stories from each year. Newsworthy stuff that doesn't seem to make it to the main papers. I spent a whole morning reading through this stuff - love it! Read it. Get paranoid. You should be... and this is a long term serious project involving media students and submissions from around the world.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.truthout.org/">http://www.truthout.org/</a><br />A reader funded news agency that provides a "stable voice for independent journalism". I found many interesting and well written articles on this site.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.aim.org/">http://www.aim.org/</a><br />Accuracy in Media - "for Fairness, Balance and Accuracy in News Reporting" - which stands to revert the overwhelming liberal bias in the US media. Ho hum. See for yourself how they do this. Note the Annual Report is 'Coming May 2008'.<br /><br /><a href="http://mediamatters.org/about_us/">http://mediamatters.org/about_us/</a><br />Media Matters for America - and from the other side a not-for-profit center "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."<br /><br /><a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/">http://dissidentvoice.org/</a><br />And one more step to the left - "a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice".<br /><br /><a href="http://www.everything2.com/">http://www.everything2.com/</a><br />I couldn't quite figure this site out. A place to post your opinions, writings or knowledge about pretty much anything. The postings are vetted by the users, and can be discarded by superusers. There is a voting system, and you can 'earn' some form of non-monetary credit for your writing. Individual pieces represent nodes, and nodes are connected by readers, and interestingly also automatically by analysis of the browsing patterns of readers. It is not a wiki - your writings are not editable even by yourself. I was interesting floating around in everything2 for a while - but I wasn't attracted to the format. It seems to float between a blog and wikipedia and I don't know where that is exactly...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nowpublic.com/">http://www.nowpublic.com/</a><br />"Crowd Powered Media" anyone can be a reporter and have it broadcast here to the world.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.trackernews.net/">http://www.trackernews.net/</a><br />A news aggregator with a particular focus on Health, Humanitarian work and Technology as it applies to both. Links to a wide variety of interesting sources - not just news sites. A project of the NGO Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters (<a href="http://instedd.net/">InSTEDD</a>).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">People organizing together:</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.wikicrimes.org/">http://www.wikicrimes.org/</a><br />Users make reports of types and locations of crimes in Brazil on a map based wiki site. If enough people participate - then crime areas are clearly identified and pressure can be brought to bare on the government to address the issue.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.addiopizzo.org/english.asp">http://www.addiopizzo.org/english.asp</a><br />Taking on the Mafia. A group of shop owners and merchants who are publicly banding together and refusing to pay protection money - or pizzo from the mafia. By forming a collective and publicly listing those merchants who refuse to pay pizzo they have started to gain public support. The public also have places to shop without indirectly funding the mafia.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.barcamphanoi.org/">http://www.barcamphanoi.org/</a><br />There have been barcamps all around the world now - and I wasn't only slightly disappointed to find out they were outside drinking meetups - but that is what bia hoi is for I guess. These are technological educational events - but without the formal structures of a conference. Often called 'un-conferences' there is no distinction between presenter and audience - everyone is expected to be willing to participate and present. This is Hanoi's attempt.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Art:</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.stickygum.com/slownotes">http://www.stickygum.com/slownotes</a><br />Postcards from Vietnam by Damien Frost (http://www.dfrost.net/). Very beautiful drawings, and a nice homepage.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://ryoheihase.com">http://ryoheihase.com</a><br />Some beautiful - if somewhat disturbing art. I particularly like his Repetition - strange dog men and rabbit men...<br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.hotdocs.ca/index.php/audience/festival/"><br />http://www.hotdocs.ca/index.php/audience/festival/</a><br />Hot Docs 2009 Festival. Documentary showcase in Toronto - why can't I go to Toronto?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Software:</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.thebrain.com/">http://www.thebrain.com/</a><br />Visual information management software. Again I was on a search for a way of organizing the diverse and scattered bits of knowledge, or sites, or books that I keep running across. I didn't end up downloading it - though I may yet do so. I couldn't face yet another software learning curve, and am still unclear as to what or why I want to organize. What is it I want to achieve - and given what I want to achieve, how can this facilitate it? I'm still stuck on the what.Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-42528637986429918592009-04-01T16:24:00.001+07:002009-04-01T17:12:09.821+07:00german dazeIt has been a strange couple of days. We have had guests in town - well - people who know people who know one of us kind of guests - in short - strangers. However and whatever, we met and had dinner at <a href="http://www.highway4.com/en/locations/hangtre.html" target="_blank">Highway 4 on Hang Tre</a> which is a fine eating establishment and the first stop to take out-of-town folk who you want to introduce to Vietnamese cuisine. Or at least, Vietnamese <a href="http://www.sontinh.com/world.html" target="_blank">rice wine</a>. Our guests were two Germans, one American, all architects. Lovely people on a one week whirl-wind tour of Vietnam. Afterwards we popped into tadioto - a place I have been able to wipe away inconvenient memories by the application of patent designed alcohol swabs. The next night, only one German, and we ate Japanese at <a href="http://newhanoian.xemzi.com/venue/show/258/Ky-Y" target="_blank">Ky Y</a>, and another stop at tadioto. The next night it was the full quotient of 3 again and fine French dining at <a href="http://newhanoian.xemzi.com/en/venue/show/2643/La-Badiane" target="_blank">La Badiane</a>, then tadioto. <br /><br />And today I spent a brief time at Cafe Cong helping <a href="http://www.scottezell.org/" target="_blank">a fine young sexually charged man</a> with his WordPress site. As we sat there with our laptops, the owner of tadioto passes by making various rude gestures at us. Mistaking these as an invitation to pass by my-living-room-away-from-home, I come and sit at the black bar of contemplation to read, drink a beer and enjoy the afternoon in subdued shadows. And who should walk in but Gerhart Schröder and his entourage. Well - it is Hanoi and anything can happen on a school day afternoon when you are having a quite beer. Minding your own business. <br /><br />On Friday late evening I fly to Tokyo to prepare for the celebration of the fait accompli - my marriage. Let us leave these German things behind us for the moment and think Japanese.Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-47791931915568364472009-03-27T11:35:00.003+07:002009-03-27T12:48:01.962+07:00bia hơi and Toer<span style="font-weight: bold;">Bia hơi Quán Sứ</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ten AM bia hơi, and I am not alone</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Today the sun is shining</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A faint blue struggles through the smog</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">To sit and drink and read and write</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In the morning, on the street</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Watching the traffic on a busy round-about</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Smoke curls through my fingers</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A woman sells me a safety razor</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">An ode to my enduring love of Hanoi</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Why has the West forgotten these simple pleasures?</span><br /><br />OK - its all very good and well of me to wax lyrical about the joys of bia hoi in the morning - but I am in a privileged position. My wallet usually contains half a months wages in Vietnamese terms (did I walk around in Australia with two grand in my pocket? no I didn't). And even the Westerners here look upon me with suspicion as the non-tourist who is unemployed. Whilst others toil at teaching English, I sit in the sun at a bia hoi and write poetry and read books. I've got to be careful... Envy will find me and strike me down. However, after half a life of loyal service to The University of Sydney I am going to take this period laying down. I always thought salaried work was a kind of blackmail. For this short period of time I shall enjoy the opposite. What shall I call it? Whitemale?<br /><br />I have almost finished the last book in the Buru Quartet - by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps and House of Glass). An extended story of colonialism and the birth of indigenous nationalism in Dutch Indochina around the the beginnings on the 20th century. A must read for anyone interested in colonialism, politics, economics and class repression. Or control of the media, or how to organize a resistance against oppression. A manual for popular uprising, showing many of the wrong paths to take, the perils and successes of social consciousness raising. Or a thesis on why which language you write in counts. There are many good book reviews online, so I shall just provide my imprimatur to these books. They are good. Get on your lazy arse and read them.<br /><br />Many thanks to deepwarren and hellsexy who physically relayed the last two of the quartet from Oz to here. What would isolated readers do without the international readers' conspiracy?Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-70575099851278824152009-03-22T15:48:00.001+07:002009-03-22T15:48:24.909+07:00tadioto<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/3328976390/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3325/3328976390_c8ff22672a_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/3328976390/">tadioto</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/rwest/">Scratchin Dog</a>. </span></div>There were no strange dreams last night, only the abyss of a dead drunk sleep. This morning, the sickness. Coffee sickness. Cigarette sickness. Moving sickness. All the sickness a third level piggy-backed hangover can muster. The heavy pressed full-stop at the end of each of my last three days has a name, and its name is tadioto. Or perhaps it isn't a full-stop at all, but a long drawn out ellipsis...<br /><br />Tadioto is a bar in the making. It isn't open yet, so I'm not going to tell you where it is. There are no customers, only consultants. I am the Jamesons consultant. The bar top is a long expanse of dull black rock, the kind of bar top that should only exist in a Murakami novel. I like to sit at the far end of the bar so I can gaze down its light absorbing length. It reminds me of the obelisk in 2001 - except you put your scotch on it. The lights are low, the music excellent and unobtrusive. The other occasional consultants are an eclectic mix of the scum of the earth - reporters, photographers and the like. The bar stools are unfeasible narrow and uncomfortable. If you want to sit at the bar it is hard work. If you can't take the pain of the stools, you are relegated to the easy chairs in the corner. Only the real drinkers, the professionals, sit at the bar. The consultants.<br /><br />The young Vietnamese bartender - practicing for when the bar finally opens - is uncomfortably handsome. He is tall and elegant, and doesn't so much move as silently glide from space to space. He has that strange quality of being-almost-not-quite-there. A skill shared between the best barmen and ghosts. Or ghost barmen as in The Shining. His voice is barely audible, and often I wonder if we have conversed at all, or whether the entire communication has taken place by telepathy. On the top of my bar tab that he meticulously updates in impeccable handwriting he writes 'Mr Jamesons'. <br /><br />And then there is the other one. The owner. I don't want to write his name, or even think it. Of late, each time I hear his name a rapid pain shots through my internal organs. My kidneys and liver strain like a terrified dog on the end of a chain. He does not write anything on my bar tab - and if he is behind the bar my glass is never half empty. This man is every alcoholics dream, every alcoholics nightmare. An assassin with bottles. This is why the consultants gather here. This will be the finest bar in Hanoi if it ever opens, but the bar is but the body. The man is the heart and mind. And like moths to the flame, so the consultants come and work towards their early graves, to listen to this man. Like some hideous parody of the sermon on the mount, the owner dispenses his wisdom and we lap it up like starving curs. We should be ashamed.<br /><br />I do not look forward to the day when this bar opens. Part of me hopes it never will. Customers will clutter the place up, degrade it, sully it with their noise and pointless chatter. I much prefer the quiet company of the consultants, gathered around their despondent Jesus. Perhaps the only good thing that can come from this bar opening is it may just save my life.<br clear="all" />Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-61381886297262942762009-03-12T15:42:00.003+07:002009-03-12T16:13:05.296+07:00the truth about my life in VietnamI've been dealing with a lot of those 'what have you been up to over there' kind of emails of late. Vietnam sounds so exotic. You look like you are having a great time. Yadda yadda yadda. These questions bug me mostly because they encourage me to sit back and ask myself the same thing. What have I been doing over here? I don't work. I often don't even leave the apartment until dinner time. I am not writing my great Australia/Vietnamese novel. I'm not even sitting back staring at the wall with some kick-arse drug habit (cigarettes and booze don't count, if only because they are legal). So what is it I've been doing all this time?<br /><br />I'll tell you what. I've been reading. Call it 'research towards the novel', or 'avoiding all my responsibilities'. I've looked at myself hard in the mirror and asked where all those hours, days, weeks, months have disappeared to. And it is reading. Whenever I can't face life, or reality, I pick up a book. And obviously I've had a lot of responsibilities to avoid. I've sat down and listed all the books I remember have read since leaving Australia in April last year. This list is in no particular order, and I've probably forgotten a few. However, there are only two books on the list which I felt happy to see the back of - the Paul Coelho and the Iain Banks - they didn't do it for me.<br /><br />Bowl of Cherries - Millard Kaufman<br />The Age of the Warrior - Selected Writings - Robert Fisk<br />The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein<br />Interpreter of Maladies (short stories) - Jhumpa Lahiri<br />This Earth of Mankind - Pramoedya Ananta Toer<br />Child of All Nations - Pramoedya Ananta Toer<br />Generation of Swine (reread) - Hunter S Thompson<br />Failed States - Noam Chomsky<br />The Zahir - Paulo Coelho<br />A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali - Gil Courtemanche<br />Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie<br />Snow - Orhan Pamuk<br />Last Night I Dreamed of Peace - Dang Thuy Tram<br />Dirt Music - Tim Winton<br />A Wolf at the Table - Augusten Burroughs<br />Possible Side Effects - Augusten Burroughs<br />Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs<br />The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor - Gabriel Garcia Marquez<br />The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini<br />In Evil Hour - Gabriel Garcia Marquez<br />Short Cuts - Raymond Carver<br />What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (short stories) - Raymond Carver<br />1967 This Is It! - Lowell Tarling<br />South of the Border, West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami<br />A Wild Sheep Chase (reread) - Haruki Murakami<br />The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon<br />Birthday Stories (shoter stories - various authors) - ed Haruki Murakami<br />A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini<br />The Piano Teacher - Elfeiede Jelinek<br />The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck<br />Double Vision - Pat Barker<br />Underground - Andrew McGahan<br />A Song of Stone - Iain Banks<br />Two Caravans - Marina Lewycka<br />A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Maria Lewycka<br />Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris<br />Strange Pilgrims - Gabriel Garcia Marquez<br />Novel with No Name - Duong Thu Huong<br />A Viet Cong Memoir - Truong Nhu Tang<br />Ho Chi Minh: Selected Writings<br />Dumb Luck - Vu Trong Phung<br />Brazil - John Updike<br />The Road - Cormac McCarthy<br />The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry<br /><br />currently reading:<br />Footsteps - Pramoedya Ananta Toer<br />Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard - Kiran DesaiScratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-77679388453925002062009-02-16T11:45:00.002+07:002009-02-16T11:52:00.396+07:00A week of headachesThere were two topics I wanted to write about last week, and both of them ended up being too hard for me. First there was that thorny personal issue of smoking - and the quitting thereof. Nearly four days I spent not smoking, with nicotine patch firmly planted on arse (alternate cheeks on alternate days). Then I snapped - and it has been a low dose of my wife's clove cigarettes ever since. I have achieved a marked reduction, and I know the next time I suck on a non-clove cigarette I'll think it is disgusting. However, my lungs are still torched and I feel like the loser I always feel like when I fail to quit yet again. The second topic was the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. Now why the hell would I want to touch that subject? A topic so complex, with such a mired history, that it is close to impossible to get the facts right. And even if by a miracle you could get the facts right, there are just too many people out there on both sides that will slam you down whatever opinion you may dare to put forward. Well there are two reasons I wanted to write something about it. The first was that I had just finished the near 500 page collection of Robert Fisk articles 'The Age of the Warrior'. The Israeli / Palestine conflict runs through that collection like a never ending car crash. I am deeply affected by books - and after obsessively reading these articles I was miserable, depressed, angry. To write something about it would be to help expunge the hopelessness and disempowerment I felt after finishing it. (The last book that provoked such powerful feelings in me was 'The Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klein). The second reason was the constantly repeated double deatholizer figures from the last Israeli incursion into Gaza. 13 Israeli dead, 1300 Palestinian dead. Without going into further detail right now - there is just something horribly wrong in that ratio.<br /><br />Yet I couldn't write anything about either topic. Damn it - I still can't. It is 9:30am and I've just come back upstairs after opening my first beer of the day. Just thinking about writing about these two topics has caused me to start drinking earlier than usual (only a few hours earlier - but still...) Before I left Australia I disposed of my rather large and disparate library. This is not the time to discuss that, only that I have few regrets about doing so. One of those regrets just occurred. I had a number of books by the fantastic author Céline (aka Louis-Ferdinand Céline, aka Louis-Ferdinand Destouches). He is responsible for my over use of ellipses... One of these books had a forward by Kurt Vonnegut Jr - one of the best forwards I've ever read. He complains that writing this forward is giving him continual headaches - I wish I could quote him correctly here. Celine has often been denounced as an anti-semite. Kurt Vonnegut was a great admirer of Celine's work - yet obviously was in no way an anti-semite. I can see the cause of the headaches. I've been having headaches all week. No all of them to do with nicotine withdrawal.<br /><br />Back to a safe topic. Dreams. I've been putting on nicotine patches before I go to bed to cut off that morning cigarette urge at the root so to speak. And one of the side-effects of this is that my dreams have become much more vivid, intense, and personally interesting. Yesterday I started reading 'In Evil Hour' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Last night I was treated to a retelling of the first 30 pages of the book in a stylized filmatic form. The priest, the mayor, the judge made their appearances. The action was no longer in Spain, but contemporary Faulconbridge / Springwood - the towns in the Blue Mountains I grew up in as a teenager. In some parts the dialogue was spoken like an awful high-school performance of Beckett. Other parts were depicted as a cartoon (a la Kill Bill). And one beautiful entrance (the Judge) was sung in a distinctly Gilbert and Sullivan fashion. In parts of the performance I was one of the actors - in other parts I was watching the whole thing on my laptop whilst charging it up before the train ride to my old school. As often happens now when my high school slips into my dreams, I remember that I have graduated from University and no longer need to debase myself into going to my much disliked place of earlier learning. I remember feeling happy in the dream when I realized this - 'Great, I've got a day off!' - I remember thinking. I awoke with the dream not finished and had an urge to roll over and sink back down perchance to sneak another episode. After all, John Goodman had mysteriously made an appearance. My wife was making the coffee, however, and the guilt of my selfishness rolled me out of bed.<br /><br />10:30am - second beer. The headache is back. The patch is my left cheek today. Why do I want to write about Palestine / Israel? Why don't I want to write about it? OK. Let's bite the bullet here (no pun intended). The Israeli military invasion of Gaza disgusted me. Like every time you see the vastly more powerful, the vastly more resourced antagonist, pummel, pound and annihilate a weaker opponent. Like when a pack of big kids beat up the small one. When a burly drunken husband smacks the shit out of his wife or daughter. Even trivially - in a professional boxing match when one opponent just far out-classes the other. When the cat plays with the half-dead mouse. There is something disgusting in watching naked power reigning down upon the weaker opponent. There is a myth about Australian's that we always bet on the underdog (it is a myth - there are plenty of Australians both as individuals and as a government that relish playing the role of the bully). Yet there is that visceral feeling of disgust I get when I see unmatched opponents. I guess I'm not a sadist at heart. 13 Israelis dead. 1300 Palestinians dead. The ratio does not diminish the deaths of those Israelis. A death-is-a-death-is-a-death. Irreversible no matter what your nationality, creed, religion, occupation etc... But that number - 1300. Almost 200 people died in the recent (on-going) Australian bushfires. This is, quite rightly, seen as a national disaster. The Australian papers have been overflowing on the subject. It is an awful number of deaths. More than 200 children were killed in the recent Gaza invasion. That number is mentioned here and there in the press, and is now quickly being forgotten. But a death-is-a-death-is-a-death...<br /><br />Why don't I want to write about this stuff? Because there are plenty of people that as soon as you sympathize with the Palestinians will accuse you of being on 'their' side. To criticize the Israeli invasion of Gaza is synonymous with being anti-Israeli, and then it is just a short step to being anti-semetic, and then someone is going to bring up the Holocaust. And this familiar slope is just so much bullshit I don't want to get dragged into. Don't I know that 'they' were firing rockets into Israel? Yes - I know that. Does it justify killing 1300 people. No. Am I supporting those terrorists Hamas? No, I am not supporting the democratically elected Hamas government. When Hamas (or other factions) kill Israelis (or other Palestinians) I don't support it. Believe it or not - you can hold a position where you neither support what the Israeli government does, or the Hamas government, or the Fatah government, or the US government. There is a position where you don't support any of the major players - but still find the sheer death and suffering caused unbearable to watch. And find the lies, misinformation, demonizing and endless justifications from all sides sickening. And this is when the headaches start. So much easier not read about it, not think about it, not try to understand. Because when I try to understand - I get sick. And why should I get sick over something that I largely cannot do anything about? It's too late. I already know about it - and it has been banging around in my head for weeks, months, years - and the best I can do is try to learn why this happens. Why this continues to happen. And what it is about humans that makes this - and so much much worse - possible. Robert Fisk has just published <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-a-fair-point-everyone-is-equal-in-their-suffering-during-wartime-1609206.html" target="_blank">another column</a> which makes a fair stab at why writing about this stuff is something most sane people would want to avoid. It is so much better than what I can do.<br /><br />Is this my third or my fourth beer now? It isn't quite midday. I should be ashamed of myself. I want a cigarette - but I asked my wife to take all the open packets out of the house to her workplace this morning. My headache is real and getting worse. Screw this writing shit. The next piece is going to be about another dream. Who reads this stuff anyway? (And if there happens to be some Vietnamese government censor out there who does read my blog - keep up the good work - I hope you are getting something out of it!).Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-52336438014833958972009-02-03T13:17:00.002+07:002009-02-03T13:22:55.169+07:00I want to tell you about a girl...A long time ago - before I even turned 18 - I fell in love with a girl. She wasn't the first girl I fell in love with, nor the last. Yet at the time I felt very deeply that I was in love with this girl. She came from a well-to-do Hong Kong / Australian family. My own family was a traditional long distant import from Europe that in the last generation had crawled into the middle classes. She was beautiful in the way that symmetrically faced young asian women often are to young white males. More than beautiful, however, she was smart. No, not smart. Many people are smart. I was smart. She was ridiculously intelligent. One of the best of the elite students in the country that year. Great at mathematics, great at English, great at wherever her intelligence was directed. And more than smart, she was kind, modest, with a subtle humour and flawless manners. Entirely dedicated to her family. Everything that a well-to-do family could ever hope for in a daughter. It was hardly surprising I fell in love with her - the only mystery was that so many others hadn't. Or perhaps they had, but she never had a boyfriend, nor seemed to show any interest in getting one. Perhaps like me, suitors were simply too intimidated to actually express their feelings to her.<br /><br />I dreamt of her last night - and this morning it has brought back a handful of disjointed broken memories. Memories of non-connected events that no more create a picture of her than the reflections of a broken mirror. Indeed, like that broken mirror, it shows nothing more than a collection of miniature reflections of myself rather than any image of her at all.<br /><br />I cannot exactly remember how we met. I cannot remember the first time we talked. Our meeting was, I do know, through a mutual female friend who I shall call Sally. I remember the only time I ever went to this girl's house was with Sally. It must have been my 2nd year in University. We had all know each other for quite a while then - and we were allowed to sleep over in the room outside the girl's bedroom. We all stayed up late that night, but at some point the girl had to go to bed and retreated to her bedroom and shut the door. Sally and I were outside, perhaps on a fold-out bed or sofa and we started fooling around. Both of us were still virgins back then, and rarely did either of us have this opportunity, this night-time proximity with the opposite sex. I cannot imagine that this fooling around went very far. Kisses and wandering hands under clothes and giggles and arousal. However, we must have been giggling a lot and when we heard the noise from the room we both stopped dead. Behind the closed door the girl was crying - sobbing into her pillow. We both felt bad. And then we both felt even worse, for neither of us could bring ourselves to go comfort the crying girl. Our friend. The girl I was supposed to be in love with. It was the first time I realized that the girl who was everything a well-to-do family could ask for was also extremely lonely.<br /><br />Another memory - much later - now I must have been in 4th year University. By now I had lost my virginity (by coincidence - and disastrously - with Sally). A year and a half in a private residential college had turned me into a drinker. Third year University in the United States had reinforced my taste for alcohol, introduced me to soft drugs and broadened my knowledge of flirtation, love, obsession and sex. I was now a tutor at a famous University whilst I hammered away on a minor dissertation and attended classes on philosophy and sociology of science. The girl was now clearly a woman, and more than half way through her medical degree. She still had not ever had a boyfriend. I was still in love with her. I had still never told her so. I was a more confident creature now, and after pacing up and down the rooms of my share-house for days on end I thought this was the time! I really had to face rejection and ask her out.<br /><br />We were the type of friends who did not meet often - but when we did it was usually alone and we would just talk for hours. And those talks were fresh, honest, interesting, frank, and simply some of the best conversations of my life. It was unusual for me to phone her up - but not unheard of. So without really knowing how to ask her, I picked up the phone and dialed her number. She still lived with her parents. I have no memory of how I asked. I imagine that a few seconds after asking I had no memory of how I asked. But ask I did, and the answer I remember clearly. It wasn't an out-right rejection, and certainly it wasn't an acceptance. It was simply that it wasn't possible. Someone had asked her out yesterday - and she had said yes to him. After four years of keeping my mouth shut - the possibility had slipped by less than 24 hours before.<br /><br />I was devastated. Not on the phone of course, that would have been impolite. But once that receiver went down I was in shock. The irony of the timing. Whilst I was pacing up-and-down someone had beaten me to the question. Not just someone even - but one of my own bloody students. I had a third of a bottle of scotch in my room - I drank it listening but not listening to Nick Cave on repeat. My friend and neighbour came to enquire what was going on - as one does when you hear your neighbour playing Nick Cave on repeat. God bless him, he brought me over another bottle of scotch and left me alone to stare at the wall and continue drinking. This was the first time, but not the last, that I had the experience of drinking to excess without the pleasure of getting drunk.<br /><br />Jump forward another year. During the early months of a PhD degree that I would never finish. The girlfriends and sexual encounters I had had were starting to pile up - partly helped by my having learnt basic massage a number of years before, but not yet the ethics that should go with that skill. The woman came over to my house to talk - as we always had before - but this time I ended up giving her a back massage. And there she now was underneath me - her naked back under my caressing hands - the curve of her breasts pressed into my mattress - the long black hair swept in a whirlwind over her left shoulder. She was still going out with my now ex-student. I was still insanely jealous of him - though to my credit he did receive the excellent marks he so fully deserved from my class. And here was his girlfriend, the object of my years of desire, all but naked underneath me, on my bed, in my room. And I know my heart beat wildly. And I know my hormones were boiling. And I know there was a deep intimacy between us at that moment that bordered on the sexual. And I, and I, for once, did not take advantage. And once finished I climbed off her, and she half turned to me and said 'she wanted to ask me something...' and then she didn't ask. The question died in her throat and lived forever in my mind as the thing unasked. The question that I wish to this day she had asked. Then she was dressed again, and the day was for us over.<br /><br />I'm not sure if it was months later, or years, but she got married to the same man who had asked her out a day before I had asked her. I was at the wedding reception. I left the Great Hall of the University where the reception was held, barely saying goodbye to the proud parents standing at the grand entrance and I ran. I ran to the quadrangle a few minutes away, crumpled into one of the sandstone arches and wept uncontrollably. A demented self-pitying wretch - I wept for what could never have been. Ever.<br /><br />Years later we met for lunch. She was now a doctor in a hospital. We ate Japanese and later walked down to a park near to where she and her husband lived. As always, our talk was frank and wide reaching and I talked of some of the events remembered above. I said how much I had loved her. And she said that it wasn't love. That I hadn't known her well enough to love her. And perhaps, perhaps, she was right.<br /><br />Compiling the final list of invitations to my own wedding celebration I crossed her off the list of people to invite. She and her husband had moved to the United States. She has already had her first child and is now a medical specialist. I know this last fact because I did some google stalking whilst compiling the invitations. I haven't contacted her for years - I haven't got a contact email, address or phone number. I would have to go through Sally to get one, and since I didn't when I heard she was pregnant, when I heard she had had a child, I didn't now. I would love to meet again, to talk, the engage once more with that clear sharp insightful mind. But to ask her to my wedding celebrations seemed just one-step-too-much-all-about-me.<br /><br />And then last night I had the dream. She was as beautiful as I had always seen her - with white braiding through her jet black hair. Hair that in the harsh light of Sydney reflected so bright that it almost seemed white itself - a observation I mentioned to her. Her smile was pure, unabashed happiness. She was walking with me, my parents just ahead of us. We were walking away from the wedding rehearsal - our wedding rehearsal. My father had jokingly asked why she was marrying me - and she jokingly said 'because of all the great sex we shall have.' And the strangest thing was that it was all entirely news to me. Somehow I had been transported to a world where this woman - this woman I loved for so long was actually about to marry me. Then she playfully kissed me and I suddenly thought of how I had wanted and desired and prayed for that kiss so long.<br /><br />I woke up next to my own perfectly real wife. The wife who I love very dearly and I lay dazed, turning the dream over in my mind. What the hell was that about? How could my subconscious be so unendurably cruel as to put this upon me? To use a past love - was it love? - to create a gorgeous perfect moment - to create what could never ever have been - and impale me upon it. Deep down, do I really hate myself this much?Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-26945900216434833662009-02-02T09:28:00.002+07:002009-02-02T09:48:46.981+07:00rolling dreamsI've been dreaming again. Nights and early mornings of multiple features that leave me confused and wondering what is going on up there. And why my subconscious is so much more imaginative that my feeble day time consciousness is...<br /><br />I woke up on the side of the road - half under a parked car. The sharp cold gravel stuck to my naked skin and had to be forcibly brushed and picked off. Some time after I realized I was actually wearing black shorts - which was good. I started walking home - possibly to the old family house in Faulconbridge. I found useful objects along the way - wire and clips that you hang pictures off the wall with. Later, I found a pile of useful discarded tools on the grass verge. Screw-drivers, drill bits, saws etc... I thought these would be useful and started to collect them up. In the back of my mind I could see they would be useful in creating ART. Then this bloke turned up who obviously owned this stuff - who was just leaving it there whilst getting more tools - and I put the load down again. I turned to walk away then stopped. I turned and apologized to the bloke and stuck my hand out to shake his - which he accepted. A few polite words, then I was back walking home.<br /><br />Arriving home I found the house abandoned. The front door had the remains of some kind of attempt to barricade it shut - the door was open. Walking into the first room down the corridor I was met by the family red setter who bounded madly around the room as red setters do no matter what mood they are in. Half his tail lay on the floor, a foot of bedragled red hair that had a surprising weight to it when I picked it up. I had the impression that he had gnawed his own tail off. As I walked through the house the feeling of abandoment of continued. The backroom was littered with more red dog hair, piled high by the wind from the open back door. More signs of failed barricades. A large plastic tub filled with fetid liquid and amophous white globs propped the back fly screen open. Abandonment. Invasion. Fear.<br /><br />This was one of a number of dreams from last night. Each I vividly remembered as I lay semi-conscious, mulling over the contents of my mind. Figuring out which houses were represented, which people. Now, of course, all the others are forgotten. If I am lucky, some random object or thought will resurrect one of them in my memory today - but more likely they are gone for good now. Perhaps I should keep the notepad next to the bed like so many people do - jot down these strange and disturbing images.Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-86974391437303454982009-01-24T07:46:00.003+07:002009-01-24T08:18:26.973+07:00Lucky's CafeOff to Bali - taxi at 6am - might as well stay up all night drinking bad scotch except for a power nap on the sofa. Took a walk down to my old house a few blocks south at 3am. Even then, women in conical hats were cycling produce somewhere - the odd motorbike not slowing down at intersections horn blaring into the darkness. A green suited cop glaring at me from his mini-stool on the corner. Nothing happening. The streets at this time are fairly clear - not like the Tet Offensive of the day where the usual traffic chaos has been superseded by traffic suicide. Unless there is a traffic cop trying to collect Tet bribes on the corner - then the traffic lights are now ignored. Two streams of perpendicular traffic somehow merge through each other continuously... I have to walk through in the periods of jam where a bus (the kings of the road and not to be fucked with) breaks the flow. Anyways - get to house - pick up 3 bottles of mosquito repellent and some good Australian literature, drink a can of Beer Lao that has been sitting in the fridge for a while, and then home.<br /><br />But now at Lucky's Cafe - Hanoi International Airport. Where you can get pho, beer, strong coffee, and can smoke at will - and god bless wifi. Since it is early I have gone for the strong coffee (liberally strengthened with bad scotch from a water bottle - iced tea I calls it). Akiko goes for the pho bo, I for the nem hai san (seafood fried rolls). Downstairs in the airport foyer we bumped into Vanessa. She is leaving Hanoi for the first time since March - for a 24 hour romp in Bangkok. She went to the infamous nightclub Solace in Hanoi last night - on a boat on the Red River. And just like me when I have gone there - lost not only her memory, but her mobile. Unable to contact her friends who she was going to travel to the airport with, she has come assuming they will not wait for her. One night in Bangkok - god speed you well love. Then we bump into Paul and Chung - the intriguingly grumpy English MIT lecturer and the hard-core Vietnamese kindergarten manager. Off to Da Nang to meet Nick, Queenie and others to enjoy the fine food of Hoi An. Paul bitches about the airport, but its kisses and pats on the shoulder and good trip and goodbye.<br /><br />Lucky's cafe - how I love you and your service with free attitude. Hanoi International - one of my favourite airports in the world (because of the cheap alcohol, the free wifi, the allowed smoking). Goodbye dear Hanoi - who is damp, cold and absorbed in Tet. Hello to Bali with its sweaty hot days and hot sweaty nights. Will I be possessed by an anilmalistic spirit like last time? Or have some American come and dig up a jar of weed from the floor of my bathroom? Who knows? I love Bali too, and am glad for a week off to rest and read. I believe this is my honeymoon!<br /><br />Here comes the change from the bill - there goes Akiko to challenge it. We must go, we must go. Till we meet again Lucky's...Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-89007836170104987742009-01-22T11:09:00.002+07:002009-01-22T11:14:30.338+07:00I'll show you the life of the mindYesterday I re-watched the disturbing Cohen brother's film Barton Fink. One of the most gripping images in the movie is John Goodman with a shotgun running down the hotel corridor as it erupts in flame behind him shouting 'I'll show you the life of the mind, I'll show you the life of the mind'. It is a pity that the DVD makers used that scene for the intro to the menu page - rather than letting viewer be surprised by it in the natural course of the movie. However, it wasn't that scene which has stuck in my memory over the years since I first watched this movie. What I distinctly remember is the very final scene of the film. A woman sitting on the beach, her arm crooked as she shades her eyes to look out over the sea. The woman - the beach - the pose - is all exactly as in a photograph Barton has been looking at on his hotel wall since the beginning of the movie. In the final few seconds of film a seagull flies across the background, and about half way across the screen drops like a stone into the sea. I remember thinking when I first saw it - how did they do that?<br /><br />Except what I distinctly remember is wrong. The bird isn't a seagull, and it doesn't drop dead into the sea, but dives in like fishing birds do. You see it pop back to the surface just before the credits roll. And the woman on the beach isn't exactly like the one in the photo. It is very obviously a reference to the photo - but on the hotel version there is a beach umbrella which is absent in the recreation. I have described this scene to various people over the years - and now realize that it was my description that is what I remembered - not the scene itself.<br /><br />I am writing up an invitation list for my wedding celebrations. I drew up a list of all the people over the decades who have meant a lot to me (even though many of them I haven't been in contact with for years). Since the reception space is limited - I then have to whittle the list back down - which is a horrible soul-destroying job to do. Even worse, however, is the spiral of nostalgia and memories that are being invoked by the exercise. And even worse still is realizing that great iceberg chunks of memory must have been breaking off and melting away into the sea of alcohol I have been adrift in for so long. I have been left paralyzed trying to remember the last names of once good friends - sent trawling through email archives - performing acts of internet stalking to fill in details. And how much of what remains has been Finked? How much resembles events and people past and how much is fantasy recreations of the life I wish I had had? Last night I dreamt that I was married to a different woman - a girlfriend from maybe a decade ago - one of the people on the list. My dream seemed to be saying 'I'll show you the life of the mind'.Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-24044142541577703322008-09-13T14:55:00.001+07:002008-09-13T14:55:55.542+07:00sicko<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/2852090525/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3142/2852090525_aa650bd8b8_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/2852090525/">sicko</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/rwest/">Scratchin Dog</a>. </span></div>The Asian Canine Flu has got hold of me. Scratchindog is going down and I don't know where the spiral will end. Hot, hot fevers. Chills as I clutch blankie around me and call out deliriously for nursie. Every movement is an effort - only the walk the to the bathroom seems urgent enough to move me. And yet, and yet, with the exhaustion and tiredness sleep evades me. <br /><br />5am I sit in front of the computer looking at the news - smoking half a cigarette (down to 3 a day) - drinking a wee scotch to ward of the germs. My mind a heaving festering jumble of thoughts and emails to be posted, failed quotes to negotiate, of trips coming up. Hurricane Ike is about to slam into Houston and people are ignoring compulsory evacuation orders. Do they think god will save them? Do they think their houses will be burgled by scuba wearing underwater thieves? It seems a harsh way to raise the general educational level by letting the most stupid die. Is 'compulsory' too big a word - and why are they not forced out? A disaster about to happen. <br /><br />It is almost a week since I returned from Laos to attend the lavish and extremely fun wedding reception of Hanh and Steve. One of the highlights of Hanoi social life for the year. Alcohol rained down from on high, children hacked ice swans to pieces, men wrestled on the floor, there was food, dancing and a fine array of eclectic fashions. Sunday was a quiet day among the ex-pats in Hanoi. Mumbled thanks to gods unnamed that the last weekend of organized liver damage was done and life could return to normal levels of inebriation. And so they have.<br /><br />The week since has been spent trying to become a real citizen of Hanoi - which means having a bank account here so I can stop being financially raped by my bank in Australia. My future landlady (for I move in a couple of weeks now) only accepts crisp $100 US notes. It's OK for some isn't it? And don't kid yourself, I have seen the US and Vietnamese Dong notes rejected for being too crumpled, or god-forbid, having a small tear in them. Their is a belief that these minor blemishes render the money not worth the paper its printed on. Which for the lower denominations of Dong is probably true.<br clear="all" />Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-29806085361009184702008-08-25T09:24:00.001+07:002008-08-25T09:24:04.896+07:00resignation and escape<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/2777645939/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3093/2777645939_dfc843667d_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/2777645939/">resignation</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/rwest/">Scratchin Dog</a>. </span></div>Hanoi days are here to stay by the looks of it. Resigned from my job in Sydney to escape the terror of returning to become institutionalized again. How do you wake up to find you've been at the same University for 18 years? That is half my life.<br /><br />So SE Asia it is for the present. And back to the horror that is looking for work - my most disliked activity next to eating my own puke. Well - almost - looking for work that is. In fact, have esaped from Hanoi for few weeks to travel around Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. My first few days in Bangkok were spent in 5 star luxury at the Sukhothai Hotel. Buckets of ice and plates of lime bought by room service to pad out my Saphire Bombay gin and Tonic. Beds like solid clouds, pillows more fluffed than any porn star. Even the Asahi brought to me by the pool came with its own individual ice bucket. The pool assitant smiling in that subservient way whilst he directed the shade umbrella over my head and I tipped my cigarette into the solid brass ashtray. This is the life.<br /><br />Well not anymore! From 5 star to no star as I awoke this morning on the rock hard mattress of the New Vuang Thong Hotel. The mattress could be described as soft only if compared to the pillow. All I want from room service here is that resupply us with toilet paper. Drunken screaming Indian neighbours, moudly life-size pictures of 70's holiday beach resorts and an air conditioner that sounds like a small prop plane. This is more the life I'll be living for the next three weeks of travel through Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. At least I still have some of the gin left, sneakily transferred into a plastic water bottle for easy travel. I'll post when I can, upon what I can. End of dispatch.<br clear="all" />Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-67428445279472077532008-05-14T11:48:00.005+07:002008-05-14T12:14:50.786+07:00blatant advertisingI am aghast at how incredibly awesome this <a href="http://www.vimeo.com/993998?pg=embed&sec=993998">short film by BLU</a> is. I guess part of the awe is thinking just how long this would have taken to pull off...Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6219850007522262767.post-4368543127771009582008-05-14T09:05:00.003+07:002008-05-14T10:41:39.465+07:00too many days of wondering where i am when i wake up...I have a feeling of being unproductive - which is not healthy in the professionally unemployed. So I have decided to make a list of things I have learnt in the last day:<br /><br />1) Learnt that 'learnt' is British English but in the US they 'learned' things... Which to me sounds like they did learn something, then forgot it... I learned many things as a young man... Whereas if you learnt something, you still have it floating around your cranium somewhere. Explains a lot about Americans really.<br /><br />2) How to make a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-RQkkqooKo">movie with massive copyright infringement</a>... but at least the video is mine.<br /><br />3) i) Đây là cái gì? (What is this?)<br /> ii) chuếnh choáng (hangover)<br /> iii) đắt thế! (expensive)<br /> iv) dừng lại (stop)<br /> v) lấy vợ (take a wife)<br /><br />4) Found that <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwest/2491468874/?rotated=1&cb=1210734746208">making your own wall paper</a> in Vietnam will be convenient and affordable.<br /><span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"></span></span><br />5) Realized that adding scotch to your morning coffee is not considered as 'sophisticated' as I thought it was. But it still tastes nice.<br /><br />6) Understood that wherever you are in the world, someone will still steal your lighter.<br /><br />7) Learnt that when Vietnamese say 'iloemyieanmyieoeshiein' they mean 'I love my wife and my wife loves white wine'.<br /><br />Enuf said. Time to take a break.Scratchindoghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12225906992852409355noreply@blogger.com2