Obama Peace Prize

I was surprised to hear that Obama won the Nobel Peace prize after such a short time in power. On the cutoff date for nominations, he was barely in his second week of office. And I'm still scratching my head trying to identify what achievement justifies the honor. Then I remembered that the Nobel Peace prize doesn't always go to people who earn it. Teddy Roosevelt won it. So did Henry Kissinger. As much as I respect Teddy for his creation of the national park system, I have a different vision when I think of him charging up San Juan Hill. I was more amazed than amused when the prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger, a war criminal who deserves incarceration for life without possibility of parole.

Not that Obama is like Kissinger or Roosevelt. It's simply that Obama hasn't earned it. It looks like a windfall. The five-member committee in Oslo, bending the rules to name him the winner before he deserved it, may be optimists or perhaps psychics. Their show. Their rules.

Maybe Oslo gives him too much credit simply because he has a dash of charisma, espouses values that promote peace and world cooperation, and knows how to talk. After the mean-spirited, go-it-alone prick exited the stage, Obama's commitment to rejoin the community of nations is a long-sought after breath of fresh air, equal parts warm and fuzzy. But it's the fuzzy part that bothers me. Looking good and saying things people want to hear is not sufficient.

Obama's dilemma is that he rules an empire with more military firepower than any other sovereign state on earth. He presides over two wars that he doesn't seem able or willing to end. As long as he stays the Bush course in Afghanistan and Iraq, he cannot be a person deserving of a Nobel Peace prize.

Oslo should have a rule that says you don't get the prize if you prosecute a war knowing that you are killing innocent civilians every day in far away places even if you don't mean to. Obama may intend peace as the outcome of his efforts but waging war for peace is like drinking your way to sobriety. It doesn't work.

Goodbye

It started out as a trip to a deserted island to camp on a beach. We talked about the state of the world, what we would miss if we never went back, and whether we could make a go, or more accurately, a stay of it here. We've decided to stay. We thanked the tour operator for the sleeping bags, tents, cookware, and utensils and sent him packing with a warning not to bring others.

There are 19 of us, four men and 15 women. We have enough kindling to produce a new generation. The island is self-sufficient. We can grow anything. Plenty of fresh water. Ample wood for structures. We can fish and hunt wild boar.

The decision to drop out was an easy one, what with the random killings, mothers throwing newborns into dumpsters, the lack of political will to end at least extreme world poverty for less than the cost of a bailout to Citibank, the nonstop bickering, war, and corruption, the perversion of religion to justify horrific acts and the threat of nuclear annihilation and pestilence. You can keep it.

I've donned body paint and now sport a tattoo expressing my new tribal identity. We have drums, guitars and bandannas. I'm taking archery lessons. I've got some seeds to plant Chondrodendron tomentosum from which I can extract curare to poison the tips of my arrows for hunting and warding off trespassers.

If this island seems familiar, it may be that you've seen the movie The Beach which was filmed here. In the movie, the tribe fared miserably. But that's them. We have a better organizational plan.

We'll be just fine. Don't worry about us.

Dave

P.S. I need someone to go to my old place to get my dog, Parker. Bring him to Phuket. He needs a first class seat since he likes to spread out. In Phuket, take the boat over to Phi Phi Don Island and deliver him to Phil at the Lemongrass Restaurant (next to the post office). Phil will take it from there. Thanks.

Thailand Miscellany

I arrived in Thailand a couple of days ago. The last two times I came here as a dental tourist. This time it's tourism period.
The first clue that things are worse now than before was the midday taxi ride from the airport taking only 35 minutes instead of an hour. Despite the crappening economy combined with political upheaval that has devastated the tourism industry, Thais nevertheless manage to maintain their famous smiles. I think it's a Buddhist thing.

Before coming, I did my due diligence by reviewing emails I wrote during the last two trips. I apologize to those who've already seen them but there's some new material too.

Food

First of all, putting a fork in your mouth is considered gauche. The fork is used to pick up food to put on the spoon which goes in your mouth. OK? Do I sound like your mother? I meant to.

McDonald's has a service here called "McDelivery." A simple phone call and within minutes you'll be devouring a double whopper with cheese, jumbo fries and a 36 oz. coke without having to lift your supersized ass off the couch to go get it.

Royalty

Thailand is a constitutional monarchy. The current king, Rama IX, has been on the throne since 1946.

It's not only bad manners to diss him but it's a crime called lese-majeste. A government official was accused of that crime last year but published reports about it can't tell us what the guy said. That, too, would be lese-majeste. The king here is beloved. That's genuine.

Mostly, the king stays above the political fray using his moral capital only to influence events when truly needed.

Politics

Ok, you heard about the shutdown of the Asiatic summit, the wild street demonstrations, the closing of the airports and all that. So what's it all about?

Back in 2006, the Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, was deposed in a military coup. Viewed as the savior of the rural poor, Thaksin's political support came from peasants in the north. As much as he is loved up there, he's disliked in Bangkok. He's now on the lam having been convicted in absentia on corruption charges. Opponents of Thaksin didn't like his successor any better. This precipitated street actions by the yellow shirts who stormed the government house and shut down the airports thus killing the tourist industry. The yellow shirts won and drove Thaksin's successor from office. That was in 2008 or 2551 on the Thai calendar.

In the color-coded politics of Thailand, the red shirts are the rural poor who would like Thaksin back. They were responsible for the demonstrations in the past few weeks. They scuttled the summit of Asian leaders. They haven't achieved their goals yet but demonstrations are promised this week.

While the political conflict between Bangkok and the north gets much publicity, there's been a little-known war going on in southern Thailand for the past 100 years. Malay speaking Islamists in the three southernmost provinces want to secede from Thailand. It's a bloody conflict that has claimed countless lives. About the war: http://www.patininews.net

Bangkok's New Airport Tower

Bangkok's new international airport has the tallest control tower in the world as measured from the base. Measured from MSL, that distinction probably goes to Bangda Airport in Tibet at 14,219 feet plus the height of the tower.

How to Get Your Own Pet Crocodile

Not strictly a Thailand story but reported in the Bangkok Post.

In case you're wondering where your next pet crocodile will come from, don't give it another thought. Crocodile Cambodia will ship 18 eggs with incubator wrapped in a paper bag to any address in the world for a cost of $2,500 USD. The accompanying instructions note that crocodiles may not be appropriate for children and may be dangerous to pets and other human beings. According to the company, ninety percent of the shipments reach their intended recipients without customs inspection.

About the Place I stayed in Chiang Mai

To the editor of Rough Guide to Thailand:
Under the heading The North-Chiang Mai-Accommodations-Moderate-Lanna Orchid Inn, please insert the following language:

"Guests of the Inn are treated to repeated pounding on a gong by neighboring monks at 4:30 A.M. to mark the beginning of the new day. Every day. For this service, there is no charge."

The Phone Book

Thais are listed in the phone book alphabetically by their first names. And it is common to adopt nicknames to confuse evil spirits.

OK, is this traditional massage or buddy massage?

Like many tourists, I sometimes have trouble distinguishing traditional Thai massage parlors from whorehouses. But when you're passing a massage parlor and one of the girls springs off the patio into your path and thrusts her tits into your chest asking if you want a massage and punctuates her question with a second tit thrust, then you can tell.

Words Matter

I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately. I’ve been around long enough to witness many new words emerge, drop out, and others take on new meanings in the American lexicon. In some cases these new meanings entirely displaced old ones. Take, for instance, the word "gay." Historically, the word meant merry, happy or carefree, like having a gay time with friends at a picnic in the park. That word cannot be used in this sense anymore. In the past, a gay man would have been mighty attractive to a woman who certainly didn’t want to be stuck with a stodgy and dull one, but should she discover he’s gay today, it’s probably time for a serious discussion about divorce.

The word "google" entered the language in the past ten years as a verb. Only recently have I been able to google information about someone or something. Before that I had to trudge down to the library or hire an investigator to find out what’s what. Now I don’t have to because I can google practically anything I can imagine. I found out that my dog is googleable because his picture was in the newspaper. Last year, my client’s dog, Jade, was shot and killed by an Oakland cop. Now Jade can be googled too.

In the realm of American politics, there’s a darker side to the dynamic change of our lexicon. It doesn't please the ears because it's, well, un-American. We now have a huge bureaucracy called the Department of Homeland Security. When, before 2002, had you ever linked the word "homeland" with anything having to do with the United States of America? Before that, the word had associations with distant places and dark regimes. For one thing, it evokes a disturbing image of Nazi Germany which was then described alternatively as the fatherland and the homeland. During the apartheid period in South Africa, homelands were ghetto territories where the oppressed black population was kept. Similarly, during Stalin’s reign, minorities who were presumed subversive lived in segregated communities known as homelands. Is it a mere coincidence that the utterly alien-sounding name "Department of Homeland Security" came to fruition during the Bush administration which also deceived us into a war in Iraq, ignored the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Convention, redefined torture to excuse torture, and made its elite base even more appallingly rich than it already was? Too creepy. It's time for a name change.

Another word that bugs me is the word "czar" as in "drug czar." Whatever the czars in pre-revolutionary Russia were about, and some of them like Catherine the Great weren’t necessarily bad, they had nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with autocracy. So why call any government worker in America a czar if you don't mean to give that person plenary power to do whatever he wants even if most of us don't like it? Germany had its autocratic Kaiser before and during World War I and rotting ancient Rome had caesars, all of these titles being variants of the word "czar." America is not supposed to have czars. We’re supposed to have public servants.

Ok, then there's the "war on _______ [insert your favorite thing to declare war on here]." The last good one we had was the war on poverty but that got eclipsed over forty years ago by the war on Vietnam. Since then, we’ve had the war on crime, the war on drugs, and the war on terror. I think we may have had a few others too, but they were fleeting, more like skirmishes than wars.

To have an effective war on something, you first have to objectify the war's target to obscure the fact that you will be terrorizing, imprisoning, and killing people. That's why the war has to be waged against an abstraction like terror or objects with no nervous system like drugs. It’s also a good idea to set a lofty, unattainable goal so that the war persists for a very long time, like Palestine vs. Israel or the Hundred Years’ War. Next, you want to make sure that there’s a lot of money to be made from prosecution of the war. Otherwise, what's the point in waging it?

A while back, walking down the street, I discovered that my city government in Berkeley, California, has a place called the Customer Service Center. For me, the place was mainly where I would have gone to take care of parking tickets if I didn't have a computer to google my way to the website to pay on line. What disturbed me about the title was the word "customer." Through a devilish linguistic sleight of hand, I've been robbed of my citizenship with its attendant rights and obligations to shape the destiny of my city. Now I'm relegated to a passive consumer of city services who's supposed to shut up and pay. I don't remember a vote on this. And I've looked all over but I can't find any contract I ever signed with these people. Frankly I wish I had so I could look for loopholes. For now though, I'll play the contented customer as long as the City plays by the rule that the customer is always right. For some reason though, I don't see this working out.

So maybe you can google your homeland customer service center and find the right czar to inquire gayfully about getting a war started on something that's bothering you.