Better Make Way For The Young Folks in Egypt
I have been glued to Aljazeera on my computer for a week. I am bleary-eyed. This youtube video posted today was a bit uplifting. Notice all the women.
World Watching And Politics
Futbol Around The World
Futbol, as Spanish speaking countries call it, is the national game in Mexico and all Latin American countries and Oaxaca is no exception. Americans call it soccer, I think mostly to distinguish the game played with a round ball from the game played with an oblong pointy one that refuses to roll on the ground in a straight line. Apparently the word “soccer” was the original name for the game in England where it was invented but that’s another story you can find on the web.
My kids played soccer in grade school and my oldest banned me from the games for being too loud and embarrassing the heck out of him. So here in Oaxaca even I have found it difficult to avoid the mania. But the audio of the vuvuzela I downloaded onto my iPhone was pretty sick. I watched Serbia and Ghana…then expecting to see the Americans play (a game they won) SKY TV immediately replayed the Serbians! What was that all about?!! I won’t even attempt to speculate.
The restaurants in the zocalo (plaza) have TV monitors facing the sidewalk cafes where mostly young people huddle together…those who don’t go to the bars to watch anyway or depending on the time of day or night the game occurs…and many of them are European language students. Yesterday Uruguay played Germany. The Europeans were in the minority and rendered pretty mute by the locals urging on Uruguay…the underdog. A table of young French girls were oblivious…tentatively tasting the black mole with barely a drop on the tips of their knives. It was fun watching the looks on their faces. Either they were famished or they loved it because afterward not a bit was left on the plates.
My son, the chef at the American Club in Hong Kong, is napping. Tonight (or rather tomorrow) the final between Spain and Holland will air at 2am. He will open the restaurant…featuring free hot dogs and hamburgers…for those intrepid souls who will stay up. No fun watching by yourself on the couch in front of your home TV…side-line coaching with friends and a little testosterone thrown in adds much to the pleasure.
Want Beautiful Thai Girl?
When We Don’t Know That We Don’t Know
I have begun asking myself, why is it so hard to put aside our assumptions that we have the corner on the truth and the other guy is dead wrong. (besides ego of course.)
I just read an essay in the NY Times by Erroll Morris, the filmmaker who made “Fog of War” (interview of Robert McNamara after the war in Viet Nam) and “The Thin Blue Line” and some other great films. His thoughts are precipitated by a ludicrously botched bank robbery where a thief was told by someone he believed that by rubbing lemon on his face it would be hidden by the video cameras. It leads to the question, “Can you be too incompetent to understand just how incompetent you are?”
From NY Times
By Erroll Morris
June 20, 2010, 9:00 pm
The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1)
Morris:
David Dunning, a Cornell professor of social psychology, was perusing the 1996 World Almanac. In a section called Offbeat News Stories he found a tantalizingly brief account of a series of bank robberies committed in Pittsburgh the previous year.
As Dunning read through the article, a thought washed over him, an epiphany. If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.
Dunning wondered whether it was possible to measure one’s self-assessed level of competence against something a little more objective — say, actual competence. Within weeks, he and his graduate student, Justin Kruger, had organized a program of research. Their paper, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties of Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments,” was published in 1999.[3]
Dunning and Kruger argued in their paper, “When people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the erroneous impression they are doing just fine.”
It doesn’t speak to the healthy optimism that we are all familiar with but blind optimism (magical thinking?) When people are incompetent they may not know that they are incompetent.
Surreal Senility Or Sneaky Sane?
This cartoon originally appeared on womensEnews.org. Check out more of the New Yorker cartoonist’s work at lizadonnelly.com (“How I Do and Don’t want to be Helen Thomas.”) and on her Open Salon blog.
89 year old Helen Thomas, a virtual institution in the Washington Press Corp, when ambushed by a rabbi, growled that Israel should get the hell out of Palestine and and that the Israelis there could move to Poland, Germany and the U.S. Wow! Talk about speaking truth to power! It was too much for PC ears to take and she resigns her political column. The Washington press corps is pondering taking away her front row seat where she has needled presidents for generations. Hmmm.
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I have recently endured flights from Bangkok to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Oregon, Oregon to Las Vegas, Las Vegas back to Oaxaca where I live. Right now, I don’t care if I see another airport or security line as long as I live. You don’t think jet lag combined with culture shock doesn’t turn the world into more of a surreal event than it already is?
Combine this with two months of demonstrations with round-the-clock fireworks, rockets, petrol bombs and gunshots and then three days of riots where 30,000 tires turned Bangkok black and 25 buildings were burned down…one of them Asia’s second largest mall…more than 90 people killed and a couple thousand injured…over 400 arrested and 200 disappeared…a volcanic eruption in Iceland that brought air travel to a halt nearly the world over and almost detained my dentist for weeks, floods, earthquakes, tsunami warnings…an outrageous “oil spill” that is surreal in itself. Add to that bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan killing hundreds. A video released by Wikileaks.com shows a U.S. helicopter attack on a group of people in Baghdad (and also their good samaritan rescuers) in which they were all killed including two Reuters journalists. Looked like a surreal video game except that it was horrendously real. Then a vicious Israeli attack on a Turkish flotilla attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza by taking in supplies to the Palestinians. Helen Thomas conveniently took that off the front pages. (News junkie that I am, it’s a good thing I don’t have TV.)
Then Las Vegas, surreal in itself, where my son spent a week telling me all about the coming world financial crisis…backing it up with all his audio tapes by “renowned economic experts.” Having read about the German bail-out of the Greeks and fear that Spain and Italy will follow, and with our debt in China’s hands it sounded rational to me. Buy gold and silver and get out of the market my son tells me. But…but…Come live with me in Oaxaca, I said, where people already live like people in the U.S will in the future. It’s called self-sufficiency.
Finally it feels weird to be back in a relatively tiny slow Oaxacan pueblo after six months in Bangkok and Hong Kong. 70,000 teachers are striking again and a caravan to a barricaded Trique village in the mountains suffered the shooting death of a Trique woman and a Finnish human rights worker by a rival Trique group aligned with the government. The weirder thing is that the demonstrators in Bangkok wore red T-shirts and the Triques wear red ethnic dress…at least the women.
A few days ago I took a nap about 3:30 in the afternoon. When I woke up, feeling quite refreshed, I went into the kitchen and checked the clock. 6:30, it said. Oh my gosh, I thought, I slept clear through the night…not an uncommon occurrence these days! So I made coffee, toasted a bagel, and went out onto the veranda to check my email.
As I was sitting there facing the park, I noticed the sky getting dark. Oh, a storm must be coming in, I thought. I went on checking email (most of which are Couchsurfing.com forum posts) and Twitter where I get the latest information on the political aftermath of the Red Shirt rally in Thailand. When I looked up again the sky was a little darker…but no wind was coming up as is usual just before a storm, which, btw, took down one of the huge trees in the Zocalo the other day…the crack of it sending people running every direction. Somebody should prune!
So onto my Facebook updates. By then the sky was really getting dark. I thought about that Mayan calendar that ends in 2012. I noticed that my friend Rico was on line on Facebook chat so I asked him, Why is the sky getting dark? He ignored me, however, and started describing all his latest. Damn. Typical Rico, I thought. But why is the sky getting dark! By this time, I was really getting freaked out. RICO! What is going on?!!! Dunno. Is a storm coming in? Don’t think so. It goes on like this.
Serious concern here. Finally I checked the date/time on my computer thinking maybe I didn’t change the time zone from Asia to Mexico…a 12 hour difference. No, it’s ok. Then I noticed the computer said it was Wednesday. It should have said Thursday. What day is it, Rico? Wednesday, why?
As is obvious by now to my dear readers, in all this time it never once occurred to me that it was 6:30 in the evening. Damn. Is this what I have to look forward to? Quit reading the news, I hear you telling me. But isn’t this what senility really is? Thoughts wondering aimlessly…alone…among their own disconnected damaged brain cells…oblivious to the world?
I take heart, though, from 89 year old Helen Thomas, who, btw, I think is sneaky sane. Me? Dunno. At 66 it doesn’t look good.
1964 LBJ Daisy TV AD
Embedding is disabled but remember this
LBJ election TV ad when Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964?
It ran only once and then was banned.
The Yellow (now Multi-Color) Side
The “Royalists” (PAD Party), also called the “Yellow Shirts,” supports the King of Thailand and is in opposition to the mostly up-country “Red Shirt” farmers who support ex-prime minister Thaksin who has been indicted for corruption and is in exile. The “Reds” charge “the Bangkok elites” with being condescending and derisive and too fond of old money and privilege.
But ironically no one is more representative of the elites than Thaksin’s mafia which has a virtual stranglehold of Bangkok’s poor where the vendors have to pay tribute even to get a business started. But of course Thaksin, when he was in power, bought off the upcountry Reds with small loans that saved their rice crops and building clinics many of which stand empty because of the lack of equipment and trained staff. So now Thaksin has a nice constituency that sent over 300,000 farmers to camp out in the business district of Bangkok. Divide and conquer through class division, I say. Americans should recognize it.
The militant arm of the Yellow Shirts held the Government House hostage for 193 days in 2008 when it fled the military grenades and tear gas to hide out at the airport. It resulted, of course, in the airport being shut down by the government…devastating to tourism and disrupting air travel all over the world. Eighty-three protestors were convicted of treason which carries a death penalty but as usual no sentences have been handed out. But it also led to a coup against the then Democrat Party Prime Minister Abhisit. Confusing at the best.
The battle against corruption is occurring these days on the internet social sites like Facebook and blogs instead of on the streets. Except for a big strategy meeting in April at Rangsit University, sponsored by the University President, the “Yellow Shirts have been strangely quiet during the Red Rally but one Yellow Shirt friend told me: “they are just finishing what we started.”
Thaksin is part of the new monied class and is funding the Red protest, most people think, to position a return to Thailand to recover the money that was confiscated by the government after he was convicted for fraud and sentenced for 3 years in jail and also to possibly run for Prime Minister again. A megalomaniac, IMO. The Yellows support the current Prime Minister (Phua Thai Party) that came into power as a result of the Yellow protest. So you could easily say it’s old money and power against new money and power and class warfare that is driving the political division.
YouTube is full of propaganda videos against the Reds and the corrupt Thaksin and I am getting them in emails from Bangkok Thai friends. But they reflect the feeling of a lot of middle class Thai people…a fact.
Offer Refused By Thai PM-Reds Expect Crackdown
So talks are off and Reds say they are expecting a crackdown within 48 hours. Apparently military watermelons are leaking information to the Reds about military build-up and movements. Apparently the military said they have to wait for the right time and separate out the women and children before they crackdown on the “terrorists” and arrest the Red leaders. But how the heck they would do this I have no idea. One never knows how to take these pronouncements.
In the meantime, groups of Red Shirts in the upper NE are converging on Mitraphap Rd. in Udon Thani to stop 178 policemen from joining the security forces in Bangkok. Some people are fearful that the resistance will migrate out into the provinces and plunge the country into anarchy.
The Prime Minister went on a public TV station this morning to be interviewed and explain the government’s position but it was scrambled after the first few minutes by somebody. This would be like President Obama giving an address to the nation but Dick Cheney’s inside hacks scrambling the station. It’s interesting that I was shocked but the hotel employees I was watching it with were not. Just that enigmatic Thai smile that can mean anything. Eventually, the station was broadcasting again. Wish I could have understood it but by this time the bilingual hotel employees were watching another station.
Back at the rally site, Reds have decided to abandon their Red color and they are already distributing different colored shirts this morning…obstensibly to become unidentifiable if the military intervenes.
A Pull Back From The Brink?
The Reds who have been holding Bangkok hostage for six weeks have given the government an offer today with the following conditions:
- That the government stop threats and harassment
- That an independent body will undertake an investigation into recent violence.
- That the Abhisit government dissolves the House within 30 days.If the government agrees to dissolve the House within one month, after the House dissolution, the government will have another 60 days to prepare for elections.
Also, Army chief General Anupong Paochinda has ruled out the use of force to resolve the political predicament, saying that “the use of force would only cause untold damage and far reaching implications but the problem will not end.”
Now we are waiting to see how the government will respond. Prime M Abhisit Vejjajiva has already offered to hold elections by the end of 2010 – one year ahead of schedule, to cease the political deadlock caused by red shirts rallies.
One wonders what the arrest of an actor turned activist has to do with this:
BANGKOK (NNT) — A key supporter of the anti-government United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD or Reds) disclosed that the black-clad firemen captured on video were involved in the 10 April attack on Ratchadamnoen Avenue, according to the Department of Special Investigation (DSI).
The actor-turned-activist Methi Amornwuttikul, who is also a leading supporter of the UDD (Reds), was nabbed yesterday by police while carrying heavy weapons. He was suspected to be involved in armed attacks against state troops on 10 April.
According to DSI Chief Tarit Pengdit, Mr Methi gave out information on the source of armories he was holding. He revealed that the men in black, who were caught on tape firing grenades during the 10 April clash, were also involved in the series of bomb blasts on Silom Road on Thursday night.
Mr Tarit stated that the authorities were compiling information and evidence, which could not yet be unveiled.
In Thailand, attackers and those behind the plots or involved with what is officially being termed as “terrorism,” could face death sentences for their actions against public order and well being. A plea bargain against conviction could sure make Mr. Tarit sing.
BTS And Parts of MRT Closed In BKK
It’s 6pm Friday and Bob just called that he couldn’t get on the skytrain at Nana to get to Asoke. All of sky train closed down. And this morning the subway was closed between Asoke and the Thailand Cultural Center where I was supposed to go this morning to my dentist so I took a taxi.
Expecting something no good to happen tonight.
Laughingnomad 