Free Fire Zone

Greetings,

A modified version of this entry was originally posted 28 April. Future tense in the present tense Bangkok tick tock. The alarm bells are ringing. Ding-dong, the witch is dead.

Central Bangkok is now a free fire zone. You know it's come down to the basics when citizens trapped like rats fight with sharp bamboo poles, slingshots and stones against tanks, armored personnel carriers and frightened conscripts.

They shoot arrows at helicopters. Amazon Indians tried this tactic. The arrow of time points to entropy and chaos.

David and Goliath. The city is a glass and brick jungle. Welcome to the urban jungle. In real time.

Arrows, slingshots and rocks. Primitive vs. Machine. Avatar.

A sniper takes out a man in fatigues. Fatigue sets in. Poor people say, fight to the death. A man with a wheelbarrow rolls through the city village, "Bring out your dead, bring out your dead."

A spokesperson says. Starve them out. Turn off the electricity. Give them a taste of high tech military power. Liberate the masses. 1984. ONE STATE rules.

Citizens wait for an 82-year old king to say something like, Go home. Go back to your poor rural villages. Support glass and brass high rise city development. Support the monarchy. Why is it anarchy? Mon-anarchy. It's the rule of law says the government. Our law. We print money. We hire armies. We make laws. Obey or die. Guns and intimidation and inequality and laws. 

The poor need affordable food, clean water, opportunity, health care, fair wages, education, and so forth.

It has been reported, via movement sensors people dance a little faster as explosions scatter metal, debris and death outside the neon splashed venues. The DJ simply turns the music up a decibel level drowning out the yelling and screaming of red shirts, yellow shirts, polo shirts, ambulances, innocent victims and bass driven hip-hop tick tock.

Red shirts represent the poor people. Yellow shirts represent the middle class.

"Poverty and corruption has absolutely nothing whatsoever to say or do about this issue," said B.S. Sympathy, a well respected scion of foreign banking firms, investment and real estate development companies.

She spoke from her heavily fortified villa in an undisclosed Bangkok location while eating caviar, drinking champagne and petting twin poodles named Lucky and Fortunate. "Let them eat cake."

The Department of Tourism said this will have no effect on:

a) tourists desperate to get out
b) tourists desperate to get in
Ships from England are now standing by in Bangkok sewage canals to evacuate nationals.

"....But taken together, they suggest a campaign by shadowy elements in Thailand to stir fear and create a sense of instability."

It's highly plausible to insert the country of your choice in the aforementioned sentence other than Thailand. You have roughly 170 choices. Start with the letter A and work toward Z, say, Algeria, Afghanistan, Bulimia, any central Asian country, China, and so on.

They stare at you from the vacuum of their eyes and say, "Would you like to make a deal?"

Metta.

Gin and tonic for breakfast

Greetings,

This isn't about the spoiled girl-child across the street yelling and stamping her feet and bawling her poor little eyes out as her mother tries to sell junk to schoolgirls or yellow gas from bottles to trucks, meteor cycles, broken terrific anxieties and terrorized spoiled childhood raising her hand threatening to strike the girl down, down, down. The girl cowers. Fear is a great motivator.

The woman's mother sits smothered in grief listlessly counting shredded money. Money smelling of petrol. Petrol cash.

No, it's about the Australian tattooed dude on a visa run with his comatose overweight and terribly unhappy illiterate Thai girlfriend, also heavily tattooed with flowing black lines, playing her hand held computer game at breakfast as he drinks a gin and tonic at 7 a.m. They are leaving by bus for a swinging coastal town.

Do you want some breakfast? he asks. She says no. I want to play my game. Do you want a drink to get your day started? No. Have an egg. It will give you protein for energy. No. I want to play my game. Do you have my medicine he said. She gives him pills. He washed them down with G&T. Breakfast of champions.

Metta.

Shantaram

Greetings,

Here are some quotes and interesting facts in Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.

Roberts escaped from an Australian prison, moved to Bombay, started a free health clinic in the slums, joined the mafia, learned and worked in their operations, ran their passport or "book" section, learned Hindi and Marathi, spent time in an Indian jail, acted in films, fought in Afghanistan and wrote his book.

A central theme is love, hate, freedom and the choices we make.

..."The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men and a hundred million cowards. The evil men are the power, the rich men, politicians and religious fanatics whose decisions rule the world and lead towards it's greed and destruction."

..."The stupid men are the police and soldiers who enforce the rules of the evil men. They are standing armies of twelve countries and the police forces of twenty more. They have power and influence. They give their lives for governments and causes. They are brave and they are stupid because they are used, abandoned and betrayed by the governments."

"Markets are about greed and control. There are two elements that make for commercial crime. Any one of them on it's own is not enough. Greed without control or control without greed won't give you the black market. Men can be greedy for the profit from let's say pastries, but if there isn't strict control on the baking of pastries, there won't be a black market for apple strudel. And the government has very strict controls on the disposal of sewage, but without the greed for profit from sewage, there won't be a black market for shit. When greed meets control, you have a black market."

Roberts discusses the nuances of black market currency profit versus the government restricted Indian rupee.

Used passports or "books" details the counterfeit operation. The question they ask a client is, "How bad do you need the book?"

According to Roberts, there are three categories of clients.

Economic refugees seeking a better life in another country. Turks wanting to work in Germany, Albanians wanting to work in Italy, Algerians wanting to work in France, Asians wanting to work in Canada or America. A passport runs them $5,000 - $25,000.

Political refugees are the second client base. They are victims of wars and conflicts based on community, religion and ethnicity. At any one time there are twenty million refugees living in camps and safe havens around the world. The Hong Kong handover to China is an example.

A new book costs them between $10,000 - $50,000.

Criminals are the third client base. Like Roberts they are thieves, smugglers, and contract killers needing a new identity. They are dictators, military coup leaders, secret policemen, and bureaucrats from corrupt regimes.

Traveling on false passports Roberts delivers two books - a perfect, unblemished Swiss passport, and a virgin, original Canadian passport to a man in Kinshasa, Zaire for $200,000. The buyer travelled safely to Venezuela. 

Robert's boss in Bombay deals with agents in Asia, South America, and Africa. As he explains, no single group of citizens are more cynical about politics and politicians than professional criminals. They see all politicians as ruthless and corrupt and all political systems favor the powerful rich over the defenseless poor.

Criminals are egalitarian. They don't care about color, creed, race or the political orientation of clients and they don't judge them when asking about their past. Every life was reduced to just one question. 

"How bad do you need the book?"

The "book" business generated two million a year in clear profit. Every dollar went to support refugee programs for displaced Afghans and Iranians in India. Every passport bought by someone purchased fifty more books, identity cards or travel documents for Iranian and Afghan refugees. Fate built around the greed and fear of tyrants rescued other victims of the tyranny.

Metta.

Secret debt

Greetings,

weave me a silk tie to economic terror
corruption, greed, illusions
goldman on sack-cloth bespoke tailor

mr. goldman uses asian foreign workers in the middle eats
to smuggle gold out 
rag and bone merchants chant profit buy low sell high
insider trading cards i buy you buy we buy inflate the price
legalized tender is the night running gold, drugs, weapons, passports, people

all the camels, donkeys, mules running trade routes

money is the enabler
the game is over they told greece
goodbye athens goodbye ottomans goodbye nazis goodbye easy government money goodbye eu(poria)

sell me a white sand island

here comes the money honey

circumvent the corrupt banking industry
so i can file a be spoke suit tailored
by pure fabrication
woven on historical looms

lucky bamboo said i’d find you here
fit to be tied to anything
where spirit is good 
matter is a matter of objective consciousness
spinning on its axis
unraveling threads
into patterns, endless knot 

undertime, overtime, inside time's beauty
sharing information with intelligence agencies

now - yesterday, today, tomorrow
now a days - last decade, this decade, next decade
the long now - 20,000 years
let me introduce myself
married to consumption 
my name is fear
fear of poverty 
an acronym
consolation 
my timid friends say it indicates
Fuck Everything And Runaway 

the bigger the fear the bigger the defense
one does not need a compass in the land of dreams
Face Everything And Recover

the bigger the obstacle the bigger the joy
read ‘operating instructions for plants’
growth flow initiation 
dispense resistance
correct motives, means
patience generosity

inside the people's labyrinth
honor receptive side of warrior nature light

complex adaptive system

tendency for increased complexity
make the wrong decision for the right reason

sublime paradox
it was love & passion that made us suffer
it’s not so much that there is something strange about time
the thing that’s strange is what’s going on inside time  
we will understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is

fate gives you two choices, the one you should take and the one you take

Metta.

Volume floats

Greetings,

A Khmer wedding lasts three days. It's LOUD. It's a monster deal.

A company arrives in a dump truck. They set up tents, tables, chairs and huge black speakers in front of an architecturally styled wedding cake home. It's happening all over town.

Speakers blast music day and night. Audible for miles. Volume shudders, shaking the terrain, setting off unemployed landmines, volcanic eruptions and destroying oil drilling operations in deep oceans. Free oil. Oceans of love, oceans of tears.

Animals run for their lives. Birds fill the sky with shrill squawks of pure terror. Panic stricken children suffer unimaginable nightmares. All the trauma counselors are celebrating with copious amounts of food and drink. Another one bites the dust. I am a dust collector.

It costs the groom's boom boom family $3,000 and up. It's a matter of EGO, social standing, imaginary wealth and appearances. They don't send out R.S.V.P. People just show up. Lots of hungry people. Friends, strangers and many animists.

Human speakers drone on and on about marriage, family and society.
Traditional singers and musicians plaintively wail at high decibels about love, suffering, happiness, fidelity, treble and bass. Contemporary hip-hop rappers take the stage with heavy metallic thumping and pumping.

100 monkeys off stage type out Shakespeare. They chatter odes, sonnets and mystifying secrets.

The insane 24/7 volume partially explains why people here speak, or more specifically yell so loud. They don't hear each other because they can't, don't, won't hear. Repeat. What? What? Repeat. Louder!

This is the Flowing holiday. Families with millions of marriageable girls are desperate to get them married. They expect their daughters to produce flowing children. It's a heavy social security reality.

They won't have the money to feed them or house them or educate them or...because those realities are far away, like stars in the sky. They'll worry about essentials later in the long now. Too many poor desperate people will have to sell their children facing immediate financial reality.

As a serious Chinese university student, filled with humility, compassion and serenity said, "Human life here is cheap."

The main problem now is raising $3,000 minimum. If you want to play you have to pay.

No please, no squeeze.

Metta.