Arrested development

Greetings,

You know life is fraught with the unexpected hammering of stone cold ice when a Tibetan environmental activist gets arrested for teaching people to pick up litter and plant trees in Sichuan, China.

His demise came when he accused a local Chinese big shot official of poaching. Poaching is a no-no. Talking about big shots poaching is a no-no. Picking up litter is a no-no. Planting trees is a no-no.

The No-No chattering xylophone, said, Let's teach this Tibetan wise guy a lesson. His henchmen concurred. Track him down. Arrest him. Charge him with trash collection and gardening offense #101. Call the judge. Tell him to sentence this monk to 5 years of hard labor with no chance of parole.

Mr. Trumped Up Charge judge, jury, and a very close friend and economic confident of Mr. Local Big Shot performed his Social duty. "You are charged with splitting the nation!" 

What? Planting trees isn't splitting the nation. Picking up trash isn't splitting the nation, said Rinchen Samdrup.

Oh, really? said the judge. Let me see. Ok, how about poaching? Yes. It's all hear say. You said my friend the local big shot was poaching. You lied. He loves his country and all the animals. If you lied about his poaching to make huge financial profits from leopards, tigers, bears, eagles, antelopes and stolen male babies, how can this court in all fairness find you innocent of planting trees and picking up trash?

I'm innocent. No. You are guilty. You are an environmentalist. You want to split the nation. You are a bad boy. I sentence you to 5 years. Bye-bye. 

The judge whispered to the prison warden, Fill up his cell with trash and trees. 

Metta.

Reuters...

S-21

Greetings,

This is from Wikipedia.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. Tuol Sleng in Khmer; [tuəl slaeŋ] means "Hill of the Poisonous Trees" or "Strychnine Hill".

Here are the security rules at the S-21 prison.

When prisoners were first brought to Tuol Sleng, they were made aware of ten rules that they were to follow during their incarceration. What follows is what is posted today at the Tuol Sleng Museum; the imperfect grammar is a result of faulty translation from the original Khmer:

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.

2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.

9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

read more...

Metta.

Writing and sex 301

Greetings,

A Chinese computer science professor received a 3.5 year sentence for "crowd licentiousness."  This is vague government wordage. It covers crowds. It covers licenses. It mean a crowd gets together and applies for a license. In this case with broad overtones they applied for a license to swap identities.

He led informal swinger clubs for partner swapping. He pleaded innocent. "I had nothing to do with the North Korean submarine attack in an apartment with 18 people. I was only the middleman. I was formatting my hard drive and downloading data."

He was charged under Criminal Law 301. 

A Chinese academic said...“I feel that the thought process of the Chinese authorities is always to try to manage and control the population, the people. Beyond prosecuting criminal activities, they feel they have to control or manage people to their standards.” read more...

Turkey also has an infamous Article 301 law. This law makes it illegal to insult Turkey, Turkish ethnicity or Turkish government institutions. Writers Orhan Pamuk, Noam Chomsky, Elif Safak, among others have been charged under this article. All the cases were either dropped or acquitted.

A spoiled young girl in Ankara was recently arrested and charged under Article 301 for insulting her mother's cooking. "I hate Turkish food. Too many tomatoes. I don't want black olives. I don't want fresh salad. I don't want fresh seafood from the Marmara Sea. I want Italian pizza with extra cheese please squeeze." It was thrown out for lack of evidence.

Her mother said, "Eat what I give you. Hurry up. I'm late for my wife swapping seminary with binary logic."

Number 301 is very popular. The number of words mating and swapping with other words is increasing. Words remove an article of clothing like a, an, the.

Metta.

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.

Innocence and War

Greetings,

I met Alice last month. She's from England and has visited Cambodia six times. She's worked here as a volunteer at local schools. She recommended two important books. 

The Lost Road of Innocence by Somaly Mam. Her true story of being sold into sexual slavery at the age of five. Heartbreaking. Somaly now runs shelters for abused girls and women in Phnom Penh. She's received international recognition for her work establishing AFESIP (Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances). 

Cambodia Now: Life In the Wake of War by Karen J. Coates. Karen is a freelance journalist based in Thailand. Her book examines Cambodian life in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal regime of 1975-1979. She interviews Cambodians across the country. She details relations with neighboring countries, politics, violence, family, poverty, environment and Cambodia's future.

Metta.

She sells souvenirs to tourists at a temple after school.