The Stories So Frequently Untold, 20 March, 2011.

And so here they were, the stories so frequently untold, looking down across the Mekong, the river of so many dreams, so many lives, in these magic kingdoms he had explored long ago. Now was a different time. His throat was sore and he was shocked every time he looked in the mirror, these things that had betrayed him, the life that he thought would never end. But everything ended; not just this. He thought it through, and everything was over, here inm the heart and there in the shattered mind, what was once coherence dissembled. He didn’t know why he had done it to himself; and now he thought there was no reason. A new year, 2011. A new year, a new man, his friend said to him, there in the early hours. A new year, a new man. They both agreed. This was going to be different, this time around. Nobody’s fool, nobody’s pet, this time around they would be their own men, stand on their own two feet. Nobody’s patsy, nobody’s baby. This was the time to be strong, to be reborn, to begin again. And so it was, the alarm they didn’t need went off at 5.30 am, and they were on their way to another flight, another kingdom, another place.

Bangkok had entranced him all year; the swirls, the contrasts, the decaying buildings and the choking traffic. How much he longed to embrace everything. At first it was the flesh; and he listened with disbelief when old timers would say; you lose interest after a while. Oh don’t be ridiculous, he thought, how could you possibly lose interest in those gorgeous bars, the fascinating bodies, those sad expressions on such handsome faces. But it was true. Because after a while you got to know what they thought; began to think as they; customer, just a customer, just another target for another tricky boy. Sometimes they were nice; even he could see that through the layers of deception; but those layers were never going to last, because these shifting sands were quagmires beyond anything he had ever experienced. Only a falang, a foreigner, could be so rude as to point out the inconsistencies. But only this morning you said…

The Dutch woman on the plane beside him, ugly to the core, had been as rude as she could possibly manage at 7am in the morning, dismissing his cheerful good morning how long have you been in Thailand. Working? Aids? Yes, yes, she replied peremptorily; reminding him of the cheerful English girl and her boyfriend the night before; happily talking, having the time of their lives; as 2010 turned into 2011 and while arbitrary as the dates may be, they marked a turning point. If 2010 had been a year of change; 2011 was the year when everything consolidated, when he saw things for what they really were, when he stopped buying bed buddies and fell in love for real. I love you, the boy would say every morning, and they would embrace affectionately, but he didn’t believe a word of it. If me no money you no love me, he thought, or knew. For him to know; for she to know, he heard the voices now, repeatedly, talking in the fabric of things, from outside the hotel, from inside the rooms, every where, as if electronic listening devices were already picking up every suspicion anyone ever had. It was very easy to misinterpret the situation, he had done it so often before; but this time; in the doomed pleasures that were only theirs, which only they could understand, he wanted to grasp hold of a friendship as if it was the last thing on earth. Not something paid for. Something felt. These things were so fleeting. Yet Luamb Prabagn had been as good a place as any to spend New Year’s Eve; and he would look out the window of what seemed like a crowded hotel room, at the street hawkers and the dusty streets and the scenes which had barely changed in a thousand years; down the steep banks of the Mekong, through the dusty trees; across the enfolding mountains where colour upon colour played through the hills. How very beautiful it all is; he said; as if he was leaving already.

And in a sense, yes, this mortal coil was very thin, this mortal plain so very fragile, the relationships they had with each other so fractionally brief; as if surrounded by idiots. What is it with the Europeans here, Michael had asked. They’ve all got their noses in the air. They look at you with undisguised hostility, he responded. I’m used to it. Haven’t stopped to bother wondering why for a long time now.

We’re on their patch. We’ve discovered their dirty little secret. That they like kinky sex. That they have to pay for it. That they like odd combinations. That they like young men. Who knows. Oh everyone’s a bit odd here; every European is expected to pay in one way or another. Why is it a secret? Why is it a problem? What do these people think they are concealing? Or is it that their noble professions as Aid workers or teachers of the dispossessed or runners of dissident websites; is it because no one wants their worthy duties exposed for the tedious wastes of time they really are. No, said Michael, it’s because they’re the same dreary farts that we see back home; but the ease of travel, the modern world, means that they are everywhere now; there is nothing to conceal. In our day it was only the adventurous, those with character and personality, who would venture outside their own domains, their own borders. Now these people are everywhere; the same ones you find in every shopping mall in every part of the world. They are as truly dreary as they looked. He shrugged in answer; who’s to know. I’ve never understood it; and they gazed; again, across the garden he loved so much, the mango trees beginning to flower, the water lilies spouting from the pond, the churn of the motor cycles as they scurried along the soi outside. Everything was changing, and everything was the same. And here they were, landing in Bangkok. Already Luamb Prabang was a distant place; distant memory, something to be talked about and forgotten, because these things were as barren and as useless as the old maids cluttering the city offices; pointless to everyone but themselves, meaningless to everyone but their cats. Hopeless in love; hopelessly lonely; these were the sad eyed ladies of the low lands who now occupied so many corners of the world. He was glad to be away; glad to be out of his own country; hoped, always, to be somewhere else. And every where beckoned, the Ganges, Varanasi, the striking outlines of the Algerian coast, the handsome, dismissive lads in Casablanca, the intoxicating swirl of the village square. I love Madrid, he had told the English girl, when they compared the parts of the world they loved the most; there in one of the only bars open in Luamb Prabang at 2am. Like everyone else she instantly declared her love of Barcelona; and he begged to dither. And the conversations flowed briefly, pointlessly between travelers. And he wished; he always wished; that nothing had to come to an end; that he was free to triumph; that his latest book would sell more copies; that everything he had ever felt; every one he had ever cared for; would gather in import, that the stories would mount into astonishing word plays; and therefore astonishing beauty; all of their own accord. Things were never so easy. The mirror was never so kind. He smiled ruthfully; and waited for the plane to land. How many there had been; since those early years as the Captain’s son.


THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11420

If you google "rape" with "Assange", you get several million hits, which suggests the Wikileaks founder has reason to complain that the criminal charges have damaged his reputation. But there is no evidence to support his further claim that the US, angry at the disclosures, has pressured Swedish authorities to revive a case they had earlier dismissed. Whatever the facts, many people will be concerned lest this drama distract attention from the ongoing revelations, including recent claims that India has tortured thousands of Kashmiri detainees.

Speculation has increased since the disclosure of the nature of the charges, the identity of the two complainants, and the factual allegations on which the rape and assault charges were based. The first summary, reportedly leaked from Swedish prosecution files, appeared in The Times of India over three weeks ago. This was followed by a Reuters summary publicized by MSNBC, which was in turn followed by the recent and highly detailed disclosures by the UK Guardian and the New York Times.

Aware that many readers might feel this information was gratuitous, and likely to prejudice the defence case, the Guardian published an editorial to justify its decision. It did not convince Assange's lawyers, who were understandably upset at the publicity given to sordid details of allegations they must now respond to, from persons whose testimony they have had no chance to cross-examine.

While the internet will continue to rake over these matters, there is no evidence to support the claims of a conspiracy theory involving US secret agents, despite the US having both the means and motive. The known facts suggest that these are mature and intelligent women, generally supportive of the Wikileaks project, but deeply offended by Assange's behaviour. What he did and whether it was a criminal offence under the law of Sweden are, of course, the issues to be resolved.

There is, however, an imbalance in the media treatment which is not altogether the fault of journalists. No one can deny that, in the eyes of the law, Assange is a "rape suspect"; but it is also true that, in the media vernacular and since 9:11, this description has a more sinister connotation. For in recent years the analogous phrase "terrorist suspect" has come to describe a person who is almost certainly a terrorist, waiting only to be legally processed in order to receive his just desserts.

This is, at least, the case where charges are made by senior public officials and repeated without question and endlessly by the press. How else to explain a widespread media acquiescence over the treatment of Guantanamo detainees, described as "the worst of the worst" by the head of the US Chiefs of Staff, the most authoritative spokesman for the Pentagon, and regularly paraded in a way meant to reinforce this claim, with blacked out goggles, gloves and earmuffs to cut off all sensory experience, and wheeled about strapped to a mediaeval trundle, like Hannibal Lecter.

We now know (mainly from the remarkable Seton Hall studies by law professor Mark Denbeaux, based entirely on US Government sources, most secured under FOI legislation) that almost all were Afghan and Pakistani peasants, many of them Taliban conscripts, and that only 5% were captured on the battlefield by US forces.

The rest were sold for rewards of between one and five thousand dollars by Northern Alliance warlords and their Pakistani allies. Given the then recent and savage civil war between warlords and the Taliban, this process was always suspect and it is not surprising that of the original 770 detainees, most held and interrogated for years, only two have been convicted of an offence and one (Hicks) confessed.

An example of this disinformation program is the fate of the Uighurs, twenty-two Turkic-speaking Muslims from Xianjiang in the arid regions of Western China. Refugees from a repressive Chinese policy to stamp out ethnic political aspirations, they were also taken prisoner in Afghanistan.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11431


Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don’t mean to do harm - but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.

(From The Cocktail Party, T.S. Eliot)

In June, I participated in an episode of Insight on SBS. The theme was “Climate Sceptics”. The premise was that the audience would be comprised of people who were sceptical about climate change to a greater or lesser degree. On the stage, fielding questions from the sceptical audience, was Professor Stephen Schneider, a climate change scientist who participated in the IPCC report. (Very sadly, 3 weeks after filming, Professor Schneider passed away. My condolences to his family.)

The episode is finally screening on SBS on Tuesday 7 September at 7:30pm. I must confess that I’m a little scared. I think I would have been okay if they’d just aired it reasonably soon after filming, but the World Cup then the Federal Election interrupted screening.

Why would I be scared? When someone says the words “climate sceptic”, the instant stereotype which springs to most people’s minds is that of a right-wing Holocaust-denying lunatic who is immune to reason. And I assure you, I am none of those things. But once you “out” yourself as a sceptic, you get tarred with that brush. I worry that my colleagues, my friends and my students might judge me, because I didn’t really get to put my views across properly (in fact, I don’t speak until half way through, presuming they even put my bit in!). I don’t like the term “climate sceptic”, to be honest; I prefer to think of myself as a climate agnostic. I haven’t made up my mind yet.

The people in the audience included environmentalists, people who worked in sustainability and agriculture, scientists and a bunch of regular people who had no particular specialisation or expertise in the area, but were just worried.

It really annoys me that I should feel scared to express my opinion. I strongly believe that progressive people should be able to raise doubts without being accused of being tantamount to Holocaust deniers, without being ostracised by their neighbours, without having someone spit in their coffee and without feeling scared that they will be labeled as a fascist. I admit that some people who fall into the sceptic camp are a little scary, but not everyone is. Ultimately, I think that deriding people who raise doubts (1) shows a lack of understanding about scientific method and (2) serves to fuel scepticism rather than to allay it.

Elitism, scepticism and risk analysis

One of the participants in the Insight program made an interesting observation to me beforehand. He said, “I’ve noticed that scepticism tends to be class-based. Middle-class, university educated people are far more likely to accept that climate change is happening. Working-class people are far more likely to be sceptical and concerned.” There is a deep elitism at the heart of the writings of some who suggest the shape of the policy responding to climate change (eg, Clive Hamilton, George Monbiot). The sly inference is that working-class people are stupid bogans who don’t know any better, and that they should let their betters guide them in what is to be done.