FunkyPix2's trip to Sri Lanka, August 2012

We're never short of surprises here in Chiangmai...

Welcome to Soi Auschwitz near our condo, for example...

 

...but inside the gates, it's all friendly and fuzzy.

   

It reminded us that we were about to visit Sri Lanka again (click here to jump to our travelogue). This was despite the moral decrepitude of its Rajapakse regime. As with the two photos above, there's a dark authoritarian side to Sri Lanka's personality, not the least demonstrated by ruthless repression of political opposition. A dozen journalists have been disappeared in the last year alone, and the leader of the opposition spent time in prison on what were clearly bogus charges. Plenty more examples at the Sri Lanka Campaign website.

  

Prime Monster Rajapakse, however, has his nose to the wind of public opinion. He is wary of the power of example set by the Arab Spring, and a mere three days after the backlash against Putin after the jailing of Pussy Riot, this sweet-talking benign little article appeared on the front page of a local newspaper, addressed to the Inspector-General of Police:

Scarf stained by blood of his own people?

 

If you trust what he says you might be a tad naive. Beware of snakes-in-the-grass. Sri Lanka's 'democracy' has a long way to travel before it matures. The social inequalities against which the Tamils were fighting are still there, evidence for which may be intuited from the following article in which the writer - obviously a Rajapakse mouthpiece -  berates the Tamils for daring to express their (democratic!) dissatisfaction with ongoing unfairness. This is not independent journalism, it's government stenography:

You can embiggen any picture by clicking on it.

 
To be fair, though, there was gross inhumanity on both sides during the 25-year civil war. Anyway, as with all visitors to Sri Lanka, we had to weigh up these moral issues, but decided to go anyway on the grounds that as Australian citizens we could talk with people and at least confirm that not all Australians subscribe to the heartless policy of the Coalition towards asylum seekers. And indeed, that we felt seriously embarrassed by both Gillard and Abbott. Have either of them ever met a Sri Lankan person for a chat over a bowl of curd and kittul?

Click here to read about our recent spin around Colombo, Kandy, Polunnaruwa, Anuradhapura and Galle.

BANK BAILOUT BINGO: "Socialize the losses, but quietly Privatize any gains".

When wealthy people and CEOs stuff up, they can expect cushy government (tax-funded) handouts. When poor people stuff up, it spells stress and poverty, plus offers lucrative new opportunities for lawyers, Real Estate tycoons, trauma and marriage counsellors. It appears that taxation revenue flows mainly uphill, towards the big end of town.

Now that the Big Bailout Bucks have topped up the coffers of the financial giants again, I note with cynical sideways glance that corporate fat-cats are (once again) slyly receiving their millions in bonuses and perks, just like before. This is symptomatic of the underlying purpose of Capitalism (a.k.a. Compassionate Conservatism's Poignant Concern for the Extremely Wealthy). Hey city hall, bail me out too! All I want is less to do, more time to do it, and higher pay for not getting it done. My point here is this - I'm not personally ready yet to dive back into the stockmarket big-time. It's not over till the fat CEO sinks. The other elephant in the room is the Yuan/Dollar stand-off... something's gotta give, and when it does, whoa, stand back!

Some facts:

* in the West, about 1% of the population of wealthy countries control 95% of the wealth; and
* in those wealthy countries recovering fastest from the 2009 economic meltdown, there is now a significantly increasing proportion of people falling below the poverty line...

Conclusions:

Capitalism is not only achieving its goal of making the Very Rich even richer, but now it's even causing increased poverty within wealthy countries themselves! Wealth and power are concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer people, to no-one's advantage but their own:

According to the present Rules Of Capitalism, disadvantaged people are expected to lose in order to make those profits possible. Observe, for instance, how rich folks are quickly moving in to buy up thousands of cheap "bank-owned" homes which have sadly flooded the real-estate market (do I sufficiently conjure up the image of tears?)

...and how the corporate sector expressed such unbounded glee (behind closed boardroom doors) that Copenhagen was such a successful failure... Their anti-Climate lobbying cost them millions, but hey short-term corporate profits should be maintained at all costs...
...um... shouldn't they?

...and now, HOURS of fun for all the family ...even better than The Simpsons!!

Presenting Fat-cat FunkyPix2's

Dictionary of Right-wing/Conservative Terminology

is sure to assist you to win your next game of Bailout Bingo:

* alternative energy sources /n./ New locations to drill for gas and oil.


* bankruptcy /n./ A means of escaping debt available to corporations but not to poor people.


* class warfare /n./ Any attempt to raise the minimum wage.


* God  /n./ Senior Pentagon adviser (war is Her way of teaching geography to Americans)

* growth /n./ 1. The justification for tax cuts for the rich. 2. What happens to the national debt when policy is made according to Definition 1.


* healthy forest /n./ No tree left behind.


* honesty /n./ Lies told in simple declarative sentences (e.g., "Freedom is on the march.").


* House of Representatives /n./ Exclusive club; entry fee: $1 million to $5 million (See: Senate.)


* insanity /n./ See: staying the course. May also apply to otherwise sane liberal presidents.


* laziness /n./ When the poor are not working.


* leisure time /n./ When the wealthy are not working.


* liberal(s) /n./ Followers of the Antichrist. (Note that in Australia, the major conservative right-wing party named itself the "Liberal Party". For starters, how's that for a Big Fatcat Lie? The party's now led from behind by that God-bothering Catholic fanatic, Mr Rabbit (See: 1. pro-life, and 2. woman.)


* No Child Left Behind /riff./  There are always jobs in the military.


* pro-life /adj./ Valuing human life up until birth.


* Senate /n./ Exclusive club; entry fee: $10 million to $30 million.


* staying the course /interj./slang./ Continuing to perform the same actions and expecting different results (See: insanity.)


* shit happens /interj./slang./ I don't have to live in Baghdad.


* voter fraud /n./ A significant minority turnout.


* woman /n./ 1. Person who can be trusted to raise a child but can't be trusted to decide whether or not she wishes to have a child. 2. Person who must have all decisions regarding her reproductive functions made by men she wouldn't want to have sex with in the first place.

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FunkyPix2's Thought of the Day

And those who were seen dancing were thought
to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

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Here's Michael Moore's entertaining trailer to his film Capitalism: A Love Story. Often, I find Moore's jargonistic style annoyingly American, but gee the guy's heart is in the right place when it comes to supporting the underdog against exploitation by the Super Well-Heeled. He keenly laments that whatever hits the fan will probably not automatically be distributed evenly (eg health care) so he's taking active steps to improve things... I can only respect that.

PS: note the dramatically gloating manner in which George Dumbya Bush announces the words "global meltdown", as if he were somehow pleased about the crash... Um, was he? Could it all have been manipulated deliberately? The principal beneficiaries of a financial spring clean are always going to be the already-wealthy classes.

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...and lastly, here's FunkyPix2's footnote to the foolishly fatal financial fuzziness of federal fiscal fantasy. Apart from stuff like "the cheque's in the mail", here's ALL you need to know about Stimulus payments, Bailouts, Tax rebates etc:

Q: What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?

A: It's money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q: Where will the government get this money?

A: From taxpayers.

Q: So the government is giving me back my own money?

A: Only a little of it. Just the part you overpaid to start with.

Q: What's the purpose of this payment?

A: The plan is that you'll use that money to buy a high-definition flat screen TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q: But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?

A: Shut up.

Winning the Peace in Sri Lanka: It's not over till the Tamil lady sings

 >>> NEWSFLASH !! >>>

BRITISH P.M. GORDON BROWN
ARRESTS OPPOSITION LEADER

Colombo, 9 Feb 2010. Prime Minister Gordon Brown this morning arrested Opposition politician David Cameron for the alleged crime of being involved in politics.
Mr Cameron's whereabouts tonight are unknown. He was violently dragged from a tea party at Buckingham Palace and driven away at speed. This is consistent with a pattern of unexplained disappearances of journalists and anti-Brown dissidents over the past year or so as the country moves towards totalitarian status alongside rogue states such as Burma, Sudan or North Korea.
Mr Brown denied knowledge of any such abductions but claimed that the recent closure of the newspaper The Monday Leader was necessary "in the nation's security interest in order to prevent corruption and to suppress dangerously anti-Democratic minority groups such as the Whigs, Tories, and other terrorist militia". He later added: "We do not have Censorship here. What we do have is merely a limitation on what the Media can say".
Mr Brown (a.k.a."King Gordon I") is also said to have stated that he soon intends to abolish parliament altogether as it is "a bloody waste of oxygen", although this breaking news remains unconfirmed due to an apparent shortage of journalists.    CDN-FOX.

Confused?? Yeah, me too.
OK, fantasy over. Flip to the reality of post-war (pre-peace?) Sri Lanka...

Exactly following the model provided by the mega-wealthy middle-class Thaksin Shinawatra (formerly of Thailand), Mahinda Rajapakse achieves power by targeting the vote of the rural Sinhalese, sufficient in number to give him an electoral majority. As in Thailand, farmers are thought to be the easiest political prey who, due to their relatively limited formal education, are less capable of assessing propaganda bias when it is fed to them.  Simple. But there's more operating behind the scenes - and as usual it comes down to money, of course.

Many people are unaware of the massive impact China has had on the history of Srilanka over the past couple of years since Mahinda Rajapakse visited Beijing. That visit gave China the courage to no longer be wary of offending India. Just as China has bank-rolled the governments of Burma and Sudan (among others) in a quest for economic empire, Sri Lanka has received massive soft loans and military assistance. Without this help, the 25-year struggle against the Tamil Tigers could not possibly have ended so abruptly, and Rajapakse would not therefore have had so many electoral aces up his sleeve. China certainly has Tamil blood on its hands. Who do you think vetoed the UN resolution about investigating war crimes in the Tamil prison camps in the north? I suggest Chinese tourists be wary around Jaffna.

Rajapakse is fanning the flames of international competition too. Last week he popped up in Moscow for a photo-op with President Medvedev and to shore up deals with Russia to explore for oil [etc] off the coast of Sri Lanka. The USA is competing furiously to keep its interests alive in the face of Chinese investment. China is in a stronger financial situation by comparison with the USA following the 2009 meltdown of Capitalism. It is the financial  cat; the USA is its mouse. China has realised that the Wild West's "shoot-your-way-in" model of colonialism isn't going to work in today's world. Colonialism can now be done better - and more cheaply - by email and online transfers.

China's state-owned CHEC Corporation is bank-rolling a huge new expressway which will soon connect Sri Lanka to the huge new Chinese-funded seaport at the southern town of Hambantota. Surprise surprise, Hambantota district is Rajapakse's own constituency - much of the money was siphoned off for his massive election campaign). Explanation? As world oil supplies shrink, China desperately needs a chain of windows onto the Indian ocean and in particular onto the Arabian Gulf. (For this same reason it has inveigled its way financially into Burma and is building a seaport at Sitwe ...which explains why the Burmese military junta can afford to be so scornful of UN sanctions.)

To the Sri Lankan rural majority, Rajapakse's waltzing on the world's stage probably seems grandly impressive ...and progressive. In the short term, people's expectations of re-vitalized economic activity may be superficially fulfilled as they observe building projects sprouting everywhere, plus find some short-term labouring jobs. In the longer term, there will be a dawning disillusionment as people begin realizing that the People's Dictatorship of Sri Lanka has been set up principally to benefit the already-wealthy Singhalese middle-class of Colombo and the southern provinces ...not the rural majority.

Is this not a recipe for grass-roots Tamil unrest all over again? Is this not a sordid re-run of colonial history by another name? Could Sri Lanka be sleep-walking into selling its soul for a pittance? It's not too late - Rajapakse faces another election in April. Is there a new Opposition phoenix rising from the ashes to bell the cat? Fonseka, even though his platform was essentially not so different from that of Rajapakse, was correct in his objective of not concentrating too much power in the hands of one person. Parliament must at all costs be allowed to dissent and counter-balance. Even if I were a Rajapakse supporter, I would now consider voting elsewhere in order to reduce his huge majority by just one vote ...after all, History is the sum of individual actions. It would prove healthier for the country to have a half-decent Opposition.

I refer you to this Canadian CBC article for balanced background reading. There are also more of my comments about Tamil-Singhalese reconciliation in my recent previous post about the Galle Literary Festival. Alternatively, just scroll down past this natty collection of one-liners...

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.

- Tommy Smothers

A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.

- Dr Laurence J. Peter

Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.

- Mark Twain

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

- Noam Chomsky

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

- Former US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without it being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.

- Winston Churchill

Only the suppressed word is dangerous.

- Ludwig Bome

2066 And All That:Dear Copenhagen, there is no Planet B.

"Uh-oh!"

     

I'm cross at the folks who brought you Copenhagen. It's never a good thing to get FunkyPix2 cross. World leaders like Brown, Obama and Rudd risk their necks if I get cross. FunkyPix2 got very cross at Australia's John Ducklips Howard... and just look what happened to him.

     

Iran's Ahmedinejad has a genuine point, unfortunately, when he suggests that the major polluters such as Australia*, Canada, the UK and the USA (what I call the Un-Developing countries) need to seriously reconsider the assumed merits of Capitalism/Democracy. It's obvious enough that "Pro-profit = Anti-Climate": watch Obama lying about the great success of Copenhagen.

*Australia has the highest carbon emissions per head in the entire world... Shame Straya Shame.

     

But it's also obvious that no country which is constrained by a 3- or 4-year election horizon can effectively plan for the Longer Run. China, with its Socialist one-party system, is actually achieving far more than the West in terms of Green reforms, forest-planting, economic safety-nets etc. Admittedly, it's sometimes at a cost to sections of its citizens, but certainly far more benevolent than the military junta in Burma.

    

By contrast, Western Capitalism (formerly known as Colonialism) is designed to maximize profit and to concentrate it in the hands of a hugely wealthy elite - and to hell with the rest. Therefore the Global Common Good is almost inevitably a casualty, as the 2009 financial train-wreck amply demonstrates.

    

The Elephants in the Room, therefore, are the very institutions we're all expected to take for granted as immutable, beyond question, sacrosanct... they are
    

Capitalism & Democracy

    

If we refuse to question them or consider changes, we in the West are as guilty of Fundamentalism as the very people we so often accuse. If we unilaterally deny that our system is imperfect, we are complicit in its failures and must accept the consequences. By saying that, I will of course be smeared as a ranting member of some knot of sandalled left-wing zealots - but no, I'm just another local lad who is bold enough to point out that the emperor is, in fact, at least partly naked.
    
The most dire consequence of all is Rapid Climate Change.

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In the following Short and Pugnaciously Cynical Photo Essay designed to assist World Citizens to cope with the coming Underwater Age (the real Age of Aquarius?), I pose more Questions than Answers:

I begin with the necessary Rapid Darwinian Adaptions which will clearly be necessary for future life underwater: Gill & Fin Surgery may soon bump facelifts as the number one elective procedure:

A Hollywood heart-throb of the future?

...or just a failed Prototype?

So, more realistically speaking, perhaps this
merman tailfin will be recorded by Historians as the
equivalent of the Wright Brothers' biplane flight:

When streets go under water - as parts of Bangkok already have -

you may have to adapt to overhead walkways to get around:

a dead thing...

Welcome to New Paris, in the year 2066...

...and Manhattan

 

...and here's a quicker solution for Climate Change Deniers such as Australia's stand-up comedian Opposition leader Mr Rabbit (member of Gravity Deniers and Flat Earth Society):

FUKITOL ...thoughtfully brought to you by

PS: Even the very name of Mr Rabbit's party - the "Liberal" Party (HO-HO) is a bare-faced lie. It ain't liberal, it's ultra conservative. It's Australia's equivalent of the Republican Right-wing Pro-lifers.

Eeeeew.

   
Do you want a really honest no-holds-barred summary of why Copenhagen was always destined to bellyflop? Click here.
A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Hold that thought.
   
NEWSFLUSH !! ...and in Breaking Wind, here's an interesting interview with a Copenhagen insider who reveals who was really in control of negotiations. I've copied an extract:

EMMA ALBERICI: There certainly was an impression by the end of it that the West, led by the European Union and the US, was bullying the poor and developing world into submission, into signing up for some kind of binding emission cuts.
   
MARK LYNAS: Yeah well I think that's rubbish. I mean that's certainly not what I saw. If anything it was the West being bullied by the developing countries. Only the big ones, of course, because the smaller countries don't really have much of a voice.
   
EMMA ALBERICI: Who was it from China involved in this obfuscation? Was it the Premier, Wen Jiabao?
   
MARK LYNAS: No it wasn't Wen Jiabao and that's also significant that the Chinese forced Obama to sit opposite a sort of mid-level official in the Foreign Ministry. I don't know what the man's name was but he was obviously a very experience negotiator and he played a very inscrutable poker face approach really.
   
And he had to keep on leaving the room to make phone calls to his superiors as he put it because he was only a civil servant, leaving President Obama and all of the other leaders and Kevin Rudd included sitting there tapping their fingers waiting for him to come back with some news.
   
I think it was meant to cause offence and probably some offence was taken.
   
TONY EASTLEY: Mark Lynas, environmental adviser to the Maldives at the talks in Copenhagen, speaking there with Emma Alberici. 

Thailand is jealous of Burma's nuclear power: Let them eat Yellowcake

Disposing of nuclear waste? No problem, the monk-on-duty
with the 'glow-in-the-dark' orange jump-suit will take care of it.

A nuclear-powered Thailand? Yep, it's back in the news. But it's sure to be safe if the Reactor is built next to a Buddhist Temple or, even better still, near a 'good luck' Amulet factory.

I expect bamboo scaffolding during the building process. And a fleet of barefoot cops on scooters as a Tsunami-like warning system in the event of a nuclear accident.

I do really love Thailand - honest - but hardly because of Thais' rigorous attention to workplace standards. Thai expertise in matters electrical, for instance, is at best dubious. Most "electricians" have zero idea of how to ground [earth] a circuit, a safety standard universally assumed in the west. I think that before attempting to build a nuclear power station, Thailand might first consider working out how to build a half-decent footpath.

Good cop, bad cop, sharing a scooter. The officer driving should fine his passenger
200 baht for not wearing a helmet. Also note the excuse for a 'footpath' (outside a Wat).

Then there's the issue of corruption and kickbacks. Sub-standard concrete, thin or missing reinforcement [etc] is the norm here as the brother-in-law's suppliers pocket their tea-money. To save cost and make up for having to pay bribes, walls made of bricks only 2" wide are frequently built without any internal reinforcement [see pic at left]. This is the happy-go-lucky land of mai-bpen-rai, and even though foreign nuclear contractors themselves may be rigorous in their own internal quality control, would they be able deal with the deep rooted systemic graft and concealment that exists here at all levels? Even renovating our apartment revealed to us the cut-throat commissions demanded for contracts ...and all with the blessing of the condo management. Outcome? It was us who ended up paying - grrrr - up to 20% extra on occasion... to people who did none of the work!

Getting nuclear power is also about keeping up with the Jonses. Thailand doesn't want to be caught in a position where it might be seen to lose face in the event that its arch rival Burma announces its own Nuclear Reactor. Am I kidding? No, unfortunately. Burma has been promised a smallish reactor by Russia, and has also reputedly had contact with North Korean technologists. Burma has been told by ASEAN that it would be kicked out if it got nuclear power, but the Burmese generals, generously bankrolled as they are by China, really couldn't give a toss. In fact, it would conveniently reduce pressure on them to tow the line with all that pesky Democracy stuff. And with fugitive Thaksin now an employee of Cambodia, I'm expecting a competitive tender from Phnom Penh at any minute.

There is a protest movement against the nuclear push here, but it is routinely belittled by the Puuyai ('big guys'] who control the media. The immediate assumption is that these silly protesters are getting in the way of Thailand's progress. My immediate comment - moving forwards is not necessarily a good idea when you're standing on the edge of a cliff. But what intrigues me is the relative low media profile of the nuclear issue in the eyes of the Thai public. Truth is that few Thais read newspapers, and many are painfully slow at reading at all. Reading isn't big in Thailand - except maybe comics. And Thai radio tends to be populist and lightweight, especially up here in the rural north. For many folks, it is more important to score the next 20 baht for a meal than waste time on remote issues involving rich people:

But to put things in perspective, here's an interesting time-line which aligns the recurring nuclear issue with the history of coups in Thai politics:

Gotta love the tsunami image.

NEWSFLUSH !!  in Breaking Wind from the Nation Newspaper:
Dramatic Thai nuclear update (Dec 24 2009).

And, of course, the expected rush on Nuclear Merchandise starts TODAY!! All available from FunkyPix2. All environmentally fairly safe and posted discreetly to you gift-wrapped in a comforting shade of green: