Traveling From Your Living Room

Time for another story gushing about the wonders of Couch Surfing! This past weekend I hosted two women who were on break from their master’s programs in St. Louis. Ainur, from Kazakhstan, is studying American law, and Shushanik, from Armenia, is studying education. They’re in their 30s, they have jobs and personal lives to return to in their home countries, but they took the plunge on expanding their horizons thousands of miles from home, which I greatly admire. They were in Chicago to sightsee, but we found time to hang out and chat, and had some cultural exchange over omelets and ice creams.

Ainur, me, Shushanik

We talked about American politics a little; they had both come to the States with the impression that we were “the most atheistic” country in the world, so they were shocked to see how much religion dictates government decisions here. Then I talked about classroom overcrowding, and not paying teachers enough, and how testing is strangling education, and Shushanik said her main research interest lies in determining which standards and methods of testing are actually useful and which are part of the problems I bemoaned.

Both Ainur and Shushanik were born under the rule of the Soviet Union, and they remember the bad old days with little fondness. For example, Ainur speaks better Russian than Kazakh because she was only allowed to speak Russian at school. They both spoke with envy of the infrastructure we have here, and the reliability of the legal system (even taking into account my rants on the prison-industrial complex).

A gorgeous March day

But they’re both very proud and fond of their homelands, as most people are, of course. Neither has any plans to settle out of her country, and they enjoy travel for the same reason most of us do: to meet new people and see new things, but not to relocate. And some things about the US upset them. Somehow, sex ed came up, and I said that kids today are only taught abstinence, and abortion is practically legal in name only. They hardly believed me; the idea that a woman’s health is her concern and hers only is so basic to them, that the thought of putting it up for public debate and legislative oversight is repugnant to them.

All this is to say that I only spent a short time with these women, but our shared love of travel and meeting new people opened us up to wonderful conversations and a free exchange of ideas and information. I know couchsurfing isn’t for everyone, but it’s been a great way for me to travel without leaving my living room, just by hosting people visiting from all over the world. I highly recommend it if you’re considering hosting or surfing. You can also go to group outings in your hometown if you want to meet likeminded folk but can’t open up your home.

ice cream break

Finally, it’s fun! I think I made it sound a bit like a UN summit, but we had brunch, wandered around Millennium Park, picked out shiny souvenirs, and had ice cream in the shade while people watching. In other words, I had a relaxing weekend with friends. They just happened to be new friends from far-flung lands.

Images 1 and 3 courtesy of Shushanik. Image 2 is mine.

ACAM: Cambodia’s Dark Past and Bright Future

I’ve finished John Tully’s A Short History of Cambodia: From Empire to Survival, and damn if it isn’t a discouraging read. It’s all right there in the subtitle–Cambodia was once a strong empire with the largest city in pre-Industrial times, an intricate system of canals and farmland, and an impressive collection of intricately carved temples, and now it is one of the poorest countries in the world, riddled with corruption, and desperately trying to pump up a tourism industry centered around the ruins of the greatness that once was.

A Short History of Cambodia

Of course, every country has its ups and downs, and no empire lasts forever. But the way in which Cambodia got totally screwed, over and over, from the mid-19th century through today, is both upsetting and instructive. Basically, although European colonization came late to Cambodia, it came with a vengeance. The French used an anti-missionary assault in Saigon as an excuse to send over a “protective mission” that quickly became a “permanent occupation force” (p.80). From Saigon to Cambodia, and soon they had control over Indochina (the colonialist term for much of Southeast Asia). Cambodia was officially a protectorate, but basically France treated them like a badly behaved colony, giving them strict governors and overhauling their entire system of government with no local input so it never had mass support (even measures like abolishing slavery and setting up schools for children).

By 1954, Cambodia had been caught up in the French fight with the Vietnamese, and the people wanted out. Prince Norodom Sihanouk successfully maneuvered to have the Geneva conference name Cambodia a sovereign nation, albeit with strings attached. I mentioned in another post that the intersectionality of world politics in the 20th century astonishes me, and while I’m sure that makes me sound naive, the extent to which the Cold War affected politics in literally ever corner of the globe in the latter half of the century can’t really be overstated, I don’t think. For example, the only way Sihanouk managed to get Cambodia free of French rule was by promising up and down and back and forth that Cambodia was a neutral country that would never enter into military alliances with any other country. Not to mention he had to beg to have his country back in the first place, and the US and USSR, along with some other countries, granted that. (This granting of sovereignty to nations that already existed and just need their colonizers off their backs is deeply puzzling to me. See reservations, Native American.)

Prince Sihanouk

This is not to say that either world power gave up hopes of using Cambodia in its Southeast Asian chess game, and the US presence in Vietnam went far toward stirring up discontent in Cambodia with the US and any pro-US factions. The Khmer Rouge, staunchly anti-US, started gaining followers. (“Khmer Rouge” means “Red Khmer,” the Khmer being the ethnic people of Cambodia, and the Red being a reference to their Communist affiliation–a context I never knew about or wondered about before. Funny how names can hold one meaning for you–deadly Pol Pot regime!–when they started out with quite another meaning entirely.)

Eventually, the country descended into civil war, with the war-weary Vietnamese, the jungle-hardened Khmer Rouge, the covert-bombing Americans, and the under-supplied national army all entangled in a mess of a fight. When the US and Vietnam got out, it became unwinnable for the national army, and Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge stormed into power.

Pol Pot, looking creepily cheerful as he palms a gun and plots genocide

Pol Pot’s socialist agenda was extreme. He immediately banned all private property, currency, manufacturing, and education. He force-marched his fellow Cambodians out of the “corrupt” cities and into the countryside, and along the way murdered thousands of people the infamous killing fields outside the city. Displacing hundreds of thousands of people, killing as many, and utterly changing the basic structure of everyday life was not, surprise surprise, a successful plan. The country plunged into disrepair, and Pol Pot went back to war with Vietnam, which no one was equipped to handle. At the end of 1978, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and took over for the next ten years.

The sickening thing about this post-DK (Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot’s name for his regime) era is the international response. The bloody and drawn-out Vietnam War had done nothing to convince the US that that country wasn’t out to conquer and convert all neighboring countries to communism (the domino theory! a real winner of an idea), and China was equally upset with Vietnam’s perceived overreach into its physical and ideological domain. They were both dead-set on punishing Vietnam for its ambition, so since Vietnam had invaded/liberated Cambodia, that meant Cambodia got to suffer too. The People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK, the post-DK regime name) “was cut off from assistance from the UN Development Programme, the Asian Development Bank, the IMF and the World Bank, with only a trickle of humanitarian aid from UNICEF and the International Red Cross” (p. 207). In effect, the international community abandoned Cambodia.

Apparently this is how it was all gonna go down.

Not only that, but Pol Pot had fled when the Vietnamese invaded, and he ran guerrilla options for many years in the jungles, ratcheting up Cambodian civilian deaths with no one pursuing him on any serious level. The Western world was so concerned about the threat of Vietnam ruling Cambodia as a puppet state that it gave tacit (and sometimes material) support to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. I repeat: we supported Pol Pot. Ask anyone with a basic knowledge of the world history of the last century who Pol Pot is, and they’ll tell you, a dictator, a genocidal madman, a brutal murderer. And yet, because it seemed politically expedient to do so, the United States and other countries supported him for a number of years, until Cambodia proved it was no Vietnamese puppet nor Communist state, and aid could be sent without troubling the conscience about the red threat (p. 213). And Pol Pot died peacefully in his sleep in 1998.

The PRK government had its fair share of gross human rights abuses, yes, but if the international community had stepped in with aid right away, and called for the swift and impartial trials of Khmer Rouge war criminals, then it would have been a very different story. Basing foreign policy a paranoid idea like the domino theory is not only foolish, it’s dangerous. It has real consequences for millions of people on the ground. The United States’ treatment of Cambodia in that twenty-year period–from Nixon’s bombings, through the support of the Khmer Rouge, to the lack of basic aid during a famine in 1979–is inhumane and unjustifiable.

So, see what I mean about Cambodia getting the wrong end of the stick for decades? The corrupt nature of its officials on every level, combined with the self-interested interference of neighboring countries and world powers, led to a war-torn nation in which the people suffered mightily. Nowadays, the country is run by a corrupt prime minister, Hun Sen, and millions of people remain in dire poverty. But aid from outside countries (especially China) does help, and the textile and tourism industries have grown the country’s economy rapidly in the last ten years. Education and health levels are rising, as well, and a healthy, educated population is much more in a position to tackle its issues and guide its own path. Cambodia’s recent history is dark, yes, but that doesn’t mean the country doesn’t have a bright future.

Cambodians moving on

Image 1 from here. Image 2 from here. Image 3 from here. Image 4 from here. Image 5 from here, credit Felix Hug.

Mamet: Overrated and Half-Baked

I’ve more than once found myself in arguments at bars that start out as civilized discussions of theater and What It Means To Us Today, and quickly devolve into screaming matches like this:

Argument Partner: MAMET
Lisa: OVERRATED
AP: INCISIVE
L: BORING AND REPETITIVE
AP: GLENGARRRRRRRRY
L: UGH SAD MEN BEING SAD ABOUT BEING MEN

And then some cussing, to stay true to the playwright.

That pretty much sums up my feelings on Mamet, but in sentence form, here it is: David Mamet has a solid grasp of craft, and very often a witty turn of phrase or bitter monologue, but he doesn’t seem to like people very much, he has yet to conceive of a woman as a fully realized character, and his work leaves me exhausted and despondent. The message of his plays or movies generally seems to be, “Being a man is hard but instead of investigating why that might be or the different ways I might be a man and interact with others, I’m going to fuck up a lot and be angry about it.” Looking at it that way, he’s apparently Judd Apatow’s muse.

And now he’s come out as a cheerleader for Free Enterprise and an enemy of Higher Education. As Tom Scocca notes, Mamet’s new book on his conversion from indifferent Democrat to passionate Republican isn’t saying anything new that conservatives haven’t been saying for years, including the part where he doesn’t seem to have done much critical thinking (such as not recognizing that participating in a capitalist society doesn’t automatically preclude you from being able to oppose capitalism). His attacks on American universities are the same tripe you can hear on any conservative talk radio station–they make our children hate America! they actually prevent independent thinking!–and reveal a similarly disappointing investment in research, reflection, or dialogue with others.

Of course his liberal fans are going to be all torn up about this, because he’s a GENIUS who went to the OTHER SIDE, but it seems like a natural progression for me. Here’s a guy who saw that the world is very often fucked up, and that people do fucked up things to each other, but instead of investigating why this was so, or finding a solution, he just ranted and sulked. “Converting” to Republicanism just puts a political label on that kind of thinking.

VOTE

I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but on the off chance I’m not: If you’re a registered voter in these United States and you don’t want Tea Partiers running our country, please vote today. Here’s a way to look up your polling place. Or just Google “where to vote.”

Even in traditionally blue states -- so get at it!

Digby has a great piece up on why it’s important to vote Democrat this election, even though the Democrats are doing their damnedest to lose all the goodwill and progressive legislation they’ve actually gained in the last two years. Even though the Obama Administration is blocking measures to repeal DADT and carrying on with torture-as-usual established during the Bush Administration. Even though the health care bill fell far short of what it should have been. Even though we remain mired in war. Even though the White House is turning on its lefty allies in a gross misunderstanding of its base and a depressing unwillingness to see how we could all move toward the same goal (it is instead trying to get the nonpartisan vote from the Republicans that it ain’t ever gonna get).

Despite all that, the fact remains that it will be SO MUCH WORSE if the Republicans regain control. With the exception of a very few, they are eagerly pandering to racist, violent Tea Partiers who are literally up in arms about economic reform despite the fact that they are funded almost entirely by corporations with their own interests at play. People have been far too willing to dismiss the Tea Party as a bunch of nutcases, but they are getting the media coverage, they are getting their lies spread, and they are going to get possibly a frightening percentage of the vote.

But even if the Tea Party’s people don’t get all the seats they’re going for, rank and file Republicans aren’t looking much better. They’ve vowed to make “no compromise” in getting rid of the health care bill — which, flawed though it is, is still far better than anything we had before. They will block every progressive measure they can, and essentially they plan to wait til they can take the White House and Senate in 2012 and then seriously screw us over. They are anti-choice, anti-women, anti-people of color, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-working class, anti-middle class, and frankly, anti-all Americans who don’t fit a very specific picture. But they’ve scared enough people who would suffer under more of their policies into thinking they’re going to suffer more under Democratic policies.

The Democrats passed the health care bill.  The Democrats passed a stimulus bill that is slowly making a real difference in regaining jobs lost in the recession. The Democrats at least half-assedly went after the banks who got us into this mess. The Democrats have let science back into the FDA’s decision making, resulting in things like the 5-day emergency contraceptive being approved. The Democrats have (not as often as they should, but fairly often) stood up against Islamophobia in places like Florida and New York. The Democrats are doggedly pursuing the DREAM Act, to open up citizenship to children of immigrants. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made huge gains in worldwide goodwill, and she has presented tough speeches and policies on the importance of women in the global economy, the autonomy of people in every culture, and the primacy of human rights on her watch.

In short, they aren’t perfect, but they are worlds better. Remove the Tea Party element and think of how the rest of the election season is being portrayed and perceived, even from Jon Stewart (damn it): That there isn’t much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. There is, of course, a huge and dangerous difference. Remember the last time the main theme of the election season was “there isn’t much difference, just vote for whoever”? That’s right, it was the presidential race of 2000. And we all know how well that turned out.

Don't let history repeat itself

The Good, The Bad, and The Silly

The Good:

Correct. (And good lord, why is Paglia still getting published?)

I wish I’d seen this published more widely. We need to hear Obama taking more stands like this, especially against Islamophobia. (Via.)

Lifesaving water missions aren’t a crime. No More Deaths (No Más Muertes) does incredibly important humanitarian aid work on the US-Mexico border in Arizona, and they’ve just won a small victory as one of their members won his appeal of a trumped-up littering conviction.

The Bad:

Okay, I know I get a lot of my bad news from Shakesville, but they really do a great job of pointing out and breaking down a lot of what’s going on around the country. Lately, the corporate takeover of America’s vote and the carte blanche on torture given to the CIA have really upset me.

These are an old pair of posts, but mind-boggling in what they reveal about the Republican party. I know and love many Republicans, but every time I see things like this, I wonder how they can vote for a party that officially wants to hurt so many people. I wonder if they still think of the party whose official platform once looked like this?

A major literary magazine in India publishes vile comments from the vice-chancellor of a prestigious university calling women writers whores.  (Via.)

Yep, actually, “redistribution of wealth” sounds about right nowadays.

The Silly:

Hark! a vagrant is a delightful cartoon about history and literature and silliness. In this one, apparently the editor never heard the maxim “show, don’t tell.”

I love, love www.passiveaggressivenotes.com — straightforwardly!

Okay, what have you been reading this week?

The Good, The Bad, and The Silly

Some of these are from last week, since I meant to post a GBS on Friday but flew to Boston instead. Like ya do. Enjoy, and as ever, put your own links in comments!

The Good

Daley has decided to step down as mayor of Chicago. I’m joining the 65% of Chicagoans who think this is either a good move or one that won’t make a difference — he’s done some really awful things while in office, but the Chicago political system is so rife with corruption that I can’t see his successor being much of an improvement. [EDIT: Bad word choice. He's not stepping down, he's simply not running again come the next election.]

Peter and Paul say hell no to the National Organization for Marriage using the Peter, Paul and Mary version of “This Land is Your Land” at NOM rallies. There’s a long history of political candidates pissing off musicians by using their songs without permission, but my favorites are when the musicians respond not just to copyright violation but to their seeming endorsement of a candidate they find reprehensible — like Springsteen telling Reagan “Born in the U.S.A.” wasn’t exactly a celebratory song, or Heart telling Sarah Palin she ain’t no “Barracuda.”

The Ginsburgs sound like they were a fantastic couple, and Ruth is such a winner. (Via.)

The Bad

This is terrifying news from June that I just read about. As post author Problem Chylde says, “The line between a conscientious dissenter and a terrorist is becoming blurrier, and citizens of all nations are treading a fine line between acting under a moral imperative and obeying the law. What is the use of having freedoms one cannot exercise?”

Traister and Holmes lay it out for us: It’s a disgrace that Sarah Palin is heralded as the face of feminism in politics. Where is that face for the Democrats?

The Silly

“If Historical Events Had Facebook Statuses“… apparently it’d all still be 15-year-old boys. Yikes! But still funny.

Two words: Hipster dinosaurs (thanks to Mlle. O’Leary for the tip)

The Good, The Bad, and The Silly

The Good:

Read this fantastic New Yorker article on Park51. I have yet to hear any arguments against the building of this community center that don’t come down to racism, unwarranted fear, and/or Republican politicking.  Also, c’mon ADL, you’re better than that.

A lot of this piece from Ta-Nehisi Coates resonated with me (but don’t worry, darlings, I’ve only just started, I’m not leaving you yet).

A great look at what global feminism can mean.

The FDA approves ella, the 5-day emergency contraceptive. Now, I agree that EC is only partially effective, because you may be using protection that fails (e.g., a broken condom) and not know about it in time to take the EC. But for those who do know their original protection failed, or for those who weren’t using protection, or for those who were assaulted and had no chance to use protection, this is a crucial drug.

The Bad:

Well, crap. It’s all about the money, still.

A thoughtful, interesting look at racism in the anti-whaling debate in New Zealand and Australia

We’re sexualizing girls at younger and younger ages, yes, but their bodies are also maturing faster than ever before — and that is a problem we can, and should, do something about.

CSI is not ironclad — lab scientists in criminal trials all too often get it wrong, and real people are affected.

Why are people so willfully stupid? (And of course, if he were, so what?)

The Silly:

My dad sent me this link with the message, “Looks like you’ll be fine on your world trip….” Well… true! Thanks, Dad.

A cool gallery of color photos from 1939 to 1943 looking at rural and small town America — check out Chicago’s skyline and the newspaper headlines pasted to the window. A gripe about the presentation: in the captions, the only time race is mentioned is when African-Americans are depicted. Whites are once again the default. (Via my friend Mike.)

What have you been looking at this week?

The Good, The Bad, and The Silly

The Good:

The Feds turn up the heat on Sheriff Joe Arpaio. As article author Seth Freed Wessler points out, Arpaio has been exercising much of the power of terror and deportation based on a federal rule, so it’s a bit hypocritical of the government to just now push the issue. But at least they are actively going after the man who prides himself on making life hell for thousands of people on a daily basis.

Judge Walker’s decision on Prop 8 might not even be allowed to be appealed, since Schwarzenegger and other California government officials aren’t interested in appealing. It’s possible that this case won’t go to the US Supreme Court, which is maybe bad news in that a nationwide decision wouldn’t be made, but maybe good news in that the conservative slant of the court might make a terrible nationwide decision. If appeals aren’t allowed, then gay marriage is legal in California and those who don’t like it don’t have much recourse.

The Bad:

Obama and his Press Secretary think those of us who have high expectations for the administration are whiners and should STFU already. Look, I know a lot of good things have happened in the last year and a half and that is genuinely exciting, but I also know a lot of things haven’t been done or even attempted (Obama could stay DADT with an executive order while waiting for Congress and the DOD to dick around on long-term policy, for example). I know that some Bush-era legacies remain or are even being strengthened (like the extension of powers of the executive branch, which Obama as candidate promised to overturn, or selling off my right to my body in order to pass health insurance reform). Sure, you have to play politics in Washington, but that doesn’t mean you have to play games with people’s rights. What’s the phrase? Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

This is what happens when you make it a matter of national policy to consider immigrants an expendable nuisance rather than human beings: people use that as a cover to treat people as expendable on their own time.

The Silly:

Britain prepares for the Olympics with some real gems of advice on intercultural understanding. My favorites: “Do not be alarmed if South Africans announce that they were held up by robots.” and “When meeting Mexicans it is best not to discuss poverty, illegal aliens, earthquakes or their 1845-6 war with America.” (Via.)

Gay Sex and the City. ‘Nuff said. (Via.) (Okay actually not enough said, please note that this is an explicitly political project and I don’t mean to take away from that by placing it in The Silly; it’s a fun project, though, so here it goes.)

Leave your own links in the comments!

The Good, The Bad, and The Silly

The Good:

Prop 8 was overturned! The California law defining marriage as between a man and a woman only was ruled unconstitutional on August 4. Appeals are expected, and this may go all the way to the Supreme Court, which could be iffy, given its current make-up, but for now, hurrah! Here’s a good refresher on what Prop 8 is and why it matters for the nation, not just California.

On the other hand, it might not be so bad if the appeal goes to the Supreme Court, since Elena Kagan was just confirmed by Congress. She will take Justice Stevens’ place this fall. She’s a bit of an unknown quantity, and a career lawyer who played it safe on a lot of issues she could’ve taken some important stands on, but fingers crossed she follows history and leans more left the longer she sits on the bench.

Obama signed a law repealing a mandatory sentencing period for crack cocaine possession. This helps a lot in closing the gap between crack and powder cocaine, a gap that has seen far more blacks than whites go to prison.

The Bad:

Target, known as an LGBT friendly place to work, is under a lot of scrutiny for giving a lot of money to a vehemently anti-gay candidate in Minnesota.

Here’s an insightful article on the dangerous fundamentalism of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a liberal favorite for her survivor’s tale and anti-Islam stance.

Renee Martin looks at the viral video of Antoine Dodson and asks why no one cares about the sister he saved, Kelly Dodson, and why people are laughing at his delivery rather than listening to what he has to say.

The Silly:

Ever read an article on ebooks? Then this is the drinking game for you! Warning: extreme accuracy and hilarity follow.

And that’s it for this week! I’m off to sit by a lake with my parents, so if you haven’t commented before, your comment might languish in moderation til I can get to it on Tuesday, but don’t let that stop you. Have a great weekend!