We Are Live @ ricetimes.com

A change of URL has occurred.  We are now at ricetimes.com.  This arrangement allows for a few more features and some more development.  

Thursday’s News

At least a few monks are seeking to continue the protests in Myanmar.  Things have quieted down after thousands were arrested after a government crackdown last month.

A strike has crippled Thailand’s rail system and left thousands of passengers stranded.

Experts are worried that gangsters are running Macau.

North Korea’s prime minister, Kim Yong Il, is continuing his jaunt around Asia with a stop in Cambodia.  Some are hoping that this is a sign of North Korea opening up to the world.

Finally, Far East Economic Review features an essay by Bertil Lintner.  Mr. Lintner warns that even if Myanmar is successful in its bid for democracy, things will not be easy.

Ricetimes Is On The Move

I’ll be moving ricetimes.  The new sight will go live on November 4th.  New URL will be www.ricetimes.com.  I’m testing out options for the new site, like putting live news feeds in the sidebar, etc.  I am planning to do a brief daily post about the latest news and longer editorials three or four days a week.  On this site, I’ll be testing out some of the posts I plan to write over on the new site.

Former Drug Kingpin Falls Off the Perch

One of the world’s most controversial and wanted men died this past week in the Burmese city of Rangoon. Khun Sa, an ethnic Shan warlord, controlled much of the world’s heroin supply until the mid nineties. He was thought to be suffering from diabetes and high-blood pressure recently, but th cause of death is unknown. The BBC reports:

He was once one of the world’s most wanted men, with a vast drug-trafficking operation in the so-called Golden Triangle region, spanning the border of Thailand, Laos and Burma.

To his people, however, Khun Sa was a freedom fighter, not a drug smuggler.

With a private army numbering in the hundreds, Khun Sa claimed to be fighting for independence for the Shan people – an ethnic minority group based mainly in Burma.

Despite being wanted by the US and other countries in conjunction with drug trafficking, his death will do little to slow the trade. Since the mid-nineties, Khun Sa has been out of the game, having made a deal with Myanmar’s government. He lived out the last 10 years of his life in Rangoon, enjoying at least a portion of his wealth with immunity from prosecution.

Author Christopher Cox, who trekked through the Golden Triangle to interview Khun Sa in the early nineties, captured one of the few snapshots of the warlord. The book which recounts the trip, Chasing the Dragon, shows Khun Sa’s many sides. He spoke of the plans for his people and seemed to be truly respected by local tribesmen. However, it was a falling out with the very same people that caused Khun Sa to retire. Ethnic minorities still control parts of Myanmar’s poppy production. Surely the military government received some of the action in Khun Sa’s immunity deal.

Copyrighting in Asia

Anyone who has wandered through the night markets in Bangkok or Jakarta, or stopped in Shenzhen knows that Intellectual property rights are not enforced. Those DVDs in the little plastic sleeves with photocopied covers are were not shipped from the studio, and the swoosh is backwards on those Nike shoes.

I have heard arguments for and against better enforcement of Intellectual property rights in Asia. Indonesian essayist and diplomat Yasmi Adriansyah argues that greater use of patents and copyrights will lead to a stronger economy.

A joint research project titled Impact of the Intellectual Property System on Economic Growth, carried out by the United Nations University (UNU) and WIPO (September 2007), shows that there is a significant correlation between IP and economic growth.

The survey, conducted in six Asian countries (namely Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, Malaysia and India), shows that trends in the number of patent applications filed are very similar to trends involving economic data, such as GDP, R&D expenditure and foreign direct investment, in many of the countries studied.

On the other hand, most of the people you see hawking fake Rolex watches and bootlegged DVDs make a hell of a lot less money than the people who produce said products. Perhaps bootlegging is simply a natural way to share the wealth of a few with the mass of people struggling to make a buck.

Companies like Nike, which opened factories in Vietnam, are bringing jobs to countries where copyright infringement is worst. However, at $30-$50 per month, the salaries of workers are a bit low to seduce workers from the bootlegging industry.

I expect developing countries to make a show of support for intellectual property as a way to cozy up to The First World. However, I think that lip service is as far as most of them will go towards cracking down on one of the more lucrative industries in their countries.

Internet Revolution in Myanmar

Videos of the current protests in Myanmar are popping up on YouTube and other video sharing sites. The government has done their best to block the internet, and silence journalists, but, obviously, they have not been entirely effective. The Bangkok Post reports that a Japanese journalist was killed by Burmese police. The information and images flowing out from Myanmar has not stopped, however.

Shawn Crispin, a correspondent for the Asia Times, wrote a recent piece on the proliferation of internet cafes in major Burmese cities like Yangon (Rangoon). According to that report there is an

“explosion of usage at public Internet cafes, particularly in Yangon, where a growing number are situated in nondescript, hard-to-find locales. All of the cafes visited in recent months by this correspondent were equipped with foreign-hosted proxy sites or servers, which with the help of the cafe attendant allowed customers to bypass government firewalls and connect freely to the World Wide Web – including access to otherwise blocked critical news sources.”

All this adds up to the fact that what happens in the coming days in Myanmar will not be as secret as the government would like. However, short of cutting all the electricity for the entire country, going door-to-door confiscating computers, or cutting phone lines, there is little that they can do to stem the flow of information. Along with BBC coverage, the web site Irrawady seems to have a strong network of sources within Myanmar itself. The site is run by Burmese refugees in Thailand. Whatever happens, the world will know about it. The question is, will all this information help the cause of the Burmese people. The military government seems to have no need for popular approval from its own people or from the international community. Like the Reuters man in the following video says, “There will be bloodshed before there is any outside influence.”

Welcome

News is news.  What, when, where, how, who cares?  When filtered through the eyes and pen (ok, that’s too old school.  I meant to say keyboard) of a person, the facts become diffused.  Anyone with eyes can see the same event that was written about and say: “That’s not what I saw.”

Sure, we all know that journalism is subjective.  Perhaps the good that information and opinion does for a society outweighs the opining of those who convey that information.  In fact, I’m sure it does.

Then, there is “color.”  What about journalism’s literary cousin?  For me, a well-written feature, perhaps blending fact and data with a story, has far more impact than any other media.  The immediacy and the visceral nature of said pieces make them seem far more based in reality than something off the Reuters’ wire.

Therefore, I disclose that the word “news” in the subtitle at the top of this page will sometimes refer to the hard facts and sometimes refer to my opinion of said facts.  I am both too small and too jaded to think that my writing will accomplish anything “big.”  Personal opinions and the personal experiences that form them are so much more real to me than grand ideas and weighty events (not that those aren’t important).

With this in mind, dear reader, feel free to peruse this weblog in the future, discarding or taking to heart whatever is on these pages.  And, so I don’t leave you with merely a rant, here are some links to articles that contain the above-mentioned “color.”   Karl Taro Greenfeld has written some great travel articles in the past.  This is an older one, but it still feels personal and fresh.  And then there is Pico Iyer, heir apparent to Norman Lewis in the genre of travel essays.
Michael Herr’s Dispatches is the ultimate combination of reportage and personal narrative, one of the most intense reading experiences I’ve ever had.