Musings

Heading out of history this morning I was attracted to a kids shirt because it seemed he had paid to have a giant "Coke" brand plastered on his body. On closer examination though it turned out to be one of those 'culture jamming' shirts, and it actually used the Coke Cola style logo to say "Cock" with a little "Try this" underneath.

I had to use a sentence I never thought I'd have to use the other day at home, "Lyam, stop drawing on your sister." He was using her little bald head as a canvas for his scribbling.



A great article from the Independant about Dubai, a place we were seriously considering going to, but the more I learn about the more I'm horrified by it. Im reading a book about the history of the third world right now, and it seems like Dubai is a state built on the back of slavery:

"Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in dozens of the camps, and the men have not been paid for months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. "We have been robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately, and when we can't, we'll be sent to prison."

This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat – but I met nobody who said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.

Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on construction projects told me: "There's a huge number of suicides in the camps and on the construction sites, but they're not reported. They're described as 'accidents'." Even then, their families aren't free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a "cover-up of the true extent" of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting."

I still remember the American ABC interview with the King done a few years ago and how they gushed over his 'success', dealing for only a few minutes on the 'underside', and framing it as a success for the 'free market'. There is a nasty subtext to all this. It's a further irony that the journalist who wrote this story (English) leaves out the part where our countries (west) used massive systems of exploitation to build the wealth we enjoy today. It seems remembering our own history is not that important.

A friend on Facebook published a story (and some speculate it could be a hoax) about the Chinese Acadami of Social Science further simplifing Chinese characters (image below). If it's true, i think it's terrific.


What struck me again this year, and I have blogged about this before, is the weakness of authoritarian structure. All the asian work places Ive been at have been that way, and it appears strong, but it's actually quite weak. People from outside percieve this a problem of governance, but in China at least, my impression is the authoritarian nature of much of the place comes from the 'bottom up', from the culture itself. This will make it a hard weed to pull from the psychy.