Bamboo: The First Laotion Claret says...

'All we want for Christmas... is a play off place.'

Happy Christmas From the Beach to Everyone Back Home

Take it East

Dylan Bamboo's First Language Class

Audio recommended

We're All Alhassan Bangura

Diamonds are forever

They won't leave in the night

I've no fear that they might

Desert me

Diamonds from Sierra Leone, Kanye West

When two of my current reading topics (UK immigration fiascoes and football) combined today I happened to fall across the story of Watford Football Club's and soon to be deported to Sierra Leonean, Alhassan Bangura who faces going back to his homeland where he could face the prospect of murder after having his appeal to remain in the UK refused.

According to stories that I've read about him online: he arrived in England four years ago, to escape the civil war in his country because his life was in danger due to his late father’s connections to the Soko cult in the country. After his father’s death, its elders threatened to kill Bangura after he refused to join and take part in its rituals of withcraft and mutilation.
He fled his home and a Frenchman who found him sleeping rough in Guinea trafficked him to London via Paris in 2004, when he was aged just 16. He was then taken to a house where two men attempted to rape him. Bangura escaped and was found in the street by a passer-by who took him to the Home Office’s immigration centre in Croydon.
He underwent therapy to help him deal with his ordeals and began playing non-league football where he was spotted by a Watford scout.
Since he signed for Watford, Bangura has been a great player and fan’s favourite. Al became a father less than two weeks ago. He says he feels more English than from Sierra Leone and his ambition is to play for England.
He was originally given indefinite leave to stay in Britain. However, the Home Office has decided that Bangura shouldn’t be here anymore and wants to deport him back to Sierra Leone.
As part of its evidence at the tribunal it accused him of lying, as he told the Watford programme that he came to England with an uncle he trusted called Eric. This was rather than tell fans a man tried to traffic him for use as a sex worker and that he was almost homosexually raped – hardly the kind of thing a footballer would tell in a culture where no player dares to admit they are gay for fear of opposition taunts.
Al can appeal the decision and needs as much support as he can get to continue living in the country where he has built himself a life with a family and a job.

I'm not the kind of person to ask people to go and sign petitions and I'm not even posting it in your inbox but on this occasion I am appealing for your action, not just because he's a footballer, or not even because our family have our own struggle with the very same corrupted and anachronistic system but because I feel that this man's plight should cause a difference in how immigration issues are looked upon by people in the United Kingdom.

“In a country where our borders are seemingly open to people from all over the world and in a game where we make plenty of noise about kicking racism out of football and society, it’s beyond belief that someone like Al has been subjected to the things he has had to go through in recent weeks.” Aidy Boothyroyd Watford's Manager.

It's a sad state of affairs that inefficient government departments much more acute at controlling the media than empowering the people that put them there can divide young families of this globalised world apart as if they are some kind of toy. And that this is condoned by a largely lethargic and unaware general public fostered on misunderstanding, fear and ignorance.

Please help and sign http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/928961524

Take it East

Happy Birthday to Me

This has to be the best Birthday ever, I woke up to a beautifully packaged big dirty nappy, a hug from Dtock and a little squawk from Bamboo. My Mum arrived all the way from Manchester (3 degrees celsius) yesterday. I'm going to spend as little time at work as possible (2 hours) before I go home to spend the day with my family.

Thanks for the cards money and emails. Thanks for the Burnley FC kit for Bamboo, Dad, it's a bit big for him but I'll get you a picture of him in it when the ladies aren't around and I'll let Bamboo know if we take three points against Preston this Saturday.

Thanks for the money and phone call Nana.

We'll be in Lumphini Park tonight, Bamboo in his new pram with Mum cooing over him, me jogging and Dtock trying to stay in time with the biggest daily aerobics convention in Asia.

Mum says Bamboo is even more beautiful in real life than in the pictures and yesterday he was as good as proverbial gold.

Take it East

Blog on

Bamboo on Form

Don't worry the lip thing didn't hurt.

Not My Words - A Twelve Year Old Thai Student's

Thai Words, originally uploaded by oneboothy.

Happy Birthday

Truth, Lies & Hypocrisy

Everyone back home who reads the papers and trusts the Guardian & Observer (or less so the BBC) like I used to, should read this, they're base propaganda machines for people who can read long, fancy, complicated words just like The Sun is the same for those who can only read short simple words;

Please follow the link and let the truth sink in, thanks for the link Dave.

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-11/14pilger.cfm

And with that I've deleted my link to The Guardian and replaced it with http://www.prisonradio.org/ as it appears more accuracy, realism and truth comes out of Death Row than out of the former.

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

Take it East, Blog On

Newport

My Mum sent me an email today, a date for our appeal hearing vis-a-vis Dtock's settlement visa rejection has been sent to Mum through the post.

Despite denying us access to the UK as a family, despite my insistence in the original application that I would stay with Dtock no matter what, despite completing the form 'Bangkok' under the part where it said where do you want to have your hearing they have given us four days to prepare for an appeal in Newport, Gwent on 3rd December.

Can the Government workers not read anymore in this New Britain? Everytime I send an email to them about it they reply to me in Newspeak. What a set of jokers... New Labour, New Britain, new doesn't mean great, good or efficient, open minded, intelligent, new doesn't mean anything except exactly the bullshit Britain has inherited.

If it wasn't for Bamboo's future and my belief that my family have the right to be together and the mother of my child should have the right to visit the country of her son's father without impediment, I'd love to tell them where to stick their asinine idiotic bureacracy. To quote that supra-hypocrite Tony Blair 'We live in a world where isolationism has ceased to have a reason to exist,' How does this work in practice Tony?

In our hour of need I will never forget how it was Thailand, the Thais, and our mutual families that came in for us. I will never ever forgive the British Government and their 1984 style bureacratic order for this fiasco. How many mistakes have they made with our application? How many mistakes must they make with everbody elses? It's those people blinded by false truths, in need who see the UK as the promised land who I feel sorry for.

With the prisons bursting at the seams and nowhere else to colonize I hope, they must be planning a very big war to cope with the results of the ghettoisation, the 24-hour boozing and the mass gambling that is the legacy of the Labour Party. [Fr.:Lynch, C., "The State of Britain,"L&TUR, (Apr. '07), p.6.]

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Take it East

A Tale of Two Countries #1 - Thailand

In the same week His Majesty the King of Thailand emerged from 25 days in hospital to a crowd of well wishers dressed in a pink blazer, Burmese troops continued their unabated aggression against their own so called 'revered' Buddhist Monks.

Whilst 'Pinkmania' engulfs Thailand, I quote from the front page of the Bangkok Post 8th November, 'Many shed tears of joy as they waited hours just to get a glimpse of the Monarch... Many well wishers dashed to shops near the hospital to buy pink shirts after seeing the King check out in pink... people said they would wear pink to express their loyalty to their King.'

Perhaps the Thai people would do well to listen to what their King said to them as opposed to rushing out to buy whatever colour he happens to favourite that week yellow on Monday, pink, green, don't forget Friday: sky blue for the Queen.

The King urges all Thais to seek the middle path and to live sufficiently. Quite how this latest craze is moderate or even reasonable is beyond me. However, it appears so much easier for them to engulf in the latest fad than to make the slightest effort to understand and/or carry out the reality behind His Majesty's fine wisdom and they do so with aplomb.

Why can't Thai people unite and show their love for their King by doing something constructive like helping so many of the homeless people that populate this country, or create and put into action plans to eradicate the cancer of prostitution in their society?

On one side of the border people are self-consumed with excessive and misdirected unnecessary homage. On the other side the very venerable, reverent monks who propound the same Buddhist philosophy as His Majesty are drowning in their blood.

How ironic, the Burmese Buddhist Monks and people are dying, suffering torture and tremendous hardship for freedom. Thais living under an obviously less brutal military dictatorship without real freedom of speech, are dressing up in pink.

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A Tale of Two Countries #2 - Burma

The junta has lifted a nighttime curfew, restored Internet access and ended a ban on assembly. But monks remain targets. The junta said recently it was still pursuing four monks who led rallies.

One of them, U Kovida, spoke to The Associated Press from the Thai border, asking that his location be kept secret for fear Thai authorities would send him back.

"At the moment you will hardly find a monk in Yangon. Monks are running away from danger. They are being arrested and sent to labor camps, tortured and killed," said U Kovida, 24.

The junta has not commented on allegations of abuse.

Taken from http://www.dassk.com/contents.php?id=1479

Selfish Genes - The Practical

In Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene he explains how different animals have genes which have the ability to control their parents behaviour. This may be by the way of a young chick's squawking with its red mouth open causing an instinctive affect in the parent to feed it. Genes that are stronger at persuading this kind of behaviour in their parents survive in the gene pool.

I'm beginning to understand Dawkin's theory in practical terms, the demarcation between awake and asleep has disintegrated to a point that I don't know whether I'm doing one or the other. Last night I was having an unpleasant dream about Kayla, my cat in the UK, then I awoke (or so I thought I had) and started thinking why I'd not seen Kayla for ages and then I realised that was because I am in Thailand, and then I awoke again, to Bamboo squawking. Sleep seems to come in small insufficient slots and then you wake up feeling guilty for sleeping, it's such a strange feeling it's difficult to explain. Work is now at home and the work I get paid for has become my hobby, when I'm at work I feel I should be home.

Dawkins went on to explain mimicry, this is when a creature from a different species can trick another creature from a different species into thinking it is from the same species for a reason beneficial to the fraudster. A good example of this is how cuckoos convince birds of other species that their eggs belong to the same hatch until the cuckoo becomes big enough to chuck the rest of the eggs and chicks out of the hatch so that the dummy parent is exclusively feeding one child that isn't even his/hers and also happened to murder all of his/her most recent offspring.

In this sense human parents have the ability to use mimicry to stall the child's crying. This is colloquially known as selling a dummy and let me tell you, at this moment in time I am very tempted.

Blog On

Beautiful Bamboo

Goodbye for Now Grandma Laos Singing 'Bamboo Kee Dta Lord'

Bamboo Kee Dta Lord

Kee Bo Mee Vita Min

Le See Luang Duay

yaaaay yaay yaay

improvised by me taken from Thailand's Carrot Mee Vitamin Song

I don't think many son in laws could honestly write that they're sorry to see their mother in laws leave their flat. After living on our sofa since Bamboo's birth, Grandma Laos left on Sunday morning not before making one last Laotian in Thailand style shopping dash around Big C. She has left me with an abundance of practical baby caring skills and a girlfriend in excellent shape mentally and physically. She (herself) left with quite a lot of shopping bags and some fantastic prints of Dylan Bamboo that I took over the weekend and am yet to release online.

Expect some post people back home these most recent prints are fantastic.

Grandma misses Bamboo and the feeling is reciprocated especially yesterday afternoon when we had a little accident with a loose turd, I'll spare you the details, it wasn't pretty but fortunately for him short-lived. Yesterday after she'd gone the ante-upped. I seemed to spend all day going backwards and forwards here, there and everywhere, but mostly in the bathroom washing, scrubbing, rinsing and pegging out. Then with Bamboo, turd watching, wee catching, wiping, more wiping, burp inducing, entertaining, cuddling, cloth changing, suit changing. Then out shopping for this pak and that pak (pak means vegetable). I love how nature gives the father the bottom end.

Even managed to get out for a game of football with some lads who live in our apartment, however that didn't get very far: an officious park security guard wouldn't let us play for the most bizarre reasons. In Thailand you can rip your motorbike down a busy footpath at the speed of sound out of your mind on Sangsom but you can't play football in an enclosed area, in central Bangkok, under an overpass with nobody about in case a tree is damaged and the authorities take it out of the security guards wages!?! In any event it's refreshing to see the locals get active about green issues for a change. I'll just have to stay an unfit Dad for now.

Today is Dtock's first day on her own with Bamboo, so we hope all goes well, I've got a private class later in the afternoon so I won't be home for poo duty till later in the evening. Keep her in your thoughts.

Blog On

Dylan Bamboo Rocking Away

Like a 'Rocking' Stone

Sideways Bamboo

Sideways Bamboo, originally uploaded by oneboothy.

Dylan Bamboo's sleeping sssshhhh...

Silence is Easy

Dylan Bamboo came home yesterday and in 6 hours he managed to go through as many nappies as hours. My duties are getting nappies off without getting shit anywhere else, cleaning, washing and shopping. Last night I spent half the night in the bathroom for reasons other than I'm usually used to. It feels much more rewarding wiping your son's mess and crap up as opposed to your own.

It's fantastic having him with us and after the effect the birth must have had on his looks and the shock I had at first, he has turned out really cute. I'm trying not to be biased, he looks like me in real life but on many of the photos taken he looks very much like Dtock when she screws up her face. His nose is a cross between mine and Dtock's so he's got an upturned button nose with a defined bridge like me at the top. His eye colour is black with a tint of what looks like green which would come from me, his skin is not as pale I first thought it was. He looks like a slightly tanned white person more than he looks Asian, his oriental looks are still only very discrete but starting to show as the swelling around his eyes comes down. He definitely has his Mum's round chin. I will post some pictures later.

Last night he opened his eyes really wide and smiled at me, which melted my heart and in a second moment grimaced you can't help wondering whether he recognises you yet (although he obviously doesn't) but I'm speaking in English to him all the time aside the Laos patter of his Mum and Grandma. I expect he's picking up the different sounds of our languages from the offset.

He doesn't cry too much and when he does Dtock feeds him, he doesn't seem to cry when he shits himself which I'm not sure is a good or a bad thing. He was making a slight noise at 4am this morning but it was all slick and easy get the dirty one off, wipe it up, put it in the wash with some water and mild baby detergent, put the clean nappy back on and go back to sleep. I'd rather have him shitting, pissing and being sick all the time than crying all the time (so long as it isn't adverse to his health) so it seems, so far so good, let's hope this is the form.

Dtock said the food she had at the hospital wasn't too good and whilst it's not had any effect on her constitution it's obviously having its effect on Dylan Bamboo's, so he's a little bit unwell at the moment with an upset stomach nothing unusual in Thailand but not the best for him, you'd think they'd be careful about the food they provide in the hospital but like I say this is Thailand.

Yesterday it took me a full day off work to get his birth certificate, walking backwards and forwards from counter to counter, translating our passports into Thai, translating his name into Thai so it comes out Dirrol Bamboo Na Buch, what's the point? He's not Thai and I wish Thai people would stop offering Thai names, I reiterate he's not Thai and he's certainly not going to play for your crap football team! Thai bureacracy is a joke, I say this over and over Bamboo will not be educated in this country, maybe kintergarden but anything after that we have to be in a country where people have a semblance of common sense. Yesterday the Thai nursing staff at the hospital started speaking to Dtock's mum in half English half Thai, how's her Mum going to understand fifteen? Thai numbers are the same in Lao as they are in Thai, these are people in educated positions, they infuriate me with their stupidity. Lest I complain about Thais or I'll be here all day.

Dtock's Mum is with us at the moment, I'll be sorry to see her go and may ask her to stay a bit longer. She's like the Terry Venables of the operation, Dtock being Steve McLaren and me being Steve Round with his cones and bibs. It's a privilege to learn from people like this, when they show you what do to it's so natural you can feel that this is the way they've done it for years, this is the way that their mothers taught them and so on. It's all so natural and correct, problems are kept to a minimum and I am learning how to become a proficient Dad without any kind of intervention from Western aids like dummies or pampers type nappies that would give him rashes and actually look uncomfortable or any of that crap that you don't really need and is just an invented to make people spend money.

So for now great news, I have a beautiful son and family, I'm losing no more sleep than if I were out on the tiles all the time like I used to be. Nobody said it would be like this, I expected hell but it's the complete opposite.

This song is for Bamboo, just like your showing despite your stomach ache Silence is Easy.

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silence is easy

Dylan Bamboo Nat Booth

No need for words, watch this...

Good Morning Bamboo

Dtock gave birth to Bamboo yesterday at 13:52 Bangkok time, he weighed 3 Kilos and 320 Grams. I saw him for a very limited amount of time through a small partition about two hours after the birth and he was balling his lungs out so he obviously takes after his father in that respect.

He hasn't acquired any of his Mum's good looks yet, he's pale and bald like his Dad, I can't recall his eye colour. He had the stark appearance of my Grandad Booth when Grandad used to pull an angry face. Let's hope the wind doesn't blow on him or it may stick like that.

Dtock is looking really good and healthy, almost as if nothing has happened. Exactly like she's been all the way throughout the pregnancy, she never complains about any pain or discomfortort, she even managed to tell one of the nurses where to go in English who was complaining at her for making a mess on the floor during a contraction, you truly have an amazing mother Bamboo.

Photos will follow in a few days, I am at work and probably won't see him till he's out of the hospital, which will hopefully be on Thursday.

Blog On, Dad

Sam Sen (3 Centimetres), Progress and Confusion

Dtock's waters broke at about three in the morning and we swiftly arrived at the hospital by taxi after fighting our way through the chaos caused by the taxi driving 'Where you go' parasites who group outside Lucky the misnomered disco/meat market at the top of our Soi.

The hospital admitted Dtock and sent me home, telling me to call at midday. I didn't call because I knew they wouldn't understand me on the phone and me them likewise. I asked my boss to call them for me instead but she couldn't get any information out of them because Dtock doesn't have a surname, Ajarn Kanokporn, my boss, bless her, gave them Dtock's only real name: Souvanney (the same and only name as in her passport), she's registered with the hospital as just Souvanney, how can they not find her?

I therefore decided to go in person just in just in case there's a mass surge of Laotion women giving birth to half English children. When I got there they said she still hadn't given birth and that I should call not come in person... I'm staying remarkably calm despite the retardedness one has to encounter in matters of life and death. I got a Thai person to call for me but they couldn't locate Souvanney because they wrote her name in English because she is Laotion and Laotions don't write in Thai, like they do in their records that they can't read properly, I know this because the lady at reception kept saying mai mee mai mee (no have, no have) and I could read her name upside down in their records book.

I asked could I see Dtock they said no, I said when should I come back for more news they said allai na (what?) I repeated, they muttered to each other sam sen which I know means three centimetres, they didn't have the gumption to tell me she was doing well or high as a kite on gas and air and/or anything really and after the prior confusion I hadn't the heart to ask.

They told me to go back at four, I've since learned from Ajarn Kanokporn's (my boss who I bumped into at the hospital again) daughter that it shouldn't be long now. But by the same token I keep looking at how big three centimetres is between my thumb and forefinger and thinking it doesn't look like much progress to me.

I called Dtock's Mum (Grandma Lao) in Laos this morning and she's on her way down on the bus, I'm collecting her at Mo Chit because she doesn't know Bangkok. Trying to work out what time she's due in is becoming a task she hasn't got a clue where she is, what time she left Udon and what the bloody hell I'm asking her. My Thai, her Lao and typical Asian 'awareness' of time and space are causing much confusion. At least we're having a laugh about it which is much more than can probably be said for Dtock right now.

Who knows by the time I wrote this blog I may have/had become a Dad!

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Still Waiting

We're literally waiting outside the hospital now, the baby appears to have dropped lower into the womb and Dtocky is getting feelings akin to hunger pains but she doesn't want to eat.

We got to the hospital with the taxi driver having a fit because he thought she was going to give birth in the taxi despite our complete calmness.

Then when we arrived after rather bizarrely bumping into my boss, Dtocky said the pain had gone, so we're back in Lumpini Park opposite the hospital, waiting for pains I suppose.

If Cocker and Vez read this it may explain why we may not be able to rendez-vous, where are you anyway?

Blog On

Waiting for Bamboo: Ever the Optimist

This week has been pretty much uneventful, we're sure that's going to change some time soon but one can't help feeling slightly deflated when all your plans are complete and all you have to do is wait for mother nature to do her stuff: true to form she doesn't.

That said we are staying relaxed at home doing all the things we won't be doing when he finally makes it. The Playstation is on overdrive, I can't remember how many times I've heard 'Uno' and we've seen nearly as much of Lumpini Park as King Rama IV's statue.

Dtock went to the hospital yesterday, from what I can gather her cervix has opened one centimetre and they gave her a membrane sweep which is carried out to encourage or hasten the birth.

I find this slightly concerning as it was only a couple of weeks ago when she had some kind of, I assume, bacterial discharge looked at and cleared up. It's not as if she was even given a choice to have the membrane sweep which certainly wouldn't be the case in the west. I just read this article which put paid to my concerns http://www.obgmanagement.com/article_pages.asp?AID=4374

Obviously I know barely anything about this subject and I am translating everything from Dtock, this is the start of the rest of my life of parental worry, I choose this moment to apologise emphatically to my parents, sorry!

On a positive note I know she's attending the most renowned obstetric department in Thailand so we can only put our faith in the staff there and hope they know what they are doing. But then again my faith in Thai capability in any field is limited at best. Even in those fields I know nothing about.

Come On Bamboo: Blog On

Thanks a Million Dad

Eleven takes later we managed to make this video to thank my Dad for sending a considerable amount of money over to pay for Bamboo's birth and treatment at Chulalungkorn Hospital, Bangkok.

What would we do without altruistic parental genes?

We're extremely grateful.

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Free Burma

burma, originally uploaded by falang_bah2002.

I missed the International Bloggers Day action in support of a peaceful revolution in Burma, which occurred two days ago. But the sentiment is with me all the same.

From what I have seen through various brief visits and read about Burma I know it is a country rich in beauty and wonder, it is a place I would love to travel one day. Living in this part of the world I have some idea of the threat perilous tenuous political activity plays in the assumed security of our everyday lives.

Thai politics is so difficult to comprehend, imagine what life must be like for the Burmese who have been living under decades of repression.

In South East Asia Buddhist Monks are revered they teach about peace, peace in the self, peace in the soul. For this atrocity to happen is more than saddening it is a humanitarian disaster that could have been avoided, it shouldn't happen.

Free Burma, originally uploaded by oneboothy.

Please read the sites on the links below, which tell you more about the Burmese plight.

Please do what you can and help Free Burma.

http://www.ncgub.net/
http://www2.free-burma.org/

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Ian Brown - Illegal Attacks

Ian Brown - God

I heard this for the first time today, Ian Brown never fails to blow me away but for him to communicate words that need to be said over and over again in this manner leaves me speechless.

So what the fuck is this UK
Gunnin’ with this US of A
In Iraq and Iran and in Afghanistan

Does not a day go by
Without the Israeli Air Force
Fail to drop its bombs from the sky?

How many mothers to cry?
How many sons have to die?
How many missions left to fly over Palestine?
Cause as a matter of facts
It’s a pact, it’s an act
These are illegal attacks
So bring the soldiers back
These are illegal attacks
It’s contracts for contacts
I’m singing concrete facts
So bring the soldiers back

What mean ya that you beat my people
What mean ya that you beat my people
And grind the faces of the poor

So tell me just how come were the Taliban
Sat burning incense in Texas
Roaming round in a Lexus
Sittin’ on six billion oil drums
Down with the Dow Jones, up on the Nasdaq
Pushed into the war zones
It’s a commercial crusade
‘Cause all the oil men get paid
And only so many soldiers come home
It’s a commando crusade
A military charade
And only so many soldiers come home

Soldiers, soldiers come home
Soldiers come home

Through all the blood and sweat
Nobody can forget
It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight
It’s the size of the fight in the dog on the day or the night
There’s no time to reflect
On the threat, the situation, the bark nor the bite
These are commercial crusades
Cos all the oil men get paid
These are commando crusades
Commando tactical rape
And from the streets of New York and Baghdad to Tehran and Tel Aviv
Bring forth the prophets of the Lord
From dirty bastards fillin’ pockets
With the profits of greed

These are commercial crusades
Commando tactical raids
Playin’ military charades to get paid
And who got the devils?
And who got the Lords?
Build yourself a mountain – Drink up in the fountain

Soldiers come home
Soldiers come home
Soldiers come home
Soldiers come home

What mean ya that you beat my people
What mean ya that you beat my people
And grind the faces of the poor

Three Days, Three Videos and Two Nights in Nong Khai

You will have to excuse me for not writing very much, the spacebar at the keyboard I write isn't very effective and certainly no help. I've just had a fantastic few days back up in Isaan and these three videos show the things that I've been getting up to.

Looking at the motorcycle one I suppose it could be taken on a much deeper level (humour aside), 'look how fast I'm going... very fast'. Dtock has just picked up her Thai visa, she's on her way back across the border now. Tonight we will get the train back to Bangkok, this is her last visa run before Bamboo's birth. Let's hope he doesn't feel the urge for a window seat along the way.

Having just read Kafka's The Trial, re-visiting the very town I stayed before I met Dtock (even the weather is exactly the same as it was) and visiting the considerably mind provoking Sala Keo Kou, I'm in deep and thoughtful mood at this arguably most important juncture of my life.

Goodbye for now Isaan I will always love you.

Bye For Now Big River

One last moment before getting back to the City.

Look How Fast I'm Going.

Seeking Early Retirement

Ours at Dusk

This is what we do...

The Yang of the Yin and Yang

Oh sunshine, shone brightly through my window today,
Could have tripped out quite easy but I decided to stay
Donavan, Happy Mondays

This was an email I sent to someone in Thailand when I was in England in Spring 2006, when I came back I had the last line quoted to me:

Can you package the following; excellent weather, blue sky, the feeling of sun on skin, beautiful sunsets, beautiful women, bizarre nonsensical conversations, cheap good food, pad thai, some annoying woman dressed in hill tribe dress but really from Pathum Thani trying to sell a wooden frog or pipe, cheap poor beer, a sense of overall well being and satisfaction, occasional conversation with some of the most intelligent well travelled consuming people of the world, a tuk tuk, more beautiful women, knowledge one can always just go to the beach, the thrill of a visa run, wrong directions, a smile, happiness, ESPN, Beerlao, a bowl of noodle soup, a classroom, loads of daft kids to teach, some sticky rice, somtam, a litany of left wing literature otherwise unobtainable, a Buddha, some flip flops, a university uniform, a feeling that your life is worth living, a cheap and obtainable dentist appointment, a game of football with a plastic coconut, a death defying motorbike taxi journey, a feeling of reallly belonging, hope?

All I have to remind me of all this is two pots of Tiger Balm, 700 Baht and my memories.

Blog On

Burnley tearing Sheffield Wednesday apart the other night. I have a feeling Bamboo's year is going to be Burnley's.

Absolute Beginners

I've nothing much to offer
There's nothing much to take
I'm an absolute beginner
And I'm absolutely sane
As long as we're together
The rest can go to hell
I absolutely love you
But we're absolute beginners
With eyes completely open
But nervous all the same

Absolute Beginners, David Bowie

When I said my 'wife' is Laotion the Director looked askance, I may well have handed him a plate of dog dejecta judging from his facial reaction. "Krai Dee," he said, "(do) you know?" I didn't think I wanted to. There's nothing so much as disappointing as learning Thai, the deeper you delve the harder you bang your head against its shallow cultured bottom.

"Krai dee it mean well known," I felt like replying not as well known as the Thai whore ping pong show just down the road, but it was my first day, they're offering me a work permit and you really shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you especially when it hangs so limply from a metaphorical arm as neurotic and unpredictable as the natives of Siam. In any event I have little choice and given half the chance I certainly wouldn't have it any other way.

Welcome to my new blog I gave up the last one, searching back through old blogs became a chore and it started to look untidy. As you may see I've been meaning to kick start this for some time now.

The profile picture is of my girlfriend Dtock praying, she's probably praying for the health and well being of our first unborn child, we know he's a boy and his name will be Bamboo Booth, a lot can happen in a year.

All the other stuff posted so far is concerned with world politics, I'm trying to convey a picture of what was happening as we prepared to bring Bamboo into the world. As we look back to our parents who must have been terrified they were bringing their child into a world of recoil, violence and confusion it seems the mechanisms of control including those that hold us (Me, Dtock and Bamboo) here in Thailand have changed little from cold 'war' to this so called 'war' on terror.

And all we wonder is who gave people the right to play God?

Blog on for hopefully less bitter tirades, the blog starts here.

The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein

Us & Them

Us and Them, And after all we're only ordinary men, Me, and you, God only knows it's not what we would choose to do, Forward he cried from the rear and the front rank died, And the General sat, as the lines on the map moved from side to side, Black and Blue, And who knows which is which and who is who, Up and Down, And in the end it's only round and round and round.

Us & Them, Pink Floyd

This is a conversation between my good friend and neighbour Dave, I posted it because it shows where our head states are at this moment in time, it's nothing ground breaking and nothing innovative (yet) but it's a spark. There's something that the majority of us have been ignoring that's so difficult to comprehend, but it's there to be seen and Dave brought this to my attention. Read between the lines and you won't have to apologise to Dave and his ilk like I am.

Dave writes..

Glad you're enjoying the book, it shines yet further light onto the corporate controlled world we live in.

I was inspired to write you this email in reference to a comment you made last to you were at my apartment. You wondered why I gave so much attention to the black struggle in America. I hope I can elocute this properly, but here goes.

No Logo is about big corporations and their influence on us. How they enslave poor people from around the world and how, with government assistance, they control us domestically. Of course we know by now that governments are ultimately beholden to the corporations and neo-liberal policy is based firmly on removing people's rights and pushing us as close to slavery as we can get. Longer working hours, lower pay and destruction of unions in order to keep any resistance to this down. On top of that we are saddled with debt through the materialist fantasies we are shown that we need constantly by advertisers, backed up by willing finance/credit companies. A population in debt is a subservient population.

We see freetrade agreements throughout the world which are the opposite of free. Corporations essentially steal natural resources from countries at a pittance and the governments of said countries collude in the robbery by signing away their Independence through 'aid' and corruption. Organizations like the IMF/World Bank/WTO are set up and controlled by America, who hold a veto over all of these organizations. Obviously the lobbying industry is the what makes the tail of the U.S government wag. The lobbying industry of course represent corporations and as such have the most to benefit from taking advantage of the international agencies. America, or more aptly, American corporations have but one desire - profit. Maximising profit comes at any cost as you see in No Logo. You know already that a C.E.O's primary objective is to make more money. It is illegal in America for them to do anything but maximize profit and that means constantly cutting overheads.

The argument in many people's head though is framed in a US vs THEM scenario (us not u.s). That is why it's so hard for people to comprehend 9/11. The government is a part of US, and US would never attack US. It's unimaginable. I would argue that the US vs THEM scenario is the correct analysis though, but US is the working people of the world. We have solidarity with anyone trying to make their bread, the exploited all over the world. Presently we have laws in the west, built up over hundreds of years which guarantee us our freedoms, our rights and our voice. These freedoms are being eroded by successive governments. America has been that way since the creation of the corporation and Britain is little better. Workers have only had the vote since 1867! After the second world war the government feared a revolution and as such the labour government were obliged to appease the masses. The welfare state was born out of this golden age. Until the 70's the workers movement in Britain was strong but Thatcherism, plus an increasingly marginalized press with less dissenting voices, turned the public against their own good. Did you know for example that people like Foot and Pilger were Daily Mirror writers in the 70's! Imagine that!

Reagan/Thatcher then engaged in the most vicious pro-business anti US policies seen for many a generation. Materialism/capitalism took hold and those policies have continued with successive governments since, becoming more severe every time as apathy and lack of knowledge are shown as positive attributes to have by the press. We have seen with the recent Blair/Bush governments that there are no limits to the virtues of the private/profit sector. Privatised schools/hospitals and war to enrich the very few who have a seat at the top table are the most glaring examples, but every decision that is taken in both the American and British system is made with the people in second place. This is essential for their own survival though. The media barons as well as the funders of both systems do not react well to non-pro business policies and these intuitions have the power to overthrow a government through the court of public opinion, to stop funding the party/candidate and thus see them lose their seat or alternatively cause the economy to crash leaving the party to hold the baby.

So the battle is THEM vs US and it's a battle that US is losing, badly. If it's ok to enslave foreigners or prisoners (prisoners have to perform slave labour in U.S prisons) and they are part of US then if the laws were not in place to protect US we would be enslaved too. We see with the implementation of i.d cards, domestic spying and all the rest of it how our civil liberties are disappearing one by one. I don't envisage slavery to involve whips and chains these days, it's way more advanced than that. I'm thinking more along the lines of 1984 or Brave New World. Maybe the slavery won't be painful but it's certainly won't be human as we know it.

Anyway, back to the black struggle. Blacks literally were enslaved by THEM. I doubt there were many coal miners in Burnley with slaves!!! Due to a fight by US, the blacks gained freedom but it has been resented in the ruling class ever since and they still face the hardest time in the U.S. We only need to see how they are treated on polling day or during Katrina to see that they are second class citizens in their own country. I don't think it has anything to do with colour either these days. It's wealth. These are in general the poorest people in the country, with the worst level of education and health care. These people don't give financial donations to any political party and are more aware than anyone of the fallacy of the American dream (which is the capitalist dream). They experience now, the nightmare which awaits all of us. Righteous, eloquent blacks share the same voice as righteous white/Hispanic or any other people and I respect all of their words equally. I enjoy political hip hop because it's like the protest songs of days gone by. They sing about the traumas they face and the hope of a better day and I can relate to it. They are a persecuted people not because of their skin colour but because they are, in general, not from the ruling class.I would recommend Malcolm X's book to you and I think you would be surprised with the correlation to your own life. I feel that it is more likely that something revolutionary will come out of the black movement than the left wing movement, even though I can never truly align with it. The black movement have their skin colour as their bond while many people still believe that US includes you, me and the governments which rule us. I hold hope that the Internet will shine light into the darkness of the mainstream but if people ever woke up they would be angry. Wouldn't they?

Anyway, this email wasn't meant to be this long and I'm sure you know most of what I wrote already.

Let me know what you make of it all

Dave

I reply....

I had a strange dream last night: I was working, or doing something, I could have been shopping in the Mall, to me both are equally arduous tasks. A man was blackmailing me trying to extort money from my person in exchange for a guarantee that I could remain with my family. I wouldn’t pay up and it was all a bit of a fracas climaxing with me punching my dreamt up oppressor square on the nose.

This somehow brings me to your US and THEM dichotomy, the man causing my stress was most certainly THEM and I am US although most US would point out I am more THEM than US and a lot of THEM would surely acquiesce, as having me in THEM makes THEM THEMer. I believe in dualism I assume the dividing linear to be obvious and clear but the more you think about it the more opaque it becomes (the more I read the less I know). Who are/is US and THEM? Are the sole manipulators of this question THEM by manufacturing a deluded belief in US that we are in fact THEM? And if they are, then where do THEM cease to become US and vice-versa. To put it bluntly I think we’ve been duped with a clever ploy, to think of all those Stone Island jumpers and the $600 CP Company coat I adored back home. I feel well and truly sold.

So the battle is on and it’s a battle that US is indeed losing because most of US don’t know we/they are US and if a majority of we/they start to suspect we/they are US then we/they try to buy themselves back into THEM by aspiring to be THEM. By way of example, procuring $200 trainers for our three year old children made by fourteen year old children working and living in abhorrent conditions in Cambodia, who are so consumed by this world order that they have been successfully detached from the dichotomy we discuss.

The battle is for the very line, not just where it exists but how it exists and whether it exists at all, without it THEM would be lost. Its movement and its permeability are open to change and ironically for once in the arena of world politics it’s to the advantage of THEM if the line is variable, permeable and enigmatic. You don’t need a visa to cross the border from US to THEM and likewise on the return trip.

British society, the Cold War, the Berlin Wall and the famines of Africa engendered the US and THEM theory in both of our formative years, we both know in which camp we stood and so did everybody else. There wasn’t any need for a wall between the North and the South. Thatcher built the divide and then Major and Blair (especially Blair) made it illusory go away, manufacturing and mining jobs went to the wall (or the developing world) and in their place. Office and Mac/Mc Jobs arrived.

My Dad who was a skilled jig grinder in a steel factory was made redundant, and in exchange the Government ironically found him work finding work for others slightly less fortunate than him: they gave him a job in the local Job Centre. So in exchange for one collar job for a different coloured collar job you somehow move classes. It doesn’t matter if workers use less skill and earn less money, the point is that somehow, once the sting has worn off classes appear to transgress class just because they work in front of a computer screen in an office as opposed to a machine in a factory. How very strange that that transgression is always upwards but communities and societies appear just as fragmented and disillusioned (if not more)

I found the best example of all this in No Logo: the kids from the Bronx sending their used trainers back to Nike, saying on CNN we made you and we can break you. I wish I could find that moment on YouTube.

For once the invisible line that exists wasn’t illusory invisible, it was dissipated of all its invisibility. However the walls and the shackles and the WTO and the Free Trade Agreements and the politics will never dissipate because humanity is too entrenched in the self. Call me misanthropic, but I only ever started seeing society’s downfall when I started working in it.

But you are right in your conclusion, if people woke up they would be very angry, but the problem is that most don’t want to wake up even though they can see it. To coin a phrase, the ‘I’m alright Jacks’ of this world couldn’t give a monkeys. So long as they are drinking Starbuck’s Lattes, shopping in Tescos, wearing Gap tops, Diesel jeans, Nike trainers and driving around in Shell gas guzzling Chelsea Tractors, the revolution can wait for Marx to reincarnate.

keep the faith

Boothy

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