Lost In Translation

The Monopolist Of Doom Visits Bangladesh

Andrew Leonard of Salon has an interesting post on Robert Kaplan's latest reportage about he effects of global warming in Bangladesh and America's lack of leadership in the global warming plight:

Robert Kaplan goes to Bangladesh for the Atlantic, and sees some scary things. At the top of the list, naturally, is the prospect for "one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes in history," as climate change wreaks havoc on a nation where a population half as large as the United States is squeezed into a territory about the size of Iowa.

And as if that wasn't enough, there's a war-on-terror angle.

Here is how global warming indirectly feeds Islamic extremism. As rural Bangladeshis flee a countryside ravaged by salinity in the south and drought in the northwest, they are migrating to cities at a rate of 3 to 4 percent a year. Swept into the vast anonymity of sprawling slum encampments, they lose their local and extended-family links, becoming more susceptible to a form of Islam with a sharper ideological edge. "We will not have anarchy at the village level, where society is healthy," warns Atiq Rahman. "But we can have it in the ever-enlarging urban areas." Such is the weakness of central authority in Bangladesh following 15 years of elected governments.

How the World Works could not agree more with Kaplan's observation that American intransigence on global warming is a bad public relations move in a world where the countries that will pay the biggest price for climate change are also the countries that have done the least to bring it about. As Spiegel Online reported in May, "the average Bangladeshi produces just 178 kilograms of carbon dioxide per year -- a mere drop in the bucket compared to the 21 tons per capita released annually by Americans." The consequences of global warming entail rising anti-American sentiment as well as rising sea levels.

But packed within that one paragraph from Kaplan are invocations of some long-standing themes that we have come to count on from the man whom one critic calls "the monopolist of doom." The impotence of democracy. The coming anarchy. A tension between urban chaos and rural traditional values.

In a world where everything is falling apart, global warming is just one more stress fracture.

In a generally admiring profile of Kaplan written for Salon in 2001, well before he had made himself so obviously comfortable in the trappings of American neo-imperialism, Laura Rozen summarized Kaplan's worldview:

We are heading toward the apocalypse, and there is no deliverance.

"I would be unfaithful to my experience if I thought we had a general solution to these problems," Kaplan writes in "The Ends of the Earth." "We are not in control. As societies grow more populous and complex, the idea that a global elite like the U.N. can engineer reality from above is just as absurd as the idea that political 'scientists' can reduce any of this to a science. In an age of localized mini-holocausts, decisive action in one sphere will not necessarily help the victims in another. Only in a few cases will an organization like the U.N. make a truly pivotal difference."

But isn't the real tragedy that mitigating climate change could be one of those cases, if the United States threw the full weight of is authority and power behind it? Instead of fighting endless wars against extremist Islam whose only tangible result appears to be raising the overall temperature of global discord?

Here's a link to the Kaplan piece in Atlantic Monthly.

Persepolis

Persepolis is an animated film based on autobiographical graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi. It describes her childhood in Iran and subsequent education in Vienna, return to Iran, marriage and divorce, and finally her resettlement in Paris in the present. It is a compelling story that personalizes the upheavals that have taken place in the Middle East in the last 30 years. It also highlights the problems of adapting to other cultures and the reverse culture shock of returning to your own home country. The animation style is a deceptively simple black and white, but it is very fluid and the energy of the story inhabits the animation. There are several humorous moments mixed in the with the moving dramatic moments throughout. I think Ratatouille looked beautiful and was a charming entertainment, but it doesn’t compare to this powerful look at politics, gender, religion, and personal autonomy. This was the best animated film of 2007 and probably would have made my Top 10 in retrospect.

53 Places To Go In 2008

The NY Times has a list of 53 places to go in 2008, my traveling days are going to be limited in the future, but that can't stop me from dreaming. Anyway, I have already been to 1. Laos (twice-most recently 2007), 14. Prague, 39. San Francisco, 44. San Diego, 47. London, 48. Vietnam, and 50. Las Vegas. Only, 46 more to go!

Random Rules: Dean Wareham

Dean Wareham is one of my indie rock heroes, part of the legendary Galaxie 500, followed by luna (one of my favorite bands of all time) and his current incarnation with wife former Luna band member Britta Phillips. In this AV Club feature an interviewer talks about random songs that come up on the shuffle of the interviewee's iPod. Here's the intro:

The shuffler: Dean Wareham, the former leader of indie-rock featherweight champs Galaxie 500 and Luna. Wareham's current project is Dean & Britta, a team-up with his wife and ex-Luna bandmate Britta Phillips; their latest album, Back Numbers, was released last year. The duo also scored Noah Baumbach's 2005 film The Squid And The Whale. Wareham's first book, a memoir titled Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance, comes out in March.

DVD Extras: I Live In Fear

Criterion has released a five film collection of lesser-known post-war Akira Kurosawa films from the new Eclipse series. One of them, I Live in Fear (aka Record of a Living Being), is discussed in Slate's DVD Extra's column. The writer draws parallels between the film and the psychic effect of post-9/11 life:

In the United States, a couple years after I Live in Fear came out in Japan, Norman Mailer wrote an essay called "The White Negro," which began: "Probably we will never be able to determine the psychic havoc of the concentration camps and the atom bomb upon the unconscious mind of almost everyone alive in these years." Mailer was celebrating a new type of person, the hipster—the "American existentialist" or "white Negro"—who responded to this fate with rebellion. But the vast majority of people, in America, Japan, and probably everywhere, kept going to work and paying their bills as they always had. Kurosawa captured the "psychic havoc" on that side of the fence—and what happens when one otherwise upstanding citizen snaps out of the spell, stares into the abyss, and feels in his bones there's no way out.

In the weeks and months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many of us, especially in New York City, feared to ride the subway, shuddered at strangely shaped bags, conjured mushroom clouds over the Empire State Building, and contemplated moving, if not to Brazil, then at least across the Tappan Zee Bridge, where life might be safer. But at some point, we put the fear aside, ignored it, or suppressed it as the only way to snap back into some semblance of normalcy.

This is the turbulent terrain that an American update of I Live in Fear—a film about our own "psychic havoc"—might cover and somehow dramatize: the line between obsession and obliviousness, between whimpering terror and blithe denial; the undeterminable toll on our "unconscious minds" from embracing either course; and the question of whether it's possible to lead a fully conscious, sane life on some road in between.

Wire Profile: Snoop

There was a good feature article last year in the Washington Post on the actress that plays Snoop on The Wire:

The thing is, Felicia "Snoop" Pearson's life wasn't supposed to look like this. At all. Some folks think it shouldn't look like this. An eye for an eye, and all that that entails.

But on rare occasions, fate decides to indulge in a little rearranging of centrifugal forces, turning lives inside out and granting the object of its attention a massive, cosmic do-over. When this happens, it helps, of course, to have a face the camera craves, a compelling back story and a knack for making people want to help you.

Four years out of prison, age 24, Snoop wasn't living a life lined up along the straight and narrow. She was back in the game, peddling drugs, running with the rough boys, an undersize woman with an oversize swagger. Not much good was coming her way.

Until the night that Snoop spotted "Omar," the gay thug on the acclaimed HBO show "The Wire," at a club. Or maybe he spotted her. Accounts differ.

The Night In Question

I just finished another short story collection, The Night In Question, by Tobias Wolff and once again I’m extremely impressed with his ability to create details that make the stories seem true to life. I am also intrigued by his Northwest connections, he grew up in Washington State, and so he often sets stories there or makes references to the area; “Powder,” “Flyboys,” and “Firelight.” His tour in Vietnam seems to be a well of inspiration (two of his books are about that experience-the memoir in the Pharaoh’s Army and his novella The Barracks Thief); it is also the inspiration for “Casualty” and “The Other Miller.” I’m pretty sure I read “Bullet In The Brain” somewhere before-Harper’s magazine? Short and sweet, it is the successfully realized story of the last moments of the life of a bitter critic. Perhaps, not as impressive as his earlier short story collection-back in the World, but barely so. Unfortunately, his oeuvre is quite small, there’s only a couple books left that I haven’t read yet.

Khon Kaen

This year's Thai TESOL Conference was in the northern town Khon Kaen. It is the de facto capital of Isaan with a population around 150,000. it has a much slower pace than Bangkok and prices are also more reasonable here.

There were lots of dinosaur statues around town (this one at a hotel) promoting museum that houses the dinosaur fossils unearthed in the area.

Here's an example of the inexpensive local stret food, spicy noodles for 10 baht ($0.35).

Diary Of A Sadman #8: Sea Swim

Phatrick's back with another bittersweet tale in the life of a sadman, here's a teaser:

It’s the final day of my vacation in the Cayman Islands, and I’m a long, wet mile from my towel, a cold beer, or land. I can make out the small figures of my wife, sister-in-law, and nephews on the beach each time my head comes out of the water for air. I’m waving to them with my right arm, but they don’t seem to notice. I consider waving both arms to try to attract their attention, but decide not to, remembering from the safety briefing that flailing your arms is the signal that you are drowning. And I am not drowning – at least not yet.

I am participating in the 13th annual Flowers Sea Swim, renamed the Flowers Recovery Mile Sea Swim this year to focus on providing relief to the recovering victims of Hurricane Ivan.

I had no intention entering a race before I got here. I planned to do no more than let sand accumulate around my feet, until I saw an ad on the television in the condo a mere five days ago. Perhaps it was my irrational fear of beach boredom, or the fact that I’d watched several people swimming that afternoon, or just the beautiful, crystal blue water of the Caribbean lying outside the door. I announced to my assembled family-in-law that I thought maybe I would do that. My mother-in-law, who arranged this entire vacation, is far too kind to do anything but express bemused and delighted interest at whatever nonsense I spout, but my wife looked at me like I’d been out in the sun too long – which I had.

Click here to read the entire post.

Thailand Revisited: Sights In Bangkok

I recently visited Thailand for a brief three days and nights (I arrived after midnight on Tuesday and flew out at 6 am Friday) by redeeming some unused mileage for the 2008 Thai TESOL Conference. This year's conference was held in the Isaan capital Khon Kaen.(i will post about later) However, I was able to spend some time in the capital, and here are some of the sights I saw there. The picture of the shrine above is from The Jim Thompson House, which is walking distance from the main shopping district near Siam BTS station.

An elaborately sculpted elephant bush.

Some grilled street food samplings.

A water taxi cruising a canal.

The infamous Bangkok gridlock in action.