My life after death rumour
Throughout a person’s life, there are many chances and opportunities for an individual to secure fame.
It can be from an inherence of wealth, collective life experiences, or simply being in the right place at the right time. Needless to say, opportunities of generating such fame might also bring the influx of negative connotations, and the person either knows how to prepare for such incursion and turn a negative into an absolute positive, or just simply going with the vicious cycle of having to live through an inherited inner-bleeding of mental embarrassment.
The Holy Sculptor
On the outskirts of McLeod Ganj, India, in dark and moist, lay quarter of the Zilnon Kagyeling Nyingmapa Monastery stands an attached hut so small it looks like a dollhouse. You have to bow to enter.
A kitchen arranged in the corridor - which still keeps you bowing - and an ascetic small room containing wee bed and tiny bookcase filled with gods figurines, offering cups and tv pushed into a corner make in fact all the living space for an old, always smiling Tibetan man. You can't say if that was Nature on his birth or just old age, which gave him such a small posture.
Copyrights? - Nineteenth Century USA Was a Major Center of Piracy
The international Internet Society and it’s New York Chapter announced to host an Open Forum Discussion on a new Copyright Alert System aimed at warning Internet users about illegally downloaded content.
This is also an interesting topic in Cambodia, entering more and more into the age of information societies.
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Queuing in Vietnam
People queue. British people are famous for queuing. We queue just to get into another queue. We queue to ask about where we should queue. We separate queuing people with ropes and guide them with signs. We spilt queues when they get too big and start them again on somewhere else. We zig-zag queues to accommodate all the queuing people. Personally I had forgotten about this phenomena. However frustrating a queue may be, I prefer it to total and utter disorganization - i.e. Viet Nam. Not to say Vietnamese are disorganized, it is all for a reason...
International Children's Day in Cambodia – 1 June 2012
When I started to write something about this special international day which is also a national holiday in Cambodia, I assumed that this would be a simple, straightforward affair – at least as far as its history is concerned. To my surprise, it turned out to be a fairly conflicting field.
I knew that there is controversy related to another case: while the First of May is celebrated widely by the international labor movement – considered by some as “communist” - but in many countries it is just a day to remember and celebrate the achievements of labor movements and to demonstrate for further securing of rights – in the USA Labor Day is observed as a United States federal holiday on the first Monday in September.
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Three persons shot - and the rule of law
Official voices had frequently commented, saying that everybody should be patient and not worry - as things go according to the law. So I also waited, expecting thee would be a final, clarifying action by the authorities for which so many people are waiting. Instead of waiting further, I write a mid term (?) report.
On 5 March, two weeks after the shooting and almost as long as the time that had passed since the Minister of the Interior said that the suspect had been identified, the spokesperson of the Council of Ministers Phay Siphan still appealed to be patient: “We have to go with due process.”
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The Freedom of Expression – China and Cambodia – and the Internet
The UN Human Rights Council - an "inter-governmental body within the United Nations system made up of 47 States responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe" - had decided, in September 2011,
“to convene, within existing resources, at its nineteenth session, a panel discussion on the promotion and protection of freedom of expression on the Internet, with a particular focus on the ways and means to improve its protection in accordance with international human rights law.”
It further requested “the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to liaise with relevant special procedures, States and other stakeholders, including relevant United Nations bodies and agencies, with a view to ensuring multi-stakeholder participation in the panel discussion.”
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Coming back from one week in Myanmar
This is just a brief note saying that I was in Yangon for one week, to attend a Barcamp meeting of about 4,000 computer users of different levels. I will report more, and not only about this meeting. Also about visiting several lakes in the city of Yangon. And also about the impressive political changes taking place since my last visits at the Barcamp meetings 2010 and 2011.
But I would like to take this opportunity to share two pictures - the first I took a few years ago, after take-off from Phnom Penh, and the other before landing to Phnom Penh yesterday.
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Vote buying in Cambodia? What about lobbying in the USA?
The Phnom Penh Post had reported on 31 January 2012:
A Cambodian People’s Party member found guilty of attempted vote-buying in last Monday’s Senate election had been let off too lightly with a fine and should face legal action, an opposition Sam Rainsy Party councilor said yesterday.
At a hearing of the Battambang Provincial Election Commission last week, CPP member Cheam Pe A was fined US$1,230 after he was caught on tape offering SRP Tuol Ta Ek commune councilor Mok Ra $700 to cast his vote for the ruling party.
Vote buying is bad – hardly anybody will defend it openly, though it is probably being done a lot – and not only in Cambodia.
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18 January shooting – Prime Minister's interventions bringing changes?
This is to document events related to the shooting of villagers on 18 January 2012 who saw their land getting lost – until finally the Prime Minister intervened on 31 January 2012, ordering decisive action to be taken. But new reports on 2 February 2012 do not show that the atmosphere has changed.
Land disputes happened in increasing numbers since many months. Some cases of violent evictions had received also wide international attention – like the destruction of the settlement in Dey Krahom - the continuing conflicts around the Boeng Kak lake (the lake has by now completely disappeared, it has been filled with sand) – and the struggle of a final group of residents evicted from the Borei Keila area.
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