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Let's face it, all the gals think George Clooney is the bomb. He's here for them. EYE CANDY OF THE WEEK
George Clooney
NOW PLAYING: In the GUEST BLOGGERS Section, ANTONIO GRACEFFO reports on the double-bind of the Long Neck Karen refugees from Burma. In the RANTS Section, ROD AMIS looks at "Wind-up Doll News". Don't YOU ever wonder why so many Blogs are bull and doring? I know I do. You expect to find the same thing every day. How un-creative! I'd like to visit a Blog where I could expect the unexpected. So I decided to create one. This Web Blog was haphazardly produced without using Spell Check one danged time. We like it that way. ESOTERICA: In the coming weeks, expect our partnership with CinemActivist.com to provide you with reviews of great documentaries from Cinema Libre Studio, PBS, the History Channel, the Visioneerng Group and Working Films that provide you knowledge and move you toward activism. Just so you know. Depending on the events of the day, we'll likely be bringing you information about a great new film on New Orleans from independent director Alex LeMay, "Desert Bayou," slated to appear in New York City and New Orleans in early October before rolling out across the country. You can catch "Desert Bayou" in the following cities on these dates:
City Cinemas Village East 181 2nd Avenue New York, NY 10003 (212) 529-6998 www.angelikafilmcenter.com Showtimes: 1:20, 3:30, 5:40, 7:45, 10:15 Fri - Sun: 11:10, 1:20, 3:30, 5:40, 7:45, 10:15 12 October: Westgate Art Cinemas 340 Westgate Mall Madison, WI 53711 (608) 271-4033 www.marcustheatres.com Showtimes: 2:15, 4:45, 7:15, 9:30 19 October: Varsity Theatre 1207 25th Street Des Moines, IA 50311 (515) 277-0404 www.varsitydesmoines.com 26 October: Broadway Centre Cinemas 111 E. 300 South Salt Lake City, UT 84111 (801) 321-0310 www.saltlakefilmsociety.com 02 November: Angelika Film Center & CafÈ 510 Texas Ave. Houston, TX 77002 (713) 225-1470 www.angelikafilmcenter.com 
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G21: Lightning StrikesRod Amis's Personal BlogGuest Bloggers PageToday's Guest Blogger: ANTONIO GRACEFFOSUBJECT: Burmese Refugees in ThailandTo read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, Korean, Japanese, Dutch, Greek, Chinese and Russian, copy and paste the complete URL ("http://www.g21.net/ls/guests2.html") and enter it in the box after you click through.
One such tourism village is Hoy Sua Toa Long Neck Karin village, located in Thailand's Mae Hong Song Province, within sight of the Burmese border. After paying their entry, tourists will find that the entire village is one huge shop, with women and children selling goods and posing for photos. There are no Karen men to be seen. Traditionally, tribal people lack a merchant class, and yet the village is 100% dedicated to the sale of trinkets. Karen in Burma live by planting and cultivating rice, raising animals, and by hunting. In Hoy Sua Tao, however, there are no rice fields. "It's their choice." said Som Sak Seta, a guide who takes tourists to the Long Neck Karin Villages. "The Karen can make money, wearing their neck rings in the camp, or they can go back in the refugee camp. They don't have a right to stay (in Thailand). This is the compromise of the governors of this place, so the Karen can stay inside of the Thai border and make some money, and the governors can get some money as well." Ajan Prasit Leeprechaa, a lecturer at Chiang Mai University is himself a member of the Hmong tribe, a group persecuted in Laos for fighting along side the Americans in the Indochina conflict. While countless Hmong families languish in refugee camps, awaiting resettlement in the USA, Ajan Prasit uses his education to study and help Thailand's many tribal people. Ajan Prasit explained the Karen predicament this way. "The Karen are faced with four options. Live in a tourist village, become official refugees, go back to the war in Burma, or number four, now some countries like New Zealand offer them a chance to go live in cultural tourism villages abroad." All of these options are only options if the tribal people are made aware of their rights, which most are not. The Long Neck Karen are typically singled out, because of their appearance, scooped up and deposited in the tourism villages, before reaching the UN camps. Allowing Long Neck Karen to gain refugee status would not be in the best business interest of the village owners, who collect money from the tourists. Owning a group of Karen is a lucrative business.
All legal residents of Thailand are given some type of an ID card, with various rights attached. Obviously, citizens get the most rights. Legal aliens may be granted rights such as employment or residence. Because the Long Neck Karen in the tourist villages have no legal status, they have no rights of residence, employment, or freedom of movement in Thailand. A Long Neck Karen girl, named Mali, told us she hadn't been given any type of ID card, although she had already lived in Thailand for more than twelve years. Do you have any other papers for residence or anything? "No, I don't have anything. They just let me stay here." Can you go into town? Can you go into Mae Hong Song? "I can, but I can't stay overnight. I can just go there and buy some food. Afterwards, I have to come back here. I have to stay here." In Burma, the Karen people would be engaging in agriculture, as well as hunting and gathering forest products, as their people have done for centuries. But in the tourism villages, they work as full time sellers of trinkets. Normally, the Karen culture would be tied to the land, the jungle, and the agricultural rhythms. As salespeople, the Karen have lost their culture completely. We asked Mali if her younger sister, who was born in Thailand, had an ID card. "No, no we don't. None of us have an id card, none of us," said Mali. Other Karen have explained that the Thai government is willing to give ID cards to babies born in Thailand, as long as the birth is registered. The same Karen said that they were either unaware of the law at the time their children were born or that the owners of the villages actually prevented the Karen from obtaining ID cards for fear of losing revenues. Mali explained how the Karen business worked. "If we stay here and wear the rings around our neck? They will give us 1,500 Baht per month, each. But the men don't get money because they don't wear the rings." Do they give you rice, something to eat here? "Yes, they give us 180 Baht per person, per month. So, we take that money and we go to buy rice and food." If you don't wear the rings, will they give you money? "No, if we don't wear the rings, we don't get the money. So, the men won't get the 1500 Baht. They only get 180 Baht for rice, per month, per person." Have you ever thought about going to work in town? "No, I can't go. I just can't go." Have you ever thought about what kind of job you would want to get? "I have been thinking about that. Someday if I can, I would like to go to work in town. But, we wear this metal around our neck, so I don't think we can go. I think we just can stay here and sell souvenirs." Thai spies, in yellow shirts, hung around photographing my team and eavesdropping on our conversations. Finally, to avoid putting ourselves or the Karen in jeopardy, we had Som Sak Seta take us to a "real" village, called Baan Nai Soi, where it was much easier to do interviews. Som Sak Seta explained the soldiers were only there to guard the border, merely a few kilometers away. While the soldiers sat on a cooler, sipping a coke, an eighteen year old Karen girl, named Zember, told her story. Zember only moved back to the village when she was about seven or eight, the age when girls take their first rings. She followed the custom, adding one ring per year, till she was sixteen. Finally, she had them removed in an attempt to gain more comprehensive citizenship rights and be able to migrate down to "urban" Mae Hong Son without being gawked at as a freak. Since removing the rings, she finds herself in a situation of double jeopardy. Now, not only does she still have the lowly status of being a stateless Karen refugee, living in a sideshow, but the Karen elders shun her as a traitor to the ring-wearing community. Zember said that she does make frequent trips down to the city during daylight. In recent years, Thailand, like many Asian countries, has been rewriting their laws to increase human rights and freedoms. The issues facing the tribal people do not seem to result from a lack of legislation but rather a lack of enforcement. Too often it seems the whim of the local authority prevents people, both Thai and tribal, from accessing rights granted them by the federal government. High percentages of illiteracy and low levels of education among the tribal people also add to the problem.
Tribal people tend to think in very tangible, concrete realities. And one reality which they see everyday is, as bad as the situation in Houy Sua Toa is, no one is shooting at them. Additionally, they have an income and they have their children and families with them. So, on some level, they are better off than they would be in Burma. And of course, at any time, they are free to return to the war. The Puyai Ban, village owners who pocket most of the tourism revenue, evoke images of the war as a justification for what they are doing. Tourists headed into Houy Sua Toa will notice a huge display of bombs and mines right near the entrance. "They are just telling what kind of bombs, and how bad it is for these people, so the tourists can know," ?explained Som Sak Seta. Som Sak Seta told us that for a brief period the Thai government had been issuing ID cards to the Karen. "Now the Karen just don't get the ID cards anymore," said Som Sak Seta. "They (Puyai Ban) prevent the people from becoming Thai citizens. They are trying not to give them anything." "If the government gives them the card, and the people in charge of this income let them have the card, and they become Thai citizens, the Long Neck Karen will disappear. So, no more income and no more attraction. They are trying to keep these people as Long Neck Karen and pay them 1500 Baht a month and keep them happy." So, what if the Karen disappeared? Mae Hong Song province would just be short of income. Isn't that so? "Usually there is a lot of income from foreign tourists. Normally the people who get the money for the entrance fee will develop the roads or build a temple or something in the village, but these people only develop their pockets. "The Karen said that if they had to relocate to another artificial village, they would not go there. They would move into the refugee camp. They don't want to go farther from the border, into the interior. Here, they have NGOs to look after them, like the UN. So, they might have a chance to go to a third country as refugees. Some of them have already moved to Holland, USA, and Australia. I think already, more than 500 have been resettled into third countries by aid organizations. "If they stay here they are being pressured by the governors in charge, if they move into the NGOs it will be better for them, they have no freedom if they stay here." The rings around their neck are cultural shackles. The Long Neck Karin are faced with a fatal alternative. Is it better to return to Burma, and risk death, or better to remain as a stateless sideshow attraction in Thailand? On the other hand, the Long Neck Karin, because of their unique appearance, are the only one of Burma's many ethnic minorities who has this option of escape. ANTONIO GRACEFFO is an adventure travel and martial arts author, living in Asia. His specialties include ethnic minorities, languages, and martial arts. He has studied Kung Fu at the Shaolin Temple and lived in the last Muay Thai monastery in Thailand. He has published four books on on Amazon.com. See his website: http://speakingadventure.com/. Contact Antonio: Antonio@speakingadventure.com Today's Guest Blogger: JAMIE MENUTISSUBJECT: A Mental Health Nightmare in New OrleansTo read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, Korean, Japanese, Dutch, Greek, Chinese and Russian, copy and paste the complete URL ("http://www.g21.net/ls/guests2.html") and enter it in the box after you click through.
The world needs to know about what is happening to the citizens in New Orleans. At present, the City of New Orleans is unable to even marginally meet the overwhelming healthcare needs of its citizens. American citizens who pay taxes and contribute to this economy are suffering because of government inefficiency and neglect. And so I remind you that our city has an important port and our coastline has a wealth of existing and also untapped oil that supports the entire nation. Do I need to? Our citizens, American citizens, do the dirty work in tourist hotels, on offshore platforms, sing, dance and entertain the masses with music of all sorts. We cook and serve up soulful, incredible cuisine unparalleled within this country. Our citizens deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. And even if we didn't do any of the things I just mentioned, we are human beings and shelter, education and medicine seem the most basic of human rights. The disaster that has happened in New Orleans could easily happen anywhere else in the U.S. and all Americans need to recognize just exactly what their government's priorities are. The United States provides infrastructure building, healthcare and business building assistance to nations around the world, but we fail our own citizens in their time of need. We spend billions each day to fund an unjust war in Iraq where countless Americans and Iraqis have died while defense and oil companies (with U.S. government blessing and support ) have prospered through death and destruction. When and if the Iraq war seems to have stabilized just enough, the disaster capitalists will descend, just as they have done in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and make money off of the suffering of others. But I digress... Recently (July 31st, 2007,) Mayor C. Ray Nagin testified about the status of the healthcare crisis in New Orleans before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation. At this meeting, Mayor Nagin emphasized the need for immediate assistance to deal with an increasing healthcare crisis in New Orleans. "I implore. I ask, I beg this committee to really do something to help us," Mayor Nagin said. With every medical facility and hospital closed after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the healthcare system, including delivery of mental health services, has been severely impacted and the effects can be felt throughout the City. An increase in homelessness, rise in diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) and emergency room visits for mental health psychosis are the result of the lack of mental health, primary care and emergency services offered to the community at this critical time. Few outpatient drug treatment centers exist, and detox beds are even harder to attain. People are dying, plain and simple. Numbers are a huge part of the crisis. As of August 2007, only 4 of the 8 local hospitals have reopened and only 5 out of 13 clinics run by the Orleans Parish Health Department are operating.? The reduced number of hospitals, clinics and medical staff have resulted in an unprecedented increase of mortality and mental health problems. During the first six months of 2006, the number of obituaries listed for the time period increased by 47% from that of the previous years'. In Orleans Parish, there was an increase in deaths of some 20% during that same time period. This increase in death is close to TWICE the national average! Due to the massive reduction in primary care services, illnesses are made more severe by the time treatment is sought and rendered. For the uninsured and indigent, the reduction of services has literally meant the difference between life and death as the insured are usually the first to be seen by the overworked providers who still exist. Power politics continues in Louisiana and the stakes are about as high as they could be. U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal (R) currently hopes to win the position of Louisiana Governor in our upcoming statewide election. He is presently a confident front runner in the race and has yet to commit to debates with any of his competitors. Mr. Jindal's role is significant for the future of healthcare for New Orleans and the State of Louisiana due to the fact that he formerly served for two years as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. During that time, he decreased the deficit that affected the Department and has run in two previous political races, including Congress, continuously citing that accomplishment. His deficit reducing cuts, however, resulted in lost staff and services for our most vulnerable citizens and took our states' quality of healthcare ranking from an abysmal 48th to a 50th place. In terms of money, there have been recent federal allocations made to New Orleans healthcare, One hundred million has been made available to expand and help rebuild primary care in the Greater New Orleans area. Of this, $35 million wi ll be used to recruit and retain medical professionals, many who left the city after Hurricane Katrina. Another $4 million will be used to open a clinic in New Orleans East and re-open the Mandeville-Deteige Clinic in Gert Town. A proposed VA Hospital is set to open in downtown New Orleans in 2012 next to a new LSU Hospital. "These facilities are critical as we work to ensure that our citizens have access to the healthcare services they need and deserve," said Mayor C. Ray Nagin. Meeting our immediate needs is something else. Like most things in post-Katrina New Orleans these days, it is the ordinary citizens that are meeting the community's needs and not the government. Until New Orleans healthcare infrastructure is rebuilt, many of its citizens are thankful for the work of local non-profit organizations who have stepped in to fill that critical gap. Odyssey House, a locally run and well-established center that treats addictive disorders continues to operate by providing 120 beds for patients. It also has expanded post-Katrina to offer free clinic services three days a week with LSU medical staff and Common Ground volunteers. The Children's Bureau of New Orleans has helped over 230 children with mental trauma symptoms. It is well staffed and accredited and its Project LAST is open to all children under the age of 17 in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish who have suffered and survived assorted traumas.? The group is supported by the United Way of Greater New Orleans and private donations. Fifty-nine percent of its focus has been on children exhibiting trauma related to the Hurricane, though the group also deals with violence and death-related traumas. The Children's Bureau is finding an 82% reduction rate in symptoms and reactions through its focused services to children. Safe Harbor is another currently operating organization that offers temporary assistance to women and children vctms of domestic violence. Despite the decreased population, its client number has tripled since Katrina. Safe Harbor is appealing to the public for help as it struggles to meet the needs of its clients. Please consider donating your time or money to these or other organizations who have stepped in to help our citizens. If you are a healthcare professional and reading this article, please consider working in New Orleans. You will be most certainly overworked, but greatly compensated and appreciated. Odyssey House (504) 494-9628 Safe Harbor of New Orleans (985) 781-4856 Children's Bureau of New Orleans (504) 525-2366? Leave a Comment
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The Burmese civil war, often viewed as a genocide, committed against Burma's tribal minorities, has been raging off-and-on for a period of nearly fifty years. Estimates claim that as many as two million refugees, many of the tribal peoples, have fled over the border into neighboring Thailand. The Long Neck Karen tribe, so called because their women wear multiple neck rings, which elongate the neck to several times normal size, have found refuge in artificial, tourist villages, where visitors - both Thai and foreign - pay a heavy entrance fee to gawk at the unusual looking people.
"Some Thai made a fake village in Chiang Rai and Chiang? Mai and stole some Karen from here to live there. They charged 1,000 Baht or more for the entrance fee. But, the Mae Hong Song government went down and took them back here already." Said Som Sak Seta.
Although none of the Karen came right out and said it, they must be living under tremendous pressure, knowing that they have no legal right of residence, no right to property ownership, and - as far as they know - no access to legal recourse. Add to this the ever present specter of deportation to a war, where they are considered the enemy, and it is no wonder that the tribal people lack the internal strength to stand up for themselves.
New Orleans is currently dealing with the effects of a severe crisis in its mental healthcare services. Inadequate services for an ailing population have affected not only a rise in the suicide rates and aggravated already existing mental disorders but has also affected an increase in domestic violence, addictions and new mental health issues among children due to devastation brought on by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.