Shooting the rain

Gunfire is seldom the answer, especially while drinking, but when your enemy is the rain...

Phnom Penh - Furious that it began raining when he was trying to drink, a Cambodian man shot at the offending rain cloud but missed, hitting his friend instead, local media reported Tuesday. Dy Sovannara and his drinking partner Hiem Vuthy were enjoying beers Monday evening in Phnom Penh when rain spoiled their evening, the Khmer-language Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper reported.

Sovannara, who claimed he was a soldier, borrowed a pistol from a nearby guard and shot into the air to "scare the rain away," but the gun misfired and the bullet hit Vuthy in the knee.

Luckily, the pair was carousing outside the city's largest hospital, allowing Vuthy to receive immediate treatment, and he was in stable condition, the newspaper reported.

Friends don't let friends shoot at the weather. Kinda impossible to scare rain away anyway.

Earth day 2008

I'm late with Earth day again. Oh well we are all late, may very well be too late. If you want a good scare on OMG WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE then check out this book:


I enjoyed its tale of a dystopian future because I like that sort of fiction but it is sobering to realise that may be our future.

Do the usual things: turn off your aircon/ lights/ computer when you leave the office/home, carpool, recycle and write hundred of emails to big businesses, the UN, national governments. Realise that unless something changes, we are fucked.

Imagine: the polar ice melts, millions of environmental refugees, crop failures, food shortages, right-wing governments with protectionist policies, armies protecting borders, wars over natural resources, rioting, panicking, death. Yeah how many of those are already in motion? Turn off the lights...

Disgusting

Violence against women is common in Cambodia. Here is another account of domestic abuse:

Phnom Penh - A German man was facing 10 to 20 years in a Cambodian jail after police allegedly rescued his wife in what they claimed Wednesday was one of the worst cases of domestic violence they had seen. Alvin Gossnol, 37, was arrested after police received complaints from his 38-year-old wife's family that she was being held against her will in their home and had been badly beaten.

Cheung Prey district police chief in theon eastern province of Kampg Cham, Heing Vuthy, said the woman had managed to escape a room she had been locked in for two weeks but had been unable to scale the locked gate because her hands were broken.

"She managed to attract the attention of a boy who was passing and he ran to tell her relatives, who called the police," Vuthy said by telephone.

"After we pulled her over the wall, she told us when they married in 2001, her husband had made a special stick to beat her with. If she got the stick for him herself, he didn't beat her as badly, but if he had to get the stick, he beat her very seriously."

...

"When we came back with a warrant, we found the stick, exactly as she had told us and it was still covered in her blood," Vuthy said.

...

Divorce is still frowned upon in Cambodia, and the women also frequently feel a financial obligation to their families to stay with their foreign husbands no matter how bad it gets.

Many women in Phnom Penh marry foreigners for a number of reasons - lifestyle, poverty, family obligations or perhaps they are not virgins. The reality is that abusers can be of any nationality or ethnicity.

It is possible that the prosecution of this abuser is a sign that violence towards women is becoming taboo. However, the more likely explanation is that in this particular case, the violence was extreme.

Freedom for women is, and will remain, limited until the taboo of divorce is lifted.

Yay democracy!

Not sure that the point of demonstrating is fully understood in Cambodia or at least by certain politicians. The governor of Phnom Penh tells voters not to worry their pretty little heads about politics. Citizen should leave the business of politics to politicians. Quite the servant of the people eh?

Kep Chuktema indicated: “I ask all of you to think and not to believe propagandas made by the politicians. Leave politics to politicians, you should work in the field and produce the crops, raise pigs, chicken, ducks, cows, buffalos, fishes, plant vegetables to sell in the Phnom Penh market so that you can improve you family living condition.”

He explained that demonstrations cannot resolve anything, and they can only create unrest and havoc in Phnom Penh, and if the demonstrators destroy shops, jewelry [sic] stores, markets, and they start looting, then who would be responsible?

Why your protests might impede the economic progress of the country! And demonstrations don't resolve anything! Yeah but in a democracy are civil liberties not supposed to be respected? Luckily he clears up that doubt with a ringing endorsement of the most perfect leader ever!

Kep Chuktema indicated that the government of Cambodia led by Hun Sen bring safety over 100% of the country, and it pushed up the price of lands, improved the livelihood of the population, and they have no fear, why then some would want a demonstration that creates unrest in the country and the city, and it will also lower the price of land as well? What is the goal (of those who want to hold the demonstration)?

Casting aspersions on the motivations of your political opponents is a great way of avoiding the real question. Why are demonstration not permitted when they are a normal part of a healthy democracy?

Also, notice the necessity of keeping the price of land high. It will bring in huge profits when the Chinese and Koreans buy up the country for export processing zones and the political elite will make a killing. In the meantime, let's raise the price of land by kicking all the poor off their land. Yay more profits for us. Long live the kleptocracy!

Kep Chuktema claimed: “You can trust us, we are city governor, we are prime minister of the country, we defend and protect the city, and provide good security and safety, people have no fear. We are not dumb to let somebody do anything they please. I, the city governor, hace the duty to protect security for the people, we do whatever for the people until we achieve it.”

Big brother will take care of you. You can trust us. We are not dumb to let you have an opinion. Please surrender your civil liberties at the door, you won't be needing them here.

Oopsies?

In medical professional in the shambles of the Irish health service just removed the wrong kidney from a child. Harney, the Minister for Health, said

that unfortunately clinical errors occur in the best healthcare systems... insists she has total confidence in the hospital carrying out a thorough internal investigation.

Really? It's amazing that she is not requesting an independent enquiry, especially after the cancer misdiagnoses last year and the resulting deaths. The Irish health service is a total joke and Harney has total confidence. I don't.

Bird flu

Anyone else a little concerned? Found this recently on bird flu.

Limited, non-sustained person-to-person transmission of H5N1 virus probably occurred in this family cluster

Even if limited, human-to-human transmission is worrying and yet is only once of the looming disasters. I feel like singing: