Eastern Approaches...

This week I find myself in the cosy confines of the local Conservative club in Thetford town centre. Like most such places, it is not really political in any sense that most would understand as political, and certainly the clientèle are a very mixed bunch indeed, seemingly of all affiliations and persuasions. What is very pleasant is that the place is cosy and rather warm. Outside it is the last day of April and the temperature is 4C with a wind chill factor that makes it feel more like zero. Also, they do a decent cup of coffee for a very generous £1.05.
As it has been a few weeks since my last flaneurial blog I felt it was time that I actually sat in front of the oddly intimidating keyboard once more and created something of a counterbalance to my observations of life in the US. Many, many moons ago now, when I was a relatively young and carefree flaneur, I also had the good fortune to visit several countries behind what used to be known as the Iron Curtain. The first taste of life on the other side was Bulgaria; it proved pleasant enough but the realisation that although myself and my travelling companion readily acquired large amounts of the local currency, those Lev were incredible difficult to actually get rid of. Beyond a few random leather goods there was literally nothing of any value or interest to purchase. The best that could be said of the shops was that they were functional...just. In the city of Varna on the Black Sea there seemed to be little or nothing occurring whatsoever.
Before we left for Bulgaria we were assured by the Bulgarian tourist agency that we could enjoy a rate of exchange 1.5 times the norm. This we naturally took advantage of, only to find on arrival

in the country that locals were prepared to give 4 or even 6 times the rate on the street. Interestingly, the most active of those engaged in such unofficial bureau de change activities wore the blue of the local police force. That was an early lesson in the joys of Socialist societies.

A couple of years later I actually found myself on a tour of the Soviet Union itself. I believe Cernenko was in power at the time, one of a series of leaders so old that no sooner had they assumed the reigns of the Supreme Soviet than they promptly dropped dead. In some ways it was symbolic of the system itself; even to my inexperienced eye it was clear that it was dying on its feet.

The first city we visited was Moscow. By this stage of my life I already had a fair amount of travelling experience and had been to about 25 capital cities previously. Moscow was far and away the most boring, lifeless and oppressive place I had ever been to in my life. Dour, cowered people, shortages almost everywhere and a general feeling of alienation, a society ill at ease with itself.

I had been told to visit GUM, Moscow's equivalent to Harrods according to our guide. On arriving there I found a dingy three storey building just off of Red Square. The goods were incredibly shoddy, but when a shipment of shoes arrived at one of the departments people were almost fighting each other to get in first. Looking at said shoes I found them to be of poor quality and style, little more than utilitarian at best.

Red Square proved a little challenging in its own right. Down the centre there were lines marked on the road that indicated where the official cars could drive into the Kremlin. It had a small zebra crossing about 80 metres from the gate. As there were no cars in sight, just tourists milling around, I started to cross over the painted lines only to be greeted with the sound of a shrill whistle. I looked around and saw a policeman in a rather impressive fur hat blowing furiously in my direction. I gestured to him indicating that there was nothing to be concerned about, not a vehicle anywhere to be seen, but his response was to put his hand upon his gun holster and indicate that I was only to cross at the designated crossing. As the days went by in Russia, I was to discover this strict adherence to such petty rules was all part of the apparatus in the Soviet Union of the time.

A few days later we flew down to Tbilisi in Georgia in an ancient Tupolev tu-154. From a height of 35,000 feet we looked down on an endless expanse of wheat as far as the eye could see on both sides of the aircraft. Oddly though, very few roads were visible. I had read before heading out on the trip that yet again that year the USSR had been forced to buy huge amounts of wheat from the US because of a shortage at home. I could not help but wonder exactly what kind of economic system could so badly mismanage its obvious and plentiful resources.

After about an hour I felt the call of nature. Looking back down the aircraft I noticed that the toilets at the rear were already occupied so I headed towards the front of the plane. About three quarters of the way along the cabin was split by a red velvet curtain. Pulling this back I was quite surprised to see several rows of very large and cosy seats, a well-stuffed magazine rack, tinkling drinks trolley and four or five flunkies. Quickly, our courier jumped up and snatched the curtain from my hand. Surprised, I asked her the obvious question:

“I thought there was no first class on Russia planes?”

She responded:

“It's not first class, it's for party members!”

Kinda said it all really...

The city of Tbilisi in Georgia was, at the time, part of an early experiment that the Soviet government were running in allowing the local farmers and manufacturers to simply sell their produce and goods without government interference. The experiment had been going for about a year but the effect was like chalk and cheese in comparison to Moscow. Fresh and healthy produce in abundance everywhere and a wonderfully vibrant atmosphere to the city in complete contrast to the utter deadness of Moscow.

Up to that stage of my life I had been very much a man of the left. As a child I had admired the likes of Che Guevera and Fidel Castro, and loved all things to do with the old USSR. My father had been a strong union man and that attitude had very much affected me as a boy. Now though, seeing the reality of life in the Soviet Union, the cold hand of centralised control, the repressive regime, the general dowdiness of everything from the flats to the clothes, the poorly designed cars and austere metro sans advertising except for the glories of the Communist Party, it was slowly beginning to dawn on me just how awful applied Socialism actually was in practice.

I went from the joys of Tbilisi, with its limited market reforms, back into Russia at Sochi. The location was pleasant enough but it became very noticeable that those of us who dared to venture out on our own had company whether we liked it or not. Often that company was 50 yards or so away but you couldn't help but notice the same faces kept turning up again and again. My courier was almost pleading with me at one stage to stay with the group. At a guess, she herself was probably under some pressure for losing control of her Western charges.

The trip ended in Leningrad (renamed St Petersburg once again now). Although a much more beautiful city than Moscow, with some gorgeous architecture, it still suffered from the same paranoia. I had spent a few weeks learning some basic Russian before I left but found that people were very unwilling to be seen spending any time at all with any of the group. Eventually, in a café cum bar in central Leningrad, I did manage a short conversation with a somewhat drunk middle aged man. He confirmed what had been my suspicion. Just being seen with the likes of a Western tourist could mean trouble for you or your family, so the wise thing was to look the other way and pretend that you had heard and seen nothing.

Hmm, this piece seems to be running on a lot longer than intended, yet it feels as if I have left so much of these experiences out. Suffice it to say that within those few weeks in the old Soviet Union the first seeds of doubt were sown. I had started the trip really quite naive about the nature of such collective systems. When I set out it had seemed clear to a young and idealistic traveller where the political future should lie. In that sense it was something of a coming of age, of the realisation that all was not right in the Socialist garden. At the time I had no idea why; the answer to that was to take another two decades, but the first inklings of the underlying reality were beginning to be realised.

Back in the Conservative club life goes on much as it ever did, that comfortable continuity that seems so complacent yet is the very glue that holds a society together. We all imagine as youngsters, much as I did, that what is needed is the bold, the new, the iconoclastic, but the reality is that much of what makes a tolerable society is in the institutions, habits and attitudes of a people. Those deep cultural roots that make Europe and its culture such a beacon to the World. The historian Michael Woods put it beautifully when he spoke of 'The habit of civilisation'.

Westward ho...

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
Abraham Lincoln

Back in the UK and finding myself gently settling into the early spring now. The contrast on my return from Phnom Penh where temperatures were regularly 30 degrees centigrade plus to the cold of the first few weeks in Thetford where we experienced the dubious pleasures of -10 was stark indeed. Added to the basic challenge were the joys of jet lag, some sort of cold probably contracted whilst enjoying the recirculated breathing of 600 and odd people on an Airbus 380 and, finally, the inconvenience of a little bit of food poisoning likely due to the consumption of what seemed to be a reheated veggie breakfast at a local hostelry. This latter made any thoughts of further travel somewhat uninviting. Once or twice in the past when I have returned to olde Albion a bit too soon I have succumbed to the temptations of escaping to more tropical climes when faced with the realities of a British winter. This time though, it seems that I will have to stay for at least the next month or so.

Added to the list of reasons to stay is also a promise I made to an American neighbour to look after his garden whilst he himself has to do some enforced travelling. He is a pleasant young man who shares with many of his compatriots the rather endearing habit of calling his seniors ‘sir’. As I am very much in this category (senior), I find myself treated in this slightly over-respectful manner on a regular basis. By no means is every American youngster quite so respectful, but during my visits to the States I was somewhat pleasantly surprised at just how often this was the case.

Much like the UK, and maybe like many other cultures, my experience of the US was that folks seemed very much more friendly, as well as more polite, the further you got from the main metropolises. New York was perhaps the least friendly place I have ever been on this planet. Nobody seemed to have even the time for the most rudimentary manners. Orders were the norm, rather than requests, and scarcely if ever were they followed by a ‘please’ or a ‘thank you’. When I tried to order a coffee in a cafe in central Manhattan I made the mistake of hesitating for perhaps a millisecond. This pause was all too much for the barista serving me who took it as his cue to move on to the next customer without so much as a by your leave. On another occasion I had accompanied my elderly father to the city back in the 80s. I remember him asking a policeman if he knew the way to the Empire State Building. This particular representative of New York’s Finest simply answered ‘yes’ and turned away.

On the other hand, a visit to the Lancaster county in Pensylvania a few years later with my girlfriend of the time, Natalia, led to us discovering the joys of the Amish culture flourishing there. Driving through the rolling countryside and leaving the turnpike with its anonymous shopping malls behind, it felt as if we had suddenly entered a time warp. Horse draw carriages of a type scarcely seen for over a century in the UK plied the narrow lanes. Men with hugely impressive beards and very courteous manners greeted you openly, if a little cautiously at times, their wives and daughters adorned in a manner that would not have looked out of place in pre-Victorian England. We rented a small room for a few days just outside the oddly name town of Intercourse. Our hosts could not have been friendlier or more helpful. The local area was quite lovely too, though the early signs of creeping commercialisation were already apparent even back then. I would guess that a return to Lancaster now might leave one a tad disappointed …

After experiencing Intercourse a few times (apologies, but some lines are just too difficult to resist…) we drove on South to the inaptly named Paradise and then turned West in the direction of Gettysburg. Given the hugely influential events that occurred there, the town itself was remarkably unprepossessing. We had a coffee in the quiet and pleasant Carlisle Street before heading out to the site of the battle itself. During the American Civil War the Confederate troops, led by General Robert E. Lee, had experienced a series of victories that took them to within 50 miles of Washington. For a few weeks it was looking quite probable that the South would emerge victorious. History hung in the balance. Their advance was halted in a large and open field just South of the town of Gettysburg. I sat with Natalia on a large rock that formed part of Little Round Top. On the early spring day we visited the area struck one as utterly pleasant, a gentle breeze blew across the high ground where we sat gazing down across a gently rising field below us that led into a wood about a mile away. It was hard to believe looking down on that peaceful scene the sheer carnage that had taken place there 130 years before. 15,000 Confederate troops had directly charged across the uphill, open ground trying in vain to take the dominating position that was occupied by Union army on the hilltop. 6,000 of those men died and many more were injured. The assault became known as Pickett’s charge and, in many ways, it marked the turning point of the war.

The cherry trees were in blossom by the time we reached Washington, the capital of this great yet perplexing nation. There had been yet another drive-by shooting the day before we arrived and Natalia was understandably nervous. A quarter of a century later and this all-American problem only seems to have grown worse. At the time, it was as much as I could do to persuade Natalia to leave the safety of our hotel room and head into the centre of town. Compared to New York at least, the capital was somewhat more civilised. We visited the normal attractions; the Smithsonian, Congress, the Lincoln Memorial yet it felt somehow soulless. Mightily impressive yes, but in a way that was so obviously designed to be impressive. It left the two of us less than impressed…

All in all, I visited the US a grand total of six times but I am not sure if I will ever go back now. It is very much a subjective opinion, but for me there was something oddly unsettling in the culture. Everything but everything seemed to be in hock to commercial interests. The realisation dawned early that visiting a mall in Miami was much the same as visiting a mall in Washington or Boston or Philadelphia or any one of a hundred other cities. This was back in the early 1990s and of course now much the same phenomenon has been visited upon the UK and, indeed, on the rest of the planet. At the time though, I remember thinking how terribly similar everything was; the J.C. Penneys and the Walmarts, the McDonalds and the Wendys, the Starbucks and the Dunkin’ Donuts.

It is hard to express exactly the reasons for my lack of desire to return, but perhaps it comes down to the feeling that I was never really able to feel like a traveller there but always merely a tourist. On almost every occasion it had felt as if I had been processed, as if I had entered via the airport at one end, had the requisite experiences in the requisite way, seen the right sights, got the right photographs, bought the right mementos, and then exited via the same airport on the way out. Somehow, the experience had never felt quite genuine, never quite ‘real’.

Back home in the UK amidst the sounds of a gurgling central heating system struggling manfully to cope with the demands of yet another cold evening whilst the freezing rain spatters noisily against the window panes, I find myself wondering where my nomadic tendencies will lead me next. Madrid in April is looking quite likely (I promised to help a friend sell a flat there) although the temptation of Greece in early May is also quite alluring. There is a big World out there waiting to be explored, although it would seem that I am forever drawn Eastwards to the depths of Europe and Asia rather than the more structured temptations of the U.S.

I want it all...

As I write these words the beast from the east has rendered Norfolk’s weather somewhat more akin to Siberia’s. In the past few days the temperature here has been down to -10 at times and never breached zero. Costas coffee house is a warm haven but a struggle to get to. I managed to unexpectedly assume a horizontal position en route when I slipped on some ice cunningly disguised beneath a layer of pleasantly fluffy snow.
It feels good after four months of global gallivanting to get back to my local cafe again. Costas themselves had rather annoyingly cancelled all their newspapers save the Sun (not sure that particular publication falls under the category of newspaper) before I left, but after receiving a large volume of complaints and becoming aware that people were also voting with their feet, I happily discovered that the Telegraph, the “I” and the Daily Mail have all been reinstated. Happy days...
I read in the ‘I’ that Jeremy Corbyn has just given a speech wherein he reversed his position of four decades of steadfast opposition to the EU to embrace the notion of joining ‘a’ customs union. As ever, the speech in reality is so general as to be meaningless as far as anything practical is concerned, but it does denote the taking up of a position so antithetical to any position he has taken before that one wonders how such blatant hypocrisy can be countenanced even by his most gullible supporters (and there are quite a few of those!). It seems that the reasoning is that although it represents a 180 degree volte face it does have the one benefit of allowing the possibility of the government losing a vote on the customs union in Parliament. In short, it is as blatant a piece of political cynicism as one could imagine. The possibility of power, of an election being called and Jeremy winning it, means that as far as he is concerned it is fine to adopt a position that all his political life he has been firmly opposed to. Power corrupts, and the desire for power can corrupt completely.

In China, Xi Jingping it seems has decided that a mere 10 years in power may not be sufficient for him. After the disaster of the Mao years when the geriatric leader continued to control China long after he was capable of making sensible decisions. This occurred mainly due to a managed ‘cult of personality’ when his thoughts were made into a kind of gospel in the form of a little red book. His words were incritically read by millions of gullible young red guards (and, interestingly, by John McDonnell....Labour’s shadow chancellor). Mao's final ten years in particular, a period known as the cultural revolution, were so damaging that the very social fabric of China was undermined with many people murdered for even the slightest perceived criticism. Xi Jinping has likewise benefitted the Chinese nation with a volume of his ‘thoughts’ to be incorporated into Communist Party Doctrine and disseminated amongst the general public. Now, apparently, Xi feels that ten years of power may not be enough for him and wishes to remove the legal obstacle of a maximum of two five year terms that the Party put in place at the end of Mao’s reign. Power corrupts, and the desire for power can corrupt absolutely.

Nicolas Maduro, Socialist leader in Venezuela, has called elections to further extend both his riegn and the extent of his powers. After having problems winning the normal elections, despite some blatant rigging, he decided to restrict the influence of the elected National Assembly and instead create a new constituent body only part of which was to be elected. This effectively meant that even if he clearly lost an election he would remain in power thanks to the built in majority from the non-elected parts of the assembly. Neat, eh!? Recently, members of the constituent body voted to put leasers of the opposition on trial for treason.  Power corrupts, and the desire for power can corrupt absolutely.

Another article tells of us of the activities of the leader of North Korea and his father,

Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un. Apparently worried that their own people might one day rise up against them, they illegally secured Brazillian passports and obtained visas from whatever embassies they could in Pyongyang in order to have a chance to make good their escapes if it proved necessary. This seems to be a common theme in communist countries, the leaders often live in fear of their populace and hence seek to control them by whatever means neccessary. Hence the CPC in China always being so concerned about ‘social stability’, basically code for the slightest sign of opposition to their rule.

It is a common trait of such folk on the left to seek control. It is often not just power that they want but absolute power, unchallenged and unlimited. With this comes the notion of ensuring that any contrary voice is controlled or silenced. It has been interesting to hear Corbyn’s responses lately when he talks about the press. He has been stung numerous times now by attacks in the press, mainly due to his connection with some very dubious characters in the past, spies, terrorists, antisemites, religious extremists, etc. The compromising nature of much of this information is somewhat inconvenient to a would be prime minister so the revelations have been a source of some irritation to poor Jeremy. His subsequent unspecified threat of “change is coming” sounded somewhat chilling. Asked to give details he would merely say that media bosses were “right to be worried” about the possibility of a Labour government. The threat was couched in language as chilling as the Beast from the East...
In China, the reaction on social media sites such as Wiebo to the notion of removing the two term limit on Xi Jinping was not particularly positive. As ever though with such left wing hierarchies, the authorities didn’t interpret this as a signal that perhaps they should reconsider but merely a sign that such criticism should be blocked, banned, rooted out or circumvented by all means available. Pooh bear, the oft used characterture for Xi Jinping found himself banned once again along with phrases such as ‘two terms’ or ‘extended rule’. Mysteriously, even the letter ‘N’ got banned for several hours!?

Maduro’s reaction in Venezuela to criticism is much of a muchness for a socialist/communist system. The group Human Rights Watch reports “the accumulation of power in the executive branch and the erosion of human rights guarantees have enabled the government to intimidate, censor, and prosecute its critics" and went on to say that that broadcasters may well be censored if they criticize the government.”
Socialism is often sold as the politics of compassion whereas, in reality (as the history shows) nothing could be further from the truth. What it craves is control and power, preferably of the unlimited variety. The common factor in all these cases is that not only do such people as Jeremy Corbyn, Xi Jinping, Nicolas Maduro or Kim Jung Un crave power but that they crave unlimited power. Not for them the unwarranted restrictions of terms, constitutions, elections or even press criticism, that is for wooly liberals and their like. They want it all...and they want it now.
Back in Costas I am finishing off my americano and girding my loins for the trudge back across the common. Hopefully this time I can at least remain vertical for the whole journey. Despite it being incredibly cold in the past few days, the snow lends this part of the World an intense beauty that is really quite unique in its own way. I have missed the place...

Brother No. 2 ...

 

'Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.'

George Santayana

Another day in the pleasant and surprisingly cosmopolitan Siem Reap, another visit to the Helen Guesthouse and Cafe. It is a few blocks from where I am staying but worth the trip for the generous continental breakfast served there. I have made this something of a habit over the last week and have much enjoyed both the food and the pleasant ambience of the place. So far, this reflects my experience of Cambodia and Cambodians in general; they seem invariably polite, gentle and friendly. So strange that here, of all places, such an awful catastrophe took place not forty years ago.
My original intention in coming to this place was to enjoy several days surveying the massively impressive Angkor Wat, but in practice I have become more and more fascinated with the nature of the tragedy that took place in this land in the 1970s than the more ancient history of the Angkor civilization. The obvious thought, given the nature of the people, is that if such a thing can happen here it can happen essentially anywhere. Mankind can be cruel and violent, but the extremes that they will go to in the name of an ideal, in this case Marxism, are truly shocking. Any individual is capable of some very dark acts, but genocide on this scale needs organisation and a rationale, at least of sorts.
Strangely, many of those who perpetrated these crimes escaped punishment for years. Most actually died before having to face any kind of court. Perhaps the most famous besides Pol Pot himself, the notorious Nuon Chea, otherwise known as Brother No. 2, was only recently convicted (in 2014) for his crimes against humanity. He is still alive today, having been given a life sentence at the end of the trial. I personally have always been against capital punishment, but such people as Nuon Chea make me question my own judgement on the matter.

Until near the very end of his trial he was both in denial about his guilt and seemingly unrepentant, saying that the actions he took were for the good of his country. Watching videos of the man giving interviews in the years before the trial, one gets the impression of someone who, even now, feels the ends justified the means. One question dealt with the killing of innocent people, which clearly happened countless times during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, and his response seemed to imply that it was OK to kill any number of people who may be innocent as long as you were sure to eliminate a possible threat amongst them.

Chea denied his links to actual killings until evidence emerged of his very direct involvement with the infamous S21 prison in the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The building formerly known as Tuol Svay Pray High School was co-opted by the Khmer Rouge in 1975 and became a centre for the interrogation, torture  and elimination of those who the Khmer Rouge considered to be a threat. As the chaos of their economic mismanagement became more and more apparent (unbelievably, they actually chose to follow Mao’s model from ‘The Great Leap Forward’ - something that had already lead to millions of deaths and mass starvation), they looked for the explanation in paranoid fantasies about saboteurs, agents of the KGB and CIA and, finally, defectors from within the ranks of the Khmer Rouge itself.
There were, alas, painfully few eye witness accounts to go on. Of the thousands of people who were sent to S21 only a handful survived (7 out of 12,000 according to one estimate). Oft times, people were picked up on the flimsiest of suspicions. These people were then tortured and interrogated. Reading a transcript from a survivor, the interrogation seemed to consist of the interrogator making an accusation that the bemused and confused prisoner was a spy working for the CIA or the KGB and being tortured in the most crude way until he not only confessed but also named everyone he knew as co-conspirators in the plot. These people were then picked up and the same process repeated.

It didn’t matter to the Khmer Rouge if those named were children, they still tortured and murdered them much the same as anyone else. The images that survive of frightened and confused kids taken before their execution are harrowing to this day. Even the babies of accused mother’s were summarily executed. The extent and depth of evil perpetrated under the Marxist Khmer Rouge and their banal ideology is hard to believe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/audio_video/programmes/correspondent/transcripts/1874949.txt

When one hears the likes of Pol Pot or Nuon Chea elucidating their ideology one is struck by its similarities not only to the communism of Mao Tse Tung that had brought such calamity to China but also to the National Socialism of Adolf Hitler. There was a large element of racism added to the underlying communism and this proved a particularly toxic mix. They hated the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the native Cham muslims and basically, any foreigner or foreign influence. An odd corrolary to this is that Brother No.2 himself was actually at least a quarter Chinese. This is strikingly similar to the oft stated possibility that Hitler himself was part Jewish.
For such stark and ongoing evil to exist it really seems to take an idealist, one that believes that the utopian ends justifies the inhumane means. National Socialist Hitler dreamed of a Reich that would last a thousand years, Mao Tse Tung and Lenin thought they were guiding their countries down the road to a not too distant Marixist utopia, Pol Pot and Nuon Chea dreamed of an agrarian communist Cambodia free of outside influence. They all were responsible for some of the worst genocides experienced by man in the whole of human history. The lesson is to beware of the true believers, the idealists, those convinced of the desirability of their dream and perhaps particularly those who wish to shape society to what they feel it should be. All such systems involve coercion and force eventually, no matter how ‘good’ the leaders seem to appear beforehand, how righteous, how filled with passion to impove society.
They are the really dangerous ones.

Back at Helen’s the day has become a lot warmer now as I sit here contemplating just how terrible such people can be. If we are honest, I think we all have to acknowledge that each of us is capable of doing terrible things. Individuals do commit such acts all the time, but for evil on a such a vast scale as that produced in Cambodia, in China, in Russia and in Germany it takes a state and usually a state with an idealistic vision of how society, and the people within that society, should be.
Usually, when I write these blogs I do so with a certain amount of pleasure. The process of sitting in a cafe contemplating, researching and writing is almost always a pleasant one. With this particular blog the feeling is a whole lot more negative. There was much I didn’t include as the details are just too awful, too unpleasant, even too shocking to want to expose my readers to. At the end of the process I just felt angry, angry for what had happened, angry that people still advocate similar systems, angry that the whole thing could happen again.
One final thought that struck me: given the history of communism and the number of times it has lead to such abject behaviour and awful atrocities, one would have thought that by now the symbol of the hammer and sickle should be held in the same low regard as the swastika - it is hard to see why we should differentiate between these two totalitarian and violent systems given their very similar results.
Enough now, time to go out into the sunshine once more and forget, just for the time being at least, that there are still people gullible enough to want to repeat such historical mistakes and who thereby risk repeating the same mistakes in the future.

Heaven protect us from idealists!

Purification...

"Death is the solution to all problems - no man, no problem."
Joseph Stalin

Today I find myself enjoying the somewhat noisy pleasures of the Bon Cafe in Phnom Penh. The cafe itself is rather pleasant; the staff friendly; the Americano and home-made soda good; the building, French Colonial, interesting. The noise comes from more sources than I care to name, a hodge-podge of kids, drills, motorbikes and aircraft taking off at the nearby airport. Still, despite all this, I admit to being rather fond of the place. It has an old-world charm that was sadly lacking from the Cafe Amazon chain I visited earlier today.
Two days in Cambodia and the abiding impression so far is of a failing economy with little or no infrastructure to speak of. The intention is to fly down to Siem Reap next Saturday where, hopefully, the influx of tourist money will have created a more comfortable lifestyle for the locals. One cannot help but wonder if this country has ever recovered from the Communist revolution of the Khmer Rouge in 1975. As with most Communist revolutions, it led to repression, economic failure and genocide, perhaps it has the distinction though of achieving these in somewhat less time than its rivals for the prize.

Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, managed to oversee the elimination of some 200,000 people whilst a million more starved due to his economic policies. Reports say that he particularly held a strong dislike for ‘intellectuals’ (again a common problem for Communist systems it seems, could it be that the intelligensia of a country are that big a threat to those in charge of such states?). Weirdly,  Pol Pot even went so far as advocating the killing of people who wore glasses at one stage, this on the rather feeble grounds that it proved they must have read too many books!
Once he established the ‘Democratic Republic of Kampuchea’ Pol Pot decided that history needed to start again and declared year zero before ‘purifying’ society. What this meant in practice is getting rid of anyone he even vaguely disapproved of. This was rather a long list: anyone following a religion, city dwellers, foreigners, the aforementioned ‘intellectuals’, etc.
(Odd how Communist despots seem so fond of  including such words as ‘Democratic’ and ‘Republic’ into the names of their country, usually when democratic is one thing they are not and some after effectively assuming King-like hereditary powers, such as the Kim family in North Korea)

All businesses were closed, schools and universities shut down, the mail and the phone system halted, health care stopped and any foreign economic or medical assistance prohibited. One can imagine the chaos that immediately ensued. Phnom Penh in particular suffered when the entire population was forced to leave for labour camps where they were to be ‘re-educated’ (The Communists do seem to have a particularly chilling knack when it comes to creation of euphemisms, do they not? Purifying and re-education are impressive for their creativity yet chilling for their reality).
Much to China’s ongoing shame in these matters, they were one of the few countries to offer support to Pol Pot. This continued even after they were well aware of what was going on on the ground.
Personally, seeing the state of the streets around me, I cannot help but wonder if this country has ever really recovered from those terrible times four decades ago. As the Soviets and the Communists in China discovered, if you eliminate the talented, the intelligent and the qualified from common affairs you eliminate much of what keeps a country civilised. In all three cases mass starvation and economic chaos followed.
On the positive side (!), one has to admit that a certain degree of the cherished ‘equality’ (another euphemism!) was achieved. The people were equally starving, equally suffering, equally terrified. I think I prefer a little old-fashioned inequality myself.

Friends ask me why, over the last few years, I have made a journey from being broadly left-wing in outlook to being virulently against such system. In a word: travel. Go and see these systems first hand, or at least the results of them. Read up on the realities of the atrocities, the brutality, the smothering of the individuals within these ill-begotten places but, most of all, visit them if you can. Any notion of the righteousness of Communist or left-wing dogma in general will soon be left far behind as the bitter reality is revealed in all its naked horror.
Back in the cafe I find myself alone as the light starts to fade. Sometimes the writing of these things takes a while as one searches for inspiration. Sometimes they write themselves. This has been one of the latter. The boy who served me originally smiles down patiently at me. The people here seem quite remarkably freindly, despite the horrors of their recent past and the suffering of today. One cannot help but like them.

No Marx out of ten....

"If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist."

Karl Marx

My last week in China, at least for the foreseeable future, and it seems to be an unhappy combination of cold, frequent wet spells and poor air quality. It can be very beautiful here at times, certainly there are many really quite incredible and visually stunning places to visit which can be a wonderful experience if... if the local area is not continuously swathed in a thick and sickly cloud of smog. I was told recently that the city of Zuzhou is an interesting place to see. I spent five days there two years ago and in the whole time was not able to see more than a couple of hundred metres. China could and should be beautiful, but they really need to get their act together as far as pollution goes or fewer and fewer people will want to come (not to mention the effects on the resident population).
I am back in the Cochan today, for the simple reason of the enforcement of the smoking ban in this particular establishment. Tis bad enough that one has to spend every moment of one’s outdoor existence breathing in the smog, not to wish to add to that sad state of affairs by inhaling in the more or less ubiquitous cigarette smoke in the cafes and restaurants here in China.
To be fair, in the five years I have been coming back to China, much progress has been made in many areas. The infrastructure constantly improves, the standard of driving, although awful by any objective standard, is considerably better than when I first came, the generally cleanliness of facilities just keeps getting improving year on year. On pollution though, despite the odd proclamation of intent by the Government, the reality is that it is still as bad as ever, if not worse.
Economically though, it has to be admitted, things are going well. In fact, it would seem evident that they have been going well for something like forty years now. The key event that seems to have allowed this progress to be made was the demise of the much admired Mao Tse Tung and the re-arising of Deng Xiao Ping. With Mao out of the way, Deng was free to turn his back on the truly awful failed economics of Marxism and embrace the dynamism of the free market.
The various Marxist experiments of the Maoists had wreaked huge havoc upon China for nigh on thirty years before Deng took control. True, there was a certain equality but, as some wit put it, though Capitalism may lead to an uneven distribution of wealth, Socialism tends to lead to an even distribution of poverty!

For some strange reason, in a time when dead white men are much decried, especially in the universities of the US and the UK, one dead white man remains sacrosanct. Karl Marx and his political and economic prognostications have arguably been responsible for more death and destruction, more violence and totalitarianism, than any other thought system that the human race has so far produced. Yet, very oddly, he seems to be the one thinker that remains almost immune to criticism, despite the results of his thinking and despite his own, rather sordid personal example (To give just one instance: he routinely cheated on his wife and managed to foster his own illegitimate offspring via coupling with the housemaid on his hapless friend, Friedrich Engels).

Marx’ predictions in relation to the rise of the proletariat invariably proved mistaken. Any revolutions that took place were invariably lead by intellectuals or other members of the bourgeoisie. The historical overhaul of Capitalism never took place (although, of course, history never ends whilst we still have a human race to experience and record it). The free markets, far from collapsing, went on to take over the World.
Also the notion of centralised control of prices and wages has proven to be horrendously flawed, implying as it does the threat of force. It stands in opposition to Adam Smith's ideas about the free market, as expressed in The Wealth Of Nations, where all transactions are essentially a negotiation between a buyer and a seller. If the two do not agree that the price is right for them then they do not transact - in this sense it is an expression of the freedom of choice of the two parties involved and would seem, in that way as least, a far pleasanter way to conduct human affairs and commerce than the coercion inherent within Marxism.

Marx’ racism is also, rather strangely, completely overlooked. For example, he referred to the half Creole husband of his niece as “a gorilla offspring.” Although of rabbinical descent himself, he was also an anti-semite of fearsome proportions. He even wrote a book with the blatant title World without Jews. Some even consider it to be the precedent for another eminent’s anti-semite contribution; ‘Mein Kampf’. (Rather oddly, it has been advanced that Hitler himself may also have had Jewish ancestry). He seems to have considered Asians to have been something of a sub-culture too, being, in his view, incapable of proper development without the assistance of European imperialism. The list goes on and on, but these few examples should suffice.

Marx’s views on slavery in the US also seem rather abhorrent from today’s perspective. A direct quote is perhaps the best way to demonstrate this point: “Without slavery, North America, the most progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe out North America from the map of the world and you will have anarchy, the complete decay of modern commerce and civilization. Abolish slavery and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.”
All very strange, but really hardly surprising considering just how much Marx managed to get wrong in his analysis and approach to a political and economic philosophy. With some justification, many have criticised Marxism as essentially envy dressed up in fine rhetoric. Although perhaps not completely fair, there is at least some merit to this view. His notion that all property should, essentially, belong to ‘the state’ is perhaps one of the clearest indications of the attitude. Again I quote, this time from the communist manifesto co-authored by Marx in 1844: “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”
Exactly what gives the Marxist state the right to own the property of private individuals is another matter. When such approaches have been tried, such as in Soviet Russia and Communist China, great suffering ensued in the first stages, transferring property from the capable to the incapable, followed by huge economic mismanagement of the transferred resources in the second, usually leading to mass starvation.

One could go on and on with this stuff, the list of Marxian unpleasantness is long and damning, but the examples I have given up to now should be clear enough. Karl Heinrich Marx was not a pleasant man, either in his political philosophy or in his private life. The attitudes he possessed to women, racial groups, slavery and even people themselves were pretty abhorrent at the time; with the benefit of hindsight (the kind of mayhem that we now know his views lead to) they are even more so.
Tis strange indeed, that such an obnoxious and odious figure should somehow retain a hero’s status to left-wing thinkers who purport to have a strong distaste for racism, misogyny and slavery but, que sera...at times the World will live in does seem to be both mad and, unfortunately, getter madder by the day!
Oh well, twas a nice rant while it lasted. Time to wrap up in scarf and wooly hat and once more brave the endless pollution of the streets of Dongguan. Hopefully, if all goes well, maybe a somewhat less intense rant will follow from the warmer climes of Cambodia next week.

Needham or not...

Dongguan had been almost relentlessly warm for the past few weeks but, since Saturday, we have suffered something of a change of fortune with a veritable deluge of rain hitting us accompanied by temperataures not far above freezing. Today I am sitting as deeply into Cochan Cafe as I can manage but, unfortunately, the local habit of leaving the main doors open to encourage customers means that the interior is, to put it mildly, chilly. At least this is one of the few cafes in Dongguan that actually does enforce the law of smoking, so one doesn’t have to deal with that particular unpleasantness as well. Obeying laws seems to be quite optional here in China, if the obeyance thereof is likely to cost the owner of the business a few customers then it is very unlikely to be enforced. In the case of smoking, the authorities made quite a song and dance about their new regulations last year, proclaiming to all and sundry how they wanted to promote healthier lifestyle habits here, but as ever here, presentation is one thing, enforcement quite another.
My mind has been somewhat occupied of late by the ‘Needham Question’, something that was brought to my attention a few weeks back by a friend of mine in Kanchanaburi. Joseph Needham, originally a biochemist, became both a sinologist and also something of a sinophile. His initial interest in China was sparked after embarking on an affair with a young Chinese scientist in Cambridge in the late 30s. She made him aware of some of the many remarkable discoveries and inventions of Chinese science up to the 18th century. China’s culture had been one of, if not the leading culture for several centuries. As Needham illustrated in his opus magnus on the subject many (the massive and unfinsihed 25 volume ‘Science and Civilisation in China’), many developments in science and mathematics had their genesis in China. Needham certainly had a point and he was by no means backwards in coming forward to make that point, writing and travelling endlessly in pursuit of his calling. Many other scholars felt that although there was much validity to what he said, he also developed the tendency to credit almost all major developments to China (much to the approval of his lover, no doubt). Basically, he over-egged it.
The Needham Problem essentially addresses the question of why this influence stopped and the culture essentially ossified (at least as far as scientific development was concerned) to the point where the younger but more energised cultures of Europe both overtook China and eventually left it far behind.
Many answers have been posited, some more credible than others. The stultifying effect of Confuscianism for example, wherein social stability is prized about all else. The nature of the Chinese state which laid great emphasis on continuity and had little need for innovation. The exam system for bureaucrats which held rote learning in high esteem but, again, did not particularly value original work. The remnants of the latter can still be seen in the Chinese education system of today. It is very good at turning out individuals who pass exams, but unfortunately not quite as good at creating pupils who actually understand their subjects. In regards to the latter, it is not an uncommon experience to come across people with degrees in English in China, who yet seem almost incapable of even the simplest of discussions using that language.

Another, somewhat more imaginative answer, is that regarding the development of glass in Europe. The theory runs that because the Europeans loved wine they developed glass to a much higher degree which eventually lead on to the development of optics, scientific instruments and, last but not least, spectacles. This latter innovation thus enabled a greatly increased creative lifespan for the European intellectual as opposed to their Chinese counterpart whose culture, favouring tea over wine, had merely developed porcelain. An interesting theory...

Interestingly, and rather oddly, after consulting 20 odd sites on the internet addressing this question, none of them seem to have posited the possibility of what would seem a very obvious contributing factor. The industrial revolution that started in the UK and spread throughout Europe created the need for a better educated workforce, at least to a basic level. To make this possible, a certain democratization of education was required in order to have sufficient people capable of working within the new paradigm. This increasing access to education created a much wider pool of potential scientists, mathematicians and engineers that had hitherto been the case.
This same process would not have been possible to the same extent in China due to one very simple but very fundamental factor: the cumbersome nature of the Chinese writing system. Mandarin Chinese is often described as a very difficult language to learn, perhaps even the most difficult. Personally, I think that spoken Chinese is no more challenging than any number of other languages, despite the difficulties connected to the use of tones. The grammatical structures within the language are of themselves far simpler than French, English or German. Many outsiders successfully manage to learn to speak the language but few, even after many years of study, get anywhere near close to being able to read, let alone write, in Mandarin.

Even Western academics who have studied the language for a decade will still have difficulties reading even the most basic novel or newspaper article in Chinese. There is no shame in this as the Chinese people themselves suffer under a similar yoke. Though the Chinese government claim a literacy rate of around 95% (interestingly similar to Western European countries and the US) this is only achieved by setting a standard that is so low as to be bordering on the absurd. Recognition of characters for example, is considered enough of a qualification even if the ability to recreate these characters is completely lacking. I have met several seemingly bright people here who are completely unable to read official documents and have to rely on friends to interpret for them.
Now, interestingly, if the results of IQ testing is to be believed, the average Chinese person is a tad more intelligent than his Western counterpart. Yet real literacy rates here in China are stubbornly low. I conducted some interesting experiments (highly unscientific, of course) myself of late just to see how difficult the written system was even for educated Chinese people. I worked with a couple of undergraduates, giving them a list of reasonably common words. Their immediate reaction was to pick up their mobile phones and enter the pinyin! When told that this was not allowed they looked just a tad flummoxed and, somewhat abashed, had to admit that they could not write the words from memory. One of the words used was ‘sneeze’. Now imagine in the West having people educated to undergraduate level who struggle with reproducing such a simple word; it would be simply unbelievable unless that person was unlucky enough to be severely dyslexic.
Another aspect of this historically is that in the times we are referring to the Chinese script was actually several orders of magnitude more difficult than it is today. Most of the scholars time was taken up by their attempts to simply master enough words to pass various administrative exams.
So, my contention is that the problem for China in regards to the Needham Paradox (it has many names!) was not so much in the culture or the underlying capabilities of the populace but simply due to the almost impossible task of democratizing education when the pupils are faced with such a gargantuan task as simply learning the written system in the first place.
Several years ago I took a trip to Russia. It was a relatively late booking so I had barely two and a half weeks to get a little Russian under my belt before I left. It took me roughly 36 hours to learn the phonetics of the cyrillic script and with it the ability to understand simple signs. More recently, a friend and I also decided to learn the Greek alphabet just for the hell of it. This process took a couple of days. Now, compare that to getting even a basic understanding of the Chinese written system...years, or even decades are required to reach a similar level.

This has proven to be quite a long piece and I am completing it in C Store, a cafe a few hundred metres from Cochan. As I look to my right I see a sign written in Chinese script, symbolically and in English. It says: no smoking. Beneath it, a young man of about twenty years of age, puffs away happily...