Globe Carving

Beats and Sweeps

2009-04-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

Capoeira swept the University of Arizona Student Recreation Center on Saturday, April 25 as masters and students from all over the world converged to test and promote their art.

Bongos thumped and the crowd clapped and joined in the chants as students "played" or fought instructors and masters in order to receive a new belt representing a greater responsibility to the group and an advancement of knowledge.

Instructor Luar do Sertao, aka Anne Pollack had to play multiple masters consecutively to get promoted to a junior master level. Pollack, still physically sore, later that evening briefly explained, the history of Capoeira to me over the phone.

"It started as secretive training for slaves to disguise martial arts and (an upcoming) rebellion against their Brazilian masters as singing and dancing," Pollack said. That's why fighting or sparing is referred to as playing, to hide its roots as an uprising Pollack explained.

Masters from Israel, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa were flown in and hosted in students homes to promote intercultural exchange beyond the "roda" or human circle that surrounds participants when they are playing.

Today Capoeira is the second most popular sport in Brasil and its appeal as a musical, spiritual, aerobic martial art is fast growing in the U.S.

The specific form demonstrated, called capoeira mandinga is unique in that includes trickery in the training. Mandinga, translated from Portuguese means magic and in this sub-style, it values a sense of humor, ability to mesmerize and distract an opponent while demonstrating maturity and respect according to www.madinga.org.

The three day long called capoeira batizado or baptism, included workshops, arts and crafts and a party with Brazilian food.

The organization offers four classes per week depending on age and ability level at the Student Recreation Center.

Media Bias Punishing Gays

2009-04-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

HONG KONG-AAA's and BBBB's are raining in as final grades are coming in and graduation is fast approaching, I'm shifting my focus to graduate research at the University of Hong Kong. I'm trying to bridge my two worlds of journalism and human rights activism by stepping back and studying how they work. Take a peak

Letters are not the goal. But they are the focus of my study. Letters when sculpted, teleprompted, printed or posted in the mass media are too important to overlook and yet are produced at such a rapid pace that they are nearly impossible to monitor. Media are struggling to survive and space that was once occupied by lucrative advertisements now must be filled with content. It must be produced with greater speed, accuracy and depth in order to keep up with up to the second, online, in your pocket, ever-expanding citizen journalism and wire reports. Pressure is mounting. The responsibility lingers.

The ocean is rising, over a million are dead in Iraq and Russia, by stopping an oil lifeline, can freeze all of Europe. The world is constantly in crisis and in flux. The media’s role is to bring the government official in Istanbul, the activist in San Francisco and the businesswoman in Lagos together with information that affects the present, reflects on the past and illuminates the future.

Presentation is critical. The San Diego Union Tribune, on Febuary 4, 2008 posted a death toll stating 3,235 U.S solders have died in Iraq. San Diego hosts numerous air force, navy and marine bases. It made no mention of the estimated 1.150 million Iraqis that have died since the U.S. invaded in 2003. Al Jazera’s English website, the same day ran a death toll estimating all of the dead Iraqis . Al Jazera is based out of Doha and is the most influential Middle Eastern News satellite network. Both omit a vital perspective and both reports are slanted to cater to and or shape the opinion of their unique audiences. However pleasing the media aims to be, both of their audiences are poorly informed, lack historical context and are less prepared to make decisions that directly affect the conflict in issue.

My area of particular interest is not as popular, or rather unpopular as the War in Iraq, but it affects more people globally in every country, city and village.

Between 10 and 12 percent of the population is queer. Every society handles homosexuality differently but, globally they are a marginalized people. The level of marginalization, I hypothesis is directly influenced by the news media’s conscious and unconscious depiction of homosexual issues.

The effects can be measured by public perception surveys, antidiscrimination laws protecting gays, hate crimes and government funded LGBT health services available.

The media’s representation of homosexual issues will have to be scrupulously studied down to the letter in order to study its effects. I will study one daily newspaper each from Taiwan (China's renegade province) and Hong Kong (China's puppet state) with the greatest number of paid subscribers and their respected communities to understand how the daily newspaper influences LGBT people’s freedom and acceptance.

I’m choosing the most widely circulated Daily newspaper in Taiwan and Hong Kong because print media is the basis of all other forms of news media. Broadcast, radio and Internet news sources, both mainstream and alternative base a majority of their stories on what they read in the most circulated paper. Often they will read from the paper verbatim. Therefor the journalistic and ethical obligations of the highest order, rest with the newspaper.

Four internship/ job opportunities if you share the same interests
Human Rights Advocacy PR
http://www.amnesty.org/en/jobs
Human Rights Advocacy- PR
http://www.hrw.org/en/about/jobs
PR- social/ medical issues
http://doctorswithoutborders.org/work/office/internships.cfm
PR HIV/AIDS prevention
http://www.aidsconcern.org.hk/eng/index2.html

Mother Africa

2009-04-12T00:20:00.000-07:00

In my pursuit to push Tucsonians out of their comfort controlled America-centric bubbles I'm interviewing eight African exchange students to heighten our critical consciousness on to a global level. Human rights, economic and environmental issues in Africa effect us all directly and indirectly.

Chiedza Mutsaka: Zimbabwe

On Economy and student immigration:
"Obviously you need to get accepted to the school- but you have to show you can pay for a full year before you can even apply.
"Then you go for your visa interview."

I couldn't sleep the night before. "You don't know what questions they are going to ask you and everything is on the line.

"You go in to the U.S Embassy, hand in your forms and they give you a slip to come two weeks later. I showed up three hours ahead of time- waited five hours then got grilled on your intentions. I don't force relationships and my relationship with the U.S is not working. Since President Robert Mugabe decided to redistribute land to implement a Zimbabwean version of affirmative action where white families farming and exporting tobacco, wheat and vegetables successfully were replaced with urban black Zimbabweans. They brought pigs and chickens on to the land, started killing dairy cows for meat-they destroyed our food security and eventually our economy as its heavily dependent on agricultural exports.

"The national Bank of Zimbabwe locked down all foreign currency and started billing increasing larger Zimbabwean notes which only raised the inflation."

"My parents, though they still had money to pay my tuition couldn't transfer money to the U.S and i got kicked out of school one semester shy of graduation." "I pleaded my story to everyone including President Shelton and they said nothing could be done. No money no school they told me. I can't take out any student loans because they need someone in the U.S with assets to cosign."

"I'm just going to have to let the U.S go."

Henry Marquis: Ghana
On Democracy

"Everywhere Ghanaians are we stand out to represent in a way that brings honor to our country."

"Independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked to the total liberation of African continent."

"Regardless of how stable we are-if injustice, war or genocide our place and our stability is still in jeopardy."

"I love being able to to lead a group of students from other African countries to represent my country"

"Africans for once, are welcoming what true democracy means peace and prosperity- after our elections in December 27, 2008 went completely peacefully, Africa and the rest of the world know the way."

Voice of Africa

2009-04-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

53 countries house over one billion people in Africa and politics, economics, war and peace are constantly in flux. Africans in the greater world, represent the largest diaspora of all time and are representative in nearly every country.

At the University of Arizona, the African Student Association gathers weekly to discuss issues at home, problems faced in Tucson and ways to bridge the two worlds while providing a home way from home for the students, President Henry Marquis said.

Last Week was African Cultural Week and to honor it the African Student Association held a different event each day. I caught up with the club on Thursday as they hosted Ask About Africa Day in the Gallagher Theater in the Student Memorial Union.

Chideza Mutsaka from Zimbabwe tried to explain the economic claps of her country and unparalleled inflation. “In Mugabe’s plan to redistribute the land back to the people, city people started raising pigs on tobacco farms and killing dairy cows for their meat on others,” Mutsaka said. “Where we once were producing enough food to feed all of Africa, kids are now dying on the street of starvation because of this colossal misappropriation.”

Kaya Belknap, from Kenya tried to put her country’s assassinations of human rights activists into terms Tucsonans could digest. “Business, namely gangs dealing with arms and drugs that yield influence in every aspect of Kenya need to silence people that threaten their interests,” Belknap said. “Everyone seeking peace and accountability looses and the thugs are still leading.”

In an upcoming feature on Borderbeat.net, I will be interviewing students representing eight African nations.

Dry

2009-03-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

The faucet continues to drip just as the Colorado continues to run dry. The average household in Tucson looses seven percent of their monthly water usage to leaks just as the Central Arizona Project, delivering water from the Colorado River to Tucson looses seven percent of the total water delivered to evaporation according to Tucson Water Department’s Public Information Officer, Mitchell Basefsky.

The worsening water shortage and increasing demands, represent a distant concern for those of us with the luxury to draw a bath without ever having to think were the water originates. To our neighbors in Mexico and South East Asia that fetch water themselves from sources that are dependent on rivers originating in the U.S and China, don’t have the luxury of ignorance.

“Now that the Mekong Mega Dams are online, 60 million people living in 5 nations beneath China, along the Mekong, are now at her mercy for food and clean water,” founder of Mekong Descent Foundation and the first person to Kayak the Mekong from Source to Sea, Mick O’Shea said.

Seven U.S states and Mexico are battling for shrinking amounts of water originating from lake Powell and Lake Havasu and transported along the Colorado River. Mexico was promised 1.5 million-acre feet per year in 1944, when the river had an irregularly high flow and the U.S has not since been able to keep that promise.

“Access to clean water isn’t a privilege, everyone needs it to live and we are petitioning to have it included in the International Human Rights Declaration,” University of Arizona’s Social Justice League President, Hali Nurnberg said.

Bunker Hill

2009-03-22T06:52:00.000-07:00

Homo Hill- Iteawon-Seoul

Thick black circular glasses are continuously sliding down his narrow nose with every sip of the orange cocktail. Talking to his friend dressed like Waldo in a red and white striped tank top, it seems like just another night, in the Seoul’s most prominent gay enclave.

But this is Sun’s last night of freedom. Monday morning he is reporting for compulsory military service. For two years he will be training and serving in the South Korean army even though he is gay and the South Korean military carries a reputation for violently harassing gay servicemen.

He is not out to his parents- as is common practice here as parents support children through university and early adulthood and divulging his sexuality would likely sever this relationship. Admitting his sexuality to his army advisors would however likely grant him an automatic discharge.

Pressure to protect his country against North Korea and honor his family overpowers his own fear and personal objection to joining an institution that doesn’t tolerate his sexuality. But he doesn’t have much of a choice. If he refuses, he will not only shame his family, he will go to jail, he will go to jail as did another man that was in his situation according to advocate.com

The Korean military isn’t all that different from the U.S where soldiers are discharged if their sexuality is exposed. The U.S. congress, in a progressive stance introduced legislation that would void “the don’t ask don’t’ tell” policies on March 3 according to a NBC report. Obama has also allegedly met with his top defense advisors in order to destroy “the don’t ask don’t tell” policies.

The U.K and Israel have ant-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation and are viewed as the most equitable in the world.

South Korean army officials have medical doctors that evaluate soldiers claiming or accused of being gay. In one incident a man claiming to be gay was ordered to take and show the doctor photos of him having sex according to
Amnesty International.

Sun, after four drinks and 45 minutes of conversation refused to divulge his family name for fear of his family, or his military advisors finding out.

Pushing up his glasses once more he slides to the LED lighted dance floor with his friend. Though this well lit bar, called Queen, displays a small rainbow sticker on the front door and is located in an area commonly called Homo Hill, homosexuality not nearly as open or accepted according to Chingusai Korean Gay Men’s Human Rights Group, Director, Won Yu Lee said.

“Its an impossible and unnatural decision to have to decide between defending Korea, yourself and your family,” Lee said referencing Sun’s situation. “We help support their fight but the fight is always changing,” Lee said suggesting that this is a global question that very few can answer.

Misty Korea

2009-03-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

Broken, brown beaten shrubs line the highway. Trees tower bare along a silty Han River and camouflaged pillboxes buried into the ground house board anxious teens wearing helmets and black boots. Nothing is in motion except our bus heading north to the DMZ.

A continuous border fence that makes the US Mexico border security look haphazard, protects us from defecting North Koreans that could theoretically float down the river directly into Seoul. But no one has been discovered trying to cross the DMZ since 1972 and since North/South Relations farther deteriorated last week as N Korea announced it will be launching a civilian satellite (U.S believes it to be a long range missile test) and the U.S and South Korean armed forces are starting a massive counter invasion war game this week, the only thing living thing in between the fences are geese.

The train stopped. The one trade link connecting the two Koreas was closed in December 2008. The final South Korean station sits barren. Except for posing South Korean soldiers and the station manager who is happy not to have the stress of real international passengers. The government however would like to expand its rail trade by tapping into the Transsiberian Railway to expedite its trade to china, Russia and Europe.

Along the way to the DMZ we stopped at the Unification Park were pink and baby blue windmills, flags and amusement park rides remain unused. Embracing statues made out of concrete and bronze receive little attention except from Japanese tourists and South Korean families praying on special holidays, for their separated families in the North.

Playful worm and Saguaro statutes rest right next to retired tanks and fighter planes in a confused, clustered juxtaposition of hope and reality. And signs warned us not to talk to the Soldiers on guard.

One soldier then yelled my way from his olive green watch post. In perfect Canadian English he said he has eight months left of mandatory military service and that he misses Canadian Ganja that he can’t get in Korea.

All South Korean men at the age of 18 are required to serve two years in the armed forces. They are then classified as reservists for the rest of their lives.In addition to a compulsory 10 years of service N Korean Men and Women can be called in for serve at any time and for any duration to continuously build and maintain their 1.1 million-man army. South Korea’s armed forces total approximately 650,000.

Both line the 2 kilometer wide DMZ waiting.

On Edge

2009-03-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

Tensions are rising on the Korean peninsula as the U.S and South Korean armed forces prepare for an annual invasion exercise according to reports from nytimes.com and bbc.com.

The timing could not have been worse as the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, more commonly referred to as North Korea plans on test firing a long range missile this week, under the guise of a civilian satellite, according to U.S. and South Korean officials who spoke with BBC.

An industrial zone that housed 90 South Korean companies in North Korea has been shut down since December 1, 2008. The industrial companies near the city of Kaesong employed 33,000 North Koreans and provided the opportunity to interact with South Koreans as their managers. North Korea propaganda bureaus try to present South Koreans as tools used by far reaching U.S. imperialism, or just plain monsters, but working alongside each other demonstrated that south Koreans are just fellow Koreans with an unimaginable standard of living.

All north-south military communication has been severed at a time where one miscommunication could easily trigger war.

North Korea issued a warning on Wednesday, stating that “the safety of South Korean civil aircraft could not be assured” in North Korean airspace off of the east coast of the Korean Peninsula that’s used daily by commercial airliners on flying into Inchon International Airport.

South Korean officials allege that the long-range missile test platform is housed in that airspace. They also speculate that the missiles are capable of reaching Alaska or Hawaii.

Presumably North Koreans worry about an attack on their missile program and see an opportunity for clandestine operations using an unrestricted commercial flight path. They too might be legitimately concerned about striking a commercial aircraft on accident with their test launch.

Either way, North Korea is preemptively arming and preparing its massive million man army incase their missile is sabotaged. “We will retaliate any act of intercepting our satellite for peaceful purposes with prompt counter strikes by the most powerful military means," a North Korean Army statement said.

“Shooting our satellite for peaceful purposes will precisely mean a war," the report added.

Many commercial aircraft carriers are still flying through North Korean airspace although Singapore and Korean Airlines have rerouted aircraft with minimal delay.

As I will be flying to Seoul on March 13, to report first hand on border issues, including cross border leaflets, North Korean defectors, media censorship and sexual orientation discrimination, I have been trying to establish contacts in both Koreas.

I have sent three emails to a North Korean special delegate in an attempt to get a journalistic visa to cross the sealed border. I have not hear back.

I recently spoke to Save North Korean Refugees spokesman, Chunyou Le from her office in Washington D.C. she’s doubtful I will be granted a visa but is optimistic she can connect me to two North Korean Defectors living in Seoul.

Ballons of Hope

2009-03-02T10:10:00.000-08:00

Steve Meth
3/2/09
Globe trotting

In an isolated country, where no email, no news and fewer and fewer people are permitted across the most fortified border in the world, North Koreans depend on the wind to listen to the outside world.

Forbidden words and images, from South Korea rise attached to helium balloons. The balloons rise steadily but the messages dangling on a string whip, side to side.

Some messages attack the North Korean Dictator, Kim Jong Il, who is idolized like a living god, according to Lee Min-bok, a North Korean defector working with the Christian North Korean Coalition. He wrote about his experiences living in North Korean concentration camp on website that posts human rights violations.

Other leaflets, floating over an estimated 2 million land mines dividing the two countries, simply ask for peace according to Kang Chul-han, a member for the Democratization of North Korea. Regardless of message or intentions, the thousands of leaflets that litter beaches, farmlands and communities in the north are unnerving both governments and may easily upset a fragile peace that has divided the two Koreas since 1964 according to South Korean government officials.

Some North Koreans avoid the leaflets, fearing punishment for reading a view that is uncensored by the closed regime. The Christian North Korean Coalition attracts the fearful to their fallen bacons by attaching North Korean Currency. The 5,000 dollar notes could buy a two or three kilograms of rice in a country, that’s been in a famine for more than 12 years according to a report by Radio Free Asia.

Other North Koreans eagerly seize the leaflets to learn about current events in the outside world, regardless of the risk.

The North Korean government has formally protested the leaflets to South Korea 22 times since 2005. South Korean government has in turn tried to stop its citizen activists, without much success, according to Chosunilbo, a South Korean newspaper.

To the south the helium tanks refill the balloons nearly every weekend. In the North, military units and police officers have been taken from their normal posts and given orders to find and destroy fallen leaflets.

Los dos Estados de Homosexualidad

2009-02-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

Michael Ruth, in 2006 spent three days in University Medical Hospital because he is gay. He was stabbed, punched and kicked in the head because he likes men. He was a freshman. His eyes were wide and bright with energy and he enthusiastically wore university of Arizona collard shirts to class according to an archived article in the Arizona Daily star I found while researching hate crimes in the Southwest.

Chris Olivares realized he was gay just after his eleventh birthday and life got hard. Growing up in La Ciudad De Mexico, open and suspected gays were unwilling targets of verbal harassment. He didn’t want to be a victim. So after high school he moved to Tucson to study chemistry, and to come out of the closet at the University of Arizona.

Michael Ruth grew up in Eagan, Minnesota. He was popular in high school and had parents that supported him. He was openly gay since age 15 and had run into few problems since then. The weather, the distance and the political science program at the University of Arizona enticed him, according to former high school and college classmate, Mike Bordon.

Even though Tucson isn’t perfect, there are more opportunities to be socially and professionally accepted as a gay man here than in Mexico, Olivares said. He disclosed his sexuality to his mother from Tucson. When he returned home to their downtown apartment for spring break his mother didn’t speak with him for four days. On the fifth day she said her son has shamed her life, ruined her professional reputation and his life would only get worse.

“It felt fantastic coming out to my friends here,” Olivares said while sitting outside Saigon Pho restaurant. “I felt like I had been holding my breath in Mexico City and I finally was able to let it out in Tucson. I wish my mom could understand.”

Arizona, historically has seen a large amount of violent gay bashing, according FBI crime reports monitoring the amount of hate crimes over the past ten years. But unlike Mexico, the crimes are followed by a community outpouring of support and tougher laws granting gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people equal protection against verbal and physical assault according to Fernando Mina Garcia, Editor of Letra S, a Mexico based non profit organization that illuminates gay targeted violence that local and provincial authorities cover up because of deep seeded political and socially accepted homophobia.

Michael Ruth’s parents flew from Minnesota to Tucson to be with their son in the hospital. After he was discharged they helped him pack his bags and move back home. He now attends Wisconsin Stout University, according to his facebook profile. An interview is set up for Wednesday.

In Mexico gays and transsexuals appear on novelas, or television soap operas and according to Olivares and a BBC report, they are laughed at. One actor/ Singer who played a straight role on the Novela, Rebelde, Christian Chavez, publicly admitted he was gay only once photos showed up on the Internet of him and another man getting married in Canada in 2005.

Less than a dozen of Mexican public figures have openly admitted that they are gay out of “fear of rejection, of criticism,” particularly for their families, Chaves said to BBC.

In Presidio Park, located in Downtown Tucson, a plaque memorializes the death of Richard J Heahin Jr. who was kicked to death in 1976 because he was gay. While scouring Arizona Daily Star’s archives I have found 11 more assaults on gays since then.

In a section just north of Paseo de la Reforma, in Mexico City, lies an area called the la zona rosa. It’s called the pink zone because of the pink tiles on the street and the highest density of gay friendly bars, shops and nightclubs in the country according to Arco Iris Tours, a gay Latin America travel company.

Comparing gay civil right legislation, Mexico decriminalized gay sex in 1871 whereas Arizona did the same in 2001 according to lambda Legal and Human Rights Campaign timelines. Both over the past ten years have been making efforts to assure legal protection from discrimination and both locations now have openly gay politicians and activists that fight for the right to live without fear of violence or discrimination.

Flash Riot

2009-02-16T13:12:00.000-08:00

San Francisco - The United Nations marched in loose formation wearing baby blue berets, gas masks and hemp dreadlocks. They're mission was to stop pillow warfare which, for the past four years, has erupted every valentines day in San Francisco, Tel Aviv, London and Madrid.

When the clock tower at the Embarcadero struck 6pm, the crowd of 2,000 people from all over the world screamed, pillows exploded and the feathers flew in every direction.

"It's the purest expression of a holiday," Addison Duke, an Advertising student at the Art Institute of San Francisco said , while coughing on a feather. "You don't buy anything, you don't dress up fancy, you don't impress any one. You laugh until you cry and smack your neighbors with pillows," Duke said.

The scrimmage turned into a battle as the smacking lasted for three hours longer than expected, agent provocateur Rick Abruzzo said from the front line. "After experiencing my first pillow fight in London, I knew San Francisco would love it so we used our networking skills and made it happen," Abruzzo said.

The U.N was not happy with the unprovoked violence and handed out citations to war criminals, who they said were using pillows as weapons of mass destruction.

Sans Dick, a U.N peacekeeper speaking in a fake french accent, with a megaphone attached to his hip disapproved of the feather count in a particular pillow.

"He took a knife and cut my pillow open," Mella Piercey, from Sweden said. "Then he wrote me a ticket suggesting I use my pillow for sleeping or hugging. But I'm now an American so I just laughed and whacked him," Piercey said, still laughing.
At 930pm, when the crowd started to dissipate, the ground was covered in certain places with up to a foot of feathers, which from afar looked like snow.

Writing on the World

2009-02-08T23:44:00.000-08:00

I squat beneath my scratched computer. It sits high no matter where in the world it lies. Sometimes its smooched between tree branches. Most commonly it sits on trashcans, benches, drinking fountains, public phone booths or occasionally my stand up desk, in what I call the command station, overlooking the rest of my castle.
I draw the most attention when I do the splits underneath my laptop. It chills on a chair, one designed for, manufactured, and purchased to sit on. But I don’t sit on it and it puzzles some passerby’s and angers others.
I’ve taken to covering the computer’s scars with bumper stickers. An equality sign, represented by an equal sign mask a black scar from Ecuador. A blue, International River’s Network sticker covers another ding, when a Cessna in Patagonia, autocratically decided to crash. It did not ask my permission.
If only I could patch the parasite drilled wholes in my intestines with a sticker.
When I write I scream. Profanities, strange giggles and grunts escape my mouth, regardless of the environment. My forehead sweats. Often my stomach rumbles and my upper lip rises to meet my nose. I know what my upper lip smells like, but I do it with gusto anyway.
My role in life is to tell others stories. I don’t create. I synthesize. I try to make sense of static, lint and light. When I get so completely saturated with images and tales, I wring myself out.
If the disgusting, bile like discharge were to hit paper it would read like the stained oh-shit safety instructions in the seat back pocket in front of you. If you were to drink it would taste like the New Jersey Turnpike. The images, stories, articles need time, much like me, to distil.
The brewing process doesn’t look like a dark sterile concrete warehouse pilled high with cedar barrels. Its visceral, agonizing and often is communal.
My favorite colleagues are seatmates on the tiny U.S airways regional jets. The planes that they cram to capacity and fly absolutely as far as the FAA will allow because they are fuel efficient and cheap to operate. They would fly across the Atlantic, with one broken toilet if they thought they could get away with it.
I make sure Debra, my seatmate, sees that I’m clearly frustrated. I start if off with something innocuous like, “How does Oprah spell her name?” Debra is happy to help out with such a simple task. Segway, to harder questions like “Why do different cultures deny the existence of homosexuals” or “Will the bank bailout be successful? It’s key that my questions have nothing to do with my writing, but that they trigger a thought process in the east side of my brain.
Sometimes I’ll get a real answer which isn’t so helpful. More often I get a three or four word cliché deflection, which is gold. It lets me know how real, sane people think, respond and bite into certain topics and ignore others.
93.2 percent of the time I throw my ideas off of my skinny roommate, Papa B, an ex pot head, NASA employee, PhD student that greets every person with a two handed hug.
Writing about hate crimes based on sexual orientation in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Mexico and Arizona, I yelled down from the command station. “Mikey, how do I call this guy, that I’ve never met, that was stabbed and hospitalized for being gay and just get him to open up? He looked up from his spotless black IBM laptop, “Tell him your gay,” he snapped back. Well I did. As soon as the hate crime victim answered the phone, gay journalist just fell out of my mouth and it seemed to put him at ease. He told his story, now I’m in the squatting, cursing and distillation phase because his story deserves demands a reader and has the power to change a reader.
Sometimes I just feel like software. A giant commander pecks 0001111s on a three-foot wide keyboard and I translate the code into a webpage that everyone can view. What makes people want to view that page though?
A Human Connection
Bridging divides, cultural, language, historical, ethical and geographical can come only with an outstretched hand. Not a clenched gloved fist. Way to go Obama.
I’m not just translating code, I’m a yenta – connecting soul to Seoul.
Formats, formulas, pyramids upside down or otherwise, ledes, delayed or direct are best determined by the people themselves rather than the assignment or article. It’s no easy task to remain Gumby like malleable. Banging out a direct led with the five Ws and H is easy, thoughtless and quick. But finding and bending language, grammar and structure to best match the subject is time consuming, stomach churning and painful.
I think I understand why journalists drink. Maybe they become master distillers. It must help settle the pain, the screams, stories and blood they have to tell.
Still the stories remain life property of the subjects. And I have a duty to them to tell it as truthfully as possible. My only liberty comes in its delivery, its audience and its message.
My own ego polishes the product. The piece needs to look good so I look good. Ego and professionalism are synonymous. They both elevate the pressure to perform. That in turn yields performance anxiety, which amps up the jitters and forces my computer into stranger and stranger places. If I were to record the amount of times I pound the backspace key it would easily equal 50 times my word count. But that filter just adds another layer of purity to the product. It removes the course lumps and the roaches that sneak in the barrel. Poured in the reader’s ear the product is smooth.
I’m granted motion when I write standing up or doing the splits. Those are the only two ways I write. My body, following the brains order needs to bend, thrust and lean to comprehend, empathize, synthesize and distill the data. Sitting, back arched over a desk, stomps creativity and amplifies the anxiety.
When I bought this overpriced, fruit stamped typing machine, I was a little anal. I implemented a strict hand washing policy before anyone could touch its virgin silver keys. I was brainwashed to think writing is a sterile process.
The K key just fell off for the second time today. I’m pretty sure humidity somewhere along the trail melted the adhesive that attaches the keys to their touch sensitive stubs. Most are now gray with experience. The usb ports are caked with dirt and wisdom and pretty soon I will need a bumper sticker to cover up latest scratch from a drop on a Hong Kong Ferry.
I was writing about a woman that got denied a 50-minute ferry ride to Macau because she practices Fulan Gong. Her husband and two kids were let on board, but she was escorted to the local police station. Her family vacation was ruined, but her oppression lives in my words and battered computer.

Gay Rights in China's Window

2009-02-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

Hong Kong, to mainland Chinese has and always will be the window to the outside world. Technology, ideas and liberties arrive at this bustling port city, that by Asian standards of democracy, represents the will of the people.

In 2007 the people spoke and the government failed to listen. Polytechnic University, in Hong Kong conducted a public survey in March 2007 that found 70 percent of those randomly surveyed support a same sex couple's right to get married and adapt children. Additionally 90 percent of respondents are in favor of abolishing discriminatory laws and punishing anyone that discriminates based on sexual orientation, according to Roddy Shaw, founder of Hong Kong based Non governmental Organization called Civil Rights for Sexual Diversities.

Since that survey, the government's only response has been to create a hotline, where people can get on the phone support if they've been victims of discrimination. If victims decide to take the accused to small claims court, the burden of proof has been lowered so if it is more likely than not that the defendant harmed the plaintiff, he or she will be forced to pay damages up to a pre-determined limit set by the court.

Gay rights have evolved in Hong Kong progressively, though laboriously over the past 15 years. In 1991 a statutory law that imprisoned gay men for having sex was overturned.

In 2005, a 20-year-old gay man after being arrested for having sex took his case to the supreme court to overturn an age of consent law that allowed heterosexuals and lesbians to have sex at age 16 but restricted gay men from doing the same until both partners were 21-years-old.

In 2008, a tv documentary depicted a loving gay couple living in Hong Kong. The government filled a complaint against the television network complaining that by broadcasting a gay lifestyle the network endorses, accepts and is trying to normalize "alternative families". The government lost.

The judiciary is repeatedly setting precedent to eliminate sexual orientation discrimination, in tune with public attitude, while the government continues to shuffle its feet.

As Hong Kong makes progress in baby steps, its liberties trickle back to the mainland and Singapore as both have since decriminalized gay sex since Hong Kong led the way in 1991.

2009-01-26T10:23:00.000-08:00

Amidst the crowd’s cheer, the scent of stinky tofu overwhelming, and the dragon dancers practicing for the new years parade, 30 stark photos remind Kowloon harbor patrons of relentless torture and death in the mainland.

One photo of a pregnant Falun Gong practitioner shows her feet and wrists dripping with blood and her eyes swollen while detained in a work camp on the day of her release. Five days later she died from her injuries, the caption beneath the photo reads.

“The Chinese government sees any large scale gathering or movement as a threat to its power. Though Falun Gong is nothing but peaceful and enriching, Its popularity and empowerment of the individual spirit continues to threaten the communist government in China,” The former Chief Spokesman of the Falun Gong, Erping Zhang, said from Boston. He has long lost the right to visit Hong Kong, Taipei and Mainland China, as he has criticized China openly by presenting in front of the U.S. Congress and the European Union and the Australian Broadcast Company

Falun Gong is traditional spiritual Buddhist discipline that incorporates meditation, moral teachings and a simplified variation of tai chi, according to Falun Dafa Information Center. http://www.faluninfo.net/topic/22/ . Any search for Fulan Gong in Mainland China is blocked, the Internet is cutoff and a provincial security official just might knock on your door the next day, according to Fulan Gong NYC project Chief, Gail Rachlin.

Since its introduction in 1992, Falun Gong has attracted between 70 and 100 million practitioners. Its core teachings emphasize compassion, truth and forbearance according to the international Religious Freedom report available at http://www.religiousfreedom.com/nwslttr/gong.htm.

Chatting, snacking on dried squid and playing dominoes under the bridges, locals stop and stare horrified. The new years cheer ran dry as the cruse ship, the Dolce Vita blew its horn and steamed out of Victoria Harbor.