A river wild

It's Sunday afternoon and the sun is beating down on me as I wait for Shadi to finish her massage. Thought I'd take the time to post a couple of pictures of this morning's white water rafting trip that we did. It was the first time for both of us and (even though we look v dorky) it was a pretty amazing experience. The river is the Ayung river and it is actually not that strong although we did go through about 25 rapids.

This place is absolutely beautiful - much like how you would imagine God to have designed heaven. I am also posting some photos of the area around our hotel which are simply breathtaking.















This is the Ayung River where we rafted- the view is from the hotel swimming pool...

















This is Shadi and me looking very dorky (as promised)




Another view of the river












I will post some pictures of Jimbaran Bay and other places in Bali in due course. Love and Kisses.

Bali-Hai

Two days to go before our holiday to Bali. For those who want to be jealous, have a look here and here for where we are staying.

This is going to be a repeat of our visit in 2003 except that we have ensured that Shadi's passport is uptodate so that we can actually travel together. Last time, I has to stay in the Ubud hotel (possibly the most romantic hotel in the world) on my own after Shadi had not been allowed to board since her passport did not have 6 months validity left. It was a hardship but I got over it. Most surreal experience: being brought room service and the waiter lighting candles and placing flowers all over the place for my little dinner for one...

Anyway, can't wait this time and I will post some photos when we get back.

2 Great Albums

The posting has all been a bit doom and gloom recently so thought I would namecheck a couple of albums which have been playing continuously on my iPod. Extraordinary Machine by Fiona Apple and Come On Feel The Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens. Apparently, Sufjan Stevens is on a mission to make as many albums as are states in the US - this is his second album based around, you guessed it, Illinois. Both are similar in their inventiveness and melodies.

What's the difference between Justification, Understanding and Excusing?

Marko's comments on my last blog raise an extremely interesting and delicate topic. Marko says that the deliberate killing of civilians must be criticised whenever it occurs and that the Hamas comment that the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv was a legitimate response to Israeli aggression. Well, to a certain extent I agree. However, it seems to me that the traditional distinction between civilians and soldiers in recent times has got increasingly blurred. For example, the US army terms civilian killings as 'collateral damage' and tries to pass off its attacks as not a deliberate targeting of civilians. Under a normal system of law, this is a very tenuous defence at best. What does "deliberate" mean in this context? In my mind the fact that the killing of civilians is a known consequence of any particular action (whatever the reason for that action) means that one is deliberately targeting civilians - this may not be threshold in international law but it is certainly the case in, for example, a charge of murder.

A further point is what it means to "target" - does this simply mean targeting for killing or something wider - In Gaza and the West Bank palestinian civilians are targeted every day by force, by political power and by the bureacracies of the occupying power - I would urge anyone to read Amir Hass' (an Israeli journalist who used to work for Haaretz - not sure if she still does) account of life in Gaza just after the Oslo peace accord in the early 1990's. The details are not unlike the details of the life of Africans in South Africa under Apartheid.

Yes, the ideal is to demonstrate non-violently and to do everything peaceably - but to the average palestinian (and to the average objective observer) this is simply not working. Deliberate targeting of civilians is awful and should be condemned but what is the alternative? If the US can do it by way of cluster bombs the example to the rest of the world is set.

Bomb in Tel Aviv

The big news today is the suicide bomb in Tel Aviv by a guy who looks about 10 but was apparently 21. His parents had no idea of what he was going to do, or should I say his "murderous intent" as the news reports would have it. Rightly condemned and talked about this was a brutal crime. But ( and there is always a but, no matter what people say), I have a couple of queries from arising from the news reports. First, I read in the Independent that the Israeli army (note: not one stupid, manipulated young kid but the state apparatus, which is full of young manipulated young kids) is shelling Gaza (where ordinary Palestinians 'live') to the tune of about 300 shells a day. Why isn't this headline news? Second, the politicians in Israel (and in the US) have taken this opportunity to conveniently blame Hamas for the bomb - this even though Isalmic Jihad has already accepted responsibility for the bomb whereas Hamas has largely kept to its ceasefire announced a few months ago.

Makes you think, doesn't it, whether people are genuinely trying to stop people getting killed, whether in Gaza or Tel Aviv, or whether there is another agenda.

Sick as a dog

Happy Easter to all. Unfortunately, as soon as the holiday started, I got sick so have been sniffing, snoring and generally lying around feeling sorry for myself for the past few days. I haven't been ill for about two or three years so it was a bit of a shock - and it literally started during the night on Thursday before the first public holiday. No doubt I will be all better and fresh to go back to work on Tuesday...

On second thoughts it might have been something I ate in Shanghai, where I was taken out to dinner at a 'not very exotic restaurant' where the food consisted of dried jellyfish, live prawns in wine (their tentacles still moving around like some small alien), pig stomach and intestine and pig's feet. or maybe not.

Thought this was quite a funny picture.

Tell Me No Lies

Anju requested a while back that I blog about the books I am reading. Frankly, when she asked, I was reading the sort of books I have become addicted to - good crime fiction and I didn't think they merited a mention. Those books are a bit like junk food - you know they are full of crap but somehow incredibly satisfying. Sometimes, you find the literary version of a US$50 burger, which is a great surprise - see Dennis Lehane (author of "Mystic River" which was a Clint Eastwood movie) and George Pelecanos for examples.

But, anyway, I am reading a book at the moment which I am forced to foist on you all: Tell Me No Lies is an anthology of the best investgative journalism over the past 80 years or so - it is edited by John Pilger, an Australian journalist who made his name covering the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Starting with the reports of the first journalist to enter Hiroshima (a few days) after the bomb was dropped and finishing with, what else some reports about Iraq and the invasion it is an amazing collection and I challenge anyone with a soul not to burst out crying when reading some of the reports - in particular, the reports on Cambodia; the My Lai massacre; Robert Fisk's report on the massacre of innocents in the refugee camps in Beirut (overseen by Sharon) and the report on the siege of Gaza after the 1994 Oslo peace accord are incredibly moving and powerful.

Essential reading.

Iran in the news...uh oh

Iran has been headline news in UK recently which is a little worrying because most of the news is a sort of watered down propoganda, either by Iran or by the US as opposed to any real information. The announcement that Iran is part of the 'nuclear club' made proudly by ahmadinejad couldn't have come at a better time for the US warmongers (sorry 'hawks'). This is an excellent article by Simon Jenkins from the Guardian which actually makes some sense - i especially like his interpretation of Jack Straw's statement that the alleged plans to nuke Iran was 'completely nuts' but actually it's pretty scary too.

A fact seems always to get missed with Iran and nuclear capability - Iran has consistently said that they do not want nuclear weapons as it is against Islam - of course part absolute mistrust; part I guess that no-one can really understand why on earth Iran would not want to have nuclear weapons cos that's what they would want. On one level you can understand the mistrust but it is hard to imagine why they would keep insisting that it is for peaceful purposes when they know they are not believed (and also must suspect that the iranian public would probably support iran obtaining nuclear weapons) - what is the point?

Shanghai'd

I stepped off the airplane this morning after landing back in Hong Kong and gulped down waves of fresh air... Hang on you say, that's not right, Hong Kong is so polluted that the air standing outside terminal 3 at Heathrow airport is a breath of fresh air in comparison. Well, it says something about Shanghai that Hong Kong has never felt fresher to me. I was in Shanghai for a couple of days on business which entailed me having about 4 or 5 meetings a day. That may not seem much but they were spread all around Shanghai and we spent a lot of time in taxis. Shanghai is a strange place - part old China Beijing type places, part the dregs of Manila, the traffic of Bangkok and in certain areas the elegance, architecture and style of Paris. I loved it as a city but I think it would hell to live there permanently. Things that struck me in no particular order; there are an awful lot of adverts for breast augmentation surgery - in taxis, in the fricking male toilets of a bar for Christ's sake; all the taxis have a notice in English which state that you can refuse to pay if the driver smokes, spits or talks on his phone - very reasonable you might think, but the last bit on that list is that you can refuse if the driver is not polite, i.e. doesn't say hello, thank you, or bye bye - sweet but impractical; lots and lots of strange buildings, the weirdest one being the tv tower which has two gigantic spheres one at the top and one at the bottom - crazy lights on all the buildings; mad mad drivers - if you wait until the green man walking comes on that just means that more cars will be driving past; most of all a noticeable underlying buzz of activity and excitement. I arrived on Sunday night and went for a wander around my hotel which was in the Xintiandi region. Xintiandi is basically a disneyfied version of old china buildings - the entire area was razed to the ground and then they built new houses to look like the old and real versions - they've pedestrianised the whole area and it is now populated with trendy bars and restaurants (and the occasional starbucks and haagen dasz of course). On Sunday night it was packed - i stopped by a bar because their live band was being piped outside and they were doing a creditable version of a u2 song. The band was a trio of trendy chinese guys complete with standard rock posing - the furore about the censoring of some of the rolling stones songs (who played in Shanghai the evening before I arrived) seemed a bit irrelevant at this local level - clearly there was no restriction on what these kids could listen to or access. the best part was a chinese version of "Yellow" by Coldplay complete with chris martin facial expressions.

i didn't have a camera with me but I took some piccies on my phone, some of which have come out ok - once I manage to figure out how to download them onto the computer i'll post up the interesting ones.

Why We Fight

My lovely and amazing cousin, Pooja, blogs about a film called "Why We Fight" which I saw this morning on the web through the website www.informationclearinghouse.org, which I have blogged about earlier. It is a striking piece of work - a sort of Fahrenheit 9/11/Bowling for Columbine with intelligence and gravitas.

As a litigator, I love these sorts of documentaries which seek to find the truth by a thorough forensic analysis of the details. It also follows one of the fundamental rules of corporate litigation, which is to 'follow the money'. One thing that occurred to me while watching was the following observation, which is tangentially connected to the war on Iraq and/or US imperialism. It is one of those well known secrets that the British, with help from the CIA, murdered Prime Minister Mossadegh (the real first democratically elected leader in a predominately muslim country) in Iran and installed the Shah, who was well disposed (i.e. puppet) to the Americans and that they did this because Mossadegh wanted to increase Iran's share of its own oil revenues (follow the money!). The Shah only lasted about 20 years before the people in Iran revolted. The Mullah's regime has lasted over 25 years. What I wondered was how oppressive must the Shah's rule have been (or how badly was the economic situation) for the Iranians to have forcibly removed him from power. Does the fact that the Iranian people have not revolted against the current regime (save for the student uprising that occurred a few years ago) mean that it is slightly better than the Shah's regime - or that they are more effective in oppressing dissent?