The Heart of Darkness - Pol Pot's Car For Sale

Update: International Herald Tribune

Update two: The Car is being sold here

One of the things I love most about Cambodia is that on each visit I see new growth. I don't mean the X.X% GDP growth that will choke us all in good time anyway if we don't rewire the economy, I mean the kind of growth that means the kids look a little cleaner, and a little less grubby. I guess it's the kind of growth that is really a reversal of growth in some ways, as a diminishing number of children are seen running around wearing shabby rags as clothing.

On my first visit, my driver called Elephant, took me around the killing fields and the notorious Tuol Sleng prison which was a school before it became a dark horror story of a torture concentration camp, a place where the Khmer kids were more barbourous than any of the adults could ever be, where they thought up the most ingenious ways to cause pain and suffering to the prisoners of the Khmer Rouge regime, which really only came to power because there was a hell of a shit fight going on in that part of the world through Vietnam and another war on something terrorful for safety. I'll never forget when I asked Elephant if he had lost any family members, how dispassionate he was retelling the story where his brother was killed by the Khmer Rouge after he stole a car to run away from the commune. He was caught, bound and immobilised before being run over in the same car he had taken. Stories like that are two a penny a Cambodia and few people want to think about the bad old days.

Anyway I could go on about how 300 kilometres or more north of the capital Phnom Penh lies the temple Angkor Wat, which in my mind is profoundly mysterious to the history of civilisation with it's Indian architecture dedicated to the God Vishnu, and how much fun I had hiring a motorcycle trials bike and generally just whizzing around on my own, playing with M16 guns and grenades on a range, and partying hard in the Heart of Darkness, but maybe that stuff isn't really interesting but it was a part of my life that I look back on fondly. Or maybe it was the butterflies that flew over the burial pits in the killing fields, on a beautiful day as I reflected on the whole thing that gave me a lot to think about.

One of the oddities of that period was the discovery by a friend of mine that Pol Pot's stretch Limo (Don't all agrarian economy Marxist tyrants run around in stretch Limos?) was being used to ship melons to the market in the capital. I felt at the time it was wrong to profit from that vehicle but like those kids who not only look cleaner on each visit but also have no recollection of that insane time, I think time has moved on. I'm particularly pleased that a portion of the profits now that it is on sale will go towards a charity. You know who you are if you are reading this but the bigger the chunk that goes towards the growth of Cambodia the better the Karma. What goes around comes around.

Mao - The Unknown Story

Ricksoloway

I'm reading Mao: The unknown story, by Jung Chang who wrote the first book that ignited my fascination with Chinese history, Wild Swans.

A few years ago sitting in a painfully and aesthically hip bar in Shanghai's Xintiandi district (real gold leaf walls, solid coloured glass bar, candles and Buddhas on postmodern plinths) with an extremely bright, hard working and well educated Coca-Cola native-Chinese client in Shanghai, we serendipitously stumbled across a mutual realisation that we both harboured a dirty political hypothesis.

Not only were we both big political history fans but as the banter ranged over Mao Tse Tung's rapacious reading habits and Tsing Tao beers, we concurred that there might also be some credence in the idea that in the big scheme of things, maybe the Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward were statistically a reasonable thing to pursue. That is in an armchair-General, moral relativism course of discourse. Post Yugoslavia break up, and the Balkan states subsequent internecine warfare it's arguable that losing tens of millions here and there to hold a country as huge as China together is an ugly but a priori, reasonable price to pay. I still suspect it might be in a desperate kind of way for the Shan, Karin, Mon, Kachin and other ethnic groups of Burma; you know save a million lives here and ignore a million rapes there - who knows anyway?

Prior to starting this book I had already concluded that Mao's power had ebbed significantly during the cultural revolution with one of those political fratricides that takes almost everyone out, and isn't unique to communism, although it was certainly most visible say in the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror (that's proper terror, not the overblown petrol bombs that delayed a few punters bound for the Balearic isles this weekend) in Tuol Sleng. If you think you're life is a bit shit and stuff closer to home like asymetrical warfare in Lebanon doesn't hit the radar, you should try to get out to the killing fields a few clicks south of Phnom Penh in Choeung Ek and see the infamous tree where in the mid 70's the Khmer Rouge (who were once backed by Prince Norodom I might add) was used as a target to swing babies by their feet so that their skulls smashed instantaneously on the bark of the trunk. I guess that's better than say the women who for example had their breasts cut off in Tuol Sleng.

Anyway I've changed my mind. Reading this book its clear that Mao wasn't some sort of freedom fighter who galvanised China on a path that is unambiguously now paying debatable dividends and then made philosophical judgements on social engineering, that will in time see the occidental variant of capitalism crushed. He was a brutal thug that intuitively knew that the times were right to divide, and kill, and rule, to achieve his own agenda. Sorry Winnie, I'd love to get a bottle of red in and sit through another intelligent discussion on this one but as this well written book is not allowed on the mainland, having a debate isn't the same if both parties aren't fully informed. Even if that is to discuss the veracity of the text.

Update: I got into a very feisty discussion with an extraordinarily stylish Chinese lady in The Endeavour Endurance Pub on Berwick Street about this book, and she was very angry that it portrayed Mao as having bourgeoisie tendencies. I accept her point about the possibility of bias in this book but not about Mao's innocence to kill his own. It was a good argument though. Sexy actually and I really liked the protection sock she gave me for my iPod as a gift.

PSFK Conference - Niku Banaie

Niku Banaie, Managing Partner of Naked Communications did a heartwarming presentation that explored some of the more pressing humanist dimensions of digital life today. Niku's grandfather was one of the early entrepreneurs of arcade and pinball games in the UK and the lesson learned by him that a fundamental human characteristic of playfulness is a key driver of all activity was not lost. Niku outlined a guideline of five universal needs for successful understanding on interaction that apply not just to life but cascade down into winning people over in general social intercourse.

• Need for love
• Need to learn
• Need to give back
• Need for simplicity
• Need for play

Niku talked about the sense of loneliness on the net and how face to face interplay is still a hard wired necessity. He talked about how The Guardian, the worlds leading liberal voice, makes most of its revenue from Guardian soulmates by putting like minded individuals together. The irony of this massively connected world is the absence of love and how so many people are facing increasing levels of loneliness. Its remarkable how important it is for science to put a tactile face on its output and yet so often the results are engineered for efficacy rather than satisfaction. On learning Niku discussed the availability of MIT open course ware, a revolutionary sharing approach to putting the best lectures and learning materials in the world on the net. Self education with the aid of an internet connection really does open up the potential for people to explore and fulfill our learning instinct. When quality content and flat distribution are coupled, the potential for unlikely people to enable themselves is nothing short of magic.

The need to give back was best exemplified by an example of the Patagonia company I talked about in an earlier post and which if you listen to the podcast gives a number of heart lifting examples on how giving back supports a virtuous circle other than just profit. Niku talked about how the founder allows all his staff to get involved with environmental activism with the company paying for a get out of jail free card that will honour any amount of bail that is set for for related civil disobedience. Yep, Patagonia encourage their employees to break the law and put their money where their mouth is. Yvon Chouinard also discusses in that podcast how the company provides day care facilities for mothers and has a retention rate for his employees that exceeds anywhere else, thus limiting the expense of having to replace valuable human resources that other companies factor-in massive amounts of dollars to keep. Patagonia's problem he jests is letting people go even after they hit retirement age. Stability is a wonderful foundation block if companies begin the process by giving back to their employees.

Kiva was the next great example of giving back. They are a web interface that allows people to sponsor entrepreneurs in developing companies with loans that save lives. By putting people in touch with specific entrepreneurs a direct connection is made, cutting through the bureaucratic and less rewarding transaction of just giving to charity. If you take a look at the link you can see how Meas Sokheang of Phnom Penh is only $150 dollars short of raising the $1000 dollars needed to buy a motorbike and pigs to take to the market. We can chip in with a minimum of 25 bucks but its a loan and not just a donation. Its repaid back with interest but the satisfaction of knowing that a real vetted loan candidate is going to be given a fishing rod with which to fish and not just the food to see her through the day. When I first went to Cambodia many years ago nobody can be unshaken by the genocide that took place there and the barbaric torture that took place in Tuol Sleng. But one thing that lifts the soul each time I return is the kids who increasingly look less grubby and frankly don't have any recollection of the Khmer Rouge years that wiped out a generation and left a stain on a par with Nazism or the Hutu Tutsi conflict of Rwanda. Here's a chance to change and observe the process by giving back and you can also meet a bunch of other people (all from the U.S.) who are putting Meas Sokheang back on her feet with a loan that she will pay back over 21 months. This site is awesome and puts facebook social networking to shame. The world really is flat in this instance. As I write this post I see that Meas has raised the money needed but that Victoria Terko from Ghana is just 25 Bucks short of her crafts business she dreams of.

On simplicity Niku Banaie highlighted how massively successful interfaces such as Google and Craigslist have become by streamlining the information we are exposed to and the number of linked options they can provide. He talked about the Sugar graphical user interface for the 100 dollar laptop that is set to launch in developing economies and how it is built around real life groups and communities, around the projects they work on the interaction between those groups. An intuitive dramatisation of first life communications on a screen if you like. The uncomfortable truth is as Asi has pointed out that our lives have become unmanageably full and we have too much to deal with. Niku talked about John Maeda's laws of simplicity: Shrink, Hide and Embody. A great example was the Wi Fi connected umbrella that alerts us to potential rain before leaving the house although the umbrella that can wail out when I've left it again would suit me. My record for losing one is five minutes after buying it. I hadn't even used it.

Niku finished up with the human need for play and gave us a bunch of examples that highlighted this important ability for positive reciprocity that all humans have and can leverage. Examples given were the climbing centre in Japan that 'reframed' the idea of simulacra rock environments and used old household objects such as picture frames and bric-a-brac to enable climbers to scale walls and a Danish school environment that had been designed around the understanding that different modes of learning included play, activity, reflection and collaboration but crucially in a manner conducive to knowledge absorption unlike that from didactic monologue.

I need also at this point, to highlight that while looking for some photos for these posts on the PSFK conference I came into contact with Lynette Webb who is also a user of Google docs & spreadsheets which allows us to share and edit in an open source manner on the PSFK conference for example. You can find the link to her notes here and I hope to be doing a post about online collaborative working with Lynette using the tools that are available to everyone. Check out Lynettes blog interesting snippets in the mean time.