In the Water

English-Chinese-Korean Activist Glossary 1.0!

OK, so this is strictly the beta, v.1.0, prototype of a multilingual activist glossary that some friends and I have been working on. There's only a few terms there now and the format is pretty basic. BUT, we are working on improving both the content and quality, hopefully even with .wav samples of what each word/term actually sounds like!! Near future, I promise.

So for now please check out the glossary and learn far far more than 'where is the bus stop?', 'what time is it?' and other terms that seem to keep popping up in your routine language classes. If you are really creative and combine the two you could have questions like 'where is the bus towards anarchism?', for example, or 'what time is it? revolution?'.

An endless source of amusement, I know.  Like I said, it'll get better.

And my email address lies somewhere on this page, so PLEASE send us more terms to translate so that we can add more than what our meagre brains can come up with and hopefully get a list of what people actually want to know!!

Sunshine on Lamy

So it's been a lonely year or so bobbing In The Water by myself. Though the multi-author function on Typepad is a little rich for my blood at the moment, that won't stop me from sticking up pieces, rants, observations etc. from other people around here! So, feel free to contribute something to my email address. Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, our first guest contributor, Sunshine Wong, offers us her direct experiences with WTO head Pascal Lamy and his crew... enjoy!

Tonight i was at a dinner organised by the FCC [Foreign Correspondent's Club- PT] - a friend had an invitation addressed "to the hong kong civil society" (whose prerequisite was also "caucasian", as it became apparent upon our arrival) - and the event was basically a meet-the-WTO director session for the creme de la creme of hong kong armchair reporters.  i had no idea that such a world existed, or rather, its existence was for me so much based on hearsay since i refuse outright to associate myself with irresponsible journalists - but anyway.  that's not the point.  unless the point was overhearing a conversation taking place to the right of me (pun intended).  Pre-talk, i hear:

- "I don't need to haul 18 plastic mugs of coffee into china's hinterland when i do reporting there now, what with the internationalisation.  it's great!"
- "But there are still no dunkin' donuts."
- "Foreigners will always be made to feel foreign in china whereas, i think, other people immigrating to america will ultimately become american."
- "Well, there will always be winners and losers in such a large scale trade.
- "The vocal minority of people who are on the short end of the stick make such a huge racket."

And m. Pascal Lamy echoes:
"... yet the majority who benefit from trade are largely silent.  the minority who are hurt by trade - and there are those who are hurt - are anything but silent and they are extremely active
politically.  you will be hearing from this not-so-silent minority often in the weeks to come." 

I like that the minority are billions of people whose lives have been uprooted and irreversibly damaged by free trade.

My stance as an art teacher with little political involvement made it all the more difficult to situate myself within that context, surrounded by "hong kong's civil society" who were all white, over 40, and chewing on the ends of their pens, wiping their gold framed glasses, or scribbling away on pads.  Apparently the articulation of the girl whose voice of protest at Lamy's meeting with NGOs yesterday wasn't convincing, thereby rendering her arguments and opinions inconsequential.  I guess lamy's bald head and calculated vocabulary and feigned mediation role he plays and all that would equal "articulate".

Asia's Poor Build Bases in Iraq

That's the subtitle of a recent article on Corporate Watch, one of the sites linked on the right side of this blog. The article, titled Blood Sweat and Tears, talks about the subcontracting done by companies such as the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, hiring and super-exploiting migrant workers from Asian countries including the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.

This "invisible army of cheap labor" puts another class angle on the occupation and the giant, permanent bases being constructed to maintain the US presence in Iraq for years to come. As the author, David Phinney, writes:

Tens of thousands of such TNC laborers have helped set new records for the largest civilian workforce ever hired in support of a U.S. war. They are employed through complex layers of companies working in Iraq. At the top of the pyramid-shaped system is the U.S. government which assigned over $24 billion in contracts over the last two years. Just below that layer are the prime contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel. Below them are dozens of smaller subcontracting companies-- largely based in the Middle East --including PPI, First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting and Alargan Trading of Kuwait, Gulf Catering, Saudi Trading & Construction Company of Saudi Arabia. Such companies, which recruit and employ the bulk of the foreign workers in Iraq, have experienced explosive growth since the invasion of Iraq by providing labor and services to the more high-profile prime contractors.

For anyone who'd remember, I'd blogged on this issue almost a year ago, linking to some personal stories of migrant workers who had been abused, exploited, and even killed while working as subcontractors for the US military in Iraq. The Phinney article linked above is the latest in a series of required-reading articles on this continuing tragedy.

Back in the water

Severe technical problems and personal commitments might have made this site seem like it was floundering, if not drowning in its namesake for a long while. However, things seem to have smoothed out a bit, so for better or worse, expect the return of regular posts on In The Water!

I'm also working on getting some other writers for this site. I floated the idea with some people here locally and as soon as we can figure out whether Typepad is the best format for a joint authored site... other feature we're expecting to add include a English-Chinese-Korean activist dictionary, presently in the works! So, please forgive the silence and watch this site for updates.

In the meantime, earlier this week the head of the WTO, Pascal Lamy (above), was in HK for some last minute preparations for the upcoming ministerial in December. In an encouraging and direct incident, a meeting between Lamy, HK Chief Executive Donald Tsang, and representatives from NGOs and trade unions descended into chaos, and Lamy's car was surrounded by protestors as he attempted to leave!

The above report is from the fear mongering Standard newspaper which has been running an active campaign against anti-WTO protests for a number of months now. With fear, apprehension and no small amount of righteous indignation, the paper wonders whether the Lamy incident is a "sign of things to come" in December.

Let's hope so!