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Blog
Archive November 2010
| Illegal Pleasures: the East – West Divide |
The social contract in the
West provides that representative governments are elected to enact laws to make
certain conduct (or absence of conduct) criminal. The law breaks us down into
three general categories: natural, artificial and potential persons. You and me,
we are what the law calls ‘natural’ persons, thank you very much. Not like a
corporation which is a construct, an abstraction and while very much an
artificial person, nonetheless the company is a person for many purposes and can
commit crimes, too. Not like a potential person, which is that clump of
protoplasm that divides and grows and at some stage (hence the hot debate)
becomes a natural person.
Read more: http://www.internationalcrimeauthors.com/
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Posted: 11/26/2010 12:03:44 AM |
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| Book Review: Bizarre Thailand: Tales of Crime, Sex and Black Magic, by Jim Algie (2010) Marshal Cavendish |
By Christopher G.
Moore
  Many of the
events, images, and personalities in Bizarre Thailand will be familiar to
experienced travelers or to expats who have lived in Thailand for any length of
time. Over the years, most people
in these two groups will have read an article about See Uey, the Chinese
Cannibal, sex workers, body snatchers, amulets, fighting fish, and the
supernatural. To his credit, Jim Algie makes these subjects fresh, vivid and
personal. My first impression was this would be a book that you would dip into.
That wasn’t the case for me. I read this collection of articles from cover to
cover with admiration for the way Algie was able to keep my concentration and
focus on subjects that I thought that I knew inside out.
The essay titled ‘The Artist of
Bizarre Architecture’ registers the multi-faceted personality of Sumet Jumsai in
the tradition of the best, balanced biographies. Another standout essay is titled
‘Empowering Sex Workers’ in which he details the long fight for acceptance by
the authorities by a tiny group of NGOs who have stayed the course and made a
big difference in the lives of countless people in the sex industry.
The pieces on Chavoret Jaruboon,
Thai’s last executioner by rifle fire, Dr. Porntip
Rojanasunan, Thailand’s top
forensics expert, and Susan Aldous, an Australian who set up a one person NGO to
assist people in prison and jail bring to the forefront the inner emotional
lives of these well-known people. Algie was able to dig deep, to get under their
skin and to allow them to reveal the deeper layers of their personality, allows
us to better understand what motives them.
My favourite articles feature the
author and his Thai wife, traveling to Cambodia and we follow as she gradually
sheds her prejudice against the Khmer. The book also succeeds as a personal
chronicle of her reassessment of orthodox ways of Thai thinking, whether about
the Thai prejudice about the Khmer, Thai history books version about Siamese
twins Chang and Eng, and the meaning of cowboys and the wild American West. The
author and his wife become our guides as they contemplate each other’s cultural
wisdom and we discover how they have enriched each other’s lives as they travel
through the bizarre world of Thailand.
I’d recommend Bizarre
Thailand to anyone who wants a new perspective about Thai cultural elements
that have made and continue to make Thailand unique and amazing. Algie has taken
his journalistic instincts inside the half-concealed enclaves, which shields the
most interesting people and has used his literary skills to reveal their
complexity. He takes the reader along for a memorable, authentic, and exciting
journey into the heart and soul of Thailand.
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Posted: 11/19/2010 1:32:02 AM |
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Arguably there is nothing
less ‘authentic’ than a sales pitch. Someone who is trying to sell us something
is going to say all kinds of things to close the sale. Flattery and guilt are
marketers’ and bargirls’ best allies. When selling moved in a big way to online,
the mentality of those seeking to sell you the latest remedy for erectile
dysfunction had found a new place to nest.
Read more: http://www.internationalcrimeauthors.com/
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Posted: 11/19/2010 1:05:53 AM |
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| THE MILLION-DOLLAR MAN IN BANGKOK |
His thinning hair was totally
white. He wore a ruffled shirt displaying the kind smile of your favorite uncle.
He looked perfectly ordinary. Nowhere near like a multi-millionaire. At least
the one’s you see in movies, TV, and gracing Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.
No one would mistake him for J.P. Morgan or Warren Buffet.
Read more: http://www.internationalcrimeauthors.com/
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Posted: 11/12/2010 1:05:55 AM |
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| SLEAZE AND THE FREE MARKET |
The fact is that, in
the not too distant past, sleaze sold books like hotcakes to horse racing
Quakers. So what? Sleaze sells a lot of things such as music, software, perfume,
wetware, nail polish, comedy acts, TV reality shows, high heel shoes, fashion
channel (after midnight), cars and pickups, Victoria Secrets, Playboy, and then
there is the story about the hooker and the former governor of New York. Like
pornographic, famously defined by a US Supreme Court justice, as something you
know when you see it, sleaze fits in such mental handbag.
Read more: http://www.internationalcrimeauthors.com/
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Posted: 11/4/2010 10:13:13 PM |
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