Thread: The Teak Door Library

Thai jail pests were my friends: Swedish ex-con
3 Aug 12



A Swede incarcerated in a Thai prison after a lack of money made him turn to drug smuggling, has written a book about his experiences in Thai prison, in an isolation cell with only rats and cockroaches for company.

"The rats, a bug and the cockroaches became my family. You may laugh at it today but that is how it was," Jens Månvinge told daily Aftonbladet.

An acute lack of funds persuaded Månvinge to become a narcotics courier in the mid-90s but he was foiled in Thailand and sentenced to death, a penalty later changed to 30 years imprisonment.

“It was the consequence that I had to face, but it was hard to know how to deal with that amount of time,” said Månvinge to the paper.

Månvinge was taken to the Thai Klong-Prem prison, also known as the "Bangkok Hilton", which is built to hold 6,000 prisoners but in reality holds twice that amount.

He told the paper that he survived his first time in the jail by planning his escape, but later changed his mind and aided a fellow prisoner’s flight to freedom.

However, this support came at a severe cost as he was punished with two and a half months of isolation. This period of time he spent chained to the wall in a dirty cell, with only rats and bugs for company.

However, the fact that the cell was infested was what saved him from going mad, according to Månvinge, who befriended his small cell mates.

“They became my friends. I turned to them and felt a support, like you do from a pet. They meant the world to me," Månvinge told Aftonbladet.

He named the male rat Louisiana Joe and the female Big Mama, according to Aftonbladet. The bug was called Den Senila Skalbaggen (The Senile Bug).

“I couldn’t always see their eyes but I knew they were watching me. In that kind of situation, these things become important,“ he told the paper.

Månvinge spent six years in Thai prison before being transferred to a Swedish jail.

In 2007 he was able to re-enter society and has now written a book about his experiences in Thailand entitled Den senila skalbaggens tröst (The comfort of the the senile bug).

thelocal.se

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, a book by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Tipping Point Summary at WikiSummaries, free book summaries

neilyoung.com

WAGING HEAVY PEACE by Neil Young
Excerpt

Blue Rider Press

I pulled back the plastic sticky tape from the cardboard box. Wrapping paper was on the ground
around my feet. My son Ben watched from his chair, and Amber, my daughter, and my wife Pegi sat
around me. I carefully lifted the heavy weight out of the box. It was further wrapped in packing paper
and then a final layer of some foamy quarter-inch-thick protective material. Then it was revealed: a
locomotive switcher with handmade Lionel markings. Curiously, it was not a real Lionel. It must have
been some kind of prototype. There was a white typewritten sheet in the box from Lenny Carparelli, one
of the endless stream of Italians connected in one way or another to the history of Lionel, a company I
still have a small share of. I read the sheet. The model was from General Models Corporation. It was a
beautiful model of a switcher. It was indeed the prototype that Lionel had used to create its own model
from. As the letter pointed out, this was back in the days before corporate lawsuits and trade secrets
invaded every little area of creativity and design.

Pegi always gives me Lionel collectibles for holidays, and I now have a very extensive collection
of rarities, all proudly displayed behind glass in a room with a giant train layout on my Northern
California ranch. It is not a normal train layout: The scenery is made up of redwood stumps for
mountains and moss for grassy fields. The railroad has fallen on hard times. A drought has ensued. Track
work, once accomplished by hardworking teams of Chinese laborers, has been left dormant. Now
expensive, highly detailed Lionel steam engines from China traverse the tracks. The railroad is historic
in its own way as the site of many electronic development programs where the Lionel command control
and sound systems were conceived and built from scratch, then the prototypes were tested and the
software was written, tested, rewritten, and retested. Heady stuff, this electronics development.
It all started with Ben Young. Ben was born a quadriplegic, and I was just getting back into trains at
the time, reintroducing myself to a pastime I had enjoyed as a child. Sharing the building of the layout
with Ben is one of the happiest times. He was still in his little bassinet when the Chinese laborers
originally laid the track, thousands of them toiling endless hours through the nights and days. He
watched as we worked. Then, after months, it eventually came time to run the trains, and later I devised

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WAGING HEAVY PEACE by Neil Young
Excerpt
Blue Rider Press

a switch system run by a big red button that he could work with his hand. It took a lot of effort, but it
was very rewarding to see the cause and effect in action. Ben was empowered by this. My friend and
studio maintenance engineer Harry Sitam was responsible for actually building the devices, electronic
switching mechanisms that turned the power on and off at the touch of a button. A selector enabled
momentary or toggle action. Harry was a huge help.

That was thirty-three years ago, though, and now I have the Windex out and I am cleaning the glass
doors on the display shelves where my prized Lionel possessions are kept safe and sound for all to see.
Not that anybody ever comes here. You could count the visitors on your hand. Relatively speaking, that
is, to the amount of care that has gone into the display. The display and layout are a Zen experience.
They allow me to sift through the chaos, the songs, the people, and the feelings from my upbringing that
still haunt me today. Not in a bad way, but not in an entirely good way, either. Months go by with boxes
piled everywhere and trains derailed with dust gathering on them. Then miraculously I reappear and
clean and organize, working with every little detail for hours on end, making it all run perfectly again.
This seems to coincide with other creative processes.

I remember one day David Crosby and Graham Nash were visiting me at the train barn during the
recording of American Dream, which we did a lot of on my ranch at Plywood Digital, a barn that was
converted to a recording studio. We had a truck parked outside full of recording equipment and were
working on several new songs. We were all pretty excited about playing together again. David had
recently gotten straight, was recovering from his addiction to freebase, had recently completed jail time
having to do with a loaded weapon in Texas, and was still prone to taking naps between takes. His
system was pretty much in shock, and he was doing the best he could because he loves the band and the
music so much. There is no one I know who loves making music more than David Crosby. Graham
Nash has been his best friend for years, through thick and thin, and they sing together in a way that
shows the depth of their long relationship.

They met in the Hollies and the Byrds, two seminal bands in the history of rock and roll, and then

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WAGING HEAVY PEACE by Neil Young
Excerpt
Blue Rider Press

came together with Stephen Stills to form Crosby, Stills & Nash around 1970. Their first record is a
work of art, defining a sound that has been imitated for years by other groups, some of which have
enjoyed even greater commercial success, but there can be no mistaking the groundbreaking nature of
that first CSN record. Stephen played most of the music, overdubbing all the parts into the night with
Dallas Taylor and Graham. There was so much he had wanted to do with Buffalo Springfield, like
producing, writing, and arranging harmonies, as well as playing more guitar , and that was his first
opportunity to be really creative after Springfield ended, and he went for it big-time.
Anyway, I saw David looking at one of my train rooms full of rolling stock and stealing a glance at
Graham that said This guy is cuckoo. He’s gone nuts. Look at this obsession.I shrugged it off. I need it.
For me it is a road back.

So now I’m polishing the glass on one of the display shelves that house my collection. With the
glass all cleaned and sparkling, I stand in the room alone and admire the beautiful Lionel models, all
perfectly lined up in an order that only I understand.

I leave that building and walk about 150 feet over to Feelgood’s Garage. Feelgood’s is full of my
amps, old Fenders mostly, but also some Magnatones, Marshalls, and the odd Gibson. I remember my
first Fender amp: I got it as a gift from my mom. She always supported my music. It was a piggyback
model. The amp was on top of the speaker cabinet. Two ten-inch speakers delivered the whopping sound
of the smallest piggyback amp Fender ever made. But to me it was HUGE. Before that I had an Ampeg
Echo Twin. I used to dream about amps and stage setups in school, drawing diagrams and planning stage
layouts. I didn’t do real well in those classes.

Feelgood’s has cars, too. I have a transportation thing. Cars, boats, trains. Traveling. I like moving.
Once when I was walking along a street in LA at age twenty-two or twenty-three, I saw a place called Al
Axelrod’s. It was a car repair place. There was a red convertible’s rear end poking out of the garage. I
recognized it as a ’53 or ’54 Buick. One of my dad’s friends, the author Robertson Davies, lived near us
in Peterborough, Ontario, and we used to go to his house every Christmas and play charades at a party.

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WAGING HEAVY PEACE by Neil Young
Excerpt
Blue Rider Press

He had a bunch of daughters. Very exciting. Anyway, he also had a ’54 Buick. It was brand-new and
made a large impression on mewith its beautifully designed grille, taillights, and an overall shape that
featured a kind of bump or ripple in the lines at about the midpoint, accentuated by a chrome strip that
mirrored it. This ripple emanated from the rear wheel’s circular well and was unique to Buicks. So I
went inside Al Axelrod’s and saw my first Buick Skylark. That really blew my mind. Only about five
hundred were ever made! It was custom chopped at the factory about the same time as GM introduced
the Eldorado and the Corvette. I looked for a Skylark for years, and finally John McKieg found one in a
body shop in Pleasanton, California.

John was a Vietnam vet who was taking care of my cars. He was an excellent body and paint man. I
had him do a job for me and then I hired him to come and work for me, taking care of the thirty-five cars
I had acquired by then. All of them were wild designs. Mostly ’50s; a lot of Cadillacs. I was not overly
interested in their mechanical condition when I bought them, just wanted those unique shapes. Later that
turned out to have been a big mistake, because most of them didn’t run well and took a lot of time and
money to restore. It would have been better and less expensive to just get original cars in excellent
condition.Anyway, after years and years of collecting, I sold a lot of them and just kept the good ones.
Most of them were right there in Feelgood’s. The best in my collection is a 1953 Buick Skylark, the one
that John found, body number one. The first one ever made. That is the big Kahuna.

So here I am at Feelgood’s, looking at my cars and a conference table with a whiteboard.

Tomorrow is a big meeting with Alex, the venture capitalist who works for Len Blavatnik, the new
owner of WMG, my record company. The reason for the meeting is my new start-up company,
PureTone. At least, that’s what we’re calling it this week. It’s very early, and we are still changing
names. The company is designed to rescue my art form, music, from the degradation in quality that I
think is at the heart of the decline of music sales and ultimately music itself in popular culture. With the
advent of online music iTunes has come terrible quality. An MP3 has less than 5 percent of the data
found in a PureTone master file or a vinyl record. I have an idea to build a portable player and online

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WAGING HEAVY PEACE by Neil Young
Excerpt
Blue Rider Press

distribution model to present a quality alternative to MP3s with the convenience today’s consumers
demand. I want to bring the soul of the music industry and the technology of Silicon Valley together to
create this new model, using artists as the driver. My goal is to restore an art form and protect the
original art, while serving quality to the music lover.

Tomorrow is the big presentation day, and I am going over my approach, which is guided by
PureTone CEO candidate Mark Goldstein, who is a start-up specialist introduced to me by Magdalena
Yesil and Marc Benioff, two friends of mine from the Silicon Valley community. These two are both
brilliant and very successful. Unlike myself, they have mastered the art of monetizing their ideas. I have
big ideas and very little money to show for it. I’m not complaining, though. It’s not the money that
matters; it’s doing things right and efficiently that is my goal. I just want to succeed at this so badly. I
dislike what has happened to the quality of the sound of music; there is little depth or feeling left, and
people can’t get what they need from listening to music anymore, so it is dying. That is my theory.
Recording is my first love in the field of creativity, along with songwriting and music making, so
this really cuts to the quick. I want to do something about it. So it is important that I get my thoughts
together, impress this gentleman, and get some financial backing for this project, which will surely need
it. My Skylark is right here with me.

neilyoung.com

THAILAND AT RANDOM
[HARDBACK]



Author : CHUNGSIRIWAT & GROSSMAN

ISBN : 9789814385268

Publisher : EDITIONS DIDIER MILLET PTE LTD

Category : ASIAN HISTORY

Language : ENGLISH

Size (W x H) : Weight : 1.50 Binding : Number of page : - Publication Date : Copyrights Year : -

Synopsis : An illustrated collection of Thailand trivia, Thailand at Random is filled with anecdotes, statistics, quotes, historical asides, facts, folklore and other unusual and useful tidbits.

Bt.585
US$ 19.01



asiabooks.com


............................................


Who invented the dish Phad Thai and why? What is the prime minister's monthy salary? What are the most common nicknames in Thailand? What is the average IQ of a Thai? How many Thai women smoke tobacco? What will you be fined for the unlawful possession of an elephant?

An illustrated collection of Thailand trivia, Thailand at Random is filled with anecdotes, statistics, quotes, idioms, cultural explanations, historical asides, facts, folklore and other unusual and useful tidbits. This veritable treasure trove of information on Thailand is arranged, as the title suggests, randomly, so that readers will come to expect the unexpected on each and every page. Designed in a charmingly classic style, and peppered with original illustrations, Thailand at Random is a quirky and irresistible celebration of everything you didn't know you wanted to know about this diverse and captivating country.

http://www.amazon.com/Thailand-at-Ra.../dp/9814385263

Ajahn Sunano Bhikkhu

Monk in the Mountain

Born in Chicargo, studied law and developed an entrepreneurial business before letting everything go and embarking on a spiritual journey more than 30 years ago, eventually led him to a Budhist monastery in England and Wat Nong Pong. For the last 19 years he has lived in solitude and serenity at his Double_Eyed Cave Retreat in Khao Yai mountains northeast of Bangkok

"Very simple and clear instructions for calming your world and understanding the Buddhist approavch to the way things are."

Joe Cummings, author of Lanna Reneissance and the Lonley Planet Guide to Thailand

Henri Charriere
Banco

The further adventures of Papillon

This is even more dynamite than the first - life after Devil's Island

among insurgents, shelby tucker

walks across burma aided by the KIA, then gets nicked by the indians and suspected of spying, great read.

Red Journeys: Inside the Thai Red-Shirt Movement
Craig J. Reynolds
Sat, 23/02/2013

Claudio Sopranzetti, Red Journeys: Inside the Thai Red-Shirt Movement. Chiang Mai, Silkworm Books, 2012. xiv + 131pp.

At the time he wrote this memoir, Claudio Sopranzetti was doing fieldwork in Thailand for his dissertation in anthropology. Based on his interactions with some of the 200,000 motorcycle taxi drivers operating semi-legally in Bangkok, his study focuses on mobility and politics. Many of the taxi drivers are from the northeast, a region populated by people of Lao descent and historically one of the most disadvantaged parts of the country. The Lao cultivators and petty traders, who migrate to the capital to work in services such as driving motorcycle taxis, have long suffered from the disparaging attitudes of wealthy, urban people who view them as country bumpkins and harbour an engrained fear of an empowered labour force.

The northeast as well as the north supported the rise of Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s most electorally successful prime minister from 2001-2006 until he was ousted by a military coup. Mr. Thaksin is now in exile, a puppet master governing from abroad through Yingluck Shinawatra, the present prime minister and a former businesswoman with no previous political experience who is his younger sister. Born in the north, Thaksin himself is a scion of the wealthy, urban upper class, but he used the riches he had amassed in his business dealings to build a formidable political machine that came to so dominate Thailand’s political system that his party monopolised the parliament.

One of the keys to Thaksin’s success was his populism. His policies – inexpensive universal health care, grants to villages to kick-start community projects – struck a chord with sectors of society missing out on a share of the country’s prosperity. Thaksin is not always a hero to all these hard-scrabble people. They can spot the autocratic tendencies in his character even if they acknowledge that the media tycoon appears to defend democracy. A taxi-driver tells Sopranzetti, “You know, I don’t like Thaksin either, but now it is clear Thaksin was just a tool. This is not about him anymore. I didn’t like him. But he had good policies” (51). An old book seller, hawking the classics of Thai radicalism and the staples of Marxism from Marx himself to Rosa Luxemburg, says emphatically, “This is class war, pure and simple.” The book stall is set up in the shadow of one of Bangkok’s sumptuous shopping malls where Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Versace shops mark a place of exclusion and unequal access to resources.

The motorcycle taxi drivers dart and weave through the city’s infamous traffic congestion. Carrying commuters, supplies, and news through the city’s labyrinthian capillaries, they inch their way down narrow lanes crowded with vendors and shoppers. The taxi drivers are the life-blood of the capital, the very embodiment of mobility in the polycentric megalopolis that has challenged urban planners for many decades. Their knowledge of the city’s geography gives the drivers status as “owners of the map.” Sopranzetti plays the embedded journalist and inserts himself into their daily routines to find out what they do, who they talk to, and what they think about politics. The motility of the drivers’ vehicles is a metaphor for their desires for upward social mobility, if not for them in their own lifetimes, then for their children through formal education that will bring greater job security and higher incomes to the next generation. Among the ten countries in the Southeast Asian regional grouping known as ASEAN, Thailand has the greatest income inequality. Conversations with the motorcycle taxi drivers provide Sopranzetti with the refracting optics through which he apprehends the needs, desires and aspirations of people striving to better themselves.

In early 2010 in a political standoff against the incumbent government, which was orchestrated and funded by Thaksin from abroad, needs, desires and aspirations are given voice in a mass protest that shuts down the centre of Bangkok, first at the iconic Democracy Monument in the old part of the city, and later in the business heart of the capital. There the Red Shirts establish a camp fortified with barricades made of tires and sharpened bamboo poles that look both fearsome and frail. The camp is a city within a city, complete with pharmacies, kitchens, make-shift dormitories, and monks’ tents. Sopranzetti follows the motorcycle taxi drivers into the protest movement that paralyses the capital. The experience consumes his mental and physical energies for an entire month.

Courtesy of Nick Nostitz

To keep sane and knowing the historic import of what he is witnessing, Sopranzetti is compelled by the emotions of the moment to say something about an event that does not fit into conventional academic formats. His visual, olfactory and sonic senses are in overdrive, and he begins to keep a diary of what he sees, smells and hears. He then blogged his observations and reflections. Red Journeys is the result, a work that has been justifiably praised as “a brilliant little book – moving, eye-opening, unsettling,” and conveying “the muddle of hope and fear” experienced by those taking part in the protests.* Maps of Bangkok help to orient the reader, and each chapter begins with a black and white front page of The Nation, a Bangkok daily. The book does not have the reference apparatus and bibliography of a research publication. It is, after all, an informal memoir, a book out of a blog, and cost factors have presumably produced this rather austere publication. Googlers wanting graphic images with plenty of red can help themselves on the internet. I do think that reference to some of Sopranzetti’s comrades in reporting, such as the photo-journalist Nick Nostitz, would have offered useful comparisons to Red Journeys.** The meaning of “Father, where are you?” inscribed on a huge cloth hanging from a bridge is lost on newcomers to Thai politics unaware that the plaintive (or sarcastic?) question refers to the present monarch.

Scattered throughout Sopranzetti’s story are nuggets of sharp observation and insight, as when he observes that soldiers sent to discipline the crowds stand eye-to-eye with the protestors of the same age, both sides armed with conviction and the certainty of being in the right, “the same exact eyes on both sides – the country looking at itself” (62). He hears rumours that resist being assembled into a coherent narrative, yet he witnesses a version of history becoming fixed, “a history of violence and sacrifice, of state repression and personal heroism” (43). He declines to hazard opinions about things that are murky with conspiracy and foreboding. Who, if anyone, has control of ordnance in the Red Shirt camp? Who are the men in black said to be a third hand? Whose third hand? Who torches the capitalist icons as the Red Shirt camp is dispersed? As the story moves inevitably and inexcusably towards its violent denouement, Sopranzetti documents the mixture of tension, fear, excitement and boredom that grips the protestors. The author himself is bored with the endless, repetitive speeches blasted at full volume from loudspeakers at all hours of the day and night. “I appreciate their resilience,” he wryly remarks, “but I do not think I can stand another night of the same discourses” (83). Adding to the din is the voice of Thaksin energising the crowds via video link from afar, instructing them to hold their ground, denounce the power elite, and force the government from office.

This particular episode in the country’s confrontational politics ends in a bloody battle. The chaos and inconvenience of the huge protest site and the unshakeable demands of the Red Shirts provoke the government to use extreme force to break up the camp and disperse the protestors, an action that results in more than ninety fatalities, and injuries, some of them horrific, to over 2,000 people. Sopranzetti learns how to stay clear of danger by heeding the advice of wise heads and minimising risky moves, but even so, it is an edgy story. A Japanese TV cameraman and an Italian photo-journalist were fatally shot during the disturbances. The protestors know how to decode the sounds of army weaponry and teach the anthropologist to identify the sniper’s rifle by its short dry sound, the grenades by their loud echoes. The battle is one-sided; David resorts to home-made Molotov cocktails, burning tyres, slingshots and firecrackers against Goliath’s rocket-propelled grenades and tanks. The course of the fighting is impossible to follow at ground-level. Sopranzetti and the protestors understand less of what is happening in front of their eyes than a viewer watching CNN in New Delhi or the BBC in London. The protestors are foot soldiers fighting on the streets with only a blurred sense of the war raging above them.

Courtesy of Nick Nostitz

As the army finishes its sweeps, arsonists set fire to shopping malls, bank branches, 7-Elevens and telephone booths along the protest site. Dense black clouds rise above the city. Looking in wonderment at the burnt-out shell of Central World, one of Bangkok’s palaces of capitalism, Sopranzetti concedes that words fail him in trying to describe the enormity of the event. Language is defeated. He manages to craft one last word-picture: the middle section of Central World has just vanished, “as if a giant spoon had scooped away this delight of Bangkok’s landscape” (131). His Thai companion says it is too dangerous to hang around any longer, and they hurry away.

Note:

* Chris Baker, “Burning Resentments, The Clashes of April-May 2010 Told from the Street Level,” Bangkok Post, 14 May 2012.

** Nick Nostitz, Red vs. Yellow, vol. 1, Thailand’s Crisis of Identity (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2009) and vol. 2, Thailand’s Political Awakening (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2011).

Reviewed by Craig J. Reynolds
Published originally on Prachatai (English)
23 February 2013

Craig Reynolds | The Australian National University - Academia.edu


Attachment Size Sopranzetti review fnl 23Feb13.pdf 120.44 KB

prachatai.com

Originally Posted by Rocksteady

Henri Charriere
Banco

The further adventures of Papillon

This is even more dynamite than the first - life after Devil's Island

looks interesting , did you read it in paper book
, I cannot find a live torrent link for an digital version ?

An expat's views
6 May 2013

I don't know if it's true about other countries, but people who have been to Thailand for any length of time between two weeks and 20 years feel impelled to write a book about it. From what they have seen, heard and experienced they believe they understand the Kingdom and its denizens. And if they have learned Thai, they know that much more.



Watching The Thais by Tom Tuohy 232pp, 2012 Bamboo Sinfonia paperback Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 395 baht

I've lost count of the number of guidebooks and bar girl/farang mis-match stories I have reviewed. The vast majority are superficial. A rare few get beneath the surface. All too many are inter-changeable (not all farangs are materialistic, all Thais are spiritual, again!). Watching The Thais by Tom Tuohy doesn't fit any one category, overlapping several. A Londoner based in Bangkok since 1997 (by way of Saudi Arabia), wed to a Thai, he teaches English. Not as farangs usually do to pick up change to continue their travels, but as a career.

Though he doesn't yet qualify as an Old Thailand Hand with two decades in residence, he has lots of personal impressions of the Land of Smiles. Tom _ Ajarn Tuohy _ is well read on the subject, perhaps more so on the English language, such as the best way to teach it.

His comments about traffic jams in the capital are spot on, but bus drivers really don't take uppers and lowers to navigate through it. And he might have mentioned that unlike elsewhere, the horn honking here is negligible. As for Thais refusing to walk more than a few metres, the crowds of street shoppers disprove that.

The author turns his big guns on CNN and the BBC for taking the side of the Red Shirts while ignoring the efforts of the government to keep the peace. Why didn't he also mention that more than a few of the vernacular media sided with the demagogue in exile?

Tom is irate at the corruption in which a heavy chunk of the education budget goes into the pockets of scoundrels. And he warns against mixed marriages between elderly farangs and young Thais, quoting news stories of all too many of these retired husbands being murdered by the wife and her Thai lover.

Farangs thinking about settling here are asked to think twice. That even if they go native in every sense of the word, they will never be considered a member of the Thai group. In his bibliography, Tuohy oughtn't to have passed the knowledgeable Christopher C. Moore, who has a deeper insight into Shangri-La.

bangkokpost.com

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo.

The true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo.
Alexandre Dumas' Dad. Sugar plantation worker turned French army officer. Excellent. True life adventurer.

Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo – a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature.

Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time.

Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution, in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East – until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.

The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.

Originally Posted by Mid

Fred Hollows: An Autobiography
Hollows, Fred / Corris, Peter



Publisher: Kerr
ISBN-13: 9781875703241
Series:
Binding: Paperback
Year Published: 2006
Australian Biography

This book first appeared in 1991 claiming it 'replenishes the sense of what is possible'. It still does. This edition shows what is possible, being don daily, problems encountered and over come, breakthroughs big and small, the spread of the work across the globe, how more and more people are getting modern eye care…and how The Foundation bearing Fred Hollow's name is setting up an ever accelerating attack on blindness the like of which has never been seen before.

The book's heart is the same: the life, work and ideas of Fred Hollows.

Fred was no saint, didn't pretend to be. He was as rough a diamond as they come. Tom Keneally called him 'the wild colonial boy of Australian surgery'.

'Every eye is an eye' as Fred put it, and there's somewhere between 25 to 40 million blind the Third World, half that preventable cataract work. Daunting, but no excuse for inaction or failure. He knew what tools were needed. Look, talk, listen, think. Urgent problem, time available unknown.

Now this lean but sturdy foundation is growing and many more vital trained people are available and the number of operations a day, a year, is climbing.

'The patient, whoever, wherever, he or she may be, will see the doctor'. Today, a lot of patients are seeing the doctor, and many more will tomorrow.

ID: 22458
Code: TR000235

bookworm.com.au


The Fred Hollows Foundation


.

Gabi Hollows AO lauds generous Aussies
Clifford Fram, AAP National Medical Writer, AAP
June 10, 2013


AAP ©

Dr Gabi Hollows has received many accolades in her life, but she says her biggest honour was to be married to pioneering eye doctor Fred Hollows and bear his children.

She says she is privileged to continue his mission to prevent blindness across the world through the Fred Hollows Foundation, which was started in 1992 before he died.

Her work has been recognised with a Queen's Birthday honour, which she says is is a badge of pride for "all the people who have been so generous".

Dr Hollows has been appointed an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to public health as an advocate for the eradication of blindness, particularly for Indigenous Australians and people in the developing world.

The foundation now works throughout Africa, Asia and Australia, focusing on blindness prevention and Australian Indigenous health.

"Through reducing the cost of cataract operations to as little as $25 in some developing countries, we have helped to restore the sight of more than 1,000,000 people," says Dr Hollows.

"Fred was honoured as Australian of the year in 1990/91.

"It is very bitter sweet. We don't have Fred anymore, but his work lives on."

"We have raised millions of dollars through the energies and the continuous philanthropy of the ordinary everyday Australian."

Other medical recipients include Professor Euan Wallace, Professor Robyn Ward and Dr Peter Woodruff, who have been appointed Members (AM) of the Order of Australia.

Prof Wallace, who was born in Scotland, visited Monash University in Melbourne for a one-year sabbatical in 1996 and decided to stay.

"Australia has been good to me. I'm thrilled by this honour. I am very surprised."

He received his honour for significant service to medicine, particularly in the areas of obstetrics and gynaecology.

Dr Woodruff has been honoured for significant service to medicine, particularly in the field of vascular surgery and through contributions to healthcare standards.

He says he's moved by his personal interactions with patients.

"I have letters of thanks. It gives me a lot of satisfaction," he said.

Prof Ward has been honoured for significant service to medical research and patient care in oncology.

"What my career to date has stood for is to be at that interface of clinical medicine and research, bringing it together to help people with cancer," she said.

au.news.yahoo.com

Originally Posted by Rainfall

"Keeping quiet while monks and other peaceful protesters are murdered and jailed is not evidence of constructive engagement." - Arvind Ganesan, Human Rights Watch.

.....



Buddhist Warfare

Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer

This book offers eight essays examining the dark side of a tradition often regarded as the religion of peace. The authors note the conflict between the Buddhist norms of non-violence and the prohibition of the killing of sentient beings and acts of state violence supported by the Buddhist community (sangha), acts of civil violence in which monks participate, and Buddhist intersectarian violence.

Buddhist Warfare - Michael Jerryson; Mark Juergensmeyer - Oxford University Press

I Am Malala
Christina Lamb, Malala Yousafzai


GIRLS RUN THE WORLD In her memoir, Malala showcases her passion for education

Reviewed by Tina Jordan on Oct 09, 2013

Silently and menacingly — just like the vampires in the Twilight books she was reading — the Taliban flooded Malala's remote Pakistan valley.

Girls, they announced, could no longer attend school.

Malala became a public face of defiance, showing unimaginable pluck by speaking to journalists and writing a blog for the BBC about her passion for education.

Then, shortly before her 15th birthday, she was attacked on a bus by a Taliban gunman.

Malala's bravely eager voice can seem a little thin here, in I Am Malala, likely thanks to her co-writer, but her powerful message remains undiluted.

ew.com

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

I've read this before. Excellent book.

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.


Amusing Ourselves to Death - Neil Postman (Malestrom) (download torrent) - TPB)

Mark Twain at his best. History , wit and travel combined.

There is no nicer surprise for a reader than to discover that an acknowledged classic really does deliver the goods. Mark Twain's Roughing It is just such a book. The adventure tale is a delight from start to finish and is just as engrossing today as it was 125 years ago when it first appeared.

Roughing It tells the true-ish escapades of Twain in the American West. Although he clearly "speaks with forked tongue," Roughing It is informative as well as humorous. From stagecoach travel to the etiquette of prospecting, the modern reader gains considerable insight into that much-fictionalized time and place. Do you know about sagebrush, for example?

Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child, the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters for dinner.

Roughing It is informally structured around the narrator's attempts to strike it rich. He meets a motley, colorful crew in the process; many mishaps occur, and it shouldn't surprise you that Twain does not emerge a man of means. But he withstands it all in such a relentless good humor that his misfortune inspires laughter. Roughing It is wonderful entertainment and reminds you how funny the world can be--even its grimmer districts--when you're traveling with the right writer.