During a visit to Burma a few years ago, I decided to avoid the country’s legendarily deadly airlines and instead hire a car to take me along the somewhat less deadly roads. Distances that on the map looked like they should take an hour to cover took entire days. The criminal extent of the country’s neglect was already obvious in Rangoon, where I saw a mother sitting with a large crowd on a downtown sidewalk, despondently holding in her arms a baby so malnourished that I’m sure it died not long after I gave her a small amount of money, [...]
CHIANG MAI, Thailand — Promises of a war on drugs by Thailand’s new government had many Thais fearing a replay of the heavy-handed 2003 anti-drug campaign that saw the deaths of almost 3,000 people. So far, however, the new war has been a restrained affair, revealing much about the political strength of Thailand’s People’s Power Party-led government. The push for carrying out a second campaign against illicit drugs came from Thailand’s new interior minister, Chalerm Yabumrung, who had campaigned on the issue. In the wake of his party’s December 2007 election victory and with the approval of Prime Minister Samak [...]
RACH GIA, Vietnam — It’s not hard to imagine the Mekong Delta under water. Much of the region lies barely three feet above sea level. According to some projections, nearly half of the delta’s farmland could be destroyed from rising sea levels due to global warming. Yet most locals here know nothing of what’s coming. While many of the planet’s well-off calculate their “food miles” and “carbon footprints,” many of the world’s poor have never heard of climate change or global warming. Even though many can sense that their climate is changing, they are largely ignorant about why it’s happening [...]
