Wednesday 7 November 2012

Leigh Dayton Science Journalist

This piece, about the treatment of science writer Leigh Dayton on the national broadsheet The Australian, was originally written as part of Terror in Australia: Worker's Paradise Lost.
It did not fit into the final shape of the book, and so is reproduced separately here:


If there was one incident that illustrated the appalling editorship of The Australian's Editor-in-Chief Chris Mitchell more than any other, as if Elisabeth Wynhausen hadn’t been enough, it was his treatment of Australia’s most respected science journalist Leigh Dayton.
The falling out issue was climate change.
Alex, rather unfashionably, tended to fall in the climate sceptic camp.
He had read a couple of climate sceptic books; and they seemed perfectly plausible to him. It was obvious enough that some of the most intelligent people on Earth, academics that had spent their entire lives studying esoteric things like sea level rises or falls, doubted the “science” of climate change.
Never stand between an academic and a grant had been his experience, and the [not vast!] amount of money involved made him instantly suspicious. As well, the ceaseless hyperbole coming from the Greens, from the United Nations and from the Labor Party, the anti-development ultra-green environmentalism that had consumed the party of the workers, also made him doubt.
There was that French Philosopher who said if most people believe something, it is unlikely to be true.
But Leigh was of a different mind.
Having spent years reading the research papers she was convinced of the science, and regarded it as a professional imperative to disseminate the information accurately.
Alex and she had been friends on the news floor for many years.
They didn’t agree on all the dot points, gender and family law being one of them, but they were always in total agreement on the idiocy of The Australian’s editorial hierarchy.
Surprised after he left work that he missed the place, the routines and the company of fellow sufferers, Leigh was one of those he missed. An intensely principled person and a fabulous conversationalist, she was a hard working scribe largely wasted on the paper’s unappreciative editors and tiny readership.
The relationship between the two was once based on mutual respect. They disagreed about climate science when she went in to discussing working on the paper, but Mitchell offered her a job and she accepted. Her stories and his editorials didn’t agree but existed in separate corners of the paper.
But things began unraveling after Mitchell changed the editorial approach of the paper in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis and the escalating loss of revenue to online advertising. The readers he wanted owned resources companies or supported the industry. Straight stories about climate change science became unwelcome entries on the morning news list.
Then Mitchell, probably knowing Leigh would not cooperate, ordered another journalist to write a major weekend feature, lauding a prominent climate change denier Ian Plimer and his new book Heaven and Earth. Plimer was a professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide University and mining company board member. With the country in a kind of climate change fever, every second story in The Australian seemed to begin with a reference to it. He was one of only a scattering of quotable academics running against the tide.
Plimer’s claim was that global warming was a “scam”, and he had been influential in opening up the debate in Australia. His fans had included two Prime Ministers, Tony Abbott and John Howard. Of his opponents on the other side of the debate Plimer wrote in Heaven and Earth: "Trying to deal with these misrepresentations is somewhat like trying to argue with creationists who misquote, concoct evidence, quote out of context, ignore contrary evidence, and create evidence ex nihilo."
Alex had interviewed Plimer on a number of occasions; he was a very pleasant man, at least on the telephone, seemingly highly qualified, happy to give ‘good quote’, as the saying went, about all a journalist in a rush really needs.
Anyway, after the positive feature, Leigh was furious.  After mulling it over, she wrote a column highlighting Plimer’s principled fight against Creation Science, but pointing out the major flaws in his climate stance. She also helped organise a book review by a scientist who shredded Plimer’s case.
As a result, Mitchell sent her to Coventry, took her off the science round and had her editing the health pages; an almost entirely unread – but remarkably profitable -- area of the paper buried behind the classifieds in the back pages of the Saturday edition.
Leigh had a hefty inner-city mortgage which meant she couldn’t leave the paper, as much as she wanted to.
Leigh’s work ethic and professionalism meant she kept showing up for work and doing the job allocated to her, no matter how demeaning for a woman of her high standing in the profession, no matter how great her anger, no matter how thankless the work.
Who did he think he was, treating the country’s best science writer like a scolded child? Or worse.
After all, this was the same man who agreed with the paper’s editor, Paul Whittaker, that she should be told to write a story claiming Stephen Hawking -- one of the greatest minds in history -- was a scientific fraud. Thinking it was a joke, Leigh laughed. She then offered another approach which was rejected.
The solution to dealing with an experienced journalist who feels morally and intellectually bound to one side of a debate and feels professionally compelled to tell the truth as they perceive it is simple.
You run one side, and you run the other.
Journalism is all about controversy.
Print everything.
The truth will out.
Let the idiots wither in the light.
Let the punters decide for themselves.
It would have been a perfectly simple matter to have given Leigh her head, and to have published countervailing views. If nothing else, that style of editing stirs up the letter writers, provokes controversies, and in the determined passions of debate, increases circulation.
Not on The Australian.
Coventry it was, for the country’s most respected science journalist.

Saturday 15 September 2012

Thai rivals unite over insurgency, The Australian, 15 September, 2012

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/thai-rivals-unite-over-insurgency/story-e6frg6so-1226474394277

Thai rivals unite over insurgency

ON Tuesday, political foes Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra of the so-called Red Shirts faction and the opposition leader, deposed prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva of the Yellow Shirts, will join forces in a forum aimed at addressing the escalating problem of Muslim insurgents in the country's southernmost provinces.
Events in recent weeks - the beheading of a soldier and the raising of the Malaysian flag at about 160 separate flashpoints across the south - have galvanised the nation's political class to address the worst insurgency in Southeast Asia.
While the Thai and Malaysian prime ministers have pledged co-operation, the influential Bangkok Post declared Thailand could not afford further casualties while both leaders made "flowery-yet-ambiguous" pledges.
Four days ago, 91 insurgents surrendered to government forces in what was claimed as the most positive breakthrough in the conflict in years. Ms Yingluck promised to help find the defectors jobs and offer them start-up loans.
Thai security expert Don Pathan dismissed the surrender of the insurgents as a "public relations stunt" and said: "Insurgents on the ground were dismissive of the so-called surrendered individuals, saying they weren't combatants. Their names came up on the army's blacklist and their parents were informed about how they could be taken off the blacklist if they just take part in this PR exercise."
The recent rash of government initiatives, including the co-operation between Malaysia and Thailand over insurgents living in Malaysia, and the meeting of the respective country's prime ministers with subsequent announcements of co-operation to resolve the issues in southern Thailand, have made front page news in a Buddhist country largely indifferent to the fate of the Muslim minority in the south. That the issue is disturbing the nation's highest elites was demonstrated by the announcement that the Thai Queen had spent millions of dollars of her own money on welfare projects in southern villages. But commentators have little hope this week's political posturing will produce concrete results. A spokesman for the International Crisis Group, Jim Della-Giacoma, said leaving the military out of the discussions was a mistake and the violence could be expected to continue.
"The insurgency is not getting better," he said. "The insurgents in recent years have shown the ability to use increasingly sophisticated strategy and tactics. They have a resilience and discipline not yet matched by the Thai political elite."
A researcher at Human Rights Watch, Sunai Phasuk, described southern Thailand as "a state within a state" and said the growing power of the military was allowing for state-perpetrated abuses, including torture, killings and disappearances. He dismissed the forum as "a political game".
Author of numerous works on the southern conflict, including Tearing Apart the Land, Duncan McCargo told The Weekend Australian a succession of serious attacks demonstrated the failure of the Thai security forces, and he held little hope for this week's conference. "I am one of a small group of experts who has tried to convince the Thai elite that this is a political problem in need of a political solution, but it is a message that Bangkok would generally rather not hear."
Thailand's watchdog group, Deep South Watch, estimates more than 5000 people have died in 11,000 incidents since the conflict escalated into bloody violence in 2004.




Sunday 5 August 2012

Agent Orange, the Cleanup Begins, The Australian, 5 August, 2012

Agent Orange clean-up, 37 years on

Stapleton, JohnWeekend Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 04 Aug 2012: 11.
Show highlighting
The historic $US450 million ($429m) amelioration effort to destroy the chemicals remaining in the environment and treat those suffering from disabilities begins on Thursday at Vietnam's worst affected site -- the former US military base and now bustling airport of Da Nang. [...]2008, when the heaviest concentrations of dioxin at the airport were concreted over and advisory notices issued to the community, people were swimming and fishing in a poisoned lake adjoining the airport.


Original copy:


John Stapleton

Americans have been astonished by this week’s announcement that the
lingering impacts of the infamous herbicide Agent Orange are only now
to be addressed, 37 years after the end of the Vietnam War.
The historic $450 million amelioration efforts to destroy the
chemicals remaining in the environment and treat those suffering from
disabilities begins on Thursday of this week
at Vietnam’s worst affected site – the former American military base
and now bustling airport of Da Nang.
Until 2008, when the heaviest concentrations of dioxin at the airport
were concreted over and advisory notices issued to the community,
people were swimming and fishing in a poisoned lake adjoining the
airport.
The painful story of neglect and obfuscation surrounding the impacts
of the herbicide Agent Orange begins in 1961. As part of its military
operations, in that year the US government ran its first experiments
destroying forests and crops. Over the next decade more than 43
million litres of Agent Orange was sprayed at up to 50 times the
manufacturer’s recommended levels across 24 percent of southern
Vietnam, including across thousands of villages.
This week marks the first effort by the American and Vietnamese
governments, along with private groups including the Ford and Aspen
Foundations, to address the problem.
The triumph to be seen at the airport this week involves the digging
up of 77,400 cubic metres of soil which will then be heated to a
temperature of 300 degrees centigrade and repeatedly tested until
dioxin levels are at zero and then re-interred.
The historic event owes much to the efforts of one man, the
distinguished Dr Charles Bailey. His arrival in Hanoi as head of the
Ford Foundations regional operations in 1997 and his personal shock at
the ignorance and lack of action over Agent Orange marked the turning
point from hand wringing this week’s ground breaking efforts.
Surveys funded by the Ford Foundation and the Aspen Institute found that although extensive land
areas had been sprayed, none of the chemical remained. Agent Orange
breaks down within a matter of days or weeks.
The problem arises with what Dr Bailey calls a “manufacturing defect”,
the existence of a chemical known dioxin associated with the
herbicide. Manufacturers did not realize that if the Agent Orange was
not “cooked” at an exact temperature, the unintended consequence was a
chemical which does not exist in nature and is one of the most
poisonous substances ever created.
The maximum allowed level for dioxin in human blood is 7-8 parts per trillion, i.e. equivalent to 7-8 molecules of water in an Olympic sized swimming pool.
“If Agent Orange was just a herbicide, it would have destroyed the
vegetation but there wouldn’t have been the direct and lingering
impacts on US and Vietnamese soldiers. Those affected, often living
around former American military bases, have shorter life spans and a
greater chance of their children having birth defects.
“Dioxin wasn’t invented, it wasn’t wanted, it was an accidental contaminant.”
After investigation of the 2,735 former American military basis
studies identified 28 hotspots across Vietnam, all of them sites where
the chemical had been mixed before being loaded onto cargo planes for
aerial spraying.
The three most severely affected centres are Da Nang, Bien Hoa east of
Ho Chi Minh and the coastal city of Qui Nhon, all heavily populated.
Dr Berrie says unlike many vaguely focused international projects,
Agent Orange is a humanitarian story with a beginning, middle and end.
“For Congress $450 million is virtually a budgetary rounding figure,”
he says. “I was taught as a child to clean up my own mess. We did not
intend to create this problem but we have a responsibility as a nation
to fix it. To do so is good for America, Vietnam and the bilateral
relationship.”








Copyright payments, Copyright Agency, 5 August, 2012.


Saturday 19 May 2012

In Memoriam, Chris Evans, Bangkok, 2012.

Bangkok is a city full of expats, and Chris Evans, who had been there for decades living both the high life and the low life, from being one of the city's most sought after male escorts, at a time when European escorts were highly sought after in the city of black-eyed angels, to years literally living on the street, from professional English teacher to an actor with a role in a number of films, from kindly to mischievous to outright devious, from shrewdly sad to philosopher king, he knew the city backwards. Chris was one of the most fascinating and endearing characters I have ever encountered. I only knew him in his final years, but even in those years he was at once kind, charismatic and intelligent. He told many a remarkable story. It fell to me to pull together a Memorial leaflet. This is it.


























IN MEMORIAM 

 


CHRISTOPHER EVANS
(../../…. - ../../2012).



INTRODUCTION

They called him “Tall Chris”; the people who knew him in Bangkok.
His sister describes him as “King of the Bad Boys” when he was growing up in Berkeley Hills, California.
He was later, in a sense, to become King of the Bad Boys in Bangkok.
Everyone, everyone who ever knew him could tell bad stories about Chris. The stories were better shared with laughter at a wake than rendered in print for gossip.
On his passing, what surprised people the most was the outpouring of affection for this errant soul.
“He helped me,” “He helped me,” individual after individual in the sub-culture for recovering alcoholics of Thailand’s capital stepped up to say; proudly declaring themselves to have been a friend.
Chris died alone in an apartment he had miraculously acquired.
He might have died alone but he did not live alone.
The number of people he knew rivaled the prince of any kingdom.
While he came from a comfortable upper middle class background in America, Chris spent years on the streets of Bangkok as a street alcoholic, with no money, nowhere to live, without even a passport.
His affection and respect for the people he met on the streets remained with him into sobriety – a period of his life in which he enjoyed various successes working as an extra in Thai movies and as a teacher all over Thailand. 
Even when he had money, Chris’s bohemian life-style continued. He patched together a living from various sources, including working at all sorts of odd jobs. As often as not he relied on “the kindness of strangers”. And he displayed little regard for his health, continuing to regard the take-away meals available from the “Seven” stores that dot Bangkok as more than sufficient.
Prior to hitting the streets Chris had lived an even more colourful life amongst some of Bangkok’s richest Thais and amongst the litany of colorful characters of Bangkok’s netherworld of bars and sex workers.
But it was life on the streets of one of the world’s most challenging, beautiful and ever fascinating cities which shaped him more than any other experience. That left him with an understanding for those who fall through the cracks, who live on the pavements of any giant city, who cannot abide the orthodoxies of middle class working life and who much prefer the streets to the comforts any hotel can provide.
You could be walking with him down some non-descript Soi off the main Bangkok thoroughfare of Sukhumvit when Chris would point to a pile of boxes and garbage accruing in a street corner and say: “She’s a marvelous woman. You couldn’t meet a nicer person. She would always bring me food and make sure I was OK when I was on the down and out.”
No normal person would even notice the wizened face at the center of the boxes, much less know her by name or speak to her kindly.
Below are scenes from an earlier sunset. 
Chris’s sister Caitlin says: “These are pictures of a very important view.  This is from our family home in the Berkeley Hills looking west at sunset to the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco.  This view was in Chris’ mind always as we grew up with it and lived in it.  It’s important to his spirit.”

 


 

 


Amongst the tributes:

“When I remember Chris I think of his John Huston smile. He was a handsome devil, tall and debonair. I think of an American frontiersman, a guy that would lift his hat when you got off the postal coach in the gold rush town. 
“It is as if Japan and Thailand were the new frontier for him.
“Chris could see those who were hurting in the (recovery) rooms even though often they are trying to be invisible. He saw me for example. I was lost and I needed someone to talk to but I was too proud to admit it.

“The champion of the downtrodden, Chris fought for the right of those who would join a meeting in Bangkok but have no trust fund or pension.

“He was the founder of two meetings: Who can say that in Bangkok?
“Twenty years from now, someone who has been sleeping rough will walk into a meeting that too tall Chris founded and hopefully be spared the hell that is the final stage of alcoholism.

“Sometimes people need a break. 
“They say that to make someone trustworthy you have to trust them first. He was tough, almost sought out adversity. Anything was better in his mind, even sleeping rough in Bangkok, as long as sister freedom was there. 

“He didn't want to be locked up in a job in Wal-Mart like most Californians are. 
“The streets of the world were his oyster and he knew there was gold in them there hills.
“God speed Chris. I hope when I reach the other side you will be there to greet me with that smile and show me around the new town.”


 
Chris with big his sister Bronwyn, 1965.


 
Chris at the Beach, 1966.

Ever energetic, Chris’s love of and understanding for the under-belly of Bangkok life and for those struggling to gain some sort of stability in their own lives, led him to start or attempt to start several different recovery meetings, with varying degrees of success.

He was the co-founder of one of Bangkok’s smallest and longest running meetings, at the Park Hotel in Soi Seven off Sukhumvit. 


 

Bangkok’s aging but well known Park Hotel in the heart of the tourist district of Nana.

A dispute over the lack of formality, structure and financial accountability at the Park Hotel meeting led to the breakaway group known as the Ambassador Hotel, now the largest and most formal of the recovery meetings frequented by foreigners in Bangkok.

While not to everyone’s taste the meeting is regarded as a beacon of traditional “hard-core” recovery, as a lighthouse for alcoholics attempting to establish a sober life in a new country and in a city replete with many temptations such as Bangkok.

The persistence of the English language meetings has now led to the establishment of Thai language meetings and the adaption into the Thai Buddhist culture of the “Twelve Step” programs originally developed within a fundamentalist Christian tradition in the America of the 1930s.

A memorial meeting for Chris was held at The Park Hotel in Chris’s honor in late August.

Around 40 people attended.

It was more attendees than the meeting had ever seen and went well beyond the usual allotted duration of one hour.

While there were occasional references to the more colorful side of Chris’s life – “the bastard left owing me 4,000 baht” got an instant laugh of recognition for example –the tributes were in turn compassionate, sad and affectionate.
And that line, “he helped me a lot”, was often repeated. 

Unlike the more comfortable members of any recovery program, Chris always had an eye out to help the new comer. 

Sometimes he would cause controversy by dragging drunken Thai men from a nearby local whiskey stall into the meeting.

Always looking from the outside on the comfortable middle classes from whence he came, Chris dismissed his critics with an airy wave of the hand as nothing but simpletons, hypocrites, would-be’s if they could-be’s, as people who had no idea what it was like to genuinely suffer the throws of addiction and alcoholism and hence no compassion for those less fortunate than themselves.

As one of the speakers recalled, Chris had established the Park Hotel meeting after persisting with trying to establish a meeting on another tourist mecca, Bangkok’s Koh San Road, once a center for the backpacking set and now a major tourist destination for budget travellers.




 
RESPECTABLE CHRIS AS A TEACHER
 


Chris: in his later years.






 

Chris: in his later years.
 

Chris, in his final year of life, beginning to show signs of his final illness and having already survived a bout with cancer, still managed to make it down to his beloved Pattaya, where he had been a frequent visitor over the years.
Pattaya, one of Thailand’s best known centers of sin, is now busily trying to rebadge itself as a cultural center.

 

Wat Suthit where Chris’s funeral service was held.