Category: politics

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An Ongoing Bureaucratic Experience

I just spent a week in Killarney sharing it with my best friend Mel of 50 + years and his wife Evi who has a colon cancer which has metastasized to her liver and bones. She is unsuccessfully part way through the first of the trio of medical protocols normally on offer for these conditions; poison, burn and cut. So a salutary moment to reflect on our shared times and experiences together on this earth and the very real possibility that it was the last time Evi and I will see each other. And keeping banality in mind, since I am drastically allergic to their cat,  so an experience heavily clouded by Zyrtec.

On Saturday I flew from Kerry to Dublin and after a quiet night at an airport hotel on the 15th, the next day presented myself at the Aer Lingus check in counter with my boarding pass, Irish passport and US ESTA visa obtained as on all previous occasions at on the US Department of Homeland Security web site. From Dublin there are so many Irish people traveling to and from the US that you clear US immigration and customs at the Dublin airport. Ahh said the young lady this visa is not valid and we cannot let you board the flight. Why so I inquired, well she replied your passport number contains a 0 and you have entered an O on the visa application, or maybe it was vice Versace. The 0 in the Proton Mail system has a bar through it, the Apple Mail does not.

Well I asked can I speak to one of the US immigration officers and see if we can resolve this minor mistake. Sorry that is not possible we cannot process you and she reversed the luggage belt and presented me with my suitcase. So what do you suggest I do I inquired. Well she said you could reapply for the ESTA visa now on your mobile phone. Indeed I could I told her but if I confused a 0 and an O on a computer at 77 years of age do you think I will do better now stressed and using a smart phone, and anyway we both know it takes 3 days to process the visa application.

OK I said this cannot be the first time something like this has happened can you inquire with your manager how we resolve it and off marched Emma with her tight bureaucratic smile in her green Aer Lingus uniform. Five minutes later she was back with her frigid and now winning smile in place and said no we cannot let you board. Fine I asked and where do I find the manager and she pointed to Gate 56 where trundling my suitcase I presented myself to the lady in charge.

Yes she said Emma told me about your problem but you see if we let you board and you are refused entry on arrival in the US then we become responsible for your return trip. Indeed I replied but you do notice I have purchased a return ticket. This is true she said but we have made an exception in the past and it resulted in problems for us. Well I said far be it for me a paying customer to cause a problem for Aer Lingus so lets pretend we never met and I will return in a minute. I walked away, fished my Canadian passport from my backpack, returned said good day and presented it to Mrs manager who then printed and gave me my boarding pass and checked in my suitcase.

I arrived at Dulles airport some 7 hours later but my suitcase did not. The young lady representing Aer Lingus at the baggage carousel checked my baggage tag and pointed out that it was made out to a Ms Suzann Quinn and had no doubt as indicated arrived safely with her in JFK in New York. Looking for a bargaining chip I inquired do you know if Ms Quinn’s suitcase is here on the carousel. No she said and and presented me with a copy of my lost luggage complaint form. Touché Mrs manager.

Yesterday morning I called the Aer Lingus lost luggage number in Dublin and consulted with a confused young man in Mumbai who told me his name was Juan. He assured me he had copied down all my information but when I asked him to read back the luggage tag number, it must have been time for tiffin, he hung up.

My second attempt speaking with Curtis, still sounding like Mumbai, was more successful and I am assured my suitcase might possibly arrive soon.

This morning Tuesday I spoke with Natasha again evidently in Mumbai and she assures me my suitcase is still somewhere on the east coast of N. America. I explained to Natasha that as there are limitations to the amount of liquids you can carry on to the plane the bulk of the essential medications to treat my eyes are in the suitcase and that soon I may be obliged to present Aer Lingus with a substantial financial claim for urgent medical services.

Years ago I read an interesting case study where these back office workers in India are obliged to adopt a name which serves the area from where a call originates and also attempt a suitable accent. They also because of their work tend to socialize together and become “fractured” on returning to their parents home in the evening. But that is another story.

Reflecting briefly on your description of Melody’s unfortunate experience with the California bureaucracy, an initial conclusion.

In any critical encounter with a bureaucracy I presume the person facing me is expected as part of their successful annual performance appraisal to have failed or found fault with a number or percentage of the cases encountered in any measured period so I prepare accordingly. Ready to cede a few considered points while attempting to win my objective. The World Bank audit team sent to my office by Mr. Vu to review the totality of the VSAT project comes to mind. It is also a Tierney truism that the lower the bureaucrat is in the power structure the more likely they are to want to wield the small power at their disposal and therefore they require delicate handling.
Unfortunately I think Melody met such an unsympathetic and evidently also ill informed bureaucrat.

So a jet lagged poorly thought out and unhelpful conclusion. Fate sent Melody to a small minded and incompetent bureaucrat whose salary and pension very much depend on people paying taxes and the “system” designed by bureaucrats is failing her.

But keep in mind, I think it is called the Kansas Syndrome, whereby if I remember correctly a group working on a project will collectively agree decisions that individually they find unacceptable. So good luck trying to design a perfect bureaucratic system.

link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fpcs.2014.4

Abstract This paper explores white working- and middle-class Americans’ paradoxical support for policies that have contributed to their thirty-year economic decline while benefitting the wealthiest people in the country. Their habit of identifying with the aggressor has caused them actively to be engaged in their own economic descent. In the words of Jesse Jackson, “They’re turkeys at their own Thanksgiving.”

Back to the battle with Aer Lingus.

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My Extended Sunday Rant

If my radio mentions the Mueller Report or Brexit I immediately change to another station. For TV I frequently opt for NHK Global the Japanese international station because they have a lot of documentaries on the continued handcrafting of classical wood, flower arranging and pottery and very little on western politics.
 
Over the years when I have exchanged views on this topic on line with our friend Abrao, Fox News and the WSJ. he assigns me the BBC and the Guardian, the role of the defender of the left. I have tried unsuccessfully  to persuade him that my firm view is a” pox on both the politics of the right and the left.”
 
Years ago when I played left to his right my best friend of 50 + years, an ex USMC Gunnery Sergeant, he operated a team behind enemy lines in Vietnam and is somehow cynical about politicians, persuaded me that political systems are simply methods for the leadership and their friends to get to the financial trough.
 
Communism. Some years ago Rolls Royce opened a dealership in Hanoi so what was that war about. When I returned to my beautiful Vancouver last year I found it to be the city in N. America with the most high end expensive cars, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati etc. owned by many of the young children of highly placed Chinese Communist cadre. Thanks also to them the average price of a home in Vancouver is in excess of C$1M and the grandchildren of the earlier European immigrants can no longer afford to live in the city. On the other hand that same communist dictatorship lifted billions of Chinese people from poverty. I am confused.
 
Capitalism. A recent newspaper article states that after centuries 50% of the land in England is still owned by 1% of the population, mostly the aristocracy. They also own important swatches of their former colonies.
 
In the US 40% of the wealth is owned by 1% of the population.
 
In Russia it is estimated 3% of the richest citizens own 90% of the countries financial assets.
 
Then the Fox News audience applauds a millionaire social democrat, Bernie Sanders.
 
I have lost the plot.
 
The Gilets Jaunes are upset that three of the wealthiest French families immediately and competitively contributed €500,000,000 for the reconstruction of the recently fire damaged Notre Dame cathedral. Pointing out the very same families, often fiscally resident in Geneva or Liechtenstein, do the maximum to avoid paying taxes of any kind, will claim the donations as tax write offs and how did so few people end up owning so much. They continue protesting for a more egalitarian society.
 
I note that when I was in Paris last week Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité , the national motto is etched in large letters on the front of every government building. Who has the script here, certainly not Macron or the Gilets Jaunes.
 
The historical consequences of the United Fruit Company and the dictatorships they installed in Central America are walking up to the southern borders of the US. But who remembers what made Chiquita bananas so cheap.
 
The Iranians though still remember that the US/CIA, UK/MI6 CIA overthrew Mosaddegh their legally elected president when he tried to nationalise the western oil companies operating in Iran and installed the Shah. And when they got rid of him they got an Islamic dictatorship and now its the the Revolutionary Guard that loot the country.
 
The Egyptian public just “voted” the extension of their military dictator remaining in power until 2030. Annual US aid to Egypt estimated to be $1.5bn, and for that they get “cessation of hostilities against Israel”.
 
The citizens of the Ukraine are so disgusted with their political class today Sunday they are about to risk the joke being on themselves and elect a comedian as president. They evidently learned nothing from witnessing what happened in the US but still might have  something of an advantage in that their comedian knows he is a comedian. Watch the evening news.
 
To quote Adlai Stevenson again ” the trouble with Americans is they haven’t read the minutes of the last meeting” but I think today we can also extend this to voting public in Europe. La plus ca change …
 
Today Sunday, Islamists bombed christian churches and tourist hotels in Sri Lanka. They were radicalised by extreme Wahhabism exported in a decades long global campaign created and funded by Saudi Arabia. The Saudi’s, good friends of the Bush family, also brought us the 9/11  Twin Towers. But annually they purchase billions of $s worth weapons from the West’s military industrial complexes so they remain our friends and allies. Number of Christian churches in Saudi Arabia – none permitted.
 
 
Layer on all that Kate Raworth’s Donut Theory of Social and Planetary Boundaries, which she thinks could possibly save us from a very likely environmental extinction and you see how I have become thoroughly confused about where our world is headed.
 
 
Having children and grandchildren and trying to make sense of the above I despair how things are shifting so fast. I used to believe that a lot of my perceptions are due to my being old, tired and cynical and for the last few years I have been searching for any voice e.g. Simon Longstaff with any idea of how we can successfully move things in a reasonable direction. At the moment my position is “a pox on all of them.”
 
The same ex USMC friend has convinced me that if you divided the worlds assets equally between the worlds population about 100 years from now the distribution would be approximately as it is today. So why bother?
 
His personal answer has been to give up any interest in the world’s problems, he presumes that somewhere down the line nature will soon consider humankind a failed experiment and turn the place over to another species.
 
The end of John’s  Sunday Rant, thank you for suffering through it.
 
Though I do like this quote. In individuals insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epocs it is the rule. Nietzsche
 
Please stay in touch I find your views penetrating and they often oblige me to rethink my own.
 
Best wishes as always,
 
John
 
PS I heard sad-populism defined as voting for something that damages your own interests as long as it hurts someone elses more. 

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Meeting A Fellow Traveller in Saigon

On a few mornings I had seen a gentleman Claude resting at a table outside a bar on Bui Vien Street in Pham Ngu Lao the backpacker district, with his walker / ambulatoire next to him. Yesterday I said hello, he smiled and I stopped to talk to him. Today I saw him again. The story I heard, told over the two get togethers and put in what I think is chronological sequence goes something like this.
 
He was in medical school in France when in 1966 the Israel-Egypt 6 Day War was threatening. Being Jewish he wrote a letter to the dean of the school saying he was going to Israel to join the army and if he survived he would return to do his final exams.  When he arrived in Israel and tried to volunteer they laughed and said they have a perfectly competent army and don’t need any untrained French volunteers. They sent him instead him to a kibbutz on the Jordanian border where he worked on a farm owned by a Holecaust survivor who taught him Hebrew. After 4 months he returned to France finished his medical training and for 18 years was a practicing surgeon. 
 
He retired and moved to the Caribbean and opened a clothing store in St Martin, eventually over 5 years ended up owning two in St Martin, 1 in St Barts and 1 in Puerto Rico.  He said some tourists thought it was chic to shop in an upscale store owned by a retired French surgeon and would pay a fortune for a silk tie. He says he made a lot more money selling clothes to tourists than he ever made as a surgeon.  However his wife of 26 years and his daughter raised their consumption levels and expectations along with the growing income from the business and this became an increasing cause of friction. They already had a large remodelled home in Provence with a few hectares of property and he became increasingly fed  with the life he was living. He and his wife divorced, he gave them the property and the business, got no thanks, and retired to Chiang Mai in Thailand with his personal pension. At this point we changed to speaking French. Remember it is Claude’s story. 
 
In Chiang Mai he frequented a French bakery L’Opera and the French owner told him he should definitely visit Vietnam as it was for him much better than Thailand. The owner had previously owned a business in Saigon but moved to Thailand at the insistance of his Thai wife. So having read extensively about Indochine when he was young, we both like Jean Hougron’s Les Asiates, he also recommended Andre Malraux and Lucien Bodart on the same subject, about 14 months ago he moved to a couple of rooms off Bui Vien street in the back packer area of Saigon. 
 
He very much enjoys his new life, his 42 year old girlfriend, she said she is 36 but she left her ID card sitting out, he sits at a table on the sidewalk in the morning, always at the same bar and watches the street come to life, in the afternoons he watches the tourists roam, he eats at or orders food from the nearby Singapore Chicken Noodle restaurant which he said had 300 choices on the menu. On my way to the French owned Marou chocolate shop, excellent local chocolate, I stopped by and picked up the carry out menu at his restaurant and there are actually 310 items with a an average price of $2.50.  
 
 
He initially estimated it would cost him $1,000 a month to live on Bui Vien street but now thought $800 covered it. For his air conditioned room with ensuite bathroom, laundry, drinking water and daily cleaning he pays $16 a day. However one surprisingly high cost from recent experience was emergency health care.
 
I asked about the walker / ambulatoire and he told me that when he fell and fractured his upper left thigh they took him to the French International hospital. There they advised him he had to have an operation to pin and repair it. They proposed a choice of two possible operations, one for D170,000,000 (€6,476 / $9,524) and another more complete for D250,000,000 (€7,322 / $10,786). He said logically at 78 years of age with how many years remaining he opted for the cheaper one where they jam the two pieces together on a spike and the recovery time is about 3 months. But when he was in the recovery room he learned they had done the more expensive and complex one and he had a 6 month recovery period with 2 more months to go, he was most unhappy with this. But during his earlier discussion with the Vietnamese surgeon he had revealed that he himself was a retired surgeon and thus at least received the fellowship of the scalpel 50% reduction in price.  http://fvhospital.com/
 
I commiserated with him about the cost of the operation suggesting that the dangers of the badly broken sidewalks and also of travelling on the back of motorbike taxis were particularly hazardous for people our age. Oh non, non, non he replied laughing, I slipped in the shower while “dancing”with my girlfriend. 
 
When does he plan to return to France ?, never he doesn’t want to hear anything more about les gilets jaunes, President Macron, immigration, politics, his ex-wife, or own a car, none of it. He wants to sit in the sun in the morning, watch the world go by, eat off his extensive inexpensive 310 item Singapore Chicken Noodle menu. I suggested, in light of his dedication to the terpischorean art while damp, and to avoid future emergency health care expenses he consider the installation of a safety grab bar in the shower. He found this uproariously funny.
 
Claude’s restaurant.

He says his next scheduled operation is for macular degeneration because, among other things he can no longer clearly appreciate some of his girl friends finer aspects.  

Yesterday I purchased some chocolate for him, for the children of my AirBnb, landlady, for my friend Gaetan the best patisserie, chocolatiere in Toulouse and of course for myself. I gave Claude his this morning.   All of that for saying hello to, smiling and sharing a coffee with a stranger.  

Definitely LOL and now too old to die young.

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Too Old To Die Young

I am staying in Pham Ngu Lao district, the backpacker area of Saigon because it full of interesting people from every corner of the world and every kind of background.
 
The old guys who judging by their sun damaged skin have spent a lot of years living here permanently and enjoying the cheap beer and other distractions.
 
Tourists.
 
  • Chinese couples with their children.
  • Korean and Indian couples and groups.
  • Asians who when they speak English turn out to be American or Australian.
  • Young women in pairs with a big backpack behind and a small one in front.
  • Young couples on locally rented beat up motorbikes with a big seabag  tied on the back touring Vietnam.
  • Malaysians at a table on the sidewalk figuring out how to eat the Vietnamese version of tacos.
And there are the Vietnamese who on a slow evening come and drive down Bui Vien Street with their children and look, in a zoo like fashion at the strange foreigners.
 
 While I am enjoying my stay here in Saigon I am struck by how much everywhere increasingly looks and feels pretty much the same, be it Barcelona or Saigon.
 
In the centre of town the very outrageously expensive big name international hotels and stores;  Dior, Ferragamo, Coach, Versace and the rest for those Vietnamese needing to be defined by conspicuous consumption. See Thorstein Veblen for details. 
 
 And everywhere the spread of McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, 7-Eleven chains or local copycat versions of cheap mass consumption. In most instances it cannot be the quality of their products, locally produced  food here is tastier, cheaper and much healthier. It must be related to a kind  mass suspension of critical objectivity and the belief (it has to be advertising ? See Edward Bernays for details) that to be modern you must frequent their premises or be seen in the street with their product in you hand and maybe moving it toward your mouth.
 
In down town there are busloads of older folks, some European or N. American but increasingly Asian, being shepherded from one local tourist site and shopping opportunity to the next. The huge buses queue for parking spots, motors running to sustain the air conditioning. 
 
In Europe it is increasingly the same with cruise ships of older Westerners, but increasingly Chinese saturating cities like Venice and Barcelona. And Airbnb, I am staying in one, pricing out locals and destroying the ambience of old city quarters
 
So I am in agreement with the Vietnamese who drive through the backpacker area to look at the foreigners, one remaining pleasure in travel is observing the other travellers.
 
Could I be becoming aged, definitely and consequently unhappy with world as I find it today, probably.
 
Too old to die young.
 
John
 

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Blaise Pascal, Pensées