Phnom Phen, CambodiaUpdated 31/12/2004Well, the news feeds seem to have caught up and are now reporting that there are over 125,000 deaths. That figure will increase further of course but I think that the figure may well peak at around 150,000 as peo

Phnom Phen, CambodiaUpdated 30/12/2004The death toll continues to rise past 80,000 and towards the figure of 90,000 that I gave yesterday. Sadly even this figure is likely to be exceeded. One UN official here in Phnom Penh that I talked to mentioned

Phnom Phen, CambodiaUpdated 29/12/2004:The quake death toll has now exceeded 68,000 and is likely to rise even further with tens of thousands still missing and some regions yet to be contacted. The figure could now rise as high as 90,000 fatalities.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia Updated 28/12/2004:Revised figures from Indonesia suggest that between 21 and 25 thousand people have perished, putting the total number of fatalities at somewhere around the 40,000 mark. Up to 40,000 people are unnacounted for i

Phnom Penh, CambodiaIt's with heavy heart that I have learned of the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami that has wrought havoc and killed over 12,000 people so far, with the final death toll likely to be far higher. I am concerned

The day before the big one and I'm gathered in Phomn Penh talking to a doctor, Phil who works alternately for the UN and the Oz government. It's my usual lunchtime haunt, a bar at a crossroads, brushing off the child booksellers, the amputee beggars

Noi was gorgeous. She was small, slim, sexy and fun, she always wore figure hugging clothes but with a subtelty that many of the other girls lacked, a sort of sophistication and sassy class that surrounded her every move, word and smile. She oozed ch

This is a little known but delightful poem from Italian tradition. It's a variation on the the Wandering Jew, that enigmatic figure whom Christ cursed to wander the earth the saviour returned again. Enjoy."'Come forth come forth, Beffana!&qu

This commentator metnioned a while back that the US had introduced a draft by the backdoor. New figures some six months later bear consideration. The characteristic Bush administrations refusal to confront reality has resulted in a paritcularly cruel

Okay, so one day over 2000 years ago there's this Nazarene chick called Mary, who's engaged to this bloke called Joseph. Nothing unusual there. One night however, Mary is confronted with a terrifying spectre, the arch-angel Gabriel who pops out of

Last Tuesday, Bush awarded the presidential medal of freedom to three of his stalwarts, men whohad proven themselves above and beyond the call of duty in order to defend their country. These were the men central to carrying out his Iraqi policy. The

Three years ago a young twelve year old boy was kidnapped and sodomised by three men that were members of the powerful Mastoi clan in Northwest Pakistan.The young boy threatened to tell of his ordeal, and several days later he was accused of raping a

Later, back at my favourite haunt, the lobster pot, I mulled over what had happened. I'd never been with a prostitute before as such. I'd slept with bar girls for money before in Chaing Mai, but this was somehow different. The bar girl culture was so

I had been in Pattaya for over a week. In that time I had been exposed to some of the wildest in your face overt female sexuality that I had ever encountered.I supose it had to happen.I had just left the hotel, and had been walking for may'be two min

In the first article of this two part feature, I castigated Rumsfeld for his incompetence over the handling of the war in Iraq. But his incompetence and hypocrisy didn't start there. In this article I will examine Rumsfelds earlier history and his co

'We're in a low intensity war that needs to be won and we intend to win it' [Nov 2003]'Ignore the doubters that say the (escalating) war is not going well' [December 2004]Little changes in a year when it comes to Rumsfelds delusional fantasies. Follo

After a few day in Pattaya, I developed a nice lazy habit of getting up around noon and wandering down the beach road towards the seafood restaurants, picking up a newspaper on the way. Being largely Western, you had to run the gauntlet of charming p

'Mere guesswork'That was how Bush dismissed a bleak National Intelligence Estimate concerning the state of Iraq just before the US elections. Yesterday a further bleak summary from a leaked, classified report filed by a departing top CIA operative pa

Its amazing the doors that open for you when you are armed with a good book, a piece of paper and a pen. Women in particular seem drawn to the artist, much moire so than a man to a female artist. I'm not sure why this should be, perhaps its a measure

In a previous article I warned about the danger of the way that America is lurching towards the religeous right.Faith based intelligence led the US to an unecessary war, where hard facts, logic and reason were undermined by a belief that the war was

A recent post US election British newspaper, the daily Mirror recently labelled the US majority electorate as dumb for re-electing Bush to office. The US news channels had a field day. How arrogant, how dare they...but freedom of the press is still p

Bluetooth is a way of getting computer devices to talk with each other over small distances using a short range radio frequency. Sounds complicated, but it really is simple to use. Basically, you simply turn on the blutooth 'radio' on say your hand h

I'm in Siam Reap, Cambodia, the closest town to Angkor Wat. It's a lazy, easy paced place, that reminds me somewhat of Luang Prabang in Laos. As usual in such places, it's easy to lose days upon end in people watching, reading contemplation of ones n

This story starts a few months earlier in Chiang Rai, Northern Thailand, right on the Golden Triangle, an area enclosing Burma,Thailand and Laos. It's the name given to a largely lawless area of all three countries and the centre of the drug trade, p