Barcelona- I’m certainly no film critic, but I came away from the star studded Vice starring Welsh-born Christian Bale as Wyoming’s Richard ‘Dick’ Bruce Cheney, ruthless veteran Republican operator and titan of industry with several thoughts. Firstly as someone who…
Category: Thailand
The Mystery of Detention Site Green
Chiang Mai- Arriving in Thailand after a couple of months working in Iraq and Syria, I had what might seem like a fairly simple idea: to precisely locate the site of the 2002 CIA ‘black site’ where Abu Zubaydah was…
A Decade of War and Peace
Barcelona- Partly out of boredom and partly out of the itch to simply create something new out of old, I threw together this photo montage over the weekend. In this era of digital photography where one shoots thousands of frames…
Between Guantánamo and Hellfire
New York- I have the lead story in today’s edition of Asia Times Online about the hearing of KSM and Khallad at Guantánamo on Saturday, the killing of Fahd-al Quso in southern Yemen (or South Yemen if you prefer) by…
The Lost World
Ao Nang- Did an elephant trek here today. Went for a ride atop the local megafauna Elephas maximus. These beasts of burden now take tourists around instead of logging. The other day one of their cousins, a 22 year old…
Terrorism in Thailand-New Article
Ao Nang- I have a new article in this week’s edition of Jamestown’s Terrorism Monitor about the recent, somewhat mysterious grenade explosions following a recent by-election for a parliamentary seat in Bangkok. The drama in BKK isn’t quite keeping all…
Tropic Thunder
Ao Nang- I had planned to head out to the island Ko Phi Phi Don today when a nearly 6ft tall Nordic girl interrupted my conversation with the woman about to vend me a ferry ticket yesterday warning of particularly…
Cast Away…
Ao Nang- My time here in Krabi Province has been closer to Cast Away than The Beach, two movies that hit theaters a decade ago about being stranded on beaches. Rather than a sultry latin Virginie Ledoyen (né Fernandez) sauntering…
On the Banana Pancake Trail
Bangkok- My last full day in the city was a fairly quiet one. I went out for the day and my Blackberry battery died and kept to myself by getting a rigorous Thai massage trying to exorcise the demons of…
“Little Arabia” and the “Planes” Operation
Bangkok- I took a very interesting meander through Bangkok’s bustling “Little Arabia” cluster today in more of my seemingly never ending investigation into the road to 9/11 and more specifically following in the footsteps of the so-called San Diego cell…