absolutely alex’s adventures & times

Karma truly is a bitch.

Fresh after extorting $3 million in ransom money from the owners of the Saudi supertanker, Sirius Star, one of the Somali pirates involved in the nasty deed have reportedly drowned while running back to the lair from whence they came.

The boat carrying the drowned pirate and his associates capsized on the way home towards central Somalia. If the drowned pirate had not held on so tightly to the money, he might have lived to commit more heinous crimes. Guess the weight of the cash took him down. Three other pirates were reported to have lost their loot as the boat went down but escaped with their lives.

Some of the cash seems to have washed up onshore.

The group of high-seas robbers took the supertanker hostage in November, during a wave of high-profile piracy cases in the Gulf of Aden. The supertanker’s cargo was $100 million worth of oil when it was seized.

The international community is beefing up its defense against pirates, looking into how to cut down on the over 100 cases of piracy in the region in 2008 alone. In the meantime, this should serve a cautionary tale — crime doesn’t pay.

Perhaps all parents and parents-to-be should be made to sign a Hippocratic Oath-type of pledge and held accountable, so that fewer children would be victimized or harmed.

Shock and horror do not begin to express the feelings of revolt one gets from reading about the case of the Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter in a windowless underground cellar in the family-owned building, raped her and fathered seven children with her.

The most chilling part of this story is that Josef Fritzl managed to get away with it for 24 years and looked like he could have gotten away with it totally, had it not been for one of the children getting critically ill.

The woman, Elisabeth, was forced to live with three of her children in the narrow and low-ceilinged confines of the bunker, robbed of sunlight and contact with other human beings, with a television and radio as their windows to the outside world. 

The other three children were taken by Fritzl to live with his family in the real world.

If the story of the Fritzls sounds inexplicable, it is not unique. It is the third similar type of case in Austria. 

Natascha Kampusch, now 20 years old, was held in an underground cell for eight years before she escaped in 2006.

There was one other case of a couple in Vienna, who caged their mentally retarded daughter for years in a cellar.

How is it that people could stay kidnapped and abused for such long periods without anyone suspecting anything?

How does it reflect on the community in the town of Amstetten where the episode occurred, when Fritzl’s actions went about undetected for about a quarter of a century?

In a town where everyone was said to know everybody else’s name, how could it be that the neighbors stayed unaware?

What does it say about the folks if they were too self-involved to realize the heinous acts going on in their neighborhood? Or were they only too happy to look the other way, mind their own business and carry on with their own lives?

The country’s social services were recorded as having been to the Fritzl household 21 times when Elisabeth’s three children were adopted by Fritzl and his wife. Why did they not investigate the strange appearance of the children at the Fritzls’ doorstep further, when they knew of Elisabeth’s disappearance?

And how could Fritzl’s wife Rosemarie be totally ignorant the entire time? Didn’t the fact that Fritzl brought back three children in succession, claiming that Elisabeth had run away and left them to her parents, ring any alarm bells? Would it not have been noticeable how often Fritzl disappeared to the basement? Why did Rosemarie so readily believe her husband’s line that Elisabeth had run away to join some cult?

How were the seven children, with one who died soon after birth, delivered? Did Fritzl do it all by himself? 

There were other tenants in the building the family lived in. Eight flats were rented out. Did these people not hear or see anything at all, children crying or playing? Did they not wonder why the old man went so frequently to the basement?

Fritzl was supposed to have been extremely cautious, buying clothes, food and other supplies for his three prisoners in other towns so that he would not raise suspicions.

While he was trained as an electrical engineer, he installed a 300kg, 1m high and 2m wide steel door at the cellar to keep his victims locked in. Could he have had the strength and the ability to handle such a heavy door all by himself? He was also said to have knocked down some walls in the cellar to enlarge it when more children were born. Was it possible that nobody noticed? Were there accomplices who abetted him in his evil pursuits?

Fritzl went away on vacation to Thailand in 1998 for four weeks. Again, how did he stock up on what would be a substantial amount of food and supplies for the victims without being noticed by anyone?

At 73, Fritzl is near the end of his life and no amount of punishment brought down by the law would affect him for very much longer. 

Some people have suggested the death penalty for him. Austria though, does have that but to have him executed would have been too easy a way out for him anyway. The monster should be put away in an isolated, windowless cell to give him a taste of what life must have been like for his daughter and three grandchildren.

Meanwhile, his daughter Elisabeth and her children, will have to carry the horrors and the scars till the end of their days. Her eldest child is still gravely ill, possibly sent to the hospital too late for her undisclosed condition to be treated successfully. 

The two other kids, one at 18, and another aged five, will face a long and tough road towards getting over the trauma and the adjustments they would have to make to live in a strange new world.

“They have to develop a tolerance for daylight and also to develop a sense of spatial awareness,” Berthold Kepplinger, who heads the neuropsychiatric clinic in Amstetten where the family is being treated, said about the children.

“When the sunbeams struck his face, he squealed loudly,” the chief inspector of the regional police in Lower Austria Leopold Etz told the media, in a heart-rending reference to the five-year old boy.

Never having left the basement cellar, the children had initially thought they had gone up to heaven when they first got out, as their mother had told them that heaven was above where they lived. 

Besides getting used to other people, the children would also have to learn to speak, as their verbal skills were reportedly limited, although their mother had taught them the language.

One cannot but feel heartbroken for the ordeals of Elisabeth and her children, and the long road to normalcy they would have to take, if that was even possible.

In the meantime, the government and people of Austria have a lot of soul-searching to do as to how cases like this could happen right under their noses, and not just once.

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Another reason why the death penalty should be abolished, before it’s too late for the innocent to be exonerated.

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Maybe Singapore won’t feel so bad now about the escape of a suspected terrorist chief from the island nation’s detention center, right under the noses of authorities who pride themselves on sophisticated security systems and well-run, incorruptible security forces.

In late February, the Singapore government was forced to acknowledge the breakout of Mas Selamat bin Kastari, alleged by the government to be the leader of a terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. He has been accused of plotting to bomb the United States Embassy and several other targets in Singapore. He was also believed to have wanted to hijack a passenger jet and crash it into Singapore’s airport.

He is still at large, despite a massive manhunt and an Interpol alert.

Morocco has just reported a similar embarrassment. Nine Islamist prisoners convicted of terrorist offenses just dug their way out of one of the country’s jails.

“They used a tunnel which came out at the house of the director of the prison,” Moroccan professor Mohamed Darif told the BBC. “They must have had accomplices.”

The escaped prisoners were believed to have left a note protesting their innocence and the conditions of their imprisonment.

Like Singapore, Morocco had made fighting terrorism one of the country’s priorities and presented itself as an ally to Western countries in the war against Islamist extremists.

And just like the Southeast Asian nation, Morocco’s case is also a first.

Sophisticated and developed Singapore would loathe to be lumped with Morocco, but that is the unfortunate reality it would have to deal with from now on.

Perhaps those two nations should exchange notes on how not to lose high profile detainees. And commiserate.

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The genie has escaped out of the bottle and there is no forcing it back in.

New York governor Eliot Spitzer has been exposed as a client of a high-end prostitution ring that may have also have money-laundering activities. After staving off the inevitable for two days, he finally caved under immense public and political pressure to resign from the job he had only held for 14 months.

Once again, with his supportive wife Silda at his side, Spitzer emerged from the Upper East Side apartment he had been holing up in for the past two days, to announce his resignation and ask for forgiveness from the public in a short statement.

“From those to whom much is given, much is expected,” Spitzer said in a brief media appearance. “I have been given much: the love of my family, the faith and trust of the people of New York and the chance to lead this state. I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me. To every New Yorker, and to all those who believed in what I tried to stand for, I sincerely apologize.”

“Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I believe correctly, that people, regardless of their position or power, take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor.”

While critics are saying that his political life is essentially dead and buried, Spitzer seemed to sound a note of defiance, leaving open the possibility that this would not be the last we would hear of him.

“I go forward with the belief, as others have said, that as human beings, our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall,” he said, although he did suggest that he would not be in politics again, saying he wants to “serve the common good” “outside of politics”.

What a shame.

Here is a man with so much intelligence, energy and potential and he squandered it all, felled by the oldest of the deadly sins: lust. It was astonishingly stupid of him to throw away a high-flying career that had the potential to go so much further, at the same time humiliating and possibly, destroying his family, by engaging a prostitute young enough to be his daughter.

Prostitution might be a private issue but when a person who has built his reputation on fighting corruption, white-collar crime and even busting prostitution rings, Spitzer is inevitably held to a higher and tougher standard. He now potentially faces federal charges which could include violating the Mann Act, which criminalizes the transport of a person across state lines for the purpose of prostitution, and other charges for breaking banking laws through his payment for the prostitution services.

New information and pictures have emerged on the young woman who is at the center of 48-year old Spitzer’s political demise, a 22-year old woman who would be a witness in the federal case against the people charged with running the prostitution ring to which she belonged.

The woman, whose real name is Ashley Alexandra Dupré, may be young but was she really worth putting Spitzer’s family through the wringer and prematurely upending his political career? That is an issue a hopefully castigated Spitzer would now have the time to reflect upon, and perhaps, serve as a cautionary tale to other politicians.

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Yet another politician looks likely to be brought down by a sex scandal.

I am just sorry that poor Mrs Silda Spitzer had to endure the indignity of doing the “stand by your man” routine, after her husband New York governor Eliot Spitzer was caught for being a client in a high-class, high-cost prostitution ring that charges as much as $5,500 an hour. Spitzer was believed to have paid $4,300 for his, to go from NY to meet him in a hotel in Washington DC. All this is was recorded on a federal wiretap.

New York Times photo

Spitzer, known as “Mr Clean of Wall Street”, made a name for himself for being a fierce and relentless attorney general in New York persecuting high-profile cases against white-collar crime and Wall Street’s excesses. He brought down the likes of the Gambino mafia in New York, and Dick Grasso, the former Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, for receiving a bloated salary incongruent with the NYSE’s non-profit status.

Spitzer, who will now enter pop culture lexicon as “Client 9″, issued a public apology that had the networks abuzz but stopped short of saying he would resign from his job as the Empire State’s governor.

“Today, I want to briefly address a private matter. I have acted in a way that violated the obligations to my family and that violates my — or any — sense of right and wrong. I apologize first, and most importantly, to my family. I apologize to the public, to whom I promised better. I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas, the public good and doing what is best for the State of New York. But I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard that I expected of myself. I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family,” he said in his statement to the media, refusing to take questions.

Putting it into perspective, what Spitzer did was wrong. But the people he most wronged were his wife and three kids, not his constituents. It is their trust he betrayed, not the New York voters’. Technically, he does not have to resign, as demanded by his gleeful enemies, led by the Republican Governors Association. Ironically, Republican politicians Senator David Vitter and Larry Craig, who were also caught in sex stings, are still in Congress. So Spitzer’s political career may yet survive this debacle.

Defenders have already rose to speak for Spitzer. Alan M. Dershowitz, a prominent legal mind and Harvard Law School professor, pointed to the holier than thou attitude of Americans, by stating that if the same thing happened to a European politician, the incident would just elicit yawns.

But Dershowitz forgets that this is the US, not Europe. Voters here do take into account shenanigans such as a sex scandals and prostitution. Even if his constituents forgave and forgot, Spitzer is likely to face the nastier prospect of facing the federal charge of violating the Mann Act, which criminalizes the transportation of a person through state lines for the purpose of prostitution. It is a sticky situation that Spitzer might not find himself getting out of easily.

In addition Spitzer, who is a rising Democratic party star with some believing he would one day be a serious presidential candidate contender, must be held to the higher standards that he himself set when he was the legendary crime-fighting and corruption-busting NY attorney general.

In 2004, Spitzer was a team of investigators which busted an escort service in New York City. That yielded the arrest of 18 people on charges of promoting prostitution and related charges. And Spitzer was captured on the record for railing against prostitution rings. It is disappointing that his hypocrisy has been exposed in such a humiliating manner for his family. Are there no ethical politicians out there anymore?

The Spitzer scandal has further ramifications beyond New York, to the presidential race.

Spitzer is known as a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter. Expect to see people pressuring Clinton to denounce him very soon. Interestingly, the start of the stumble in Clinton’s campaign could also be traced back to Spitzer, who had mooted the idea of issuing drivers’ license to illegal immigrants in NY state. Clinton tripped up when confronted during an early Democratic debate on whether she supported it. Though she was known to have backed Spitzer’s idea, her vacillating answer was seen as one of her first of her missteps in the race. Clinton might just lose this superdelegate.

At this juncture when things are going downhill at a faster pace than the Bush administration can take a breather and when it needs the support of Congress to remain in Iraq more than ever, why did it stupidly allow the State Department to grant immunity to the Blackwater security personnel in the case under investigation? Have the Bush administration and the State Department lost their minds? Or are they just so arrogant that they just don’t give a damn?

It’s a mistake so glaring that other government officials are even calling it a misstep, or have said it would hinder or compromise investigations by the FBI. Some are even incredulous that the State Department had the temerity to grant the immunity. Perhaps I was sleeping during my government classes, but since when did the State Department have the right to grant immunity when cases are under investigation? Isn’t that the Justice Department’s duty?

Pardon me, I forgot that obstruction of justice, corruption and non-accountability are the modus operandi of this administration. It is so above the law that it can hand out immunity to its cronies any time, and get away with it. By now, we should have been used to tactics like pardon and immunity being trademarks of this administration to cover up for any type of wrongdoing.

Perhaps they are too busy congratulating themselves on doing a heck of a job and have totally forgotten to think about the consequences of granting immunity to thuggish behaviour that could have caused the death of 17 innocent Iraqi civilians. Or maybe they do know deep down – even if they aren’t willing to admit it to themselves – that the Iraq war is lost for good, so who cares about winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi civilians anyway?

It’s just a shame that they’re way too stupid and short-sighted to realize that they’re making things even worse than it is, especially when the issue at hand involved defenseless civilians being killed. Wake up! Just wait for the outrage and retaliation that will erupt from the Iraqi side at the news of the immunity. The troops over there will have to pay the price, with their lives.

That brings me to the next question – why are these contractors, who are getting a handsome salary for their “work”, granted immunity and can’t be held accountable, while our troops, who likewise risk their lives and are not paid anywhere near the contractors, are not protected the same way? I’m not suggesting that crimes ought to go unpunished or swept under the carpet. I am just curious about the double standards here, especially the hypocrisy, when the line is always that we support the troops.

Giving immunity to the likes of the Blackwater hired guns will just perpetuate the arrogance that they have not failed to display. It will make them think they’re above the law and allow them to carry on with their trigger happy ways.

It’s pretty obvious that the State Department doesn’t want investigators to get to the bottom of this incident. Or it’s payback time to Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, who has given tens of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party.

Does shame really work as a deterrent?

Perhaps in Asian societies, it would both be a deterrent, and a negative incentive, to behave. Or at least not to get caught.

At least that’s the thinking of the new Thai acting chief of the Crime Suppression Unit in Bangkok.

In an acknowledgment that the police forces need policing themselves, the chief has introduced an element of shame and pop culture to the officers who turn up late at work or park in the wrong places. He’s issuing pink Hello Kitty armbands, adorned with hearts, to errant officers.

AP Photo

Hello Kitty is a worldwide phenomenon with children, especially girls. Known as the cartoon cat that has no mouth but allows fans to project all sorts of emotions onto it, it seems like a strangely inappropriate but also logical cartoon character to pick for shaming errant Thai male officers.

“This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor,” the acting police chief told the International Herald Tribune. “Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It’s not something macho police officers want covering their biceps.”

True. But an earlier incarnation of the same idea — singling out offenders with an armband, previously in tartan fabric — didn’t work. Offenders actually took the armbands home as souvenirs.

Not that they won’t do the same with the pink Hello Kitty ones. Police officers’ daughters could be enamored with it. After all, Hello Kitty is a huge hit with young girls.

Tourists who might not be aware of the armbands’ implications, might also find the idea too cute and even start asking to take photos with the officers. It’s not too far-fetched. Last year, when the Thai military overthrew former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a coup, soldiers on the streets of Bangkok were posing for photos with tourists.

Going back to whether shame is an effective deterrent, it might work for a short while. But as the practice becomes the norm eventually, it might lose its sting.

The Thai police ought to think of a combination of sticks and carrots, not just sticks.

It is well and good to shame offenders, but more effective would be rewarding them for good behavior.

Why not have special mentions of good officers? Or reward them with financial incentives? These are probably more likely to motivate people to better behavior, especially cash, in a developing country where the members of the police force are unlikely to make very much.

Positive reinforcements would be a much better way to change behavior and lift the morale of all those involved, spurring them on to good practices.

It’s time to cut the paternalistic attitude. Treat the officers like the adults that they are, and stop using guilt and shaming tactics. If they were treated with the right respect, and incentivized to work hard and follow the rules, it would be a much better thing for the Thai police force, and Thailand, as a whole.

Deposed Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is mad and he is fighting back.

And he will soon be making a bold, even risky, move.

Thaksin said he would go back to Thailand to fight a case that the military government, which ousted him in a coup last September, will soon be filing against him. The government has charged Thaksin and his wife for their involvement in buying land from the central bank. Bloomberg reports that the specific charge involves the violation of an anti-corruption law that bans a spouse from entering into contracts with government departments under their spouse’s direct supervision. Their case involved the alleged purchase in 2003 of land from the central bank’s Financial Institutional Development Fund for 772 million baht ($22.4 million) by Thaksin’s wife, it adds.

Thaksin has been living in exile London since his ouster. But he has been keeping a high profile, from attempting to buy a UK football club, to addressing his supporters in Thailand last week through a video-conference link, when he lashed out against the military government. His latest action was prompted by the freezing of around $1.5 billion of his assets by the Thai government.

Thaksin still has considerable popular support, especially from Thais in rural areas. Many had benefited from the populist measures that he enacted during his time in government, such as offering micro credit plans to the poor to start businesses.

Tens of thousands had recently braved possible arrests and crackdown by the ruling military junta by turning up at rallies decrying the government’s action against the political party Thai Rak Thai, which is led by Thaksin. A Thai court had ordered that Thai Rak Thai be dissolved for election law violations and barred its leadership of 111 people, including Thaksin, from public office for five years.

The military government had said that they would be willing to negotiate with Thaksin about his assets, with an eye shrewdly on appeasing the large numbers of supporters the deposed leader still commands.

Thaksin’s return to Thailand to face trial could prove a two-edged sword. On the one hand, there is a strong possibility of his being detained, with all his and his family’s assets frozen and being powerless to leave the country.

However, there is also a likelihood of Thaksin and his advisers recognizing the still considerable support he has playing to his favor. Don’t be surprised if they are making a calculated move to rally more people to him with his return, and even possibly stage a comeback.

Thaksin might have promised to quit politics and asked the military to “let me live peacefully, like someone with dignity.” But provoked to fight, and with public sentiment souring considerably against the military junta in recent weeks, he might just be tempted to capitalize on it.

It had to happen sooner or later, and for China, it’s finally waking up to the ugly realities of the danger of its production methods, especially in the area of food and medication.

The past few months have exposed an embarrassing but chilling series of food and product safety neglect by China’s manufacturers. First there was the pet food recall in the US, when those made in China were found to contain melamine, and more recently, toothpaste that contained harmful substances was found in the US and a few Latin American countries.

The international headlines screaming the dangers of these products from China and their harm to the buying public’s health had finally shamed the Chinese government into doing something about its food and drug safety regulations as the authorities announced plans to introduce nationwide inspections.

Ambitions plans were also declared by the Chinese authorities, such as the establishment of a new food and drug safety guarantee system. It promised to have new controls on food and drug imports and exports and increase random testing on medicines by 2010. And the government planned to conduct safety checks on a large majority of food makers while its regulators would crack down on the sale of counterfeit drugs and medical devices.

It all sounds good on paper but with pervasive corruption and the vastness of China being the reality, it remains to be seen if the enforcement would be rigorous enough.

Sadly, China’s society is gripped by a relentless materialistic mentality. With communism’s erosion and the absence of religion as a guiding force, mammonism is more often than not the people’s inspiration.

Officials can be easily bought over with bribes, especially those outside of big cities, while greedy businessmen disregard health risks and have no qualms about unethical business practices and cutting corners to save costs and make a quick buck. Workers hired on the cheap are often too ignorant, afraid or weak to know better or resist when pressed into complicity and wrong-doing.

But more distressingly, deep down the Chinese authorities’ attitude had hardly changed either.

Its first reaction to any accusations to the harm of its food or medical exports, as always, is to just plain deny anything.

It’s reminiscent of how it mishandled the SARS epidemic, which spread a lot further and infected more than it should have, as China kept mum and buried its head in the sand, pretending nothing is going on and refusing to issue warnings to contain the spread.

The Chinese authorities still haven’t learnt its lessons very well, as seen in its handling of bird flu, but constant international pressure is making it rethink its strategy a little more.

If there is one tactic that the Chinese psyche would respond to, it would most likely be shame.

Naming and shaming, and bringing to light the wrongdoings of its manufacturers, have more often than not succeeded in making the Chinese authorities take action.

Unfortunately, the shady practices and unscrupulous businessmen have been around for ages, and their activities are only recently surfacing as China goes international with its products.

For years, it has been lax about goods for domestic consumption. There have been various cases of inferior or downright dangerous materials being included in food and medication produced in China. One famous case was the sale of infant formula that was watered down and substituted with bogus materials, which led to the deaths, organ damage and malnourishment of a large amount of babies in China. That case caused anguish and provoked condemnation in the country but it hasn’t made the authorities do much.

Another case involved slimming pills, which contained a variant of fenfluramine, an appetite suppressant that had been banned in the US for damaging heart valves. The pills led to deaths and health problems to its users, mostly women. Those pills were exported to Singapore and caused a death there too, along with health complication in others. One of the victims took the case to court in Singapore, but only the Singaporean importer of the pills was punished.

With China’s growing economic might and as its products find their way to more countries, more needs to be done by its authorities to ensure that stringent standards and proper procedures are followed by its manufacturers. It will definitely be a tough and expensive job for the Chinese authorities as its regulatory system is weak away from the center, and local officials are often fiefs that do not strictly follow central orders.

But if it is serious about growing its economic power, maintaining credibility with importers of other countries and ensuring that a “Made in China” label does not become equated with inferior or dangerous goods, China will have no other choice but to get tough and crack down on errant manufacturers and corrupt officials. It will have to do it soon too, before the mistrust of Chinese products spreads even more and clips its fast-growing sector of economic growth.