Sounding on Southeast Asia for February 23, 2010

• Do a search for Mekong and Naga lately – lots of news.  Here’s a review in the Nation (Thailand) of a new book relating the Mekong and the Naga.  Good stuff, want to read.
• I’ve got a couple of students who are writing a grant to go work and study with the awesome group in Cambodia Tiny Toones.  Tiny Toones is an organization founded by Cambodian Deportee K.K., who was one of those young Khmer Americans forcibly deported from the US (usually the only home and dominant culture they’ve ever known) because he never applied for citizenship and got into trouble with the law.  Sounds like he had a pretty rough life, but he’s making a seriously positive difference in Phnom Penh, where he teaches breakdancing, life skills, and literacy to street children.  Here are a couple of mass-media articles about the group. Time Magazine | NYT

• The Irrawaddy writes an excellent piece on the rising dangers for migrant workers from Burma, Laos, and Cambodia in Thailand. Go. Read.
• Should we be surprised that Americans aren’t following the Khmer Rouge Tribunal?  While the Camblogosphere is all a-twitter over complaints about the meaning of the word ‘yuon,’ (យន) and Preah Vihear (ព្រះ​វិហារ), and Americans are obsessing over the return of Lost and the Olympics (is NBC going to sue me now?) a trial is happening in Cambodia that puts both of these countries’ histories in perspective and relationship. Not that we care, apparently. Elena Lesley has a few pieces in Granta about this.
• Hey America – we dropped more tonnage of explosives on Cambodia than we dropped during all of WW II. Stop forgetting that.

And oh yes, this is what this web site sounds like if it were music.