Eye infections are itchy.

A massive windstorm hit Bangkok last week… I was standing by the bus stop waiting to go home when I saw this huge dark cloud moving across the sky. On one side was clear blue skies and the other was this menacing black cloud. I was in a trance watching this thing move across the sky. At the same time, there were planes flying into the cloud, probably making their way to the airport to northern parts of Thailand. I wonder if they made it to their destinations? As the cloud passed above my head, I could here this rumbling. Suddenly down the road was this huge dust storm moving towards me. All I had between me and this dust cloud was a telephone pole. 

I had a difficult time standing up and trying to see when my bus would arrive. After being pelted with rocks, pebbles, plastic bags, and sand, I was finally able to get on a bus. But the storm was so strong that dust and stuff was getting inside the bus. Buses in BKK either are air-conditioned or have no windows. I was in one that had no windows… lucky me!  After putting on my glasses that shielded my eyes from all the sand and dust, I could really get a good look at the storm. Arriving at my stop, basically anything that wasn't nailed down was torn away and littered the roads. The scaffolding on the top-left of the above picture was suppose to have a banner but it was ripped to shreds. You can see how strong the wind was by the way the palm trees are being bent.

I've been nursing a slight eye infection from this storm and all the dust that was thrown around.  

For those of you politically minded:

Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps

By Naomi Wolf
Source: http://www.alternet.org/story/51150/

Editor's note: This is adapted from Wolf's forthcoming book "The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot."

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down — the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy, but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated in the United States by the Bush administration.

Read the whole article at: http://www.alternet.org/story/51150/