Will Learning About American Photographer Chris Jordan Save Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's Soul?

People pass by a luxury shop on Waikiki's Kalakaua Avenue in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Photo © John Brown All Rights Reserved

Chris Jordan is an American photographer that took up photography after being a lawyer for ten years. You have probably seen his iconic images of American consumerism even if you didn't know his name.

Mr. Jordan was among ten photographers, including me, whose work appeared at Melkweg Galerie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands in conjunction with the 2008 Global Conference on Sustainability and Transparency.

In a September 26, 2006 interview that appeared on Jörg Colberg's blog Conscientious, Chris Jordan remarked,

"I don't have a good sense about whether my images are actually affecting anyone's behavior. I suspect that they are not in any direct way. It's a complex subject, because on one hand I want to be an advocate, but on the other hand I have to be realistic about my chances of changing anything."

He continues, "In Europe it is cool to be a down shifter, to buy used clothes and talk about sustainability on a household level….the social indicators of unhappiness such as suicide, anxiety, depression, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse are lower in Europe than they are here (America), and dropping while ours are rising."

I wrote in a previous post about child laborer Chantal Srey Mao's death, "As photojournalists, writers and publishers, our names are not important, but we hope we can illuminate issues and bring them to you so that we all may learn a bit more about the world around us."

After we all learn a bit move about the world around us (if we do), are we happy about what we discover?

There are lots of people doing great things around the world and that is a great discovery in itself. I'll be the first to admit that I could never approach the level of commitment and good deeds of many of the people I've learned about. Just have a look at some of the links posted on this blog and you will find literally hundreds of people who have probably questioned their own behavior and discovered new paths to self-fulfillment. Today these people are making differences in the areas of human rights, gender equality and the environment and don't seem too interested in telling the world about "their stuff".

So how about the rest of us "Average Joes" out here? Does having "stuff" make us happier or have we fallen into the trance Jordan himself admits he'd descended?

Take global warming for example. Chantal Srey Mao was working at a place in Cambodia where she was forced to breathe in heavy air polluted by constantly smoldering garbage that generates toxic byproducts, including methane, a global warming gas 23 times more potent than CO2.

According to the recent UK government-commissioned Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, "international efforts to combat climate change must prioritize the preservation of existing natural forests."

It's a well known fact Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's family has stripped the country's forests. Cambodia has lost over 30% of its primary tropical forest in just the last 6 years. It seems that Hun Sen's depth of denial is quite frightening regarding global warming and he doesn't care about the environment.

Chris Jordan says, "To escape the insane money-driven consumer matrix we have enslaved ourselves in, you don't have to be a saint or an altruist or even care about saving the environment at all. You can do it for the purely selfish reason that you want to save your own soul."

I'm not a soul saver but rather, have faith that people are responsible for saving their own souls should they choose to. For me and probably some of you it's a nice thought though.

I wonder if knowing about American photographer Chris Jordan could snap Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen out of his own Kleptocratic trance?


John Brown Photojournalist On LIGHTSTALKERS
My Mondo Library Photography
My Photoshelter Photography Archive Homepage

Photography Guest Of The Week Alessandro Vincenzi - Spain

Photo © Alessandro Vincenzi All Rights Reserved

Moldova: Waiting for Mom is the title of a photo story by Alessandro Vincenzi appearing on Gaia Photos that looks inside the lives of some of the roughly 400,000 Moldovan women living in Italy while in search of better opportunities for themselves and their families.

Born in Bologna, Italy in 1973, Alessandro entered professional photography quite late. After specializing in tropical medicine and earning a degree in biology at the University of Bologna, Alessandro joined Medecins Sans Forntieres (MSF), a humanitarian aid agency, in 2005.

During his free time on missions with MSF as a biologist, Alessandro took pictures of patients and other people in distress in various contexts and countries.

As the second prize winner of a photography contest in 2006, he attended a Toscana Photographic Workshop held by Antonin Kratochvil (VII Photo Agency). During that same year Alessandro won the National Prize of One Vision European Competition with “Looking Forward”.

At the beginning of 2008 he decided to leave MSF to become a full time professional photographer. Alessandro is based in Madrid, Spain and has been represented by PkPosse, an Italian based agency associated with Prospekt, since October 2008.

Click here to see a more of Alessandro Vincenzi's photography, and please have a look at Gaia Photos to see our continually updated new features page.

John Brown Photojournalist On LIGHTSTALKERS
My Mondo Library Photography
My Photoshelter Photography Archive Homepage
GAIA Photography and Photojournalism

Cambodia's Corrupt School System Extinguishes The Dreams Of A Nation's Children

A young boy who lives in a relocation community in Kampong Cham, Cambodia takes time out to look outside from his new home. He is among 250 people, who were displaced to this location from their former homes on the banks of the Mekong, River. The move was triggered by the construction of a large new hotel on the site of their former homes. In all, thirty-nine families made the move and each received 50 kilograms of rice and plastic sheeting to wrap up their homes from the new hotel's owner.

Photo © John Brown All Rights Reserved

During morning hours, Mr. Um Ero, usually headed off from the snack stand he owned to his duties as a public school teacher at Prince Sihanouk High School in Kampong Cham, Cambodia. His stand is near the high school so he didn't have to go far.

He also kept busy in the afternoons serving as vice-director of a now lifeless NGO, Khmer Ghvith Thmei Organization (KGTO), which was operating before the lid went down due to corruption. (Please see related story, Corruption Is Not A Crime In Cambodia). KGTO was operational thanks to funding issued by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Pact Cambodia's LAAR program.

His afternoon job consisted of dedicating himself to poverty reduction and fighting corruption. In fact, one of KGTO's principal areas of program emphasis included providing training and support for the Volunteer Youths for Development and Peace Network (VYDAPN).

Let us agree that advocating poverty alleviation and standing up to corruption while teaching youth about development and peace made Mr. Um Ero a role model in the eyes of those he mentored. His stature as a teacher further enhanced his status as a community leader. Furthermore, the young people knew KGTO had cooperated with rights-promotion organizations including the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) and the Center for Social Development (CSD), two organizations known in Cambodia for "telling it like it is." What better way was there to achieve focused moral clarity while developing a social consciousness than by studying Mr. Um Ero in action?

Nonetheless, there was a problem and it was the morning job. According to a report issued awhile back by the CSD, "Public education clearly stands out as the institution responsible for more than half of the total yearly amount spent on bribes by all households."

The survey continued, "Households frequently pay corrupt payments in their everyday contact with the education sector with 72% of all households reporting contact the previous year, and those 72% had a 33% likelihood of bribe conditional on contact."

What's happening here folks is teachers are shaking down kids and their families for money.

According to the report, the most commonly mentioned forms of corrupt practices paid by students to teachers are for:

1. "Enrollment and registration: corruption is paid when enrolling a child in school."

2. "Exams and grades: teachers ask for corrupt payment when students have tests or students pay to receive better results."

3. "Snacks or drinks during breaks or after school: Snacks and drinks are sold by teachers as a supplementary income. Parents feel pressured to give their children money to spend on this and fear the children will otherwise be discriminated against by the teacher."

4. "Extra private classes: payment or private education by the teachers covering the official curriculum after school hours."

These facts are a bit astonishing to visitors breezing through the country seemingly oblivious to the root causes of why this nation has been slow to rebuild. One day I decided to ask three Prince Sihanouk High School students if bribery existed at their school while visiting their home, "Have you ever been asked for money by a teacher at your school before the teacher would give you a test paper?" I asked the trio, "Yes" they all responded nodding their heads affirmatively. "Do you ever say no?" I shot back. "No, we're afraid we wouldn't pass our classes" a seventeen-year-old boy admitted.

In need of corroborating testimony that would satisfy my curiosity, I subsequently asked Mr. Um Ero, snack shop owner, teacher and corruption fighter, "Have you ever witnessed any teacher at Prince Sihanouk High School asking students to give them money in return for test papers?" "Yes", he said. "Have you ever asked a student for money?" "No never" he asserted.

When students are asked how they feel about this informal arrangement they seem resigned and point to teacher's low pay (about $50 USD per month) as the reason the shakedowns occur. It's as if they don't realize this systematic abuse is wrong, and instead, merely lump bribe payments with other costs of going to school such as buying books and school supplies.

This system starts long before high school however and poor primary school aged children become the first victims. Unable to fork over bribe money, they're forced to quit school (or never start) to begin their careers earlier than most. Professional opportunities available to 7-12 year olds include scavenging for recyclable material, book selling, beheading frogs, food selling, working in salt fields and tending to farm animals.

Back to Mr. Um Ero for a moment. Clearly, he sees himself as an honest man but in fact, he is intellectually dishonest. By afternoon, he advocated poverty reduction and mentored youth courtesy of US funds provided to him but his toleration of an extortion racket at Prince Sihanouk High School that perpetuates increasing Cambodia's poverty rate is totally void of any principled thoughts. After all, isn't this guy a "corruption fighter"? It seems "talking the talk" is a bit easier when one perceives America has your back than "walking the walk" when real poverty reduction is on the line. Um Ero knows his bread always tastes better when it's buttered on both sides.

In an article written by Jennifer Hile that appeared online in National Geographic News on September 12, 2003, Mom Thany, executive director of the Child Rights Foundation in Phnom Penh, Cambodia stated, "It's very important for nonprofit organizations to develop schools in Cambodia," she continued, "We are a very poor country, and there are not enough schools here."

While I agree with Mom Thany's assessment regarding the lack of schools, is relying on the nonprofit industry to develop the Kingdom's schools the best option for Cambodia's long term outlook? Shouldn't Prime Minister Hun Sen's government start spending 100% of its allocated education budget instead of under 80% as it has in years past (while spending over 100% of the allocated military budget.) Shouldn't the Cambodian government spend its own money before asking for outside help?

Admittedly, nonprofit organizations (NPO's) would probably plan to pay teachers at these newly developed schools a livable wage, perhaps even eliminating bribery in these schools. That in itself would reduce poverty and bring some kids back off the street and into the system. However, it would also lead to the development of a two tiered school system.

One system would exist where bribes are paid and a parallel one where they are not. In the "no-bribe" system, students would be "forced to study" to earn good grades and they would actually receive diplomas that benchmarked a level of knowledge. In the shakedown system diplomas are awarded based on whether or not a student played the game. What's between their ears may or may not be reflected by their sheepskin.

Hundreds of Cambodian college students pay $100 yearly kickers in addition to their annual tuition to be passed to the next class. At the end of their four-year course many of them know about as much as the first day they walked in. Now you know why competency levels are considered to be low in Cambodia by outside investors vs. countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Rather than relying on NPO's to develop education, the Cambodian government should partner with business to find lasting solutions. If big business has a growing demand for people who possess specific skill sets, they should help foot the bill for their education. Cambodia is a country that imports engineers from Japan to supervise such routine work as underground sewer pipe construction, so certainly the need is present.

When a large development firm such as the 7NG Company tells Hun Sen they need a properly functioning infrastructure to drain a few hundred fancy toilets each day, Hun Sen should offer that he could use some schools along with adequately salaried, honest teachers for the nation's children. THEY should be the ones cooperating to advance the educational agenda by eliminating corruption and the institutionalized school bribery business in Cambodia. I fail to see why nonprofit organizations that will eventually leave the country should be long-term stakeholders in this endeavor. Ten years ago the percentage of Cambodia's gross national product (GNP) that came from international aid stood at 14 percent and that number has worsened over the years. It's well past time to start moving the needle the other way.

I encourage those who support Mom Thany's thesis to visit neighboring Laos. Ten years ago The European Union (EU) funded the construction of several schools but today the schools exist as mere shells. Sure students and teachers occupy them but teachers are low paid and business/government funding is virtually non existent. Books and other school supplies are scarce and while the buildings still stand, Communist Laotian leaders failed to put a system in place that would sustain them as places to learn.

Hun Sen sets terms and conditions of doing business in Cambodia all the time. A few weeks ago for example, Cambo Six, a gambling operation Hun Sen ran throughout the country with Singaporean partners closed and the partners were sent packing. Further, Cambodian citizens have been banned from gambling casinos in the Kingdom. Apparently too many of Hun Sen's millionaire buddies lost big bucks so Hun Sen decided to save his friends from themselves (no I am not kidding).

So why doesn't Hun Sen start partnering with business, raising teachers salaries and punishing teachers who seek bribes if it's relatively easy to? That's simple. He has no desire to educate the underclass. Oh sure, he wants everyone to read at an eighth grade level so people can find out about "how much he has done for them", but he has no motivation to improve their critical thinking.

Further, if he eliminated bribery in schools, a large majority of the sons and daughters of corrupt officials and businessmen who willingly pay those bribes would fail to learn how to benefit from corruption themselves. Many of these students are already beginning to value the fact that they will always have money if they play by Hun Sen's rules.

And as for good old Mr. Um Ero? Hun Sen's got him right where he wants him; a snack shop owner who can talk all he wants about eliminating corruption in the afternoon, but because of his own mystifying intellectual duplicity fostered in the very system in which he now teaches, can't do a thing about it the next morning.

And today I'll leave you with a little quote:

“I write for those who cannot read me. Those from below, those who have waited all these centuries at history’s end of the line, who don't know how to read and don't have the means to do so." - Galeano

John Brown Photojournalist On LIGHTSTALKERS
My Mondo Library Photography
My Photoshelter Photography Archive Homepage

Photoshelter's Allen Murabayashi Tells Me Why Nobody Reads My Blog

Photo © John Brown All Rights Reserved

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The photo offers proof that I know a celebrity from the world of entertainment that has fun and enjoys parties and nightlife when I see one. Carabao anyone?

Photoshelter's Allen Murabayashi says I am probably already on my path to failure regarding this blog because nobody wants to read it, and no one is. He says there are two reasons for a blog:

1. A person has something so incredibly interesting and viral that people can’t stay away.


2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO).Allen says no one will ever care about this blog because I will never say something amazingly noteworthy. Moreover, I should write in a journal rather than post thoughts online. Ok, that's fair enough. Internet rankings and an examination of the stats back up that assessment. Although this blog's Alexa ranking has moved up 5,200,000 places in the past month or so, it's still mired in 4,806,417th place according to Technorati.com.

Furthermore, of the people who do visit, only 10% ever return. Clearly, very few people are interested in reading more of my brand of BS once they see it so Allen Murabayashi is right. Let's look at four topics people are staying away from.

1. Child laborer Chantal Srey Mao, 16, who was killed at Stung Meanchey Landfill in Phnom Penh, Cambodia a few months ago.

2. The rape and disembowelment of Lao Hmong women and children currently taking place in conjunction with an ethnic cleansing program being jointly conducted by the Lao and Vietnamese Armies in northern Laos.

3. A Cambodian woman stricken with breast cancer who faces death as a result of being denied access to a foreign funded NGO by the Cambodian government.

4. Sixty million people living in Southeast Asia's Mekong River Basin, some of whom will become victims of ecological damage while enduring human suffering due to hydroelectric dam projects.

Admittedly, these subjects are "incredibly uninteresting" to readers of this blog and that's backed by the fact that no comments were left regarding them. Allen is an intelligent man and he knows what he's talking about.

Ok. Ok. I get it! So what are more important subjects to YOU? Celebrities? Entertainment? Fashion? Film? Food? Football? Fun? Parties and Nightlife? Shopping? TV? Video? All of those words are among Technorati.com's "Top 100 Tags" relating to blogs.

The problem folks is those tags apply to people living inside the bubble of Western prosperity and some people just don't care about that bubble too much. It's not that I don't take notice of these pop culture topics, it's just that I want to diversify.

What does the tag "food" mean to those who have enough to eat vs. the 40% of the population in Cambodia that is malnourished? There is food for eating of course, but also food for thought.

How about "TV" and "video"? In a country where TV news is censored by the government but eighty percent of the people lack the electricity to turn a television on if they had one, that tag takes on new meaning.

In Galeano's words, "While society would draw and quarter us, disembowel us, cut us up into little pieces in order to fake an understanding of the human condition but in fact subdue us, what we really crave is to put the pieces together. We are what we do to change ourselves. We are daily involved in the struggle to reconcile the contradictions that bedevil us."

Therefore, Mr. Murabayashi, I'm going to continue to march along my path towards personal failure because the world's contradictions certainly bedevil me and "we are what we do to change ourselves", not our little blogs nobody is reading anyway.

John Brown Photojournalist On LIGHTSTALKERS

My Mondo Library Photography

My Photoshelter Photography Archive Homepage

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