Newley Purnell

In my most recent Gridskipper post, I take a look at Karr’s bust and the Thai tourism industry.

Wow. Yesterday was quite a day here in Bangkok, with Police arresting suspected JonBenet Ramsey killer John Mark Karr. Initial reports suggested that he was proclaiming his innocence, but then he ultimately confessed to the crime. But wait — could he be lying?

2Bangkok.com has a good round-up of news stories, many of which paint Bangkok (understandably) in a negative light. And here’s an interesting look at Karr’s life in Thailand.

A brief alert for all newley.com readers who’re into fantasy football (soccer). My kid brother Colin has put together a Yahoo English Premier League group; go here to sign up. It’s free. Email me (newley [at] gmail.com) for the group name and password. Lineups must be submitted by 11:00 a.m. GMT on Saturday, August 19 (that’s 6 a.m. EST in the US). FC Newley is in. It will be scintillating fun, I promise.

UPDATE 2: Is Karr falsely claiming to to be the killer?

UPDATE: Thai police say he’s confessed.

CNN:

A suspect was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday “for the December 26, 1996, murder of JonBenet Ramsey,” the district attorney in Boulder, Colorado, said Wednesday.

A law enforcement source identified the suspect as 41-year-old John Mark Karr, a one-time schoolteacher and American citizen who has lived in Conyers, Georgia.

It is the first arrest in the decade-long investigation of the 6-year-old beauty pageant contestant’s slaying. The case was the subject of suspicion and speculation and provided years of fodder for the news networks and the tabloids.

Karr had been communicating with someone in Boulder and that online communications played a key role in leading authorities to him, law enforcement sources said.

Karr has confessed to some elements of the crime and is under investigation for an unrelated sex crime, the sources told CNN.

Reuters provides more info on the suspect:

BANGKOK - Thai police said on Thursday they had arrested an American in connection with the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, a child beauty queen whose grisly death triggered a U.S. media frenzy.

They did not name the man, identified in U.S. media as primary school teacher John Mark Karr, 41, but said he was arrested in conjunction with FBI officers after being followed for three weeks as he sought a job teaching English in Bangkok.

“We arrested him yesterday at an apartment not far from my office after having followed him for 21 days,” immigration police chief Lieutenant General Suwat Tumroungsiskul told Reuters.

“During the arrest, we were accompanied by American officers. He has been in and out of Thailand a couple of times and the arrest warrant was issued just a couple of days ago.”

Writing in the New Yorker, investigative journalist Sy Hersh — a guy who’s broken a story or two in his time — says that the US helped plan Israel’s war against Hezbollah, and that the Israeli air campaign amounts to a dry run for a US attack on Iran’s underground nuclear installations.

Hmm. Growing instability in the Middle East with an undercurrent of American influence. Is it me or does that ring a bell?

First Sly Stallone sets his sights on Bangkok, and now Nicholas Cage — the man who famously named his son Kal-el, after Superman’s birth name — is up in Krungthep.

Seems Nick is here filming a re-make of the 1999 flick “Bangkok Dangerous.” Apparently the film will be called “Time to Kill” (not to be confused with the 1996 crapfest “A Time to Kill”).

According to the Wikipedia page for the new movie:

The original film’s main character is a deaf-mute whose disability makes him a fearless, unflinching gunman. That character will be changed in the remake.

“We’d like to keep him the same, but we understand that from a marketing point of view Nic needs to have some lines,” Oxide was quoted as saying in the International Herald Tribune. “So what we’re going to do is transform his girlfriend instead into a deaf-mute. This switch will maintain the drama of communication between the two main characters.”

Cage’s character’s girlfriend will be portrayed by Hong Kong actress Charlie Yeung, who is preparing for her role by learning Thai dance and sign language.

In addition, Cage’s character will have a local “errand boy” with whom he develops a bond. That role will be portrayed by Thai film and television actor Chakrit Yamnam.

Indeed, I can confirm that filming occurred Sunday evening on Soi Cowboy, one of the Big Mango’s most popular red light districts. I wasn’t there, but a pal was picked to be an extra, a gig which required him to sit in a girl bar from 4 p.m. until 4 a.m.

While I admit that I don’t read much about basketball generally or the NBA specifically, this just might be the most amusing — and incisive — thing I’ve ever read about the sport.

And speaking of dogs, let’s just be thankful that there’re no devious little simians in Bangkok to tease hapless soi pooches.

I love the street dogs in Bangkok. (Everyone here calls them “soi dogs,” as “soi” is the Thai word for “alley.”)

The canines here and scrappy and they’ve got tons of attitude. They’re usually friendly, and since Thai people are Buddhists and they generally don’t believe in hurting living things, the stray pooches are often in pretty decent shape. Stray dogs often stick to regular territories — their beats, if you will — and the folks who live nearby seem to pitch in and feed them. The other day I saw one of my neighbors, a middle-aged lady, scamper across four busy lanes of traffic to give a local soi dog a nice big bag of food. He was delighted.

(This is not to say, of course, that all stray dogs in Bangkok are looked after properly — lots aren’t, but my experience is that compared to canines I’ve seen in developing countries like Ecuador or Cambodia, the dogs in Thailand have got it pretty good.)

Anyway, given that I love Thai soi dogs, you can imagine my surprise upon discovering that they’ve got their own blog — authored by a real, live Thai soi dog, Cassanova. Seriously.

Fidel Castro, as we all know by now, appears to be circling the drain. In response, Lisa Wixon gives us “Cuba for Dummies,” an excellent WaPo column. It begins:

I lived in Havana for nearly a year without permission from the United States. I talked to Cubans and found out what they had to say. Nothing bad happened to me. I took notes.

Be sure to check it out.

(Via.)

The New York Times’s Noam Cohen has an interesting story about efforts to advance a simplified version of English to be used around the world — what some are calling “globish.”

When its president proposed last month to ban English words like “helicopter,” “chat” and “pizza,” Iran became the latest country to try to fight the spread of English as a de facto global language.

But with interest in English around the world growing stronger, not weaker — stoked by American cultural influences and advertising, the increasing numbers of young people in developing countries and the spread of the Internet, among other factors — there are some linguists and others who say: why fight it? Instead, the argument goes, English, particularly the simpler form of the language used by most nonnative speakers, should be embraced.

Esperanto teachers world-wide must be totally bummed out by this turn of events.

There’s a noodle stand outside my front door. I mean, really outside my front door.

As you can see in this image, when I come bounding downstairs, I’m practically on top of these poor folks. Not only am I 6′3″, but the door’s elevated well above the alley, so much so that there’s a cinder block I use as a step before landing on the street. I wish I could capture the looks on some of these patrons’ faces when they glance up from their bowls of noodles and see an enormous farang looming about ten feet above them. It seems that when I’m not amusing Thais, I’m frightening them.

(By the way, the owner of the stand, Muay, is delightful. And she turns out some seriously good food.)

The AP’s Audra Ang reports that foreign English teachers in China are increasingly encountering occupational hazards:

It’s a new twist on globalization: For decades, Chinese made their way to the West, often illegally, to end up doing dangerous, low-paying jobs in sweatshop conditions. Now some foreigners drawn by China’s growth and hunger for English lessons are landing in the schoolhouse version of the sweatshop.
…
As China opens up to the world, public and private English-language schools are proliferating. While most treat their foreign teachers decently, and wages can run to $1,000 plus board, lodging and even airfare home, complaints about bad experiences in fly-by-night operations are on the rise. The British Embassy in Beijing warns on its Web site about breaches of contracts, unpaid wages and broken promises. The U.S. Embassy says complaints have increased eightfold since 2004 to two a week on average.

(Via.)

Hide the women and children.

Bangkok bad guys: run for the hills.

Rambo is coming to the Land of Smiles.

Filming for “Rambo IV” starts October 1st in Bangkok, baby. Who will (a now nearly geriatric) Sly Stallone be hunting down and killing like the vile pigs they are? None other than the Burmese military junta! This EW story is full of gems. Stallone, in making this new film, had to figure out who to slaughter (apparently an idea hatched in 2002, in which Sly would head to Afghanistan to take out Osama Bin Laden was scuttled):

‘You know, it’s hard,” says the 60-year-old star. ”Politics have changed so much. Who do we fight? The Finns? You can’t do that. The Dutch? That’s not gonna work. Wooden shoes are not gonna look cool.’

Sly Stallone: stand up comedian! He’ll be here all week, folks. Be sure to tip your waitresses.

Stallone may be joking, but finding Rambo a fresh foe was actually a serious problem for the Nu Image/ Millennium Films production. After ruling out the Mideast, Africa, and Korea, the actor finally hit on a solution. ”I called Soldier of Fortune magazine and said, ‘What is the most critical man-doing-inhumanity-to-man situation right now in the world? Where is it?”’ The answer was Burma.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I’m jonesing for information on international human rights crises, my resource of choice is Soldier of Fotune magazine. Those pantywaists at Amesty International? Lilly-livered pinko eggheads, the whole lot!

So, the script that emerged — a ”first draft” Stallone has written with Art Monterastelli (The Hunted) — finds Rambo living a monastic lifestyle in Bangkok and salvaging old PT boats and tanks for scrap metal. (”It’s like he’s stripping himself down,” says the actor, pensively. ”That old piece of military equipment.”) When a group of volunteers bringing supplies into Burma disappears, a relative of one of the missing missionaries begs Rambo to find them. He heads off with a team of young guns, a plot point required by the financiers, who wanted to hedge against Rambo’s possible mono-generational appeal.

When I walk through the streets of Bangkok, I am struck by two things: 1) the countless retired Green Berets I see living monastic lifestyles, and 2) the preponderance of old PT boats and tanks lying around — you can’t swing a dead cat on Sukhumvit road without hitting discarded military hardware!

I cannot wait to see this movie.

(Via.)

I am very conspicuous in Thailand. I’m very tall. I’m white. And I constantly do silly farang (foreigner) things — like sit on the ground and eat my lunch.

A captured this excellent 30-second video of me today at an outdoor market about 500 meters from my apartment. (Click on the image above or go here to watch it.) I’d bought some chicken with roti and decided to sit on the ground to consume my snack. Unfortunately for me, a gaggle of Thai ladies saw me do this and were consumed with laughter — why would I sit on the dirty street when there were tables nearby? They found this to be hilarious. They guffawed and pointed at me, which I quite enjoyed. Then, with characteristic courtesy, they directed me to a table to sit down.

Indeed, making a fool of myself in Thailand is something of an inadvertent past time. Longtime newley.com readers will recall that I did this for the first time way back in 2001. And I wrote about it in an essay called “Soup to Nuts.”