Since I know that everybody will want to buy my new book for Christmas I should probably point out why I did not list every Amazon site. The book is available at Amazon UK, Amazon Canada, Amazon North Korea, of course, but I would actually prefer it if everybody could buy it from a single version of Amazon. Or from another site. It seems that Amazon has found a clever way to avoid paying people what is rightfully owed.
If you sell a book on Amazon and live outside of the United States, as many of us do, Amazon will only pay you after you reach US$100 in sales. After all of their fees and taxes, of course. $100 does not seem insurmountable but there is a catch. Amazon divides each national website. If you sell enough to make $99 at each of their 12 sites they do not pay you $1188. They pay you absolutely nothing. If you make $100 at one site and $99 at the other 11 they do not pay $1189. They only pay the $100.
I seem to be more populat at Amazon US and Amazon UK. I make money from those sites but nothing from the others. I have sold a lot of copies from Amazon Germany but not $100 worth, so I might not see that money for years, if ever. I have currently sold one copy from Amazon Mexico. I will never see those 98 cents. Most sales are from Amazon US, so it makes the most sense to only advertise that site.
So if you are one of the five people who are thinking about buying this thing from Amazon, all I ask is that you use amazon.com.
As long as I am spamming my own blog I might as well remind everybody about the first book. It is still available. What better way to say Happy Christmas to loved ones than to give them a book by somebody who does not celebrate Christmas.
Barnes and Noble
Amazon
Kobo
Sony
iTunes
Bookworld
distributor
21 December 2013
20 December 2013
Fortnight in the Philippines
So it turns out my blog post about the Philippines was long enough to be a book. It is a bit of a short book but a book nonetheless.
It was such a unique experience that writing about it was both very easy and a bit of a challenge. There is so much to say about what happened, what we did, the ongoing situation. I could have made an epic that rivaled War and Peace. In length. Not so much in artistic value. But who has time to write such a thing. And, frankly, who would ever read it.
It is currently available in a variety of digital formats. Print versions will likely take a while. I am still trying to get Letters to Friends in paperback. That one is flying off the shelves like a zeppelin. This one might have to wait.
Kindle
A bunch of different formats
Barnes and Noble, Sony, Apple are all coming soon.
15 December 2013
Tagalong Writing
I started writing about my time in the Philippines. I’ve yet to finish. I cannot say what will happen with it whenever I am finally finished. It is already too long to be a blog post. But I doubt it will ever be long enough to be a book.
I suppose I could add more to it to make a book length but that would take some time and I have no real desire to do such a thing. My current plan is to write whatever comes out and decide what to do with it later.
Stay tuned. Maybe there will be an epic multipart post in the coming weeks.
Update: Nevermind.
I suppose I could add more to it to make a book length but that would take some time and I have no real desire to do such a thing. My current plan is to write whatever comes out and decide what to do with it later.
Stay tuned. Maybe there will be an epic multipart post in the coming weeks.
Update: Nevermind.
06 December 2013
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was internationally known as a peace activist. The world will remember him as the first black RSA president. When I was a child he was known as a hero by blacks and a criminal by whites. He helped found Umkhonto we Sizwe, which was a terrorist organisation by anybody’s definition. Mandela freely admitted to the treason and sabotage for which he was imprisoned. MK killed countless civilians in bombings and guerrilla attacks. Their victims were black, white and everything in between. I vividly remember their attack at Durban’s Golden Mile just after my seventh birthday, although I did not know any of the people killed or injured. I do not think any 7-year-old should have to deal with the racial injustice of apartheid but I do not think any 7-year-old should have to know about terrorism either. Mandela has since acknowledged that he and MK violated human rights.
People who want to deify Mandela tend to whitewash his early terrorist activities but I think it is important to know where he came from in order to understand where he went. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To the radical blacks he was helping to free them from oppression. And there was serious oppression under apartheid. It was not simply segregation and inequality. Blacks were treated as common criminals simply for being born black.
But killing people who have nothing to do with your inequality has nothing to do with freedom. Killing blacks to free blacks from oppression simply makes no sense. There were a lot of whites who campaigned against apartheid. Whites were subject to banning just as easily as blacks. It was far easier to be white but most whites had no control of the government at the time, just as most blacks have no control today. Then and now it was a very small group of people who wielded the most power.
Fortunately for everybody, Mandela mellowed out during his years in prison. He gradually evolved from advocating radical urban warfare to a more moderate approach. By the time he was released he sounded less like Malcolm X and more like Gandhi. I never would have voted for the ANC just after my seventh birthday, were that possible. But I campaigned for them just before my fifteenth. I did not vote for obvious reasons. We were all pretty excited when they won and Mandela became president. I would doubt that I knew anybody who had a problem with it. We were glad that South Afrika had finally become South Africa again. Mostly we were happy that apartheid was truly dead.
The reason Nelson Mandela is so well known throughout the world and we are all talking about him now is not because of anything he did in office. His presidency was not very noteworthy save for being the first democratically elected president. He became famous for being in prison and stayed famous for what he did after he left office. He did more for human rights than all the other former South African presidents combined. Though in retrospect that does not say much.
I think Mandela was a good president. He did what he could to unite the races. No minor feat at the time. And no one can deny that we all get along much better than before he was president. There are certainly fewer necklacings. His biggest mistake was ignoring AIDS, as his predecessors and successors have done.
But I still think de Klerk was a braver president. It is much harder to end an entrenched corrupt system than to start a new one.
Mandela did two great things as president. One was to force reconciliation down our throats. Weather we liked it or not. There were more than a few people who wanted to kill all whites. Or at least kick them out of the country. Mandela knew that such a thing would destroy the economy permanently. No country outside of Africa would ever trade with us if we were so hostile to such a large minority of our own citizens. Especially when they are white people. You can disenfranchise whatever minority group you want but if they are white then you lose all support from Europe, North America, Australia, Japan. Trading only with African countries is a horrible fiscal model.
Mandela was willing to trade with absolutely anybody, regardless of traditional allies and enemies. He did not care if you were communist, socialist, capitalist. He reached out to dictators, democratically elected representatives, military strongmen. If you were willing to trade with and invest in die Nuwe Suid Afrika you were golden. Some people did not feel that was the best policy. Getting in bed with the wrong sort usually has lasting consequences.
But Mandela’s government spent a lot of money trying to lift blacks out of apartheid. All those new social programmes were not free. They did a great deal of good but somebody had to pay for them. Raising taxes on people who make $1 a day is not an option. Taxing the hell out of whites would only lead many to leave the country, which a lot of blacks wanted, but would be almost as economically reckless as kicking them all out. Countries like the US and UK were more than happy to criticise apartheid and praise Mandela’s release but they were not so enthusiastic about new investment in the new government. They were happy to hurt the economy with sanctions but far less interested in helping the country when the sanctions were lifted. Symbolically jumping on the hero bandwagon is a lot easier than actually spending money on that which you claim to believe. Mandela’s government had little choice but to seek investment from international leaders who never increased their own popularity by praising Mandela.
Mandela’s other great achievement as president was to serve only one term. He voluntarily retired when he could have easily been elected several more times. Lesser men would have worn out their welcome. Others would have tried to make themselves dictators. Mandela probably could have given himself far more power but he was obviously serious about making his country a democracy.
Nelson Mandela was our George Washington. Neither was a great president but both were necessary for the country to grow and move forward. Both could command attention and respect by simply walking into a room. Everybody liked both men and now historians treat them as noble heroes while ignoring their serious flaws. In many ways both countries need them to be as elevated as they are. We need our heroes to be larger than life.
People who want to deify Mandela tend to whitewash his early terrorist activities but I think it is important to know where he came from in order to understand where he went. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To the radical blacks he was helping to free them from oppression. And there was serious oppression under apartheid. It was not simply segregation and inequality. Blacks were treated as common criminals simply for being born black.
But killing people who have nothing to do with your inequality has nothing to do with freedom. Killing blacks to free blacks from oppression simply makes no sense. There were a lot of whites who campaigned against apartheid. Whites were subject to banning just as easily as blacks. It was far easier to be white but most whites had no control of the government at the time, just as most blacks have no control today. Then and now it was a very small group of people who wielded the most power.
Fortunately for everybody, Mandela mellowed out during his years in prison. He gradually evolved from advocating radical urban warfare to a more moderate approach. By the time he was released he sounded less like Malcolm X and more like Gandhi. I never would have voted for the ANC just after my seventh birthday, were that possible. But I campaigned for them just before my fifteenth. I did not vote for obvious reasons. We were all pretty excited when they won and Mandela became president. I would doubt that I knew anybody who had a problem with it. We were glad that South Afrika had finally become South Africa again. Mostly we were happy that apartheid was truly dead.
The reason Nelson Mandela is so well known throughout the world and we are all talking about him now is not because of anything he did in office. His presidency was not very noteworthy save for being the first democratically elected president. He became famous for being in prison and stayed famous for what he did after he left office. He did more for human rights than all the other former South African presidents combined. Though in retrospect that does not say much.
I think Mandela was a good president. He did what he could to unite the races. No minor feat at the time. And no one can deny that we all get along much better than before he was president. There are certainly fewer necklacings. His biggest mistake was ignoring AIDS, as his predecessors and successors have done.
But I still think de Klerk was a braver president. It is much harder to end an entrenched corrupt system than to start a new one.
Mandela did two great things as president. One was to force reconciliation down our throats. Weather we liked it or not. There were more than a few people who wanted to kill all whites. Or at least kick them out of the country. Mandela knew that such a thing would destroy the economy permanently. No country outside of Africa would ever trade with us if we were so hostile to such a large minority of our own citizens. Especially when they are white people. You can disenfranchise whatever minority group you want but if they are white then you lose all support from Europe, North America, Australia, Japan. Trading only with African countries is a horrible fiscal model.
Mandela was willing to trade with absolutely anybody, regardless of traditional allies and enemies. He did not care if you were communist, socialist, capitalist. He reached out to dictators, democratically elected representatives, military strongmen. If you were willing to trade with and invest in die Nuwe Suid Afrika you were golden. Some people did not feel that was the best policy. Getting in bed with the wrong sort usually has lasting consequences.
But Mandela’s government spent a lot of money trying to lift blacks out of apartheid. All those new social programmes were not free. They did a great deal of good but somebody had to pay for them. Raising taxes on people who make $1 a day is not an option. Taxing the hell out of whites would only lead many to leave the country, which a lot of blacks wanted, but would be almost as economically reckless as kicking them all out. Countries like the US and UK were more than happy to criticise apartheid and praise Mandela’s release but they were not so enthusiastic about new investment in the new government. They were happy to hurt the economy with sanctions but far less interested in helping the country when the sanctions were lifted. Symbolically jumping on the hero bandwagon is a lot easier than actually spending money on that which you claim to believe. Mandela’s government had little choice but to seek investment from international leaders who never increased their own popularity by praising Mandela.
Mandela’s other great achievement as president was to serve only one term. He voluntarily retired when he could have easily been elected several more times. Lesser men would have worn out their welcome. Others would have tried to make themselves dictators. Mandela probably could have given himself far more power but he was obviously serious about making his country a democracy.
Nelson Mandela was our George Washington. Neither was a great president but both were necessary for the country to grow and move forward. Both could command attention and respect by simply walking into a room. Everybody liked both men and now historians treat them as noble heroes while ignoring their serious flaws. In many ways both countries need them to be as elevated as they are. We need our heroes to be larger than life.
04 December 2013
What I Did On Thanksgiving
I have returned from the Philippines. It was an amazing experience and I am still processing the tsunami of information floating around in my head.
The IDF sent 234 people, including 150 doctors, nurses, medical technicians. We set up a field hospital, found a lot of survivors, found even more dead people, built schools, created entire water systems. The doctors treated 2686 patients, including 848 children, and delivered 36 babies. Two of the children were brought back to Tel Aviv for cleft palate surgery that could be better performed at an actual hospital.
My team spent a great deal of time flying over islands and being endlessly impressed with how powerful a typhoon can be. The mayor of one of the smaller cities said it looked like a war zone. Some areas looked like pictures of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. There would be a lone tree trying to stay up surrounded by debris as far as the eye could see. One of the big differences was that most of the dead in Hiroshima were incinerated. In the Philippines there were dead bodies everywhere.
On an ironic note, the Japanese delegation in the Philippines landed next to a monument dedicated to the people of the Philippines who died in the Japanese invasion.
I will have much more to say about this later. By this I mean the typhoon and our relief mission, not the Japanese.
The IDF sent 234 people, including 150 doctors, nurses, medical technicians. We set up a field hospital, found a lot of survivors, found even more dead people, built schools, created entire water systems. The doctors treated 2686 patients, including 848 children, and delivered 36 babies. Two of the children were brought back to Tel Aviv for cleft palate surgery that could be better performed at an actual hospital.
My team spent a great deal of time flying over islands and being endlessly impressed with how powerful a typhoon can be. The mayor of one of the smaller cities said it looked like a war zone. Some areas looked like pictures of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. There would be a lone tree trying to stay up surrounded by debris as far as the eye could see. One of the big differences was that most of the dead in Hiroshima were incinerated. In the Philippines there were dead bodies everywhere.
On an ironic note, the Japanese delegation in the Philippines landed next to a monument dedicated to the people of the Philippines who died in the Japanese invasion.
I will have much more to say about this later. By this I mean the typhoon and our relief mission, not the Japanese.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
