(title image by author)

I'm still travelling, and this Th!nk3 post reaches you from the boardwalk at my next stopover: Hong Kong. I've done a bit of sightseeing in the day and a half that my cheap air tickets have allowed me in the city; only one museum though - that of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. This early 20th-century Chinese revolutionary, the man who led the breakdown of the empire and the establishment of a republic, spent a lot of his time in the West - and while the museum, sponsored by the HK government, may be overstating the colony's influence in the man's life, Dr. Sun did travel here multiple times in his life, including five years studying medicine. In the memoirs of the man and his contemporaries, he is said to have been struck by the contrast between the British colony and the cities of China proper (an empire that failed almost at the same time as Europe's great Sick Man, the Ottoman state, which was where I started this journey).

Sun Yat-Sen was startled by the difference. At the time he saw it, barely half a century had passed since the island at the Pearl River delta had even been inhabited. How did this tiny outpost become an oasis of prosperity and lawfulness so quickly, while so much of the Celestial Empire still wallowed in muck?

As a revolutionary, Dr. Sun was quite accomplished - he'd scrapped the monarchy and defeated unscrupulous usurpers of the republic's top office. His vision of China, modernised and brought to its full power through the considered adoption of Western ways, took a while to happen - although the Kuomintang party that he founded, led by hid comrade Chang Kai-Shek,  did establish a free, democratic and commercially-minded Chinese state on Taiwan. Nevermind; it's 2010, and for all that China is still a country full of injustice and abuse, it has learned the value of Western efficiency. Meanwhile Hong Kong has one of the world's highest per-capita GDPs (and there's a lot of capita).

I've made the point before, but it is worth reiterating: prosperity is the solution. Truly prosperous nations - not those that have gotten rich quickly because of natural resources, but those whose populations have attained prosperity through their own efforts - will resolve their development issues. With guidance and care from those that have gone through the process already, but inevitably.

There is an American podcaster, an Internet radio personality, by the name of Dan Carlin. I cannot recommend his free shows highly enough; his lectures on history are as enlightening as they are entertaining (you may remember that I am quite a fan of an enthusiastic approach to teaching), while his current-events commentary offers an insight and perspective that all of us could do more with. He is that very rare breed of person whom you have to respect even if you completely disagree with his position. He does not have all the answers; but I will always applaud a person who asks all the right questions.

A show he did recently discussed Gaza. I've been loathe to weigh in on the Th!nk3 discussion in the wake of the Freedom Flotilla incident - especially after I applauded Lara Smallman for showing true journalistic integrity in approaching the issue of Gaza in general, and gotten flamed to high heaven; even in an atmosphere as respectful and learned as Th!nk About It, the question of Gaza invariably slides down, past emotion and into hysterics. Dan Carlin's careful and considered voice was a terrific contribution to my own struggle with the topic. Here's a link to the show in question; have a listen and tell me what you th!nk.

For those of you without speakers or headphones to hand, or an hour to kill, here is Dan's solution: not only lift the blockade, but use international aid to develop the hell out of Gaza. Bring in foreign contractors; local authorities, particularly the more negotiation-minded Fatah, are notoriously corrupt. Use European construction workers if you have to (and personally, I invite you to discuss the implications of this as a massive EU public works project in the comments), or if not, there's Turkey, whose celebrated construction crews have already rebuilt Germany once, and are rebuilding Antalya every three years. Put lots of awesome stuff into Gaza, so that when locals become hot under the collar, they have a lot more to lose than just some run-down tenements.

I don't agree with Dan. Not on issues of possibility, but I just don't see it working: other nations have gotten major windfalls like that, and it hasn't done them much good. (Iraq has oil, and for all the stupidity of the invasion, it wasn't exactly a people's paradise under Saddam. Afghanistan apparently has a trillion dollars' worth of minerals; how is its future looking?) A viable Palestinian state must take example from elsewhere. How about Lebanon? The most independently successful Arab state, one that has never enjoyed oil money, but was still by all accounts a very nice place before the region's turmoil turned into a civil war battleground.

In fact, once we're done with Gaza, we should really think about rebuilding Lebanon too.