Invading Iraq: Just Surviving Thanks to Waqil and the Blue Flame

Published on Jan 15, 2003 by Luke Hunt

Editors note: Under immense time pressures from the luxury of Kuwait City and the less comfortable surroundings of the northern deserts, the Phnom Penh Post’s indefatigable Kuwaiti correspondent had filed this for his avid fans.KUWAIT CITY, Jan 15 — News-starved hacks in Kuwait City have stumbled across a US military conspiracy of a sort not seen since the invasion of Cambodia. The means are comparably cruel and devious and aimed at controlling the coverage of an Iraqi invasion by weakening the media’s capabilities through boredom and bankruptcies.To explain it costs $5,000 to get a journalist here and kit them out in the latest battlefield colors.Throw in a $1,500 a month per car, a $3,000 a month per diem, another $5,000....

Hong Kong Before the Handover

Published on Mar 14, 1998 by Luke Hunt

Love is a Many Splendoured Thing was a fitting 1950s Hollywood tribute to romance. Hong Kong war correspondent falls in love with local girl. He dies. She cries. A decade later, Honkers is a Cold War transit lounge where boy spy meets girl spy, they sleep together then part. Now it’s The Kong and Luke Hunt tries to explain.Rosie doesn’t see herself as a whore, after all she is discerning. The term prostitute is equally insulting and Rosie is uncomfortable. She fidgets – and with some pride proclaims: “I’m a barfly.”Indeed, she is the classic barfly, which in The Kong has its own peculiar definition, and is the last line in a game that is structured by the local rackets....