Reference: Bhutan elects National Council, Bangkok Post, January 1, 2007

The photograph included with the article about elections in Bhutan (Bhutan elects National Council, Bangkok Post, January 1, 2007) shows Bhutanese citizens holding identity cards lined up to cast their vote in a place identified as "a polling station in Jaigaon, 45 km from the Indo-Bhutanese border". Kindly note that Jaigaon is in India on the border with Bhutan and across Bhutan Gate from the Bhutanese border town of Phuntsholing. Bhutanese citizens in Phuntsholing do cross over to Jaigaon to make international phone calls and to use the internet but it is not likely that they would go there to cast their vote.


Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Troops get amulet protection, Bangkok Post, January 1, 2007

On December 11 2007, one of the buses in a convoy of three buses carrying soldiers to Pattani in southern Thailand was hit by a roadside bomb and 15 soldiers in that bus were injured. There was no fatality. Incredibly, in the investigation into this incident, data were taken on whether the soldiers were wearing a talisman called the "Luang Poo Jiam" around their neck at the time of the bombing. The data showed that while all the soldiers in the convoy possessed these talismans, only those in the unfortunate bus were not actually wearing the amulets on their neck at the time of the bombing. The military concluded from these data that the talismans had protected the soldiers who wore them and had exposed those that did not to the injuries caused by the bomb. Subsequently, the the military commander of the Pattani Task Force ordered all his men to wear the "Luang Poo Jiam" amulet around their neck at all times saying that they would be protected from harm if they did so. The military has acted in an unprofessional manner in this case and in so doing has provided all the reasons to those still in doubt why there must never be another coup in Thailand. The economic powerhouse of Southeast Asia can ill afford to place its future in the hands of talisman jockeys.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Your horoscope for 2008, Bangkok Post, December 31, 2007


I read in the Bangkok Post today that in 2008 my "dept repayments will not be satisfactory" and that I will "have no fortune in taking risks". I am also told that "huge spending will incur" (Your horoscope for 2008, Bangkok Post, December 31, 2007). My horoscope for the Bangkok Post is that in 2008 they will find a competent copy editor among the large number of educated farangs in the Kingdom and thereby serve as a more reliable reference for students of English in Thailand.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Stop sacrificing environment, Postbag, Bangkok Post, December 30, 2007

In Edmonton, Alberta there is a shopping center where, even in the dead of winter when it is forty below zero outside and not much daylight to speak of, one can go to a gargantuan indoor tropical paradise where it is sunny and warm and where there are all things tropical including a beach with artificial waves where one can go surfing. All humans aspire to hedonism given a chance so why should Asians be excluded? If energy and natural resource consumption by human beings on a per capita basis is a concern one should address it where it matters and where such consumption is an order of magnitude higher than that in developing countries like Thailand. It is weirdly hypocritical for a Westerner whose wealth and spending power in Thailand were generated by wanton consumption of natural resources to lecture the Thais on the evils of what little consumption they have been able to achieve.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: An inconvenient query: who'll pay the bill, Bangkok Post, December 29, 2007

The author of the article on global warming (An inconvenient query: who'll pay the bill, Bangkok Post, December 29, 2007) says that he felt a jolt of fear from what he describes as a scientific assessment contained in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report on climate change. That jolt of fear was not accidental because the report to which he refers is not an unbiased scientific assessment of climate data but a carefully scripted instrument of fear written for the express purpose of jolting its readers with misrepresentations of the data, exaggerations, and even outright lies. The summer melt of the Arctic ice is not unprecedented, extreme weather events have not become more frequent or more severe, and atolls in the South Pacific are not sinking under rising sea levels. The IPCC's claim that Hurricane Katrina was caused by man-made global warming has been thoroughly discredited and their forecasts for more severe hurricane seasons in 2006 and 2007 have been proven wrong. They are merchants of fear and their method is the dissemination of convenient lies.


Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: PPP-led govt not a foregone conclusion, Bangkok Post, December 25, 2007

In an election held on December 23, 2007 by the military-led interim government that was deemed to be fair and impartial by all concerned observers, the PPP captured 232 seats in the 480-seat parliament with the Democrat Party a distant second with 165 seats. Yet, Bangkok intellectuals dismiss the people's choice as less than real because the PPP was "trounced by the Democrat Party in Bangkok". All doubt of the elitist tenor of the their position is then removed with the description of Bangkok first as "the nerve center" of Thailand and further as home to the "movers and shakers of Thailand". The implication is that the rest of the country including the Northeast is populated with "grassroots" who neither move nor shake and who cannot be trusted to think for themselves much less to make decisions that affect the country as a whole. The argument exposes not only the elitist nature of Bangkokians but also the complete inability of self-proclaimed thinkers, movers, and shakers to comprehend the fundamental principles of democracy including the that of universal suffrage. Democracy is a form of government in which the people rule even if they are just common folk out there in the hinterland and even if their decisions are deemed incorrect by intellectuals.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Inconvenient truth in Bali, Bangkok Post, December 23, 2007

The "soul searching" column in the Bangkok Post says that "hurricanes, cyclones, snowstorms, and floods" are "killing people largely as a result of the war on nature waged by humanity in pursuit of economic development" (Inconvenient truth in Bali, Bangkok Post, December 23, 2007). The reference is to alleged causal relationships between carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and global warming and between global warming and the frequency and severity of extreme weather phenomena. Kindly note that extreme weather and weather related calamities are not new nor have they become more frequent or more severe. As far back in time one cares to look in either weather records or geological data, one finds calamities caused by extreme weather. In the drought of 1877 in China parents sold their daughters into sex-slavery for the equivalent of $5 each and in the famine of 1790 in India parents killed their children and ate them. The devastation caused by the cyclone of 1737 in the Bay of Bengal is yet to be outdone by any weather phenomenon. In 1933 there were 21 hurricanes in the Caribbean and extreme hurricanes there have been recorded prior to the current phenomenon of rising atmospheric CO2 in 1856, 1910, 1922, 1926, 1930, 1938, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1979, and 1988. The allegations that extreme weather is a new phenomenon and that it is caused by human activity have been repeated so many times that they have become truth by default. The Karl Rove Principle holds that if you repeat a lie enough times it will take on all the properties of truth.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Certainly not my cup of tea, Bangkok Post, December 21, 2007

Mr Prasong once tried to shame the Prime Minister into coming clean on his real estate dealings by saying that Mr Surayud should have the courage to do "what even a little girl could do" (Bangkok Post, October 11, 2007). That reference was to Marion Jones, a world class athlete, who had returned her Olympic gold medals when she tested positive for drugs. The Bangkok Post ran a story about Dr Kathleeya Stang's special musical performance for HM the King with the headline "Thai-American girl to pay musical tribute to HM the King". Dr Stang is 28, an ophthalmologist, and an accomplished musician. When Mr Samak was asked by a young female journalist whether former TRT executives had influenced PPP's selection of candidates for the elections, Mr Samak retorted with an obscene reference to the journalist's sex life as a way of dismissing the question. Misogyny and sexism come naturally to Thai men and are not unique to Mr Samak as suggested by today's commentary (Certainly not my cup of tea, Bangkok Post, December 21, 2007).

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Jakarta scurrying to fix ad blunders, Bangkok Post, December 20, 2007

Indonesia does not have a monopoly on odd English. All over Asia there appears to be some confusion when it comes to the word "battery". Does the "a" come first or the "e", or are they both "e" or perhaps both "a"? Is there one "t" or two, and is the last consonant "r" as in "arroy" or "l" as in "alloy"? One can find odd prose in any issue of the Bangkok Post. For example, on page B4 (Orient Thai to start flights to Kathmandu, Bangkok Post, December 20, 2007), we read that "Thailand will use the maximum number of flight frequencies allocated to Thai airlines" and on the same page (International aviation groups criticise AoT, Bangkok Post, December 20, 2007) we find "Airlines are up in arms about plans by Airports of Thailand to raise user fees". The headline about a single Indonesian blunder says "Jakarta scurrying to fix blunders". In the editorial on page 12 (EC must carry on with its work, Bangkok Post, December 20, 2007) we read that the Election Commission must have the courage to "punish wrongdoers by issuing them with red cards".

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Roof of the world, Bangkok Post, December 20, 2007
Reference: Bali a victim of its own success, Bangkok Post, December 20, 2007

Two articles on the same page of the Bangkok Post describe the ill effects caused when the dominant culture of a nation inundates by sheer numbers a small geographically distinct minority within its borders and thereby destroys its cultural identity. We are told that the Han Chinese are riding the new railway to Tibet in "alarming" numbers and that non-Balinese Indonesians are "flocking" to Bali drawn by the tourism boom, and that these trends have placed the Tibetan and Balinese cultures, religious heritages, and archaeological artifacts at risk.

Certain relevant aspects of these events have not been considered in making this case. First, no matter how quaint or historically significant it may be, no society wants to live in poverty just to be a living museum for the tourism pleasure of those who live more comfortably elsewhere. Until the quaint people one visits live as well as the visitor, with the same access to health care, education, and commerce, no visitor has the right to demand that the people should stay quaint.

Second, the free flow of labor, capital, and ideas within a nation also works in favor of the minority. Tibetans and Balinese people are afforded more choices in terms of education, jobs, lifestyles, travel, trade, and investment by having free access to the rest of the country. Consider the harm caused by the partition of India in 1947 when the citizens of the new Muslim nation of Pakistan suddenly found themselves shut out from most of what was once their country.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Re: "ADB needs to clean up its stance on climate change", Bangkok Post, December 10, 2006

There is no evidence that carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants causes global warming or that global warming increases the severity or the frequency of typhoons. Even if there were, there could not be a more inappropriate target for protest than the Asian Development Bank. The sum total of the annual CO2 production from ADB-funded power projects is likely to be less than a single day's production in America alone. ADB projects provide electricity to the poor, who otherwise would not have access to electric power. It is the rich who are consuming the world's energy, not the poorest of the poor. The fat man is telling the thin man to eat even less. It is criminal hypocrisy to deny to poor Asians the wealth and comfort that are taken for granted by Westerners and that were made available to them by fossil fueled economic growth.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Abhisit in string of road mishaps, Bangkok Post, December 19, 2007

So now we discover that the only politician in Thailand that we thought subscribed to rational objectivism and not to goofy superstition wears an amulet instead of his seat belt when riding in his car even after all that Western upbringing and Western education (Abhisit in string of road mishaps, Bangkok Post, December 19, 2007). You can take the Asian out of Asia but you can't take Asia out of the Asian.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

The insignificant human versus his mighty ego

Suppose you could go back in time as far back as you wanted to go and suppose that you could amass all the coal, oil, peat, and natural gas that were ever combusted by human activity. Now suppose that you could combust all of these fossil fuels all at once in an instant of time. You would not have enough energy to make a single hurricane or to cause a single volcanic eruption on the scale of Pinatubo or Krakatoa, or to cause an earthquake or to make a tsunami. Man is an insignificant life form and not the master of the planet. I would say that we are nothing but ants on the planet except that we aren't because ants outweigh us by an order of magnitude. The planet is not at our mercy. We are at the planet's mercy. If you need religion you're better off with Jesus, Mohamed, Rama, or Buddha than the IPCC or Al Gore.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Early climate change victim Andes water, Bangkok Post, December 18, 2007

The article says that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels has caused such a reduction in the size of glaciers in the Andes that the area is now suffering from a shortage of water (Early climate change victim Andes water, Bangkok Post, December 18, 2007). The area in question is a semi-arid region subject to droughts and supplied by melt water from evanescent glaciers that have come and gone in cycles for thousands of years. The history of the region has been shaped by changes in this source of water. The current state of relative dessication is a part of a well known pattern of water supply in the Andes and it cannot in any way be related to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: The Arctic is screaming, Bangkok Post, December 17, 2007

Since 1998, and most recently in 2007, we have been told on a fairly regular basis that climate change induced by greenhouse gases from fossil fuels has reached the "tipping point". One wonders how many tipping points there could be. When asked to define the term they said that it is not a point of no return and that a definition will be forthcoming in the future but that there is no doubt that we have reached the tipping point in 2007. In other worlds they are not sure what tipping point means but they are pretty sure that we are there. Judging from the increasing pitch and volume of their press releases, I would guess that their rhetoric has also reached some kind of tipping point.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Home loan crisis won't just go away, Bangkok Post, December 17, 2007

The Bangkok Post commentary says that a run on banks caused by false rumors of bad loans can be solved with a temporary injection of liquidity but one caused by a true news about bad loans cannot (Home loan crisis won't just go away, Bangkok Post, December 17, 2007) and concludes that the 1998 LTCM crisis was solved by a temporary injection of liquidity because it was caused by a false rumor of bad loans but the 2007 mortgage crisis cannot be solved in that manner because it was caused by a true information about bad mortgages. This analogy is false because the 1998 Long Term Capital Management financial crisis was caused by true information about a loan default by Russia and not by false rumors about bad loans. As a footnote, one should also consider that financial markets respond only to changes in the forecast of future cash flows and not to past events. No event in the future can be either completely true or completely false because the future is not known with certainty.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Leave Burma alone, Bangkok Post, December 13, 2007

Theodore Roosevelt spoke softly and carried a big stick but that luxury is not available to Hun Sen, a man who is supposedly the leader of a nation but who finds himself taking orders from donors because his government cannot function and his nation cannot survive without foreign aid. He does not have a stick. He compensates for that shortcoming by speaking as loudly as possible. Many of his utterances appear to be symptoms of insanity but are really the venting of his frustration of having to deal with an international community that carries the big stick of foreign aid and that stick so emboldens them that some puny United Nations bureaucrat can garner the audacity to call for the people of Cambodia to overthrow their government. I know of no country or government that would tolerate that kind of behavior.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Climate change hits Asia hard, Bangkok Post, December 12, 2007

The claim that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are causing extreme weather events (Climate change hits Asia hard, Bangkok Post, December 12, 2007) has been challenged. An organization called the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change (http://www.csccc.info/) has published a report showing that the mortality rate from extreme weather events in the period 1990-2006 is almost half of that for the prior 90 years of the 20th century and that this mortality rate is not rising but has been falling steadily since 1920. The global warmists have dismissed this report as a product of scientists who are in the pay of oil companies but have not explained its findings. They have also failed to explain what errors in their climate model might have led them to incorrectly predict extreme Atlantic hurricane seasons for 2006 and 2007. They sound a lot smarter when they stick to their usual 100-year forecasts because you can't prove them wrong. Jesus Christ's many competing Apocalypse peddlers fell out of grace when the world did not end when it was supposed to. Jesus did not set a date for the end and made his forecasts long and indefinite. There is a lot that the global warmists can learn from Jesus.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Warming threatens penguins, Bangkok Post, December 12, 2007

The planet's climate is ever changing and these changes can cause the extinction of some species even as a burst of evolution creates new species better suited to the new conditions (Warming threatens penguins, Bangkok Post, December 12, 2007). The penguins themselves are a product of this process. They are flightless and not well dispersed and therefore at risk of extinction but that extinction, if it happens, will lead to a new species and even greater biodiversity. This is how nature works. Nature does not need environmentalists, much less UN bureaucrats, to micromanage these processes nor is such micromanagement possible.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: World losing patience with junta, Bangkok Post, December 11, 2007

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is reported to have said in Bangkok yesterday that his patience with the Burmese junta was running out. Accordingly, he is willing to raise the Burma issue at the UN-ASEAN summit next year and he has received a pledge from Thailand's Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont that guarantees Thailand's full support to UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari. These words are music to the junta's ears. It must make them happy to know that so deep is the lake of patience in Ki-Moon's heart that it has yet to run out and that the river of patience is still flowing like the Irrawaddy and guaranteed to keep flowing for at least another year. Buying time with trickery is their game and Mr Ki-Moon has signaled that he will play. As for Mr Surayud, he was actually given a chance to support Mr Gambari at the ASEAN summit in Singapore but he gave his support to the Burmese junta instead and he reiterated at that time that the internal affairs of Burma were strictly off-limits to ASEAN. The veto powers exercised by Burma at the ASEAN summit show that Burma can change ASEAN but ASEAN cannot change Burma. Mr Ki-Moon's choice of ASEAN and Mr Surayud as his bulldogs to bring democracy to Burma assures the junta that it shall be business as usual and the status quo for the foreseeable future.


Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Asia's growing oil palm farms seen as climate change threat

With 35 scientific flaws identified in Al Gore's global warming documentary, the failure of their predicted extreme hurricane season to make an appearance either in 2006 or in 2007, and serious questions about the validity of their climate model, the global warmists have developed a new more defensive strategy by dismissing their critics as "industry representatives" and by claiming that errors in their model do not detract from the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions because the reduction can only do good and can do no harm (Realistically it's too late, Bangkok Post, December 10, 2007). Both of these arguments are flawed. All critics are not industry representatives and even if they were, it is the substance of their argument and not their affiliation that needs to be addressed; and history has shown that environmental extremism is not costless to society. The worldwide ban on DDT in the hysterical aftermath of the book "Silent Spring" has made possible the resurgence of malaria and dengue fever and has cost millions of lives. The error has been recognized. The ban on DDT was lifted last year as a way of containing these deadly diseases once again. Closer to home, the global warmists themselves are now crying foul at the environmental devastation being caused by the rapid expansion of the palm oil biodiesel industry in Southeast Asia (Asia's growing oil palm farms seen as climate change threat, Bangkok Post, November, 2007), an expansion that is in fact part of their prescription to fight global warming with renewable energy. The global warmists' charge against the biodiesel industry is an unwitting admission that their fight against global warming has gone wrong. The assumption that environmentalists do good by definition even if their science is flawed is false.


Cha-am Jamal
Thailand
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Reference: Pearl harbour raid remembered, Bangkok Post, December 9, 2007

The article says that a few dozen "greying" Pearl Harbour survivors had gathered to remember their comrades who died in the attack in 1941 (Pearl harbour raid remembered, Bangkok Post, December 9, 2007). Kindly note that those who were serving in the military back in 1941 are in their 80s today. They are no longer greying. They are as grey as they are going to get.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Sharif Bhutto remain divided, Bangkok Post, December 8, 2007

Pity the Pakistani voters in their next elections. They have to choose among a military dictator, a convicted felon who has been found guilty of corruption, and a family with serious criminal charges pending in the courts. Is that all the leadership material 150 million people can muster? Perhaps partition was not that great of an idea after all. There are 150 million very happy, free, and democratic Muslims living on the other side of the great divide while the supposedly safe homeland for Indian Muslims teeters on the edge of becoming a failed state.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Melting Greenland ice sheet could be next puzzle for UN panel, Bangkok Post, December 8, 2007

When the IPCC first raised the alarm and cranked up the rhetoric about rising sea level, their forecast was that at the current rate of increase in the use of fossil fuels, the sea level would rise by seven meters in 100 years and devastate low-lying countries like Bangladesh. When these estimates were challenged and their internal inconsistencies exposed, the IPCC quietly revised the 100-year forecast downward 100-fold from 7 meters to 7 centimeters on their website but the rhetoric continued unabated slyly inserting "thousands of years" in place of "100 years" in the 7-meter forecast (Melting Greenland ice sheet could be next puzzle for UN panel, Bangkok Post, December 8, 2007). The sleight of hand appears to have gone unnoticed by the media. The media has been less than vigilant in holding these people accountable for their brash fear mongering and have dutifully published all of those scary press releases without a critical analysis. One day the greenhouse gas scare will go the way of the ozone hole scare and the millennium bug scare and the gullible that went along for the ride will be disgraced along with the perpetrators of this fraud.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Iran's take on America, Bangkok Post, December 6. 2007

The article reflects on various policy errors of the Bush Administration that have disgraced America and lists among other things its misguided war on terror, its failed energy policy, and the deterioration in America's infrastructure and traditional values (Iran's take on America, Bangkok Post, December 6. 2007), but what does any of this have to do with Iran? Is Iran the new bogeyman? Once the USSR was America's bogeyman and when the USSR bit the dust it was Saddam and now that Saddam has also gone to dust I suppose they have homed in on Iran; but why do they need a bogeyman?

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Venus inferno due to greenhouse effect, Bangkok Post, December 3, 2007

Venus is similar in size to earth but the comparison ends there. It is a lot closer to the sun and it has no magnetic field. The atmosphere there is 96% carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid. It is a planet of volcanoes that may have had some liquid water once but was never like earth. Yet, the implication of the article ( Venus inferno due to greenhouse effect, Bangkok Post, December 3, 2007) is that Venus represents earth's fate if we don't reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. It is yet another desperate attempt by the global warming people to scare the rest of us into going along with their agenda. Desperation of this magnitude, instead, should serve to alert us to the level of fraud that is being perpetrated upon us.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: The crunch is in mandatory limits, Bangkok Post, December 4, 2007

It is reported that an effect of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels is that droughts, floods, landslides, and rising sea levels are becoming commonplace in Indonesia (The crunch is in mandatory limits, Bangkok Post, December 4, 2007). The primary causes of natural disasters in Indonesia are earthquakes and volcanic activity neither of which has anything whatsoever to do with greenhouse gas emissions. Floods and landslides are not "becoming" commonplace in Indonesia, they have been commonplace their since time immemorial. There has been no drought in Indonesia recently and there is no evidence that the sea level is rising in indonesia. If the sea were rising it would rise everywhere not just in Indonesia.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Democrats at odds on Cuba, Bangkok Post, December 3, 2007

America's Cuba policy is that which will curry favor with the anti-Castro Cuban voters in Florida and it is influenced directly by the Cuban Political Action Committee in Washington DC (PAC). America's immigration policy is that which will curry favor with the Hispanic voters and it is influenced directly by the Hispanic PAC. America's Middle East policy is that which will curry favor with the Jewish vote and it is influenced directly by the Jewish PAC. And so on and so forth. American foreign policy is a product of an incoherent mishmash of special interest groups each pushing its own unique agenda that may or may not have any relevance to America itself. America has become a giant host on which feed diverse cultures of parasites. No candidate can articulate a comprehensive and coherent US foreign policy for fear of stepping on parasitic toes. When a Presidential candidate begins to hem and haw you can bet that the issue in question is curry masala.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Thai-American girl to pay musical tribute to HM the King, Bangkok Post, December 1, 2007

The reference to Dr. Kathleeya Stang, age 28, an ophthalmologist as well as an accomplished musician, as a "girl" (Thai-American girl to pay musical tribute to HM the King, Bangkok Post, December 1, 2007) and that to world class athlete Marion Jones as a "little girl" (Prasong attacks PM's land grab, Bangkok Post, October 11, 2007) are sexist. Yet, such references come easily to Thai men, even those as educated and urbane as Khun Prasong. Misogyny runs deep in Thai culture.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand