Reference: Stunning victory for the Awami League in Bangladesh elections

The two main parties vying for control of parliament in the elections held in Bangladesh on December 29, 2008, are the BNP and the Awami League. Early returns show an unexpectedly huge margin of victory for the Awami League. To grasp the measure and meaning of this lopsided result one has to consider that BNP's primary ally in the elections was the Jamaat-e-Islami Party of Bangladesh, an organization whose stated mission is to establish Islamic Sharia law. Jamaat-e-Islami's sister party in Pakistan, also called Jamaat-e-Islami has ties to Lashakar-e-Taiba, the Islamic organization with alleged links to the terrorist events in Mumbai. These events in November 2008 have raised the specter of yet another war between India and Pakistan and generated unprecedented geopolitical tensions in South Asia. The Bangladesh elections follows in the heels of these events and the results are best understood in this context. The crushing defeat of the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami alliance is a clear rejection of Islamic extremism by the Bangladeshis.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Pakistan groups banned but not bowed, Asia Times Online, December 18, 2008

In "Pakistan groups banned but not bowed" you write "At the same time, on the 37th anniversary on the fall of Dhaka and the split of Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, the media played up Indian intelligence's proxy operations and the attack of the Indian armed forces that resulted in the separation of East Pakistan." Please note that the "attack of the Indian armed forces" was a response of an attack by the Pakistan air force in the western front. The 1971 war started in the west and moved to the east. The war resulted in a comprehensive and humiliating defeat of a Pakistani miliatary apparatus that was thought to have been one of the world's best by Pakistani citizens. The scary part of the post Mumbai reaction is that we are seeing the same kind of bravado among Pakistanis once again. We are getting scarily close to a war scenario posted by a youtuber named Rakesh in October 3 of 2008. Here is the link to that video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er9_eM9_8Do

Rakesh's real fear is that terrorists may seize control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Fear of a storm surge in Samut Prakarn, Bangkok Post, August 27, 2008

It was reported several times earlier this year that a noted weatherman had predicted that a tropical cyclone the likes of Cyclone Nargis was likely to cause a devastating storm surge along Samut Prakarn and Bangkok sometime during October of 2008 and that global warming was to blame (Fear of a storm surge in Samut Prakarn, Bangkok Post, August 27, 2008). October 2008 and the cyclone season has come and gone since that prediction without even a cyclone let alone a storm surge in the Gulf of Thailand. The credibility of the expert and the gullibility of the media were derived from the claim that this particular weatherman had correctly predicted the 2004 tsunami with otherwise intelligent and diligent newsreporters failing to note that tsunamis are not weather events but geological events and that geologists have yet to claim that earthquakes are predictable. The media are being taken for a ride by global warming scaremongers. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Poznan only marking time, Bangkok Post, December 18, 2008

According to the newspaper you can trust, the volume of sea ice in the Arctic basin "fell to its lowest recorded level to date" this year and that reduced ice coverage is causing a non-linear acceleration in the loss of polar ice because there is less ice to reflect sunlight (Poznan only marking time, Bangkok Post, December 18, 2008). This scenario was sold to us in October of 2007 when the summer melt in the Arctic basin was more extensive than normal. Their theory predicted that due to the loss of sunlight reflection by ice, the Arctic ice extent would not fully recover in the winter of 2007-2008 and that the summer melt in  2008 would be greater yet and the ice formation in the winter of 2008-2009 lesser yet and so on and so forth until the artic basin becomes completely ice free. They said that the Arctic was the "canary of global warming" meaning that what happens in the Arctic is a harbinger of what awaits the rest of the world. It's all very scary except for the data. The ice extent in the Arctic basin fully recovered to well above 4 million square km that is considered "normal" for that time of year by December of 2007; and even worse for the scaremongers, the summer melt in 2008 was less than that in 2007, not more; and today in December of 2008 we find that the Arctic ice extent is back above 4 million square km. The Arctic ice melt scenario reported in the Bangkok Post editorial was postulated in the fall of 2007 and today, about 15 months later, we find no evidence to support it and if anything the data seem to be pointing in the other direction. I have attached the data for your reference. They were downloaded from the University of Illinois website.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Govt has populist agenda, Bangkok Post, December 17, 2008

It is reported that populist policies of the new government in Thailand are "aimed at helping grassroots people in rural areas" (Govt has populist agenda, Bangkok Post, December 17, 2008). What are "grassroots people"? Are some Thais grassroots and others not? How does one make this distinction? And what criteria will the government use to decide whom to help and whom not to help? 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Hua Hin villages declared disaster zone, Bangkok Post, December 15, 2008

It is reported that certain mountain villages near Hua Hin have been declared a disaster zone because of extremely cold weather with temperatures as low as 10C (Hua Hin villages declared disaster zone, Bangkok Post, December 15, 2008). It was only a year ago that Thai scientists had said that temperatures lower than 15C in Thailand was a thing of the past because of global warming caused by our use of fossil fuels (Rise in average temperatures seen, Bangkok Post, November 3, 2007).  

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Greenhouse gas talks falter, Bangkok Post, December 11, 2008

It is not likely that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is "the world's most respected scientific agency" (Greenhouse gas talks falter, Bangkok Post, December 11, 2008). In spite of its best efforts, it has failed time and again and now in Poznan as well to convince the world that its scaremongering scenarios are credible. All of its scientific predictions and climate relationships that could be empirically tested have proven false. They are left with nothing more than climate devastation that "could" occur a hundred years from now under certain unsubstantiated hypothetical conditions. The proof of their credibility is in the pudding. The IPCC has now failed three times, in conferences they convened, to convince the world that the Kyoto Protocol should be extended beyond 2012. They have completely run out of empirical support for their position and are now running entirely on inertia. They will likely survive one more year until the meeting in Copenhagen in 2009 unless common sense prevails and they are disbanded sooner. 

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Climate change is quickening, Bangkok Post, December 1, 2008

More than 10,000 delegates are attending a meeting in Poland of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from December 1 to the 12th. During this period we can expect a flurry of scary press releases saying that human activity is causing the earth to become warmer and that global warming will soon be out of control and that there will be devastating consequences (Climate change is quickening, Bangkok Post, December 1, 2008). If one reads these press releases carefully one will find that they consist entirely of hypothetical statements that state that if event X occurs then a devastation Y is likely to follow. They are limited to hypothetical data because the real data do not support their thesis. The earth is cooling not warming and arctic sea ice has fully recovered from its summer melt and shows no sign of ratcheting downwards as they had hoped it would to prove their point that the arctic is the canary of climate change. The great gathering of global warming scaremongers comes at a very inconvenient time for them because the data have not cooperated with them at all and the global economy is so devastated that the competition for research dollars is fiercer than ever.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand