Reference: Surviving the rough times, Bangkok Post, June 17, 2008

The lecture by Thailand's finance ministry on how to survive the rough times (Surviving the rough times, Bangkok Post, June 17, 2008) is bitter irony because it is the finance ministry itself that sits at the nexus of a banking system that is inherently metastable and ill-suited for surviving rough times. The Bank of Thailand, the country's central bank and bank regulator, is not an independent body. Although it is held responsible for bank discipline, in fact it takes its orders directly from the finance ministry. At the same time most of the nation's banking assets are held by state owned banks. The manager of each these banks is held accountable for the bank's performance and yet she too takes orders from the finance ministry. That makes the finance ministry at once the nation's bank regulator and its largest banker but without any accountability whatsoever. The ministry outsources that responsibility to the BOT and to the managers of state owned banks. The finance ministry acknowledges that a "public service accounting system" needs to be applied but it has not been applied and there are no plans to implement such a system possibly because it implies that the responsibility for making policy directed loans will shift from bank managers to the government. The banking architecture of Thailand is not built to survive rough times.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Ireland votes "no" to Lisbon Treaty, June 15, 2008

The failure of the EU to form a federation along the lines of the USA first with the failed draft constitution and then with the failed Lisbon Treaty shows that the all or nothing plan will not work. They might wish to follow the way that the USA has grown by first forming a federation of the willing and then allowing other EU members to join if and when they wish to do so. The EU already exists at least at two levels - the economic union alone and the common currency club. It should be pretty simple to extend the idea to three levels. Britain, for example, has rejected the Euro but apparently wishes to join the federation and Ireland has rejected federation but has adopted the Euro.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Parking remains a lost art for many Bangkok drivers, Bangkok Post, June 16, 2008

According to a Bangkok Post Commentary (Parking remains a lost art for many Bangkok drivers, Bangkok Post, June 16, 2008), "Unless you're burning off premium benzene at over 40 baht per litre, cruising on LPG/CNG, or second-guessing the merits of gasohol - you park your car". The article also says that a certain soi in Bangkok is "exacerbated by oversized commercial trucks loaded with carbonated soft drinks, who ... can roam the streets of Bangkok at all times, thus continuing the plight of brittle bones and calcium deficiency in our population". Referring to a car parked at the entrance to a soi it says "You turn into the soi where that vehicle is parked on either side of the lane".

I would like to offer my humble suggestion that these sentences are nonsensical. Along with most of the article, they belong in the category of odd prose. Parking isn't the only lost art in Bangkok, apparently.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Abhisit urges PM to call general debate, Bangkok Post, June 14, 2008


It appears that Mr Abhisit is too polite to be an effective opposition in Parliament against the Incredible Hulk. We have neither an effective opposition bench nor a vigorous free press that can hold the government accountable and therefore we must depend on civil society to perform that critical function of democracy. That is why we need civic groups like the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD).

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Fortune teller, June 15, 2008

At a Buddhist temple that we often visit with gifts of food there is a Las Vegas style slot machine that offers prophesy instead of a jackpot. When the coin drops, a light that moves in a circle stops at a random spot that was your destiny and a computer voice tells you which row and column to use. In a glass case next to the machine lie many rows of printed pads. You must find the pad that is yours and tear out a page. It contains your fortune in Thai and Chinese script. Devotee bow to the machine to accept their fate before collecting their fortune. Gambling is more than skin deep in Asia. It derives from a belief in the overwhelming importance of luck. When life itself is a game of chance, gaming is not limited to casinos or lotteries. It is a way of life.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: About politics, Bangkok Post, June 12, 2008

One wonders how much actual work is involved in being a Minister in the Government of Thailand. Many cabinet members work two full time jobs and yet have sufficient leisure time for family and recreation. The Minister of Finance, the Minister of Commerce, and the Minister of Industry also work full time as Deputy Prime Minister. The Prime Minister himself moonlights as Defense Minister.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Odd prose from an advertisement in the Bangkok Post, June 11, 2008

1. Due to energy awareness of people around the world with in this decade, crude oil has to be classifying as main power source since long time ago.
2. Ethyly alcohol or called ethanol is one type of alcohol in form of no color, clear liquid but very sensitive flammable with very high octane.
3. Unfortunately, most topics today for ethanol is to use as fuel, substitute or mixed with gasoline that are processed from agriculture.
4. This seems to be a diamond of agriculture time.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Global cooling

The global mean temperature for May 2008 is reported to be 14.39C, or 0.35 Centigrade degrees cooler than in May of 2007 when it was 14.74C. The six-month moving average temperature in May 2008 was 14.4733C, or 0.3534 Centigrade degrees cooler than the corresponding value for May of 2007 when it was 14.8267C. It appears that the planet has a mind of its own and has embarked on a cooling trend despite all those greenhouse gases that human activity has emitted and a runaway global warming scenario past the tipping point that the IPCC had predicted. The global warmists are being rather quiet about these data. Had temperature differences of this magnitude been in the other direction there would have been plenty of noise.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: The Cosmic Christ, Bangkok Post, June 10, 2008

The genius of Deepak Chopra (The Cosmic Christ, Bangkok Post, June 10, 2008) is more in marketing than in cosmic affairs. Seizing a window of opportunity some years ago, he sold touchy-feely philosophy as Eastern mysticism to the New Age market in the West; and when he discovered that conservative Christians eschewed New Age religion he entered that market segment as well and sold them exactly the same stuff re-packaged as Jesus Christ. It is a superb marketing achievement.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: More Japanese join test of fuel of future, Bangkok Post, June 9, 2008

It is reported that Japan intends to use household fuel cells to "kick its addiction to fossil fuels" (More Japanese join test of fuel of future, Bangkok Post, June 9, 2008). It should be recognized in this context that these fuel cells run on natural gas and therefore they do not represent an alternative to fossil fuels. In this arrangement hydrogen is not a source of energy but a delivery mechanism. As for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, there is no real way around the stoichiometric relationships of methane combustion whether it is carried out in conventional engines or in fuel cells.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Global viewpoint, Bangkok Post, June 8, 2008

Ever since America ascended, it has been predicted with some regularity, particularly in times of economic shocks, that it will soon decline; and these predictions continue to this day (Global viewpoint, Bangkok Post, June 8, 2008). And yet America hasn't declined. The failure of these predictions may have to do with innovation. It is something that America does particularly well and something that fundamentally alters the equations that pundits use to make their forecasts of doom.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

The inconvenient truth about college professors from Dave Barry's 2004 commencement address

This is your big day - the day you leave college prepared by your professors to go out into the Real World. The first thing you'll notice is that your professors are not going out there with you. They are not that stupid; that's why they are professors. They've figured out that college is a carefree place where the most serious real problem is finding a legal parking space. So your professors are going to stay in college until they die. This is called "tenure". But you have committed the grave tactical blunder of acquiring enough credits to graduate.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Opposition leader jailed for contempt, Bangkok Post, June 3, 2008

What China can learn from Singapore is that it is not necessary to cling to the old and clunky one-party system to run an autocracy. It is perfectly safe to allow other political parties to exist as long as you have the right kind of legal and criminal justice system in place to make sure that they don't actually get to rule. Once it does that, China can become a full-fledged multi-party democracy with constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and human rights but with certain safeguards in place to protect the state from lunatics and anti-state elements. That way the world can fully embrace China as an upstanding and democratic member of the international community just as they fully embrace Singapore today.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Polar bear numbers set to fall, Bangkok Post, June 4, 2008

The survival of the polar bear is threatened because man made global warming is melting ice in the Arctic according to an article in the Bangkok Post (Polar bear numbers set to fall, Bangkok Post, June 4, 2008). It is true that the Arctic ice anomaly - the difference between how much there is and how much ice there should be at any given time of year - was down in negative territory by October of last year. The loss of Arctic sea ice emboldened global warming scaremongers to declare it a climate change disaster caused by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and to issue a series of scenarios about environmental holocaust yet to come. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the ice anomaly has completely disappeared. In fact, an ice breaker cruise ship that was supposed to give adventure tourists a look at a Northwest Passage opened by climate change became stuck in the ice. The article on the threat to polar bears due to ice anomalies in the Arctic is itself an anomaly given current ice data.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Odd prose from the Bangkok Post, June 3, 2008

1. MBA students definitely and automatically earn much meritorious reputation with the MBA abbreviation behind their names.

2. Top-notch Thais who make it to the shortlists are rare.

3. Ivy League Thai students are golden.

4. The hardship he has gone through probably couldn't be stressed enough. One could only imagine.

5. After graduating from an international programme in economics from Thammasat University, he entered the world of nine-to-five quite interestingly.

6. His experience in business overseas has given him an edge in the MBA bloodbath, but only metaphorically speaking, of course!

7. Though he seems very talented and bright, Win unfortunately had no trick up his sleeve.

8. He is expecting to learn more and harvest as much knowledge he possibly could there because this 100-year-old school is widely known for its "Socrates-style" case method, that requires classmates to discuss case studies.

Reference: Geography 101

Property developers advertising their resorts and condominiums in Cha-am habitually claim that one may watch "glorious sunsets over the sea" from Cha-am. Kindly note that Cha-am beach lies along the western shore of the Gulf of Thailand. A sunset over the sea in Cha-am is a geographical impossibility.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: For Than Shwe, to hell with compromise, Bangkok Post, May 31, 2008

In un-characteristically tough language veteran Burma analyst Larry Jagan writes that we will be unable to reach any kind of agreement with the junta as long as Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK) is the issue (For Than Shwe, to hell with compromise, Bangkok Post, May 31, 2008) and yet all along the international community has been making her the only issue. One would think that there would be some kind of a learning curve and that we would learn to make progress with the junta on a host of issues that are important to the Burmese people that do not have to involve ASSK. The Than Shwe acrimony toward ASSK is well known. It is not possible to take sides on this issue and expect to mediate in Burma. It is time for the international community to cut bait on the ASSK issue, to stop being righteous, and to define their real objectives in Burma. There is a lot that we can do for the Burmese people if we could only get around that un-scalable brick wall of our own making.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Truth or consequences, Bangkok Post, May 29, 2008

Economic shocks caused by rising oil price work only in the short term and are illusory in the long term because the world economy is oil based. In the long term, the price shock causes inflation which eventually wipes out the gains to oil producers and the real cost to consumers. Each time the price has risen in the past, the pundits have told us that alternative energy sources and conservation measures would become economically feasible and deliver the world economy from its reliance on crude oil. It did seem that way for a while until inflation brought us back down to reality when the apparent price differentials disappeared. Your columnist's claim that $4 a gallon for gasoline in the USA is what it will take now in 2008 (Truth or consequences, Bangkok Post, May 29, 2008) is almost verbatim what the pundits were saying back in 1980 about $40 a barrel for crude oil. It did not happen then and it will not happen now.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Antarctic melt poisoning penguins, Bangkok Post, May 29, 2008

When DDT almost wiped out mosquito borne diseases it was considered a good thing and it's inventor was awarded the Nobel Prize. In the hysterical aftermath of the book "Silent Spring"m however, environmental activists said that DDT was a bad thing because its rampant use was said to be poisoning wildlife. A worldwide ban was quickly imposed. The ban made it possible for malaria, dengue, and other mosquito borne diseases to make a comeback. Last year the WHO decided that DDT was a good thing after all and lifted its worldwide ban as a way of combating these lethal diseases. Within a year of this action, the environmentalists have found new evidence that DDT is a bad thing because melting glaciers in Antarctica releases DDT that was trapped in the ice and poisons penguins (Antarctic melt poisoning penguins, Bangkok Post, May 29, 2008). Seventy years after its invention we still can't decide whether DDT is a good thing or a bad thing.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Antarctic melt poisoning penguins, Bangkok Post, May 29, 2008

It is reported that Adelie penguins are threatened as climate change melts Antarctic glaciers (Antarctic melt poisoning penguins, Bangkok Post, May 29, 2008) and yet just one month ago we read in the Post that all that melting down there was caused by volcanic activity underneath the ice (The fire below, Bangkok Post, April 28, 2008).

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: The perennial path of Buddhism, Bangkok Post, May 28, 2008

In early 1998 the Indonesian Rupiah and economy had collapsed and riots erupted in Jakarta. The riots were primarily against the government but the frustration of the poor and the unemployed eventually found expression in ethnic violence against the relatively wealthy Chinese immigrants. This event has been described only in terms of economics and ethnic tensions in the region. Religion had nothing to do with it. The attempt by the Bangkok Post to represent it as religious war between Islam and Buddhism (Reference: The perennial path of Buddhism, Bangkok Post, May 28, 2008) is inconsistent with its own articles and editorials written exactly ten years ago on this date.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Kashmiris uncork old habits, Bangkok Post, May 28, 2008

An article in the Bangkok Post about wine shops in Kashmir says that is is "forbidden for Muslims to consume alcohol" and that the Koran says that wine is "the abomination of Satan" (Kashmiris uncork old habits, Bangkok Post, May 28, 2008). These statements are not accurate. Wine is actually celebrated in Islam and an unlimited quantity of it is promised to Muslims when they ascend to heaven. The Koran does not forbid Muslims from drinking but it does forbid them from becoming drunk. Those that cannot drink in moderation must not drink at all only as a way of avoiding drunkenness.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Bin Laden denounces Arab leaders, Bangkok Post, May 20, 2008

In a recent taped message Osama Bin Laden, a Sunni, not only took on Arab leaders but also fired a salvo at the Shiites apparently jostling with them to be the bearer of the mantle for the Palestinian cause. He appears to be fearful that the fall of Saddam and the rise of Iran and Lebanese folk hero Nasrullah may cede too much power to the Shiites.

His message contains the surprising revelation that the historical schisms among the tribes and clans of the Muslims are still festering even as they try to rally against a perceived common enemy in Israel. Without a common enemy they would surely self-destruct by re-igniting centuries old clan warfare. In that sense, peace with Israel would be a disaster for them because they need a common cause to maintain a semblance of unity and to keep from killing each other.

The fear and loathing in the Middle East is not just a two way thing. It is a three-way hate triangle. President Bush may have accidentally played the right card in the Middle East. By removing Saddam he has moderated Sunni power in the region and balanced the hate triangle.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Chalerm to crack down on jail graft, Bangkok Post, June 17, 2008

It is reported that here in Thailand, drug dealers can carry on business as usual from jail with their mobile phones, and that business there is so good that they can afford to buy luxury automobiles for their jailers. I suppose that the point of having them in jail is that it makes the extortive bribery business more efficient. One can gain new perspectives on the war on drugs by following this line of reasoning. It should be noted that more than half of Thailand's 170,000 inmates are doing time for drug offenses.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Bird's Nest still battles the haze, Bangkok Post, May 16, 2008

It has become fashionable to think of Beijing as choking with traffic and pollution and yet it is a clean and wide open city with large boulevards complete with bicycle lanes, accessible sidewalks, and pedestrian underpasses. At the height of the tourist season armies of tourists both Chinese and foreign descend on Beijing and parts of the city appear to be packed with people and the roads appear to be packed with cars but even then the traffic is moving. If you visit Beijing only during these periods you will get a distorted view of life in the city.

There are no motorcycles to be seen much less two-stroke engines. Many Beijingers ride their bicycles of both the human powered and battery assisted varieties through an excellent system of bikeways . A network of electric and NGV powered buses and underground subway trains provides an extensive, efficient, reliable, and dirt cheap mass transport system. The air is cleaner and the traffic moves more freely in Beijing than in Bangkok.

It is unrealistic to expect the staff at a three star hotel in Beijing to speak English. You would have better luck at five star hotels and at the international guest houses at any one of the universities in Bejing where the room rates are more affordable. Sadly, the much hyped English language training program for Beijing taxi drivers that was announced last year has come to naught. It helps to speak a little Chinese.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: All quiet on the global warming front, May 2008

In prior years natural calamities such as Cyclone Nargis along with the new cyclone that is forming in the Bay of Bengal in Nargis's wake as well as the drought in Spain, the worst in 60 years, would have made global warming headlines. They would have warned us that man made global warming was to blame and that therefore these weather phenomena were really man made because we use fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide. This time around, however, the global warming alarmists have been rather quiet because over the previous year, even while human activity injected more than 7.5 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere, the globe has not warmed. In fact it has cooled significantly. The average temperature in the six months from November 2007 through April 2008 was 14.523C compared with 14.827C for the same period one year ago. The allegedly clear causal relationship between carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and global temperature is on thin ice, so to speak. As well, we are reminded that weather calamities are natural events that happen anyway, with or without global warming.

Cha-am Jamal
Thaland

Reference: Doing too much too soon may backfire, Bangkok Post, May 14, 2008

The junta had a 48-hour warning that Cyclone Nargis would hit Burma and they did not take any measure to shelter those at risk. It has now received a warning that yet another cyclone is forming in the the wake of Nargis and again it has chosen to suppress that information and do nothing to safeguard Burmese citizens in its path. Meanwhile the junta is preventing both international aid agencies and their own monasteries from providing direct assistance to the victims of Nargis. Clearly the issue is repressive control rather than sovereignty. The author of the article in the Bangkok Post (Doing too much too soon may backfire, May 14, 2008) refers to the junta as a "repressive regime" but concludes that Thailand's "warm relations" with it are more important than doing "too much" for the victims of cyclone Nargis because that may "create a bad impression". Would the author consider relief efforts "doing too much" if he or she were one of the hapless victims waiting for aid? It is time for Thailand to take stock of reality and to consider just what kind of people they are being so warm and friendly with. Bad impressions come in all flavors.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Temporary ordination in Thailand

The onset of the rains in Thailand brings with it a rush of temporary ordinations of young men into monk-hood supposedly for the duration of the rainy season. Few if any actually stay that long, most choosing to return home after just a few nights in the monastery, for it is not what he does at the monastery but the ordination ceremony itself that is important. It is a rite of passage for Thai men. It qualifies them to take a wife, to have a family, and to assume their functional role in society.

Sadly, these lavish ceremonies also serve to perpetuate gender inequality in Thai society for there is no parallel rite of passage for women. The ritual enforces a social gender hierarchy and leaves impressionable young minds with the importance of being male. Women's role in this hierarchy is to do women's work the most important of which is to give birth to a son. The roots of sexism in Thai culture run deep.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: No free press and no democratic government, Bangkok Post, May 9, 2008

The principle of the freedom of the press does not in any way require the government to coddle the press but only to allow it to function to the extent that it can and when that extent is not sufficient the finger of blame must be pointed in the other direction. This government has not abused the use of defamation lawsuits nor has it abused its authority to silence media critics. The government's only fault appears to be that it has a Prime Minister who can out-debate the media. That talent is not a crime against press freedoms. It is part of that process.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: "India gave 48-hour warning to Burma", and "Storm toll forces junta to delay vote", Bangkok Post, May 7, 2008

It appears that the senile old fools in Naypiydaw are mis-managing the cyclone Nargis disaster from start to finish. If there is a silver lining to this human tragedy it is that it will likely be the straw that breaks the camel's back and brings these old fools down; and finally returns Burma back to the people of Burma. It is as if God has intervened. Recall that it was the 1970 cyclone in Bengal that broke the back of the Yahya Khan military regime in Pakistan.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Bush urges Burma to accept US teams, Bangkok Post, May 7, 2008

One can only hope that the junta in Burma was paying attention when the US Navy had worked its magic to save the people of Bangladesh after cyclone Sidr had devastated that country and that they will respond quickly and positively to the generous American offer of assistance in Burma's time of need. The failure of the junta to respond quickly and adequately to the disaster may bring them down just as the cyclone of 1970 had brought down the Yahya Khan military regime in Pakistan.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Bollywood in Bangkok. Bangkok Post, May 7, 2008

Bollywood movies, which now come from Mumbai and not Bombay, consist entirely of predictable plots and dialog weaved through a patchwork collage of bizarre song and dance routines that will make you squirm. Their rationale is that to make it work financially they have to cater to the lowest common denominator in India that is their customer base. I can appreciate that but if they aspire to the international entertainment business they will have to wean themselves out of that. As it is one can sit through no more than 30 seconds of the stuff they are dishing out from Mumbai before becoming nauseated.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: PK Samak's conduct with media faulted, Bangkok Post, May 4, 2008

According to various Thai journalists' associations, press freedoms in Thailand are being eroded because their journalists are unable to stand toe to toe, eyeball to eyeball, and debate the issues with Prime Minister Samak. Apparently, the problem is that the Prime Minister is too aggressive. He points his fingers at journalists and uses hostile language and a demeaning tone of voice.

The failure of Thai journalists to debate with Mr Samak (Reference: PK Samak's conduct with media faulted, Bangkok Post, May 4, 2008) appears to be more of a competency issue than a press freedom issue. Mr Samak has not abused his authority to shut down dissenting media and he has not filed defamation lawsuits against anyone as others before him had done. Instead he has brought the debate to a public forum. This kind open discourse is healthy, democratic, and what the freedom of the press is supposed to provide. Do Thai journalists not possess the competency to function in this setting?

In the past, the inability to debate the issues in a public forum has led to defamation lawsuits. Has that karma come full circle? Shall we now see defamation lawsuits filed by the press against the Prime Minister?

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Thailand's women suffer in silence, Bangkok Post, May 1, 2008

The article notes that the Durex sex survey shows that 70% of Thai women do not have orgasm during intercourse and concludes from this data that it is the product of a patriarchal society with a mysgogynist culture unique to Thailand. The logic in this argument is somewhat of a stretch. We may deduce from the data that 30% of Thai women do achieve orgasm during intercourse. This percentage is not far off the global average and well above that of our Asia Pacific neighbors including India, China, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. China has achieved greater gender equality than Thailand by all other measures but their female orgasm rate is a paltry 24%, significantly less than that of Thailand. The column makes some good points about gender inequality in Thailand but confuses the issue by trying to link it with orgasms.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: Get your facts right, Postbag, Bangkok Post, April 29, 2008

George Bush Sr used two lies very effectively to gain congressional and public support for the Gulf War. The first lie was that Iraqi troops killed babies in a Kuwati hospital by removing them from incubators and throwing them on the floor. The only witness to this alleged horror was a 15-year-old Kuwati girl who later recanted. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the American Broadcasting Corporation, the Washington Post, and the New York Times reported after the war that the things that this girl said had never happened. The tearful testimony of the young girl and its analysis may be viewed at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2068209706002999721&hl=en. 

The other lie was that 250,000 Iraqi troops with 1,500 tanks were amassed on the Saudi border. They said that they had satellite pictures to prove it but that these pictures were classified and could not be released to the media. Russian satellite pictures of the very same spot taken at the same time were not classified, however, and they showed an empty desert with no soldiers and no tanks. Even diehard supporters of the Gulf War now distance themselves from these stories and tend to justify the war in other ways.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: The fire below, Bangkok Post, April 28, 2008

An article in the Bangkok Post says that a volcano under the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, that last erupted 2000 years ago, is now active and may be responsible for melting ice and retreating glaciers in that part of the continent (The fire below, Bangkok Post, April 28, 2008). At the same time the global warming alarmists claim that these changes are man-made and that they are caused by carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels as predicted by their computer model of the earth's climate. This computer model is the source of all of those doomsday scenarios one often finds in the Bangkok Post. However, the effects of volcanic and other geothermal activity on climate are not included in this model even though there is sufficient evidence that the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 caused climate change on a global scale. Given the new data on Antarctic volcanoes one can only conclude that the climate model of the global-warmists is flawed. Its forecasts, however scary, are not credible.


Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Spin doctors exposed, Bangkok Post, April 27, 2008

The article describes the lies and total fabrications used by the Bush administration, with the full cooperation of the media, to sell the Iraq war to the American people (Spin doctors exposed, Bangkok Post, April 27, 2008). "Spin" is too kind a word to describe these lies for spin requires some elements of truth to massage. The son is following in the footsteps of the father. It was another Bush administration some years ago that had sold the Gulf War to the American people with another set of outlandish lies that likened Saddam to Hitler by claiming that his soldiers were taking Kuwati babies out of their incubators and killing them. The lies had worked so well back then that ordinary Americans actually celebrated what was surely one of the cruelest events in the history of warfare. In what was termed a "turkey shoot" by gleeful Americans, Iraqi soldiers who had given up the fight in Kuwait and were retreating to Iraq on a major highway, became exposed to aerial attacks and were picked off one vehicle at a time by American warplanes and massacred. Now, as then, America is the one playing the role of the bully that they had said they had come to save mankind from.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Thai police shamelessly bizarre, Bangkok Post, April 24, 2008

Burmese migrants who have managed to escape to Thailand have paid their human trafficking agents thousands of Baht for the privilege, so desperate is their life in Burma. To describe this tragic situation as one in which the migrants are forced or lured to come to Thailand is is a gross misrepresentation.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Life Magazine, April 24, 2008

On page 14 of this week's Life Magazine it says that "moving house can be stressful". The article is about moving to a different house and not about physically moving the house to a different location. On page 3, in reference to men who get cold feet when it comes to marriage it says that "most guys want to get married but the issue is that they would like to prolong it as long as possible". The writer is referring to men who want to defer or postpone marriage and not to those who wish to prolong marriage. Further down in the same page we find a mysterious sentence whose meaning is left to the reader's imagination: "Know when it's time to keep him and know when it's time to kick him out of your life". The Bangkok Post is Thailand's international newspaper. It is not the appropriate vehicle for poetic expressions of Thailish. Surely Life Magazine can find a qualified copy editor among all those educated falangs milling about on Sukhumvit Avenue.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Matichon columnist Hakthongkwang, Bangkok Post, April 23, 2008

The press has a right to attack Mr Samak and Mr Samak has the right to defend himself in public. This kind of open and vigorous debate is healthy and productive and characteristic of democratic societies. Mr Samak does not hide behind his lawyers and file criminal defamation lawsuits and he does not abuse his power to muzzle dissenting views as others before him had done. The press should welcome the free and open dialogue with the Prime Minister and participate freely in it. What is Matichon whining about?

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Nothing positive about global warming, Postbag, April 23, 2008

A reader of the Bangkok Post in Santa Fe, New Mexico, writes that he is "working as hard as possible to ensure that the Bangkok Post does not need to move its offices due to rising sea levels" that he claims is caused by man-made global warming (Nothing positive about global warming, Postbag, April 23, 2008). The city of Bangkok is located very near to sea level and it is sinking. It floods every year during the rainy season and these floods are particularly bad when flooding coincides with high tides. Eventually the BMA will have to invest in some kind of flood control and management infrastructure. However, none of this has anything to do with carbon dioxide, global warming, or rising sea levels. For one thing, there is no evidence that the sea level is rising. The letter from Santa Fe follows a well known strategy used by global warming alarmists. First scare the daylights out of them; then hold yourself out as their savior.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

The real meaning of democracy

Even as the USA goes around the world spreading democracy they are finding that democracy is taking root a little faster than they had hoped. The problem is that these darn people out here in Asia are taking this democracy thing a little too literally and they are going out and voting for people that the Americans don't want them to vote for. So now we have two democratically elected governments, one in Palestine and one in Nepal, who are bad people and unacceptable to the USA. They are terrorists, for Pete's sake! Perhaps this thing called democracy needs to be defined a little more carefully to make sure that those dumb voters out in Asia don't elect just anybody.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Expat Thais turn to alcohol, Bangkok Post, April 21, 2008

There are tens of thousands of Thais in Taiwan mostly from the impoverished Northeast region who have sold or mortgaged their land to go there. They work long hours and they work very hard under harsh conditions and stern and inhumane supervision and they live in cramped and spartan factory dormitories with fellow Thais. Many return injured or ill. They send millions of dollars per year back to Thailand. There was a riot by Thai workers in Taiwan in 2005. They were protesting their working and living conditions. It is the riot more than drunken disco brawls that characterizes their life over there. The description of these people as drunken "lonesome doves" (Reference: Expat Thais turn to alcohol, Bangkok Post, April 21, 2008) is possibly more anecdotal than representative. As a footnote, if you are used to Beer Chang you will find Taiwan Beer rather weak and insipid. It would be pretty hard to get drunk on that stuff.

Cha-am Jamal

Thailand

Reference: A giant problem, Bangkok Post, April 21, 2008

According to the Bangkok Post, "There is no need for a formal study to show that elephants are being deprived of habitat, food, and water, and are consequently being forced to raid farms to survive" so obvious are these relationships (A giant problem, Bangkok Post, April 21, 2008). The alternative to a formal study is to jump to conclusions and those conclusions may lead well meaning do-gooders to do more harm than good. Some years ago, it was similarly obvious that the University of California at Berkeley had a sexist admission policy because women suffered a higher rejection rate than men by a large margin. After much righteous indignation, protest, and gnashing of teeth, a careful examination of the admissions data showed that more women than men applied to those faculties that had higher rejection rates. When this variable was introduced into the statistics, the difference due to gender completely disappeared from the data. I hope, for the sake of the elephants, that their benefactors study the problem more thoroughly instead of jumping to conclusions and quick fixes. As a curiosity, similar problems in South Africa have led to culling of elephant herds and the appearance of elephant meat on restaurant menus.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Burmese migrants in Thailand

A story in the Bangkok Post describes an incident in Ranong, Thailand in which a human trafficking event went horribly wrong and resulted in the death of 54 migrants from Burma and says that a Burmese official from Bangkok traveled to Ranong to commiserate with the survivors (Burmese official goes to Rayong to meet the survivors, Bangkok Post, April 13, 2008). This outward show of sympathy comes from a government that is not willing to repatriate its citizens who have been arrested for illegal entry into Thailand and a government whose misrule and mis-management has created the poverty that is the root cause of the exodus. Whatever the proximate causes for the misery of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, ultimately it is the junta that must be held liable and accountable. Their misrule is a crime against humanity.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Reference: Maoists to be Nepal's largest party, Bangkok Post, April 14, 2008

Maoist communists in Nepal, who derive their name and inspiration from the Chinese communists, have shown their Chinese gurus that the right way to take political power and to rule is through democratic means. By contrast, the Chinese Maoists have never won an election and rule only by virtue of an armed insurgency that was funded and controlled by foreigners. If they are as convinced as they want us to be that the Chinese people love them and want them to rule then why do they fear dissent? And what have they to lose in multi-party elections? They gained international legitimacy by way of a deal they made with Nixon in 1972 but in their hearts they surely know that they were put in Beijing not by the people of China but by Stalin and the Comintern. It is time for Maoist gurus in China to learn from their students in South Asia.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Global warming

All of the scary forecasts of the global warming alarmists having been debunked by the data, they have now resorted to a new more robust strategy that is immune to real data because it relies wholly on hypothetical data (A long dry summer, Bangkok Post, April 8, 2008, Global warming stings, Bangkok Post, April 12, 2008, Carbon footpring enters everyday vocabulary, Bangkok Post, April 13, 2008). They say in effect that regardless of the fact that none of our extreme weather predictions have come true and regardless of the fact that 2007 was not the hottest year on record, and regardless of the fact that the earth now appears to be cooling and not warming, please consider for a moment the devastating tragedy that could befall us if the earth did warm by an extreme amount that we cannot support by the actual but boring data. What one can read between the lines in these articles is that the global warming issue is dead in the water and that these articles are the death throes of the superheroes who had once enlisted themselves to save the earth from carbon dioxide.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

Beijing Traffic

It has become fashionable to think of Beijing as a city choking with traffic and pollution and yet it is a wide open city with large boulevards complete with bicycle lanes, accessible sidewalks, and pedestrian underpasses. There are times when the roads are almost fully utilized but the traffic is moving at all times stopping only for traffic lights. There are no motorcycles to be seen much less two-stroke engines. Many Beijingers use bicycles of both the human powered and battery assisted varieties. A network of electric and NGV powered buses and underground subway trains provides an extensive, efficient, reliable, and dirt cheap mass transport system. The air is cleaner and the traffic moves more freely in Beijing than in Bangkok or Hong Kong. The only time I saw what could be described as a road choking with traffic was the Badaling Expressway on the night before a holiday called "grave sweeping day" when there was a mass exodus.

Cha-am Jamal
Beijing

Golf in China

Here is an excerpt from the promotional literature for a golf course in Beijing, China. "We make a wonderful course by keeping the nature water and tree farthest. The various layouts and the buildings in the course with sinuous landform, forms a natural botanical garden beautiful scene. The designer designed the different difficulty to cater for the different players. When the golf ball go through the water and the grove, and enter into the hole, you can taste the enjoyment and the challenge. There is no ideal there is no being. The Riverside golf regards the ideal as her life. It need time, the accumulation of cultural and other, but it is most important to realize the being, and endeavor for it. Makes the golf culture being, bring forth the perfect Riverside golf club - our being." The problem with writing things in Chinese and then translating to English is that the Chinese language contains commonly used character sequences that mean things like natural-botanical-garden-beautiful-scene more or less. We are also dealing with a cultural oddity. Chinese students of English love to plagiarize. They will take phrases and even entire sentences that they find particularly poetic or beautiful and stick them into their English essay just to use them. The hapless reader is left to guess their relevance to the rest of the text. Also, Chinese tends to be poetic and metaphorical more so than English and the effort to find the right combination of English words for all those poetic idioms in tandem with random plagiarism produces the Chinglish gibberish one often finds in restaurant menus and product literature.

Cha-am Jamal

Beijing

Whether or not we choose to use the 2008 Beijing Olympics to leverage Chinese politics with respect to Tibet, it is quite clear that the opportunity to do so exists and it does so in a way and to an extent we have not seen since Nixon used the Sino-Soviet split as leverage to open China to the world. The same kind of leverage exists today because the Communist Party of China has oversold and over hyped the Olympics to the Chinese people with the expectation that its grand success on the world stage will legitimize its rule and solidify its "Mandate from Heaven" as benevolent dictators. By having done so they now face the risk that if things do not go well in the Olympics, they may lose face and along with that, their mandate from heaven. The all-out assault by the CPC propaganda machine to vilify the Dalai Lama and his sympathizers in the West as evil and hypocritical should serve as sufficient evidence of the Party's tenuous position. The level of fear and loathing in the Party that has been generated by the Tibet issue is unprecedented in the post-Mao era. It appears to me that they are in disarray. To strike or not to strike is a separate question but there is no question that the iron is hot.

Cha-am Jamal

Beijing