Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Japan and China putting Africa's elephants at risk

A report in the Washington Post tells of how Africa's elephants are now endangered because the international effort to control the ivory trade has collapsed. The market for the ivory is Japan and China. Scientists studying the problem report:
. . . an aggressive, well-funded anti-poaching program could be highly effective now because DNA testing can pinpoint where the animals are being killed. The report also said that an education program in East Asia is essential to curb the demand for ivory.

"I don't think people in China and Japan fully understand the crisis that their ivory purchases have caused," Wasser said. He proposed something like a current Chinese campaign against shark-fin soup, in which a popular basketball player asks, "What's wrong with us that we kill the sharks for the fin?"
Japan, one of the richest nations on earth, has absolutely no excuse for engaging in this kind of barbaric trade. It gets worse, at the last meeting on the ivory trade,
in October 2006, a CITES committee authorized Japan provisionally but deferred a decision on China. At that meeting, however, Japan failed to report 2.8 tons of illegal ivory it had seized several months before, showing, some officials said, that smuggling remains a problem.
Disgraceful.

Singapore's Scariest Building

At first I thought it was some kind of revolving restaurant, but I am told that this building is actually police headquarters for Singapore: a genuine Panopticon in the heart of the city-state! Or should I write police-state?

This brief exerpt from the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Foucault suggests why the "Panopticon" is an ominous choice of architecture style for a national police headquarters:
For Foucault, the epitome of the institutions of “discipline” -- a mode of domination that sought to render each instance of "deviance" utterly visible, whether in the name of prevention or rehabilitation -- was the Panopticon, a circular prison designed in 1787 by the philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham, which laid each inmate open to the scrutiny of the dark eye of a central watchtower.
What were they thinking when they built that thing?

Thai Officials: Bangkok could get bombed again in March

Thailand's government recently held an emergency to discuss intelligence reports that the Southern Insurgents are planning to bomb Bankok in March. Attacks could be planned for March 3, which is Maha Bucha Day. Another risky day could be Songkran, the Thai New Year in April. (Daily News via Bangkok Pundit) This follows recent, strongly-worded travel advisories issued by Australia and Canada.

Thai Prime Minister Surayud Losing Popular Support

Bangkok Pundit reports:
It really goes from bad to worse for the (Thai) government. Some politically connected people have told me that that there will be no election this year. If this is the case, I think the government will come under increasing pressure - unless they can somehow point to some extraordinary event which caused them to delay the election.
A recent poll shows that support for Thai Prime Minister Surayud has slipped to just 35%.

Two Dangerous American Men

There is growing fear that the Bush Administration just might be stupid -- or crazy or desperate -- enough to start a war with Iran. Top generals in the US military are believe it would be madness for the US to attack Iran; strategic analysts believe war with Iran would be catastrophic to long-term US foreign policy objectives.

However, if Bush does not attack Iran, he will go down in history as the president who not only lost the Iraq war, but turned Iran -- a foe of America and Israel -- into a regional superpower. If Bush is to have any hope of saving his reputation -- that is, if Bush is to go down in history as something other than the worst president in US history-- perhaps he has little choice but to take a huge gamble and invade Iran. Such an attack will most likely prove disastrous not only for US interests but for the world economy. Attacking Iran amounts to a big gamble. It's not sensible for a nation as powerful and secure as the US to make such a reckless gamble, but if you were as weak and insecure as President Bush now feels himself to be, you might be tempted.

The US is lost in a new Middle East of its own creation; it's a situation the present US administration does not have a snowflake's chance in hell of understanding, and coping with effectively. This becomes quite clear if you read an important article by Seymour Hersh published in this week's New Yorker Magazine. Hersh investigates the Bush administration's policy towards Iran and describes the emergence of a kind of Cold War in which the two factions of Islam -- Sunni and Shiite -- confront one another. (Although 90% of Muslims are Sunni, many oil-rich regions of the Middle East are in control of Shiites, most notably Iran and most of Iraq. Predominantly Shiite countries include Iran, Bahrain, and the Hezbollah faction within Lebanon. Although Syria is not Shiite, Syria's leaders are allied with Shiite Iran. Other countries of the Middle East -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc -- are mostly populated by Sunni.)

Hersh's article makes it appear that the US has sided with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni states against the Shiite states. This gets confusing because essentially, this means the US is fighting on the same side as Al Quaeda (which is pro-Sunni). The exception is Iraq, where the US supports its Shiite government and where most of the attacks against American forces have been conducted by Sunnis.

Here are some interesting quotations taken from Seymour Hersh's article -- from his interviews with various officials in the Middle East:
  • Saudi official: “Today, the only army capable of containing Iran”—the Iraqi Army—“has been destroyed by the United States. You’re now dealing with an Iran that could be nuclear-capable and has a standing army of four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers.” (Saudi Arabia has seventy-five thousand troops in its standing army.)
  • Saudi official: “We have two nightmares,” the former diplomat told me. “For Iran to acquire the bomb and for the United States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them. If America does it, we will be blamed.”
  • Martin Indyk, of the Saban Center, said, however, that the United States “does not have enough pull to stop the moderates in Lebanon from dealing with the extremists.” He added, “The President sees the region as divided between moderates and extremists, but our regional friends see it as divided between Sunnis and Shia. The Sunnis that we view as extremists are regarded by our Sunni allies simply as Sunnis.”
  • Partition would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states,” he said. “I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the issue will reach to North African states. There will be small ethnic and confessional states,” he said. “In other words, Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other. This is the new Middle East.”
Hersh raises the alarming possibility that the US is secretly funding covert operations intended to destabilize Syria and Iran. There are echoes of Iran-Contra scandal and also the "secret war" in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam era. But this time it could be worse.

The implication is that secret -- undoubtedly illegal -- covert operations are being run out of Vice President Dick Cheney's office. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” Hersh quotes a four-star US general as saying. It's scary to contemplate so much power in the hands of Dick Cheney. Cheney is one very arrogant bully and actual events have proven him wrong about most every policy he has advocated in recent years. Cheney's dismal track record and the unchecked powers of his office make Cheney just about the most dangerous man on the planet.

Introducing my other blog, Jotazine

Jotazine is my other blog. It's where I post my thoughts related to travel safety, work-travel gear, and ideas about some places to visit, stay, and eat. The focus of the travel blog is getting good value for your money.

Mosquito coil smoke may be very dangerous

At my other blog, Jotazine, I recently posted Jotman's investigation into the safety of mosquito coil smoke.

Hanoi 's streets to face traffic jams

It is anticipated that the flow of traffic in Hanoi will grind to a halt within a few years. As a condition entering the WTO this year, Vietnam is required to eliminate its 50% tax on automobile purchases. That's a pretty stark example of how a trade agreement can undermine the the quality of life in an urban center, and comprimise the ability of a state to manage its own transportation infrastructure. Maybe Vietnam can copy Singapore's example and require that car owners purchase vehicle permits.

Monday, February 26, 2007

The King Never Smiles by Paul Handley

This week, the New York Review of Books published a review by Ian Buruma of Paul Handley’s biography of King Bhumibol, The King Never Smiles (it costs $3.00 if you aren't already a subscriber). Buruma's review of Handley is highly favorable. Buruma writes: “The originality of Handley's book lies in his tough but I think fair-minded analysis of the revival of royal authority under King Bhumibol.” And he calls the biography "one of the most important books to appear on Thailand in English." Most thoughtful readers will concur.

Ian Buruma comments on the lèse-majesté law:
There is one topic, however, that neither Giles Ungphakorn, nor the free press activists, nor indeed anyone in Thailand can broach safely in public, and that is the role of the monarchy as an obstacle to liberal democracy. As with the September coup this year, coups have been justified in the past by allegations of lèse-majesté. (…) This is why even an impeccable democrat like Kavi Chongkittavorn, the Nation editor, will write piously that "the monarchy has been a stabilising force for Thai politics and society," and "HM the King's words are sacrosanct,"[5] without pausing to think that sacrosanct words, however well meant, may not always be what is most needed in a developing democracy.
Ian Buruma seized the opportunity to project the theme of the book into the current period we are now living through, the aftermath of the coup, comparing Thaksin to the monarch:
Even though the King is said to have disapproved of Thaksin's intransigence, the Muslim question was probably not the main bone of contention between the prime minister and the palace. In some ways Thaksin might be compared to the earlier strongman Phibun Songgram; their types of self-promotion threatened to upstage the king.[10] Like many monarchs, King Bhumibol has an aristocratic disdain for capitalist business, which he regards as selfish, even as the palace benefits from it. The King, who is one of the richest men in the world, owns vast holdings in Bangkok and elsewhere, administered by the Crown Property Bureau, which has shares in many companies, including Siam Commercial Bank and Siam Cement. But charity is the Buddhist way to accumulate personal virtue, and Bhumibol, being supremely virtuous, spends a great deal of time spreading his largesse, using funds donated to the palace by charitable citizens who see this as a way to raise their own karmic stakes.

Thaksin's brand of populism— handing out money to villagers, offering cheap loans, paying for grand spectacles—is self-serving in a different way perhaps, but might well have been regarded as competition. And as Paul Handley rightly observes in his book (published when Thaksin was still in power): "While Thaksin's autocratic government is problematic in the context of democracy and good governance, his concentration of power around himself as the country's self-styled "chief executive" can be seen as a move to neutralize the palace in politics."

To describe royal charity as a form of populism would seem to be a paradox, for what could be more elitist than a monarchy? But it is not unusual for aristocrats and kings to claim to be on the side of the common man against the greedy rich. What we see in Thailand, then, is two competing forms of charismatic autocracy: a traditional type, seeking its legitimacy in religion, culture, history, bloodlines, and superior virtue, and a new kind, based on money, celebrity, and media savvy. This is not unique to Thailand. Anyone who has seen The Queen, the movie about the British royal family in Tony Blair's United Kingdom, will recognize the phenomenon. But the drama in Thailand is especially acute, because unlike Britain, Thailand is still struggling with democratic institutions. Those who applaud too loudly, for understandable reasons, the victory of the old guard over the new should think of the damage done whenever people look to kings and generals to solve problems they should really take care of themselves.
What the review by Ian Buruma does not capture is some the grandeur of Handley's theme, the emotion, the salience of the historical narrative. It's a story that has all the ingredients of a modern tragedy played out on an epic scale. I'm speaking about those decades Thailand wasted fighting battles against mostly imaginary insurgents; when, having hyped-up the communist threat, the generals drove decent citizens underground, creating support for an insurgency where there had been none before; where democracy protesters across two generations get mowed down by machine gun wielding soldiers; as with student activists, so was the fate of great forests -- most having been felled; and of the precious few jungle areas that remained, still more were to be flooded for dams; where a capital city once know as the "the Venice of the Orient" has became an insufferably polluted place. You pave paradise, put up a parking lot. It’s a tragic place, Handley's Thailand, where good education has never been a national priority; where coups have been more frequent than elections; generals more trusted than voters; myths taken more seriously than reason.

The missed opportunities, the priorities that should-have-been – these give Handley’s book the makings of an epic tragedy. Ian Buruma's review does a good job of projecting the theme of Handley's book onto recent political events; but it's Handley's treatment of a broader sweep of Thai history that makes the King Never Smiles a magnificent read.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

The Innovation Cycle and OLPC's "Children's Machine"

In a previous post I evaluated the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. I think the intentions are great, but I ask: is the intended market ready for the technology; equipped to absorb it? My impression is that OLPC has probably picked the wrong "Lead Users." As has happened with countless other technological innovations, Children's Machine may well succeed, but not in the market (i.e. classrooms) for which it was originally intended. At least not initially. For example, I wonder if the Children's Machine might not be more likely to succeed -- as an innovation -- if the laptops were put into the hands of college-age students from developing countries.

The best early adopters are probably not young schoolchildren in developing countries. That's not to say that such students won't benefit from this new laptop in the future. There's every chance they will eventually. But I think that the folks at OLPC are trying to do too very difficult things at once: they are attempting to prove a technology and create a new market simultaneously. Entrepreneurs occasionally achieve victory on both fronts simultaneously -- inventing a technology and creating a market, but usually they only succeed if they are prepared to be very flexible on the second point. Those people who become the most passionate early users of a novel innovation are rarely the consumers the entrepreneur originally had in mind. But assuming entrepreneurs are flexible in their approach to the market, some new products at least have a fighting chance to capture new markets. OLPC, however, appear totally unwilling to compromise on the vital second point: any alternative market for their Children's Machine is a "black market." I refer you this paper that explores the role of the consumer in creative innovation.

The Economic Critique of OLPC
David Henderson wrote an economic critique of OLPC. Henderson shares my concerns about the impact of corruption on the OLPC project; he makes a similar argument using economic terms:
Would people in poor countries buy $100 laptops out of their own money? Some of them would (. . .) Many people in those poor countries (. . . ) would prefer to spend $100 on other items -- food, iodine pills for water, DDT, basic generic drugs, maybe a sewing machine. (. . . ) Possibly, Negroponte will be able to persuade Bill Gates or others to cough up many of the funds. But the vast majority of the funds for this $100-apiece purchase are likely to come from the governments of poor countries (. . . ) So what started "off as a completely innocent, let's-help-the-poor-in-poor-countries proposal will end up, with government involved, as just one more way of government using force against its own people to buy goods for them that they regard as luxuries, preventing them from buying the goods that they need to make it to next year. That's a tragedy. And if Negroponte rethinks his strategy, it's a tragedy he can help avoid.
Essentially, that's quite close to the argument I made in the previous post. Henderson also writes:
As development economist Jeffrey Sachs used to recognize, poor countries tend to have governments with a lot of power (see his "Growth in Africa: It Can Be Done," The Economist, June 29, 1996, pp. 19-21). That's one main reason they remain poor. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out in his classic cautionary book, The Road to Serfdom, in countries where governments have a lot of power, the worst tend to get on top. Thus, the powerful bureaucrat who is charged with distributing the computers is not likely to be a particularly ethical or caring person, as maintaining his power is more important to him than raising his people out of poverty. In fact, this bureaucrat is likely to give the computers to his friends or to others who are politically powerful. In many countries, he may even try to sell them.
If the term "where governments have a lot of power" was rephrased to "where individuals holding government posts have a lot of power" I could would agree: It's not that governments in poor countries are "powerful" -- such governments are far weaker than their Western counterparts (they don't really govern very much) -- but that the individuals who occupy government posts are essentially "above the law," and hence certain government ministers and officials are "more powerful."

India Backs out of OLPC
According to this news story, India has just announced that it has backed out of the OLPC scheme:
India has decided not to participate in Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, which was organized to provide children and educators in developing countries with a simple-to-use computer that would cost around $100, The Hindu reports.

India’s Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry called Negroponte’s project “pedagogically suspect,” and said its money would be better spent on secondary education, according to The Hindu.

“The case for giving a computer to every single [person] is pedagogically suspect,” wrote Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee in a letter to India’s planning commission, according to The Hindu. “It may actually be detrimental to the growth of creative and analytical abilities of the child.

“We cannot visualize a situation for decades when we can go beyond the pilot stage. We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools,” Banerjee said, according to The Hindu.
I am sympathetic to the Education Secretary's concerns about computers undermining students' creativity. Of course this need not be the case: there's nothing inherently anti-creative about a computer. Yet, the way computers tend to actually get used in classrooms may well be detrimental to the creative learning. So I believe it's a valid concern, and one that has received far too little attention.

Excitement for OLPC Spreads Among Software Developers:
This tech blogger is psyched about OLPC. "OLPC has excited me" begins his post:
Let me say this - an object based filesystem on a mesh-style network is hot. In python, even hotter. The fact it's open source makes it awesome. I'm hoping to talk to Ivan more about this later on in the conference.... This is probably one of the first open-source projects that makes me feel like a contribution could readily affect the world. I'm going to have to find some free time.
I think the machine sounds exciting too. And his enthusiasm for its hot specs only increases my convinction that there's going to be a strong black-market demand for the laptop.

Because truth be told, Jotman wants one.

One Laptop per Child? Can OLPC's Strategy Succeed?

Contemplating some problems plaguing Thailand's education system (posted here), I was cheered by something I had read about some time ago. I thought: well, there’s always that $100 dollar laptop-for-each-child project at MIT. It had heard that Thailand planned to buy some of the nifty green machines.

I have long held out hopes that MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte's plans to provide one $100 laptopsper each child would revolutionize education in the developing world. Some background on the scheme:
The Children's Machine, also known as XO-1 and previously as the $100 Laptop, is a proposed inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children around the world, especially to those in developing countries, to provide them with access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The laptop is being developed by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) trade association. OLPC is a U.S. based, non-profit organization created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture, and distribute the laptops. (Wikipedia)
I thought the best things about the $150 dollar laptops (present estimate) is that they'll be Internet-ready, and so it will be easy for kids to download online books. So for the first time, kids everywhere will have access to real libraries with great books. I thought at long last, neither lousy teachers nor lack of textbooks nor lack of a library need prove an impediment to learning. I must say I loved the idea.

I first read about OLPC and became an enthusiastic fan of the concept before relocating to Southeast Asia…. And it’s funny how even after you have some new life experiences, it can be some time before a long-held opinion pops, vaporizing into thin air.

One-hundred and fifty dollars – the cost of the laptop – did not sound like much money to me back when I lived in the West. But that’s a lot of money for the average Thai.

The question stuck me: what is to prevent the laptops from being sold on the black market?

That’s the Achilles heel of the project. You have these kids in poor villages with a laptop worth up to 6 months income for a local (assuming a $1 a day level of poverty -- that's a typical earnings for many Indonesians, Cambodians, etc.). I can easily imagine administrators, teachers, siblings -- even parents -- would sieze an opportunity to sell such a laptop to black-market dealers for some hard cash. Maybe the students themselves would try to sell them...

One thing that made me cringe reading the OLPC website was this sentence: “Children must not only own the laptop, but take it home.” This statement implies that the poor child in question has recognized property rights. I learned in Indonesia that the sense of individuality and individual ownership is not so clear-cut.

Once I asked a Balinese man: “Do you own a motorcycle?”

“Yes. I have three motorcycles.”

“Three?”

“My brother has one, my sister has one, and I have one.”

I tried this question out on some other Balinese; same kind of answers every time.

The child’s computer will belong to the family. And the family will decide what is to be done with it.

If you can turn the laptop into cash and food-on-the-table today, why not try? The uneducated tend to think less about the future – that’s one reason education is so important. Yet this same quality also makes them less likely to invest in it.

Negroponte’s response to this problem is to
...make this machine so distinctive that it is socially a stigma to be carrying one if you are not a child or a teacher. Now you can obviously take it down to your basement, but I hope your spouse will even say: "Oh God! Honey! What did you do?" OK? you stole from the church. It's like a red cross on something. So I'm hoping that the distinctiveness of the product will be the third one that maybe isn't thought of that often.
Social stigma? Let’s hope he's consulted with the anthropologists on that one. I have my doubts. I think owning something that looks cool (one of the design specs for the laptop is that is must "look cool") is not going to prove a social stigma in the developing world. Let's get real here: the average guy on the street in Karachi is not going to care where some green laptop came from!

What really made me question the enterprise was when I learned of the “additional costs” associated with each laptop: “The $100 figure does not take into account any setup, maintenance, damage, or replacement costs. An online critic of the project estimated that the true and ongoing cost of the OLPC initiative would be USD$972 per 5 years per laptop.”

That kind of money can go a long way anywhere the Third World. For example, many young students in Cambodia lack pencils. The estimates may well be too high, but it does make me question whether the one-laptop-per-child approach is a wise way to focus the very limited funds and resources allocated to educating children in these countries.

By way of contrast, John Wood, founder of Room to Read, is building and filling libraries for children in Cambodia for a far lower cost per student. According to Wood a $2,000 library can serve 400 children -- that works out to just $5 per child.

I found the MIT's OLPC website lacking in technical content – too much glossy PR for my taste. Also very little meat on OLPC's private Wiki. The Wikipedia article I found to be superior – various technical specs are posted and the critique section was especially worth reading. And I found another thoughtful critique of the project at the Fonly Institute (don't miss the comments).

It would be disturbing were governments in various developing countries asked to fund such an expensive and large-scale "experiment' as OLPC. Not only does this provide an incentive for corruption; it could drain money away from proven educational programs and initiatives. My own experience as an IT entrepreneur taught me the benefits of small scale experimenting. An economist explores such issues here.

I would be surprised if small scale experiments using mostly existing technologies – mobile phones, used laptops or PCs parts, etc -- could not achieve similar results to those aimed for by the OLPC at lower cost. Here's a list of similar tech projects.

I've met individuals and seen organizations doing great things for education in the developing world. People you probably haven't heard about. I would hedge that what these people are learning on the ground is going to prove far more important in this good fight than any single technology product, however marvelous.

Corruption in the Thai Education System

I was telling you what I like about Krabi Town. Across the street from Relax Coffee I found an neat little guest house run by Sam (not his real name). Formerly Sam taught in a Thai school. The experience was disheartening. Sam told me the parents paid high fees to send kids to school in Thailand, but the school trustees were siphoning off the money, and trying to force the teachers themselves to buy basic supplies such as paper for their students at inflated prices. He said corruption was endemic in the Thai education system. “The typical class for ten-year-olds has about fifty or sixty students. Unless you are an army drill sergeant, you can’t teach in that environment. Not much learning takes place."

As he spoke we could hear the drums being played by a nearby elementary school in some kind of parade ceremony.

“They play the drums at the schools everyday” said Sam. “Thai kids have to listen to a lot of drum music. . . .”

Friday, February 23, 2007

Important website: Greenpeace Southeast Asia

When I was in Singapore and the Exxon Mobile petrochemical factory had an accident (see this post), I wanted to find out what really happened. It was then that I made a discovery: Singapore has no environmental NGOs. None.

That's why I'm so happy to report that Greenpeace has since launched a new website: Greenpeace Southeast Asia. Only three countries in the region have Greenpeace offices: Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia. Hopefully, with this new website, people living in other Southeast Asian nations (such as Singapore) will find it easier to access news and information on current environmental issues. Nice move Greenpeace!

Thursday, February 22, 2007

How Japan bribes SE Asia nations to accept its toxic waste

A report by Greenpeace says that Japan is using bilateral agreements to get around the Basel Convention -- an agreement which requires each country to take responsibility for managing its own waste within its own national borders. Apparently the Japanese tie development aid project assistance -- i.e. subways for Bangkok -- to side agreements that require recipient to accept Japan's waste.

What I think is wrong with this kind of bilateral agreement:
Due the high level of corruption in the poor nation receiving the toxic waste, a few government officials and businessmen in the recipient nation profit from the waste transfer. Any environmental commitments that Japan insists be put into these bilateral accords will tend to be ignored, because it is profitable to ignore them. And who is going to enforce them? Courts, police, etc. are bought off. Poor people, animals, and the environment pay the entire cost.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Deadly fake drugs from China flooding Southeast Asia

The NY Times reports that in a sample of malaria medicines from Southeast Asia that were tested, 53 percent were found to be fake. The fake drugs are manufactured in China. The article reports that the sophisticated packaging and chemical make up of these drugs renders them almost totally indistinguishable from the genuine product. Because some fake drugs contain aspirin, patients are deceived; they may feel as if the fake drug is "working."

According to one source, the distribution of the deadly fakes mirrors the old heroin distribution networks. That would put Northern Burma at the epicentre of distribution, where contacts with Thai distributors move the drug onwards. When I visited the Burmese border town of Tachileik, I noted that a dozen people tried to sell me viagra. Based on the Times report, it would seem that the Viagra they were peddling was almost certainly fake.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Basel Convention Aims to Stop Toxic Waste Transfers

I recently learned about an organization called BAN concerned with a really important issue you might not have thought much about: the transfer of toxic waste products from rich countries to poor ones. The Seattle-based group is named after a 1994 multinational agreement called the Basel Convention which aims at curtailing this practice.
There is an ugly underbelly of economic globalisation that few wish to talk about. Under the guise of simply utilizing the “competitive advantage” of cheap labour markets in poorer areas of the world, a disproportionate burden of toxic waste, dangerous products and polluting technologies are currently being exported from rich industrialised countries to poorer developing countries. In effect, rather than being helped to leap-frog over dirty development cycles directly toward clean production methods, developing countries are instead being asked to perpetuate some of the world's most toxic industries and products and are even asked to become the global dumping ground for much of the world's toxic wastes.
There's more information about the toxic waste crisis at BAN's website.

"Cobra Gold" Joint US-Thailand Miltary Exercises to Proceed

Not five months after a military coup d'etat snuffed out democracy in Thailand, the US administration has decided to proceed with the annual US-Thai military exercises known as "Cobra Gold." (Bangkok Post) This decision is neccessarily a short-sighted one, because by proceding with the exercises Washington sends the message that democracy is expendable. How to explain this rather surprising anouncement (that comes just a few months after the US suspended military aid to Thailand)? Two possibilities come to mind.

1. Perhaps the US is afraid that Thailand will move closer to China should the US not continue to cooperate with the junta-backed regime. If so, it would seem to indicate that Washington has little expectation that Thailand will soon return to democratic rule.

2. Perhaps Washington is buying Thailand's short-term cooperation at the United Nations on global security issues relating to Iran or North Korea.

But the US Administration is comprimising one if its self-declared core principles: support for democracy. Either way you look at it, this announcement testifies to an new and profound development: an acceleration in the relative decline of the geopolitical power of the United States.

29 Bombs go off in the Southern Thailand Provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala

The Bangkok Post reports:
Seven people are dead and more than 60 wounded in the biggest wave of coordinated bombings, terrorism and murders ever reported across the four southernmost provinces. A bomb on Monday morning in Yala town raised the death toll to eight.

At least 28 bombs and three murders targetted foreign tourist sites, Thai-Chinese celebrating the Lunar New Year, hotels, karaoke bars, power grids, telephone lines and commercial sites in the country's southernmost provinces. Two public schools were torched.
Bangkok Pundit comments that the recent co-ordinated bomb attacks throughout the Southern provinces puts the Bangkok bombings in perspective:
51 incidents and 8 dead. Hmm. I thought one of the arguments that the Bangkok bombings wasn't undertaken by the terrorists was that the Bangkok bombings weren't "deadly enough"(...) So 3 people died in Bangkok in 9 incidents and this was only intended "to cause unrest", but when 8 people die in 51 incidents the aim was "to take lives".
The administration in Bangkok have had their heads in the sand. By rejecting offhand the likelihood that the Bangkok bombings were perpetrated by Southern extremists, the country denied itself opportunity to learn from the prior attacks. While the goverment has been spinning the Bangkok bombings in the interest of political expediancy, the security situation in the nation spins out of control.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Fire Proves Thai Disaster Response Capabilities in Tourist Region Still Woefully Inadequate

Thai News Asia reports on the Phi Phi Island fire:
Police organised crowd control and contacted Krabi authorities and the Royal Thai Navy to send a helicopter to assist in the operation.
The fact is that the Royal Thai Navy did absolutely nothing significant by way of assisting with the fire-fighting operation. The Royal Thai Navy helicopter just flew around a few times -- showing up a full four hours after the fire broke out. I later assumed the helicopter had been responsible for delivering the Governor of Krabi Province to the island so he could make a statement (as reported in this post).

But when that Royal Thai Navy helecopter first appeared in the sky, hundreds of firefighters cheered and waved: help had arrived! Or so we imagined.

The second time helicopter passed by -- about half an hour later -- the cheers from the bucket brigade were mixed with jeers and sarcastic remarks. Tourist-fire fighters on the front line were risking their lives to put out a massive fire amidst collapsing walls. What had this helicopter done to help the situation since it flew by the first time? That was the question. As I was bucketing water, a British woman -- a tourist-firefighter -- said to me:

"Why can't they drop some water on the fire?"

"Good question," I replied.

Two years after the tsunami, the recent Phi Phi Island fire demonstrates that the Thai Royal Navy remains ill-equiped to help in the event a disaster strikes this heavily-touristed island. Also, it glaringly highlighted the equally appalling fact that the popular island of Phi Phi still lacks any formal disaster response organization or fire fighting squad whatsoever.

This situation is deplorable, especially in view of 1) the massive influx of aid monies Thailand received from the interational community, post tsunami; 2) the fact that hundreds of thousands of international tourists continue to support the region economically.

It is not only possible, but quite probable that the vital Phuket-Krabi tourism region of Thailand will experience disaster again in the near future. Of particular concern is the region's proximity to the violent provinces of Southern Thailand, where insurgents have waged a two-year long campaign of bombings and murders. Many informed foreign observers of Thailand strongly suspect that Southern Insurgents were responsible for the bombings in Bangkok on New Years Eve. And the Phuket-Krabi tourist region is every bit as viable a terrorist target as Bangkok -- perhaps more so. Given the deteriorating situation in the South of Thailand and the recent Bangkok bombings, it would be no small miracle if the Phuket-Krabi region were spared terrorist attack. It is incumbent upon Bangkok to establish rapid disaster-response capabilities within this key economic region.


UPDATE:
An angry Phi Phi business owner informs me that that Phi Phi businesses pay what she considers "high taxes": well over 300 baht per square meter per year. Also businesses must pay a separate "sign" tax.

"What do we get for our taxes?" she asked.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Phi Phi Island Fire - How Many Tourist-Firefighters?

My story about fighting the Phi Phi Island fire is now posted -- lots of photos! Click Here or just scroll down.

I have just updated my blog coverage of the massive fire Sunday on Phi-Phi Island. Most notably the fire was successfully fought by a volunteer "international fire brigade" consisting of hundreds and hundreds of tourists from around the world who joined forces with local Thais to put out a blazing inferno that consumed 11 shops. The fire began shortly before noon yesterday.

How Many Firefighters? An article in the Bangkok Post states that there were 200 tourist fire-fighters. I believe his estimate to be far too low. On the other hand, I feel that my original estimate that there were over 1,000 fire fighters may have been too high. After reviewing my notes and photos I would conservatively say at least 350 foreigners were actively involved in putting out the fire at any one time during a three hour period (as some dropped out from exhaustion, others took their place). A similar number of locals were actively involved, both in the bucket brigade and "behind the scenes," collecting and delivering buckets, drinks, and other supplies to the firefighters. My best conservative estimate is that at least 700 tourists and locals participated in a massive effort to put out one very big fire.

Police Investigate the Phi Phi Island Fire

This video shows the police team conducting an investigation of the fire.


Police discuss the fire with Buht, a witness to the fire.

Two Phi Phi Island Fire Survivor Were Tsunami Survivors

Guhn and Buht, both of whom appear to have been in the building where the fire first broke out, were also victims of the tsunami that devastated Phi Phi Island two years ago.

Buht reflects on the two disasters:

What Caused the Phi Phi Island Fire? Jotman Investigates.

Guhn, who works nearby to where the fire broke out, explains what caused the fire.

Ground Zero of Phi Phi Island Fire

This (rather spooky) video clip surveys the scene of yesterday's devastating fire on Phi Phi Island.

Fire on Ko Phi Phi Island - International Bucket Brigade


© Copyright 2006 by Blogger Jotman (story and photos). All Rights Reserved.

PHI PHI ISLAND, KRABI PROVINCE, THAILAND: Around 11:00 AM I was in an Internet cafe on the north side of Phi Phi island (also spelled Pi Pi or Pee Pee) when there was some commotion on the street. Some people loaded fire extinguishers onto a cart. I heard the word "fire." There was no sign of smoke where I sat across from the Seven Eleven store.

The restaurant next door began to shut down. People started filling the narrow street. Thais appeared with carts, some carried buckets.

No sign of smoke. I walked down a lane towards where the Thais with carts were rushing, in a southerly direction. I looked up at the sky and saw a huge plume of smoke filling the sky in to the south and drifting westward. The source of the fire was about 500 meters away: evidently a shop the southern shore was ablaze. Perhaps more than one shop, the plume of smoke was thick, black and getting bigger before my eyes.

We seemed to have an inferno on our hands. It was then I realized that the small wooden shops lining the south shore of Phi Phi might be consumed in a chain reaction as the fire spread.

Many of these shops had been spared the tsunami. The tsunami devastated the north side of Phi Phi, leaving many businesses along the south shore, where the boats dock, unscathed. A part of the island spared the tsunami looked to be going up in flames.

At this moment, the danger presented itself that we could have a major catastrophe on this dry tropical island that has not seen a drop of rain in several weeks.

I entered the Seven Eleven (which was preparing to close) and handed over some Thai baht for a disposable underwater camera (my digital cameras batteries had died).

This was deja-vu. The last time I bought a disposable camera was in New York City at about the same time of day on 9/11.

"Just take it, go -- no pay" the Seven Eleven girl was telling the remaining customers. More than fear but a measure of near panic was setting in. Shops were closing. Many Thais working here knew the drill; they had survived the tsunami catastrophe which struck the island only two years ago. On that day, the survivors closed shop and ran like hell.

But in my mind was that other great catastrophe of this new millennium. What I saw next seemed a replay (on a much smaller scale) of the sickly cloud etched into my memory from the morning of 9/11 when I stepped out onto Broadway and looked South.

Looking south, I saw that a sickly cloud now filled the sky of this tropical island paradise.

"Head for the mountain!" shouted a Thai lady, pointing towards the mountain.

That’s when I took this photo. The sky to the south was no longer blue. A giant plume of grey and white smoke spread across the sky. Shops were closing, people were beginning to move very quickly down the tiny lanes.



I walked along the south-east coast of the island, approaching the fire zone from the east (Before I was north of the fire). Because the wind was blowing west, the air was clear and I could get very near to the blaze. When I rounded a point, I saw that perhaps a thousand or more tourists and locals stood along the shoreline for two hundred meters.



At first I assumed they were spectators. No. Most were working furiously to put out the blaze. I pulled out the disposable camera which I had bought at the Seven Eleven and started taking photos of the massive international fire brigade, finishing off the camera roll in just a few minutes.

Hundreds of people stood on rocks and waded in the waters off the rocky beach area. Smoke and flames were coming out of ruined shops for a hundred meter stretch. I saw that the trees of the jungle behind the shops had also caught fire.

I approached closer. Five-hundred to one thousand of tourists and locals formed some five or six vast lines passing buckets of seawater from the bay up to those facing the smoke and flames where stores once stood. The men receiving the water buckets up near the flames -- barely visible in the smoke -- numbered perhaps a hundred.

There was great haste to get sufficient water on the flames before the fire consumed the forest.

“We need more people!” came the shout from the line.





"More buckets!” came a shout from men high up amidst the smoldering ruins of buildings. The fire had reached into the forest behind the shops lining the sea, and this was a focus of their attention.



I wanted to help. But what to do about my camera, computer, and cash stuffed bag? I pulled an extension cable-lock out of my bag and used it to attach the bag to a tree overhanging the shore (a spot in clear view of the nearest-most bucket brigade which I had decided to join). Piled onto shoreline rocks near this tree were tourist clothes: many shorts, t-shirts, and other beach apparel salvaged at the last minute by a desperate shopkeeper as the flames encroached on his source of livelihood.

The mood of the bucket brigade was intense. Hardly anyone spoke a word. Every so often someone shouted “heads” as an empty bucket was thrown back down to the sea.



In retrospect, it's easy to say that this was a somewhat unfortunate -- though totally understandable (given the heat of the moment) -- practice that destroyed a number of buckets as some of the empty buckets that had been tossed down shattered on the rocks.

We filled black buckets, white paint buckets, small beach buckets, also big aluminum pots. In the line stood thin blonde girls in bikini bottoms and beach tops, shirtless tattooed western men, many Nordics, also large number of Thai men and women.


In my water-bucket chain we made way for a water pump. Several of these were set along the beach to deliver water up the hill. Some people expressed anxiety about the proximity of the electric pump cords to the sea water.

The buildings continued to burn and smoke. Suddenly from the building, about fifty meters above where I waded filling buckets of water, there was a cheer. Our line had successfully put out one of the fires! We applauded the brave heroes of our line, the men standing amid the rubble.

But four other lines of the great international fire brigade were still fighting the fire. Our line disengaged and its members absorbed themselves into the remaining lines.

Every so often a wall collapsed with a thundering clash. Many expressed fear for the at the top of our line delivering near the ruined shells of the buildings.

A helicopter appeared. More cheers.

“Why don’t they drop some water?”

It was a good question. This was mainly a tourist firefighting brigade.

“We could certainly use a fire chief here” I muttered to the English woman next to me as I dogged another flying bucket.

“You said it. They have no fire department on the island. Nothing. This is it.”

“Safety first!” someone cried out in reference to the flying bucket-hazard. Snickers and moans.



"We need people over here!" came a cry from atop the smoldering wreckage of shops to the east. I moved back to where I had begun my fire fighting career. The first line I had joined had just been re-activated.



Between dodging the flying buckets and being handed more buckets, and handing the last bucket off, I found my attention engaged on a task like nothing I else I could recall. I recalled that psychology professor Csikszentmihalyi popularized a term for this feeling of being-in-the zone. He calls it flow.

Click here to watch videos showing the investigation of the fire, hear fire victims' stories, and survey the destruction it caused.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Inferno on Phi Phi Don Island - Hundreds of Tourists Fight the Blaze

PHI PHI ISLAND, THAILAND - Between 500 and 1,000 tourists participated in the effort to put out a fire on Phi Phi Don island in Krabi Province of Thailand (near Phuket) today. Jotman was on the scene and is live blogging the fire.

More to Come.

Governor of Krabi Province Arrives by Helicopter - Live Blogging a Major Fire on Phi Phi

The governor of Krabi Provinced just arrived by helicopter. He spoke by megaphone to seven hundred tourists and locals participating in the efforts to put out a blazing inferno that had just destroyed ten shops and part of the Apache Bar along the South side of Phi Phi Island.

The governor said he wishes to thank tourists from around the world who helped to save Phi Phi island from the big fire today.

MAJOR FIRE ON PHI PHI DON ISLAND NEAR PHUKET THAILAND

PHI PHI DON, KRABI PROVINCE, THAILAND - Around 11am this morning a major fire broke out on Phi Phi island destroying 10 stores, at least one thousand tourists and locals joined joined forces to put out the fire. The fire consumed businesses adjacent to Apache Bar -- the east wing of Apache bar also being consumed by the fire. Phi Phi Don Island faced the brunt of the tsunami two years ago.

Jotman is presently on Phi Phi island. He took photos, and participated in the efforts to put out the fire.

More to come.

UPDATE: Jotman reports that one tourist fighting the fire got a nail through the foot. A Swedish newspaper reports some tourists with smoke inhilation. No deaths or injuries .