Italian view of Thai political crisis

Francesco Sisci ponders the political situation in Thailand in La Stampa:

. . . the police seem powerless, the military refuses to intervene, and the demonstrations grow bolder by the day. The protesters insist on the same old thing: The prime minister must quit. Why should he quit? Because a mob said so. Then who should appoint the new government? Who knows. Or does somebody?

But this is not democracy. This is, once again, a coup d’etat. It does not matter whether the military rolls out tanks to banish the prime minister; it is bad enough that they tolerate a situation where a democratically elected government is held hostage to a rabble shouting empty slogans.

Sisci writes that the fall of Thailand's democracy might bode ill for the entire region. He sees European parallels:

Fascism started in Italy, then a minor European power, in 1922. A group of people took the law into their own hands, donned black shirts, and marched on Rome intimidating the Italian king, the public, and even the army into surrendering power.

The situation regarding Thai democracy may, in fact, not be so dire with respect to the recent protests, according to a report by S. Crispin in the Asia Times (hat-tip Bangkok Pundit). Crispin observes a lack of middle class support for the protesters, the fact that the participants seem to be quite old, and an apparent lack of palace support for the movement.

However, I think that if the economic situation in Thailand should deteriorate significantly, the protests will likely gain traction.
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Note: Bangkok Pundit and Siam Sentinel also comment on this article.

Zimbabwe government illigitimate

“The international community has condemned the Mugabe regime’s ruthless campaign of politically motivated violence and intimidation,” Mr. Bush said in a statement from the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., adding that he had directed his secretaries of treasury and state to develop sanctions “against this illegitimate government of Zimbabwe and those who support it.”

The wording of the Bush statement as reported in the NY Times brings to mind what Paul Collier wrote in a recent WaPo op/ed. Collier suggested that under certain circumstances governments such as that of Robert Mugabe ". . . should temporarily lose international recognition of their legitimacy." Collier believes the temporary suspension of international recognition -- ideally orchestrated by the UN but more feasibly by the EU -- could create circumstances favorable to a military coup.

It certainly seems appropriate to speak of the Zimbabwe government in this way.

Obama campaign at risk

I was happy that Obama won the votes he needed to secure the nomination. Although I have not withheld criticism of him in the past, I imagined it would feel good to cheer him on.

What did Obama do this week? He came out in support of a bill that granted amnesty to the telecoms. And after the Supreme Court ruled against the DC handgun ban, Obama did not criticize the landmark decision.

Obama had said he was against amnesty for AT&T and other telecommunications companies that may have broken laws at the behest of the Bush Administration. Also Obama had said he backed the Washington DC ban on handguns. (Obama's hometown, Chicago, has long had a similar similar handgun ban). City-wide handgun bans have proven popular -- local citizens overwhelmingly support the bans in DC and Chicago.

Clearly, Obama's strategy here is to deprive the Republicans of divisive issues they can use against him.

However, presidential elections most often turn on questions of character. McCain has a proven track record of standing up -- frequently against his own party -- for issues he strongly supports. And there are clear parallels in McCain's political career to his open defiance of the Vietcong from the time he was taken captive in 1967.

Because electing a man of McCain's character, decency, and reputation to the White House would obviously be a vast improvement over the current occupant, Obama has to demonstrate to voters that even more than a change in character, the country needs a change in direction. To rise above McCain in November, Obama must be seen to stand up for what he believes.

War on photography

It has gotten out of hand in the US and Britain reports the Guardian:

Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We’ve been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.

Except that it’s nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. . . .

Hat-tip War on Photography blog which documents attacks on photographers.

US Supreme Court decision clears way for more Columbines

Remember Bowling for Columbine? Today the Supreme Court of the United States decided that local US communities do not have the right to ban guns. The highest court affirms that individual Americans -- wherever they may live -- have the Constitutional right to arm themselves to the hilt.

The 5-4 decision follows yesterday's horrible Supreme Court ruling. Wednesday the top US court ruled the world's richest corporation should not have to face punitive damages for trashing the Alaska environment. That's what happened when Exxon put a drunk captain in charge of a supertanker in 1989.

Are these decisions shocking? No. What else are we to expect from the legal minds who put George W. Bush in office?

Photo: by Jotman shows the Supreme Court.

Exxon won't sweat Valdez settlement

Profits for 2007

ExxonMobile beat its own record for the highest profits ever recorded by any company, with net income rising 3 percent to $40.6 billion, thanks to surging oil prices. The company’s sales, more than $404 billion, exceeded the gross domestic product of 120 countries. (NY Times, Feb 1, 2008)

One of 38,000 Alaskans impacted by the oil spill

The 11 million gallons of crude oil from the tanker destroyed the herring population and Mr. Wills’s fishing career, so he borrowed money to open a bookshop, a cafe and the Mermaid Bed and Breakfast in downtown Homer, Alaska.

Mr. Wills had expected to use his $85,000 share of the $2.5 billion punitive damage settlement against Exxon to pay off some of his debts. The United States Supreme Court decision on Wednesday cutting the damages to around $500 million means Mr. Wills will receive only $15,000, he said.

“After everything we’ve been through, that’s barely enough to cover payroll for a month,” he said. “This is a knife in the gut.” (NY Times, June 25, 2008)

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Photo: This sea lion soaked with oil may not have survived the oil spill.
Note: Since 2006, thousands of Singapore residents have turned to Jotman for information about the latest accidents at the ExxonMobile refineries located offshore (local Singapore newspapers can be slow to report such incidents. Moreover, Singapore law forbids environmental NGOs.)

Preah Vihear inflames nationalist sentiments

With his coalition still intact, the Thai prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, appeared set to prevail over Thailand’s emboldened political opposition in a confidence vote this week. But accusations that his five-month-old government bowed to Cambodia in a territorial dispute have weakened the government and stoked nationalist sentiment.

The NY Times article quoted above then seeks to explain how the old temple of Preah Vihear came to take center stage in the stand-off:

The opposition is divided between the Democrat Party in Parliament and a group called the People’s Alliance for Democracy, which has organized street protests for the past month. But they have jelled over the issue of Preah Vihear, a 900-year-old Khmer temple that sits on a ridge along the Thai-Cambodian border.

The International Court of Justice ruled in 1962 that the temple belonged to Cambodia but the surrounding land — and perhaps most important, access to the temple — have remained in dispute. The temple can be reached from the Thai side relatively easily; on the Cambodian side it is accessible only by bad roads and footpaths scaling the mountain.

In an apparent attempt to help solve the dispute, Mr. Samak’s government endorsed Cambodia’s application to list Preah Vihear as a World Heritage Site, a classification made by the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization.

But the opposition accused the government of having ulterior motives in backing Cambodia’s application, claiming that Mr. Thaksin, who is also a billionaire tycoon, will benefit from business deals in Cambodia. Negotiations on the Preah Vihear issue were led on the Thai side by Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama, who is a former lawyer for Mr. Thaksin.

I am concerned about how the Cambodians will react -- down the road -- if the Thais continue to turn the fate of the ancient Khmer temple into a political football. It's all such a shame, especially as the PAD protesters just seem to have been looking for any old grievance to stoke outrage against the elected Thaksin-allied government.

Thai investment in Cambodia is substantial -- not just in terms of the deals Thaksin has planned. On this account, I would be surprised if the Thai business community let this matter get any more out of hand.

The unpredictable element here is the Cambodians. The potential for Cambodians to display explosive animosity towards a neighbor that claims ownership over one of their prized temples cannot be understated. What would be Thailand's response if Cambodians over-react to all this domestic Thai political posturing? After all, only a few years ago Cambodians burned Thailand's embassy to the ground because a Thai pop star claimed Angkor Wat truly belonged to Thailand!

The Cambodian position is understandable, even if the behavior is over-the-top. Recall that it was the Thais who sacked Angkor in 1431, destroying Khmer civilization.

Concerning the Preah Vihear dispute, Bangkok Pundit has examined the Thai political manuevering in the context of the 1962 International Court of Justice ruling -- "the temple of Preah Vihear is situated in territory under the sovereignty of Cambodia" -- and the recent UNESCO application that set off the present controversy here (more here and here). Bangkok Pundit, noting how some Cambodian bloggers have responded to the controversy, blogged: "Both the opposition in Thailand and the opposition in Cambodia are claiming that the same thing that they are both disadvantaged although neither side have yet to advance a legal argument on how exactly how either side is disadvantaged. So far it is nationalist rhetoric on both sides." That sounds about right.

Maps: Khmerization, which has others. Note that Sean Pengse, director of the Paris-based Cambodia Border Committee, told VOA that "putting only Preah Vihear temple and not the surrounding areas is against the decision of international court in the Hague." Pengse cites agreements made in 1904, 1907, 1962, and 1991. (h/t BP)

Brains on planes

• Brain drain - The shift of workers abroad.
• Brain waste - when people go abroad to do work that pays better but is less skilled than what they would do at home.
• Brain export - is the more positive version of drain and waste. This happens when educated workers leave their home countries but more than pay for their absence through remittances, technology transfer and boosting their native countries' workforce when they return.
• Brain globalisation - is simply the recognition that international mobility of skilled human capital is now an integral part of life in multinational companies and the global economy.
  
• Brain circulation - refers to skilled workers moving between countries to ply their trade.
• Brain exchange - is when multinational firms move skilled workers between their operations in different countries—having cosmopolitan workers, especially executives, is increasingly seen as a competitive advantage in leading global companies.

Economist/Manpower

Will Obama redefine national security?

Toni Morrison, winner of Nobel Prize in Literature for 1993, recently told an interviewer that she likes Obama because he has "wisdom." I am skeptical and cannot help but wonder what she sees. Few politicians exhibit that rare quality.

However, Gary Hart is one public figure in the US who I think "gets" the big picture. Former presidential contender Gary Hart has written a NY Times Op/ed about "historical cycles." He thinks that another major historical cycle is just about to begin. Moreover, Hart thinks Obama has a chance to shape it. Hart writes:

What matters more than the length of the cycles is that these swings, between what Schlesinger called periods of reform and periods of consolidation, clearly occur. If we somewhat arbitrarily fix the age of Franklin D. Roosevelt as 1932 to 1968 and the era of Ronald Reagan as 1968 to 2008, a new cycle of American political history — a cycle of reform — is due.

Gary Hart shares his thoughts about what will really matter during the next cycle. Note that Hart views its challenges as transnational, making it seem unlikely that overtly nationalistic American solutions will suffice to overcome them.

No individual can entirely determine the architecture of a historical cycle. But much of the next one will be defined by how we grapple with a host of new realities, ones that reach beyond jihadist terrorism. They include globalized markets; the expansion of the information revolution into places like China; the emergence of new world powers including India and China; climate deterioration; failing states; the changing nature of war; mass migrations; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; viral pandemics; and many more.

Back in February, on this blog I asked: "What if Obama redefined national security?" Gary Hart believes the question must be central to framing the country's new priorities:

Senator Obama’s attempt to introduce the next American cycle should include, at minimum, three elements. National security requires a new, expanded, post-cold-war definition. America must transition from a consumer economy to a producing one. And the moral obligations of our stewardship of the planet must become paramount.

Regarding the third element, I blogged that Obama's pledge to provide clean energy and save the environment must amount to far more than a sweet deal for his supporters in the biofuel industry. We have heard nothing particularly revolutionary from the presumed Democratic nominee beyond the facts of his ancestry and early life adventures. So far, it can be said that Obama has not moved far to embrace any "new cycle."

Of course, one can claim that a cycle began or ended at various times. But I tend to agree with Gary Hart that the time has come to present Americans with some bold new ideas. A rethink of national secutity would seem the ideal place to start. Yet it remains to be seen whether Obama has the wisdom.

Dick today

Photo by Jotman.

Nuke plans found in Bangkok: Part II

Recall two recent reports. First, the arrest of the infamous Russian arms dealer Victor Bout in Bangkok on March 6. Second, the report last week that one of the computers belonging to the nuclear smuggling network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan --containing the blueprint for a nuclear bomb --had been found in Bangkok.

Well, a blog post by Spook86 has prompted me to ponder whether the two reports might not be connected. Spook86 blogged:

Sources in the intelligence community tell journalist Douglas Farah that at least 10 copies of the weapons documents found on the Swiss computers may have disappeared. Two of those copies may have been passed to Russian arms merchant Viktor Bout, while the others wound up in the hands of unknown parties. . . .

Might the computer found in Bangkok have been connected with Bout?

Thais drive less and turn to public transit

Every cloud has a sliver lining. Following a worldwide trend, traffic congestion in Bangkok seems to be decreasing. Moreover, Thai exports have increased.

Is Obama really a friend of the developing world?

If you believe that either solving the global food crisis or preventing global warming should top the agenda of world leaders, then Obama may not be the US presidential candidate best positioned to deliver results.

I previously blogged about Obama's biofuel problem. Recently, I had the impression that Obama had reconsidered his position. I am afraid I was too optimistic about Obama. According to a NY Times report published Monday:

Ethanol is one area in which Mr. Obama strongly disagrees with his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona. . . they offer sharply different visions of the role that ethanol, which can be made from a variety of organic materials, should play in those efforts.

If the NY Times article is to be believed, Obama continues to favor ethanol subsidies to US farmers in spite of the recent food crisis. On the other hand, McCain has a track record of standing against biofuel subsidies to US farmers.

Most tellingly perhaps, McCain said he would have voted against the recent farm bill, whereas Obama said he would have supported it. (As they were both campaigning, neither showed up to vote).

Would President Obama be a genuine friend of the developing world? Or is Obama mainly devoted to transferring US taxpayer dollars into the pockets of the US corporations who have sponsored him? At a time of world food shortages, the once obscure issue of ethanol subsidies raises big questions about Obama.

Does the NY Times article fairly reflect Obama's position?

I must say I had my doubts about whether the NY Times article accurately presented Obama campaign's present position on ethanol. So I checked his website. The Energy and Environment page of Obama's website portrays biofuels as a panacea. Obama says he wants to:

• Expand Locally-Owned Biofuel Refineries: Less than 10 percent of new ethanol production today is from farmer-owned refineries. New ethanol refineries help jumpstart rural economies. Obama will create a number of incentives for local communities to invest in their biofuels refineries.
• Establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard: Barack Obama will establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard to speed the introduction of low-carbon non-petroleum fuels.
• Increase Renewable Fuel Standard: Obama will require 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be included in the fuel supply by 2022 and will increase that to at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol by 2030.
• Invest $150 Billion over 10 Years in Clean Energy: Obama will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure. . .
• Double Energy Research and Development Funding: Obama will double science and research funding for clean energy projects including those that make use of our biomass. . . .
• Renewable Fuels: Obama has worked on numerous efforts in the Senate to increase access to and use of renewable fuels. Obama passed legislation with Senator Jim Talent (R-MO) to give gas stations a tax credit for installing E85 ethanol refueling pumps.

Fully one quarter of Senator Obama's energy/environment plan - 6 of 21 policy points -- read like a strategy to enrich the biofuel lobby. Has no Obama advisor read a newspaper in the past six months? Two recent developments should have caused the Obama campaign to rethink the candidate's support for biofuels. First, two major studies by climate scientists found that biofuel is a net contributor to both global warming and deforestation regardless of where a particular biofuel crop happens to be grown. Second, from Kenya to Indonesia poor people have been protesting high food prices. The law of supply and demand says that continuing to subsidize biofuel production in the United States contributes to higher food prices worldwide. The question begs to be asked: Is Senator Obama sincere about strengthening America's ties to the developing world and saving the environment?

What about John McCain?

The "global warming" page of McCain's website makes no mention whatsoever of biofuels like ethanol. McCain's website has only this to say about biofuels:

John McCain Will End Policies That Contribute To Higher Transportation And Food Costs. Ethanol subsidies, tariff barriers and sugar quotas drive up food prices and hurt Americans.

People living in the least developed countries need a US president willing to stand up to Congress and put an end to US biofuel and agriculture subsidies. For everyone on the planet, the question of selecting the most effective tactics to counter global warming is paramount. The respective responses of the two candidates to these questions could not be more different.
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Photo: by Jotman. In central java, a rice farmer walks across his field.

Why PAD street protests threaten Thai democracy

Friday in Bangkok, street protesters moved to surround Government House. In a Bangkok Post article, Professor Thitinan Pongsudhirak condemned the protesters and provided an overview of the dangers the movement poses to Thai democracy. The street is not an acceptable alternative to institutional democracy in the view of Professor Pongsudhirak:

The anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) is going for the jugular. Now in its fourth week of street protests, PAD laid siege to Government House over the weekend, declaring victory but refusing to go home. It now intends to prevent the People Power party-led government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej from returning to its seat of power, as if such an act is sufficient for government resignation en masse.

Every step along the way since it retook the streets several weeks ago, PAD has provoked heavy-handed government responses in order to create the conditions for an extra-constitutional, extra-parliamentary intervention. PAD has grossly distorted and manipulated news and events to its own ends, launching character assassinations and criticism of anyone who posits opposing and contrarian views, all in the name of ''rescuing the nation''.

Bringing the legislative branch of government to a standstill is probably not a good way to replenish a democracy. Let us recall the role street demonstrations played in bringing the National Socialists to power in Germany in the early 1930s. The German comparison is my own. In the article, Profeessor Pongsudhirak compares the PAD led street campaign to tactics of the movement's professed archrival, former Prime Minister Thaksin:

In so doing, PAD has ironically morphed into the very object of condemnation on which it initially built its reputation. [. . . ]

PAD is now hijacking Thai democracy in the same fashion that Mr Thaksin's authoritarian tendencies and political party machine monopolised it. The extremist movement tolerates no dissent. It is either PAD's way or the wrong way, which ranges from pro-Thaksin accusations and lack of loyalty to the throne to questions of patriotism.

Time, writes the professor, is not on the side of the PAD movement:

To be sure, PAD is in a hurry to topple the Samak government because street demonstrations are expensive and at risk of exhaustion. If PAD cannot quickly force the issue and seal the game by pressuring Mr Samak to resign or by inviting outside intervention, it risks fizzling out.

Thai Prime Minister Samak, a man with a mouth as big as his nose, plays into PAD's hands every time he opens it:

For the government's part, Mr Samak and his key lieutenants have been just as belligerent and defiant in return, fanning PAD's flames. The brinkmanship game between PAD and the Samak government has now reached a crescendo.

Something will soon have to give. PAD would have to back off or Mr Samak would have to budge by resigning, alone or along with his ministers. Otherwise the escalating face-off between the two sides will increase pressure for outside intervention from the military. As it now appears that PAD has political and financial backing from the highest corridors of power, the street demonstrations will continue far beyond PAD's eventful but indecisive ''D-Day'' on May 20.

In the Kingdom of Thailand, reference to "the highest corridors of power" is often a veiled reference to the Privy Council.

According to Professor Pongsudhirak, the protests are proving effective:

And PAD's street noises are having their intended impact on Mr Samak. His tenure appears increasingly untenable. Few doubt that he could withstand PAD's maelstrom much longer without resorting to a hard-line response, which would spell his demise in any event. The endgame of his downfall is being played out against Mr Samak's will.

Yet what really plagues the Samak government is less PAD than growing economic hardships and standard-of-living issues. Many of the street demonstrators, numbering in five digits in peak periods, are disaffected by rising energy and food prices, and the lack of effective policy responses. As a result, PAD has gained some foot soldiers from the farm sector and state enterprise unions. Some of the non-PAD protesters have also staged their own shows separate from PAD. Several large mobs have occupied areas near Government House. The air of anarchy and inevitable confrontation is palpable.

Pongsudhirak considers the question of the the potential for a coup, and the role of the military:

This precarious environment has called the military's role into question. Mr Samak is seen as close to Army chief Anupong Paochinda, who still insists on staying out of the fray. But his colleagues in the regional commands and elsewhere, especially the First Army Region with jurisdiction over Bangkok, are playing their cards closer to their chests.

In view of their lacklustre coup the last time, the army is unlikely to come out again unless there is unmanageable violence in the streets which the government and the police cannot handle. Such a military intervention could come in two related ways.

First, the army could simply impose limited martial law through the Samak cabinet's emergency decree in the affected areas of Bangkok. The other would be another outright seizure of power, resetting the democratic game all over again.

This is what PAD apparently has been egging the army to do. But even if violence spirals out of control, it will be confined to a few areas of Bangkok. A coup would be unnecessary. Gen Anupong is not seen as pro-coup but his immediate subordinates in key commands may have other ideas. Accordingly, Gen Anupong's role and the First Army Region commander's movements should be watched if violence flares and degenerates.

Mr Samak has himself to blame for not being more competent on policy fronts and for exacerbating the tit-for-tat battle between his government and PAD. His position is now shaky, and PAD will keep gnawing at his personal credibility and his administration's eroding legitimacy. His term will be shortened correspondingly. It will serve as a bad precedent and a blow to Thailand's topsy-turvy democracy.

Mr Samak's government deserves scrutiny in parliament and through constitutional channels and mechanisms, but not through PAD's rabid and reckless, rights-over-responsibilities street campaign. Indeed, PAD's success would be Thailand's setback.

A weak democratically elected leader tries to lead a country at a time of rising food and fuel prices? The democracy is confronted by an increasingly radicalized minority determined to undermine the sanctity of parliament and settle old scores in the streets? A visit to exhibits housed in the restored Reichstag in Berlin provide a reminder of where such actions at such times can lead a country.

Burma: will junta intransigence on cyclone relief inspire civil society renaissance?

The Burmese junta's lethargic and obstructive response to the cyclone disaster has left an opening for local civil society groups to expand and to fill the unmet needs of victims, reports the Sunday edition of the Washington Post. Money quote:

. . . the surgeon remarked: "I think the government made a huge mistake. If they were seen to care, people would have forgiven them for the past 20 years."

Thai coup bad, Burmese coup good

The night of the Thai coup of September 2006 was my entry into the world of blogging. Today Thailand stands on the brink of another coup. Street demonstrations reminiscent of the summer of 2006 seem likely to continue, perhaps to the point where the royalist-backed Thai military might once again claim cause to depose an elected government. Since the last Thai coup, I have also blogged about the desperate situation facing many Burmese. A country run for decades by an oppressive military dictatorship, Burma seems in need of a good coup.

Development expert Paul Collier, the author of a recent and important book about how the West can best advance the welfare of the "The Bottom Billion" (more here), takes up the question of "the good coup" in a WaPo op/ed. Citing the dictators in Burma and Zimbabwe as prime candidates, Collier reasons that a military coup can be a good thing. Collier is cautious, however, in making such a pronouncement:

I find it a little awkward to be writing in praise, however faint, of coups. They are unguided missiles, as likely to topple a democracy as a dictatorship. But there is still something to be said for them.

. . . as likely to topple a democracy as a dictatorship. Thailand comes immediately to mind. The Thai coup of 2006 toppled a democratically elected government; if the country were to experience yet another coup this year, it would be a crippling blow to Thai democracy. Truly, a Thai coup would be a bad coup. So how to rationalize -- legitimate -- a means of transferring power that seems anathema to the democratic ideal? Collier writes:

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the international community has taken the rather simplistic position that armies should stay out of politics. That view is understandable but premature. Rather than trying to freeze coups out of the international system, we should try to provide them with a guidance system. In contexts such as Zimbabwe and Burma, coups should be encouraged because they are likely to lead to improved governance. (It's hard to imagine things getting much worse.) The question then becomes how to provide encouragement for some potentially helpful coups while staying within the bounds of proper international conduct.

In fact, some basic principles are not that hard to draw. For starters, governments that have crossed the red line of banning U.N. food aid -- a ghastly breach of any basic contract between the governors and the governed -- should temporarily lose international recognition of their legitimacy. Ideally, such moves should come from the United Nations itself; surely banning U.N. help constitutes a breach of rudimentary global obligations. But realistically, other dictators, worried that they might wind up in the same boat, would rally to block action at the United Nations, so we must look elsewhere.

. . . should temporarily lose international recognition of their legitimacy. Of course, Collier has Burma in mind. I agree. On 23 May I blogged:

There is no excuse for the widespread conviction that a group of criminals in uniform, men who have the audacity to call themselves "a government," must first approve before the strong, rich, and free peoples of the world go to the aid of the cyclone victims. We should be in there now, saving Burmese lives with our ships and helicopters. . . .

By turning away aid to cyclone victims, the Myanmar regime demonstrated its criminality. At such times as these a regime should not be recognized. Collier proposes a formal mechanism of international de-legitimization, which would be wonderful. At least the prospect of being "de- legitimized" serve as an incentive for a rouge regimes to behave with greater civility.

Collier reasons that UN recognition would be difficult to successfully withdraw. Therefore, he proposes that a withdraw of EU recognition might be the next best thing. Collier explains how this future mechanism of the European Union might function. Optimistically perhaps, Collier thinks the mechism could be used not just serve as a stick to keep dictators in line, but as a carrot to encourage any would-be coup plotters. Collier believes such a protocol could make good coups more likely to occur -- where and when they are most needed:

A collective E.U. withdrawal of recognition from the Mugabe or Shwe regimes would be an obvious and modest extension of the values that underpin the European project. Making any such suspension of recognition temporary -- say, for three months -- would present potential coup plotters within an army with a brief window of legitimacy. They would know that it was now or never, which could spur them to act. And even if the loss of recognition did not induce a quick coup, E.U. recognition would be restored after the three months were up.

Is fear that the outcome of a coup would not be deemed legitimate actually that which has held back potential coup-makers in the past? We don't know the answer. It seems to me there is no harm -- and much that could be gained -- were the EU to implement Collier's proposal.

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You can read my post concerning Collier's bold ideas about development here.

Cambodian bloggers face persecution

The majority of Cambodian bloggers write in English so they can reach a global audience, but very few touch on one of blogging's most popular topics: politics.

Be Chantra's Khmer-language comedy blog is read by the Cambodian diaspora in the US and Japan but those hoping for something beyond humour are confronted with a banner on his site that reads: "No Politics Here".

"Politics could easily hurt you and it is nonsense," he said.

Last year Radio Free Asia reporter Lem Pichpisey fled to Thailand after receiving anonymous death threats for his reports alleging Cambodia's political elite were involved in illegal logging.

Attacks against journalists in Cambodia have fallen in recent years as the government has turned to the courts to punish reporters or publications it feels have violated the press law, critics say.

Although defamation, the charge most frequently leveled against journalists, was decriminalised in 2006, stiff fines now discourage aggressive reporting.

"The good thing about a blog is that it can be anonymous and you still can be contacted," said Gary Kawaguchi, a digital media trainer at the Department of Media and Communications of Cambodia.

"But the press here is very controlled and people still find out who you are so bloggers still have to be careful," he added.

Chak Sopheap, a university student who started a blog in her own name last year to draw attention to Cambodia's impoverished rural communities, said she was threatened criticising the ruling Cambodian People's Party.

"The message said, 'If I were you, I would run. Otherwise you will be killed,'" Chak Sopheap said.

While her fellow bloggers have vowed to keep their political criticism anonymous, Chak Sopheap said she will continue to post her views, claiming her blog affords more freedom of expression than Cambodia's mainstream media.

"Through blogs people change their attitudes and open their closed-lip habits. They can talk about how society can be developed," she said.

AP

Bangkok connection to nuke blueprints

American and international investigators say that they have found the electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon on computers that belonged to the nuclear smuggling network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist. . .

. . . the latest design found on Khan network computers in Switzerland, Bangkok and several other cities around the world. (NY Times)

Doesn't it seem like there's always a Bangkok connection?

Cambodia goes 3G

Not burdened with any pre-existing telecom infrastructure, Cambodia leapfrogs to 3G.

Congo: has the UN made a bad situation worse?

You read next to nothing about this crisis in the newspapers. Yet, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1990s was the world's deadliest conflict since World War II. Despite the peace settlement of 2001, the most costly deployment of UN peace keepers ever, and the holding of elections in 2006, some two million people have died in the Congo since the war ended. The Economist recently reported that the number of women raped in one month in one province of the Congo last year may have numbered in the tens of thousands.

Séverine Autesserre, writing in Foreign Affairs, believes the international community has actually managed to exacerbate strife in war-ravaged central Africa:

. . . the main reason that the peace-building strategy in Congo has failed is that the international community has paid too little attention to the root causes of the violence there: local disputes over land and power. If anything, international efforts to bring peace have enhanced local tensions. While it focused on organizing the presidential, legislative, and provincial elections of 2006, the international community overlooked other critical postconflict tasks, such as local peace building and overhauling the justice system. Meanwhile, the electoral process fueled ethnic hatred and marginalized ethnic minorities, making the reemergence of armed movements all the more likely.

The international community must fundamentally revise its strategy. It must focus on local antagonisms, because they often cause or fuel broader tensions, and regional and national actors hijack local agendas to serve their own ends. Until the local grievances that are feeding the violence throughout eastern Congo are addressed, security in the entire country and the Great Lakes region overall will remain uncertain.

Angel Ye

Over 10,000 students died in their classrooms during the recent earthquake in China, mainly due to the fact their schools were poorly constructed. Today the Chinese government censored an exhibition photograph that showed a dead child's hand extending out of rubble, clutching a twisted piece of steel reinforcement, no thicker than a pencil. Back in late May, local Chinese officials were sending police to beat up grieving parents who protested. The parents wanted shoddy school construction standards investigated and negligent officials punished. Recently, the Chinese government promised to investigate.

"They could do worse than consult with Ye" writes Edward Wong in the NY Times. Wong's report concerns one school principle who had tirelessly lobbied government officials for the funds to repair faulty construction standards at his school. When the earthquake stuck, not a single student attending "Angel" Ye's school died.

Smart lady, stupid banks

In a coffee shop a lady asked to borrow my copy of the International Herald Tribune. A few minutes later she handed it back to me.

"That one article really makes me mad" she confessed. "The one about the banks."

I found out her name was Sally and she was from Seattle. Sally explained her frustration to me.

"Three years ago I gave clear instructions to my broker: do not invest in any of these institutions doing sub-prime loans.* It doesn't make any sense. How can you loan money out below the interest rate and call that a real business?"

"But your broker bought the stocks anyway," I interjected. She was pacing back and forth across the coffee shop.

"No. My problem is that the banks bought the stocks of those businesses making sub-prime loans."

"And you own bank stocks" I said.

She nodded. Although US banking rules had prohibited US banks from loaning sub-prime, nothing had stopped the banks from investing in companies that made sub-prime loans.

___
*I previously blogged about the sub-prime crisis here.

South Korea: power to the netizens

It would have been unthinkable only a couple years ago. The most new-media savvy group of people in South Korean society -- teenagers -- have put seemingly unstoppable momentum behind a political cause.

Protests against US beef imports have brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets and threaten to topple the government.

It began as a movement in South Korea's new media space. South Korea is widely regarded as the "most wired" country in the world. And who are its most wired citizens? Ronda Hauben, "citizen journalist" for South Korea's OhmyNews explains:

At first, the candlelight demonstrations were initiated by middle school and high school students, especially middle school girls, using their cell phones and the Internet. In early May, it was common to see middle and high school students at the demonstrations, wearing their school uniforms. The candle girl, a middle school girl holding a lit candle, became the symbol of the protests.

This raises some concerns. Are members of this age group really ready to play a leadership role in society? Is this demographic not particularly vulnerable to innuendo, marketing, and propaganda? Do they have the life experience to put an issue -- i.e. the threat of mad cow disease -- in perspective?

Because to this observer, the scale of the reaction seems out of proportion to the magnitude of the threat. Relative to other problems facing a modern society, it's hard to fathom why US beef imports ought to top a teenager's list of concerns.

Beginning in late March, I blogged about "the anti-CNN" campaign of Chinese netizens. That movement seems to bear at least some superficial resemblance with the anti-US beef campaign. Might both netizens' movements have made a similar mistake? About the Chinese campaign I blogged:

. . . therein lies the fundamental problem with the netizens campaign . . . their disinclination to approach alleged evidence . . . with a critical mindset.

Quote of the day

If you don't perform to your utmost, you'll be in trouble.

- HM the King of Thailand*

* from a speech given on the appointment of five judges to the Constitution Court and Administrative Court. Translated by Thanong Khanthong, The Nation.

Fuel price protests hit Thailand

AP reports on a wave of fuel price protests in Thailand:

• Cabbage and rice farmers planning protests
• Half of Thailand Fishing Federation members'50,000 fishing boats being kept ashore because of the high cost of diesel. Some boats being burned in protest.
  
• Truckers parked trucks on the roads on June 11 to protest fuel price. One hundred thousand trucks will be brought into Bangkok on June 17 if truckers' demands has not been met by government.

When will the taxi drivers protest low fixed meter rates?

US beef threat has South Koreans outraged

South Korea is an amazing place: it seems as if nothing bad ever originates there; the source all problems facing Korea is other countries.

True to form, absolutely massive protests swept the South Korean capital Tuesday evening. The protests concerned the government's plan to allow the import of US beef. The demonstrations are so big that they actually threaten to topple the government.

Judging by some Korea based blogs (here, here), the protest movement seems to have been encouraged by teenage netizens. Freaked about the prospect of catching mad cow disease, the kids circulated rumors on the Internet suggesting Koreans are genetically susceptible to mad cow. Of course, there is also a local business angle to this story.

Imagine if young South Koreans put this much energy into protesting against something that is actually likely to hurt them -- like cigarettes?
___
Photo: Shows North Korean anti-smoking campaign poster (BBC).

Burma cyclone survivors, prior to eviction from camp by army

This photo shows several cyclone victims prior to eviction from their roadside camp. The image is cropped from one of many photos supplied to Jotman by Tobias Grote-Beverborg, foreign correspondent for Deutsche Welle, who recently visited Burma. Scroll down for more photos and the shocking story of how these survivors were treated by the junta.


Photograph © 2008 Tobias Grote-Beverborg. All Rights Reserved.

Indonesia recycles

I took this photo in Indonesia last month. Plastic bags are collected by scavengers at the Jakarta city dump and then washed. This man sorts and shreds plastic bags for packing. Later, the bales will be shipped to Surabaya for recycling.

Have you seen my Jakarta garbage video?

Burma army forced cyclone survivors to clear roadside camp

A Jotman exclusive.

The desperate survivors of the cyclone camped along the road, but when Tobias returned the following day, the roadside was deserted. In the early hours of the morning, soldiers had forced survivors to move. The scene was eerie, as these photos, kindly provided to Jotman by Tobias Grote-Beverborg, Asia correspondent for Deutsche Welle, reveal.

Photographs © 2008 Tobias Grote-Beverborg. All Rights Reserved.

Before

Many more photos here, the whole story is here -- where I previously blogged:

Tobias visited several camps on the outskirts of Rangoon. He showed me truly shocking "before eviction and after" photographs.

"This photo shows what the place looked like before," said Tobias.

Along a road, hundreds of miserable looking Burmese people hunched under makeshift shelters -- blue and orange sheets. To the sides of the road was swamp -- the site of their former village.

After

The disturbing scene -- as Tobias described the it to me -- and I blogged previously:

"I returned to the village the following day" said Tobias. "But everyone was gone. I was told the army had come early in the morning and forced everyone to clear out."

Tobias showed me another photograph. The same road where hundreds crouched was almost deserted. It was an most disturbing sight.

Germany recycles

I took this photo in Berlin of a garbage can at a shopping mall. The Germans have discovered how to make recycling easy. I like the color-coding.

ABC interviews Laura Bush: Should we have gone into Burma anyway?

First Lady Laura Bush responded to questions about the US response to the Burma Cyclone in an interview Monday with ABC News (transcript). Here's what the First Lady had to say about Burma:

JONATHAN KARL: But it seems that recently you've had a very public role on the diplomatic front, and maybe even on the policy front. I mean, you became the -- I think the first First Lady in American history to do a press conference in the White House briefing room -- of course on Burma. Have you -- are you taking a more assertive role than you have in the past?

MRS. BUSH: Well, I don't know if I would call it that. I think I just know more. You know, I'm more educated about the situation in Burma and the situation in Afghanistan, just after having lived here in the White House for seven years. I've just learned more about it and know more about it, and Burma certainly. And especially after the cyclone we all looked at Burma and it's just so difficult and so sad and so really, I think, very, very difficult for people in the United States to know that we had all the help we had right off the coast of Burma and that the government would never allow us in.

There's something that's really disappointing, really frustrating about that. And it's just really one of the most difficult things that's happened, I think, since my husband has been President, and that is to know that we had help there and that they wouldn't allow it in.

JONATHAN KARL: When you look at that and you consider more than 2 million people affected and all that American help was right off the coast, the --

MRS. BUSH: Should we have gone in?

JONATHAN KARL: Should we have gone in anyway?

MRS. BUSH: You know, I don't know. I mean, I think that's the question. I think that's what goes over and over in my mind is, I want the people of Burma to know that the people of United States know what their situation is, that we knew what their situation was before even the natural disaster, but the detention of their Nobel Prize winner, the woman whose party was elected overwhelmingly and then never allowed -- that party was never allowed to govern, and the country has been decimated, just like Afghanistan was under the Taliban. But I want the people of Burma to know that, and I don't think they'll ever know, although I do think they listen to Voice of America and BBC and some other radio stations that go into Burma. So maybe they'll know by that.

JONATHAN KARL: But do you think there will come a time when we look back on this and we realize --

MRS. BUSH: And wonder if we should have --

JONATHAN KARL: Yes.

MRS. BUSH: I don't know. I mean, it's always easy to look back and it's very hard to project what really would have happened if we had done that. And so it's always easy to look back and say, oh, we should have done this or we should have done that, but without knowing what the real consequences would have been. We did fly in over 100 big cargo planes of aid, and I think that was good.

JONATHAN KARL: Did you ever talk to the President about the possibility of going in?

MRS. BUSH: Yes, I mean, we talked about it off and on the whole time it was there. And I didn't see a lot of coverage. I only saw one news coverage on what was on those ships, the Navy ships that were there on the coast of Burma. And one thing they had were these huge trucks that could drive off with big desalinization equipment so they could make fresh water, a lot of fresh water, and be able to store it or to get -- put it in some other sort of storage so that people who don't have fresh water now because of the effects of the cyclone could have fresh water. And of course water and food is so critical.

JONATHAN KARL: So getting back to your trip to Afghanistan . . .

It is interesting to know they at least talked about it.
___
Top Photo: © 2008 Tobias Grote-Beverborg. Used with permission.
Bottom Photo: shows Laura Bush giving a news conference about Burma, via Jezebel.

Interviewed at the Global Media Forum

Recently, I was invited to speak at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany. The theme of the three day conference was "Media in peacebuilding and conflict prevention."

Paulette Moore of Shenandoah University Television interviewed me. Moore is creative. Observe how she rose to the seemingly insurmountable challenge of conducting a video interview with Jotman.

I hope to share some insights from the conference in future posts.



Top photo: Shirin Ebadi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize from Iran, was keynote speaker on the first day of the conference.

Photos of Burma Cyclone survivors - taken day before army made them leave

A Jotman exclusive.

Recently I spoke with Tobias Grote-Beverborg, Asia correspondent for Deutsche Welle. Tobias had recently returned from Rangoon, where on the remote outskirts of the city, he visited survivors of a village that had been decimated by Cyclone Nagris. Tobias has kindly supplied Jotman with photos from his visit with these cyclone survivors.

The truly shocking story behind the photos -- as told by Tobias to Jotman -- is recored in this Jotman post. Our discussion raised some new and distrubing questions which I addressed in that blog post.

Update: Tobias has just emailed me his "after photos". That is, the photos he took of the same roadside the following day -- it's a crime scene. You can view these here.
____
I would like to express my appreciation to Tobias for kindly allowing me to post these photographs at Jotman. English translations of news reports for Deutsche Welle by Tobias Grote-Beverborg relating to his trip to Burma are available at the Deutsche Welle website (see here, here and here). The website SouthAsia.de is the place to go for English language reports from Tobias and other outstanding Deutsche Welle correspondents in Asia.

Photographs © 2008 Tobias Grote-Beverborg. All Rights Reserved.

Thai politics follows Monty Python script

Lately there have been a slew of lese majeste cases filed in Thailand. (Lese mageste is the crime of insulting the Thai monarchy, which caries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years). The question remains: who is behind these charges? The answer keeps getting weirder and weirder.

The Bangkok Post reports (hat-tip Bangkok Pundit) that the Thai police officer who has been filing these charges -- against BBC correspondent Johnathan Head and a leading Thai politician named Jakrapob -- is working in concert with a mysterious foreigner (allegedly British) who goes by the name Akbar Khan (presumably a pseudonym).

The Bangkok Post reports:

Pol Lt-Col Watanasak, a Nakhon Sawan native, said his parents had taught him since he was young that Thais must show reverence for His Majesty the King.
He conceded, however, that he was not alone in this fight to protect the monarchy and bid to bring an offender to justice. A British friend, Akbar Khan, alerted him to Mr Jakrapob's speech.

The article provides background on the mysterious Akbar Khan:

Mr Khan, a former English teacher for police at the Special Branch Police and the Crime Suppression Division, listened to Mr Jakrapob at the FCCT that night.
The 42-year-old British citizen later translated the speech into Thai and submitted the paper to many police, but none were prepared to file a complaint against Mr Jakrapob.
Mr Khan, who accompanied Pol Lt-Col Watanasak to an interview with the Bangkok Post, said he could not sit back and watch Mr Jakrapob show disrespect to the monarchy and looking down on the Thai attitude towards the monarchy.
"I have been living in Thailand for 20 years. I have never heard any Thai speak like Mr Jakrapob before. Worse, he spoke in front of foreign reporters who are ready to write it and spread it out to the world," he said.
Mr Khan said Mr Jakrapob's speech was not only offensive to the monarchy, "but also insulting to Thais, their culture, society".
"Mr Jakrapob is a Thai national. He should not have made such a remark, which I find really disgusting," said Mr Khan, who works as a freelance translator and reporter.
Mr Khan said it was hard to convince any police he knew to take legal action against Mr Jakrapob.

Are we to believe that an Englishman, running around Thailand, has taken it upon himself to decide what is or is not proper behavior for "the natives"? The audacity! Taken at face value, Akbar Khan's performance sounds like something out of George Orwell's Burmese Days. But colonialism implies a victimized nation. Recalling how Thailand's political and judicial systems sprung into action the moment this Englishman snapped his fingers, it is impossible to feel sympathy for the Kingdom. No, this is not Burmese Days.

If only Thai civil liberties and the well-being of the accused were not at stake, I would say this looks like something right out of Monty Python.
___
The story that Akbar Khan could be behind the recent lese mageste charges was first broken by blogger Bangkok Pundit. See his earlier post concerning Akbar Khan and especially his most recent post (which includes links to background information about recent lese mageste charges).

A book John McCain should read

MOST terrorists are amateurs. Al-Qaeda is overrated. The “war on terror” is not the third world war. Michael Sheehan’s conclusions, expressed in the plain words of a former soldier, will not win literary prizes or universal assent. But the depth and breadth of his experience give him an authority that is hard to assail.

The Economist

Thailand: are the PAD demonstrations the smokescreen for a coup?

Jonathan Manthorpe, a Canadian foreign affairs correspondent, surveys recent political developments in Thailand from the 2006 coup to the present street demonstrations, highlighting the thorny question of royal succession. Concerning the recent street protests, he observes:

What has brought the protesters out onto the streets are moves by the Samak government to amend the constitution put in place by the military. These plans appear to undercut the legal basis for charging Thaksin with corruption.

Most demonstrators are from the People's Alliance for Democracy, an urban party that dislikes Thaksin's appeal to the rural poor.

The PAD's demonstrations in 2006 provided the excuse for the coup, and it is natural to wonder if that is the agenda again.

Some recent news reports suggest that public support for the PAD protesters may be waning. But if it is a set-up for another coup, it might be sufficient for the coup-plotters if the protests have created the perception of public dissatisfaction with the elected PPP party-led government of Prime Minister Samak. In other words, the protests could be a smokescreen.
____
Hat-tip: Bangkok Pundit/Absolutely Bangkok

New evidence Irrawaddy Delta is a vast crime scene

UPDATE: Exclusive photos from Burma that accompany this story have been posted here.

Friday I spoke with a journalist who had recently returned from the Irrawaddy Delta. Talking with Tobias Grote-Beverborg of Germany's Deutsche Welle, I learned something new and disturbing concerning the Cyclone ravaged region of Burma.

First, some background. The information he supplied directly relates to a recent report by Amnesty International. News media reports -- like this one from the CBC -- informed us of the finding of the Amnesty report:

The human rights organization said that since May 19, there have been 30 confirmed reports of people being forcibly removed from places of refuge in Rangoon and the northern part of the Irrawaddy Delta, one of the areas worst hit by the May 3 storm. Many are being relocated to their homes further south, which were destroyed and are yet to be rebuilt, Amnesty researcher Benjamin Zawacki told the CBC.

What I had not realized until I spoke to Tobias, was that those being relocated were not necessarily being evicted from "camps," but rather, from their own neighborhoods.

The reason you see photos of people lining roads is that the road is often the highest ground in the vicinity of their former homes. So when the army evicts these people from the roadside, the junta is effectively evicting local residents from their own land.

Tobias visited several camps on the outskirts of Rangoon. He showed me truly shocking "before eviction and after" photographs.

"This photo shows what the place looked like before," said Tobias.

Along a road, hundreds of miserable looking Burmese people hunched under makeshift shelters -- blue and orange sheets. To the sides of the road was swamp -- the site of their former village.

"I returned to the village the following day" said Tobias. "But everyone was gone. I was told the army had come early in the morning and forced everyone to clear out."

Tobias showed me another photograph. The same road where hundreds crouched was almost deserted. It was an most disturbing sight.

"The speculation is that a Taiwanese aid group had posted information about its assistance to these people on a website, and seeing this, the government ordered the people out."

Tobias showed me photos that showed jackets donated to victims by the Taiwanese NGO.

I asked Tobias if these villagers were among the thirty sites referred to in the recent Amnesty International report as having been cleared away. He told me he had doubts that these villagers would have been known by the human rights group.

So what might be the significance of the fact the junta is moving villagers off their own land? First, as I blogged here, we know that many of those impacted by the cyclone are members of an oppressed ethnic minority. Half the population of the Irrawaddy Delta is comprised of members of the Karen minority group, and we know the Karen have been subjected to violent attacks perpetrated by the military government in the past. As Jotman reader Crisips commented, the various actions of the junta seem to betray a broader strategic objective of the kleptocrat military government -- something that goes beyond gratuitous cruelty or sheer indifference to suffering.

The information supplied by Tobias reveals that at least one so-called "camp" from which cyclone survivors have been forced to vacate was located adjacent to the site of survivors' destroyed homes. In the vicinity of Rangoon, we can surmise that any farmland belonging to cyclone victims would likely consist of rich fertile soil, valuable for agricultural. The observation of Tobias might well constitute evidence of premeditated criminal intent by the junta to steal land from farmers. Is this part of a pattern? Further inquiries should provide the answer.

Most ominously, the Irrawaddy Delta increasingly resembles not so much a natural disaster area as a vast crime scene.
____
Reports from the recent trip Tobias Grote-Beverborg made to Burma are available at the Deutsche Welle website -- see here (the cyclone camp story), here and here. The website SouthAsia.de is the place to go for English language reports from Tobias and other DW correspondents based throughout Asia.