Published on May 13, 2005
The practice of anointing cars with religious icons for protection [“Supernatural insurance”, Auto Industry, May 12] is likely not a benign mutation but a dangerous one. Drivers who feel shielded from harm by divine forces are less likely to take responsibility for safety. They are therefore more likely to be reckless. I would like to see this practice discouraged for this reason. The responsibility of maintaining safety on the road rests squarely on the driver. Defensive driving and some good old kreng jai on the road will protect you, your car and your fellow citizens with whom you share the road.
Cha-am Jamal
Bangkok --------------------------------------------------- Some haunting words from Bertrand Russell It was an eerie to read the below quotation by Sir Bertrand Russell after receiving it in my daily e-mail: “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” I hope it does not apply to Thailand. Songdej Praditsmanont Bangkok --------------------------------------------------- More similarities between Wigan and Bangkok I think K Tow [“They probably sell Wigan shirts on Sukhumvit”, Letters, May 12] has got it quite wrong – there are many similarities between Wigan and Bangkok. For a start both have canals, albeit Bangkok’s are called klong. There is a Bull’s Head and a Black Swan in both Wigan and Bangkok, both have a lot of Manchester United and Liverpool fans and both have inebriated Englishmen looking for female company every Friday night. The only difference between the two places is that Thais speaking English are easier to understand than people from Wigan. Don K Feltcher Bangkok --------------------------------------------------- The US is also in denial about bird flu Thailand isn’t the only country neglecting to impart the necessary information to those who need it. The US has provided very little media attention to the subject of bird flu, and certainly not to the extent that this threat deserves. Brief and scattered news reports – which often contain conflicting information – are not enough to shake the average American out of his sense of invulnerability. Warnings given to countries must be extended to warnings given to individuals. I have been watching this situation for months. When I contacted my county public health nurse, I was told that the local plans for responding to a flu outbreak are not being given to “the public”. She said there is “absolutely no possible way that we could see an influenza pandemic in this country by as early as next spring”, and that I should prepare myself however I see fit, but to leave all concerns for public preparedness up to Uncle Sam. Yeah, right. I am completely appalled at the outright lies they are preparing to dish out to the American public. There is no scientific basis for claiming there is “no way” an outbreak cold could occur before next year. As long as there is a single human infection, and the virus continues exist in bird populations, there is a risk it could be here in a matter of weeks. The Centres for Disease Control report that it is preparing to see an outbreak by spring. So why would this be the stance taken by public health officials? My community has a population of about 5,000 people – and we have one doctor in a tiny clinic, with no overnight-care facilities. Even with federal funding, there simply will not be enough money to stockpile the necessary supplies for a temporary hospital in our town. The Federal Emergency Management Agency says that every community should have its own stockpile for an event like a flu outbreak of a serious nature, not to depend upon the Red Cross or other outside sources to bring supplies to us. Any disease affecting our area would not just be in one place, but all over. Hospitals catch it first – temporary sites are established when the hospital can no longer keep up with admissions. To assume that a nearby hospital would part with supplies it is already running out of itself is foolish and irresponsible – we need to obtain and store these items locally – as does everyone else. The problem is that with the lack of direct information for the public, and misinformation coming from public health officials, anyone saying anything or trying to accomplish something of this nature (stockpiling medical supplies) is discredited by the very lack of input from our government officials. No one wants to be arrested for being a troublemaker or illegally stockpiling supplies, or sued for predicting a disaster which never comes to pass. Yet these must still be done – with or without their official sanction, if we are to be prepared. I know the government is doing “what it can” – I’m informing myself – but President Bush appears not to have added pandemic influenza to the list of diseases the government can institute quarantine powers for. My local physician has not been notified of this threat in any official manner. Just how long are they going to wait before telling the public it’s time to prepare? This is the first time in human history we’ve had any warning – and they are squandering it. Perhaps rather than treating us like mushrooms, making critical life-or-death decisions for us and keeping the people “under control” they ought to try leadership. Heather Lucas United States --------------------------------------------------- Did we fight WWII just to surrender to relativism? This past week the world solemnly paid tribute to the various nations, their generals and troops who were instrumental in liberating Europe from the Nazi oppression. It was a sacrificial effort in which many citizens and soldiers alike gave up their lives so that the rest of us could live ours in freedom from want and slavery. We might have expected that such ultimate selflessness might have conferred upon our societies the wisdom to truly value life and liberty. Unfortunately, in the years following World War II, much of Europe turned its back on its hard-won freedom and voluntarily succumbed to a new “dictatorship of relativism” that is no less evil than the fascism that preceded it. This new tyranny recognises nothing as being definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of satiating one’s own ego and desires. We have seen the contemporary results – nihilistic yet impeccably democratic legislation that repudiates life itself! Did those who come before us die just so that we could negate the very lives they gave up, by our legalisation of various drugs, prostitution, homosexuality, contraception, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, abortion and euthanasia? Once a year we pay homage to those who have served and especially those who have fallen, but do we really understand what it means to keep the faith or to take the torch from failing hands? That we dishonour those who gave their lives for ours can only be understood by seeing that their faith, the faith we are asked to keep and nurture, was in life itself, and its sanctity and beauty. Their giving of their most precious gifts, their own lives, can only be justified if we keep that faith, that torch. Otherwise we negate their lives and ours – they become the wasted dead and we fare no better in the grand scheme. We can only redeem the losses of our war dead if we act to redeem our betrayal of life in all its forms. Sixty years after VE Day, it is Europe that cries for liberation from the tyranny of modernity being imposed by liberal governments as they seek new and ingenious ways of undermining morality and embracing nihilism. Is this the direction Europe wishes to take as it embarks on a new European constitution? Is this the path Western civilisation wishes to traverse? I suggest that the initial step to halting this demoralising slide towards an anti-life state philosophy is available to us today. This will take a great effort on the part of us all. We need to re-examine the assumptions that we permit to serve as the foundation of our own individual lives. We must ask ourselves what purpose the sacrifices of so many on our behalf served – did they die in futility so that we could wallow in our life-repudiating self-absorption? Perhaps, in time, and through the promotion of a “culture of life” Europeans – indeed all people – will come to experience a new liberation based on the realisation that it is not war, but truth that sets us free. Paul Kokoski Bangkok --------------------------------------------------- An unintentional play on words? I was intrigued by the news item in The Nation on Friday describing how a company called I X-Change Co planned to cure constipation with a mobile telephone download “Healthy downloads: Mobile content to cure constipation”, News, May 6]. I had to check to make sure it wasn’t the first of April when I saw the name of the executive director of I X-Change – Prune Ansvananda. Edward Maddock Pattaya --------------------------------------------------- ‘The Nation’s’ balanced approach is appreciated What I like about The Nation is its balanced reporting. For example, in your May 10 edition there was a piece from The Guardian “We must never forget Russia’s role in defeating Hitler” [Opinion], which, while helping us to remember the huge sacrifices made by Russia in WWII, nevertheless appeared to somewhat play down Stalin’s quite appalling murderous record against his own people. If mass terror and purges were not intrinsic to Soviet rule, as suggested by the writer, how were they allowed to happen right from the beginning of Soviet rule? I wonder whether the writer has read the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore’s horrifying tale “Stalin – The Court of the Red Tsar”. Then in the same edition you print “Moscow needs liberating” [Opinion] from The Wall Street Journal, which takes a rather different view. For example, “Why does Putin protect Stalin and the sanitised version of this history?” Keep up the good work! Observer Bangkok
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