In Your will of support, verily a deity, Night's dark or rain's horrors cannot quite compare In intensity to the robust gleam radiant in Your virtue: The light of hope and dispeller of despair Succour to the hapless, in the youth, purpose you renew A birthday anniversary so meet cannot be,Measured enough for the joy and amity

Your children accord you in serendipity: In this land of the peaceful and plenty

Greetings, blessings and renewed joy toYou are our offerings

Lovely Queen, source of our Muse's springs

Dedicated to Her Majesty the Queen, on the occasion of her birthday on August 12, 2006.

Glen V Chatelier

Director, International Affairs

Assumption University

Bangkok

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THAI's union trumps PM in protecting the public's interest

Thai Airways' union has done a great service to the flying public by explaining the inconveniences likely to be caused by switching domestic flights to the new airport two weeks ahead of international flights. Not only will passengers miss connecting flights by the ill-considered move, but also there are serious safety issues raised by confusing responsibility for air-traffic control and fire services, etc.

I suppose if an emergency arose the number of fire vehicles would be inadequate, being split between two distant airports. Politicians should not meddle in changing dates for opening of the new airport. They should leave it to the professionals.

Consideration for passengers must come first, not the scoring of political points.

Mary Cox

Oxford, england

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Villagers can have PM, but why subject  everyone else?

It is pretty obvious that in Thaksin's head the world is upside down. Educated people are fools and villagers are smart. Since the people of Isaan are so desperate to have Thaksin back as their prime minister, why not make him the ruler of this part of the country? The rest can go on with democratic reform.

Roland Strauss

Switzerland

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Sending corrupt police to the South will only worsen things

There have been news reports that highway officials and police officers have been under investigation for taking bribes from overloaded truckers. A high-ranking police officer gave an interview saying any police officer found taking bribes would be moved to one of the three southernmost provinces as a punishment. Bravo! Great strategy.

No wonder there's so much resentment for the government down South. I am no politician or strategist, but it seems to me that moving corrupt officials down to an area of conflict is not the best solution to either the problem of corruption or the separatist uprising in the South. What good can corrupt officials do in an area in need of efficient governance? And what will the locals in the southern provinces think?

The government is in fact helping the separatists by giving the local population more reasons to hate the authorities. We need more model officials down there, not corrupt ones. We are treating the three problem provinces like a prison, and this has got to change soon or we will loose them forever. And it will be the fault of our own incredible ignorance and the mismanagement of our central government.

We had better start educating ourselves and stop trying to depend on our government to take care of things. Obviously the people in power haven't got a clue. If someone is going to help, it will have to be us.

Nant Thananan

Bangkok

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Alcoholics try to hide behind science to explain away faults

Re: "Taxpayers' money is not being used to support alcoholics," Letters, August 8.

John Bligh's response is appreciated. He agrees that alcoholism is not a disease, but goes on to say; "... it's a psychological condition that can be hereditary and the victims of it should be regarded in the same way as anyone who has contracted Parkinson's ..."

John, I think that idea is based on the type of contrived science that tries to find a genetic excuse for society's major people issues: obesity, homosexuality, etc.

I bet that most scientists don't agree that alcoholism is genetically predetermined any more than a person has a mitochondrial propensity for a Pepsi over a Schweppes. As for the effects on taxpayers, non-drinkers do pay additional amounts for the transgressions of alcoholics - perhaps not so much in direct taxes, but certainly in higher insurance premiums, greater law enforcement, more court sessions and injuries caused by drunk drivers. The list goes on and on. An alcoholic is more likely than a health-conscious person to be laid up in a hospital. In a public health system like Thailand's, this sort of person therefore sucks up a disproportionate share of a hospital's resources. This also relates to the large number of road accidents and injuries arising from domestic disputes that are fuelled by alcohol.

Ken Albertsen

Chiang Rai

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The Israelis and Palestinians should coexist in a single state

Josh Andover talks in "A clearly defined Palestinian state is best hope for peace" [Letters, August 11] about the vision of "a new generation ... without the inbred hatred both sides now possess. Only then can peace have a chance." Ever more Israelis and Palestinians are beginning to ask whether that will not lie in a single, democratic, secular state for all Israeli Jews and Palestinians, a bi-national experiment with full cultural autonomy, the civic equality of all and the privileging of none. Such a solution would allow for a massive return of Palestinian refugees, and gradually create a dynamic polity roughly half-Arab, half-Jewish, rooted in radical reconciliation, eventually maybe in federation with Jordan and Lebanon. That pathway would, by engineering a new symbiosis in the Levant, eventually liberate all concerned from the nightmare of this failed attempt by a misguided Jewish nationalism to set up an exclusive state in someone else's country. Its upshot has been a war with no end in sight. Major Palestinian intellectuals like Mazin Qumsiyeh recognise that a two-state solution cannot work at this point. Nor will it solve the kind of "ethnocracy", the anti-Arab apartheid, we have built up inside Israel, giving such huge privileges to the majority population. Key political scientists in the US like Virginia Tilley have written extensively on the one-state solution. Israeli intellectuals like Haim Hanegbi and Ilan Pappe think it is the only sane way forward.

Sure, this conception of togetherness still has relatively few advocates on the Arab and Israeli-Jewish street, but that can change rapidly. The bubble many of my fellow Israelis live in, inculcated by our media and schools and prevailing "mind-set", is beginning to burst. Cultural autonomy, the Hebrew and Arabic languages and a hundred other flowers can bloom in a participatory state of the future based on mutual respect for dignity - and an end to this dialectic of humiliation, murder, and theft of land and identity. It would involve major concessions by nationalists on both sides of this divide. And of course fundamental rethinking by religious fundamentalists on both sides. One secular, democratic, bi-national, multicultural state was Martin Buber's vision decades ago. It remained Edward Said's dream "road map", grounded on historical realism, humanity and equity, right up to his recent death. It should be put on the agenda of preferred futures once again.

Gershon

Bangkok

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The history of the Middle East is as long as it is cloudy

Re: "Mideast conflict rooted in displacement of Palestinians", Letters, August 9.

Isaac Hayes is correct that there is much ignorance regarding the Middle East. His letter demonstrates this point as he has made up his own version of history, which would be disputed by all reputable historians.

Hayes' assertion that Jews were absent from the Middle East for 2,000 years is false. Jews have lived in the Middle East continuously for over 3,000 years. For about 1,000 years, Jews were sovereign in Israel with Jerusalem as their undivided capital. In 422 BCE [before the common era], the First Temple was destroyed, and many Jews were exiled into what is now Iraq. Eventually, Jews spread out throughout the Middle East. The Koran refers to two tribes of Jews living in Saudi Arabia during Mohammed's time (seventh century CE). Even the fiercely anti-Semitic president of Iran acknowledges that Jews who now live in Iran have lived in that land for over 2,000 years.

A short time after the First Temple was destroyed, Jews returned to their land, and re-established Jerusalem as their capital. When the Romans conquered Israel in 70 AD, many Jews were exiled again; however, some Jews stayed on their land. Today's Palestinians are Arabs who are indigenous to the Arabian peninsula. Arabs did not come to the land of Israel until the 7th Century CE, when Mohammed's armies spread out from the Arabian Peninsula with their new religion Islam in a very successful imperial enterprise.

In the late 19th Century, Jews started migrating back to Israel/Palestine from Europe. At that time, there were already large Jewish populations in the Jews' four holy cities - Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safad. The Jewish communities in those cities are at least hundreds of years old. By the time the modern state of Israel was born in 1948, there were roughly 900,000 Jews living in Arab and Muslim countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The vast majority of these Jews were driven out of their countries after 1948 and came to Israel as refugees. Anyone who is interested in the history of the Middle East should read any one of Bernard Lewis' (the pre-eminent Middle East historian) many books on the subjects.

Josh Baker

Thailand