Knee-jerk reaction to junta could be misguided

It has to be obvious that the Burmese government was being facetious when it said it would accept direct cash aid from America, a country that has been calling for the overthrow of the current regime for years now.

I think that maybe Chris Kaye should consider some of the facts surrounding this situation before he or she begins assigning hero and villain labels to the players.

Chris, try looking at it this way. Your child falls and is seriously injured. A dozen people nearby offer to help including one person that you know and who has condemned you on a regular basis. You refuse the help of the person in question and of any friends that he might have with him. Does this make you a bad parent even though help was available from other sources? Why was America banging on the door with help in what seemed like hours after the first reports of the disaster, when it couldn't even help one of its own states for days after a disaster? Why did America not offer the same relief to China a week later when it experienced a disaster?

I have no love for the junta as I honestly believe they have aided and abetted the flow of drugs into Thailand. However, I also do not know enough about what is really going on to condemn them for refusing aid from a country that makes it known that they want to see an end to the present government.

I seriously doubt that the junta is good for the Burmese people, but on the other hand, I have talked to many foreigners who have been in Burma and have told me that they didn't see where it was so bad. Certainly no worse then Cambodia or Laos.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that I don't really know what the situation is there but I have doubts that it is as bad as a lot of people with an agenda would like us to believe. And if it is, why haven't the people entered into open rebellion yet?

John Arnone

Yasothon

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Democracy taking second place to political ambition

Re: Editorial: Jakrapob continuing in the same old way, May 13, 2008

It is evident that Thaksin Shinawatra has his finger on every adverse political condition in our country at the moment. He is responsible for the political impasse we are facing.

We now have a prime minister who is more capable of using his mouth than his head; a one-time political bully as a minister taking care of internal affairs; and a once-respectable academic who is trying to add a bulldog characteristic to his persona in order to command respect and fear in the Thai media. All this is a result of a despot who wants to return to power and become even more despotic in our once fairly democratic country.

What next?

Chavalit Van

Chiang Mai

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Report was in the worst possible taste

Has The Nation completely lost all sense of what is or isn't news?  I find it distasteful in the extreme that today's front page lead is not only headlined "CP Group reports no big disruption - livestock and chicken farms avoid damage", but that you choose to illustrate the story with a photograph of a mother grieving over the body of her child.

I'm sure that lady, and the tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of others affected by the earthquake, share your readers' delight that the CP Group's business interests have emerged unscathed. How can any serious newspaper lead with a headline like this? What about leavening the mish-mash of wire coverage with a quote from someone at CP expressing condolences to those who've suffered? Editorial standards, not any more, it seems.

David Tuck

Bangkok

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Suggested plan to help Burma not feasible

Re: UN-style mission may be the way to help Burma: Letters May 13.

Burin, your plan is exemplary but naive. There is no way that the Burmese junta would ever allow a foreigner to head any operations in their country, especially if the personnel involved are foreign. They are totally xenophobic and paranoid; consequently they see danger to themselves everywhere and are unable to trust anyone, including their own people.

Compare the Chinese government's reaction the earthquake with that of the Burmese junta's to the plight of their own people. Perhaps someone can/will write a book entitled, A Tale of Two Disasters.  Finding material for such an endeavour should be very easy.

William Reynolds

Chiang Mai