We all know there is a drought affecting all of Southeast Asia. The issue is not whether there's also drought in Yunnan, the issue is one country taking far more [water] than its share.
China hasn't yet finished the fourth of eight planned dams for the Mekong . The fourth will be the tallest in the world, at 300 metres, holding back billions of cubic metres of water.
Chinese officials are predictably tossing out all sorts of soggy excuses, such as how only 15 per cent of the Mekong's flow goes through China. Whether or not that's true, it's not a decent excuse for being so greedy.
It won't become a "water war" as none of the countries downstream, even collectively, are any match for China's military might. The same military that took control of Tibet, which, by the way, is the source for all the major rivers in China and most major rivers flowing to SE Asia and India.
It would be interesting if Tibet gained independence and then chose to dam the rivers right inside its borders. How would the millions of Han Chinese react to that, I wonder? Would they just roll with it, using their current reasoning, "Well, only six percent of the rivers' water comes across Tibet's border, so it's no problem if they put that water in reservoirs for their own use." Yeah, sure!
KEN ALBERTSEN
CHIANG RAI
Thai social democratic party is needed now
Not long ago I suggested a Thai social democratic party as the only way to settle the never-ending unrest. Others are now voicing the same view. The working class and the poor need a party representing them and their interests. Their legal democratic power is now sadly hijacked by rich businessmen-politicians, making Thailand a very unstable country.
The labour unions must wake up or be woken up to rescue the country from chaos by establishing a social democratic party. The political unrest and the legal democratic power of the working class and the "anger of the reds" have to be channelled into such a party, where it can be expressed in ways acceptable in a cultivated, developed democracy. I am waiting for The Nation to report from the biggest unions. What are their views?
The reds who are fighting for Thaksin will disappear when the money is gone. But the political unrest will not vanish before big changes are made.
ARILD JOHNSEN
ST PETERSBURG, FLORIDA.
Scanners used to protect informants?
Even though the subject of the GT200 bomb detector has become obscured behind the more urgent threat of the upcoming mass rally by the red shirts in Bangkok, it doesn't mean that the issue should go away quietly. And with a recent spate of explosions in the South plus the theft of war weapons from an arms depot attached to the 4th Army, we must continue to dig deeper into this particular military purchase with greater and deeper insight.
We should know why, after the scanner's worthlessness had been scientifically proven beyond doubt, the Army (and at least one other civilian agency) still insisted on its tangential benefit. Could it be that the Army is withholding something from the public? If so, what?
It has been theorised in some circles that this expensive and supposedly hi-tech detector was used as a means to protect the informants that the Army always relies upon for virtually all its intelligence in the South. In other words, the Army already knows from informants where and when bombs will be planted, and even by whom, but cannot get to them directly without revealing the [identity of] the informant (likely be someone close to the insurgents), so it must rely on something more believable (by the insurgents).
The discovery of the scanner's true colours has put all of us in a very awkward position.
VIC PHANUNPHAI
BANGKOK
Thaksin definitely is not a winner
Meechai Burapa's letter of March 8 claims that Eric Bahrt and Songdej Pratitsmanont missed his point in his previous letter. He goes on to state that "Thaksin is living proof that winners don't quit, and quitters don't win." That anyone can believe that Thaksin is a winner is clear evidence why Thai politics is in the state it is today. Until enough people realise that Thaksin was not a winner for the country and that his only aim was to win on his terms to enrich himself and his cronies, then little will change in terms of any government being able to honestly serve the people who elected it.
Self-serving politicians are evident in governments worldwide, but Thailand seems to have more than its fair share. When the government and opposition parties stop their bickering and infighting, individuals stop jockeying for favourable positions and all start acting like mature adults rather than spoilt children, only then can Thailand hope for a government that will truly serve its people.
CHRIS KAYE
CHONBURI
