Re: " Burma gets an "earful" on planned elections", 21 July
I read with a mixture of incredulity, amusement and scarcely cloaked cynicism your report of the Asean meeting entitled "Burma gets an 'earful' on planned elections". What made my sides split was that a motley collection of tin-pot dictatorships, masquerading to greater or lesser degrees as pseudo-democracies, would have the cheek to chastise the most successful dictatorship of them all.
Like it or not Asean is a right shower. A bizarre combination of second- and third-rate states thrown together through nothing more than geography and greed and trying to ape the EU. Until Indonesia's Pauline conversion to democracy, Thailand was the closest thing to a functioning democracy as it got in Asean. Frightening when one thinks about it.
I don't know whose marvellous idea it was to ask Burma to join but the murderous generals have been laughing all the way to the bank, especially the Export-Import Bank of Thailand, thanks to their dear friend and now convicted felon Thaksin Shinawatra, since that fateful day.
It was that historic day that sealed Asean's fate. They blew their cover so to speak. In asking a brutal murderous regime to join and not need change in any way they destroyed the credibility of the organisation as a force for good. Indeed it brings into sharp focus the motto of Asean - "One Vision, One Identity, One Community"
Therefore it was amusing to see the quote from Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan that he "thought" Burma got an earful. Well, if the Secretary-General is not sure, then I cannot imagine who knows for sure.
And as for the nonsense about Burma not seeking to build nuclear weapons: Well, as the Americans so charmingly put it - wake up and smell the coffee. Those murderous repressive generals know that nuclear weapons are their get-out-of-jail-free card. They have seen in stark clarity that a failed, pointless, sad joke of a country of no relevance to the modern world can, because it has nuclear weapons, happily commit an act of war and be found out to have done so and no one will do anything about it.
So the generals know that getting this magic card will elevate them from blood-soaked tyrants whom the majority of the world rightly treats like a pariah state and chooses to ignore, to international players who would be immune from any form of interference however vile their behaviour was to become in the future.
As John Hurt, a space traveller in the film "Alien", found to his cost something quite unpleasant was being nurtured within his body only to burst out and savagely destroy the rest of the crew. But that was only a film and Sigourney Weaver was there in good Hollywood style to fight for the side of good.
JOHN DE LAURENT
BANGKOK
Mixed-up confusion killing the Beeb?
"In world system, there is largely Democracy, but the question is who controls Democracy?" tweeted Thanong Khanthong Wednesday on "Tweets from The Nation".
This is a profound question everywhere, but particularly in Thailand today, which has just passed through a very democratic upheaval in which no one can say who was actually in control or what was at stake. Certainly it was "democratic" indeed in a way that very few democratic countries in the world could ever have tolerated. Masses of poor people were allowed to take over the commercial centre of the country, and not only was daily life made impossible for workers in the city, bombs were hurled, buildings were torched, and a pitched battle was fought during which the Thai army was forced to withdraw with five soldiers dead and many more injured.
Could this have happened in Times Square or on the Champs Elysees, in Berlin, Copenhagen or Tokyo? Of course not - the demonstration would never have been allowed even to start what is more to settle down and cripple the whole country for months in defiance of the law and with disastrous consequences for the majority of working people.
And take note, nobody to this day knows who killed those soldiers either, or the journalists, or the pedestrians - or even the poor, unarmed protesters who died in the crossfire. Even that's not clear. Even less clear is who controlled the "democracy" during this terrible upheaval, or who had more "democracy," what is more God, on their side? Or what anybody was fighting for!
That is the ambiguity a great many of us are still asking the BBC to address, because in its coverage the equation was always simple - the "good" rural people were being suppressed by a "bad," "undemocratic" urban elite. That was the BBC's message every evening for weeks even though the evidence was only in the reporter's head and nowhere to be seen on the ground. Oh, except on the huge posters and banners positioned for the BBC News to film, conspicuously and artfully in English.
BBC: listen to the wise words of one of the world's most professional and respected economists, Amartya Sen: "There must be something more to the conflict when the poor happen to be led by the richest man in the country." ("Sen faults Western media coverage of unrest," The Nation, 21/07/2010).
I never once saw that conundrum explored on the BBC, though I did see Thaksin Shinawatra allowed to state unequivocally on BBC prime time that hundreds had been killed by the army in the Songkran riots in April the year before, a blatant and self-interested fabrication. Not only did I not see the BBC go on to expose that fabrication, never once did I see it question why Thailand's richest man would have wanted to lie about the death toll in the first place. Was the fact that the army was on that occasion proved not to be responsible for a single mortality a problem for Thaksin - or for the BBC? Did it screw up the news you both had in mind?
C WOODMAN
CHIANG MAI
Lockerbie details already online
Mr Cameron and President Obama have agreed to share information on the Lockerbie release. I find this surprising because the US lawyers were all over the case when it was in progress and the USA probably know more about what happened than Mr Cameron. If the truth comes out it should only embarrass the US Secret Service again.
There is a well-documented report by Private Eye in the UK available on line at http://private-eye.co.uk/ which exposes the lengths the US went to get the conviction. The Scottish authorities did the right thing. If BP had anything to do with it they should be praised
RICHARD BOWLER
BANGKOK
Any system to check if a car has been sold?
A few months ago, while shopping for an SUV, I came across one particular red-plated European brand at a much lower price than normal, with very low mileage on it (two digits). Upon enquiry, I learned that this SUV was a demo car (hence, the lower price), but with such a low mileage, it meant that they must have done something with the odometer. Is this possible, especially for the modern electronic ones? And if so, then it must be against the law.
Also, I just read that the Land Transport Department will start (for the umpteenth time, I think) to get serious with red-plated cars running around the country. According to them, we have 30 days to get the official plates. However, in the real world, the buyer has already paid the tax, etc, right from day one to the car company. The question is, don't they have a system to check whether a car has been sold or not, right from the minute that the transaction took place?
VIC PHANUMPHAI
BANGKOK
Khun Sumet, please give us the details
Sumet Jumsai has decided to "kill the messenger" ("A stale, outmoded Eurocentric view", 22 July), taking to task Jeremy Browne, the UK foreign minister, who criticised the continued state of emergency and spoke on freedom of expression. The world is indeed trying to tell Thailand something but it is apparently easier to kill the messenger than to swallow the bad news.
Sumet Jumsai did not miss an opportunity to brag about the British-born Thai PM who received a degree from Oxford - as did Oliver Cromwell, that great "reformer" whose head was placed atop a pole in public for five years. So much for the Oxford Alumni Association.
Sumet Jumsai alluded to former PM Thaksin calling him the "shadow" PM, "who is known to have obtained his degree in a different way." Oh, really? We would very much like to know by whom this "is known" and the specifics about the "different way."
Do tell, and do provide the details, as inquiring minds want to know.
GUY BAKER
BANGKOK