B by Tom

You know the axiom: The Bush administration blundered away the international outpouring of goodwill after 9/11. Oh well, with goodwill like this, who needs anti-Americanism? [via Sully]

And that's from Ireland, mind you. Perhaps I should do the same with the Thai press. But then again, better not. We don't want America to mistake us for an enemy, do we?
22:43

A moment of silence
. . .
22:12

Finally, Thailand debates capital punishment

But not the way you think. While the death penalty has been abolished in 74 countries (including Cambodia, Colombia and Côte d'Ivoire) and is a controversial issue in many that still have it, here in Thailand, the controversy is whether to kill more humanely or less so.

Lethal injection will replace the firing squad starting October 19. Although there's been no real public debate about this, a popular talk show that lets viewers "vote" with their cell phones thought they got an issue here and, much to my dismay, they were right!

When I stopped watching, a good 30% was voting "no", saying effectively that lethal injection is too "easy" on the condemned. One declared outright, "We must have no mercy on the bad guys." From what I gathered, far from being fringe radicals, these people are only a notch more fervent than the 70% who voted "yes". If the question had been whether or not to scrap the death penalty, the "no" votes would have been an indignant 99.5%.

That's mind-boggling. All Thais know full well how corrupt our state is (especially when it comes to law enforcement) and yet we are perfectly happy to hand it the power to take life (and in a gruesome manner, for that 30%). This we did without even demanding in return safeguards such as the jury or protection against double jeopardy. We crave retribution that much, it seems.

There are just too many ironies here. This is, after all, a country that touts itself as "the land of Buddhism" (purportedly synonymous with compassion, kindness, forgiveness and all that good stuff). It is also a country whose public sentiments run high against the war in Iraq (I guess Saddam & Co don't count as "bad guys"). And still in this country, a man who confessed to beating his wife to death walked free without even serving a jail term. Try to reconcile all this and your brain bursts asunder.

P.S. The talk show vote was not without some interesting anomalies. Some people actually thought lethal injection more cruel than the firing squad, and both "yes" and "no" votes resulted from that.
23:23

Just saw the brilliant Michael Moore on the BBC's "Hard Talk". (Notice "brilliant", which means I'm talking about the previous Director-General of the WTO, not the stupid white man who makes fictitious films, nor--for you Brits--the Lib Dem MP)

Prior to this, I knew virtually nothing about the former New Zealand Premier (yes, he held that post, too) but a half hour was all it took for him to win me over. With such clarity, conviction, optimism and style, he expounded the promises of free trade and struck down, one by one, the litany of attacks against it. And this he did in spite of an interviewer who was a competent devil's advocate. (It wasn't Tim Sebastian today, but even the master nagger himself wouldn't have been able to derail Moore, who was just too good.) Evidently, the embattled trading world could use someone like this to help it move forward.

That, unfortunately, is more than I can say of his successor-- Supachai Panitchpakdi. The former Thai deputy PM simply lacks all the qualities that Moore so magnificently exhibited. Put Dr. Sup on the same show and he wouldn't come out in one piece. And if Hard Talk is hard time, the actual WTO round will be incomparably tougher--with hundreds relentless negotiators (think meaner and less reasonable Tim Sebastian's) plus thousands of militant NGOs. Whatever his intellectual background (which, in fact, is far from exceptional), Supachai's lack of leadership and PR skills makes him a poor choice as head of the world's most controversial and bitterly divided body.

Therefore, I hereby motion to "recall" Supachai (à la California) and then recall Moore to the post.

P.S. You might be wondering how a crashing bore like Dr. Sup landed on such a plum job in the first place. Here, Surin Pitsuwan--Thai Foreign Minister at the time of Supachai's nomination--offers an incredibly self-serving account:

There was a long pause again. Finally, the US Secretary of State responded in a more conciliatory tone: "Then what are we going to do, Surin?"

Her Thai counterpart seized the moment and made a bold suggestion. "Instead of one director-general for four years, why don't we think about six years divided between both of them?"

"That sounds interesting!'' she said.

"But you would have to ask your boys in Geneva and Washington if that would be legal and allowed by the WTO's rules," her Thai counterpart continued.

"I will check with them and get back to you as soon as I can," she said.

That was how Dr Supachai's position was secured -- at the highest diplomatic level between Bangkok and Washington. Not at the WTO General Council in Geneva, as many had come to believe.

Yeah right, he played Madeline Albright like a fiddle! Wipe this bullcrap off your eyes before reading on.

More likely, as Moore himself explained, the job-splitting solution came about from both sides' realization that it was better to share than to let the EU sneaked in its own man as a "compromise".

And so it paid off, the petty pigheadedness on the part of Thailand and the "developing world" (which included Japan but not most of Latin America). We Thais finally got to make our consummate contribution to world trade: incompetence. In return for that, I predict, the world will in due course give us what what we so richly deserve: ridicule.

P.P.S. Below is my unpublished letter to the Bunkum Post regarding Surin's bold-faced narcissism:

Dear Editor
Reading your article headlined “Dr. Supachai’s long and winding road to Geneva” (Bangkok Post, Perspective, Aug. 25 [2002]), I grew more and more admiring of the mysterious foreign minister of the Chuan cabinet. He (or she?) not only stood his ground defiantly against the wishes of then-US Secretary of State Madeline Albright, but also crafted an ingenious solution to the WTO directorship impasse, effectively handing Mr. Supachai his prized job. Who could this hitherto unsung hero possibly be?

As in a good thriller, the identity will be revealed only in the very last line. The heroic foreign minister is none other than Mr. Surin Pitsuwan—the article’s author himself. Isn’t that cute?

Unfortunately, neither thrill nor cuteness is what I look for when reading the Post. A newspaper should inform, not excite, much less idolize. And politics—international or Thai—would do well with some ‘full disclosure’. Mr. Surin has every right to glorify himself and his former colleagues, but that he himself is doing that must be made clear from the beginning (so the readers can be appropriately reserved with their admiration). Anything short of that is very bad form.

Tom Vamvanij

P.P.P.S. For the uninitiated, Supachai, Surin and Chuan all belong to the (Thai) Democratic Party, which is touted by the like of The Economist and FEER as "reformist" (as opposed to "populist"). The touts are wrong. Surin's article not only pitted "the North" and "the South" against each other, but also never once mentioned "free trade" or "liberalization", opting instead for the "fair trade" rubbish. If that's not populist, I don't know what is. Perhaps this?
23:57

Anti-idiotarian frontrunner?
With a Democrat like Lieberman who needs a Republican: [from Slate]

Lieberman's attack on Dean elicits excited "ooohs" from the reporters watching the debate on television in the hall's basement. Lieberman brings up Dean's opposition to trading with countries that do not have the same labor and environmental standards as the United States, and he calls it "stunning": "He said he would not have bilateral trade agreements with any country that did not have American standards. That would mean we would not have trade agreements with Mexico, with most of the rest of the world. That would cost us millions of jobs." Then, after peppering Dean with jabs, Lieberman rears back to throw the knockout punch: If Dean were elected president and carried out his promised trade policies, "The Bush recession would be followed by the Dean depression."

It beats me how Dean's come to be known as the "straight-talking insurgent". Like Bush in 2000, he simply panders to his hard-line base. Lieberman, on the other hand, is the real thing, like McCain. And like McCain, he'll probably lose.

Why don't the two renegades get together and start a party? I think they'll get 90% of bloggers' votes.
15:23