B by Tom

That's what blogs are for
Time won't publish my letter. Fortunately, B will.

Dear Editor,
No sooner did the dust settle on Ground Zero that we learned that many victims of 9/11 were non-Americans (latest figure: 235 from 40 countries). Would Pico Iyer [Sept. 15] suggest their friends and families, many of whom Asian and all of whom still “mired in grief” in this second anniversary of the terrorist outrage, to “learn from Asia”, too?

Mr. Iyer should be careful here. Asia, after all, is a vast continent that is home to the Indians and the Pakistanis, the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Sunnis and the Shias, and the Chinese and the Tibetans, among many others. Cambodians’ passivity toward their mass murderers, which Mr. Iyer cited, is an exception, not a norm, and its result was not exceptional peace, but extraordinary bloodbath.

By perpetuating hoary bromides about Asia’s “older cultures”, Mr. Iyer is furthering the “us-them” attitude that he purportedly opposes. Frankly, I feel much less comfortable with his kind of divide (Asians versus Americans) than Mr. Bush’s (the civilized versus the terrorists).

Tom Vamvanij

Was that enough of a rebuff? I actually think the article cries out to be fisked. Do you think it'll be worth it?

Update I was wrong. They do publish (an inferior version of) it.
22:44

Trying to balance budget?

What do Thai senators do when they're not busy trying to obstruct help to Iraq, block anti-terrorism laws and compare the PM with Hitler?

Go gold-digging.

P.S. Note to Sen. Chirmsak: When I think of Hitler, the first thing that comes to mind is not his use of decrees (or executive orders), which also exist in full-fledged democracies. Rather, he is more synonymous with -- didn't your Ph.D. studies somehow touch upon this? -- his fanatical hatred of Jews, which happens to be shared by the terrorists of today. Thus, if Hitler were still alive, he wouldn't try to stop JI or Al Qaeda from blowing up Israeli planes with RPGs. Now, the question is, would you, Mr. Senator?
00:21

Warriors of the world unite!

From a must-read by David Brooks of the New York Times: [via Sully]

The quintessential new warrior scans the Web for confirmation of the president's villainy. He avoids facts that might complicate his hatred. He doesn't weigh the sins of his friends against the sins of his enemies. But about the president he will believe anything.

Replace "the president" with "America" and you have a portrait of the Thai journalistic/academic warrior.

Never mind that the "friends" in this context are Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong Il, Mahathir and the Chinese communists; if the "Big Bully" is mad at them, they are by definition heroes of the oppressed "little people" -- you know, like us.

Now that the American warriors are rabid in their hatred of Bush, whom they see as the face of the Right, you can expect their Thai counterparts, who see Bush as the face of America, to gleefully tout them ("Look, sensible Americans are...").

The problem is, this alignment of hatred breaks up as soon as the desirable outcome transpires. Say Dean wins the election in 2004; for the American (Left) warriors, it will be mission accomplished, but for the Thai warriors, a new face of America will still be a face of America (and an avowedly protectionist one at that).

Maybe the Thai warriors will then align themselves with the American (Right) Warriors. And the war rages on.
00:16

Now with COMMENTS

Just click the link below each post and let your voice be heard. (Who will be the very first?)

Update We have a winner!
01:01

"Technical changes... to win more Chinese readers"
Not content with renaming Tintin in Tibet "Tintin in Chinese Tibet", the Chinese deleted passages about Tiananmen and Harry Wu from Hillary's Living History. What's next? Blank out the "democracy" entry in the Britannica?

Perhaps. But immediately next is blocking access to this correction web page. Censorship "increasingly futile" in the Internet era, Sen. Clinton? Not with Cisco-built filter.
22:26

Best among worst
Many thanks to Khun Surin who wrote:

The government comes up with some good idea, vow to do it but when it is not in the news anymore, things tend to slip and go back to its old ways.

I absolutely agree with you, Khun Surin, except for the "good" bit and everything that came after "but".

This may come as a surprise for many of you, but I am actually critical of many, if not most, of the Thaksin government's policies. I disapprove of the crackdown on prostitution (Legalize it), the 30-baht health scheme (How do you pay for that without annual contributions?) and the war on drugs (If the right not to be subjected to random urine tests is not a human right, it should be) to name but a few.

It would be nice if the administration would just let these agendas "slip" quietly like Khun Surin says, but I think the opposite is happening. They're being relentlessly pursued because they're not only popular, but also borne directly out of Thaksin's interventionist instincts. (The guy openly admires Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir -- yikes!)

So, Thaksin has a wrong philosophy, which breeds bad ideas, which he implements vigorously. Why keep him around then? Let's dump him in the next election.

In favor of whom? The Democrats?

Eewww.

Long live Thaksin.
21:39

So as not tarnish Thaksin's "nationalist" credentials, the Bunkum Post graciously buries this story in page 3, below the fold:

And in case someone notices it and and his trust in the Premier's "nationalism" is shaken, the Post kindly offers a backup tag: cronyism. Contrary to the headline, more priority is given to "accusing" than to "defending".

Never mind that only two years ago the very same Bunkum Post was critical of the 25% ceiling, insinuating that it was crafted in order to hamstring competitors of the Shinawatras' AIS Corp.

Inconsistent? Not at all, don't you see the bad guy is always the same?

P.S. Look at the byline, only two Post reporters wrote this six-sentence story! They must be exhausted!
23:30

Finally, a worthwhile French import

Allow me a bit of bragging here. I discovered and bought Revel's L'Obssession anti-américaine on my own during my latest visit to Paris, without anyone's recommendations.

Yeah, yeah, I (now) know that you bloggers have filed a gazillion posts about it since last year, but the point is I had read none of them before buying the book back in July, alright? Indeed, I'd never read about the book anywhere until Totten mentioned it just a couple of days ago.

Okay, perhaps this isn't something to be bragging about after all.

P.S. Along with L'Obsession, I also bought Nos amis les français. Here's another book the French should be reading, so long as they appreciate the poignant irony it highlights. That is, the US military was busy producing and consuming pro-French propaganda right after liberating the country, whereas the French are now indulging in anti-American propaganda designed to thwart another American-led liberation.

That's a big "so long as". The Frenchies may probably just brandish the book's counterarguments against Francophobia (perhaps without even citing the source) and point to the rebutted gripes as evidence of "American prejudices" against them.
00:43