Southeast Asia News 35

San Fernando Moon

Asia sees growing appetite for aromatic rice
The International News

SINGAPORE: As the appetite for aromatic rice rises steadily across the globe, Asian growers are aggressively stepping up efforts to fill the demand with a number of grades of the premium grain. While Thailand is pondering ways to boost production of its famous Jasmine rice, India and Pakistan are witnessing a steady rise in demand for their long-grain Basmati varieties from the United States, Middle East and Europe.

Even cheaper grades of aromatic rice, which provides a natural aroma when cooked and a flavour that may taste like roasted nuts or popcorn, has been developed in Thailand and is finding rapid acceptance in China. "If prices don’t rise too high, we would see the aromatic rice market expanding," Charoen Laothamatas, secretary-general of the Thai Rice Exporters’ Association, told Reuters.

"United States, Canada and Europe are the target markets where the purchasing power is high and consumers are willing to pay that kind of price," said Charoen. Thailand, the world’s biggest rice exporter, expects overseas sales of the aromatic varieties to rise about 10 per cent in 2004 from the two million tonnes sold in 2003.

Lower Cost Jasmine Rice


Prison in Thailand draws tourists
Houston Chronicle
By JENNIFER VALENTINO

BANGKOK, THAILAND - With its stark concrete walls, armed guards and electrified fences, Bang Kwang maximum-security prison hardly looks like a tourist destination. But it has become an attraction of sorts to travelers wanting to experience something different — and at the same time do a good deed.

The prison on the outskirts of the capital houses Thailand's death row and more than 7,000 men serving sentences of 25 years or more for crimes ranging from drug smuggling to murder. Among them are a few dozen Western inmates, far from home and happy to be on the receiving end of what might be called prison tourism.

Their visitors are often complete strangers — tourists motivated both by curiosity and by a desire to cheer up a prisoner far from home, living in conditions that are harsh by Western standards

Prison Tourism in Bangkok


Respected magazine folds as weekly
The Australian
October 28, 2004

ASIA'S Hong Kong-based weekly news magazine the Far Eastern Economic Review is to fold in its current form with the loss of 80 jobs, the magazine's publisher Dow Jones said today. The magazine, which led debate on Asian issues for 58 years, will be relaunched as an opinion-led monthly, Dow Jones - publishers of the Asian Wall Street Journal - said in a statement. The job losses represent 10 per cent of Dow Jones' workforce in Asia.

A company source said staff were told the news today in a specially convened meeting at a hotel in Hong Kong. The first issue of the Review in its new format will be published in December.

Death of the Far Eastern Economic Review


The botched acquisition of the Far Eastern Economic Review by Dow Jones should be taught in business schools.
Torn and Frayed in Manila

Not long ago, there were two excellent English language weekly magazines covering Asia: Asiaweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Both were bought by American conglomerates – Asiaweek by Time Warner and the Far Eastern Economic Review by Dow Jones – and both were subsequently closed, leaving the region only with the feeble “Asian” edition of Time. An excellent account of the Asiaweek debacle by a friend and former senior editor of the magazine can be found here.

The mismanagement of the Far Eastern Economic Review by its corporate masters is a textbook case of how not to handle an acquisition. Under its previous editor, Derek Davies, the Review had carved a name for itself for the excellence of its economic reporting, its refusal to be cowed (the Singapore Government banned it on several occasions) and its wide-ranging book reviews.

Torn and Frayed in Manila Looks at the FEER Failure


An Asian Mission Ends
HKFCC
Todd Crowell

The demise of Asiaweek in December 2001 created shock waves in the Hong Kong journalistic community. Two writers look at the newsweekly's death.

Shortly after I joined Asiaweek as a staff writer in 1987, I made the mistake ofdescribing something in Asia as being "exotic." This promptly elicited a snappy little note from Senior Editor Bob Woodrow to the effect that the quaint customs of the natives of Washington state in the US from where I hailed might be called exotic. "Nothing in Asia is exotic!"

It was on such a simple and basic premise as this that Asiaweek was founded in 1975 and on which it based much of the claim it made in its mission statement. The magazine's claim to be that authentic voice of Asia was often derided. Were not the editor-in-chief, managing editor, assistant managing editor from New Zealand and Australia, people would ask?

The Death of AsiaWeek in 2001


Asia by Blog
SimonWorld
Oct 28, 2004

Asia by Blog is a twice weekly feature, posted on Monday and Thursday, providing links to Asian blogs and their views on the news in this fascinating region. Please send me an email if you would like to be notified of new editions. Previous editions can be found here.

This edition contains changing Chinese newspaper terms, football, New York Times lies, killer tomatoes, Koreans defecting both ways, death in Singapore, the curious case of the dictator's son and Maria Sharapova's underpants, plus plenty more...

Simon's Asia by Blog


Vietnam Opens Bunker Used by Ho Chi Minh
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 27, 2004

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Behind thick concrete walls and iron doors, Ho Chi Minh and other top North Vietnamese leaders hid out in secret underground tunnels during U.S. B-52 bombing raids and plotted key military strategies that led to America's defeat in the Vietnam War. For the first time, Hanoi has opened the bunker used by the late former president, his military leader, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and others. It's in the same building where the 1968 Tet offensive and the fall of Saigon in 1975 were planned from about 30 feet below the surface.

But the site's history goes far deeper than that. Visitors are being given a rare, firsthand glimpse of nearly 1,000 years of Vietnamese history through touring the site of the Kinh Thien shrine, which dates to the 11th century.

Uncle Ho's Bunker in Hanoi Now Open for Tourism


Dear daughters, when I die...
A Sassy Lawyer in the Philippines
Saturday, October 30, 2004

Dear daughters,

It is two days before All Saints’ Day when most Filipinos will troop to the cemeteries to “visit” and “pay respects” to their dearly departed. I thought I’d let you know my preferences although I don’t expect to die anytime soon. When I die, burn my body. I have not taken, nor do I intend to take, out any memorial plan for myself. I do not believe in spending money over rituals for a corpse and I hope that you will respect my wishes when my time comes.

No flowers, no candles, no prayers, no sad songs.

No churches, no wakes, no donations, no eulogies, no crocodile tears.

No strangers partaking of the free food--feasts--that are normally laid out during wakes. No long-lost relatives gossiping over my corpse. No politicians and wanna-be politicians making grand entrances and claiming how well they knew me.

No mausoleum, no crypt, no tombstone, no annual treks to the cemetery. The living are far more in need of the use of those vast tracks of land than corpses ever will be.

When I am gone, remember how I lived, not how I died. Grieve, if you must, and remember that how I raised you will be the living testament to what kind of human being I had been in life.

Love always,

Mommy

Sassy Still Raising Hell in the Philippines


Gay Asia: Tolerance pays
Far Eastern Economic Review
October 28, 2004
Gordon Fairclough

FOR many, the journey has yet to begin, but a growing number of Asian gay men and women are finally on the road to winning social and legal acceptance. Some are benefiting from the belief that open societies equal stronger economies; others are finding the courage to stand up for themselves as they find--often through the Net--that they are not alone.

ON A HOT TROPICAL NIGHT, around 8000 gay men are dancing to pulsing house music. Laser lights play across sweaty bodies. Many of the men have whipped off their shirts. Some are down to just their Speedos.

Singapore Window Posts One of their Final FEER Articles


Singapore's Bling
Newsweek International
George Wehrfritz and Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop
Nov. 8 issue

You've heard of Singapore Airlines. You've heard of Raffles hotels, and the telecoms giant SingTel. But have you heard of Temasek Holdings? It's the enigmatic and little-known state holding company that funded and built the global brands above. It's also largely responsible for Singapore's rise from swampland to superefficient First World city-state. Established in 1974 to oversee government-led modernization, Temasek has nurtured strategic industries like electronics and transport, built state-of-the-art power and telecommunications grids, and even bought the local zoo. Today its portfolio is worth $56 billion.

It controls seven of the top 10 companies listed on the Singapore Exchange and its affiliates make up 34 percent by value of all shares traded. Yet the entity at the core of Singapore Inc. recently revealed a long-kept secret: between 1993 and 2003, its first annual report noted, it delivered average shareholder returns of 3 percent per annum—peanuts compared with the 13 percent annual gains recorded by America's S&P 500 companies during the same time.

The cause of the stunted growth is obvious: Singapore's economy has passed its glory days of white-hot expansion. Thanks to lower-wage rivals like Thailand, Malaysia and China, it's lost its edge in manufacturing, and is increasingly challenged in services. That slowdown is driving Temasek literally off-island. "We expect to steadily increase our exposure to Asia," says chairman S. Dhanabalan in the report, signaling a partial divestment from Singapore itself.

Excellent Newsweek Article about the Dismal Economic Performance of the National Investment Fund


Singapore Comes 147th out of 167
Singabloodypore
Oct 28, 2004

There is nothing unique about Singapore and the so called necessary curtailment of freedom of speech, (out of bounds markers). It is part of a trend in the region. When you see the list in full and look at Singapore's bed-fellows you may get a sense of becoming infested with fleas.

Singapore, however, is the only economically developed nation at the bottom end of the scale. But in Singapore the counter argument will be that Singapore is unique because of its diverse ethnic and religious mix and so social unrest must not be allowed to occurr as it would undermine the economic success. But haven't the other countries in South East Asia been undermining press freedom? Why hasn't it led to economic success for the others? To simpistically link the denial of press freedom as a primary cause of economic success, and maintenance of it, is a myth.

Hicky At Singabloodypore Looks at Press Freedoms in Asia

Saturday Cats

Sleeping Tiger

Kitty Solitaire

Fodor's and Travel Writers Blog

Travel Writer from Hell

Fodor's Blog
Shannon Kelly
October 26, 2004

Tough Travel-Writing Medicine

Many of the articles posted on Travel Writers: The Travails of Travel Writing, a blog created by travel writer Carl Parkes, seem almost relentlessly cynical about travel writing (see in particular “The Truth About Travel Guidebooks,” “The Travel Writer as Freeloader,” and “Thomas Swick on the State of Travel Writing”). As a guidebook editor, my gut reaction is to be defensive when I read claims that guidebooks are boring and outdated, and that they “fudge things.” (Those are MY BOOKS you’re talking about, buddy.)

Then again, I have bookmarked Parkes’s blog and I check it nearly every day. And if you twist my arm just a little, I’ll admit that there’s some truth in it.

So read it, enjoy it, and by all means, demand more of your guidebooks. Write us letters, send us e-mail, tell us what sucks, and we’ll look into it. You, the traveler, the reader, and -- let’s not forget -- the consumer, have the power to help us improve books. Demand more. If harsh criticism results in better guidebooks, I’m all for it.

Fodor's Reviews my Travel Writers Blog

Random Noise

The Honeymooners

10 Things That You Should Never Buy Used
From wet suits to beds, it pays to buy new
By Liz Pulliam Weston

In my companion piece, "10 things you shouldn't buy new," I listed lingerie as one of the items for which you'd best pay retail. There are plenty of other examples where the cost savings don't justify the risks of buying used:

1. Laptops: You're taking a chance when you buy any used computer, but the math really doesn't work when you're talking about a unit that's as prone to abuse and problems as a laptop

Exception: You're buying a refurbished unit that comes with a warranty.

2. Car seats: A car seat that's been in one accident may not protect your child in another. And damaged car seats aren't uncommon; a survey commissioned by Sainsbury's Bank in England discovered one in 10 car seats currently in use in that country had been involved in an accident.

10 Things to Never Buy Used


With a chill in the air and frost on the pumpkins, it's the spookiest time of the year. Out of a trunk from the attic and a bag from the cellar, 2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes are here!

by Dan Savage and David Schmader
Photographs by John E. Hollingsworth

Hilarious Halloween Costumes for Kids - Abu Ghraid Victim, Nancy Reagan at Casket, Arrested NYC Poster, More!


Aerial Photo of London with Cool Zoom Feature

London Map with Zoom


Cat Animation!

Cat Animation from Bore Me


Cruising - Till death us do part
Oct 28th 2004
The Economist

ARE you haunted by thoughts of spending your golden years vegetating in a dingy old folks' home, supping on denture-friendly peas and boiled beef, and playing endless rounds of cribbage? Fear not, there is a cost-effective alternative: life on a cruise ship. A year in an “assisted-living facility” costs Americans, on average, around $28,500 a year. In large cities such as Chicago, costs are even higher, topping $40,000. Living in a dedicated cabin aboard the Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Seas, on the other hand, rings in at a rather competitive $33,260 a year.

Luxury liners offer many of the same amenities as old folks' homes: meals and housekeeping, laundry and hair-dressing services, and even an escort to dinner. They have handgrips in the toilets and walk-in showers. And they also provide plenty of things that land-based facilities do not—such as premium-grade ozone, nightly entertainment and round-the-clock access to medical care.

Perpetual Cruising as an Alternative to Assisted Living


September 6, 2004
TASTE TECHNOLOGIES
The Ketchup Conundrum
Mustard now comes in dozens of varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same?

Many years ago, one mustard dominated the supermarket shelves: French’s. It came in a plastic bottle. People used it on hot dogs and bologna. It was a yellow mustard, made from ground white mustard seed with turmeric and vinegar, which gave it a mild, slightly metallic taste. If you looked hard in the grocery store, you might find something in the specialty-foods section called Grey Poupon, which was Dijon mustard, made from the more pungent brown mustard seed. In the early seventies, Grey Poupon was no more than a hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year business. Few people knew what it was or how it tasted, or had any particular desire for an alternative to French’s or the runner-up, Gulden’s. Then one day the Heublein Company, which owned Grey Poupon, discovered something remarkable: if you gave people a mustard taste test, a significant number had only to try Grey Poupon once to switch from yellow mustard. In the food world that almost never happens; even among the most successful food brands, only about one in a hundred have that kind of conversion rate. Grey Poupon was magic.

Heinz Ketchup Rules, but Will Kerry Win?


Alternative Website about Japan

Schoolgirls and "Compensated Dating"
"Japan was disgusted that girls were pawning their innocence, ignoring the fact that it was their fathers who were paying for it."

Japan for the Uninvited


Wired moose
Fairbanks Alaska Daily News
By TIM MOWRY, Staff Writer

It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's a bull moose hanging by its antlers from an electrical power line in the middle of the Alaska wilderness.
In one of those only-in-Alaska stories that will shock even the sourest of sourdoughs, a trophy-sized bull moose was accidentally strung up in a power line under construction to the Teck Pogo gold mine southeast of Fairbanks. The moose apparently got its antlers tangled in electrical wire before workers farther down the line pulled the line tight about two weeks ago.

The moose was suspended 50 feet in the air when workers, recognizing something was wrong, backtracked and found it.

The moose was alive when it was lowered to the ground but was later killed when officials from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game decided against tranquilizing it to remove the wires because they were worried the moose, already stressed, would die and the meat would not be salvageable as a result of the drugs.

Photo courtesy of City Electric Inc. BIZARRE INCIDENT--A moose hangs from a power pole near the Pogo Mine on Oct. 5.

The incident happened Oct. 5 at about 40 Mile Pogo Mine Road, which leads to the gold mine about 80 miles southeast of Fairbanks. "It's just an unbelievable story," said Gabriel Marian, president of City Electric Inc., the contractor erecting the power line to the mine. "The only unfortunate part is we had to shoot the moose.

Moose Caught in Transformer Erection - See the Photo


Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson sounds off on the fun-hogs in the passing lane
By DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Armageddon came early for George Bush this year, and he was not ready for it. His long-awaited showdowns with my man John Kerry turned into a series of horrible embarrassments that cracked his nerve and demoralized his closest campaign advisers. They knew he would never recover, no matter how many votes they could steal for him in Florida, where the presidential debates were closely watched and widely celebrated by millions of Kerry supporters who suddenly had reason to feel like winners.

Kerry came into October as a five-point underdog with almost no chance of winning three out of three rigged confrontations with a treacherous little freak like George Bush. But the debates are over now, and the victor was clearly John Kerry every time. He steamrollered Bush and left him for roadkill.

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful. . . . I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him "Mister President," and then I felt ashamed.

Karl Rove, the president's political wizard, felt even worse. There is angst in the heart of Texas today, and panic in the bowels of the White House. Rove has a nasty little problem, and its name is George Bush. The president failed miserably from the instant he got onstage with John Kerry. He looked weak and dumb. Kerry beat him like a gong in Coral Gables, then again in St. Louis and Tempe -- and that is Rove's problem: His candidate is a weak-minded frat boy who cracks under pressure in front of 60 million voters.

Hunter S. Thompson in Rolling Stone


The Walrus Magazine
A Manual's Labour
Don Gilmor

In her book, The Rise of Viagra: How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America, the sociologist Meika Loe argues that the concept of normal is being redefined. She examines the cultural impact of Viagra in the six years since it was introduced. Viagra became the fastest-selling drug in history, and quickly transcended the medical world. Along with its competitors, Levitra and Cialis, it is aggressively advertised directly to the consumer, using both sports metaphors ("Step up to the plate," "Stay in the game," "Light the flame") and sports figures. "Iron Mike" Ditka, the former coach of the Chicago Bears, a caricature of the hard-nosed, blood-and-thunder football deity, endorsed Levitra in a Super Bowl ad. The retired Brazilian soccer star Pele pitched Viagra, albeit with the caveat that he didn't need it himself. But if he did, he said, he'd use it. The drug remains a staple of comedy routines (Viagra is like Disneyland: a one-hour wait for a two-minute ride), and it is used as a verb in the business world. Viagra grossed more than a billion dollars (U.S.) the year it was introduced. From a pharmaceutical company's perspective, this was the perfect storm, a condition that was common but not normal. But defining normal, branding normal, became the marketing challenge.

Reviews of Two New Books about Sex and Viagra

Flores Tiny People

Tiny People on Flores

Nature Magazine Provides Excellent Coverage of this Amazing Discovery

Southeast Asia News 34

Siam Map

Playing with the wrong card
The Weekend Standard
Weekend: October 23-24, 2004

Even those rich enough to have bought a Thailand Elite Card are too embarrassed to talk about it. And even after it was put on the market a year ago with overt government backing - including the imprimatur of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra - not even the government bodies responsible for the card want to talk about it now.

Launched with great fanfare ahead of Thailand's hosting of last October's Apec (Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation) summit, the card confers exclusive benefits such as discounts on spas, a fast-track line at airport check-in and business introductions for "VIP foreigners who have high purchasing power'' and want to buy into what promotional materials say is the world's first `countrywide country-club''.

Costing US$25,000 (HK$195,000) each, the Elite Card promised a whole new level of service and special perks, backed by powerful government support for self-identified "high-quality tourists'', in contrast, presumably, to the hordes of downmarket visitors already spending their vacation dollars in Thailand.

But the golden bloom logo - the pat bok, or ceremonial palm-leaf fan which "has been reserved throughout Thai history to designate VIPs'', according to the Elite Card website - is already looking tarnished

The Thailand Elite Card Fiasco


Myanmar shakeup offers glimpse of junta Inc
Yahoo News Asia-Pacific
Oct 25, 2004
By Darren Schuettler

BANGKOK, Oct 25 (Reuters) - From karaoke bars to travel agents and newspapers, rivals are carving up the business empire of Myanmar's sacked prime minister and his once powerful clique. Scores of firms linked to Khin Nyunt's military intelligence have been shut or temporarily suspended at the behest of junta strongman Than Shwe, who purged his former ally last week.

Khin Nyunt's demise has offered a rare glimpse into how the generals, their families and a handful of businessmen profit in one of the world's most corrupt economies, analysts say. "It's about controlling access to money and Khin Nyunt's removal may have had as much to do with internal business interests as with politics," said Bradley Babson, a retired World Bank economist and Myanmar watcher.

Burma Shakeup All About the Money


Cambodia's underwear gang strikes again
Mail and Guardian Online
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
25 October 2004 15:45

Cambodia's notorious underwear thieves have struck again, shooting and seriously wounding a motorbike taxi driver just outside the capital, local media said on Monday. The gang earned its name because its members wear nothing but underpants, but wield AK-47s. It terrorised communities in several provinces last year but had appeared to have disbanded until the attack on Sunday, Khmer-language Kampuchea Thmei said.

Terror in Cambodia


Asia by Blog
Simon World
Hong Kong
Oct 25, 2004

Asia by Blog is a twice weekly feature, posted on Monday and Thursday, providing links to Asian blogs and their views on the news in this fascinating region. Please send me an email if you would like to be notified of new editions. Previous editions can be found here. This edition contains Korea's worst season, China's mines, Hooters, which US Presidential candidate is best for China, Japan's earthquake system, could China annex North Korea, pissed off Pakistanis and plenty more...

Simon's Asia by Blog


Vietnam's Phone Subscribers Growing
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 26, 2004

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- What's the best way to sue my neighbor? How big is Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum? Is surgery necessary to remove a bunion? Am I pregnant? For answers to these questions, call 1080. Directory assistance in communist Vietnam goes a lot further than America's 411. It's a combination of a lonely hearts column, Dr. Ruth and general information service, with a force of female operators ready to take on just about anything, 24/7.

In a country where information -- including the Internet and media -- is tightly controlled by the government, the service fills a big gap. And its popularity attests to a level of telephone penetration that reflects Vietnam's growing prosperity -- 9.3 million telephone subscribers in a nation of 82 million.

The service started in 1992 in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, as a way for the Communist Party to explain social and economic policies. More than a decade later, exchanges in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City alone field 75,000 calls a day asking for everything from college exam scores and soccer results to advice on finding love.

"One day I got a call from a man who said that two people were quarreling on Hang Bong street," said Tran Hong Ha, 30, an operator in Hanoi for 10 years. "That old man asked me to come there immediately because they were quarreling with each other very fiercely and he hoped that with my sweet voice, I could help..."

New York Times Reports on Phone Service in Vietnam


Smuggling Cost Philippines US$10 BLN Last Year
Yahoo News Asia-Pacific
Oct 25, 2004

MANILA, Oct 25 Asia Pulse - Smuggling in the country has resulted to US$10 billion in losses to the Philippine ngovernment last year yet the Bureau of Customs has not sent a single smuggler to jail in the last three years. This was the result of today's hearing by the Senate committee on trade and commerce investigating the problem of unabated smuggling of goods to the detriment of local producers.

Smuggling in the Philippines


So You Want to Be on TV?
Sassy Lawyer in the Philippines
Oct 25, 2004

Reading X-P’s latest entry reminded me of something that my husband and I were discussing a couple of weeks ago--hidden cameras and the right to privacy. Reality TV or not, someday I’m going to get my chance. Not to be on reality TV but to sue at least one TV station for invasion of privacy.

Hidden security cameras are one thing. But a hidden TV camera in a taxicab or in a restaurant is quite another thing. There’s this local TV show hosted by Andrew E. I saw part of one episode where Andrew E. pretended to be a cab driver and was carrying on conversations with real passengers. It was a gag, naturally. At the end of the segment, the camera was revealed and the passengers were told that they were on TV.

Sassy Lawyer in the Philippines on Hidden Cameras


U.S. pays $1 million reward to Filipino informers
Yahoo News Asia-Pacific
Oct 25, 2004

U.S. government representatives on Monday handed reward money totaling $1 million to three Filipinos who helped authorities track down and kill a senior leader of the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group. Two men and a woman wearing black caps, long-sleeved white shirts, gloves, sunglasses and stockings over their faces to conceal their identities received the money in suitcases at a ceremony in the grounds of a hospital in Basilan, an island near the southern tip of the Philippines.

The Philippine military said the three gave information that led to operations in Basilan last April in which Hamsiraji Sali was killed. Sali was among the leaders of the Abu Sayyaf who kidnapped and later killed hostages in 2001.

Big Bucks Rewards for Information


10,000 pay-TV pirates in Singapore
Singapore Straits Times
By Alfred Siew
Oct 26, 2004

THE temptation of watching English Premier League matches and other pay-TV programmes for free is drawing people to use illegal decoder boxes, even as the law is being changed to jail those who do so. As many as 10,000 illegal decoder boxes are being used in Singapore this year, according to survey results released by the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (Casbaa) on Tuesday.

These pirates have caused StarHub to lose US$3 million (S$5 million) so far this year, said Casbaa. On the whole, the cost of pay-TV piracy in Asia is expected to rise 11 per cent to US$970 million this year, the association said.

Singapore laws are being toughened to punish not only the sellers of unauthorised decoder boxes, but also anyone who uses them to receive pay-TV programmes. Proposed changes to the Broadcasting Act, which were first read in Parliament last week, will make it a criminal offence for anyone to receive pay-TV signals with unauthorised set-top boxes. Illegal decoder boxes, which cost between S$200 and S$600 in the black market, unscramble signals from StarHub and give a user access to all cable-TV channels for free.

TV Piracy in Singapore


City state does its death by the book
Kimina Lyall
The Australian
23 October 2004

When it comes to the death penalty, Singapore is unapologetic for its cold-hearted efficiency. In its official drug education website, the city state publishes the diary of David W, a 21-year-old addict the Government hanged in 2000.

"They weighed me today," David wrote three months before his death. "Not because they are worried about me putting on weight, no not for that. They need to know how heavy I am to calculate the length of the rope."

Later, David says one of the reasons he will be wearing a hood at his execution, "is so they don't have to look at you".

Australian Nguyen Tuong Van, 24, is likely to know soon how David felt. In a decision as swift as his expected execution, three judges this week dismissed his appeal against the death sentence without saying a word to the former child refugee. Not looking at the condemned man might be one way of coming to terms with state-sanctioned murder, but righteousness is another.

Singapore and Executions


Singapore Eyes Vegas-style Casino Project
Yahoo News Asia-Pacific
Oct 25, 2004

Singaporeans already spend about $180 million a year in neighbouring Malaysia's casinos, operated by Genting Bhd, which bar Muslims. About $140 million of Singaporean money is spent in Indonesia's Batam island casinos and about $400 million on casino cruises. The Innovation Group, a U.S. consultancy that compiled the data, said "floating casinos" and illegal gambling in Asia are worth about $4.2 billion alone. Some estimates put the value of Asia's legal gambling industry at about $14 billion.

But critics say Singapore is flirting with a social disaster and public debate simmers over a proposal to restrict local access, possibly by introducing a membership system, in the hope of heading off widespread gambling addiction. A survey by the Straits Times newspaper last month showed public opinion in Singapore evenly split over the idea, with 53 percent of the country behind it and 46 percent disapproving.

Is Gambling Coming to Singapore?


Singapore percussion group breaks Guinness record for non-stop drumming
Yahoo News Asia-Pacific
Oct 25, 2004

SINGAPORE : A Singapore percussion group, Rhythm Masala, has drummed its way to a Guinness World Record. The five drummers played non-stop for three days and two nights, totalling 50 hours, at the Awesome Africa Music Festival held in Durban, South Africa from September 23 to 29. They used 40 international drums - some of which are of Chinese, Malay and Brazillian origin - to break the record for non-stop drumming.

Another World Record for Singapore

Major Endorsement for Kerry

Kerry and Clinton in Philadelphia

BoingBoing endorses John Kerry for President

You may have noticed that the BoingBoing masthead looks a little different today. We've added a link to Apple "Switch" ad director Errol Morris' videos depicting former Bush supporters who will vote for Kerry in 2004. We've also added a banner for moveon.org.
When Mark first launched the BoingBoing weblog, it began as a sort of publicly-viewable personal scrapbook of "wonderful things." More than four years later, with four more participants added to the mix, that is what this project remains.

It may seem odd for a scrapbook to endorse a presidential candidate. But Mark, Cory, Pesco, John and I -- the people who keep this scrapbook alive -- share the conviction that John Kerry is the candidate best suited to lead America for the next four years. And we want you to know why.

In recent days, a growing number of news organizations have posted eloquent endorsements for Kerry. Some of them are particularly suprising, because they come from such unlikely sources. We encourage you to read them, and consider their content.

For us, the choice for Kerry involves simple things. Justice, liberty, privacy, transparency. Freedom of speech, thought, and technological expression. A woman's right to choose. Equal access to health care, education, and economic opportunity for all. The rule of law, at home and abroad. Peace. The enduring value of the American Constitution.

These are wonderful things. The Bush administration has proven both inability and unwillingness to protect them. In 2004, Kerry is the one.

We urge all eligible BoingBoing readers to exercise their right to vote in this election. Democracy is a wonderful thing. It won't survive without your participation.

Boing Boing -- A Directory of Wonderful Things

Southeast Asia News 33

Bangkok Klong


Indonesia's moral defenders take a swipe at sin
Asia Times Online
By Bill Guerin

JAKARTA - Indonesia's self-appointed guardians of morality, the once disbanded radical Islamic Defenders' Front (FPI), have once again resorted to violence in the nation's capital, Jakarta. The first attack came late Friday night when around 300 FPI storm troopers broke into the Star Deli restaurant in the elite residential and entertainment district of Kemang in South Jakarta. The restaurant had closed, after being tipped off by the police, but the FPI cadres smashed the windows and chairs. No one was injured in the attack, which, it is claimed, police did nothing to stop.

On Saturday the US Embassy issued a statement warning Americans in Indonesia to take precautions against such attacks, raising fears that the "sweeping" could affect tourism prospects. Jakarta Police quickly deployed 600 Mobile Brigade members and 500 officers to patrol the streets of the capital, with Jakarta police chief, Inspector General Firman Gani, saying the vandalism was "out of line" and definitely a violation of the law.

FPI spokesman Alawi Usman, however, was quick to defend the group's actions. "We are against immorality," he told foreign reporters the day after the Star Deli attack. "We are doing this for the future of the country's youth."

The FPI has a history of attacking places of "recreation" where they believe prostitution or gambling is taking place. In the past they have closed down brothels, burned entertainment centers and physically attacked sex workers. Their leader, Al-Habib Muhammad Rizieq bin Hussein Syihab, more popularly called Habib Rizieq, spent several months in prison last year for orchestrating attacks on "iniquitous" nightspots, bars and cafes in 2001.

Muslim Activists Attack Cafe in Jakarta


Indonesian Muslims Attack Pig Farms
Yahoo News
Wed Oct 20

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Muslims armed with machetes attacked several pig farms in Indonesia, slaughtering around 20 swine they claimed were giving of "offensive" odors, The Jakarta Post reported Thursday. Police did nothing to stop the attack Wednesday in South Tatura, central Sulawesi province, the paper reported. The farms belonged to local Christians.

"The farms give out a bad odor and this is offensive, especially during Ramadan," said local Muslim leader Abdul Haris, referring to the Islamic fasting month where religious feelings often run high. He said the farms were also polluting a local river, presumably with dung from the animals. Muslims are forbidden to eat pork, which is considered unclean. Police were not immediately available for comment.

The Muslims were armed with machetes and sticks, the Post reported. Losses from the attacks were estimated at around $8,000, the paper quoted a pig farmer as saying.

Muslims Attack Pig Farms in Sulawesi


Authorities demolish wall blocking Catholic school in Indonesia
Yahoo News Asia-Pacific
Oct 25, 2004

Indonesian officials on Monday knocked down a brick wall erected by a hardline Islamic group to block access to a Catholic school it accused of converting local Muslims, police and school officials said. The Sang Timur Catholic school to the west of Jakarta was closed in early October when the Muslim group built the two-meter-high (seven-foot-high) wall in front of its gates.

Local government workers demolished the wall hours before former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, who is a well-known interfaith activist, arrived to discuss the issue with local people.

Indonesian Authorities Destroy Brick Wall Blocking Christian School


Indonesia presses for removal of vessel that sank with 4,000 cars
Jakarta Post
Oct 26, 2004

SINGAPORE (DPA): Indonesian authorities are mounting pressure on a ship operator to remove the wreckage of a vessel that sank last May with more than 4,000 cars after a collision in the Singapore Strait, a spokesman said on Tuesday. The Indonesian Directorate of Sea Communication has written again to Eukor Car Carriers Inc to salvage the Hyundai No 105 car carrier sitting at the bottom of the strait in Indonesian waters as it poses a navigational and environmental hazard.

The 12,899 DWT vessel carrying the cars sank after a collision with the 303,896 DWT crude oil tanker Kaminesan. The collision punched a 50-by-20 metre hole in the Hyundai's side. In now lies in about 40 metres of water.

Straits of Malacca Swallows 4000 Cars


Susilo: Graft scaring off foreign investors
Jakarta Post
Oct 26, 2004

JAKARTA (AP): Indonesia's new President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Tuesday that rampant corruption and poor law-enforcement were scaring off much needed foreign investors. Susilo told prosecutors at the Attorney General's Office - itself a notoriously graft-ridden institution - he would be "watching them closely" and that any wrongdoing would be punished.

Foreign investors have largely deserted Indonesia in recent years because of corruption, security concerns and an unpredictable legal system. "Corruption and injustice are everywhere. Our legal framework is very weak, law enforcement does not work well," said Susilo, who took office last week. "The result is that there is no investment in our country."

Susilo said Indonesia was "being ridiculed" abroad because of its poor image, but gave no indication how he intended to solve the problems he listed. The retired 55-year-old general was handed a landslide victory in polls last month from voters hungry for change after six years of ineffective leadership following the downfall of ex-dictator Soeharto in 1998.

Susilo himself is a longtime member of Indonesia's corrupt military and political elite, and critics have questioned whether he has the will to push through the reforms Indonesia needs.

Susilo Goes After Graft and Corruption


Asian Ardour in Question
Yahoo News Asia-Pacific
Oct 25, 2004

According to an international sex survey published this month, Asians have the dubious distinction of being the world's least active lovers. The annual survey by condom maker Durex has consistently placed Asia's developed nations at the bottom of the sex league table, with Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong registering the weakest sex drive in this year's poll. It's enough to make Asia's more lascivious lovers fume with wounded pride, or prompt a nervous partner to reach for the Viagra.

Durex Survey on Sex in Asia


Muslim food oulets only allowed to open after 3pm
The Star
Oct 26, 2004

Food outlets owned by Muslims will only be allowed to open for business after 3pm during Ramadan. If they disobey the ruling, their licences will be withdrawn. This was contained in a circular distributed to the outlets here signed by the Kuala Terengganu Municipal Council secretary Mohd Zulkifli Abu Bakar recently. A copy of the circular was also sent to the state Islamic Affairs Commissioner.

The move, however, has not gone down well with some Muslim restaurant owners. A copy of the circular was also pasted on the doors of the KFC and Pizza Hut outlets at Jalan Sultan Ismail. A bigger notice on the outlets stated that their businesses would only open from 3pm until 11pm during Ramadan. State Local Government and Housing committee chairman Datuk Ahmad Said said such circulars were issued by all local authorities in the state. He said some restaurant operators had disobeyed the ruling and action would be taken against them.

KFC and Pizza Hut Restricted due to Ramadan


Colonial Cool
Kuala Lumpur's heritage areas are also home to its hippest nightlife
Time Asia
Thursday, Oct. 21, 2004

Bangsar, at one time Kuala Lumpur's beer-and java-fueled social epicenter, is not quite the buzzing burb it used to be. Blame that on two upstart areas — Changkat Bukit Bintang and Jalan Doraisamy (a.k.a. Asian Heritage Row) — that have become the Malaysian capital's hottest new districts, thanks to a combination of restored colonial architecture and hip nightlife. There's plenty of decadence to boot — Changkat Bukit Bintang doubles up as love-hotel central.

These days, however, signs advertising rooms by the hour are fighting for space with those touting stylish bars, clubs and cosmopolitan restaurants. And the eclectic mix of styles is a surefire draw. Recently given a welcome face-lift, buildings lining downtown K.L.'s restored heritage rows boast soaring ceilings, wrought-iron balconies and timber balustrades. Some of these 1930s gems — in an Art Deco style adapted for the tropics — also have air wells open to the sky. "People are beginning to realize the past has value," says Lim Huck Chin, a conservation architect. "Going out now has a more human face." See for yourself in one of these heritage hangouts.

Time Europe Reports on Latest Nightlife Venues in Kuala Lumpur

Thailand Images at Flickr

Thai novice monks in Phitsanulok

I've just created a Flickr site with images of Thailand, and everyone is welcome to have a look and contribute their Thailand photos.

Thailand Images at Flickr

More Trouble in Southern Thailand

At Least 84 Killed in S. Thailand Monday - Ministry
By REUTERS
October 26, 2004

PATTANI, Thailand (Reuters) - At least 78 people died in a crush in southern Thailand on Monday after police and troops fired shots to disperse a crowd of Muslim demonstrators outside a police station, a justice ministry official said on Tuesday. The 78 deaths were in addition to six people already confirmed killed in Monday's violence in the restive region.

``Seventy eight people died from suffocation. We found no wounds on their bodies,'' senior justice ministry official Manit Sutaporn told a news conference in the southern town of Pattani.

New York Times on Trouble in Southern Thailand


The Religion of Cop Killers
Dave Rodrigues
Oct 25, 2004

Groups of Thais are known to have been trained in the 1990’s in Afghan terror camps and Wahhabi mosques are now dotting the southern landscape. In earlier deadly attacks this summer, police found Arabic-language pamphlets calling for the creation of a Muslim homeland on the bodies of some of the dead. Southern Thailand also features the Yala Islamic College run by Wahhabi cleric Ismail Lutfi with an estimated 8,000 followers installed throughout the south in key Islamic posts. Like most Islamic institutions in southern Thailand it is funded by Saudi money. Saudi Arabia is the spiritual center of Wahhabism.

Dave Rodrigues Blog


Scores die after Thai protest
27/10/2004 02:36:37
ABC Asia Pacific TV / Radio Australia

In Thailand, almost 80 people have died while in military custody in the troubled south of the country. Officials say most of them suffocated while being transported in trucks. They were among hundreds of Muslims arrested at a violent protest outside a police station in Narathiwat province.

Only six people were previously believed to have been killed in the demonstration, which was broken up by the security forces using live rounds, tear gas and water cannon. The Thai military says the suffocation deaths appear to have occurred while the detainees were being taken on a five-hour journey to an army barracks in the town of Pattani. It was the worst violence to hit the region near the Malaysian border since April.

Malaysia has expressed serious concern about the situation. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi says Malaysia is seeking more information on the incident...and has offered Thailand any assistance it needs. The prime minister also says he hopes the Thai government will be able to manage the crisis "so that it will not spread and cause further violence."

Thai Muslims Suffocate in Police Vans


Thai protesters die in custody
BBC Asia-Pacific
26 Oct, 2004

Protesters were arrested and many then loaded into army trucks. At least 78 people died in southern Thailand after being arrested and loaded into army trucks following Monday's clashes with security forces. Officials said almost all the dead suffocated as they were taken to an army barracks several hours away.

The new death toll is in addition to six people who died during the clashes themselves, which erupted on Monday following the arrest of six Muslim men. It was the latest in an upsurge of violence in the Muslim-majority south. Violence erupted after at least 1,500 protesters gathered outside a police station in Narathiwat province after the detention of six Muslim men.

Timeline:

0900: 1,000 protesters gather at Takbai police station. Army urges protesters to disperse, but instead hundreds more join.

1500: Protesters hurl objects at police, who use tear gas and fire bullets
Hundreds arrested and six deaths reported.

1800 Tuesday: Officials admit 78 others died in army trucks after arrest, many of suffocation.

More Violence Feared

After clashing with security forces, more than 1,000 protesters are reported to have been arrested. Thai officials said 78 of the arrested protesters were later found dead, apparently after they suffocated in trucks used to transport them. "After we brought people who were arrested into detention, we found that another 78 people were dead," Justice Ministry spokesman Manit Suthaporn told reporters.

Dr Pornthip Rojanasunan, a forensic expert for the Justice Ministry, told the BBC that 80% of the victims died from smothering or suffocation and 20% from stress or convulsions. Army deputy commander Maj-Gen Sinchai Nujsathit admitted that "we had more than 1,300 people packed into the six-wheel trucks" for a journey to Pattani province that took five hours. Mr Suthaporn said the men were already weakened from fasting and that when they were piled on top of each other they probably could not breathe.

The violence began on Monday after a crowd gathered at the district police station in Takbai, Narathiwat, to protest against the detention of six men accused of providing weapons to Islamic

BBC Report: All Hell Will Break Out


The Restive South
BBC Asia-Pacific
26 Oct, 2004

Thailand's Muslims are largely concentrated in the four southern provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, Songhkla and Yala. The area is less prosperous than central Thailand, and many of the region's inhabitants complain they are at a disadvantage compared to the country's Buddhist majority. But those living in the region are also very different from the rest of the Thai population.

The southern provinces were originally part of the ancient Kingdom of Pattani, a semi-autonomous Malay region which adopted Islam in the mid-13th century. Thailand annexed the region in 1902, but the people living there had - and still do have - far more in common with their neighbours in Malaysia. They speak Yawi, a Malay dialect, and most importantly they are Muslims, abiding by Islamic rules and restrictions.

Increasingly estranged from the Bangkok government, Muslim separatists began an insurgency in the 1970s. The violence eventually died down in the 1990s - but only after the government promised to channel more funds into the region and ensure the Muslim community an adequate political representation. A raid on an army depot in January this year signalled a return to the violence.

Four soldiers were killed and 400 guns, most of them M-16 rifles, were stolen from a store in Narathiwat province. Since then there have been frequent incidents in which symbols of authority - including police officers, teachers and Buddhist monks - have been targeted by Muslim gunmen.

The deadliest incident happened on 28 April, when hundreds of suspected Islamic militants launched a series of raids on security posts in the region. The day ended in the massacre of more than 100 of the poorly-armed militants, and there was international concern over the degree of force used by security personnel.

BBC Background Report on Problems in the South

The Case Against Bush

Bush Debates Kerry


Ten Reasons America Needs a Change
By Ted Rall

PORTLAND--George W. Bush has been a busy boy these past four years. Because his Administration's policies are so radical and his attempts to change our country so far-reaching, it is sometimes difficult to remember them all. Here's a summary of why Bush and his gang of bloodthirsty corporate goons must go; voters may take them along to the polls to help them cast their ballots.

1. He stole the 2000 election. Voting to "reelect" an illegitimate commander-in-chief who seized power by judicial coup d'état is a tacit endorsement of how he got into the White House in the first place. How the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) ruled in Bush v. Gore is irrelevant. As a federal court, the five runaway Supreme Court justices had no right to agree to hear the case. Under our system of government, elections--and election disputes--fall under state jurisdiction. Their decision to take the case, the way they fixed the outcome in Bush's favor, and Bush's willingness to assume the presidency extraconstitutionally are outrages that no patriotic American, even if they agree with his policies, can forgive.

2. He politicized 9/11. During the early days after the attacks on New York and Washington, a stunned nation came together to mourn, and to assess the motivations of the 19 men who despised us so much they were willing to commit suicide as mass murderers to drive home the point. Rather than channel our newfound solidarity into positive initiatives, however, Bush used 9/11 to push for the USA Patriot Act, fast-track signing authority on free trade, tax cuts for the wealthy, lax regulations for polluters and a multitude of items from the partisan Republican Party wish list. He portrayed Democrats and others who disagreed with him as un-American traitors.

3. He let the terrorists get away while giving them a payraise. The 9/11 hijackers were Egyptians and Saudis recruited by an Egyptian group, Islamic Jihad, with funding from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, some of whom received training at camps which were mostly in Pakistan, all of which were funded by Pakistani secret intelligence. Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), who may have funded all or part of the operation via Al Qaeda, was in Pakistan on 9/11. So who does Bush go after? Afghanistan (news - web sites), at best a back lot of Pakistani-backed Islamists and Iraq (news - web sites)--which had nothing to do with 9/11. And what does he do about our real enemies in Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia? He sells them more weapons. Egypt becomes the second largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel, collecting over $2 billion annually. Pakistan, ruled by a pro-Taliban general who jailed and tortured his democratically elected predecessor, is encouraged to develop its nascent nuclear capabilities. The 3,000 victims of 9/11 remain unavenged--and the stage is set for future attacks.

4. He murdered nearly 100,000 people. The war in Afghanistan killed at least 10,000 civilians and 20,000 Afghan soldiers (of which 10,000 were POWs allegedly massacred by Northern Alliance soldiers as U.S. Special Forces troops supervised the slaughter.) As of three weeks after the fall of Baghdad, General Tommy Franks estimated Iraqi dead at 30,000 civilians and 30,000 Iraqi soldiers, men who were fighting to defend their country from a hostile invasion army. At least 10,000 more civilians and 5,000 Iraqi resistance soldiers have died since then. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq have anything to do with the war on terrorism, which has yet to start. Both wars were waged to expand American military and economic hegemony and Dick Cheney (news - web sites)'s policy of "total energy dominance" over oil and natural gas resources. The world would be safer if Charles Manson, a mere amateur killer by comparison, were released and Bush was sitting in prison.

5. He bankrupted the treasury. When Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (news - web sites) projected a surplus of $5 trillion over the next ten years. Now, after two expensive wars of aggression and two series of extravagant tax cuts for the ultrarich--including the elimination of inheritance taxes on multimillionaires' estates--the federal budget is facing a $5 trillion shortfall. That's a $10 trillion net deficit--ten times more than the Reagan deficit that took Clinton his entire tenure to pay off--for giveaways to Bush-connected defense contractors like Halliburton and a fraction of one percent of wealthy individuals. Most Americans will get nothing out of this but the bill which, if history serves a guide, won't be repaid until our children are dead. Goodbye national healthcare, sayonara help with college tuition. Bush has stolen our future.

6. He threw thousands of innocent people into concentration camps. Drawing from another of fascism's greatest hits, Bush used his fictional war on terrorism as a lame pretext to throw thousands of Muslims and Arabs into a new gulag archipelago spanning the globe from secret CIA (news - web sites)-run prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq--including the infamous Abu Ghraib--to INS detention centers in Brooklyn to the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Detainees caught in battle were denied their Geneva Convention rights as POWs, tortured and even murdered. Illegal immigrants who should have been deported were jailed indefinitely without access to attorneys, or visits from family. In the ultimate Orwellian twist, they were turned into "unpersons"; even their names were withheld from the media. Any president who endorses such atrocities, as Bush has repeatedly done in speeches, is against everything that America purports to stands for. Bush has even signed a secret directive authorizing himself with the right to assassinate anyone, anywhere--including American citizens--as "enemy combatants."

7. We are more feared than Al Qaeda. Bush's radical new policy of "preemption"--a self-ascribed right to invade other countries based on a presumed hunch--has terrorized then international community. Even though they have never threatened us, nations like Iran and Syria wonder whether or not Bush will invade them next--and are racing to develop nuclear weapons to protect themselves from the U.S. threat. Our traditional allies, who still want to engage themselves with the rest of the world, have been forced to distance themselves from our bull-in-a-china-shop foreign policy. We, not Islamist terrorists, are the world's most feared power. We are feared, which is why we are hated. Because we are hated, we are in greater danger.

8. Bush has done nothing to improve the economy. At one of the presidential debates, Bush was asked what he would tell someone who had lost their job to outsourcing overseas. He answered that the unemployed had received their $300 tax cuts, and that within five years his education policies would start to help children. The truth is, Bush did nothing to jumpstart the weak post-dot-com economy he inherited in 2000. Like most Republicans, he favors high unemployment as a way to keep labor week and salaries cheap. A Bush victory would ensure more of the same--fewer jobs, lower salaries, reduced unemployment benefits. A president can do a lot to stimulate the economy: jobs programs funded by the government, tax cuts for the working class. But Bush won't act because it would run counter to his ideological beliefs.

9. Bush will appoint the next Supreme Court justice. Whether they're values issues like abortion or gay marriage, or the next election dispute, the Supreme Court is balanced on the razor's edge between reason and right-wing fascism. Sandra Day O'Connor (news - web sites) and William Rehnquist (news - web sites), who originally intended to step down during the last four years but evidently decided not to do so because of Bush's lunacy, are over 80 years old. They may not last another four years. We can't let Bush have the chance to appoint their successors.

10. We deserve a president who can speak English and doesn't look like a chimpanzee. John Kerry (news - web sites) is a far from ideal prospect but he's a huge leap forward from an evolutionary standpoint.

Ted Rall Opinion Columns

Southeast Asia News 32

Tasmania Poster


Asia wings it when it comes to bird flu
Asia Times Online
Oct 23, 2004
By Bruce Klingner

Health officials fear that an influenza virus that led to widespread sickness would cause massive disruption to a nation's health-care system and inhibit the government's ability to maintain essential services. A large portion of the population would be sick, virtually all at once, overwhelming doctors and hospitals. Beyond the direct cost of care and medicines, the overall economic implications would be staggering, not only for the poultry industry - a key component of several Southeast Asian economies - but also other meat industries impacted by loss of consumer confidence and reductions in the tourist and transportation sectors, resulting from international quarantines.

The Horrors of Avian Flu Explained


Partying monks defrocked
News24.com
24/10/2004 10:53

Bangkok - A group of Thai Buddhist monks has been arrested and defrocked after holding a spate of rowdy drug and alcohol parties, police said on Sunday. The group of six monks at a temple in Ratchaburi west of Bangkok was arrested on Friday night after local villagers complained about their wild behaviour and drug-taking, said Police Major Annop Nuamnaka.

"Villagers are fed up with the monks at this temple as they always make loud noise when they drink and take pills," Annop told AFP. He said five of the saffron-robed monks had tested positive to amphetamine pills called "yaa baa" (which means "crazy drug" in Thai) while the sixth was drunk. The monks were defrocked by the temple's head monk following their arrests, said police.

Monks are expected to refrain from drinking alcohol or taking strong stimulants, and are revered in Thailand, which is 95% Buddhist.

Thai Monks Just Wanna Have Fun


3 Nights In A Row
Stickman Bangkok
Oct 24, 2004

Over the last few years I've made more than a few negative comments about the farang oriented naughty nightlife industry in Thailand, and have not been shy in suggesting that there is a hell of a lot more to Thailand than the naughty bars and all of the nonsense surrounding it. I have always maintained that it is fascinating to watch all of the goings on but many people have questioned how someone can write so much about something while not in favour of it.

The truth is that every day I get more and more out of touch with the bars, and people are calling me on this. Many people have said that I should not write about something that I am on record as saying I am not in favour of it. So, to try and get up to date on what is going on and see if my negative feelings about it all remain, I spent three nights in a row in the naughty bars of Bangkok this past week. What follows is my journey through the bars, and my thoughts on this aspect of farang life in Bangkok today.

Stickman Reports on the Bar Scene in Bangkok and He's Not Amused


Northern Malaysian state abuzz with talk of prince's planned wedding with Thai woman
Yahoo News Asia
Oct 22, 2004

Frenetic preparations were underway for the lavish wedding of a Malaysian prince and a Thai commoner next month to which 15,000 guests including Thailand's prime minister have been invited, a newspaper reported Friday. The groom is Muhammad Faris Petra ibni Sultan Ismail Petra, a prince who is next in line to be the sultan of northeastern Kelantan state, a staunchly Islamic state, The Star newspaper said.

He will marry Kangsadal Pinitpakdee, a 24-year-old science graduate and the daughter of Viroj Pinitpakdee, a former member of Parliament from the southern Thai province of Pattani, The Star said.

Malay Prince to Marry Thai Citizen


Malaysian police seize large stash of cannabis packed in instant noodles
Yahoo News Asia
Oct 23, 2004

Malaysia's marine police arrested four Indonesian men who allegedly tried to smuggle 149 kilograms (328 pounds) of marijuana packed in instant noodle boxes, a news report said Saturday. Police intercepted the suspects' boat Friday near Westport, a key port north of Kuala Lumpur, and found the huge cannabis stash, The Star daily reported. The bust was the biggest drug haul by Malaysian authorities this year.

The boat's captain and three crew members _ all Indonesians aged between 22 and 55-years-old _ were arrested, said Abdul Rahman Ahmad, a senior police official. A police spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, confirmed the arrests but declined to elaborate. The suspects could face the death penalty if convicted of drug trafficking.

How Long Does It Take to Stuff 149 Kilos of Weed into Instant Noodle Boxes? Only these Guys Know for Sure


Controversial Afghan contestant back in Philippine beauty pageant as judge.
Yahoo News Asia
Oct 24, 2004

An Afghan woman, condemned in her conservative homeland after appearing in a bikini in a Philippine beauty contest last year, rejoined the pageant Sunday as a judge, saying the controversy bolstered her advocacy for women's rights. Vida Samadzai, 26, was among 11 judges chosen to pick the winner in Miss Earth, an annual beauty pageant that promotes environmental protection, organizers said. There was no Afghan candidate among the more than 60 women vying for the title Sunday following last year's controversy, they said.

Afghan Beauty Queen as Pageant Judge


Amnesty International and the Death Penalty in Singapore
Yahoo News Asia
Oct 24, 2004

Amnesty, which seeks a worldwide ban on state executions, says Singapore's death row is shrouded in secrecy. In the country itself, there is little public debate about the issue and even less information on how the process is carried out. In the pre-dawn hours of any Friday, someone could be on their way to the gallows at Changi prison. No one knows for sure.

Amnesty says about 400 people have been hanged in Singapore since 1991, most for drug trafficking. This adds up to possibly the highest execution rate in the world relative to the island's 4.2 million population.

Amnesty International and the Death Penalty in Singapore

Indonesia News

Javanese Court Dancer


Islamic militants attack cafe in Jakarta
The China Post
2004/10/23
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)

Muslim militants in Indonesia's capital vandalized a cafe popular with expatriates because it was serving beer during the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, police and one of the militants said Saturday. The Star Deli was closed when around 300 members of the Islamic Defenders Front arrived just before midnight on Friday. They smashed its windows, chairs and neon signs advertising beer, said Mary Gregory, the cafe's owner.

Alawi Usman, a spokesman for the group, admitted vandalizing the establishment. "We are against immorality," he said. "The guys saw the beer on the table and what happened, happened. We are doing this for the future of the country's youth."

No one was injured in the attack, which police did nothing to stop, Usman said. Police confirmed the raid occurred, but declined say why they did not try to prevent it. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but its government is secular. It has significant Christian, Buddhist and Hindu populations.

Islamic militancy has risen in recent years, and al-Qaida-linked terrorists have carried out three bloody attacks, including the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings. The Islamic Defenders Front was formed in 2000. It has a history of vandalizing entertainment centers during Ramadan. Many analysts say that extorting money from frightened bar owners _ not Islamic principles _ is its primary motive.

Star Deli is in Kemang, an area in south Jakarta known for its restaurants, cafes and bars. It is popular with foreigners and wealthy Indonesians. "Maybe they (the attackers) saw the cafe as purely a place for alcohol," said Gregory, who is married to an American citizen. "Most of my customers are expats."

The Jakarta government has issued bylaws regulating the opening of nightspots during Ramadan. Freestanding bars and nightclubs are supposed to close for the whole month. Enforcement of the laws is patchy, and police and government officials are easily bribed to turn a blind eye.

Islamic Militants Attack; Jakarta Police Watch with Bemusement


U.S. warns citizens to avoid nightspots in Indonesia after cafe attack

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - The U.S. Embassy warned Americans on Sunday to avoid nightspots in Indonesia for the rest of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan after Muslim militants vandalized a bar in Jakarta. About 300 members of the Islamic Defender's Front broke windows and chairs Friday night at a bar popular with expatriates because it was selling alcohol. It was closed at the time of the attack, and no one was injured.

"The U.S. Embassy cautions American citizens to avoid all standalone bars, clubs or nightclubs where similar acts of violence may be repeated,'' the embassy said in a statement on its Web site. The United States has already warned its citizens to avoid travel to Indonesia because of the risk of terrorism. In the past two years, Indonesia has seen three attacks by al-Qaida-linked militants on Western targets, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists.

The Islamic Defenders Front, formed in 2000, has a history of vandalizing entertainment centers during Ramadan. Many analysts say extorting money from frightened bar owners - not Islamic principles - is its primary motive.

U.S. Embassy Warns Americans


Indonesia Ranked World’s 8th Most Corrupt
Laksamana
October 20, 2004 10:54 PM

Indonesia is the joint-eighth most corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International’s latest index of perceived corruption levels released Wednesday (20/10/04). In a table of 146 surveyed countries, the Berlin-based organization rated Indonesia alongside Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Georgia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Finland was rated the world’s least corrupt country, while Haiti and Bangladesh tied for the ignominious position of being the most corrupt.

Analysts say corruption has become worse in Indonesia since the downfall of former dictator Suharto in 1998 due to poor law enforcement, the proliferation of new political parties and the granting of greater powers to the nation’s generally rapacious regional administrations.

Indonesia’s press freedom has failed to stem the level of graft, with courts now being accused of siding with allegedly corrupt tycoons and intimidating journalists who speak out against injustice. The administrations of former presidents Megawati Sukarnoputri, Abdurrahman Wahid and B.J. Habibie largely failed to overcome endemic corruption, but there are now hopes that Indonesia’s new President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will be able to improve the situation.

Indonesia. Almost the World's Most Corrupt Nation


Brandon at JavaJive in Jakarta Recommends Flickr

What’s my latest addiction? Flickr.com. How many of you have tried sites like friendster, hotornot, or other “group” websites? Ok, how many of you have joined sites like usefilm.com for photo critique? Now, how many of you have spent hours reading over travel blogs, photoblogs, and other weblogs searching for new experiences and perspectives?

Flickr is almost all of them combined. Where some other sites like friendster have failed, I believe this will succeed. We as an online community are constantly looking to connect to like minds. We as photographers are always looking for new inspiration and critiques for our work. We as travelers are permanently on the lookout for new experiences and ways to see other cultures through words and images.

Brandon at JavaJive in Jakarta Recommends Flickr for your Photo Needs. Better than Ofoto or Yahoo


CONTRACT No. 69/69
PROVISION OF BAR GIRL SERVICES
(JAKARTA EXPAT / INDONESIAN NATIONAL VERSION)

PART A – AGREEMENT

THIS AGREEMENT IS MADE BETWEEN A. Punter Private Ltd hereinafter called the “Punter”, of the one part.

AND Nok (aka Lek, Daeng, Porn, Pie, Mimi, Titi, Fani, Lolita) (delete as applicable) hereinafter called the “LBFM” of the other part.

WHEREAS:

(a) The Punter requires certain Sexual Services as described in the Contract (hereinafter called the “Services”) to be carried out at Punter's site or other location as instructed in connection with the Losing The Plot Project (hereinafter called the “Project"), and

(b) Contractee is willing to carry out the Services in accordance with the terms and conditions set forth in the Contract.

NOW THE PARTIES hereby agree as follows: -

Legal Contract for Services Rendered

Burma News

Southeast Asia Handbook by Carl Parkes


Dilemma of dealing with Burma
By William Horsley
BBC
The outside world seems at a loss over how to deal with Burma's strongmen.

Pro-democracy campaigners are shocked by the political changes. The latest political shake-up in Rangoon has strengthened hardliners and damaged prospects for democratic reform. Western experts on Burma believe the head of its military junta, Than Shwe, removed Prime Minister Khin Nyunt as part of an internal power feud, to forestall any challenge to his own rule.

Burmese pro-democracy campaigners are shocked.

They say the man appointed to be the next prime minister, Soe Win, is a hardliner who master-minded the violent attack last year on pro-democracy leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi. British officials say the latest moves take Burma another step away from the democratic reforms which the regime has promised.

US state department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "These events do not point in the direction of allowing freedom of exercise of political and human rights." Many experts fear the new power line-up in Rangoon may spell a new phase of repression in Burma.

Burmese Prime Minister Replaced with Hardliner


Khin Nyunt's fall from grace
By Kate McGeown
BBC News
Khin Nyunt is reportedly under house arrest

Burma's Prime Minister Khin Nyunt has been ousted by a more conservative member of the ruling military junta, Soe Win. The often secretive government said Khin Nyunt had been "permitted to retire for health reasons".

But there is little doubt that his departure relates to a power struggle which has been going on for months. As well as being prime minister and third in Burma's political hierarchy, Khin Nyunt was also the chief of military intelligence. This position frequently brought him into disagreement with Burma's paramount leader Than Shwe, who controls the entire army.

"There has been a conflict between the army and the intelligence for some time," said Aung Zaw, the editor of Irrawaddy, a publication run by Burmese journalists in exile. "They have often been at loggerheads," he told BBC News. According to Dr Aung Kin, a Burmese historian based in London, Khin Nyunt's fall from power could be related to Than Shwe's desire to secure his own future.

The Power Struggle in Burma


Myanmar names Soe Win as PM
October 20, 2004
CNN News

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Myanmar's new prime minister is Lt. Gen Soe Win, a former defense chief who entered the regime's top ranks only last year. His appointment, replacing the ousted Khin Nyunt, was announced in Yangon Tuesday night by the State Peace and Development Council, the ruling junta chaired by Myanmar's most powerful figure, Senior General Than Shwe.

Separately, the SPDC said Khin Nyunt had been "permitted to retire for health "reasons". Khin Nyunt's removal is seen as a consolidation of Than Shwe's power in this nation of 42 million people.

Soe Win, The Latest Puppet Prime Minister in Burma


Irrawaddy Journalists Look at Burmese Events

Regardless of the speculation, it’s high time for Burma’s dynamic duo, Than Shwe and Maung Aye, to make a move. They can plunge Burma deeper into the Dark Ages, or they can begin to work for genuine reform. But in the dog-eat-dog world of Burma’s military culture, they are bound to encounter resistance from the country’s top brass. With one down, and two to go, we will have to wait for next chapter in the power play in Rangoon.

Irrawaddy Provides the Best Analysis of Recent Events in Rangoon

Southeast Asia News 31

Indian Dancers and Musicians

Lessons learned from India's bandit king
Asia Online
By Siddharth Srivastava

NEW DELHI - India's most wanted bandit, Veerappan, with a price of more than US$1 million on his head, has been killed by an Indian special task force (STF) - made up of more than 750 specially trained personnel - created with the sole purpose of tracking him down. The STF had been trying unsuccessfully to do just that for more than a decade, while the brigand and his gang traversed in excess of 8,000 square kilometers of dense jungle that borders the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. It is estimated that more than $50 million has been spent to bring down Veerappan, the most expensive security operation ever undertaken in India to chase one man.

India's Bandit King Captured, but Where is his Stash?


Falling turtle damages HK taxi

Thursday was not a good day for Mr Tong, a taxi driver in Hong Kong. First he had his mobile phone stolen and then his car was hit by a falling turtle. The pet, which lived in an apartment in a high-rise building, managed to climb out of an open window before plunging to the road more than 10 floors below.

It fell straight onto the taxi driver's car, leaving a dent in the roof, police spokesman Anson Lo told the Associated Press news agency. The turtle survived the ordeal, although its shell was broken, Mr Lo said. People in Hong Kong traditionally believe that turtles are a symbol of good luck, but Mr Tong could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

It's Raining Turtles in Hong Kong


Nations Compete for Foreign-Language Oscar

Movies from 49 countries are in competition for the foreign-language prize at February's Academy Awards, among them the film festival hits "House of Flying Daggers," "Nobody Knows" and "Kontroll."

The number of entries was down from last year, when a record 56 countries submitted films for Oscar consideration. Each country is allowed to submit one film.

China's entry, "House of Flying Daggers," is a martial-arts historical epic from director Zhang Yimou, whose previous martial-arts tale "Hero" was nominated for the foreign-language award for 2002 and became a hit in U.S. theaters when it was released last August.

Complete List of Foreign Language Oscar Nominations Here


Crocodile Husbandry Is Really Hard, China Finds
New York Times
By KEITH BRADSHER
October 23, 2004

ANYU, China, Oct. 16 - Over the past decade, China has become an industrial colossus by mastering an extraordinary variety of commercial skills, from the manufacture of high-speed computer chips to the production of top-quality automotive steel.

Learning to stimulate the sex drive of crocodiles has proved more difficult.

China's Forestry Department eliminated steep duties on imported breeder crocodiles nearly a decade ago. The hope was that low wages, highly skilled farmers and well-developed road and port networks would turn China into a highly competitive producer of crocodile meat, hides, shoes, purses and other goods.

But impotence, obesity, runny noses and finicky palates among the crocodiles have made this dream difficult to realize. Imported by the tens of thousands from tropical Thailand, the crocodiles have had trouble adapting to slightly cooler southeastern China and have been slow to breed, prone to infections and reluctant to eat anything but expensive chicken breasts.

Hilarious New York Times Story about the Difficulties of Raising Reptiles in China


Man Wears 'Cocaine' T-Shirt in Court
Thu Oct 21, 8:53 PM ET
Strange News - AP

HONG KONG - It was not the best legal defense strategy: A Hong Kong man appeared in court on drug charges wearing a T-shirt that said "cocaine" and drew a stern rebuke from the magistrate, a newspaper reported Thursday. Ho Heng-chau pleaded guilty to possession of three ecstasy pills, but while his lawyer was arguing for a lenient sentence on Wednesday the magistrate noticed the T-shirt, according to the Apple Daily newspaper.

"Do you know you're appearing in court?" Magistrate Ernest Lin was quoted as saying. "What are you doing wearing a 'cocaine' T-shirt? You might as well carry a sign that says 'I'm a drug head.'" Ho, 20, did not respond, Apple Daily said. The magistrate fined Ho $510, then chided the young man again over the shirt.

"Next time a police officer sees you wearing a shirt like this he'll confront you," Lin was quoted as saying. "Would you wear a shirt that says 'marijuana?'" Judiciary spokeswoman Jaime Or told The Associated Press she had no information on Ho's case.

At Least He Didn't Wear this T-Shirt in Singapore


The horror: a guided tour
Daniel Rosenthal
Wednesday October 20, 2004
The Guardian

You might think that movie tourism is a genteel business - why not visit the sun-drenched Italian landscapes featured in The English Patient, or the castles and battlefields seen in Mel Gibson's Braveheart? At an all-inclusive cost of £3,950 a head, this 16-day journey through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia promises to re-create several of the film's most famous scenes.

Guided by Indochina expert Peter O'Sullivan, who has reported from Cambodia for the BBC World Service, an intrepid dozen will start by riding US jeeps through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon, as was). Then, like Captain Willard and his doomed crew, they will head up the Mekong river by motorboat - "into the Heart of Darkness", as the brochure puts it - pausing to water-ski to the sound of the Rolling Stones. In Cambodia, the in-flight entertainment on a helicopter ride over paddy fields will, naturally, be Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

"Apocalypse Now" was Filmed in the Philippines; The Final Temple Scene on the Pagsanhan River


A Royal Solution for a Nationalist Vietnam

The only way to solve these problems is by restoring to Vietnam a government similar to that proposed by the Vietnamese Imperial Family. There must be democratic elections for the people to choose, from among whatever party they wish, who will represent them in government. It can be possible as The Kingdom of Cambodia has achieved a democratic government that represents all political parties under the protection of the monarchy, is an example with the help of the United Nations.

This is Really Odd. Somehow, a PR Release from the Vietnamese Monarchist League (in Illinois!) was Posted as "News" on Yahoo. Go Figure


Monks flee after sex with teens
24/10/2004 13:58 - (SA)
Partying monks defrocked
Sex tape exposes monks
Monks told to leave politics
Monks hurt in parly brawl

Phnom Penh - A pair of monks were on the run on Saturday after an angry mob chased them from their pagoda when they were apparently caught having sex with local twin teens on the temple grounds, police told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. Nang Peng, 24, and Hong Vung, 22, fled Wat Srahyov in Kampong Thom province, about 300km north of the capital, after the father of the 17-year-old twins discovered his daughters were at the pagoda alone with the monks and mustered a mob to retrieve them.

The mob discovered the group in the act and ran the terrified monks out of town despite protestations from the girls, local police said. District police official Yang Som told dpa by telephone that both girls had professed love for their partners and denied allegations by their angry father, Som Sau, 46, that they had been raped. But, he said, the act was still a breach of common decency and would be prosecuted.

"The monks just cannot have sex in the pagoda," the district police official said. "I will act on the authority of the district and arrest them to face court." However, he added that the case was complicated as the girls had confessed to police that they loved the monks and had willingly consented. The age of consent is considered to be 15 in Cambodia

Monks Just Need Some Lovin'

Laos Travel Story

Laos Cinq Kip

Fine travel story about Laos and Luang Prabang:

Luang Prabang Diary

And another about an English teacher in Bangkok:

Bangkok Triad

Upcoming Executions in Singapore

PM Lee

Foreigners charged in Singapore drugs scandal
Oct 22, 2004
By Jason Szep

SINGAPORE, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Singapore's authorities charged a second Briton and a 56-year-old Dutchman on Friday in a rare high-society drug scandal in the tightly controlled country.

Briton Andrew Veale, a 40-year-old financial broker, was charged for consumption of cocaine and the party drug Ecstasy, and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and a S$20,000 ($11,970) fine, a Central Narcotics Bureau spokeswoman said. Petrus van Wanrooij, a Dutch citizen, was also charged for consumption of drugs along with Singaporean Penelope Pang, the 35-year-old daughter of an entertainment mogul, police said.

Police have detained 23 people since Oct. 7, including a Tunisian restaurant marketing manager and two Singaporeans who face possible execution on trafficking charges after police found 61.2 grams (2.2 ounces) of cocaine in their possession. The arrests follow anti-drugs campaigns this year targeting drugs popular at nightclubs frequented by the sons and daughters of the nation's business elite.

They also come after a year in which synthetic "club drugs" overtook heroin as the drug of choice in the city-state and young ethnic Chinese outnumbered Malays as the biggest group of drug abusers for the first time in 15 years. "The crackdown on the cocaine ring shows the government is really not softening up when it comes to drug crimes," said Chua Beng Huat, a sociology professor at National University of Singapore.

Of the 23 arrested, 14 have been charged, including another Briton, 35-year-old Nigel Bruce Simmonds, editor of the Singapore edition of high-society magazine "Tatler". He was charged with consumption and possession of cocaine and methamphetamines.

Award-winning French chef Francois Fabien Mermilliod and the son of a former High Court judge, along with a Sri Lankan artist, were also charged. Nine people including a television news anchorwoman and popular rapper-actor were released after urine tests turned out negative, police said.

Singapore's drug laws are among the world's harshest. Anyone aged 18 or over convicted of carrying more than 15 grammes (0.5 ounce) of heroin, or 30 grammes (1.1 ounces) of cocaine, 500 grammes (17.6 ounces) of cannabis or 250 grammes (8.8 ounces) of methamphetamines faces mandatory execution.

Officials stress that drug use is well under control in the wealthy country of 4.2 million people. Drug arrests fell 47 percent in 2003, largely reflecting a 75-percent tumble in heroin arrests, recent Central Narcotics Bureau data show. But, like elsewhere in Southeast Asia, concern over synthetic drugs is on the rise. The U.N.-funded International Narcotics Control Board says that about two-thirds of the world's methamphetamine seizures take place in East and Southeast Asia.

Executions in Singapore

Singapore Sign 1971

Amnesty, Australia ask Singapore to spare life of drug smuggler

SINGAPORE (AFP) - Human rights group Amnesty International and the Australian government have urged Singapore to spare the life of an Australian man sentenced to hang for heroin trafficking. Amnesty, a strong critic of the death penalty system in Singapore, urged the city state -- said to have the world's highest number of executions relative to its population -- to grant clemency to Nguyen Tuong Van.

Singapore's highest court on Wednesday rejected Nguyen's appeal to set aside his conviction and sentence. Only a rare clemency from Singapore's President S. R. Nathan could spare him from the gallows, the only form of execution here. The 24-year-old ethnic Vietnamese from Melbourne will be the first Australian citizen to be executed in Singapore if he fails to get his sentence commuted to a prison term.

"Clearly Amnesty International is dismayed that the appeal has been turned down," Tim Goodwin, spokesman for Amnesty International Australia, told AFP by telephone. "We are calling on the Singapore government to grant clemency."

In Australia, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Thursday the government would appeal directly to Singapore's president to spare Nguyen's life. Downer said while he accepted the court's decision that Nguyen was guilty, Australia opposed capital punishment.

"It's now just a question of the sentence, and we hope that, by appealing to the president of Singapore, that it will be possible to get clemency granted and, as a result, Mr Nguyen serve an appropriate custodial sentence in Singapore," Downer said in a radio interview.

"We think that to execute him would be simply too severe," Downer said. Downer acknowledged that the request for presidential clemency was a long shot, as Singapore has granted only six appeals in the past 25 years. "It is an outside chance ... but we'll just do what we can," he said.

Amnesty in a report last January singled out Singapore for executing more people than any country per capita and renewed calls for it to abolish the death penalty. It said more than 400 convicts, many of them foreign migrant workers, were executed in Singapore, which has just over four million people, from 1991 to October 2003.

Nguyen was arrested at Singapore's Changi airport while in transit from Cambodia to Australia in December 2002 and convicted for smuggling almost 400 grams (14 ounces) of heroin. Singapore made the death penalty mandatory for drug traffickers and murderers in 1975. Anyone caught with more than 15 grams of heroin in Singapore is assumed to be importing or trafficking the drug.

In its ruling Wednesday rejecting Nguyen's appeal to set aside his conviction, Singapore's Court of Appeal said the death penalty was constitutional and hanging did not amount to cruel and inhuman punishment. "It was clear that he wanted to earn money by transporting drugs," the ruling said. "He flew to Phnom Penh, where members of a drug syndicate provided him with the heroin for transportation via Singapore."

Burma and the Failure of ASEAN

Aung San Suu Kyi

A MISPLACED BET ON KHIN NYUNT
The Nation
Oct 21, 2004
Bangkok

In the seven years that have passed since Burma (Myanmar) joined the grouping as a member, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) has repeatedly staked its reputation on defending Burma's dismal rights record.

Burma's biggest triumph came early this month on the eve of the Asia-Europe Meeting in Hanoi. The country's long-awaited admission to the meeting was a major success for Rangoon (Yangon), tantamount to full recognition of the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council) and its apparatus and methods.

It is unbelievable that both ASEAN and the EU (European Union) have for so long allowed the Burmese junta to get away with the sort of political oppression for which it is widely and resoundingly criticized. The fate of opposition party leader Aung San Suu Kyi is no longer even a key issue for ASEAN or the EU.

For years, ASEAN has pretended not to hear her voice, denying her a role in the future of Burma in favor of the dictatorial military regime that has run Burma since 1988. If anything happens to this crucial Burmese voice in the days and weeks to come, ASEAN and the EU will only have themselves to blame.

It surely came as a surprise for both ASEAN and the EU when ex-Prime Minister Khin Nyunt suddenly fell out of favor this week with Rangoon's leading strongman, Gen. Than Shwe. Only now are the members of ASEAN expressing any sort of concern about the future of Burma's path to democracy.

The reason is simple -- ASEAN placed a heavy bet that only Khin Nyunt would be able to transform Burma. He had been given all kinds of support since he assumed the premiership in August of last year, even though ASEAN knew full well that as a leading member of the junta, Khin Nyunt was subject to the sort of power plays in which all of the Burmese generals engage, using each other as fronts to tighten their grips on power and weaken that of their opponents. So far, it has been a win-win formula for the junta leaders.

To Thailand, the dismissal of Khin Nyunt appears to have a deeper impact. More than Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra would like to admit, of course, the personal connections and burgeoning business interests between the two countries have suffered because of events of the past several days.

The allegations of corruption thrown at Khin Nyunt are a clear indication of the increasingly cozy relations between him, Thailand's premier and his business empire. It was no accident that the house arrest occurred at the same time as a Cabinet meeting in Tak. Thaksin and his spokesman suddenly behaved as if they were intimate with the developments inside Burma, as if they had prior knowledge.

However, Thaksin was simply trying to conceal the fact that he had misjudged Burma. The prime minister will pay dearly for his mishandling of Burma, as will Thailand as a whole.

The changes that took place in Rangoon on Wednesday will have far-reaching repercussions on Thailand's policy towards Burma and the whole range of economic and trading arrangements between the two countries. The change of leadership in Burma could lead to attempts to further discredit Khin Nyunt, which may entail disclosure of all sorts of shady business deals that had been sealed with foreign leaders or businessmen.

As for the junta, this latest escapade proves once again that the bag of tricks it uses to manipulate ASEAN and the wider international community is quite deep indeed.

***********************************

GIVE BURMA A CLEAR MESSAGE
Bangkok Post
Oct 21, 2004
Bangkok

The rise of hardliners in Burma is bad news for anyone hoping for national reconciliation and participatory government in the impoverished country. As an immediate neighbor with some leverage, Thailand must show the way in dealing with the new leadership.

Gen. Khin Nyunt, removed as prime minister and the head of military intelligence on Tuesday, had brokered most ceasefire agreements with ethnic minorities, and favored a political role for Aung San Suu Kyi, the charismatic opposition leader.

The appointment of Lt. Gen. Soe Win as prime minister is expected to change all this. The former air defense chief is a protege of Senior General Than Shwe, the chairman of the State Peace and Development Council who is known to oppose any political role for Suu Kyi. Ethnic leaders, many of whom are personally committed to Gen. Khin Nyunt, do not trust the senior general.

Some were thinking of withdrawing from the national convention that was to resume the drafting of a Constitution next month. Critics have dismissed the convention as a sham because it excluded Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which won the 1990 elections by a landslide.

The removal of Gen. Khin Nyunt has also raised concerns for the safety of Suu Kyi and her deputy Tin Oo, both of whom have been under house arrest since May 30 last year, their detention engineered by hardliners.

Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, appealed to the Burmese authorities to release them "without further delay." The U.N. chief also called on the generals to "remain committed to the process of national reconciliation and democratization."

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra can help by opting for pressure rather than accommodation. The leverage he can apply lies in the controversial credit line of four billion baht ($97.5 million) that his government has extended to the junta in Rangoon for infrastructure development. The credit was extended on condition that the materials are bought in Thailand and that the loans be repaid within two years at an interest rate of 3 percent.

The controversy centers on a 600-million-baht loan that the Export-Import Bank of Thailand has approved for Burma to enable its purchase of a broadband satellite system from a company belonging to the prime minister's family. The bank has admitted disbursing 338 million baht to date, but it is not clear if this has benefited the company. To press for constructive change in Burma, the prime minister could order a stop to any further disbursement of the credit line.

The prime minister should also drop Burma from the economic cooperation strategy he initiated last year. The plan dramatically expands the tariff-free privileges on imports from immediate neighbors. Under the plan, Burma's tariff-free exports increase to about 300 items from 72, Cambodia's to 249 from 48 and Laos's to 150 from 26.

He should also persuade other member states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to withhold economic cooperation with Burma until their commitment to political reform is shown. As a group, ASEAN must make clear that a Burma uncommitted to reform cannot chair the grouping in 2006 as scheduled.

The squeeze on economic cooperation, however, must not extend to humanitarian issues. Help to fight life battles like HIV/Aids must continue.

While stepping up economic pressures, Thailand must raise its guard at the long border with Burma. The rise of hardliners in Rangoon increases the potential for conflict with ethnic groups in the region spilling over into Thailand, including shelling, hot pursuit or flight of armed combatants and civilian refugees.

Until the new leadership in Rangoon proves that it is committed to desirable change, the prime minister must resist any temptation to rally to them. Any telephone contact or visit would be taken as recognition. The change in Rangoon is an opportunity for Thailand, and ASEAN, to come clean by putting people before private interests.

Norodom Sihamoni and the Absurdity of Cambodia

Enter the King

Cambodia's New King Dances Into a Land of the Absurd
New York Times
By SETH MYDANS
October 23, 2004

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Oct. 19 - As he prepared for his coronation at the end of the month, Cambodia's new king, Norodom Sihamoni, stepped gingerly into the roiling politics of his country with an apology ("I lack experience") and a promise ("I will not interfere").

The smoothness of his election to the largely ceremonial post last week by a nine-member Throne Council was deceptive. An ambiguous, possibly unconstitutional arrangement, it was the result of a nimble maneuver by his father, Norodom Sihanouk, who suddenly announced his abdication two weeks ago.

Even though there is no provision in the Constitution for abdication, those who hold real power in Cambodia saw fit for the moment to let the king play out his scenario and nominate his successor.

Even now, that scenario is not quite clear. In a series of enigmatic statements, the outgoing king has raised questions by saying that he had retired rather than abdicated and that he would remain active as "a (very old) retired 'public servant.' "

King Sihamoni, a ballet dancer and choreographer who has been living in France, may have had his father's help in drafting his tactful statement last week and is expected to be his understudy in the monarchy.

In effect, some people are saying, Cambodia will now have two kings, which seems only fitting in a country once ruled by two feuding co-prime ministers and now burdened with what by some calculations is the biggest government per capita in the world.

Regardless of the model Constitution it adopted in 1993 under the guiding hand of the United Nations, this is a nation where force and fancy trump the formal structures of government and the written rules of the game.

As Cambodians say, "The law is in the mouth."

The king is whoever the palace says he is, despite the constitutional provision that "the king shall be the head of state for life." Government decisions, court rulings and national policy are - if he chooses to involve himself - whatever Prime Minister Hun Sen decides.

In July the prime minister succeeded, after much wrangling, in seating a Parliament through an overtly unconstitutional procedure that assured his continued position as prime minister.

"Hun Sen has demonstrated that he can do just about anything he wants," a Western diplomat said. "It's one of the most ridiculous governments in the history of the country."

For nearly a year, after an inconclusive election in July 2003, Cambodia had no government. Mr. Hun Sen's party won but needed a coalition partner to form a majority in Parliament. When he finally worked out a deal with Prince Ranariddh and his royalist party, part of the package was the sale of dozens of cabinet positions.

This nation of 13 million people is now governed by a 186-member cabinet. In addition to the prime minister, it includes 7 deputy prime ministers, 15 senior ministers, 28 ministers and 135 deputy ministers.

Jobs like this are seen as money-makers, and they do not come cheap. The biggest ones carried price tags as high as $100,000 or even $200,000, according to various accounts.

The opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, has asserted that Prince Ranariddh received a payoff of $30 million, a charge the prince denies.

When the government was seated, Mr. Hun Sen said the time had come to tackle serious problems, and he put corruption at the top of the list. But, first things first, many Cambodians expect the new ministers to focus on recouping their investments through bribes and business deals.

"Every position is a graft center," said Craig Etcheson, a political scientist who is writing about contemporary Cambodia. "This place has some of the worst corruption in the world and they've just multiplied the centers of corruption manyfold."

The money has got to come from somewhere, here in one of the poorest countries in Asia, where according to a recent World Bank report, per capita income is $280 and more than a third of the population lives below the poverty line.

One source is the ravaging of the country's forests and the illegal sale of land and other natural resources, according to economic and political analysts. Drug trafficking and human trafficking are major enterprises as well, diplomats say.

Another source is bribes extorted from domestic and foreign businesses and from the population in every arena from schooling to health care. According to the World Bank, "Four-fifths of the private sector sampled acknowledges the necessity of paying bribes, and 71 percent of large firms report that these payments are frequent.''

A third source is the skimming of funds from the international aid that forms a major part of the country's budget. It is a truism here that huge portions of that aid never reach their destinations.

An annual meeting of donor nations, postponed while Cambodia struggled to form a government, is scheduled for December. Each year at donor-meeting time, Mr. Hun Sen makes gestures he evidently has no intention of fulfilling, like pledging to halt illegal logging.

This year, in addition to announcing his crackdown on corruption, Mr. Hun Sen's new government passed a law allowing a trial to proceed for surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, during whose rule 1.7 million people died from 1975 to 1979.

After many years of delays, trial watchers remain skeptical about the prospects. Just this month, after leading the passage of the law in the National Assembly, Prince Ranariddh suggested that the cost of a trial could be better used in helping the poor. The cost is estimated at somewhere over $30 million

Saturday Cat

Saturday Cat

Our weekly cat is pissed off at Carl since he's been gone for a week, over to Roseville to visit his mother and watch HBO in her new house. Why doesn't he learn to blog while on the road? Cats are smart. People are stupid.

Southeast Asia News 30

Laos 100 Kip

Does anybody know who is that cheerful looking fellow on the Lao money above? Here's a few stories about Southeast Asia over the last several days:

The Nation
Elite Card scheme a first-class failure
October 14, 2004

The government must stop throwing good money after bad and let Thailand Privilege Card Co die a natural death. Now is the time for the government to admit that the trouble-plagued Thailand Privilege Card Co, the company that operates the Elite Card, has failed and stop all of its losses. The company, which is wholly owned by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), has fallen far short of its targets in the year that has passed since the scheme was launched. Initially, the people behind this ambitious campaign expected to be able to sell one million membership cards to deep-pocketed foreigners interested in receiving red-carpet welcomes to Thailand’s golf courses, spas, hotels and exclusive clubs as well as special privileges in booking travel and other luxury services, including the ability to buy property.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra dreamed of selling Elite Cards to one million foreigners at Bt1 million apiece, earning Thailand a tidy Bt1 trillion. He launched the Elite Card at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting last October, distributing a number of Elite Cards to the assembled rich and well-known.

However, despite all of the high hopes of its supporters, the Elite Card scheme has turned out to be a business failure: only a couple hundred cards have actually been sold.

After all, what kind of person would really be interested in shelling out for the privileges being offered by the Elite Card? Super-rich foreigners have always been able to secure the top services in Thailand, without having to subscribe to the Elite Card. In addition, spending their money and time in Thailand through the programmes covered by the Elite Card would have represented a compromise of their privacy.

If the Elite Card scheme were a normal business, it would have been shelved a while ago, or at the very least its business plan would have to be radically revised for the company to stay competitive. But since this project was the brainchild of the Thaksin government, nobody seems willing to stand up and admit that in fact both the concept and the execution have flopped.

Thailand Privilege Card is capitalised with Bt1 billion of taxpayers’ money. So far it has spent Bt500 million from this capital. The company originally hoped to have to spend to this limit, leaving it with Bt500 million in capital.

It was originally expected that income from the sales of the membership cards would keep the company moving along. However, since the revenue from the sales of the membership card is not forthcoming, there is a danger that Thailand Privilege Card might find it impossible to raise money to finance its expansion. In the end, the company might find its capital completely depleted if it proves unable to earn enough money even to support its operations.

Without the expected stream of revenue, Thailand Privilege Card has been forced to revise its investment plan. Just the other day the company decided it would have to scrap a huge plan worth more than Bt2 billion to invest in golf courses in Bangkok and some of the other major tourist cities of Thailand.

Thailand Privilege Card recently found itself face to face with a major financial scandal when it emerged that the company owed Bt140 million to CNN to pay for advertising to promote the Elite Card. Amazingly, nobody has yet stepped forward to take the responsibility for the fact that the company had placed ads on CNN without paying for them.

Three committees have now been set up to investigate the scandal. Juthamas Siriwan, the governor of the TAT and the former president of the board of Thailand Privilege Card, has also found herself a subject of investigation.

The whole episode has severely damaged the reputation and image of the Elite Card. No one is interested in working for Thailand Privilege Card, as evidenced by the loss of six members of its board of directors since the beginning of this year, including Juthamas, who stepped down in the middle of this year.

There are now only five directors left, making it impossible for the company to hold meetings because the present number of directors fails to meet a quorum. If the Elite Card project is destined to fail, let’s just accept it, chalk it up to experience and stop the haemorrhage of money before it leads to even bigger losses.

The Elite Card Fails


Govt urged to speed up Pai Airport project
MAE HONG SON
Oct 15 (TNA)

The local authorities in Thailand’s northern province of Mae Hong Son have urged the government to complete the improvement plans for the Pai Airport by November to cater for the large number of visitors expected during the forthcoming high tourist season.

Local officials asked the Deputy Prime Minister, Wissanu Krea-Ngam, to accelerate the upgrading of the Pai Airports runway and the planned extension--20 metres in width and 700 metres in length. It is expected to cost more than ten million baht.

Pai Airport: The End of Paradise?


Stickman Visits Roi Et

Wandering around the town, I bumped into another group of teenage girls who were all starry eyed at the farang before them. I played dumb for a minute or so before leaping into the vernacular which drew out a huge round of applause. Like the girls I met the previous day in Khon Kaen, these girls had come in from one of the outer provincial districts to attend their entrance exam. There were eight of them and they were all very nice and incredibly interested in the farang before them. We chatted for a while and when I told them that I was an English teacher, we just about had an impromptu lesson with me explaining the difference between the past simple and the past perfect. Despite the fact that they could read and write English to a reasonable level - they have studied it for several years by this point in their schooling, they could barely speak it. Invitations were made to visit their school and that is something I'd love to have done, but the timing was all wrong. I left them and it was smiles all around. Boy, the people in this province are REALLY nice.

Stickman Loves Roi Et


Asia Online Five-Part Series on the Philippines

But in Mindanao, the overall sentiment is that the region has been forgotten by the central government. There are no jobs: seven to eight people in 10 go to Sabah, in Malaysia, to find work. Muslims are being driven, maybe not to direct support, but at least to sympathy toward the MILF.

As for the communists, the CPP and the NPA, they are even more active under Arroyo than before. The military says the NPA currently has 10,000 fighters with 7,000 weapons. Their network is spread out all over the country, and not only in the north. The MILF has even struck a working alliance with the NPA: it has learned that guerrilla warfare can be very effective.

And as for the Abu Sayyaf, the Muslim extremist group operating in the southern Philippines, the consensus in Manila is that it is completely neutralized. Its ties to the Philippine military are notorious. "The Americans created them themselves," says Bobby Tuazon of the independent website Bulatlat.

The Philippines -- Disgraceful State


Sassy Lawyer in the Philippines Goes to War with Philippine Daily Inquirer

Fear, insecurity and anxiety? YES. Fear, insecurity and anxiety. The article proves that they will exert every effort to make sure that, in case of difference of opinion between mainstream media and blogs, they will use their resources to insist that they are right and we are wrong. If we were an inconsequential group, would they bother? I think not.

Sassy Asks if Philippine Daily Inquirer "Talking Points" is really a Blog


Malaysian Idols

Jac (Jaclyn Victor) didn't win alone, Dina didn't lose it all. It's Malaysia and its hip SMS generation that came up tops in projecting a vivid Bangsa Malaysia!

The latest Malaysian Idol is apparently not Malay. Controversy erupts.


Malaysian Racist Jokes

I have quite a few Malay and Indian friends, and fortunately they are bunch of open-minded human beings, and have the sense of humor to laugh at jokes about their own race and religion. Mocking other races is just like mischievously making fun of fat people (with no intention of hurting their feelings). We know it’s morally wrong and evil, but do it anyway just to have some cheap laughs.

Did You Hear the One about the German? The French? The Italian? The American?


Bali in the Shadow of Fear
Asia Times Online

Shortly before midnight on October 12, 2002, a devastating terror attack was launched at the beachside town of Kuta on the island of Bali, Indonesia. Two bombs exploded in quick succession in Paddy's Irish Pub and outside the Sari Club. The blast and subsequent fires left more than 202 people dead and several hundred injured, most of them young vacationers from Australia and other Western countries.

It has been exactly two years since the Bali bombings, an event that introduced the world to al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the pioneer vanguard of Islamic militants in Southeast Asia. The question now is, what has become of JI and what are its prospects?

With the arrest of many senior JI operatives, it might appear that the group's capacity and capability to mount large-scale coordinated operations aimed at destroying multiple domestic and foreign targets within the region have been dented. However, this is clearly not the case. The JI network in Southeast Asia remains intact and retains the capacity and capability to mount another operation of Bali's scale, as was made clear by last month's attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

Bali is Still Living Under the Threat of Terrorism

Random Noise

Alien Invasion

A somewhat slow week for entertaining stories from Southeast Asia, so here's some oddball sites I stumbled across in my quest for the true meaning of life. Most of the following URLs were found on ScreenHead, a relatively new blog from the demented mind of Nick Denton, who has hired some young fools to find the very best in twisted websites from the U.S. and around the world. Many are Flash-based animations, which I find too time consuming to download on my dial-up connection, but the more static sites include all sorts of fascinating stuff. Only dial-up friendly sites are described below.

so ever since we launched screenhead last week, denton has been forwarding message after message of people whining, “eeeeew grody. you're making me puuuuuke. i haaaaaaate that picture, which was exactly my point. and you know what? it takes a long frigging time to make someone look that nasty.

The Creation of that Horrid ScreenHead Character


Online comics/novels are popular with folks with too much time on their hands, though the following graphic novel might be of some interest.

A Cartoon Novel from Art Bomb


Ever noticed those hand-made signs posted on freeways protesting the war, or Bush, or the unethical treatment of animals? Who makes up this shit? The following site has dozens of examples sent in by freeway anarchists across the country, and might just inspire you to get out of the house and create some Hell of your own.

Freeway Free Speech


Did you notice during the final Presidential debate last week that Bush had an odd, square-shaped bulge on his back, under his rather cheap looking suit? Conspiracy nuts have been going well, nuts, all week with rampant speculation that it was a radio transmitter and that Bush's entire speech was been monitored and nuanced by Karl Rove off in the sideline darkness. Sounds a bit on the paranoid side for me, but the following site has the best collection of photographic evidence I've seen yet on the net.

Radio Transmitter? Or just a Cheap Suit? You Decide


This is insane. More than 500 pictures posted on a single page, many of them reaching almost iconic status through exposure on the internet. Everything from cute kittens to suggestive t-shirts.

540 Humorous Pictures


Our membership program is designed for single men looking for mail order brides who are beautiful, significantly younger, educated, unspoiled by feminism and whose culture is one of support and respect.

Beautiful single Iraqi women are looking for romance and marriage. Meet traditional Iraqi girls who want to be your wife. If you are seeking a more feminine woman, an affectionate girl and a true love, you have found your magic carpet to happiness. We offer dating, spousal visa services, tours, correspondence and international one-on-one test drives with Iraqi ladies.

Iraqi Brides


Burger King is always thinking of new ways to sell their chicken sandwiches, and this Flash advertisement went online several months ago. Once you've loaded the page, you can command the man-in-a-chicken-suit to do ridiculous things. I'd recommend "dance." Funny stuff.

The Subservient Chicken


I had a Chihuahua once when I was a kid. The family discovered the homeless critter somewhere in the Southeast while we were making a cross-country trip from Alabama to California. We named the little mouse Pancho Gonzales Elfago Rodriguez Tucumcary Parkes. The following joke site is about that tiny dog.

The Center for Chihuahua Exploitation


Put your cat in front of a mirror. Then put another mirror behind your cat. Take a photo of your completely confused cat.

The Infinite Cat Project


A friend sent me the following URL on the assumption that I'm much older than in real life. But it's a funny look at nostalgia and how life worked back in the 1950s.

American Nostalgia

Kevin Sites in Iraq

Kevin Sites Dances in Baghdad

Iraq has plenty of journalists reporting on the war, but only a few bother to maintain a blog and help outsiders get an inside look at the conflict. I mentioned the excellent Chris Allibritton some time ago, but the hottest journalist/blogger at the moment is Kevin Sites, who recently posted the above image along with some humorous commentary. His latest post relates an upriver journey with the American military in a Swift Boat which immediately reminds him of, what else, Apocalypse Now. Great photos included. If you're only going to look at one Iraqi war site, this is it.

Kevin Sites Reports from Iraq

Saturday Cats

Lioness with Cub

Bengal Tiger

Ubud Writers Conference

Bali

Nick O'Neill lives in Seminyak, Bali, where he reviews hotels, works on maps, and provides his readers with a daily blog about life in paradise. He's also one of the founders of Boots N All, and so connected with a worldwide collection of travel writers such as Jen Leo and Rolf Potts. Nick has been attending the Ubud Writers Conference over the last few days, where he has met Tony Wheeler and my old buddy, Bill Dalton. Here's a report:

Taking a break at the Writers Festival in Ubud Bali.

I am sitting in a tiny internet cafe on Jl. Campuhan taking a break from the Writers Festival in Ubud. This morning I rode from my house around 6.30am to Kuta then shot over to Ubud (actually Sanginggan ) and the Indus restaurant where the Ubud Writers Festival is being held.

At 9am I sat in the front row of an audience of about 50 and listened to Tony Wheeler, the founder of Lonely Planet and Bill Dalton the founder of Moon telling how they met and founded their respective companies. The chair was Ryan ver Berkmoes editor of the new LP guide to Bali.

Both guys were engaging and cut loose with personal opinions. Tony told us that they first met Bill in 1971 sitting in the curb in Kings Cross Sydney selling copies of his 'Indonesia notes' which he had photocopied. That was the start of Moon books.

Tony told us that he and his wife Maureen wrote the first copy of 'Asia on the Cheap' (which turned into SE Asia on a Shoestring) in the back room (room #2) of the Palace Hotel which was some pokey budget place in Singapore. It took them 3 monthes to write. After they finished Tony recommended the local printer to Bill and said "If you want a cheap quiet place to write the book go to room #2 at the back of the Palace Hotel." This was where Bill wrote his 'Indonesia Guide'. I think Tony regards Bill as 'the expert' on Indonesia and Bill certainly is a character to go with it. I love it.

Bill told us a funny story of about the time when he used a tip from another traveler about a hiking trail in Sumatra in his guide book without properly checking it out. Several months later he got a letter from a guy who had followed his advice and had the most unpleasant night in the jungle as the directions were flawed. Bill said the guy was covered in leeches and mosquito bites and included a tape with his letter....'Bill if I ever meet you in person....if I ever, ever....etc."

Ubud Writers Conference, Day One


And here's the afternoon session with the Tony-and-Bill Show:

At 2.45pm the afternoon session was due to continue. The title of this session was ‘A Guide To Bali’.

Bill is a real crack up. Super motivated about travel and the culture of Asia, and an individual who is very opinionated. Ryan kept trying to direct the conversation towards discussing how travel guide books had affected places in Asia, Bali in particular. Bill kept of doggedly telling everyone that it’s best not to use a guide book at all and to take a good novel about the place as well as books on language and culture. “If you’ve developed good travel skills in other countries you’ll be able to re-use them in Bali.” he said.

Tony defended tourism and the part travel guide books play in encouraging tourism and the effects its has on a place. His main argument was tourism has given people options and if you ask them would they like to go back 50 years most of them would say no. He also said that its very arrogant of westerners to complain that there is traffic on the roads and that some places are spoilt because we westerners want to look at a paradise like scene, then go back to our air conditioned room expecting the locals to rough it.

During the whole discussion I kept my mouth shut. I already know my opinions and ramming them down someone else’s throat isn’t going to teach me anything. I was interested in the opinions of the panel and the other members of the audience.

Bill was saying that in his guides he always left some things out like the exact name of a pristine beach. “Tell them where the beaches are located but don’t point out the name of your favourite one” he said, “leave some things for them to discover.” He also said that literary techniques can be used in travel guide writing such as ‘teasing the reader’ to read further.

Ryan told us about writing the 10th edition of LP Bali and his experience finding a ‘new beach’ in Karangasem. He described a white sand crescent, fringed by palm trees that was a picture of paradise. I immediately knew it was Pantai Putih (White Beach) located in Perasi. Its true the beach isn’t on the tourist trail and is lovely. Ryan said he had to decide whether to omit this find from the new book to preserve the natural quality, or to add it and risk the place being wrecked by tourists. He decided to enter it in the new edition and said that helping the local economy was worth the risk of possible negative effects.

Ubud Writers Conference, Part Two

Report from Jakarta

Indonesia 100 Rupiah 1958

It's Ramadan in Indonesia, and all sorts of mysterious powers are in action. A report from an expat in Jakarta:

This morning my baby sitter informed me that she lost her mobile phone. She said she was hypnotized by a person on the street. She had no idea what happened. Luckily the thief took the hand phone and not my daughter. No the question is, was she indeed hypnotized? I heard of more stories like these. Or did she needed money for her family in the kampung and therefore sold it? After all, it’s Ramadhan.

[My Bar in Jakarta] has never been closed –not even for one day- since it’s opening on January 1st 2000. Every year with Ramadhan again it is a risk we take, but so far we have been lucky. A few weeks ago I went for a beer in Jl. Jaksa, to this little old bar named Romance. There I ran into Pak Pak, one of the city officials who normally comes to [My Bar] once a year with Ramadan to cash in the yearly bribe.

At first I didn’t recognize him as he was not wearing his DKI uniform. I caught him red faced, not with his pants down, but with a beer in his hands and two young girls on his side. The girls were clearly not colleagues that came for an after work drink. For the girls it was a drink before the job. They were drinking black beer and Red Bull.

Enthusiastically I walked up to Bapak Pak Pak and shook hands. The girls, in their early twenties, were looking up in surprise. In their hand they both held a cigarette, red colored from cheap lipstick. Pak2 introduced me to the girls and offered me a beer. ‘He is the owner of [My Bar], he whispered to the girls. The girls looked with their mouth open as if I was more important than the president. Pak Pak quickly spoke a few sentences. “This year no problem with your bar/cafe. We will help again. Same deal as last year.Ok?”

I think he wanted me to leave quickly, maybe maluh with the girls, but I decided to tease him a bit. ‘Do they work for you? Are they your family?’ He only replied with a ‘No, no, no…’ , and a shy smile. He started to sweat a bit. ‘You should bring them to [My Bar]!’, I said. ‘No, no, no…’, he answered again but the girls reacted enthusiastically. ‘Iya oom, mau dong, oom!’. One girl started to flirt with me. Pak2 opened the upper button of his tight shirt and took a few quick gulps. ‘No problem with your cafe this year, mr expat, no problem…”

That was a month ago. So far I haven’t heard from him. I can’t say this is good or bad news, but last night nobody from the city government came to my place to collect payment. I thought it was a deal. Or?!? After all, it’s Ramadhan…. I am getting nervous a bit, but ....[My Bar] will be open as usual, even though it may look closed from the outside.….

The Wonders of Ramadan in Jakarta

Dan Washburn in China

Laos 100 Kip (Back)

One of the best travel pieces on China I've read in years.

Dan Looks Over the River to North Korea

Southeast Asia News 29

U.S. Military Money Japan 1962

Cambodia's Next King: Apparently the Least Apparent Heir
By SETH MYDANS
October 12, 2004

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Oct. 11 - Playing one final hand in a lifelong game of chance, King Norodom Sihanouk has engineered the succession of his most self-effacing son, Prince Norodom Sihamoni, to the throne his father has held for more than 60 years.

On Monday, the government took the final steps to prepare a nine-member Throne Council that is charged, under the Constitution, with selecting a new king. In this case, its action, expected this week, will probably be a formality.

The Next King of Cambodia: Single, Lives in Paris, Ballet Dancer


Profile: Norodom Sihamoni

Norodom Sihamoni has so far shunned Cambodian politics

Before King Sihanouk announced his abdication from the Cambodian throne in early October, few people had heard of his son Norodom Sihamoni. But within days of the announcement, the 51-year-old ex-ballet dancer was thrust into the limelight as the most likely candidate to become the impoverished nation's next king.

The modest, music-loving bachelor is said to be reluctant to take the throne, but has indicated his willingness to do so if asked by Cambodia's official Throne Council.

BBC Profile on Cambodia's Next King


Haul of Heroin Seized Bound for U.S.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 12, 2004

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- A massive heroin cache seized in July southeastern Myanmar was meant to be shipped to the United States, a counter-narcotics official said Tuesday.

Authorities seized nearly 1,320 pounds of heroin in Ye, a township 150 miles southeast of capital, on July 9, in the biggest single seizure of the drug ever recorded in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

In the United States, the street value of that quantity of heroin would be tens of millions of dollars. Myanmar is the world's second largest producer after Afghanistan of opium and its derivative, heroin.

Massive Heroin Seizure in Burma


Thai police search for rape suspect whose tongue was bitten off by victim

Police in Bangkok said Wednesday they are searching for a man whose tongue was bitten off by a girl he allegedly tried to rape. A 17-year-old girl turned up at Lucksong police station with a 2.5-centimeter (1-inch) -long piece of human tongue, which she said belonged to a 19-year-old male friend she knew by the nickname Koh.

She told police that when Koh attempted to rape her, she pretended to consent to his advances and then bit off part of his tongue, police Capt. Somsak Maiboonmee said.

"His tongue was partially severed, so I decided to just bite it all off. It was still in my mouth," the girl told reporters. "He yelled at me and got up, kicked me in my neck, and then I ran away."

Nice try, Guy


Thais active lovers, but little foreplay
KARNJARIYA SUKRUNG

Thai lovers are having sex about twice a week _ with many admitting they use no protection despite not knowing their partner's sexual history.

And on average, they each experience between eight and nine sexual partners, the Durex Global Sex Survey concludes.

More than 350,000 people in 41 countries participated in this year's on-line survey to determine sexual attitudes, behaviour and trends among people of reproductive age. Thais proved among the most responsive, being grouped among the five countries with the most replies.

As many as 46% of the 15,000 Thai respondents confessed they have had unprotected sex, and about 42% in the 16-20 age group.

"Thai respondents contradict themselves, saying that their two major sexual concerns are HIV/Aids and unplanned pregnancy. Yet the use of condoms has been in decline. This behaviour is worrisome," said Dr Pansak Sukraroek, an obstetrician and host of the sex education television programme Choo-Rak, Choo-Ros. On the performance scale Thai lovers are up there with the rest of the world, having sex an average 103 times a year. The French are most active, claiming an average of 137 times, while the Japanese are way down _ only 43 times a year or less than once a week.

Although matching the global average for sexual frequency, Thai men spend the least amount of time on foreplay _ admitting to only 11.5 minutes on average, only half what the British claim.

Durex Survey on Sex in Thailand


Innocent of Bali cannabis charges: woman

A GOLD Coast beauty therapy student last night continued to protest her innocence of drug-smuggling allegations, claiming that she had no idea how 4.2kg of high-grade cannabis ended up in her boogie board case.

Schapelle Leigh Corby, 27, of Tugun, could face the death penalty after Customs officers at Denpasar airport found a package containing the cannabis in her bodyboard bag last Friday. Police said it was the largest quantity of cannabis ever taken into Bali, and the first such case involving an Australian.

Ms Corby, who travelled from Brisbane via Sydney to the popular Indonesian resort island with friends and family, vehemently denies any knowledge of the drugs until they were discovered at Denpasar airport. Yesterday, as she was paraded in front of media at police headquarters in Bali, she maintained she had no knowledge of the drug parcel until Customs officials opened her bag in Bali.

Australian Female Pleads Innocence on Pot Charges


Evidence of 'jungle yeti' found

Adam Davies plans to write a scientific paper on the discovery.

Fresh evidence has been found in the jungles of Sumatra supporting claims that a mythical 'jungle yeti' may exist, claim two UK explorers. Adam Davies and Andrew Sanderson found footprints which seem to match examples they found three years ago, which were shown to be from a new species of ape.

The orang pendek, as it is known, is said by islanders to walk like a man. The pair, from Stockport and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, now plan to write a scientific paper on their discoveries. The new evidence was found in the Bukkantingi area of the island.

The pair found new footprints similar to the one they found in 2001. Mr Davies and Mr Sanderson also claim they tracked the creature to within 500 metres but were unable to follow it into dense jungle. Three years earlier, they found hairs and prints which were analysed independently by scientists and shown to be from an unknown species.

They have now discovered evidence of the creature's existence in separate parts of the island.

Yetis? On Sumatra?


Prostitution wave hits 'squeaky clean' Singapore
By Fayen Wong
October 13, 2004

Singapore - On a residential street corner on the outskirts of Singapore's red-light district of Geylang, a van pulls up beside two women in the evening dusk, both dressed in revealing blouses and hip-hugging skirts.

Moments later, 27-year-old Ming opens the van's door and disappears. Her friend, 30-year-old Yeh, waits for another customer. Both are tourists visiting from mainland China, and both are the vanguard of a new trend in the oldest profession.

Prostitution is expanding from red-light urban districts into the leafy suburbs, propelled mostly by mainland Chinese women on tourist visas and fueling a growing underground sex industry in a country known for prudish laws and orderly living.

The trend follows a blossoming in ties between Singapore and China, nourished on ethnic bonds, and is provoking a groundswell of public criticism as prostitution spills out of legal and tightly regulated brothels.

Adding to the assault on Singapore's reputation as a strait-laced, strictly controlled society is a State Department report this year that said the wealthy city state had a "significant" trafficking problem involving women and children.

Singapore's government disputed the report, which put the Southeast Asian island on par with Cambodia, China and Indonesia as "countries that do not fully comply with the minimum standards" to eliminate trafficking of women and girls for sex.

The focus on sex-for-hire in Singapore, whose ardor has been cast in some doubt by a record-low fertility rate, has been further sharpened by a new book "Invisible Trade" on a thriving world of high-class prostitution in Singapore.

Prostitutes from China Flood Singapore


Singaporeans having less sex: Durex survey

SINGAPORE : The incentives to start a family are getting better, but the sex life of Singaporeans is getting worse. Couples have been having sex less and less often - down from 110 times a year in 2002 to just 79 times now.

In fact, the latest and most extensive Durex Global Sex Survey found that out of 41 countries, only the Japanese are having less sex than the Singaporeans - just 46 times a year. Only once or twice a week - that's how often Singaporean couples have sex.

This is a far cry from the amorous French who topped the sex survey, getting busy between the sheets twice as often.

Durex Survey on Sex in Singapore

Singapore Window

Singapore Wedding Party

I cannot figure out exactly who is behind the website called "Singapore Window," but it's basically a news clipping service for articles about Singapore, and generally tends to find the more critical rather than complimentary stories. Only a few articles are added weekly, but if you have some curiosity about an alternative look at Singapore, then it's worth an occasional visit. Here's a few items from SW.

*************************************************

There were few signs of a shift in this authoritarian stance under Mr Lee's hand-picked successor, Goh Chok Tong. Westerners were horrified in 1994 when a young American, Michael Fay, was given eight strokes of the rattan, the bamboo cane, for defacing cars, despite the protests of President Bill Clinton.

This authoritarian attitude even stretched, famously, to a ban on chewing gum in 1992 on the grounds that it made a mess of Singapore's proudly clean city streets. The ban was eased in May this year for nicotine gum as the Goh government started a thaw in social policy that has included the lifting of a ban on gays in the public service.

And now, following on from the change to the legal status of gay civil servants and gum chewers, there are signs that the newly elected government of Lee Hsien Loong, 52, also known as Baby God, the son of Mr Lee senior, may be prepared to allow, even foster, further liberalisation in Singapore.

Gum, Gays and Gambling

********************************************

THE number of homosexuals infected with HIV, the virus that causes the deadly AIDS illness, is on the rise in Singapore, according to government statistics. Thirty-one of the 138 new cases of HIV infections reported in the first-half of 2004 were through homosexual transmission, compared to 40 cases for the whole of 2003, the Ministry of Health said in its latest statistics on HIV infection in Singapore monitored on its website.

Gay HIV on Rise in Singapore

**********************************

THREE years after a major restructure, Singapore’s two media giants are reversing direction, moving from rivalry to partial merger that will please shareholders more than consumers. The Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and MediaCorp have announced a merger of their mass-market television and free newspaper operations to stem large losses.

The agreement has effectively ended Singapore’s brief era of having two competitors in newspapers and TV stations to provide Singaporeans alternative choices.

Some believe it was also started to smoothen the Free Trade Agreement talks with the United States to placate Washington in case it demanded to see a freer media industry in Singapore.

Back to Media Monopoly in Singapore

**********************************

SINGAPORE'S police force Friday, Aug 27, announced guidelines maintaining restrictions on free speech despite new Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's vow to create an "open and inclusive" society.

Lee, son of Singapore's tough founding leader Lee Kuan Yew, promised greater freedoms in the tightly controlled city-state when he was sworn in on August 12 and in a subsequent policy speech said indoor political discussions will no longer require licenses under certain conditions.

Critics said the guidelines meant little had changed in Singapore.

New Freedoms for Singapore?

*********************************

ONE of the hottest-selling books here these days is about trade -- but it has nothing to do with Singapore's exports of semiconductors or petrochemicals.
Invisible Trade is a ground-breaking book on Singapore's sex industry, particularly high-class international prostitutes posing as "escorts" and catering to a global clientele with kinky tastes and money to burn.

The bestseller and a US government report on alleged trafficking of Asian women here have turned the spotlight on a thriving business in a city-state better known overseas as a prudish, strictly controlled society.

Prostitution and Politics

*********************************

CHEWING gum remains largely banned in Singapore, there's heavy media censorship and the Government intervenes in most spheres of economic and private activity. It has all contributed to Singapore's reputation as being straitlaced to the point of being boring. Or is Singapore so straitlaced?

August 9 was Singapore's National Day. The previous evening, what was billed as Asia's biggest gay party, the Nation Party, was held in Singapore. It was part of three days of high-profile gay-oriented events that were kicked off with an opening party at Singapore's Suntec Convention Centre, not far from Singapore's new Parliament building.

The Gay Scene in Singapore

**********************************

FOR decades, conservative Singapore has rejected proposals to open a casino in the city-state, denying its gambling-addicted, predominantly Chinese population the opportunity to place a legal bet.

Now, the matter is back on the table, with the government inviting proposals, to which six international gambling companies have expressed informal interest, for an entertainment center, with a casino at its heart. "We have to reconsider because... the situation changes," said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, after taking office last month.

The biggest change is that gambling has gone global and become respectable, with many tourists demanding the chance to have a flutter and enjoy first-class entertainment while they shop and tour. "They have been exposed to it in places like Las Vegas," says Jonathan Galaviz, a casino-industry analyst and partner at Galaviz Ong & Co., of Las Vegas. "Casino-gaming operators... truly view their client base as global."

Is Gambling Coming to Singapore?

The Travails of Travel Writing

See Java

Ok, readers, you've got two choices today.

I've started a new blog called The Travails of Travel Writing with over a dozen articles about the difficulties of being a travel writer and it's right here.

Second choice:

Prostitution, New Jersey Style It's a New York Times article, so free registration is required.

I'm trusting everybody to do the right thing.

Singapore News

Old Singapore

Charities score at transsexual beauty pageant

Singapore - Singapore's first major transsexual beauty pageant was held over the weekend to raise money for the poor, with the event's organisers hailing it Sunday as a ground-breaking, sell-out success. An audience of 1 350 people wa1tched 13 finalists compete for the title of Miss Tiffany Singapore, based on the famous Thai contest of the same name, at the city-state's biggest in-house restaurant on Saturday night.

Thirty-three Singaporean transsexuals originally entered the contest, including one national serviceman, according to the organiser, Mogan Aruban. Mogan, who is the chairman of non-profit charity organisation Singapore Amalgamated Services Co-Operative, said the contest reflected an increasing tolerance in famously conservative Singapore.

"This was a ground-breaking event considering the whole family values thing (of Singaporean society)," Mogan said. "I think it's acceptable now because the prime minister (Lee Hsien Loong) has said we have to liberalise and among the younger generation there are so many gays."

Former prime minister Goh Chok Tong said last year that gays would be allowed to work in the civil service as part of the government's loosening of social controls, however homosexual acts are still illegal.

Mogan said he had been staging more traditional fund-raising events, such as dance competitions and functions featuring international celebrities, over the past 15 years, but Miss Tiffany was the most successful. He said the event raised S$120 000 (R460 000) for his charity, which cares for some of the poorest people in Singapore.

Bring Back Bugis Street!

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Singapore's cocaine circle
The Straits Times
They tend to meet while doing business or at social gatherings
Ben Nadarajan

THE cocaine-snorting circle in Singapore appears to be a small and tightly knit group. Its members are quite distinct from hardcore heroin addicts and yuppie party drug abusers, in that they tend to meet while doing business or at social gatherings, and will introduce each other to the drug as well as the syndicate selling it.

However, sources said these people usually use the drugs for personal consumption. They don't dish it out at private parties. Most consume the coke in the privacy of their homes, although some take it just before they hit the pubs in their flashy sports cars or luxury sedans.

Among the 23 people arrested in a swoop on a suspected cocaine trafficking ring this week, 16 were Singaporeans, two permanent residents and five foreigners. Tunisian Guiga Lyes Ben Laroussi, 35, marketing manager at Bobby Rubino's restaurant, is the alleged link-man of the syndicate.

Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) officers had been tailing Laroussi for the past two months and had spotted him on several occasions meeting suspected drug addicts outside pubs in popular nightspot areas such as Mohamed Sultan.

Bobby Rubino's owner, Mr Jimmy Hsiao, said Laroussi had called in on Wednesday, the day before his arrest, to ask for a few days off as his girlfriend's family was visiting from Malaysia. Mr Hsiao said Laroussi had started work at the restaurant about four months ago but had worked in Singapore before and 'knew a lot of expats here'.

According to CNB records, the last time an expatriate was arrested for trafficking drugs here was way back in 1991 when Dutchman Johannes van Damme was caught with 4.3kg of heroin at the Changi Airport. He was hanged.

Cocaine? In Singapore?

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McDonald's Loses Legal Fight Against MacNoodles

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. fast-food giant McDonald's Corp. lost a legal battle in Singapore Monday to stop a food company from distributing products named "MacNoodles," "MacTea" and "MacChocolate." The world's largest fast-food company said Singapore-based Future Enterprises Pte Ltd. had copied McDonald's trademarks when registering its products in 1995. The High Court dismissed the case in April but McDonald's appealed.

"McDonald's has spent millions to create goodwill and instant public recognition for its 'Mc' series of marks," said Davinder Singh, a high-profile Singapore lawyer who represented McDonald's, before the judge ruled against the fast-food chain. The ruling ends a courtroom tussle over intellectual property rights and anti-monopoly laws, and comes as Singapore positions itself as a bastion of intellectual property protection in Asia in an aggressive bid to attract foreign investors.

Under a U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement that took effect in January, the wealthy city-state's intellectual property laws were harmonized with those of the United States. Lawyers for Future Enterprises had argued that "MacNoodles," "MacTea" and "MacChocolate" bore no similarity to those of McDonald's. The Singapore products are packaged with an eagle logo and distributed in supermarkets and convenience stores.

"There can be no likelihood of confusion or deception. The marks are different in appearance, sound and concept," said the company's lawyer, Tan Tee Jim. McDonald's has restaurants in 119 countries and serves nearly 50 million customers a day in more than 30,000 restaurants. In Singapore, it has 129 restaurants.

I have renamed this blog McFriskoDude

Thailand News

Endangered Animals

Chastity goes out the window in Thailand

Bangkok - Thai teenagers' chaste reputation has gone out of the window with more than half of Bangkok youths believing that pre-marital sex is no longer taboo, poll results showed on Sunday. Public displays of affection among teenagers are virtually the norm now in the once-staid Thai capital as youths - bombarded by erotic marketing, racy television and a more liberal attitude - come to see sex as fashionable, the survey showed.

Of the 417 teenage high school students in Bangkok polled by Rajabhat Suan Dusit University this month, 51,3 percent said underage or pre-marital sex was now acceptable, while a full 92,81 percent said teenagers should be able to express their love in private. Only 1,12 percent said no affection should be displayed in public, while 78,88 percent said holding hands was the extent teens could go to in expressing their love publicly. Kissing or hugging was the limit for 17,53 percent.

'The institution of the family has also failed dismally'

In a worrying trend, however, the largest single reason for why students expressed their love in public, totalling 36.11 percent of respondents, was "following the trend". The poll did not report figures for how many of the teens actually engaged in sex, nor did it report any trends comparing the results with previous years or generations.

Conservatives condemned the findings, with one prominent senator reportedly pinning the lapse in student modesty on Western influences glorified by the Thai media. "The institution of the family has also failed dismally," Senator Rabiabrat Pongpanitch told the Nation newspaper. "Familes are no longer capable of providing a balance, resulting in drastic changes in teenage sexual behaviour."

She said most married couples today work for a living and the traditional bonds between parents and children have been strained. Research by the health ministry and cited in The Nation showed that 18 percent of students in Thai cities lose their virginity between the ages of 12 and 15.

Thai Youth Morals

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New Zealand Herald
Phuket reefs perish under assault of tourist hordes
By JAN McGIRK

Beneath the blue Andaman Sea, Phuket's coral reefs are in ruins. Just as Thailand prepares for an upsurge of new visitors, with the Government aiming to double its tourist revenues, marine biologists have warned that careless development has already wrecked two-thirds of the reefs surrounding the resort island of Phuket. No wonder authorities are getting that sinking feeling.

Seen from a high-rise hotel room or a deserted beach, the vistas of forested limestone islets that featured in a classic James Bond speedboat sequence and The Beach are just as breathtaking as ever. But being one of the world's top 10 yachting and diving destinations is slowly mutilating its 14sq km underwater garden. Sludge and debris washed into the sea from construction work across the island is the main cause of the reefs' demise, said Nipon Pongsuwanthe, from the Phuket Marine Biological Centre.

Commercial fishing and daytripping divers have also harmed the delicate coral formations. And researchers at the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources say this part of the Andaman Sea is awash with 10,000 tonnes of rubbish. Floating garbage has increased by 10 per cent since last year, they say.

Phuket Reefs in Peril

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Latest teacher shooting sparks mass transfer request from Thai south

BANGKOK (AFP) - More than 1,000 panicked education officials and teachers have sought transfers out of Thailand's restive south following the latest shooting of a teacher by suspected Islamic separatists, an official said.

At least 200 teachers in Pattani, one of three provinces in the deep south wracked by violence this year, petitioned authorities for immediate transfers after a deputy principal at a local school was gunned down Wednesday and left fighting for his life, a Pattani education department official said Thursday.

About 1,000 others were also believed to have requested transfers from neighbouring provinces Narathiwat and Yala, as authorities were unable to provide sufficient security in the region which has seen more than 310 people including teachers killed this year, the official.

"We are terrified. We don't know what will happen to us," she told AFP. "Even though I was born here, I want to leave and work somewhere else because we are living in fear here."

She said teachers had taken to avoiding public places such as markets, shopping centres or outdoor cafes.

Thai Teachers in South Request Transfers

Philippine News

Liwayway and Mt. Mayon

BBC News
Bomb caused Philippine ferry fire
Gloria Arroyo initially downplayed claims the ferry was bombed

A ferry fire in the Philippines that killed more than 100 people was caused by a bomb, a report has concluded. President Gloria Arroyo, who initially downplayed claims of responsibility from the Abu Sayyaf group, has admitted that militants were behind the attack.

She said six members of Abu Sayyaf had been charged with murder and attempted murder over the attack in February. Two of the six were arrested in March, but the other four - including two of the group's leaders - remain at large.

The 10,000 ton Superferry 14 was heading for Bacolod in the central Philippines when it caught fire, on 27 February 2004. According to officials, 116 of the 900 people onboard are now presumed to have died, although only 63 bodies have been recovered.

The report into the fire has now concluded it was caused by "an explosive device," national police spokesman Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil said in a statement. Investigators believe the Superferry was targeted because its owners, WG&A, refused a request for $1m in protection money from Abu Sayyaf in 2003.

The Abu Sayyaf group claimed responsibility soon after the incident, but the government initially dismissed the claim as a "propaganda ploy". In March, however, a group of Abu Sayyaf members were arrested over the incident - including one man who allegedly confessed to planting the bomb. On Monday Mrs Arroyo said six people had been charged over the incident - adding that the two already in custody had also been found responsible for the abduction of a group of tourists from the island of Palawan in 2001.

The kidnapping eventually resulted in the deaths of several hostages, including two Americans. Mrs Arroyo called for police to step up their efforts to find the other four men charged over the ferry bombing. "I am now instructing the police and the military to intensify the manhunt for the two masterminds - Khaddafy Janjalani and Abu Sulaiman - and their two other accomplices," she said on Monday.

Sulaiman and Janjalani, thought to be Abu Sayyaf's main leader, already have $5m bounties on their heads. Abu Sayyaf - which mainly engages in kidnap for ransom - is one of four Muslim rebel groups operating in the southern Philippines.

It has been labelled a terrorist organisation by both Manila and Washington, and is believed by the US to have links with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. The Philippine Government has deployed thousands of troops in the south in an effort to eradicate the Abu Sayyaf.

BBC News on Philippine Terrorism

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Tuesday October 12, 4:45 AM
Prison Raid Yields 29-Inch TVs, Luxuries

It looks like prison life wasn't too tough for some of the Philippines' most notorious inmates. Authorities said Monday they had seized late-model flat-screen TVs, DVD players and stereos, assorted firearms and mobile phones from jail cells in the national penitentiary compound in the Manila suburb of Muntinlupa.

Bureau of Corrections Director Vicente Vinarao said he ordered the swoop after an upsurge in the electricity bill, and in line with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's order for all government offices to save on energy. More than 900 assorted weapons _ swords, knives, live ammunition, improvised guns and machetes _ also were confiscated, Vinarao said.

"What is surprising, maybe you will not believe, that along with the ... assorted weapons, we also confiscated almost 100 televisions, mostly 29 inches," Vinarao told DZBB radio. He said while the assorted weapons could be hidden, it was impossible for TVs and other appliances to be smuggled in without the guards' knowledge.

Vinarao said most of the luxury items were found among convicted drug smugglers, who were also using cell phones to conduct business from jail. He said that as a result, "undesirable" prison guards and custodial personnel were removed from the facility. Vinarao said only one television set is now allowed in each prison dormitory, and that lights will be turned on only from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. to help cut to about half the prison's $35,700 monthly electricity bill.

The national penitentiary is home to death row convicts, those serving life sentences and other criminals.

Martha Stewart Soon to Move from the Cupcake Womens' Facility in America to Manila

Philippine News

Miss Philippines

The other issues about the Philippines, of even greater than their cuisine, is the future of their country, which by all appearances is now in a frightening state of decline. What will happen? Will the underclasses revolt and seize power? Will the middle class instigate reforms or continue to flee to America? But the most intriguing question is about the right. Remember Marcos and his cronies? Will they once again seize absolute control of the country and continue to rob the Philippines blind?

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Is the Philippines ripe for revolution?
Torn and Frayed in Manila

Randy David ponders the possibility, even the likelihood, of a middle-class coup against the flailing president in today's column. He starts from the assumption that the current situation "is not politically sustainable" and goes on to argue that "sheer hunger will not spark a social revolution. For it is not hunger alone that grips the poor; they are also seized by a paralyzing helplessness that takes away the volatility from their anger." I agree with that.

David reckons the greatest threat to Gloria will come from the middle class:

"in the final analysis, it is not the poor who pose a threat to Gloria, but rather the educated and the middle class who voted for her. They had set aside their deep doubts about her capacity to turn the country around, and supported her on the belief that an opposition win would spell a sure catastrophe. But now that she is safely President, they are not about to make it easy for her."

It is true that revolutions have typically been led by intellectuals (such as teachers) and an exasperated, squeezed petit bourgeoisie, rather than by oppressed workers or peasants. Still, it seems to me that there is one important difference between the situation in, say, Russia in 1917 and that in the Philippines today. Thanks to globalization, the Philippine middle-class no longer has to either put up with the current situation or try to change it. It has an attractive third option: leave. The balikbayan alternative is critical to understanding why the current rotten system persists, because many of the people who might be capable of changing it are in San Francisco or Milan. Ironically, their remittances to their families actually keep the current system afloat, by staving off a foreign exchange crisis. No wonder the political class continually praises the overseas Filipino worker.

Still, if Randy David is right and Gloria's "natural allies" are about to to turn against her (he says that "the question is not whether she will last, but how long?") what can we expect in her place?

This description of Germany in the early 20th century rang a few bells with me:

In the twenty-five years before the 1914 the Mittelstand (often described as the the losers in the proicess of modernization) had come under increasing economic pressure of large-scale corporate business from above and the increasing social pressure of organized labour from below. This had already produced a move towards a right-wing radicalism -- militant, anti-semitic, nationalistic -- in Mittelstand politics. In post-war Germany, with its political instability, scenes of violemnce and inflation, the Mittelstand felt additionally threatened by the crumbling of familiar landmarks and accepted values and by insecurity about its future." [Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: parallel lives, p. 74]

The Philippines is not going to take such a radical course as Germany in the 1920s, but many of the features that Bullock talks about ("the crumbling of familiar landmarks and accepted values and ... insecurity about its future") are already among us, making some form of "right-wing radicalism" attractive to a desperate middle class. Stand up Ping Lacson and Bayani Fernando -- your time is at hand.

Frayed and Torn in Manila on a possible Philippines Revolution

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The prospects for the right in the Philippines
Torn and Frayed in Manila

Manolo Quezon has published an excellent rejoinder to my previous post. If he’s correct and a move to the right in the Philippines is unlikely, what are the alternatives?

Continue with a pro-American, pro-big-business capitalist model. In this scenario, Gloria would stumble through her six-year term to be replaced by, say, Mar Roxas in 2010. The social structure that underpins the political process would be unchanged, in fact with a scion from one of the country’s richest families as president, it would be stronger than ever.

A continuation of the present is always worth a bet, but Randy David’s original article questioned whether the status quo is sustainable. He argued persuasively that it is not.

One major problem with this model is the Government's complete inability to come to terms with the deteriorating security problem. Warlordism and continuous high-level violence are no longer mainly restricted to Mindanao, as they were in Ramos’s time; huge swathes of Mindoro and Quezon provinces are rapidly becoming ungovernable. In the end, this is bound to affect the success of the export-driven business model that Gloria wants to put in place, as has happened in Colombia and Nigeria, among others.

Move to the left. Like Quezon, I don’t think the Philippines will turn to the left in the short term. The fact that Bayan Muna failed to put up a Presidential candidate in the 2004 elections indicates not only its financial weakness vis à vis the other parties, but its own perception of its electoral prospects. There are many reasons for this, including what Quezon describes as the “inherent entrepreneurial, if not actually rightist, mentality of many of the poor”, but this post is already way too long to go into them here.

Move to towards a theocracy. Disenchantment with the material world makes a shift to a “higher” plane an increasingly attractive option. The fact that a mediocre candidate like Brother Eddie made a good showing in the 2004 elections is testament to that. Still, the religious parties will face the same problem that has always bedevilled the left – they are split into numerous sects and religions, so they seem more likely to limit themselves to exerting influence on the government on key issues, rather than becoming an alternative government.

Increase in regional political power bases at the expense of central government. Quezon makes an interesting argument related to the ever-increasing expenses of national political campaigns:

Ironically, the need to bribe everyone makes political office, and thus power, more and more expensive -increasingly too expensive on a national scale. The political class has therefore clearly decided it's better off with small fiefdoms which are cheaper to maintain than national office: hence the efforts to go parliamentary and federal.
There is a lot in that.

Move to the right. So where does that leave the right? I think two factors will be critical.

First, a downturn in the world economy would be disastrous for labour-exporters like the Philippines. Mass unemployment in the West on the scale of that in the 1980s would slow labour migration, cutting off a critical safety valve. If bright, disenfranchised Filipinos are no longer able to seek change through the departure lounge of NAIA, they will seek it here.

Second, if the trend of the last five years continues, security seems likely to deteriorate still further. If the Philippines continues to slide slowly and sedately towards anarchy, the feeling that “something must be done” – the same sentiment that propelled Mayor Duterte to power on a “law and order” platform in Davao and won Ping Lacson a prominent position in national politics despite his human rights record – will strengthen.

Torn and Frayed on the Rise of the Right in the Philippines

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Manuel Quezon
October 12, 2004
Too few to go right

A recent entry in Torn and frayed in Manila muses on the possibility that the Philippines is ripe for revolution. In particular, a revolution, in Marcosian terms, "from the center" -or a swing to the right.

The bloggist concludes,

The Philippines is not going to take such a radical course as Germany in the 1920s, but many of the features that Bullock talks about ("the crumbling of familiar landmarks and accepted values and ... insecurity about its future") are already among us, making some form of "right-wing radicalism" attractive to a desperate middle class. Stand up Ping Lacson and Bayani Fernando -- your time is at hand.

The difficulties faced by any effort to get the country to "swing to the right" are many:

1. An upper class in danger can always summon money to its defence, as well as influence policy makers and politicians. Any succesful rightist effort, however, in the context of a constitutional democracy, requires public support. If a significant middle class exists, it can be convinced to share the fears of the upper class (loss of savings, dangers to the preservation of property, crumbling law and order).

2. However, the question in the Philippine context is: what middle class? The middle class at home is preparing to leave, or sinking into the ranks of the upper lower classes; the most capable of the middle class is already abroad. Worse still, middle class values and cohesion are being eroded by the bankruptcy of the educational system and the erosion of traditional middle class values, including the work ethic, because of the proven success of the get rich quick OFW mentality.

3. Either way, a succesful rightist effort requires some sort of mass base. The aspirations to social mobility -the desire of the poor to be middle class, if not rich- is one way. The other way is to simply manipulate the masses in order to serve the interests of, and protect, the upper and middle classes. The leftists have failed to generate mass enthusiasm for their ideals because of what I am convinced is the inherent entrepreneurial, if not actually rightist, mentality of many of the poor. The problem is, the right has not being able to use the selfishness of the individual, regardless of economic circumstance, to political effect.

4. Since the political class is dependent on public support, and since public support is based on a mendicant attitude, wealth is maintained through power which is, in turn, maintained through the bribery of the electorate, which is content to use the corruption of society to its advantage. Ironically, the need to bribe everyone makes political office, and thus power, more and more expensive -increasingly too expensive on a national scale. The political class has therefore clearly decided it's better off with small fiefdoms which are cheaper to maintain than national office: hence the efforts to go parliamentary and federal.

5. Because of this attitude among the political class, the upper and middle classes are poised to lose whatever leverage they may have. In a country of small fiefdoms, the already dwindling middle class becomes even more politically inconsequential, just as national mass movements, which both the left and the right need to influence the politicians, become irrelevant or ineffective.

Manuel Quezon Responds to Torn and Frayed

Philippine Cuisine?

Lake Taal

A couple or intriguing items have come up recently on blogs from the Philippines. First, why isn't Filipino food recognized outside the Philippines and barely even in Southeast Asia?

I was browsing the Google links to The Radical Chef when I came upon a cached page of an interview of the food editor of a local newspaper by a U.S. based online Filipino community paper. The subject was why, when someone mentions Asian cooking, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian and Malaysian cuisines are mentioned but not Philippine cuisine. I agree with the editor that it is not because Philippine cuisine is inferior. It is because we have not taken the proper steps in bringing our own cuisine, and the creativity of Filipino chefs and cooks, to the world’s attention. Despite modern technology that allows us to bring Filipino cooking shows to cable TV viewers all over the world, the recall value of Filipino dishes at the mention of Asian food remains low.

Sassy on Filipino Cuisine

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Isn’t it strange that I have been ranting about the misdirected attempts to promote Filipino cuisine when this little piece of news suddenly pops up...???

MANILA : The World Bank’s private sector financing arm will put some of the 100 million dollars it plans to invest in the Philippines into local fast food chain Jollibee Foods.

International Finance Corporation (IFC) country manager Vipul Bhagat told the BusinessWorld newspaper the body wants to help both the company expand in the provinces and entrepreneurs who want to run their own Jollibee restaurants. [Channel News Asia]

The provinces are the only places left where ethnic Filipino cuisine thrives and they’re about to be deluged with Jollibee. And then what? The future generations are supposed to define Filipino cuisine according to the Jollibee menu? Talk about killing the Filipino culture…

I honestly feel the need to barf.

Sassy on Jollibee

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September 29, 2004
Foodarama
In Filipino food, culture and identity, the Sassy Lawyer who is also rather a radical chef, writes about our failure to promote Filipino food.

Along the way there's an interesting exchange of views as to what "authentic" Filipino food is.

In New York City there is a Filipino restaurant called Cendrillon that has attempted to make Filipino food accessible to foreigners as fine cuisine.

In truth, the question as to why Filipino food hasn't gained popularity abroad, despite so many Filipinos living expatriate lives virtually everywhere on the planet, seems to bother many Filipinos.

A surprising number of Americans, because of the U.S. bases and the pockets of Filipino communities in the States, are familiar with lumpia and adobo and like it very much. Chances are, if Filipino food is discussed at all, it is lumpia and adobo that are mentioned and recipes for them printed: sometimes sinigang is included, too.

I asked a chef-writer friend why Filipino food doesn't catch on, and his reply (tongue in cheek or not) was that "our food is too brown," while most other people add that our food reeks of too much fat.

The question of fat, is, I think, crucial. It's too obviously there. Chinese cuisine may, perhaps, be as filled with bad cholesterol, but it isn't as obvious. Thai food seems positively a health nut's dream in comparison to ours. In contrast so many Filipino dishes positively glory in lumps and chunks of fat and fatty items.

The same chef-writer friend claims that Thai food was actually reinvented under the auspices of the 19th Century kings of Thailand, to make the food aesthetically pleasing to Westerners, if not to introduce certain concepts of preparation in vogue at the time. This was the genesis of my friend's "too brown" comment. In the presentation department, by Western standards, our food often lacks the combinations of color, texture, and then attention to presentation that obsesses the West (and Japanese), and which the Thais, if the royal edicts concerning food preparation are true, learned.

In Cendrillon in New York, the Filipino food is deprived of fat, and attentions is paid to presentation. There are Filipino chefs and gourmets at home who have been trying to do the same thing. But it has not caught on, and no "new Filipino" aesthetic when it comes to food has arisen.

Nor have attempts been made to study our food in order to preserve the flavors and mixtures that characterizes it, while purging it of its more unhealthy aspects. I remember telling friends when I first visited Bangkok that while we seemed so similar to the Thais, they stood out in marked contrast to us in the rarity of their pot bellies. Some friends argued this was a function of diet: at the time Thailand was still virtually at par with us economically, but they seemed to eat more healthily. Less meat, more vegetables. This segues into a story I heard from a Thai that about 20 years ago, concerned with the proliferation of farms growing poppy and marijuanna in the upland regions, the King embarked on a program to get farmers to plant vegetables, and prodded the government to establish a functioning and efficient transport network to get produce quickly and cheaply to urban centers. He also lobbied to reduce the number of middlemen and thus give the farmers greater profits.

The result was, according to the Thais, cheap and fresh vegetables for everyone, happier farmers who gave up on te drug trade, and a society that always has cheap food, which tides everyone over even when the economy is down.

Manuel Quezon Replys to Sassy

Southeast Asia News 28

Indonesia

Fugly Bali

"Bali the island paradise" is mostly a contradiction in terms, with one of the world's most corrupt governments, police forces and business community (being travel is the main industry, this means hotels, travel agents and tour operators). Unfortunately tourists, through ignorance or even selfish disinterest, are putting themselves, their family / friends, fellow travellers, the Balinese and Bali's culture / heritage at risk. This site is dedicated to making people aware of the problem, the often disgusting facts about Bali which are seldom made public, and how each and every visitor to Bali can help cure the problem (plus help keep themselves safe against crime, terrorism, disease and more).

What health risk?!
Bali's secret hoteliers
Are you booking into a hotel owned by the Suharto family?

Here you will find out what the risks and truth / effect is, and who or what to avoid. We will expose the Balinese "Mafia" police here, and why we believe they and the corrupt judiciary are the primary root cause for everyday undisclosed murders (including children), the promise of yet further terrorist attacks, stealing from tourists and other foreigners, and putting everyone in Bali's life at risk. We will name the hotels / businesses that have dubious connections and / or have acted against the Balinese, Bali's culture / heritage, tourists to Bali, etc. Please do not become a victim or part of the problem.

The Truth about Bali?

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Sunday October 10, 8:29 PM
Australian arrested in Bali for suspected drug smuggling

Indonesian police have arrested an Australian woman on suspicion she smuggled 4.2 kilograms (9.3 pounds) of marijuana to the tourist island of Bali, a customs official said Sunday. Schapelle Leigh Corby, 27, was arrested Saturday when she arrived at Bali's airport from Sydney. Customs officials said they noticed a bulge in her surfboard bag and found the marijuana inside.

"The narcotics test kit confirmed it was marijuana," said Slamet Rochim, chief of the airport's security. Corby initially denied the bag was hers but confessed when authorities produced a claim ticket with her name on it, he said. If convicted, Corby would face a sentence ranging from 20 years in jail to death.

Indonesia has severe penalties for drug use and smuggling, but poor law enforcement and corruption make it a lucrative location for drug deals. About 65 people _ mostly African and Asian nationals convicted of drug offenses _ are awaiting execution.

Last month, Indonesia executed two Thai nationals for drug offenses.

Looks Like a Set-up

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U.S. Criticizes Indonesia on Human Rights
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 11, 2004

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Departing U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce said Monday he regretted that Indonesia hasn't improved its human rights record enough to allow the resumption of military relations with the United States.

Washington curtailed ties with the Indonesian military in 1999, after Indonesian soldiers and proxy militia killed up to 1,500 people and destroyed much of East Timor when the half-island nation voted to break away from Indonesia.

The Bush administration wanted to normalize ties with the Indonesian military, which it sees as a key ally in the fight against terror, but Congress rejected the move. During a briefing with foreign reporters, Boyce expressed disappointment that U.S.-Indonesia military relations were still curtailed, saying he kept pushing Jakarta to prove that it had improved its human rights record.

But we don't have the material with which to seriously go to Congress and do that. It's a regret on my part,'' said Boyce, who takes up the post of ambassador of Thailand later this month. During his three years in Jakarta, Boyce chose low-key diplomacy over the confrontational style preferred by his predecessor Robert Gelbard, but human rights still topped his agenda.

When I arrived, a lot of Indonesians said that now that you're totally absorbed with the war on terror, presumably you won't be all over us on human rights the way you have been,'' he recalled. ``To which I said ... `Are you planning on violating human rights? If you do, we'll say something.' ``

Indonesia's military has long been accused of human rights violations throughout the country. Amnesty International recently accused soldiers of torture and extra-judicial killings in the insurgency-hit province of Aceh.

Although Jakarta did hold rights trials for some of those accused in the East Timor violence, 16 of the 18 government and military officials involved were acquitted. That sparked outrage among Western governments and rights groups who labeled the court a failure.

Boyce also called on Indonesia to arrest Anthonius Wamang, an alleged separatist rebel accused of playing a role in the August 2002 killing of two American school teachers near an U.S.-owned gold mine in Papua.

The failure to bring Wamang -- who has been indicted by a U.S. grand jury -- to justice is another factor blocking the resumption of full military ties between the United States and Indonesia, Western diplomats say. Indonesia has no extradition agreement with the United States, and it is unclear whether Jakarta would deliver Wamang to Washington if he was arrested.

Indonesian Human Rights Disappoint

Saturday Cat 7

Saturday Cat 7

Yeah, I know. It's Monday, but better late than never.

More than Just Friends

Say it's not true, Matt

Matt LeBlanc: Straight Gay-Guide Cover Model

As Matt LeBlanc Day on Defamer winds to a close, Towleroad provides an intriguing coda. They've unearthed the '90/'91 edition of the Spartacus International Gay Guide featuring a young, avowedly gay-sex-with-gay-hustlers-in-the-back-of-a-limo-free LeBlanc. We won't be so narrow-minded as to suggest this cover revelation changes the disposition of his strenuous denials of the rumors about his sexuality, it merely reinforces an opinion we've long held: A man in a letterman's jacket looks pretty gay.

And in other news completely unrelated to the sexuality of Matt LeBlanc, PETA has apparently joined forces with some beautifully naked lady from Australia and
started a new advertising campaign in Thailand. Something about Save the Baby Elephants, but I didn't notice.

Singapore Gets Wild!

Singapore Gets Wicked

Seems like a university class was having a group picture taken a few months ago, and a couple of the girls decided to spice things up. Both were canned and are now awaiting their death sentences.

More Wacky Singapore News:

Man sets record for burgers in mouth

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Spurred on by shouts of "shove it in, shove it in," 19-year-old Ezra Nicholas set a world record by stuffing more than three McDonald's hamburgers into his mouth - without swallowing - at the close of Singapore's contest to be the world's wackiest.

Nicholas jumped up, pumped his fists in the air and shouted, "Yes! I am the Burger King!" as he spat out the last bits of the 3 and one-fifth burgers that could put him in the Guinness Book of World Records.

"I just thought to myself, I've got to do this, I've got to do this," Nicholas said. "I'm on top of the world right now, because everyone's going to know that I can shove more than three burgers in my mouth!" The previous burger-stuffing record was set in 1998 by American Johnny Reitz, who squeezed three into his mouth without spitting or swallowing.

Over the weekend, 20 Singaporeans attempted to smash 10 unusual records and put the tiny island nation on the map. But they only broke two. On Saturday, 50-year-old Jeffery Koh became the world's fastest eater of dry biscuits by swallowing three cream crackers in a mere 14.45 seconds, smashing the previous mark of 49.15 seconds set by Britain's Ambrose Mendy in 2002.

But other attempts over the weekend failed, ranging from the fastest to drink a 14-ounce bottle of ketchup through a straw to the longest paper airplane flight. Some suffered the agony of defeat.

One contestant crashed into a pole and cut his forehead as he raced to push an orange with his nose over a mile in the fastest time. Others reported bruised knees and elbows. Koh said Sunday his biscuit-eating efforts had left blisters in his mouth, hampering his burger-stuffing abilities. He could only stuff a little more than two burgers in his mouth before gagging and spitting them out.

Contestants also fought to:
- do the most push-ups in a minute;
- pick up the most Smarties - a brand of candy-coated chocolates - with plastic chopsticks in the fastest time;
- talk the fastest backward;
- make the longest paper doll chain; and
- say the most words in a minute

Four judges were flown in from Australia, and all record-breaking feats will be submitted to the Guinness Book of Records.

Southeast Asia News 27

Naw, not really...

I've got some spare URLs laying around my Favorites, so I'll post a few things of posssible interest.

The Sultan of Brunei has announced plans to reopen Parliament, after a delay of some 20 years, but nobody really expects any great changes. Why in the world would he ever give up all that money and power?


Friday September 24, 4:55 PM
Substance abuse in Asia-Pacific gives rise to social-health problems: WHO

MANILA, (AFP) - Growing affluence in the Asia-Pacific region has been accompanied by rising substance abuse, partly helping spread the deadly AIDS virus, said a World Health Organisation (WHO) report. Asia has the largest share of treatment centers for amphetamine-type stimulant (ATS) abusers in the world with 18 percent of the global total, the report said.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime lists amphetamines, notably methamphetamine, as the major problem drug in Thailand, the Philippines, Japan and South Korea. UN data shows an estimated 3.3 million injecting drug users in Asia, and in a number of countries, this is largely driving the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Alcohol, cannabis, opium, heroin are the major drugs of abuse in India.

A report published by the UN drugs office and India's Ministry of Social Justice estimates 62.5 million users of alcohol, 8.75 million of cannabis, two million of opiates and 600,000 of hypnotics or sedatives in that country.

The report concluded that between 17 percent and 25 percent of these people could be classified as dependent users who need urgent treatment. South East Asia is "plagued" by high levels of ATS and injecting drug users, as well as a dramatic increase in alcohol consumption, according to the WHO's regional director Dr. Samlee Plianbangchang.

"A recent trend is increase in glue, petrol and solvent sniffing. A disturbing observation is that more and more young people are being drawn into this devastating habit," he said.

"Many developing countries in the region are experiencing rapid social and economic changes, resulting in the greater availability of a wide range of different psychoactive substances -- everything from tobacco to illicit drugs," said Shigeru Omi, WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific.

Another drug story from Southeast Asia:

MALAYSIA: Malaysia bans 'opium-idolising' song by Cantopop diva Faye Wong

Malaysia has banned a song by Hong Kong pop diva Faye Wong on the grounds that it idolises opium-smoking

South China Morning Post
Thursday, September 23, 2004

Malaysia has banned a song by Hong Kong pop diva Faye Wong on the grounds that it idolises opium-smoking, the internal security ministry said in reports published on Thursday.

The Cantonese song, entitled "In the name of Love", was among 33 items including 28 Chinese books published in Hong Kong and Taiwan to be banned because they were considered morally harmful, the official Bernama news agency said.

The Sun newspaper quoted a spokesman for distributor Sony Music as saying the song, which was the title track of Wong's latest album released early this year, was banned because of one line in the lyrics about opium-smoking.

The company would remove the offending track from the album before remarketing it, the spokesman said. So far more than 10,000 copies of the album have been sold locally, the newspaper said.

Wong, who is popular among Malaysia's six million ethnic Chinese, gave a sold-out concert in Kuala Lumpur last April.

Mainly-Muslim Malaysia has strict censorship laws, often banning songs with foul language and cutting or axing films deemed too sexy or touching on sensitive issues. It banned a total of 1,582 foreign films between 2000 and May 2004.

Bad news about Malaysia and graft politics:

Malaysia's Abdullah firmly entrenched but graft claims dog party meet
Sun Sep 26, 2:49 AM ET Asia - AFP

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi consolidated his 11-month leadership at the just-concluded congress of Malaysia's ruling party, with a new team in place and former premier-in-waiting Anwar Ibrahim exiled to the opposition wilderness.

But allegations of vote-buying after surprising results in triennial top-level elections tarnished the annual convention of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), and given Anwar an avenue to make a comeback on a campaign of democratic reforms, observers say.

Abdullah was officially endorsed as UMNO president at the congress after taking over from Mahathir Mohamad who retired last October. He issued a strong warning to the party's 3.2 million members to shun "money politics" or risk losing political dominance.

"UMNO is our political strength. We must avoid any problems that can weaken UMNO. All these things, such as money politics, cannot be allowed to happen. Let Malays live with dignity," he said late Saturday in wrapping up the three-day congress.

UMNO heads the multiracial ruling coalition which has been in power since independence from Britain in 1957. Claims of vote buying emerged after unexpected results for three UMNO vice-president (VP) posts and the defeat of some ministers in the Supreme Council, the top policy-making body.

Terrorism Hub in Southeast Asia: Southern Philippines

AUSTRALIA REPORT TAGS SOUTHERN RP AS ASIA'S NERVE CENTER FOR TERROR

MANILA, September 22 , 2004 (STAR) By Marvin Sy - The southern Philippines has been tagged as the nerve center of regional terrorism, an Australian newspaper, quoting Australian intelligence documents, reported yesterday. The Australian said the Southeast Asian-based regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) has had ties with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf for almost 20 years.

The documents were supposedly a compilation of interviews with a senior JI defector and other sources which confirmed suspicions on the existence of two training camps of the MILF located in the dense jungles of Mindanao for JI recruits. Most of the information were culled from the supposed confession of Mohammed Nassir bin Abbas, the former leader of the main camp being used to train JI members.

The documents show the alliance began in 1985 in Pakistan during a meeting with Indonesian cleric Abdullah Sungkar and MILF chairman Hashim Salamat, who died last year. JI leader Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, was said to have consolidated the links among the three groups. The documents allegedly contained information on the MILF members who were teaching gunsmith skills to JI trainees.

Around seven JI members were reportedly sent to Mindanao in 2000 to learn how to make handguns, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and pen guns. The newspaper report noted Nassir’s claims that JI leader Zulkifli bin Mohamed Jaffar established a link with Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khaddafi Janjalani. The bandit group leader was said to have given Zulkifli P100,000 to bomb the airport in Cotabato City in 2003.

Three subsequent bombings in the region were also attributed to Zulkifli even as the Philippine security officials initially blamed the MILF over the incidents. Ranking MILF leaders were subsequently spared from prosecution after the Philippine government, in an effort to win back the MILF to the peace negotiations, decided to drop the criminal charges against them.

Philippine security officials claimed the JI training camps in Mindanao have ceased to exist as early as four years ago when the government started negotiations with the MILF. According to Nassir, around 40 JI members were in Mindanao last February, half of whom trained at Camp Jabal Quba, the training camp he used to command. Nassir claimed to have trained 540 militants a year until early 1998.

A white paper released by the Australian government last July said that the Abu Sayyaf was forging ties with the MILF and that it was evolving into an international terror organization. In the report of Rohan Gunaratna of Singapore’s Institute and Defense Studies, it said that as long as the training camps in Mindanao exist, the JI will continue to exist.

Singapore security officials said the JI stepped up its militant orientation with increased number of reconnaissance and surveys of potential targets. The change in orientation was initiated by Hambali who reportedly wanted the JI to convert all its "missionary" cells into operations cells.

Singapore officials said the JI planned to send as many men as possible for training abroad, particularly in Mindanao in southern Philippines. Over the past few days, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer announced their plans to take preemptive strikes against suspected terror camps across the Southeast Asian region, including those in the Philippines.

Australian officials have explained at great length that any action for preemptive strikes will have to be coordinated with the government concerned.

More Trouble in the Philippines

Muslim Rebels To Push For Self-rule In Talks With Philippine Government
SULTAN KUDARAT, Philippines, (AFP) - Muslim separatist rebels plan to press Philippine government for self-governance and recognition of their "ancestral domain" to end their insurgency, a top leader told AFP.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) deputy chief Ghazali Jaafar, speaking in his heavily fortified home on the southern island of Mindanao, said Manila should acknowledge that the Bangsamoro (Muslim people) historically ruled the south of this mostly Roman Catholic country.

Negotiations with the government of President Gloria Arroyo have so far led to a ceasefire and agreements to cooperate on flushing out foreign militants from MILF strongholds. But when the talks resume in October, they are likely to include political and economic issues.

"We are not negotiating for surrender," said Jaafar, sitting under the insurgents' flag and closely guarded by two guerrillas wielding M16 assault rifles. "But we have been fighting for three decades and it is time we find a solution." Joining the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is "unacceptable" because it has been a failure and does not reflect "the will of the Bangsamoro," he said.

The ARMM was created when the former Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), from which the MILF split in 1978, signed a peace pact with government in 1996. It now consists of four mainly Muslim provinces and a city on Mindanao, which remains poor despite the millions of dollars poured into it.

Many roads remain unpaved, and while a few shopping centers have been built, they are owned by settlers from elsewhere. Unlicensed guns and private militias of rival warlords add to the problem. "The so-called ARMM is not a real autonomy. It did not have power and answers still to the Manila government. It also did not contribute to the improvement in the lives of Muslims," Jaafar said. "Look around you, we are still a poor people."

Phil in Hong Kong Seeks Hello Kitty Magnets

Phil in Hong Kong seeks Hello Kitty Magnets

Words completely fail me. Phil, a blogger in Hong Kong, generally writes about political issues and other idiocies (idiocities) about expat life in the former British enclave. Today, he comes clean about his secret fetish. This photo of his refrigerator reveals his deepest, darkest secret: Hello Kitty Magnets. Good for you, Phil. I wish you best of luck to find those elusive, missing Hello Kitty magnets, and I expect ongoing reports. This could be the start of something really, really big.

Phil is my new hero.

Phil in Hong Kong Needs Hello Kitty Magnets

Paris Hilton Blog

Paris Hilton Blog

I've just been looking at the liberal blogs on the internet, and think I'm going to throw up. Paris Hilton does not yet have a personal daily blog, but she should certainly start one to shut down the NY Post and other trashy daily-ies that make tons of cash on her public fancies. And to do something about the sad and dismal affair of the blogsphere.

Blogs are now almost totally dominated by right-wing idiots and pundits who offer up their daily barrage of garbage and unsubstantiated gossip to the world public, who have small idea their agenda or psychological frame of mind. The Drudge dot coms wanna bee's are appealing to the lowest common denominator and make their living touting old tactics once used by pundits such as Senator McCarthy during his days as ruler of the roost. They are unfair and unbalanced. Instapundit and Buzz Machine lead the list.

But the liberal blogsphere isn't much better. Koz and Atrios are good, but others are often just plain boring. In the interest of being polite and kind and even-handed, liberal blogs are mostly pablum, and so are incredibly bad. I keep trying to read the blogs at Mother Jones and Reason, and often need to puke or take more coffee to keep awake. When will they wake up? Liberal opinion is healthy and there's an audience for people sick and tired of right-wing blogopundits.

The Bush War in Iraq

Bill O' Poster in New York City

Iraq: Politics or Policy?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 3, 2004

Sorry, I've been away writing a book. I'm back, so let's get right down to business: We're in trouble in Iraq.

I don't know what is salvageable there anymore. I hope it is something decent and I am certain we have to try our best to bring about elections and rebuild the Iraqi Army to give every chance for decency to emerge there. But here is the cold, hard truth: This war has been hugely mismanaged by this administration, in the face of clear advice to the contrary at every stage, and as a result the range of decent outcomes in Iraq has been narrowed and the tools we have to bring even those about are more limited than ever.

What happened? The Bush team got its doctrines mixed up: it applied the Powell Doctrine to the campaign against John Kerry - "overwhelming force" without mercy, based on a strategy of shock and awe at the Republican convention, followed by a propaganda blitz that got its message across in every possible way, including through distortion. If only the Bush team had gone after the remnants of Saddam's army in the Sunni Triangle with the brutal efficiency it has gone after Senator Kerry in the Iowa-Ohio-Michigan triangle. If only the Bush team had spoken to Iraqis and Arabs with as clear a message as it did to the Republican base. No, alas, while the Bush people applied the Powell Doctrine in the Midwest, they applied the Rumsfeld Doctrine in the Middle East. And the Rumsfeld Doctrine is: "Just enough troops to lose." Donald Rumsfeld tried to prove that a small, mobile army was all that was needed to topple Saddam, without realizing that such a limited force could never stabilize Iraq. He never thought it would have to. He thought his Iraqi pals would do it. He was wrong.

For all of President Bush's vaunted talk about being consistent and resolute, the fact is he never established U.S. authority in Iraq. Never. This has been the source of all our troubles. We have never controlled all the borders, we have never even consistently controlled the road from Baghdad airport into town, because we never had enough troops to do it.

Being away has not changed my belief one iota in the importance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq, to help move the Arab-Muslim world off its steady slide toward increased authoritarianism, unemployment, overpopulation, suicidal terrorism and religious obscurantism. But my time off has clarified for me, even more, that this Bush team can't get us there, and may have so messed things up that no one can. Why? Because each time the Bush team had to choose between doing the right thing in the war on terrorism or siding with its political base and ideology, it chose its base and ideology. More troops or radically lower taxes? Lower taxes. Fire an evangelical Christian U.S. general who smears Islam in a speech while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army or not fire him so as not to anger the Christian right? Don't fire him. Apologize to the U.N. for not finding the W.M.D., and then make the case for why our allies should still join us in Iraq to establish a decent government there? Don't apologize - for anything - because Karl Rove says the "base" won't like it. Impose a "Patriot Tax" of 50 cents a gallon on gasoline to help pay for the war, shrink the deficit and reduce the amount of oil we consume so we send less money to Saudi Arabia? Never. Just tell Americans to go on guzzling. Fire the secretary of defense for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, to show the world how seriously we take this outrage - or do nothing? Do nothing. Firing Mr. Rumsfeld might upset conservatives. Listen to the C.I.A.? Only when it can confirm your ideology. When it disagrees - impugn it or ignore it.

What I resent so much is that some of us actually put our personal politics aside in thinking about this war and about why it is so important to produce a different Iraq. This administration never did. Mr. Kerry's own views on Iraq have been intensely political and for a long time not well thought through. But Mr. Kerry is a politician running for office. Mr. Bush is president, charged with protecting the national interest, and yet from the beginning he has run Iraq policy as an extension of his political campaign.

Friends, I return to where I started: We're in trouble in Iraq. We have to immediately get the Democratic and Republican politics out of this policy and start honestly reassessing what is the maximum we can still achieve there and what every American is going to have to do to make it happen. If we do not, we'll end up not only with a fractured Iraq, but with a fractured America, at war with itself and isolated from the world.

Japan, not Harajuku

Saturday Cat 6

Saturday Cat 6

Blogspot Delays

Singapore Ladies

I've been having some problems this week posting with BlogSpot and placing pictures with Hello, but I seem to be working out the tricks and will hopefully be back in business soon.