The weekly “we’re not going to have a coup” article from the Bangkok Post

Air Force chief Chalit Phukphasuk
The following article was written in the Bangkok Post online today.

I become increasingly puzzled as to why the newspaper keeps writing and printing these articles in which senior military people say that there will be no coup. Maybe it’s just so that when they (inevitably) have the next one, the journalists, historians, bloggers and commenters can point to how recently the military said there won’t be one.

I mean really, is it news?

no substitute for CNN

I have let the past six days go past without mentioning the cyclone in Burma that has been so destructive there. I hate to admit it, but I was unaware of it as a current event when it happened. I was enjoying a couple of days of self-indulgence and didn’t watch CNN or read the newspaper on line.

The first I knew was on Tuesday morning when I went to my Thai class. For some reason, the teacher started to discuss it; it may have been just to teach us the word for cyclone (paayoo = ’storm’, paayoo fon = rain storm, paayoo hima = snow storm, paayoo saai = sandstorm)

In any event, a student commented that there seemed to be 3 or 4 hundred people killed. My teacher corrected her, saying that the estimate had been raised and it was 3 or 4,000. We all tut-tutted and shook our heads, thankful for a moment that the tragedy was 1000 or more kilometers away.