Sign of the times

30 July 2010

This was probably inevitable in the current economic climate in Dubai and it is hard to dress it up as anything other than another sign of Dubai coming to grips with reality.

The organisers of one of the Gulf’s biggest annual conferences, Leaders in Dubai, has confirmed the event will not take place this year.

IIR Middle East is salvaging this for now by saying that it will become a bi-annual event, the next forum taking place in October 2011. That gives a year's breathing space before any decision need to made about 2011.

This has been a high profile event; a high priced networking that has seen previous speakers such as Al Gore, Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell, Jack Welch and Kofi Annan.

IIR Middle East has denied that the decision to restructure the conference schedule was made in view of Dubai’s economic difficulties. But presumably if there were no economic problems then the conference would have marched on.

Thai probe of journalist deaths called inadequate

30 July 2010 - Associated Press

Thailand's government has failed to properly investigate the shooting deaths of two journalists killed while they covered recent political violence, and the perpetrators of those attacks should be brought to justice, a press freedom group said Thursday.

The Committee to Protect Journalists concluded in a seven-page report that both the government and protesters during March-May demonstrations "engaged in lethal recklessness that led to the deaths of two journalists" and injured nine other media members.

The New York-based group alleged that initial government investigations and even the autopsies of the two men were "incomplete and opaque" and that investigations by embassies, victims' relatives and news organizations had been obstructed or denied access to information.

CPJ called on the government to complete the official autopsies and police investigations into the deaths, fully investigate cases of injured journalists and to open relevant information to independent probes.

According to the CPJ report, Sek Wannamethee, the second-ranking diplomat at the Thai Embassy in the U.S., said in a written response that the government regretted the loss of life and was committed to investigating fully and impartially.

CPJ cited some two dozen journalist witnesses to the violence in alleging government troops several times "fired in a random manner into crowds of apparently unarmed demonstrators, frequently in areas where reporters were present." The witnesses also saw "heavily armed, black-clad protesters who fired gunshots and launched grenades at troops deployed in areas where journalists were positioned."

Italian freelance photographer Fabio Polenghi, 48, was shot dead May 19 as troops moved to quash the 10-week protests in central Bangkok. The CPJ report said his family was dissatisfied at the government's response, including a failure to provide an official autopsy report despite repeated requests.

The report said a similar lack of clarity attended the April 10 death of Hiro Muramoto, 43, a Japanese cameraman for Reuters. Muramoto was among about two dozen people who died in the first armed clashes between troops and the protesters. In all, nearly 90 people died, most of them protesters.

The report said that an investigation by Reuters found that Muramoto "was shot almost certainly by a high velocity bullet fired at street level while standing in a street between Thai troops and red shirt protesters," contradicting an earlier government suggestion that a rooftop sniper on the protesters' side was responsible.

CPJ also cited an unnamed Bangkok-based diplomat as saying the government refused to release closed-circuit television footage surveillance of the April 10 violence that might shed light on Muramoto's death.

The report also called for the government to lift censorship of the media that was imposed under a state of emergency declared during the protests.
 

LinkedIn dollars

28 July 2010

Facebook may be the multi-billion-dollar IPO everyone is hungry for, but investors should not discount the business acumen of the business social network.

On Tuesday this week, hedge fund Tiger Global Management made a US$20-million investment in LinkedIn, giving the New York-based investment firm a 1% stake in the company at a value of US$21.50 per share. The shares were acquired from an existing investor, meaning the deal does not represent a new investment in LinkedIn.

According to SharesPost, a website that tracks the value of private companies, LinkedIn still has 105 million shares outstanding. At US21.50 per share, that gives the “professional network” a total valuation of US$2.26-billion.

Compared to a recent estimate of more than US$30-billion for Facebook’s potential valuation, and LinkedIn still appears to be the junior player among the social media heavyweights. Though that could make LinkedIn, which is expected to go public soon, even more attractive to potential investors.

“It’s relatively low risk for these companies to buy pre- IPO and gives them the benefit that generally they’re going to trade up,” Ted Hollifield, a partner with Dorsey & Whitney LLP, told Bloomberg on Tuesday.

Last December, Tiger Global bought shares of Zynga Game Network Inc. as part of a US$180-million deal that included Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies, which also recently invested in Facebook. Zynga, by far the world’s largest online social gaming enterprise, has an estimated valuation of more than US$4-billion.

Other investors in LinkedIn include Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners. The company has raised more than US$76-million in funds since 2008, most of which still remains in the bank.

As LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner once put it: “We don’t need the capital.”

Well, not yet anyway.

The value of a huge netowork of business professionals must be significant; and make the fickle social media network users on Facebook and MySpace look less than interesting.
 

Escape at Riyadh

27 July 2010

A Lufthansa Cargo MD-11 freighter, registration D-ALCQ performing flight GEC-8460 from Frankfurt/Main (Germany) to Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) with 2 crew and 80 tons of goods, veered left off the runway and broke into two parts and burst into flames while landing at Riyadh's runway 33L at 11:38L (08:38Z). The airplane came to a stand still on soft ground just off the left hand runway edge. The captain and first officer received injuries and were taken to local hospitals. Fire fighters were able to extinguish the fire, that broke out in the center area of the aircraft, front and rear portion were visibly not consumed by the fire.

The airport reported, that fire fighters were able to contain the fire.

Aviation sources in Riyadh reported, that the crew declared emergency reporting a cargo fire indication while on approach to Riyadh.

Observers on the ground said, that the airplane was already trailing smoke while on final approach.

Saudi Arabia's Civil Aviation Authority confirmed the crew arriving from Frankfurt (Germany) declared emergency reporting a cargo fire inside the aircraft while on approach and landed at 11:38L (08:38Z). An investigation is under way.

That MD-11 is a difficult airplane to land and Lufthansa's pilots are among the best trained. It looks like they did a great job to bring down a plane that was already alight.
 

One rule for some

27 July 2010

So the yellow shirts are back on the street. PAD protesters today submitted a note to UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) protesting against Cambodia's bid to list Preah Vihear Temple as World Heritage Site.

The protest included about 1,000 people; who gathered in front of Unesco's Bangkok regional office from 10am. They were led by yellow shirts leaders; Chamlong Srimuang and Chaiwat Sinsuwongse. They vowed to stay on until 3pm. They may stay overnight.

The same yellow shirt leaders who occupied the airport in 2008 and have never been charged.

I am confused by the report as the Hindu temple near the Thai-Cambodian border was already listed in July 2008 as a World Heritage Site. Thailand has been lobbying member countries to delay Phnom Penh's management plan owing to border disputes in areas adjacent to the temple.

The rally on Tuesday is clearly more than five people defiance of the state of emergency which has been imposed in Bangkok and other provinces. But there is no sign that the government will take any action.

Meanwhile MCOT is reporting that the DSI will submit terrorism-related cases involving 26 Red Shirt leaders, guards and Bhumjaithai party bombing suspects to prosecutors on July 30. Nothing yet on the airport closures from almost two years ago.

As I said; one rule for some.

Let's hear it for Chongqing's lawmakers

26 July 2010

In a new law parents in one Chinese city are to be prevented from snooping on their children's online activity and text messages.

Adults, including family members, are banned from searching through children's computers or phones under a new regional law passed in Chongqing, southwest China, state media reported in China today. The regulation outlaws snooping into their emails, text messages, web chats, and browser history. The regulation is designed to protect the rights of children, but is surprising given widespread concern in China about excessive internet use among young people and their access to unsuitable material.

The Chongqing Evening Post described the new regulation, adopted on Friday by officials in Chongqing, as the first of its kind in the country. Other Chinese media said it expanded an existing national rule. But both experts and children doubted whether it would have an impact in practice.

Still, I like the concept. It should be immediately extended to spouses and other family members. The world would be a far less paranoid place.

Eleven-year-old Song Jingbo, from Xi'an, told the newspaper he did not think his mother and father would be able to access his data anyway, adding: "I am far more internet savvy than them."

China has the largest population of internet users in the world and minors alone account for more 126 million of them, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

A Thailand update

25 July 2010

To a foreigner vacationing in Thailand all probably appears normal. Hotels and bars are open (though I assume the bars will close for Buddhist lent) The malls are packed. The media is debating the length of female student skirts. PM Abhisit is trumpeting economic growth. And the Culture Ministry, Nipit Intarasombut, has said that excessive use of Facebook, Twitter and mobile phone messages distorts the Thai language.

So back to normal then ?

If you have any interest in Thai politics or the future of Thailand then you need to see what is going on behind the scenes. Scratch away the veneer and you see Thailand lurching towards a Burmese style military junta in suits.

By-election

There is a by-election in Bangkok Constituency 6 today.  The two key candidates are Korkaew Pikulthong of the Puea Thai Party and Panich Vikitset for the Democats. But Korkaew has had to run his campaign  from behind bars at the Bangkok Remand Prison

Meanwhile the state of emergency decree obstructs any fair vote campaigning or rallies and the red shirt media has been all but closed down. What is left is the media that favours the government. The prime minister and ministers campaign in Bangkok 6 accompanied by reporters and government officials. While Korkaew resorts to distributing cds from prison. He has not yet been charged with anything.

Bizarrely the Bangkok Post even quotes the the results of a Police Special Branch poll of voting intention. Why is the Police Special Branch polling voters? To intimidate?

The constituency is considered Democrat territory, and the party is also counting on a backlash caused by the violence associated with the Red Shirt movement, culminating with arson at 30-odd locations as their protest ended on May 19.

"The race is very important for both parties because the result, as well as the margin won, will be seen as a symbolic statement in a tense and divided political landscape," said Karn Yuenyong, the director of the independent Siam Intelligence Unit said to Reuters.

The exit poll suggest a Democrta win; but the guy locked up in jail still is likely to get 50% of the vote. If this was an up country by-election the Democrats would be buried.

Leg irons and chains

Now the next issue truly alarms me. At his worst PM Abhisit is all talk. He says something and does nothing.

His latest reporting as though he is some sort of humanitarian hero is that the PM is "ready to consider" a proposal that would see leg irons and chains removed from detainees held on charges in connection with the recent political violence.

People held in leg irons and chains without being charged and without access to legal representation. This is from the middle ages; not an enlightened civilized democracy. Criticism grew in Thailand last week when photos were released showing two injured red shirt supporters chained to their beds at Police General Hospital.

Mr Abhisit said he "welcomed the proposal", but that he "would have to review its details". Then avoiding taking any decision at all he said "if a proposal is submitted to him, he would relay it to the Corrections Department, which is responsible for looking after prisoners".

This is the same Abhisit who claims that  the government is doing all it can to protect people's rights. The reality is that Abhisit and his government are responsible for a huge roll-back of rights and freedoms in Thailand.

An army to control the reds

Meanwhile to police the red shirts in the north the Defence Ministry and the army plan to establish a 7th Infantry Division (of 20,000 troops) based in Chiang Mai at a cost to the taxpayer of about 10 billion baht spent over five years, starting next year.

An army is necessary to control the reds as the police are generally regarded as red shirt sympathisers.

The army is also asking for a 5 billion baht procurement for 121 armoured personnel carriers; a 350 million baht reconnaissance airship (a balloon!); 134 million baht to order 1,200 Mini Tavor rifles for special warfare soldiers and the 1st Army; and 16 Enstrom 480B light helicopters costing 1.2 billion baht. The Bangkok Post says that these "controversial major military procurements and projects have been endorsed or are awaiting approval ahead of the coming retirement of army chief Gen Anupong Paojinda".

SoE

The State of Emergency still exists across much of Thailand - it may gradually be removed in the provinces, but something that should be the exception appears to now be the norm in Bangkok.  Permanent secretary of the Ministry of Defence General Apichart Penkitti is quoted in the Bangkok Post as saying that he “believes the political activities of the Puea Thai Party and the red shirts still pose a threat…”. Apparently the general is worried about a birthday party for the absent Thaksin Shinawatra.

Getting the government message

My quick and not very scientific survey of taxi drivers and golf caddies is that they do not like Abhisit or the army. "Thaksin good" is a recurring theme. The professional classes in Bangkok shudder at the thought of any further protests. But even they see a certain heavy handedness in the government crackdown. And the shopping classes - and there are many such people truly don't care as long as Central World is rebuilt quickly.

Thaksin strikes back

23 July 2010

Thaksin for once appears to have hired advisors who know what they are doing and whose work is researched, thorough and credible.

On his own Thaksin was struggling to manage the media message. His twittering was incomprehensible. His thaksinlive website aimed more at a Thai audience, where it is blocked anyway, rather than the international media and decision makers.

So this week, and some two months after the Thai military crushed the red shirt protest at Rajaprasong, Thaksin Shinawatra's team of international lawyers, headed by Robert Amsterdam of law firm Amsterdam & Peroff LLP, has issued a detailed 80-page document on the origins of the Thai crisis, Thaksin’s rise and fall, the red and yellow movements, and the violence that erupted in Bangkok in April and May, killing 90 and wounding hundreds.

Amsterdam says Thaksin has asked his firm to advise the Thai lawyers defending red shirt protesters arrested in recent months. This document forms part of the defence.

Amsterdam calls for "truth, accountability and genuine elections as prerequisites for real and lasting reconciliation in Thailand.” As my Aussie friends would say he is probably pissing in the wind.

This government will do all they can to ensure that public opinion views the violence as a red shirt issue sponsored and driven by Thaksin and his supporters.

The white paper is not, of course, a neutral account of Thailand’s crisis. After all Thaksin is paying lawyers to produce it. Amsterdam works for Thaksin and Thaksin is cast as a champion of democracy in Thailand. That's the biggest problem with the credibility of the document. If it was not sponsored by Thaksin it would be so much easier to be sympathetic.

But, as Andrew Marshall rightly comments for Reuters, "Amsterdam’s analysis is a comprehensive and well-researched document of a quality far superior to the embarrassingly unsophisticated invective that tends to dominate the debate in Thailand from the pro-establishment side. It is recommended reading, and for those who disagree with it, the challenge is to come up with a document of similar quality, rather than falling back once again on angry and empty condemnations."

You can read it here.

One key quote noted by Andrew Marshall is on page 32: On October 8 2008 as leader of the Democrats Abhisit had this to say about PPP Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin’s brother-in-law:

“For all that has happened, the PM cannot deny his responsibility, either by negligence or intention. What is even worse than laying the blame on the authorities is vilifying the people. I have never thought that we would have a state which has the people killed and seriously injured, and then accuses the people of the crimes. This is unacceptable. I have heard those in the government always asking people if they are Thai or not. Considering what you are doing now, it is not a question of being Thai or not, but whether you are human at all.”

In less than 2 years he appears guilty of presiding over even worse acts than those he so roundly condemned. And if anyone cares why I dislike Abhisit it is because he appears to have once been a decent man who has sacrificed decency and honesty for power.

Leaving Asia's shade

23 July 2010 - The Economist

"Fifteen months after we launched our column on Asia, the current Banyan is moving on. At the launch, readers and colleagues chipped in with a dire prediction. Banyan would find Asia had little in common with itself, a mere congeries of nations and occasional failed states. However defined, Asia was a geographical accident, a Western construct. Banyan himself, readers charged, entertained the fantasies of a fevered colonial mind.

Yet after plenty of roaming, the prediction has failed to come true. The case for treating Asia as a shared space, falling under a columnist’s purview, is only reinforced. But let’s be blunt: no serious project for integration is close to existing. It is inconceivable that South Korea or the Philippines would have cheered, say, Bangladesh in the World Cup, as most of Africa roared for Ghana.

What a huge chunk of Asia does have in common is a joint adventure, namely the pursuit of materialism based on rapid economic development. The optimism is striking. Tomorrow may look different from today, but everyone agrees that it is likely to be better. The optimism is usually justified. Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan have joined, or are joining, Japan among the ranks of rich countries. Malaysia and Thailand, once dirt-poor, are now middle-income countries. China has lifted 250m-odd out of poverty. Health, a good education, the pursuit of happiness: hundreds of millions of Asians can now aspire to these.

The shorthand for all this, the “Asian miracle”, used to be a littoral phenomenon, confined to East and South-East Asia and tied via the shipping container to Western markets. But now the miracle is powerfully reshaping the continental land mass and old perceptions with it. India’s new rates of growth, nearly matching China’s, are part of this. So too is the transcontinental development of roads, railways and pipelines, laid at a dizzying pace.

Places once indifferent to each other in economic terms—think of India and China, or South Korea and Central Asia—are waking up to the possibilities of exchange. That is binding Asia closer together. It is also plugging Asia, even its remoter parts, into the energy markets of the Middle East and consumer markets farther afield. There may be, as Kipling said, “no ’busses runnin’ from the Bank to Mandalay”. But railway planners talk of a two-day high-speed trip from Shanghai to London by 2025.

Infectious optimism, but the following dampens it. Asian growth belches out greenhouse gases. In the ten years to 2008 Asia’s energy use grew by 70%. The future is coal-based: half of Asia’s primary energy consumption, and 70% of China’s, is coal.

Development is laying waste to the region’s natural richness. The Chinese miracle is built on a raw, bulldozed landscape of unrelenting horror. In Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, once-vast stands of virgin forest are gone. Laos and Myanmar (“Elephints a-pilin’ teak”) are now going the same way. Asia’s sushi fad bodes ill for the bluefin tuna even on the far side of the world.

And a model of development that excels at laying down highways and throwing up factories is less good at ensuring “inclusive” growth and social protection. Success is inequitably shared. Every new villa for rich Chinese shunts poorer Chinese out of the way. Extreme poverty remains widespread. Researchers at Oxford University claim that more poor people live in eight states of India than in the 26 poorest African countries combined.

Lastly, Asia has its failed, rogue and nuclear-tipped states, none ghastlier than North Korea. Asia has a dozen or more insurgencies and civil conflicts before even considering Afghanistan, a problem for the rest of Asia as much as for the West.

And Asia has its share of killing fields. On July 26th in Cambodia, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, will hear his sentence as former commandant of Tuol Sleng, the Khmer Rouge prison which 14,000 entered and barely a dozen left. If punished, he will be an Asian exception. In Timor-Leste, there has been no real reckoning of how 200,000 died at the hands of the Indonesian army and its agents. In Sri Lanka a triumphalist government brooks neither an investigation into its defeat of the Tamil Tigers last year, when perhaps 20,000 Tamil civilians died, nor even the slightest attempt at reconciliation. Bulldozing the traces of the recent past does not build strong foundations for the future.

For these reasons, whenever optimism has turned to political arrogance, alarm bells have rung for Banyan. Asians are right to be proud of their region’s resilience in the global financial crisis. Leaders are right to feel in their gut what the West grasps only superficially, that the crisis has hastened the “rise of the rest”.

But leaders are wrong when they conclude that success is based on some enlightened Asian political way. Those who think this tend to reside in more or less authoritarian states, with stunted political development, directing the economy with a strong hand. Such authoritarianism is particularly good at generating, along with the growth, the negative consequences of expansion, corruption included. It is hard to see how that qualifies authoritarians above others to clean up the mess, particularly in ways that are socially just.

Political stuntedness is now Asia’s biggest problem. China, in particular, fails to explain how democracy with Chinese characteristics—democracy without multiparty elections, the separation of powers and the rule of law—is better than the ordinary sort. Nor in the internet age is employing a police state to censor what people may know an effective use of taxpayers’ money. Call these the musings of a fevered mind. Yet, for all Asia’s shortcomings, Banyan greatly regrets his going:

“For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say: Come you back, you British columnist; come you back to Mandalay!”"

Not normal in Bangkok

23 July 2010

it is interesting to think how Banyan's message in the Economist (see above) equates so well to the situation in Thailand - and political stuntedness is a great description of the direction-less state of the country.

Thailand is still under the grip of an army managed democrat government; a state of emergency still exists and the CRES still appears to be making all the important decisions.

Suranand Vejjajiva served in the Thaksin Shinawatra cabinet and is now a political analyst. In the Bangkok Post today he wrote that "through suppression the government may claim a return to normalcy. It also hopes that with the red shirts' voices stifled, the government's one-sided propaganda can break through and change the hearts and minds of people who "see red". The message is about the protection of the revered institution of the monarchy and unity for the common good so the nation can return to peaceful and normal ways."

Things are clearly not normal in Bangkok. Hotel occupancy is still low. Security is enhanced. There are airport style security scanners at the entrance to all the subway stations. Not that anyone seems to care whether the signal is red or green. Imagine trying to instal such security in London or New Yor. It would be impossible.

Japan said yesterday that it hopes to receive further information from Thailand about the death of a Japanese cameraman shot more than three months ago during protests in Bangkok.

Hiroyuki Muramoto, 43, of the Thomson Reuters news agency, was shot in the chest by an unknown gunman on April 10 while covering unrest involving Thai troops and anti-government "Red Shirt" protesters.

It is disgraceful that no progress has been made.

There is also concern domestically from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) that at least two-thirds of red-shirt protesters detained under the State of Emergency decree at Bangkok Remand Prison had endured human rights violations.

Dr Niran Pitakwatchara, who is an NHRC commissioner, said yesterday many red shirts had no access to legal help or counselling. "These people have in fact not yet been charged," he said, "They are just suspects."

But the malls are open so most people are happy just getting on with their day to day lives. But all is not well - my caddy at Hua Hin says she wants Thaksin back. Abhisit bad she says. The government is trying to manage and control the message. But the people are not listening.

But the good news is that the government is still able to find someone else to blame for the nation's problems! For instance, Facebook and Twitter are being blamed for the poor language skills of Thai students — and the Culture Ministry is suggesting a return to the bygone tradition of writing letters. Of course this has nothing to do with the appalling lack of investment in education in Thailand.
 

Dubai's continuing debt problem

23  July 2010

Dubai World has presented its restructuring plan to its creditors. And it has done so with a warning that lenders, aside from the government's own support fund, would face a "significantly" lower chance of recovery if its debt plan fails and it is forced to seek liquidation, according to the debt restructuring plan outlined to bankers on Thursday.

The document, seen by Reuters, also said the repayment of an initial $4.4bn, five-year debt tranche would be financed by its Istithmar World portfolio and its Infinity investment -- two segments that were ringfenced from the conglomerate's debt proposal.

The Infinity World unit holds a stake in MGM Resorts International.

There is an issue in that. A Dubai entity is being used to bail out another Dubai entity. And it is using an entity that holds its gambling investments in MGM Resorts to fund the initial repayment. Gambling of course is illegal in Islamic UAE.

The debt plan warns that "recoveries for all creditors except DFSF in a liquidation scenario would be significantly below those expected under the proposal."

The DFSF, or Dubai Financial Support Fund, has lent billions to Dubai World as the flagship company struggles to cope with a massive debt burden. Much of that funding has come from Abu Dhabi.

Dubai World is restructuring $23.5 billion in debt.

Campaign Shows Lingering Divisions in Thailand

21 July 2010 - New York Times

"In a parliamentary race this weekend that is being seen as a referendum on Bangkok’s recent upheavals, only one of the two leading candidates is campaigning.

The other is in prison, accused of terrorism for his leading role in the so-called red shirt protests, which paralyzed the city center until they were crushed by force in May.

The disparity underlines the divisions that persist in Thailand following a nine-week anti-government demonstration during which nearly 90 people were killed and more than 1,400 injured. Since then a sort of clenched turmoil has prevailed, with a surface-level calm concealing social and political conflict that most analysts say is likely to burst out again in the future.

Since stopping the protests, the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has pursued a two-track policy, promoting what Mr. Abhisit calls “national reconciliation” while at the same time arresting his opponents or silencing them with vigorous and widespread censorship of newspapers, radio stations and the Internet.

Tourism and the Thai economy have sprung back to life, much more quickly than had been feared. The Bangkok commercial district that the protesters occupied for nine weeks is back to normal, with large placards saying things like “We must reconcile as we are one country, one family, one people.” But there are counterpoints to such sentiments. On Sunday, just before the two-month mark, a small group of red-shirt protesters gathered in the same area, watched by police officers with riot shields, and chanted a competing slogan: “People died here!”

Hoping to bridge this gap, the government has formed a 20-member Reform Committee headed by a widely respected former prime minister, Anand Panyarachun. The panel says it will address five aspects of the social inequalities that underlie many of the red shirts’ grievances: income, rights, opportunities, power and esteem. Another government commission has been formed to investigate the violence; parallel nongovernmental groups are tracking its work.

But at the same time, a state of emergency continues to be enforced in Bangkok and much of Thailand’s rural northeast, an opposition stronghold. The emergency decree gives broad powers to the security forces, including the right to detain suspects for up to 30 days without charges.

Using its emergency powers, the government has frozen the bank accounts of scores of people it accuses of helping to finance the protests, including relatives of Thaksin Shinawatra, the fugitive former prime minister who was ousted in a coup in 2006. He is a prime mover of the protests, and many red shirts still hope for his return.

The government says it is maintaining the state of emergency because its opponents are still plotting violence. Its critics say the emergency is a cover for a campaign of repression.

“They only want to limit the rights of the red shirts and all the people of the country,” said a university professor who asked that her name not be used because she has been summoned for questioning over her role in the protests. “They will place charges against us, which is unfair. They say everything is stable, but how come they still use the decree?”

More than 400 red shirts have been detained, by the government’s accounting, although critics say this may not be the full number. Eleven leaders of the movement are in detention.

Among those leaders is Korkaew Pikulthong, the candidate in the Sunday by-election. Mr. Korkaew, who is being allowed to speak to visitors only through a wire screen, has recorded three short speeches intended for broadcast, but they were seized by censors for review.

According to newspaper reports, the speeches accuse the government of failing to tackle corruption and of treating its opponents with a harsh double standard, as well as criticize the violence used against them.

In the Sunday by-election, which is being held to fill the seat of a lawmaker who died, Mr. Korkaew faces Panich Vikitsreth, a government official who is the candidate of the governing Democrat Party. The district offers something of a test case — it is a mixture of middle-and upper-class residents, who are expected to support the Democrats, and lower-income neighborhoods that more closely reflect the makeup of the red shirt demonstrators.

“This is like a test for the red shirts to see how much the people like them,” said Nussara Nimanong, 40, a supervisor at a department store in the district.

Chonticha Aonchan, 46, who sells lottery tickets on the street, said she was backing the red shirt party, whose name translates as For Thailand. “Puea Thai Party creates policies for the poor, while the Democrat Party only works for the rich,” she said.

Prasert Pornchai, 73, who owns a business selling construction equipment, said, “The Democrats will win for sure because a lot of people don’t like the way the red shirts act. They are violent. If you make them angry, they can burn down buildings.”

In Thailand today, there are limits to such political talk. On Tuesday, three college students were summoned by the police for violating the emergency decree by criticizing the decree itself, on banners and on the Internet. Earlier this month, a spiky-haired 17-year-old singer, Witthawat Thaokhamlue, was forced to leave a reality show called Academy Fantasia after making anti-government statements on his Facebook page.

“How about resigning?” he had said of the prime minister. “Moron!” At an abject news conference side by side with his father, Mr. Witthawat apologized, saying he had spoken out “because I was still thinking like a teenager and didn’t have good common sense.”

The sensitivity of the censors was on display when they banned a public-interest video advertisement that seemed to fit very well with the prime minister’s campaign of reconciliation.

In a series of questions backed by scenes of the conflict, the video asks Thais to consider the shortcomings that led to the social breakdown and violence.

“Did our society deteriorate?” it says. “Did we love money more than righteousness? And did we only wait for help? If there was anyone to blame, it would be all of us. Apologize, Thailand.”"

EK's thirty 777s order is not new Boeing revenue

19 July 2010

Boeing made headlines at the Farnborough Air Show with a big order for 30 777s from Dubai flag carrier Emiratess.

Emirates announced an order for 30 Boeing Co. 777-300ER aircraft valued at $9.1 billion (at list prices - Ek will not be paying list price!), as the largest Arab airline expands its fleet of long-range jets.

The airline disclosed the order today during the Farnborough Air Show in the U.K.

But it is all a bit smoke and mirrors. There will be a lot of fanfare and it is good news for Emirates' growth. But it is not new revenue for Boeing. Of the 30 planes, 18 had already been ordered and were listed in Boeing’s backlog as coming from an undisclosed customer.

Today’s announcement adds to the 71 777-300ERs Emirates previously ordered, of which 53 aircraft are now in service, the airline said.

Emirates is already the largest operator of Boeing 777s, which typically seat up to 400 passengers on the 300 series(yes Emirates does pack them in).

Similar to the deal Airbus got at the Berlin Air Show last month, this order is also a replacement for a 2007 order from airplane leasing company DAE Capital - led by CEO Bob Genise, formerly of Bellevue-based aircraft lessors Boullioun Aviation Services.

In Berlin, Emirates shocked rival airlines by announcing a massive order for 32 Airbus A380 superjumbo jets, worth $11 billion at list prices, or more like $6 billion in real money after standard discounts. That was in addition to the 58 A380s Emirates had previously ordered.

But trade magazine Airfinance Journal soon revealed that the order was part of a complex swap. The Dubai government was working out the consequences of the global economic crisis and the bursting of its real estate bubble in 2009. Faced with a collapse of financing for DAE Capital, Dubai decided to cut the lessor's ambitious growth plans and negotiated a transfer of its 2007 Airbus sales commitments to Emirates.

Emirates didn't want smaller airplanes. Hence a 100-airplane order for 70 single-aisle A320s and 30 widebody A350s from the leasing company in 2007 switched to that order for 32 superjumbos in 2010.

In terms of dollar value, it's a wash for Airbus. But it is clearly better than a canceled order.

Now similarly for Boeing. In 2007, DAE Capital had ordered 70 single-aisle 737s,15 widebody 787 Dreamliners, ten 777s and five 747-8 freighters.

Emirates wants only 777s. Even with this order it is unlikely that Dubai has fully made up the DAEC shortfall.

Another fine mess

18 July 2010

It is not so long since a past prime minister of Thailand lost his job for appearing on a cooking show. Now Abhisit Vejjajvia, the incumbent, and Korn Chatikavanij, the Finance minister might lose their jobs for a mobile telephone text message?

After 18 months of procrastination Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission was expected to give a verdict today in a case in which Korn asked three mobile telephone operators to send out free texts to more than 17m subscribers.

But the NACC did not issue s verdict today - adding yet more political uncertainty to the mess that is now Thai politics.

The message in question read: “This is your new prime minister, may I ask you to help bring our country out of crisis. If you are interested in receiving further messages from me, please (reply) to 9191 (3 baht per message).”

It’s not Watergate, but the opposition Puea Thai party say that the text messages constitute a gift from the mobile operators worth more than the limit of Bt3,000. They have asked the NACC to move against the prime and finance ministers, a move that would automatically trigger their suspension pending impeachment procedures.

The case might be a storm in a teacup, but this is Thailand. Two years ago, then prime minister Samak Sundravej was summarily removed because he had received $2,800 – expenses, he argued — for appearing on an episode of Cooking and Grumbling, his nationally televised cooking show, while in office.

Samak of course was a supporter of Thaksin Shinawatra. Many of Thaksin's supporters have fallen as a result of court verdicts. Thaksin himself was sentenced to two years in jail for giving his wife permission to bid for a property owned by a branch of the central bank, even though there is no convincing suggestion that her connections secured her a better deal.

Message-gate won’t go away. But how long can the NACC delay a verdict. And having set a precedent with Samak how do they apply the rules consistently. Maybe it does not matter.

Thailand's no limits censorship

18 July 2010

Freedom of speech in Thailand was guaranteed by articles 39, 40, 41 in the 1997 Constitution.

According to those articles, censorship may be imposed to preserve national security, maintain public order, preserve the rights of others, protect public morals, and prevent criticism of the royal family and insults to Buddhism. In addition, criticism of the King is banned by the Constitution, although most lese majeste cases have been directed at foreigners or Thai opponents of political, social and commercial leaders.

But for all these promises there is a huge amount of censorship of any site or view or opinion that involves disagreement with the current government. Many of Thailand’s 100,000 blocked sites featured comment critical of the government content. These are not necessarily written by red-shirt supporters.

Add to that almost unfettered blocking of anything considered harmful to the nation's morality as an excuse to block "adult" sites. This is a more than a little hypocritical in a country that still encourages and generates significant income from a thriving domestic and international sex industry.

The government sees anything that contradicts their simplistic view of the country as an anti-democratic threat. Any site that questions, or calls the government to account, gives cause for concern.

Added to that concern is the recent witch hunt of Mark Thawkumlue, a contestant in Academy Fantasia, who dared to express a personal opinion criticising the government and Prime Minister on Facebook. Though Thawkumlue used crude language, his persecution - which saw him quit the reality TV show - illustrates the current climate in Thailand, which some liking to McCarthyism.

Thailand's political crisis made headlines worldwide earlier this year, when nearly 90 people — most of them protesters — were killed and more than 1,400 people injured during nine weeks of demonstrations.

The protests were crushed when the army moved into the main protest site in Bangkok's central commercial district on May 19. As the army moved in some protesters set fire to about 30 buildings around the capital, including an upscale shopping mall and the stock exchange.

Bangkok's stupid war

16 July 2010 by Christopher Johnson

The banality of war and the folly of our attempts to cover it really hit home when you visit a wounded journalist in a hospital. Nelson Rand was lying in bed, doped up on morphine, unable to even sit up. The left side of his body was riddled with purplish gunshot wounds that made me want to vomit. Nicknamed “Le Castor (The Beaver)” by his colleagues at France 24 TV, the brave young Canadian journalist could only smile like an infant at our attempts to converse with him. Rand probably wasn’t hit by accident. Somebody shot him three times -- in the leg, abdomen and wrist -- while he was near Lumpini Park in central Bangkok, doing his job just like journalists in safe and sanitary Tokyo. Was he targeted because he was wearing a black shirt, the colors of the mysterious renegade military unit allegedly fighting alongside the ordinary Red Shirts against thousands of Thai soldiers? Or did they try to kill him specifically because he was a journalist with a camera in hand? This is what goes through the mind of journalists in Bangkok and other danger zones. (What goes through my mind in Tokyo, by comparison, is: What stocks should I buy? What kind of dog is that?) Every journalist in Tokyo should go to Bangkok and hang out with their colleagues down there. Too often in Tokyo, we will avoid eye contact or try to bar each other from cliquish clubs, or dish out name cards but go no further in cultivating a friendship. Without a war or common enemy to unite us, it’s easy to hate or envy our colleagues, and fall into passive-aggressive behavior or a gravy-train mentality that justifies the bullying of newcomers who challenge our turf. While journalists in Tokyo get their noses out of joint, Bangkok journalists get their arteries ruptured or their brains punctured or their hearts pierced with bullets. Since Bangkok journos spend time together sneaking into Burma, taking fire in Afghanistan and Iraq, or caring for each other at hospitals and funerals, they are a friendly and footloose bunch, and perhaps the best group of journalists in the world. When another young Canadian, Chandler Vandergrift, was hit in the head and back by exploding grenades during the military assault on the Red Shirts’ protest camp in central Bangkok on May 19, the army’s medics ignored him, and even yelled in Thai “pai loei!” at cameramen to get the hell out of there (as captured on film by Cyril Paen for France 24 TV’s reportage series.). But journos in helmets and flak jackets stopped their work -- on perhaps the most potentially lucrative day of their careers -- to save a colleague they didn’t even know from bleeding to death on the street. (Meanwhile, back in Tokyo, someone was trying to steal someone’s shifts or strings, or was compiling a dossier to kick someone out of a club.)

NO SAFE ZONES HERE
During the Battle of Bangkok, out of at least 80 dead and 1,400 wounded, no fewer than eight journalists were shot, and two were killed: Hiro Muramoto from Japan and Fabio Polenghi from Italy. They were careful professionals, not reckless bounty hunters. Like many of us, they perhaps felt safe among smiling Thai farmers, maids and motorcycle taxi drivers who were finally standing up for themselves and demanding a greater share of wealth and power. Many of the journos were injured in a city they had chosen as their safe haven away from Afghanistan or Iraq. For them, the presence of war in their own backyard seemed unreal (as best depicted in Richard Erlich’s blog, www.surreal-random-media.posterous.com). Every war zone seems to have its hotel, and it was shocking to see the royally connected Dusit Thani endure grenade attacks and rumors that snipers used it to gun down Black Shirt leader Seh Daeng while he was across the street talking to Thomas Fuller of the International Herald Tribune. With snipers in half-built high-rises picking off people in the Din Daeng area as well, it seemed nowhere was safe in central Bangkok. On the climactic day of May 19, I took the advice of some wise producers overseas and fled to what I thought would be the safety of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, 16 stories above the battleground. Having survived my own foolishness in Yugoslavia in 1991 and Baghdad in 2003, to name a few, I decided that I wasn’t going to die on May 19 because some fat-cat politicos and generals were using conscripted soldiers and brainwashed peasants and migrant workers to fight their battles for them ahead of an annual military reshuffle and the inevitable passing of the beloved King Bhumipol, hospitalized since September. Out the wide glass windows near the FCCT, I could see soldiers marching on the Skytrain line to my right; protesters setting fires under the Chidlom train station below me; and residents and maids escaping down side streets in their flip flops. Even as the sound of gunfire and grenade explosions sent us to the floor and behind pillars, we at least felt safely above the fray. But then the black smoke of fires engulfing Bangkok began to seep through the building and into our nostrils, and heavy explosions nearby forced us to remove jerry cans of fuel (for use in generators) away from the windows. For a while, we were trapped. To my left, explosions rocked the Central World shopping complex, one of Asia’s largest, triggering fires and smoke. Along with disgruntled protesters, Bangkok’s underworld of dek wen (young hooligans) and drug-dealing, brothel-running thugs were burning down 30 key buildings, including banks and convenience stores owned by Chinese-Thai tycoons seen as having links to the governing Democratic Party and 1980s strongman and privy councilor Gen. Prem Tinsulanonda.

My worst nightmares about Thailand were coming true. When I first worked at The Nation newspaper in 1988 -- and doing stuff such as idiotically speeding down Asoke Road without a helmet -- I wondered what the noxious exhaust fumes and incessant construction noise would do to human beings after 20 years. When I was living on islands and in villages through the 1990s and beyond, I got worried about dark signs emerging in Thailand’s otherwise shiny society. Too many village kids were skipping out of school to play video war games (“The Terrorists Win”). Too many Thai women were murdering their foreign husbands to collect insurance payouts from Germany and elsewhere. Too many dek sen kids of wealthy parents were shooting up discos. And far too many foreign female backpackers were being found raped and murdered.

THE BLAME GAME
All of this brute force and savagery was coming to a head on May 19. Amid this madness, it was easy for the current government and most Bangkok media to blame exiled former leader and billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, who was seen shopping in Paris while his supporters were burning Bangkok. A decade ago, after buying his way into power by giving cheap loans to villages, he gave the police carte blanche during the “War on Drugs” to murder suspected drug dealers (which in the Thai context included ladies selling pineapples). His crackdown on separatists in the Islamic south gave Thailand something normally associated with Cambodia and Burma -- a civil war. During Thaksin’s leadership, and the military coup that ousted him, Thailand went from being a peaceful Buddhist country to a neo-industrial state divided into camps for or against Thaksin. A former police captain, Thaksin still apparently had the loyalty of Bangkok police, who let the Red Shirts occupy the central business and hotel district. Seemingly unable to command the police, the young Oxford-educated Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, who was accused at first of being too soft on the protesters, finally ordered some 20,000 troops to subdue a few thousand protesters and Seh Daeng’s unit of about 20 or 30 renegade soldiers. It was like Manchester United taking on the lads from the pub. The soldiers had APCs and M16s. The Red Shirts had motorcycles and “M150s” – bottles of stimulant drinks filled with gasoline. The Battle of Bangkok was so lopsided, in fact, that journalists in helmets and flak jackets seemed to outnumber the rebels at times. All of which made us feel like targets for snipers on both sides. With smoke billowing across the city and vandals on a rampage, the government declared a curfew and threatened to shoot offenders on sight, meaning I would somehow have to get out of the closing FCCT, which had no food service anyway, and find a place to work all night, if not sleep. It would be impossible to get through the fires around Din Daeng back to my trusty guesthouse north of there. Without a place to stay, I thought of joining my colleagues sheltering at a temple along with hundreds of elderly female protesters and their children. Once at street level, I joined Thai troops who were marching in to take control of the Ratchaprasong intersection. One of them tore down a poster of Thaksin, while others rounded up suspected rebels, including a Buddhist monk in saffron robes. One exhausted soldier puked in the street, others gasped for air under heavy armor in 40C heat, as residents offered them water through their front gates. The soldiers told me they were from Kanchanaburi Province, and didn’t know Bangkok very well. Wearing pink tags on their helmets and yellow bandanas -- royal colors -- they didn’t walk with the swagger of a triumphant army liberating a city. They seemed almost embarrassed to be doing this inside their own country instead of taking on the Burmese or the Khmers. For some mindless reason, I wandered ahead of them, into the Ratchaprasong intersection. It was like a habit. For years, I could walk out of the FCCT, say a prayer at the Erawan Shrine and go to Central World to buy shoes or maybe catch a movie. But this time, the intersection was eerily gray and quiet. Thousands of protesters had fled, leaving only a single elderly lady, Phusadee Ngamkhaa, sitting there like a zombie telling me in Thai that “I’m not going to leave until they dissolve the parliament.” Next to us, the Central World shopping mall was hissing and spewing smoke toward us. Other than a few photographers, there was nobody else around. Even the soldiers were afraid to enter the intersection. It finally dawned on me: I should not be standing here, right now, at 5 p.m. on May 19, the worst day in Bangkok’s history, with a 300 mm telephoto lens that looks like a gun.

SEEKING REFUGE
That’s when I heard the shots. They sounded like cap-gun toys. A bad sign. Sniper fire. The soldiers heard this too and started to run in their heavy boots. Disoriented, I walked at first, and then ran, ran for my life, as fast as I could.

Again, out of habit, I was wearing white tennis shoes, as if I were going to play tennis while on holiday in Bangkok. Running through smoke and ashes, my shoes became caked in the black tar of burning tires melting black-tarmac streets. Like a bad memory, the black would forever stain my formerly white shoes. I felt embarrassed, not exhilarated, for foolishly putting myself into a dangerous situation; I should have known better. Reaching the go-go bar area of Nana Plaza, it was a relief to see transvestites and mother-daughter tag-team whores buying fried insects for dinner. At the Asoke intersection, former BBC Tokyo correspondent Chris Hogg, who had just filed a calm and clear TV report, told me the curfew was 8 p.m. I had to go somewhere, where I could at least work all night safe from vandals and arsonists. Struggling to find a motorcycle taxi driver, since many of them were Red Shirts now on the run, I gave a driver three times the normal price to take me to the offices of the Associated Press on the other side of the downtown core. He sped down Asoke, just like I used to do, past the smoldering Stock Exchange of Thailand. Having filed live TV phoners every 30 minutes, I hadn’t eaten all day, and was hallucinating from exhaustion. I thought I saw the Queen Sirikit Convention center on fire. (It wasn’t). With Rama IV Road and others blocked by protesters setting fire to Channel 3 TV (forcing the staff to escape by helicopter), the driver got lost in Klong Toey slum, not far from where Bangkok Post employees were fleeing attacks on them for allegedly supporting the government. The poorest of Bangkok’s poor, who had little to lose in the destruction, were drunk and laughing at the absurdity of it all. When we finally emerged onto Silom, it was already dark, and just minutes before the 8 p.m. curfew. The whole area, normally raging with tourists and touts and nightlife, was a crab trap of razor wire and APCs. It was dark, and there wasn’t a soul on the street. I was seriously scared. Battle-weary soldiers searched us and only let us through after I begged in Thai and the driver gave them his ID card. Finally, the driver dropped me at the Pan-Pacific Hotel, and I gave him extra money in case he had to bribe his way back home. High above Lumpini Park, AP’s best photographers had a wide-angle view of the day’s action, as they processed their art and wiped the smoke and soot off their faces and L-class Canon lenses. Since I was filing for some of their clients, they kindly let me stay there overnight, along with another temporary guest, legendary photojournalist Al Rockoff (portrayed by John Malkovich in The Killing Fields). Again, it seemed to be a hallucination. Below us at 3 a.m., Bangkok was dead quiet and dark. Not a soul on the street, nor a car on the expressway. In his folksy drawl, Rockoff told me how he still loved Cambodia, because he had only been shot there once, compared with four times in Vietnam. At 6 a.m., with plumes of smoke painting the horizon, the hotel guards finally let me onto the street to find a taxi to my room. Summarizing the hellish scene, a policeman said to me, “Muang Thai na beau (Thailand is boring).” The taxi driver, circling around a labyrinth of checkpoints, said poetically, “Prathet Thai mai wai (I can’t take Thailand any longer).” Yet somehow, I still loved the country, and didn’t want to leave just yet. In the coming days, as troops arrested 400 Red Shirts and charged leaders with terrorism, and an 11 p.m. curfew forced people to scramble for taxis home in the rain, Thai media and academics would vent their anger not at the military or the government, but at the foreign media’s “biased” coverage in favor of the Red Shirts. Facebook and Twitter -- which both Thaksin and Abhisit used as propaganda tools -- were rife with friends blaming “the media” for the May mayhem. Thammasaat University, where students led democracy uprisings in the 1970s, even hosted a symposium to blame everything on the BBC and, in particular, CNN’s Dan Rivers, a truly courageous reporter who in addition to covering a war, was trying to track down camera gear stolen from his home. Like other journos, CNN and BBC crews had been interviewing Red Shirts, partly because it was easier to gain access to them than Abhisit and the generals, who were hiding inside barracks. Another reason: the color red looks really good on TV and through the lenses of cameras saturated to the max. There’s another reason why the media often seemed to be railing against the government and the military -- they were shooting at us. Eight journalists wounded, two dead. What are we supposed to do? Print propaganda ad nauseum? Show non-stop images of Thais loving Thais, as the military forced all Thai TV channels to do on May 19? If the Thai government really wants 15 million tourists to come back to Thailand this year, they should sincerely investigate every single death and injury as a separate criminal case. They should pursue justice against people within their own ranks as well as the alleged “terrorists” who occupied parts of Bangkok for two months but didn’t kill any of us in their Red Zone, as far as we know. After surviving Bangkok’s stupid war, it was nice to be back in the peaceful boredom of heiwa-boke Tokyo, to look for minimalist photos of dogs and flowers, and to report on the Bank of Japan’s latest decision not to change interest rates.

Covering Asia since 1987, Tokyo-based freelancer Christopher Johnson (www.globalite.posterous.com) is the author of Siamese Dreams and an upcoming novel set in Japan.

Washington Post sends a message to Abhisit

15 July 2010 - Editorial - Washington Post

"After bloody clashes between the Thai army and opposition demonstrators killed some 90 people in the center of Bangkok in May, the unelected government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva promised to launch what he called a "national reconciliation plan." Since then authorities have arrested hundreds of opposition leaders; closed media; frozen the bank accounts of suspected supporters of the Bangkok demonstrations and brought terrorism charges against the movement's exiled leader, Thaksin Shinawatra.

On July 6, Mr. Abhisit renewed a state of emergency in Bangkok and 18 other provinces, allowing his regime to arrest and hold people without charge, censor the media and prevent public gatherings. Meanwhile, he has announced that the parliamentary elections he had offered to hold in November will be postponed until next year. If this is what he calls "national reconciliation," Mr. Abhisit, a graduate of Eton and Oxford, must have taken a lesson in Orwellian language.

In fact Thailand's government is carrying out something close to the opposite of a policy that might heal the country's deep polarization. It is trying to crush the "red shirt" movement that still supports Mr. Thaksin, a former prime minister whose ouster in a 2006 military coup has plunged a once-promising democracy into endless turmoil. In the process, Mr. Abhisit is raising the chances that the opposition will go underground and turn violent. That would ensure that Thailand loses the foreign tourists and investors on which it depends -- not to mention the support of Western democracies.

Mr. Thaksin and the red shirts have contributed to Thailand's impasse by blockading the center of Bangkok for two months last spring and for refusing the compromise Mr. Abhisit offered before the violence began and the army moved in. But the root cause of the troubles is the refusal of the traditional political class, the military and the royal court, which Mr. Abhisit's government represents, to accept the results of democratic elections.

Repression will not solve this problem. If Mr. Abhisit really wants reconciliation, the steps he must take are clear: End the state of emergency, release the red shirt leaders and negotiate leading to elections, with a commitment by all sides to allow the winners to rule within the boundaries of a reformed constitution."

Keep on clogging

14 July 2010

Funny people the Dutch. Never thought they were quite so myopic. Their football team came home to a massive welcome. Yet they should have come home to a nation shocked at how there team had alienated the rest of the sporting world and tuned a beautiful game into brutality.

The world cup is over and Spain won a final that turned almost immediately from a sporting contest to a morality play. Spain were the good guys. The Dutch were the other team.

This was a match ruined by Dutch brutality. Referee Howard Webb has been harangued by the Dutch manager, players and public. But the international media is a bit less blinded then the Dutch. The goodwill built up by years of attractive Dutch football was severely depleted by 120 sorry minutes. Being defensive and trying to break up the Spanish passing game is one thing; borderline anti-football is something else. Some of the early tackles were brutal. De Jong's karate kick would see him arrested if he did it on the street.

But it was the final and Webb was trying to keep 22 players on the pitch.

Rob Hughes, an Englishman writing for the New York Times  called it the most egregious team display he's seen in 40 years of the event. The Dutch got eight yellow cards, along with their one red. Six yellow cards was the highest previous total, both teams included, for a final. The Spanish got five yellows, one for Iniesta removing his shirt after scoring. A yellow card for a karate kick to your opponent's chest and a yellow card for taking off your shirt. Not quite comparable.

The Dutch coach called it practical soccer, ugly but winning soccer. The thug De Jong and claimed FIFA have made world football far too soft. He claimed the display would barely have merited a mention in the game's gory past. He even added that his tackle on Alonso looked worse than it was. , although to be honest I didn't see the opponent coming in from the side. I was really focused on the ball and I caught him on his chest. It was a little bit curious.

The Dutch seem to be woefully unaware of their own failings and of international dismay at their tactics.
He said: "You always have to be careful what you say but it is very clear when, after such a game, you sit in the dressing-room together and you are only talking about the referee and his bad points.

"For me if you play a World Cup final, you need a world-class referee. I don't know whether that was a worldclass performance from the referee.

"I had two chances in the second half and the first one was my mistake.But the second opportunity was very clear. The referee had to send their player off. He had to give a free-kick, but in the end there was no advantage.

"There were a few things, but there is no point discussing them now. There were some strange decisions, but we will speak about it internally."

Yet in spite of Webb being lenient of both dangerous fouls and disgraceful acts of verbal abuse which kept them in the game, the Dutch still have the audacity to criticise him. Had a stricter referee been in control, some of the Dutch team would have had an early shower.

That FIFA has not come out and condemned both the Dutch team and their post match comments is very poor but completely in keeping with an organisation run for egos rather than for the good of the game.

Clogs of war

12 July 2010

How ugly were the Dutch? Here is a round up of comments.

Sport 24 South Africa: The Netherlands tried to crudely drag their Soccer World Cup final opponents at Soccer City here into the abattoir. Only Spain’s artists stubbornly would not comply on Sunday...What got into the Dutch? Were they really supposed to be this cynical, this spiteful, come the big day? Theirs was the on-grass equivalent of road rage, and for all their near-laughable protests of harsh treatment from the English policeman Webb, a counter-lobby would suggest the Netherlands were fortunate to still have a full complement of personnel even at the 45-minute mark.

Sporting Life: Spanish captain Iker Casillas lifted the World Cup to the African night sky as all of Spain celebrated the first World Cup triumph in their history.

And justice was done at the end of a match in which Holland should have lowered their heads in shame.

South Africa did not deserve this. They did not deserve a final which made history with 14 yellow cards, two of them leading to a red for Everton defender John Heitinga - the most cards in the 80-year history of the tournament.

They did not deserve the final throes of the first World Cup on their continent to be remembered for Dutch thuggery and a match which stained the spirit of football.

New York Times: There has never been so foul an intent in the 40 years I have watched the World Cup. Sadly, the English referee Howard Webb added to it by handing out only yellow cards to eight Dutch players.

The red stayed in his pocket until extra time when John Heitinga, who had already received a yellow card for an earlier foul, brought down Andrés Iniesta to prevent a scoring chance. In some soccer circles that is seen as a team-oriented act, deliberately accepting a second card to prevent what could have been the winning goal.

Sydney Morning Herald: The agent provocateur was - who else - Mark van Bommel, although Robin van Persie's hatchet job of Sergio Busquets inside the first few minutes set the tone. The Dutch game plan, quite clearly, was to kick the Spanish off their stride. Literally. It worked.

Another jailed Brit in Dubai

12 July 2010

7 Days reports toda that a 56-year-old motorist who made a rude gesture with his finger has been jailed for a month.

The British man was handed the sentence at Dubai Misdemeanors Court for flashing his middle finger at the 18-year-old Iraqi student.

The court heard that the Brit had shown his finger to the student and the pair then stopped at a red signal near Uptown Mirdif and the Iraqi man sounded his horn and called police.

The comment below the article probably tells more of the story. And anyone driving here will know this is a likely version of events. The comment notes that "there was actually a lot more to this story that has not been reported here. The Iraqi man cut up the 56 year old with his car and nearly caused a crash. The 56 year old said he had some stern words with the Iraqi, but never showed his middle finger. The Iraqi left the country soon after the incident and was never traced to give evidence."

Meanwhile as noted below two motorists who were arrested after videos of their dangerous driving in Dubai were posted on YouTube have been fined just dhs1,000 each.

UAE airlines to recruit 80,000 staff in a decade

11 July 2010 - The National (To be taken with a pinch of salt!)

"The country’s two largest airlines are gearing up for one of the biggest recruitment drives in aviation history, with plans to hire 80,000 pilots, cabin crew and other staff over the next decade.

The immense growth in hiring at Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways comes at a tough time for the industry in many other parts of the world.

In Europe, carriers have resorted to cost-cutting, which includes shedding jobs. They also face constraints in the form of environmental taxes and opposition to the building of new runways that would ensure continued growth.

The UAE carriers’ extra staff will be needed to operate hundreds of new aircraft that are on order. The number of aircraft being bought is expected to increase this month when representatives of the region’s big carriers gather at the Farnborough International Airshow to announce their latest orders.

Dubai officials have already hinted at yet another order for Emirates, on the heels of an US$11.5 billion (Dh42.23bn) purchase of new Airbus A380s announced last month at the Berlin Air Show.

In Abu Dhabi, Etihad is already one of the largest employers, with about 8,000 staff. By 2020, when all of its planes have been delivered, it should have 27,000 employees.

Emirates Group has even greater staffing needs. The company, which includes the airline and a global network of ground handling, travel and ticketing agencies, will double in size by 2020 to a fleet of about 300 aircraft, from 149 today.

It took us 25 years to get to 40,000 employees, but in the next 10 years we will double that to 80,000,” said Rick Helliwell, the vice president of recruitment at Emirates. Factoring in current employees who retire or move on, Emirates will require more than 60,000 new employees over the decade, including 2,500 pilots and 20,000 cabin crew, Mr Helliwell said.

Recruitment agencies say the big Middle East airlines such as Emirates and Etihad are always favourites among qualified aviation professionals. However, their staffing would become more challenging throughout the decade.

“The Gulf airlines have always been competitive employers and for many qualified personnel will remain an employer of choice,” said John Barry, the managing director of Sigma Aviation Services, a global aviation staffing service based in Dublin. “That said, the Gulf airlines should not underestimate the challenges ahead of them in the coming years.”

Middle Eastern carriers are enjoying a short-term bounty of qualified aviation workers after the global economic crisis forced airlines elsewhere to shed workers.

“The downturn has allowed us to recruit across a range of areas,” said Ray Gammell, the chief people and performance officer at Etihad. “For aviation specialist areas and head office positions such as human resources, finance, you name it, it has been easier. At the same time, our market position has allowed us to be discerning in who we take compared to four years ago.”

Airline staffing requirements follow a general formula. At Emirates, each wide-body aircraft results in another 350 staff being hired, including up to 20 pilots and 80 cabin crew. The airline currently visits as many as 30 countries a month to recruit workers.

Etihad’s fleet plans include six new aircraft arriving next year, four in 2012, six in 2013, and 12 in 2014. Currently, 85 per cent of its new hires are being sourced from its new online recruiting portal, Mr Gammell said. It will cross the 10,000 employee mark in 2012, and then accelerate its hiring in 2014 when its new aircraft begin arriving in large numbers.

While airlines in the Middle East are trying to stimulate the local market by hiring nationals, they have largely relied on expatriates to meet their staffing needs, offering packages that include housing, education and health coverage. They also try to promote from within for specialist skills, helping pilots certified for the Airbus A340 to become certified for the double-decker A380, for example.

Gulf airlines will increasingly rely on outsourced training programmes, said Mr Barry, “thus ensuring a transparent pipeline of pilot numbers in the coming year”.

However, the huge staffing requirements of big Gulf airlines are making it more difficult for other airlines to compete for the best talent. “The real pain in the supply chain will probably be felt more keenly by smaller operators and operators in different regions,” he said."

Rejoice? Arabtec is paid something

9 July 2010

The National newspaper excitedly reports that Arabtec is about to receive its first major cash payment from Nakheel since the Dubai World-owned developer revealed its plans to restructure about US$10.5 billion (Dh38.56bn) of debt.

Though the nespaper notes that the exact amount of the payment has not been disclosed but the country’s biggest builder is to receive 40 per cent of what it is owed by the developer of the Palm islands.

40%. And just how does Arabtec then pay its subcontractors and workers. Well it doesnt. And that has been the problem across the property sector for almost two years in Dubai.

The news comes just over a week after Nakheel said it had reached an agreement with 75 per cent of its trade creditors and would settle Dh4bn of claims within two weeks.

Under the deal contractors have been offered 40 per cent in cash and 60 per cent in the form of tradable securities, with a 10 per cent yearly return. But for any contractor the immediate need is cash. Sure 40% is better than nothing but this is covering old, old debts.

Would any contractor want to start work again with Nakheel? There must be demands for payment up front or some sort of guaranteed payment plan or all work stops again.

Dozens of Nakheel projects came to a standstill at the onset of the financial crisis, leaving contractors struggling to get paid.

Saud Masud, the head of property research at UBS in Dubai, said Nakheel’s payments to contractors would not be a “game changer” for overall conditions in the construction sector.

“It’s a good thing that they’re getting paid but the issues are bigger,” Mr Masud said. “There are backlog challenges and other customers that need to pay.”

He is being diplomatic.

The trouble with Twitter

9 July 2010 - The Guardian

"As the sacking of a CNN journalist for a tweet on an ayatollah's death has shown, it's hard to convey nuance in 140 characters

When Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Fadlallah died in Lebanon on Sunday, tributes poured in from Lebanese politicians and religious leaders of almost every hue. There were official condolences, too, from further afield: from Bahrain, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen, and from the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

Britain's ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, praised him in her blog, describing the ayatollah as a "much admired leader of many Shia Muslims throughout the world". She continued: "When you visited him you could be sure of a real debate, a respectful argument and you knew you would leave his presence feeling a better person. That for me is the real effect of a true man of religion; leaving an impact on everyone he meets, no matter what their faith …

"I remember well when I was nominated ambassador to Beirut, a Muslim acquaintance sought me out to tell me how lucky I was because I would get a chance to meet Sheikh Fadlallah. Truly he was right.

"If I was sad to hear the news [of his death] I know other people's lives will be truly blighted. The world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints. May he rest in peace."

In the midst of all this, Octavia Nasr, CNN's senior editor of Middle East affairs, posted a brief comment on Twitter. It said:

"Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah … One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot."

Had she said: "Good riddance to Fadlallah … the world is better off without him," I can't imagine there would have been any fuss. But, as it was, her tweet soon had pro-Israel activists up in arms and calling for her to be sacked. Last night, CNN duly obliged, saying that her credibility had been "compromised".

Fadlallah, as the BBC delicately puts it, left behind a mixed legacy: "For many in the west, [his] name was irrevocably linked with acts of violence against the American presence in Lebanon in the early 1980s." At the same time, though, in many other areas his views were remarkably enlightened (at least by the standards of Shia ayatollahs). Lebanon's Sunni prime minister, Saad Hariri, called him "a voice of moderation".

Despite all that, Nasr now recognises that her tweet was ill-judged. The reaction to it, she says, is "a good lesson on why 140 characters should not be used to comment on controversial or sensitive issues, especially those dealing with the Middle East".

But I'm not sure that CNN itself is entirely blameless in this affair. Like most news organisations (including the Guardian), it has been encouraging its journalists to cross over into social media and establish a more personal and informal relationship with their viewers and readers.

Indeed, Nasr's profile page on CNN (presumably soon to be deleted) hails her as "a leader in integrating social media with newsgathering and reporting".

News organisations have good reasons for moving in this direction but Nasr's recent tweet shows how easily it can go wrong.

Tweets, by their very nature, are short and written in haste – often without much forethought – but it's not just the lack of scope for nuance that can lead to embarrassment.

If you're soberly analysing world politics one minute and then posting notes on Twitter that you've just spent an evening binge-drinking with contacts, what are people going to think?

Of course, people with serious jobs do let their hair down occasionally and, with time, we may get used to the idea of having our professional and personal lives simultaneously on display but at present, at the very least, it is likely to raise eyebrows.

It's not just in journalism, either. Two tech-savvy State Department officials recently travelled in a delegation to Syria to discuss IT issues.

"I'm not kidding when I say I just had the greatest frappuccino ever," one of them tweeted during the trip. Another tweet talked about challenging a Syrian government minister to a cake-eating contest.

For some, this was shocking evidence that the officials were getting far too matey with the Syrians but their boss, Hillary Clinton, doesn't seem much troubled. To her mind, it's all part of "21st century statecraft".

Not that there's anything very new about it, really: it's just one side of a diplomat's life that we're not accustomed to seeing. Diplomats have always fraternised to some extent with "the enemy" and journalists, for their part, have always had opinions about the things they cover. We're kidding ourselves if we pretend that they don't, so why not be up-front about it? Twitter, though, may not always be the best place to do it."
 

Thailand - Licence to Kill

9 July 2010

Reporters Without Borders has published its detilade account on the deaths of, and injuries sustained by, journalists in the recent violence in Bangkok. It is thorough; it is powerful. And the saddest part of all is that the current Thai government will do nothing about it. It is safe to assume that the recommendations in the report will be ignored.

The report is clear that the army failed to act with the "required restraint" to protect members of the media.

Italian freelance photographer Fabio Polenghi and Japanese cameraman Hiroyuki Muramoto of the Thomson Reuters news agency were among 90 people killed when anti-government protests descended into bloodshed in April and May.

The group said that some of the witnesses and victims it interviewed believed journalists were targeted during the violence, in which 10 members of the press were also injured.

"Some of their accounts clearly show that Thai soldiers put civilian non-combatants, including journalists, in mortal danger and respected no rule of engagement," it said.

"They did not try to prevent journalists from covering the events, but the rules of engagement and the lack of professionalism on the part of the soldiers led to serious incidents that could have been avoided," the group added.

Its report, "Thailand: Licence to Kill", also found that armed Red Shirts "deliberately exposed Thai and foreign journalists to mortal danger".

It called for any Red Shirt leaders found responsible for violence against the press, as well as troops that fired on properly identified members of the media, to be punished.

The report called for the results of investigations into the deaths of Muramoto and Polenghi to be made public as soon as possible. As soon as possible is a very long time in Thailand.

Most of those killed were civilians, while nearly 1,900 people were injured during a series of clashes triggered by the rally, which came to an end with a deadly army crackdown on May 19.

Masaru Goto's pictures are a vivid reminder of the violence and loss of life. Warning - some of the pictures are very graphic.

Irreconcilable differences

8 July 2010 The Economist

Seems to me that the Economist has this spot on. This is no reconciliation; it is survival through repression.

"Emergency rule means the suspension of normal rules during extraordinary times. For the Thai government, it seems to be the new normal. On July 6th the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, extended a state of emergency that he had declared in April during rowdy demonstrations by opposition “red shirts”. The army ended the protests on May 19th and red-shirt leaders are in jail or in hiding. In the aftermath, Mr Abhisit launched a national reconciliation plan, but without a promise of early elections, as protesters had demanded.

The security forces insist that danger lingers. So Mr Abhisit, who leads a shaky coalition government formed with the army’s backing, extended emergency rule in Bangkok and 18 other provinces. In five quiescent provinces emergency rule was lifted. The rules allow the authorities to detain suspects without charge, censor the press, ban public gatherings and freeze bank accounts.

Opposition politicians argue that Mr Abhisit’s reconciliation is a sham. Indeed, the government seems more intent on crushing the red shirts. But the anger and alienation that fed the protests is unlikely to fade away. The International Crisis Group, a think-tank, has called for the government to lift emergency rule. It argues a legitimate movement may be driven underground. A by-election in Bangkok on July 25th, in which a red-shirt leader is running from jail, may test the public mood.

Bangkok is still reeling from the protests, in which 89 people died in bloody clashes. Thailand’s supine media have largely dropped the topic, in favour of upbeat accounts of the government’s efforts to regain international confidence. The names and circumstances of the dead, mostly rural and working-class protesters, barely rate a mention. Last month the government appointed a retired attorney-general, Kanit na Nakhorn, to investigate the violence, as part of its promised programme of reconciliation.

But anyone wanting a swift investigation into how so many people died on the streets of Bangkok, and the identity of the mysterious gunmen who fought alongside the red shirts, will be disappointed. Mr Kanit’s panel has a two-year time-frame, though it is required to report on its work every six months. Human-rights groups complain that there is no provision to prosecute those suspected of crimes. The emergency decree also grants officials immunity from prosecution for actions taken under its provisions.

The other commissions are even less promising. One is supposed to examine press reform. Another is to propose amendments to the 2007 constitution drafted by military appointees. Both are bereft of opposition voices. Mr Abhisit has also set up parallel panels on social, political and economic reforms. One is to be chaired by Anand Panyarachun, a British-educated royalist and former prime minister, now aged 77. The other is reserved for Prawase Wasi, a doctor and academic who helped write the previous, 1997, constitution. They have a leisurely three years in which to make recommendations on how to bridge Thailand’s deep divisions.

Both men played similar roles in the 1990s, when a loose alliance of NGOs, intellectuals, trade unions and others thrashed out a consensus on a new constitution. The liberal charter that resulted in 1997 was torn up in 2006, after a royalist coup against a popular prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. He refused to go quietly, setting Thailand on its present self-destructive path.

Duncan McCargo, of the University of Leeds, sees parallels between Thailand’s fumbling response to the red shirts and its approach to Muslim insurgents in the troubled south. In both cases, he says, authorities have glossed over political grievances and focused on individual troublemakers like Mr Thaksin. Security forces have behaved badly. When the violence got out of hand, reconciliation commissions were set up to find a solution. Not surprisingly, the same names turn up: Mr Anand chaired a 2005 commission on the southern violence. Mr Prawase also served on it. Its findings were largely ignored. And the conflict shows no sign of ending, despite five years under emergency rule.

Some have predicted a similar red-shirt uprising. A few bombs have gone off. But the leadership is in tatters. Terrorism charges have been filed against 53 people, including Mr Thaksin, a fugitive who already faces a two-year sentence for abusing his power. Hundreds of others are in jail. Red-shirt media have been shut down, including popular radio stations. In the provinces there are whispered claims of state-sanctioned killings. But, for now at least, repression seems to be working.

Mr Abhisit has been busy trying to woo voters with catchy giveaways, such as free bus- and train-rides for the poor and a pay rise for civil servants. How to finance these populist policies is another matter, though the Thai economy is doing quite well, despite the political upheaval. Nomura, a Japanese bank, says it could grow by 6% this year, thanks to robust exports.

This week Thais were encouraged to call a hot line and speak their mind. As television cameras rolled, Mr Abhisit and his ministers took a few of the calls. The telethon was billed as “Six days, 63m opinions”. Some callers complained of economic problems. Others expressed political views. Politicians love this sort of thing. There is a much more systematic way to find out what the Thai population wants. It is called an election."

Why the CRES is wrong

8 July 2010

I have been trying to avoid writing much about Thailand. It is hard to write anything more about the political basket case that this country is and about the hypocrisy of those in power. There are plenty of people linked from my blog that write wisely about Thailand.

But this week the CRES asked that the State of Emergency (introduced in April) be continued across Bangkok and much of Thailand for another three months. It is pretty clear that the important decisions in Thailand are being made by the CRES - which is chaired by Deputy PM, Suthep. Remember Suthep is no longer an elected politician after a land purchase scandal. He is a government appointee. Yet arguably he is the most important person in this government.

The CRES and the state of emergency laws work together to suppress any and all opposition. The government and the military now control the country's institutions, access to and the flow of information and sadly also the country's future. Which looks like much more of the same.

Just as an example of the CRES' reach earlier this week Puea Thai Party spokesman Prompong Nopparit said that he was ready to provide information on the 11 red-shirts allegedly being detained at a military camp in Kanchanaburi to the CRES.

Meanwhile CRES spokesman (and now Bangkok housewife heartthrob) Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd said that the CRES had asked Kanchanaburi police and military units and was told there were no red-shirts being held there as alleged.

Col Sansern said the CRES would on Wednesday ask police to summons Mr Prompong for questioning. Sansern said Bangkok is under a state of emergency and providing false information causing misunderstanding among the public and the media is prohibited.

If Mr Prompong fails to provide sufficient information and a clear explanation for the allegation to the CRES, he will face being charged with distributing false information under the emergency decree, said Sansern adding that the penalty for this offence is set at two years in jail and a 40,000 baht fine.

Time to muzzle another dissenting voice.

The reality is that an elected government needs to run the country The State of Emergency needs to be cancelled. The CRES needs to be disbanded. And Col Sansern needs to be muzzled.

Thailand's red shirts vow to fight on

8 July 2010 The Guardian

"In the near-empty Red Coffee Corner cafe, in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, the portraits of four men have pride of place above the front window: Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Thaksin Shinawatra.

Beneath the picture of the exiled billionaire former prime minister – ousted in a coup, convicted of corruption but still a hero to millions – Jakrapon Botirak was holding court, discussing the future of Thailand and its fractious politics.

"This [cafe] is not a good business," he said. "It loses a lot of money. But it is important that people have a place where they can come to talk about our country freely. This is a place for that."

Thailand's north, populated largely by small-scale farmers and shop owners – the country's "rural poor" – is known as the redshirt heartland. It is from here that the anti-government movement, whose protesters occupied the streets of Bangkok for more than two months, drew its numerical strength and where it remains strongest.

On Tuesday the government signalled that the movement was still a threat, as it extended a state of emergency for another three months in about a third of the country, including the areas around Chiang Mai.

"The people here are still red," Jakrapon said. "Not on the surface, [there are] no more shirts, but they still have the red feeling, they still oppose the government."

Since the violent crackdown by government troops in May that ended the redshirts' protest on the streets of the capital, the movement, once proudly public, has been forced underground. Few supporters are now willing to identify themselves or talk openly about the cause. Redshirt stickers and flags, once ubiquitous across this part of Thailand, are a scarcity now.

All that remain are anonymous, vague threats of "guerrilla warfare", and "uprising against the government", all without detail or timetable.

Police are still actively searching for known political activists in Chiang Mai. There is, reportedly, a list several dozen names long, but most of the people are in hiding. The Red Radio station, where Jakrapon was a DJ, has been raided several times and its broadcasting equipment confiscated under Thailand's emergency decree law. Jakrapon's coffee shop is one of the few places in the town that remains defiantly red.

But beneath their seeming acquiescence to the government's reasserted authority, people in Chiang Mai are still enraged, according to Jakrapon. "People are still very angry with the government. The government did not choose the smooth way to end the protests, by talking. They chose the violent way, by shooting."

Fourteen people were killed as troops marched on the reds' protest camp in central Bangkok on 19 May, bringing to at least 88 the number of people who died in the political violence over 68 days of protests.

But the forcible end to the protest has not dissolved the disaffection felt by many Thais towards their government.

"People are ready to fight again, they are not afraid. This is only a rest, a break," Jakrapon said.

Despite the portrait overhead, Jakrapon said the redshirt movement had moved beyond its former figurehead, the fugitive Thaksin. "Thaksin has no special rights or power. The reds are about democracy now."

This is debatable. Thaksin's foreign billions bankrolled much of the long-running demonstration, and opinion persists at senior diplomatic levels that it was his refusal to negotiate with the government that led to the demonstration's final bloody end.

But the redshirts in Chiang Mai say they oppose the government led by Abhisit Vejjajiva because it was never popularly elected. They say it is a puppet administration for the interests of the wealthy elite and the military figures of Bangkok. And, regardless of motivation, in that distant capital it is recognised that while the protest might have been crushed, the discontent that drove it remains.

"Things have calmed down," said Bangkok's governor, Sukhumband Paribatra. "But I am of the opinion that things are not back to normal yet. It may be just an interlude, I hope I'm wrong, but I think it is a possibility that this is a quiet interlude between two crises. This is why I'm very worried."

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok, said the government faced a difficult task trying to reconcile Thailand's yawning political divide. "The early signs aren't good. There's vindictiveness in the air."

Tawangwong Yoduppatham runs a tiny shop on the northern outskirts of Chiang Mai. He went by train to Bangkok four times to join the protests and was behind the reds' tyre-and-bamboo barricades when the troops advanced. "The soldiers, they shoot at everybody, even people who are peaceful. I saw people killed. We run, we have to leave, but we leave more angry at the government."

He is cynical about government talk of an early election, a "circuit breaker" on the political impasse gripping Thailand. Tawangwong believes that even when the parliamentary term expires at the end of next year there will not be elections. "Nobody here trusts the government. They say one thing and do another. They lie to us."

He added that the sense of peacefulness in Thailand's north belied the people's anger. But with the redshirt leadership in hiding or in prison on terrorism charges, there is a vacuum at the head of the anti-government movement.

"There are two groups of people, some who want more protests for the world to see, and other people who want to go underground, to do violence against the government. But for now, the people are just waiting for new leaders to come up. For sure, the grassroots people are all ready to fight.""

Carrefour to leave Thailand

7 July 2010

Carrefour has launched the sale of units in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand in a deal that could raise around $1 billion for the French retailer.

Carrefour is working with investment banks Goldman Sachs and UBS on the auction, which is expected to generate interest from both corporate buyers and private equity firms. The auction is apparently in its early stages and like any sale process could change at any time.

Carrefour, the world's second-biggest retailer, has also exited Japan and Korea over the years to focus on bigger and fast-growing markets such as India.

Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij stated (probably rightly) that he is not worried by the investment withdrawal of the French hypermarket chain and still believes in the country's potential to attract foreign retail investors.

The Queen is coming

7 July 2010

The Queen is coming to town - Queen Elizabeth II (the monarch not the boat) will make a state visit to the UAE in the autumn, her first trip to the country in 31 years.

Buckingham Palace issued a statement yesterday confirming the visit, after the British monarch accepted an invitation from Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi.

The dates and itinerary of her trip are being withheld for security reasons but it is expected the Queen and her husband Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, will come some time after Ramadan.

From the UAE, the Queen, 84, will fly to Oman, where she will join celebrations to mark the 40th year of Sultan Qaboos bin Said's rule. That should give everyone a pretty good idea of the dates ! So much for security!

The Queen is 84 ! She does keep going remarkable well. It will be her second trip to the UAE. In 1979 she visited and met with Sheikh Zayed in Abu Dhabi before flying to Dubai for two days, officially opening a number of projects including the Dubai Municipality building.

Theodore Karasik, director of research and development at the Institute for Near East & Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, said the visit was bound to carry economic implications. “The British monarch is coming at a time of permanent and robust cooperation between Britain and the UAE. Plus as the Queen will be visiting the Emirati royals, the visit will be full of pomp and circumstance.”

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh recently completed a nine-day tour of Canada and yesterday she made her first visit to New York in 34 years. She visited the World Trade Center site for the first time and addressed the UN General Assembly, which she had not done for more than 50 years.

Last month, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, met the Queen at Epsom Racecourse during the Derby.

One rule for some

7 July 2010

Two motorists who were arrested after videos of their dangerous driving in Dubai were posted on YouTube have been fined just dhs1,000 each.

The footage showed a 4x4 vehicle driving down Sheikh Zayed Road on two wheels, while a pick-up truck was performing handbrake turns.

The National newspaper revealed todat that one of the drivers was a Dubai policeman; the other a government official.

The two Emirati men were found not guilty of endangering the lives of other road users and were handed the fines for reckless driving by Dubai Court of Misdemeanours today.

The police revealed that the reckless drivers had been part of an organised celebratory procession for fans of Al Wasl Football Club after they won the Gulf Club Champions Cup. Police patrols were apparently at the procession to ensure it happened safely, but they had been at the back of the parade.

To put this in perspective the fine for being caught by a speed camera at 20-40km in excess of the speed limit is AED600.

Emirates flying into protectionism

6 July 2010 - Business Traveller

"Emirates recently stunned the aviation world with a further massive order for A380 superjumbos.

At the Berlin air show it signed an $11.5 billion contract for 32 additional A380s which will, when all are delivered, provide Emirates with a combined fleet of 90 superjumbos which is several times more than will be operated by its rivals.

But aviation experts are now questioning whether or not Emirates will actually be able to utilise this huge fleet of A380s.

The problem for Emirates is that it has become a victim of its own success. It has developed a quality and value for money brand which is as well known around the world as, say, the Easyjet brand is amongst cost-conscious travellers here in Europe.

Fearful of Emirates stealing more of their passengers, the world’s big national carriers and their governments are attempting to restrict the Dubai national airline’s growth.

Quoted on Dow Jones newswires in New York last week, Peter Hartman, CEO of Dutch airline KLM (part of the Air France and KLM grouping) said, “Emirates is likely to face more and more reluctance [by governments] to grant it traffic rights.”

This is already happening. According to reports in France’s “La Tribune” the French government has rejected Emirates’ application for more landing slots in Paris. According to La Tribune, Emirates can expand in France but only provided it opens up a new destination: Lyon.

In the case of Germany, the government last year ordered Emirates to raise its fares in line with prices charged by EU carriers (see online news November 20, 2009). Emirates would dearly like to inaugurate services to two additional German cities: Stuttgart and Berlin. But permission has been refused unless Emirates were to drop flights to two of its four existing German destinations (Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich) and this is something which it has refused to do.

The Dubai-based airline has also been refused permission to add extra seats on routes to Canada and South Korea.

Emirates built itself up by emulating the business models of transfer carriers like KLM and SIA. These airlines specialise in carrying passengers through, as well as to, their respective hubs of Amsterdam and Singapore.

Dubai’s strategic location enabled it to capitalise on the voluminous numbers of East-West travellers (those flying from Europe to Asia and Australia, for example). More recently it has begun tapping a new growth area of North-South traffic (passengers flying from Russia, Japan and China via Dubai to Africa and Latin America).

The kangaroo route linking Europe with Australasia is a prime example of how Emirates has come from nowhere in the past 20 or so years to dominate the market.

Way back in 1988, our own British Airways was market leader. In those days BA served seven cities in Australia and New Zealand. An advertisement in BA’s 1988 timetable proclaimed “We’re on top Down Under. No one offers a better choice of destinations. Or a better way of getting there.”

Fast forward 22 years and BA, with its Down Under schedule now cut to as few as seven flights a week to a single city (Sydney) is a minnow. Today it is Emirates, with its 70 flights a week (mostly operated by large B777s and A380s) to six cities, who has assumed BA’s kangaroo route mantle.

Interviewed on arabianbusiness.com, Maurice Flanagan, Emirates’ founding CEO and current executive chairman said, “We always planned to grow, we were just never able to put our finger on how quickly. Now we’re short of capacity all the time.”

Flanagan claims that rivals should follow its lead and order more planes for efficiency savings.

“I can’t understand why other airlines have been so slow to pick up on the A380. The economies are fantastic. It has given us a huge advantage because the seat mile costs are much lower than on any other aircraft.”

So for now Emirates’ expansion is based around adding new countries to its network and increasing seat capacity (where it is allowed to do so) on existing routes. Rostering an A380 in place of a B777-300 will add over 100 extra seats.

In the case of Europe a new destinations in the form of Holland (Amsterdam) came online last May, and the Czech capital of Prague joins Emirates’ network in July with the Spanish capital of Madrid following in August.

Although Emirates has not added any additional UK cities for a couple of years it has boosted the number of seats into Heathrow by upgrading two existing services to its A380 operation. The A380 will also be used into Manchester from September with Birmingham (a city to which Emirates operated a special A380 flight last year) a future possibility.

Interesting times like ahead."
 

What happened to the RTA/Emirates contract?

6 July 2010

The Public Transport Agency (PTA) of the Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) announced in a press release that it has recently completed the training of commercial bus drivers who would be deploying on buses commuting the employees of Emirates Group, and as per the agreement concluded between the two parties, the service was launched on in June.

No it was not. The crew buses are still under the old contract with (I thinik) Europcar.

According to Mansour Rahma Al Falasi, Director of PTA’s Fleet Drivers Affairs, the Agency, in coordination with PTA’s Bus Dep’t, Business Development Dep’t, and Maintenance & Services Dep’t as well as Contracts & Purchasing Dep’t of RTA Corporate Administrative Support Services Sector, (how many departments are needed to show some drivers where the EKHQ building is !) has completed this intensive training course to ensure optimum qualification of commercial bus drivers to groom them for delivering top-class services to the employees of Emirates Group and act as RTA ambassadors to other departments and agencies in Dubai Emirate.

“The training course included 10 sessions; namely: customer service, principles of Transport Ambassador Program, communication through Transport Ambassador Program, fire fighting, passenger evacuation in the event of fire, defensive driving, safe driving, smart appearance, navigator system, familiarizing with the use of the ingress and egress of Emirates Group’s Main Building, and technical training,” said Al Falasi.

The course, which lasted 16 days; comprising 13 days of practical training and 3 days of theoretical training in a total of 154 training hours, witnessed the participation of 192 drivers who received training from 10 instructors, 2 training officers, and 2 training specialists.

It is noteworthy that PTA has signed in last May an agreement to hire a number of buses to commute 15,000 employees of Emirates Group between the residences and workplaces at the Dubai International Airport, Head Office of the Group and other locations affiliated to the Group in Dubai over 109 routes, in a contract valid for 3 years amounting to 100 million dirham.

But there is no sign of the buses.

Lockerbie bomber alive and well

6 July 2010

I hope the Scottish are suitably embarrassed. Last year and either on their own or under commercial pressure from the UK government, the Scottish government released Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the Lockerbie bombing based primarily upon evidence that al-Megrahi was dying and had less than a year to live. Now, and perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that his medical condition is nowhere near as bad as had been represented to the Scottish Court:

The Lockerbie bomber could survive for 10 years or longer, according to a cancer specialist who last year said he would be dead within three months of his release.

Professor Karol Sikora has told The Sunday Times it was “embarrassing” the bomber had outlived his three-month prognosis.

Megrahi, 58, is the only person convicted of the 1988 bombing of a US Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, which left 270 dead.

The Scottish government provoked outrage from the United States when it released him from prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds because he dying of metastatic prostate cancer.

In Scotland, prisoners are eligible for release on compassionate grounds if they have fewer than three months to live.

A report in the Sunday Times said Libyan authorities, keen to secure Megrahi’s release, asked several experts to put a three-month estimate on the bomber’s life but Professor Sikora was the only one to agree.

Professor Sikora, the dean of medicine at Buckingham University and medical director of CancerPartnersUK in London, was paid for his medical assessment of Megrahi at Greenock prison on July last year.

He told the newspaper: “There was always a chance he could live for 10 years, 20 years … But it’s very unusual.

Within weeks after al-Megrahi was released, there were allegations that the medical evidence supporting his petition for compassionate release was questionable at best, as well as allegations of a quid pro quo deal between Libya and the U.K. involving oil and/or a trade deal. Also, given the hero’s welcome he received on his return to Libya, it’s not all surprising to hear that the Libyan Government may have been involved in cooking the books to create the facts necessary to allow the Scottish Justice Minister to approve his release.

There’s nothing that can be done about this at this point, of course, but one has to wonder if the Scots feel deceived at all about this.

The curious case of UAE banks

5 July 2010 The Financial Times

What’s going on at the banks in the United Arab Emirates? It is an open secret that the deterioration in their asset quality is worse than suggested by the size of problem loans, which credit rating agency Moody’s puts at 4.9 per cent of total loans at the end of last year.

Dubai has been through a devastating crisis. The emirate’s property crash has wiped 50 per cent off values, while in nearby Abu Dhabi the market is down by 30 per cent. Economists expect property prices to fall some more, perhaps even as much as 20 per cent.

Many companies in the region are suffering and few are able to secure new credit lines. It has not gone without notice, moreover, that the non-performing loan to gross loan ratio reported by HSBC Bank Middle East was 7.3 per cent – a “better indication” of reality, according to Fitch Ratings.

“Knowing the situation of the property market in Dubai and of the family-owned conglomerates and government-owned companies, the very low problem-loans numbers [that UAE] banks are showing do not add up,” says one financial analyst.

In fact, when analysts look at the state of the banks, they assume the published ratios do not capture the whole picture and they incorporate a higher figure for delinquent lending.

Yet the analysts are not alarmed. True, banks are reluctant to lend, thereby damping down economic growth. But the UAE banking industry is well capitalised and the banks are likely to be able to absorb the higher assumptions of worsening asset quality. It is also understood that the central bank is not prepared to allow financial institutions to fail.

Banks have some leeway in classifying their problem loans (impaired loans and those more than 90 days past due but not impaired). To be sure, UAE banks do not appear to be adopting the most conservative approach.

But those who look closely at the industry say there are several factors that have allowed the bankers to convince the central banks and their auditors that problem loans should be kept low.

The crucial element in the mystery is the most obvious. Unlike other markets, UAE banks exist in a protected environment. Some of their most troubled clients – the state-backed Dubai companies such as Dubai World, owner of the developer Nakheel – are not going bankrupt. Instead they are receiving financial support from Abu Dhabi and from the Dubai government and are therefore restructuring.

With central bank approval, the banks will make provisions only after the restructurings are finalised. Moody’s estimates that the deal Dubai World is agreeing with creditors – and which the financial community has broadly welcomed – will bring the amount of problem loans at the banks covered to about 9 per cent by the end of this year.

With other parts of Dubai Inc also likely to restructure, problem loans as a percentage of total loans could reach 12.5 per cent this year, says the agency.

“Some people compare the situation with the Asian crisis when problem loans were much higher – but there is a difference here,” says John Tofarides, an analyst at Moody’s. “You’ve got a strong financial neighbour supporting the Dubai government in the restructuring.”

Other experts point out that it usually takes two years after the outbreak of a crisis for non-performing loans to peak, as corporate defaults follow consumer defaults. That stage will be reached this autumn. In the UAE, banks also tend to renegotiate loans with clients, keeping them out of the non-performing category.

In the post-financial crisis world in which the global banking industry remains shaken, UAE banks should be counting their blessings. “The banks are just highly supported,” says Mr Tofarides. “Not a lot of countries are sitting on more than 90bn barrels of oil with an indigenous population of less than 1m.”

He dies; she is jailed. Only in Dubai

5 July 2010

This is the latest from the Dubai courts courtesy of The Gulf News; the summary - an unmarried couple have sex in a Dubai hotel; he has a heart attack Instead of fleeing the scene she dies the decent thing and calls security for help. She gets detained and charged and locked up; and will then be deported. Moral of the story. If he dies after sex, run !

 "A woman has been jailed for having consensual sex with a businessman who suffered a cardiac arrest and died shortly following the act. The Dubai Court of Misdemeanours on Monday jailed the 28-year-old Iranian woman visitor to two months in jail after she was pronounced guilty of having consensual sex.

Presiding Judge Abdul Majid Al Nezami, who pronounced Monday's judgment, said the accused, S.I., will be deported after the completion of her punishment.

When the woman first appeared in court last month, she pleaded not guilty and defended that the deceased was her fiancé and that they had signed a temporary marriage contract in Iran.

Prosecutors accused S.I. of having sex with 47-year-old Iranian, A.M., who suffered a cardiac failure and died in a hotel in Dubai. Prosecution records showed that the couple was having sex in the hotel room when the man's breathing became heavy and he fell to the floor.

The woman was said to have called the security for help. Police and paramedics rushed to the hotel. The woman was detained as the businessman was pronounced dead. The woman told police interrogators that after the sexual act, A.M. moved aside and complained of chest pain and was hardly breathing. She alleged that she called paramedics who failed to revive the man.

S.I. alleged during questioning that she informed A.M.'s friends about what happened and they in turn informed the police. The woman, according to prosecution records, denied indulging in the flesh trade and sleeping with the victim for money.

Forensic reports confirmed that A.M. had earlier suffered a heart attack and his body showed signs of an open-heart surgery. A friend of the deceased told the police that they had come to Dubai on a visit visa two days before the incident.

The fragile peace may not last until the poll

5 July 2010 - The Australian

The is one central question in Thailand today. Can the nation, and specifically the capital, Bangkok, get through to an election, probably in about 12 months' time, without another outbreak of serious violence?

The betting is no more optimistic than 50/50.

In April and May of this year Bangkok was convulsed by demonstrations, led by the Red Shirts - supporters of billionaire former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup in 2007. Clearing these demonstrators ultimately cost 90 lives and 1400 were injured.

The Red Shirts wanted the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajiva to immediately resign and face new elections. Abhisit offered early elections as soon as November this year, more than 12 months before they are due, but negotiations for a compromise broke down. A faction of the Red Shirts became violent and used lethal weapons and forced the military intervention to clear Bangkok's streets. Since then much of the country has been subject to emergency decree which limits the rights of protest. By-elections will be held later this month and these will give an important indication on whether the opposing sides will fight each other peacefully at the ballot box, or engage in more violent confrontations.

Having just spent some time in Thailand, and having talked to as many people as I could, I think it's clear that most Thais now are genuinely sick of violence and were shocked by the deaths in March and April.

This gives a real chance for non-violence holding. Elections are not that far away. People will have a chance to peacefully vent their anger at any government or politician they don't like.

Perhaps even more important than this strategic mood are a series of tactical factors. The Red Shirt leaders are mostly in jail. The most violent leaders of the most violent faction are dead. The Thai police and intelligence services are much more tuned into any signal of a big operation coming along from the Red Shirts.

The violence of March and April has also given the security services a kind of mandate. They won't let demonstrations get so big and they won't let them dominate the centre of Bangkok for months on end.

As well, the Abhisit government has an extensive program of welfare measures for the poor. It recently raised the age for free schooling from 12 to 15 - perhaps the single most important pro-poor move any government could make. .

The government is also looking at free public transport entitlements for poor families. In fact it is basically looking at any measure it can adopt to give money to poor people to prevent them rioting.

Abhisit's government has also set up a slew of commissions to try to make Thai politics fairer, for example by making it harder to have politicians and political parties struck out by the courts. There's some irony in this because such measures were previously seen as one effective way of battling corruption.

So that is the case for optimism - people are sick of conflict, the election is coming, the police are on the job, the government is doing its best.

It's a substantial case.

But the case for pessimism is also substantial. The anger against the government in the northeast is still very severe. They have three grievances. They still feel they have not had their fair share of benefit from Thailand's decades of strong economic growth. They still like Thaksin. And they are angry that the Red Shirts have gone to jail while the Yellow Shirts have not.

This anger is so great that it is unlikely that many members of the Thai government could travel safely to the northeast of their own country.

That's the big strategic factor for pessimism. Then there are the tactical factors which favour renewed violence. Thaksin and some other business figures appear to be continuing to support the protest movement from abroad. Thaksin has been running a very well-funded public relations campaign which saw many gullible western journalists paint even the most violent Red Shirt demonstrators in a favourable light.

People are scared the Red Shirts will go underground and pursue acts of sabotage or terrorism. That I think is possible but fairly unlikely. There are always a lot of unexplained explosions in Thailand. A lot of that is associated with criminal activity. But there is also a tradition of setting off an explosion against your own premises and blaming your opponent.

And finally the Red Shirts have support not only in the countryside but in Bangkok itself. Eventually they will catch their breath, and the security services will surely become less hyper-alert over time. In a complex, congested city of 10 million people like Bangkok, 10,000 demonstrators who will gather at a critical point and not move can cause enormous dislocation. And then the security services are faced with another episode of bloodshed to disperse them.

Bangkok has been in crisis now more or less continuously for four years. At its base, democracy rests on accepting it when you lose. Neither side in Thailand has shown a willingness to do that over the last few years. Thailand's economy has been resilient in the face of political crisis but that surely cannot go on forever. The bitterness of the last few months will test the legendary Thai goodwill absolutely to the limit. I wouldn't bet on the result either way.
 

Emirates Wins with Big Planes and Low Costs
The Dubai-based airline has quickly become a top international carrier

3 July 2010 Bloomberg Business Week

While the last five years have been grueling for much of the airline industry, Dubai-based Emirates has prospered, becoming one of the top three international carriers. Now, the 25-year-old government-owned airline is on the offensive. To bolster its all-widebody fleet, it's adding 90 Airbus A380 superjumbo jets with 45,000 seats and operating costs 12 percent lower than rival Boeing's (BA) latest 747. That huge fleet of double-decker widebodies poses a threat to big European carriers that, like Emirates, specialize in flying passengers long distances through giant transfer hubs, says British Airways CEO Willie Walsh.

Emirates' latest order for 32 A380s valued at $11 billion, announced in June, will give it 70 more superjumbos than any other airline. "It's a miracle that Emirates already has more intercontinental seats than Air France and British Airways combined," says Wolfgang Mayrhuber, CEO of Lufthansa. "It took us 40 years to get 30 747s in the air in one of the biggest global economies, so one must assume that this is an investment for the world."

Emirates ranked only 24th among international airlines as recently as 2000. Since then it's achieved a sixfold increase in traffic—defined as passengers carried multiplied by the distance flown. The Dubai carrier zoomed ahead last year to join Lufthansa and Air France-KLM Group as the biggest operators of international flights. "We always planned to grow, we were just never able to put our finger on how quickly," says Maurice Flanagan, founding CEO at Emirates and currently executive vice-chairman. "Now we're short of capacity all the time."

Key to Emirates' success: flying super-sized planes—one of its A380s carries about 500 passengers—to reduce expenses per head. The savings help it undercut fares of established rivals like Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, and Singapore Airlines while still making money. Emirates reported net income of $964 million for the year through Mar. 31.

"I can't understand why other airlines have been slow to pick up on the A380," Flanagan says. "The economics are fantastic. It has given us a huge advantage because the seat-mile costs are much lower than on any other aircraft."

Chris Tarry, an independent airline analyst, says Emirates' business model is largely the result of improved jetliner range and Dubai's location midway between Europe and Asia. "First, there's now the technological capability to join any two places on the globe with just one stop," Tarry says. "Second, Dubai is well placed to capture intercontinental traffic flows from North America to Asia, and Europe to Asia and Australia."

Emirates' moves could slam competitors. "It's challenging a segment of the market that is important for BA," says BA's Walsh. "But there are other European hubs where the reliance on transfers is bigger," such as Lufthansa's in Frankfurt and Air France-KLM's in Paris and Amsterdam, he says.

The Emirates model relies on treaties that permit flights between two nations by an airline from a third via its home country. The model works best on long-haul routes requiring refueling, where Emirates doesn't lose out to competitors by stopping in Dubai.

As the Emirates fleet has grown, so has opposition from European carriers, which say the company benefits either directly from funding by Dubai or indirectly through less-costly access to state-owned airport and air-traffic services.

Dubai airport's passenger total rose 9.2 percent, to 41 million, in 2009. The terminal ranked fourth on international flights in March, behind London Heathrow, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, and Hong Kong International. Flanagan says Emirates has gained no unfair advantage and that any government assistance received since the company's founding is dwarfed by past government payments to formerly state-owned BA and Air France.

Lufthansa says Emirates will be further aided by German Chancellor Angela Merkel's plans to introduce a tax on passengers departing from German airports in an effort to raise 1 billion ($1.22 billion) euros a year for the federal government. By contrast, says Lufthansa's Mayrhuber, "the words 'ticket tax' haven't been translated into the Arabic language yet."

Still, the chances of European countries blocking route applications from lower-cost Gulf carriers like Emirates are slim because of the impact that would have on Airbus, says Richard Aboulafia of consultant Teal Group. (Airbus has received support from European governments in the past.) The planemaker, which has plants in France, Germany, Spain, and the U.K., has 280 orders for its A380 and A350 models from Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Etihad Airways of Abu Dhabi. "The Middle East is grabbing market share from legacy airlines, and European governments seem willing to make that sacrifice," Aboulafia says.
 

The crushing of debate in Thailand

3 July 2010

As Bangkok Pundit noted in his blog yesterday "the current political environment in Thailand is not really conducive to blogging about political events." He is one of Thailand's better connected and respected bloggers - and he has confirmed that he will be taking a few months hiatus with blogging reduced to a minimum.

Even the Bangkok Post has published an opinion piece suggesting that the government needs to accommodate differences of opinion. But there is little sign of change. The government is still relying on its state of emergency to maintain an iron grip.

Suranand Vejjajiva, a cousin of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and a columnist at The Bangkok Post newspaper was speaking this week at a symposium on media freedom organised by Chulalongkorn University's Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS) and funded by the European Union. He said Thailand is currently facing many censorship problems. "Who's going to define national security? What constitutes lese majeste? Who is going to define that? ... We're living in special circumstances because the emergency decree is out there. ... Right now you can close down community radio without having to go through the judicial process," said Suranand.

The emergency decree, he added, enabled the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to detain "Voice of Taksin" editor and red-shirt key member Somyos Phruksakemsuk for three weeks although no coherent charge was ever made against him.

Suranand said a lot of mainstream media are too accommodating of the current government and have overblown the fear of Thaksin as a threat to the "super structure" of the Kingdom, while in fact Thaksin is merely a threat to the present government.

Very few print media continue to ask what happened with the 90 deaths, he said.

"[As for] The Nation and The Bangkok Post, I don't see them asking anymore," he said, adding people were being forced by the media and the government into believing in "one-sided propaganda", which dictates that: "You have to be united in only one direction" and that, "anyone who has a different opinion is loyal to Thaksin and disloyal to the King".

Spoiling For a Fight

2 July 2010 - Forbes India

During World War II, the skies of Europe witnessed plenty of dogfights between the Allies and the Axis. The second week of June 2010 saw the start of another, although no planes will be shot down here. Emirates airline chairman and CEO, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, challenged Lufthansa, Europe's largest airline, on its home ground.

Sheikh Ahmed placed an $11.5 billion order for 32 more Airbus A380 Super jumbo aircraft. With 90 on order in all, Emirates is set to be the world's largest operator of the plane putting Lufthansa, a much bigger and older carrier, on the back foot. Lufthansa CEO Wolfgang Mayrhuber could do little but grin and bear it.

Emirates offers more seats than Air France and British Airways (BA) combined on many intercontinental routes, despite a very small home market. With the huge new capacity on order, the writing is on the wall for European flag carriers. Halfway around the world in India, Emirates has worked pretty much the same way. In the last two years, it has grown its network to ten cities, building a formidable and competitive market presence. Emirates now operates 185 flights a week into India, as opposed to Air India's 179. Constrained only by Indian government- restrictions on starting newer stations and flights, it is hungry for more.

For many in the travel business, in terms of passenger preference and network, Emirates is effectively India's new national carrier. Head to head, the Air- India group, with Indian Airlines and Air India Express, has a higher number of international flights. But Emirates is adding new connections every month (Prague and Baghdad in July and Madrid from August). In contrast, Air India has been shrinking operations, in its fight to stay alive. From Dubai, Emirates connects to over 100 cities all over the globe compared to AI's network of about 30 odd global cities connected from India. Even stronger European airlines like Lufthansa, British Airways and Air France--which used to eat Air India's lunch by carrying westbound Indian passengers to their big hubs--are now nursing black eyes with Emirates beating them at their own game.

From a two plane operation in 1985, Emirates has moved up the pecking order by steadily investing in capacity. The huge double-decker A380s ordered in Berlin, each of which can carry 550 passengers, will add many new seats on key routes such as London to Dubai. It is seen as a turning point for the airline industry. The new capacity assumes hundreds of new flights, which can only come from a more liberalized global airline regulation. Airlines like Emirates are pushing for this opening up, a process being resisted mostly by older carriers.

Fresh capacity often pushes down fares. Emirates fares are already up to 50% cheaper than those offered by European rivals on transatlantic routes. The additional capacity offered by the A380s could make it difficult for flag carriers such as BA to compete on some segments. The flights through Dubai have already made some traditional routes operated by BA, Virgin Atlantic and other European carriers uncompetitive. For instance, the "Kangaroo Route” from Europe to Australia via Singapore or Bangkok, has been affected by the arrival of the three Gulf carriers Emirates, Qatar and Etihaad. The combination of more competition and a recession has forced both BA and Virgin to cut capacity on their Australia services.

Australian aviation think-tank Capa (Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation) has been keenly following the airline boom in the Middle East and has published several reports analyzing the impact. Capa India head Kapil Kaul says, ``the aviation business and Emirates airline are strategic to Dubai Inc." India is probably the most important geographic segment for the airline, not just in terms of funneling traffic into Dubai, but also as a source of cheap, talented manpower, he says. Capa expects Emirates to take equity in Indian carriers when government regulations allow it.

European airlines and the Indian carriers have decided that the only way to protect their market is by joining hands. Air India will soon be part of Star Alliance, feeding into a club that includes Lufthansa, Air Canada and United Airlines. Kingfisher has joined another alliance Oneworld, with British Airways and Cathay Pacific as sponsors.

Dubai Inc, on the other hand, has flanked the lower-end of the market with FlyDubai, a Dubai-government owned low-cost carrier which started flying to India this month. Emirates airlines, however, remains focused on the premium and middle segment the market. Though the promoters are common, the two operate as separate entities. Emirates' promotions and advertising are proof of this. The new campaign focuses on attracting first and business class travelers, with free hotel stays in the new Armani hotel at the Burj in Dubai. "About 30% of the Indian traffic is premium class customers,” says Majid Al-Mualla, senior vice-president commercial operations, Emirates. Economy class passengers get help with visa helpdesks and free tickets for children if both parents are traveling. For thousands of Indian passengers every day of the week, EK and DXB, the IATA code (Emirates and Dubai), are the gateway to the world.

"One of the reason's for EK's success is that so many Indians love transiting via Dubai," says Madhav Oza, proprietor of Blue Star Travels, one of the biggest travel consolidators in Mumbai, who sells Emirates seats as well as those of rival airlines. The shopping, easy visas and simply the familiarity with the city often makes them choose it over colder and more congested European hubs like Frankfurt, Paris or Brussels, he says. So going via Dubai has become an attractive option, even if you are traveling to Australia or Africa.

Well aware of this, Dubai is building its infrastructure ahead of time. While environment and noise-restrictions have stalled several airport projects in the West, construction has begun on what is intended to be the world's largest airport at Jebel Ali. The Dubai World Central-Al Maktoum International will have five runways and be able to cope with 180 million passengers a year. The first runway of the airport is due to open next year. However, analysts say the timing could be very critical. The Emirates could be saddled with huge excess capacity if the global economy takes a few wrong turns.

One of the most common criticisms about Emirates is that it owes its success to oil money and subsidies from the Dubai government. The airline and Sheikh Ahmed have always denied this. The airline has started declaring audited results, in what financial circles think is a precursor to an initial public offering. Profits for the year ended March were $964 million.

Subsidy or not, Emirates has benefited hugely by having Dubai as a hub. The airport is open 24 hours a day, and is operated by a sister company. It works in tandem with the airline to draw passengers from all over the world. And this is quite a contrast to the European or even the Indian airports, hemmed inside busy cities with curfew times restricting air traffic. Editorial director of American airline trade magazine Air Transport World, Perry Flint, does not believe the Dubai government secretly subsidizes the airline. "The government has simply understood the importance of a strong national airline to the economy, rather than paying lip service like in other countries", he says. Rather than viewing Emirates as a cash cow, to be milked for taxes, the government has provided all the tools the airline needs--a massive airport with no curfew and low costs, a low or no tax environment to keep taxes down, laws that make it easy to import foreign labor an aggressive negotiation of routes on behalf of Emirates and a credit rating backed by the state (which is not so good today).

Emirates has often been called a ‘Route machine', because of the new points being connected every year. But frequent fliers say mileage points are not the only reason for choosing the carrier. Movies count too. "Emirates had TVs on all seats in 1992,” says Patrick Brannelly, vice president for passenger communications and visual services.

Patrick's designation reflects the change in in-flight options, which now include phone, text and email. "We thought other airlines would follow in two or three years. But it took most of our rivals a good eight to ten years to have personal televisions,” he recalls.

Travelers can use their mobile phones to make calls and text from the flights. Opinion was divided about whether this would be intrusive to other passengers, but Brannelly says the experiment has gone well and it is just like using mobiles in any other public place.

The in-flight entertainment equipment is the most expensive component of the plane after the engines. It costs anywhere from $10,000 - $15,000 per seat to install the system on a plane, he says When they began; IFE had six channels, today there are more than 1,200. From options of 15- 20 movies, it is now video on demand, with hundreds of options. Movies in Hindi, Malayalam, German, French and other languages are available not only within a particular geography, but across the network on all flights.

Kaul predicts that the Emirates network in India will only grow stronger over the next few years as Indian carriers simply do not have the strong balance sheet needed to compete.

But it will not be so easy in the rest of the world. Emirates is growing its network in Europe--it connects to 19 cities. But the large European carriers have a footprint in dozens of cities in North and South America, something Emirates is some way from achieving. For instance, it connects to only four cities in the United States, as opposed to Lufthansa's 22 North American gateways.

The latest order is another bold move in a world where most airlines are taking severe hits on their profits.

But Sheikh Ahmed knows that to win a dogfight, you have to be on the top.
 

Spies like us

1 July 2010 - The Economist

Invisible ink, meetings in a park, buried pots of money, bags switched at stations and a good-looking Bond girl as well. The story of the 11 Russian secret agents uncovered by the FBI this week has everything to turn it into a low-budget spy movie. But it has even more to turn it into a slapstick parody of one: spies who fail to dig up any secrets but post their photos on Facebook and who argue with their masters about the ownership of their safe house.

According to the documents provided by the FBI to the courts, the suspects were “illegal” agents of the Russian Foreign Intelligence agency (SVR), a descendant of the KGB, who had mostly lived in “deep cover” since the 1990s in sleepy suburbs of New York, Boston and Washington, DC.

The cover was good: “they couldn’t have been spies…look what she did with the hydrangeas,” one neighbour told the New York Times. The spying, less so. In fact, the spies were not even successful enough to have espionage charges brought against them. Their task, it seems, was to infiltrate influential political circles in America and find out their thinking on Russia and Barack Obama’s intentions for last year’s summit in Moscow, but there is no sign that they succeeded beyond what could have been gleaned from reading the better papers. (One of the alleged moles, Vicky Pelaez, was, in fact, a left-leaning columnist for El Diario, New York’s largest Spanish language newspaper.)

The FBI court documents paint a picture of a professionally inadequate team trying to justify their usefulness (and their expenses) to their Moscow masters. The intercepted dialogue between the conspirators is more reminiscent of Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” than anything written by Ian Fleming:

LAZARO: They tell me that my information is of no value because I didn’t provide any source…it’s of no use to them.

PELAEZ: Really?

LAZARO: Yes. They say that…without a source…without stating who tells you all of this…it isn’t…your report isn’t….

PELAEZ: [Interrupts] Put down any politician from here.

Another intercepted message shows the director of Russia’s intelligence service, SVR, displaying an alarming interest in the house in which the conspirators live. “We are under the impression that C. views our ownership of the house as a deviation from the original purpose of our mission here. We’d like to assure you that we do remember what it is.”

The revelations have caused embarrassment in Moscow, not so much because Russia was caught spying on America, but because it did it so clumsily. Old KGB spies this week lamented the decline in professional standards. But the scandal has rather more serious domestic implications too. It punctures the mystique that helped allow the security services to gain such clout under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s former president and present prime minister and a former KGB spy. The story discredits him and his circle of siloviki, the former and present members of the security services. Being laughed at is worse than being feared.

Mr Putin tried to play down the whole incident. In a conversation with Bill Clinton he almost managed to turn the whole thing into a joke: “You’ve chosen the right time to come to Moscow. I hear your police have got carried away and put people in jail…but that’s their job after all; really, they are all just doing their job…”

Yet even Russia’s official foreign ministry response was low-key, particularly compared with the rants of a few years ago. It admitted that the detained “illegals” are indeed Russian citizens and expressed the hope that America will show them some understanding. America’s officials were similarly calm. “I do not believe that this will affect the reset of our relationship with Russia,” said Robert Gibbs, the president’s spokesman. “We have made great progress in the past year and a half working on issues of mutual concern.”

Still, the question of the timing of the arrests—years after the operation started but only days after Barack Obama’s recent cordial meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev—seemed puzzling. Conspiracy theories abound. Was the scandal intended by hardliners in Washington to torpedo the improving relationship with Moscow? Was it plotted by Moscow’s hardliners to undermine Mr Medvedev? Was it meant to strengthen Mr Medvedev’s hand against the siloviki as part of an American policy of playing Mr Medvedev against Mr Putin? Or was it merely designed to win the administration a few good headlines after a rough few weeks? The official line, that the suspects were on the point of fleeing, got some confirmation from the fact that one of them did indeed get away to Cyprus, where he was arrested and then, inexplicably, bailed.

At any rate, neither America nor Russia seem to have any desire to jeopardise the “reset” in their relations. As for the future fate of the illegals, Mr Putin may have some good advice. When British spooks were caught in Moscow using a transmitter hidden in a rock, Mr Putin argued there was no need to extradite them: “If these spies are sent out, others will be sent in. Maybe they’ll send some clever ones that will be hard for us to find.”

flydubai announces flights to northern Iraq

1 July 2010