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plachon
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Posts posted by plachon
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Asia and India (mostly) are certainly the biggest polluters and destroyers of land, resources, environment, wildlife, etc, etc....
They as people and as a government just don't care about what they are doing or care for the future of the people or the planet.
It's greed.
Think of the air quality difference between Delhi, India and/or Haikou, China versus ... British Columbia or New Zealand.
It's suicide living in Haikou or Delhi.
"Asia and India (mostly) are certainly the biggest polluters and destroyers of land...."
I think you meant to say Asia (India is in Asia) is the most populated and thus the most polluted continent om earth.
The first 98 most polluted cities in the world (according to this):
are in Asia.
edit: oops, forgot Cairo, Egypt, Africa at #30 & Mauritius #49
Interesting list, though I wouldn't take it too seriously, bar the fact that the first 98 (or thereabouts) most polluted cities are in Asia.
For example, where is Beijing and a dozen other heavily polluted cities in China, that would easily make the top 30? The list seems to be biased towards India, and I suspect is using official govt data, which in the case of China, is an absolute farce. People only know how badly polluted Beijing is from their senses first and foremost, but also the US Embassy monitor, because the govt refuses to acknowledge to their own citizens just how bad the air is.
And where is Bangkok in the list, or Chiang Mai, for that matter. I guess the Thai govt doesn't want to scare the tourists away by admitting to the scale of the problem with any official data. As far as I could make out, the worst city in Thailand according to the list was Chiang Rai at 256, with PM10 data supplied from 2012. But Chiang Mai has had far worse air quality than Chiang Rai for years, so why is it not included higher up the list? And where is Bangkok?
Another anomaly (or total joke) is the position of Mexico City at 461. For anyone who has visited Mexico City in the last 40 years would know the air quality is appalling and utterly toxic. It would make the top 20 for sure, so given this, I wonder if any of the ranking data is reliable?
But having just come back from Thailand and experiencing some of the worst air quality I can remember ever, all I can say is that I am very glad I don't live there any more. As my plane took off from Swampy airport, one could hardly make out Bangkok below, with visibility from smog down to less than 2 kms max. The plane ascended to about 4,000 feet and then suddenly, it broke through the layer of smog and we were into blue sky. It was such a clear line between toxic smog and clean air above, that I took a photo of it as a memento.
All I can say is good luck to you folks living in that toxic hell-hole - just try to avoid breathing in too often!
You know those shock photos on packets of fags, with the holes in the throat and diseased lungs etc? My recommendation to TAT is that they should be mandatory on all tourist brochures to Thailand!
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Big Publicity involving Big Names and likely Minimal Result.
Other than token gestures who will pay any attention ?
Yesterday my local authority had the water trucks out watering the plants on the central reservation of the dual carriageways.
I wonder if it will extend to government agencies scaling back on their lawn and garden watering operations, usually taking place during the hottest part of the day, when the bulk of it just evaporates straight back into the air. The other favourite trick is to leave the sprinklers in the same place all day, so that spot becomes a sodden mess, with water just trickling away over the surface. Saw that the other day at a RID-managed dam gardens and a university in the heart of arid Isaan.
Until the government leads by example, it is unlikely the private sector or ordinary Thais, especially farmers, are going to cut back on their water guzzling habits. Usually its all talk and no action, beyond some tokenistic gesture.
People should be asking how this 30 % target will be measured and evaluated? And by whom?
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Build an airport on a swamp....you will get snakes!
Especially one named Cobra Swamp - Nong Ngu Hao - up until the airport was renamed.
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"Of the 26.9 million tonnes of garbage generated last year, 8.4 million tonnes were properly disposed of and 7.09 million tonnes were also disposed but not properly. Hazardous garbage amounted to about 590,000 tonnes, up 14,000 tonnes from a year before."
If 8.4 million tonnes were properly disposed of and 7.09 million tonnes were improperly disposed of, one wonder about the other 14.41 million tonnes of rubbish - what happened to that? Either the stats are all <deleted> (quite likely), or there is over 14 million tonnes of crap running round the country awaiting proper or improper disposal. I guess it could imply that the bulk of the rubbish was just dumped haphazardly in the environment, such as you see in countless upcountry villages where the people just go to the edge of the village and pile the rubbish on the road verge or dump it in the local river.
Whatever, over 1.1 kg per person a day of rubbish is shockingly bad, if I compare it against my own family's rubbish collection for a week in UK. I reckon it is about 600 g per pax, including recyclables separated out curbside. Main weight is wine, beer and cider bottles.
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Delivering the meat to Bangkok restaurants... who were waiting for their <deleted> tiger meat? Who had customers waiting - for their order of tiger meat?
Shoot the whole lot of them, the sick bastards. Loads of money but no breeding or class, is the problem.
Asia is full of wannabe sociopaths and their retard offspring, who got their hands on fortunes very dubiously...
I hope you directed the same level of vitriol at the US dentist who shot Cecil the lion with a crossbow and slowly killed over 48 hours, just for his trophy collection. Neither cruelty to animals, nor greed, nor sociopathic tendencies are restricted to people from any single continent. Neither, sadly is ignorance and racism, as your post and the many who "liked" it demonstrate in spades.
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The way they over fish i surprised they have an industry
The solution has been over the last 20 years to move the industry further afield to neighbour's and international waters and overfish those instead. This expansion has been heavily subsidised by state funds, so I guess the govt is being consistent in subsidising the retraction of the industry too, now the global oceans are increasingly spent. The money will no doubt be mostly channeled to the wealthiest boat owners, rather than the small guys who are suffering the most from the combined state-private sector mismanagement of the fishery.
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I guess this is so that the Burmese soldiers can work on the land that the military stole from the Karen.
Did the Thai military steal land from the Karen in Myanmar?
I don't know about their land (Burma-Thai gas pipeline anyone?) but the Thai military have been complicit in stealing the Karen's forests and wildlife for many years, through their counterparts in the Burmese junta. Big Jiew was one of the worst offenders in this regard, exchanging Burmese students arrested in Thailand after they fled for their life following the 1988 crackdown for Burmese timber concessions, much of it sourced from Karen native territory. The Karen military also got into the act to a certain extent, but were a little less rapacious than their Burmese counterparts.
Excellent post. Thanks for this, plachon. Few know the history and sociopolitical implications of the deforestation of this region. Big Jiew's real name was Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, a Thai army general and politician. He did indeed cooperate with the Burmese Army in corrupt and dodgy scams that resulted in the deforestation of large swaths of Myanmar/Burma as well as Thailand. At one point, after logging was banned in Thailand, he had an operation that exported logs to Burma, where they were stamped with a forestry stamp to disguise their origin, then re-imported to Thailand. After awhile, they did away with shipping logs across the Salween-- why bother?-- and simply brought the stamp to Thailand. The great Thai forests disappeared into the pockets of Chavalit and others involved.
And not just in Burma and Thailand, either-- he moved his operations to Cambodia after the heat got turned up. This operation involved the Khmer Rouge. Global Witness says that pursuant to a meeting between Cambodian Ag minister Tao Seng Huor and then-Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit, Cambodia agreed to export 1.1 million cubic meters of 'old felled' timber to Thailand.
"All the logs were in Khmer Rouge (KR) held territory, making verification of their existence impossible. Global Witness’ investigations, however, showed that the loggers were in fact cutting to order and paying the KR between $35-90 per m3."
This Global Witness paper makes it clear that China was also involved in the pillaging of natural resources from minority areas of Burma.
(you can open the below link in Internet Explorer or some other browser)
For a good summary, look into James Fahn's 'Land on Fire: the environmental consequences of the Southeast Asian boom': http://www.amazon.com/Land-Fire-Environmental-Consequences-Southeast/dp/0813342678
For a look at the political economy of deforestation in Thailand, check out these two posts:
https://www.ncsu.edu/project/amazonia/Delang.pdf
http://dev.mtnforum.org/sites/default/files/publication/files/857.pdf
Thanks too, for your further information and links. I do indeed remember the Salween logging scandal, but don't recall Chavalit being at the centre of it. Maybe he was, but I just don't recall his name coming up in the news reports at the time. I do remember his links with pulling a lot of the logs out of Cambodia, though, both before and after the UN elections, and his control of the trade along the Thai-Cambodian and Thai-Lao borders in Isaan, using his old military connections and new political alliances with Isaan godfather politicians to good effect. Wasn't Newin Chidchob initially a New Aspiration Party politician, bringing home the bacon for Chavalit in Buriram, for instance?
By the 90s, Chavalit was an old hand at the game of border logging, having presided over the 1987 debacle at Ban Rom Klao along the Loei-Pitsanuloke border with Laos, that started over rights to logging border forests and resulted in the deaths of an estimated 700 + Thai soldiers and heaven knows how many Lao soldiers, an incident that was deftly brushed under the carpet within the domestic media, though is featured in James Fahn's book you link to, in Grant Evans book on Lao modern history and was obliquely mentioned in Grossman & Faulder's 2011 biography of King Bhumibol (p.158).
If any living Thai politician deserves a critical biography more than Big Jiew and his amazing exploits, I can't think of any. Or perhaps there is one, but written in Thai and not yet translated to English? Historians note......
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Thanks for the replies so far. It seems like the Shompoo cruise may be one option, but am still interested to hear back from anyone that's taken the slow boat favoured by backpackers to hear their experience of the trip and practicalities. Does one leave daily, for instance, or just certain days of the week? Are the prices fixed or depend on the individual boat? How far in advance do you need to get a ticket and what is the going price? And can you pay for half way to Pak Beng only, or have to get a thru' ticket to Luang Prabang? And just general feedback, for anyone that's taken it in the last year or so.....
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I guess this is so that the Burmese soldiers can work on the land that the military stole from the Karen.
Did the Thai military steal land from the Karen in Myanmar?
I don't know about their land (Burma-Thai gas pipeline anyone?) but the Thai military have been complicit in stealing the Karen's forests and wildlife for many years, through their counterparts in the Burmese junta. Big Jiew was one of the worst offenders in this regard, exchanging Burmese students arrested in Thailand after they fled for their life following the 1988 crackdown for Burmese timber concessions, much of it sourced from Karen native territory. The Karen military also got into the act to a certain extent, but were a little less rapacious than their Burmese counterparts.
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Israel is an interesting one.
Anyway, well done Thailand for only dropping four places, all things considered.
Israel is a bizarre one, given the security situation, the almost constant state of semi-warfare with Palestinian territories and fact that a large section of the society are utterly marginalised by an apartheid-type arrangement. When one considers that France, one of the most civilized and livable countries in the world doesn't appear in the top 20, but the US is in top ten, one really has to wonder about the criteria for constructing this table.
If I was in the bottom quintile of the population, I would much rather live in any of the states that offer social security and protection (i.e. Western European states, Canada, Australia and NZ) over any of the other nations listed, but if I was in the top quintile, probably some semi-secure and democratic state would do. Thailand's place at 93rd is questionable, given its economic fundamentals, and it has the potential to be far higher with a little bit of decent leadership, functioning justice system and political stability. However, given the events of the last 10 years, I wouldn't be surprised to see it slip further down the list over the next decade, unless it can finally get its act together at the top.
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The Suay peoples ('Kui' is impolite to Suay, rather like calling South Asians 'khaek') have history dating back to the Angkor empire. One branch of the Suay are elephants keepers, the other farmers. While the people are called Suay, their language is Kui.
This is incorrect, I am afraid. The people and their language, historically, are Kui or more correctly, Gui. They were named "Suay" by the Siamese colonisers, who became the dominant force in Isaan and parts of northern Cambodia and southern Lao during the early 19th century, as the Kui were not rice farmers and could not give rice or money as tribute to their overlords. So instead, they gave themselves as tribute, which in Siamese/Thai language is pronounced "Suay" and became corvee labourers in the Central Plains. They also gave themselves and their elephants to the Siamese conquerors, being masters at the art of elephant round-ups in the jungle and taming the animals for work or war. So "Suay" is a non-native name imposed on them by the dominant ethnic group and not their self-identified name. However, in recent times, history has been forgotten and gradually successive generations have come to accept the name "Suay" for the ethnic group and language.
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Heaps of misunderstanding and misinformation on GM crops from all sides of this debate, but one really needs to be concerned when some of the most egregious contributions on the subject come from a serving PM.
If the following quote has been correctly translated, then I think he needs to either get another set of advisors, or take 5 from his duties and do some serious reading on the subject. Usually, if you know nothing on a subject, it usually better to keep one's mouth firmly shut, to avoid looking like the proverbial fool.
"Other countries use GM plants in the event of war or crop failure due to disease. This is because these plants can tolerate drought and disease and also have high yields, which will be useful in the event of war around the world," the PM said.
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Has anyone recently taken any slow or tourist boats down the Mekong from Chiang Khong or Huay Xai to Luang Prabang? If so, would be interested to hear your experiences and any details re. options of boats, times, prices, etc. Thanks.
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If it wasn't for GMO plants you would not be eating today's corn,carrots,apples,oranges,lettuce,many of the beans,cabbage and over 50 every day food products and produce you enjoy.The anti-GMO people sounds like the hippy wearing $100 Hush Puppies,designer genes in a demonstration in New York wanting more government hand out and substances..
OMG, how on earth do Europeans survive and thrive without their daily fix of GMO products, like the lucky Americans consume? We must be virtually starving through lack of our daily GMO-fix of "50 every day food products and produce you enjoy". Woe are the rest of the world, who just don't appreciate the benefits of GMOs and wearing designer genes.
Mind you, I reckon that self-professed "smart guy" Donald Trump may have overdone it a bit on the GMO Florida oranges, which would explain his bizarre skin colour and even weirder utterances.
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A result of having fingers in too many pies.
Time to sell off non-performing assets.
I was wondering what that gristly thing with a nail on it in my CP meat pie was.
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Go to the poorest parts of the Northeast, supposedly the driest region of Thailand, and you will not find agriculture at the heart of the economy. While it sounds cute and folksy to call farming "the backbone of the rural economy", the reality is that farming is just one amongst a number of income streams for the majority of rural households. Far more important for most is off-farm remittances from family members working elsewhere and increasingly, other small non-farm businesses, like contract piecework, such as sewing or jewelry making, or local labouring.
Thus to blame drought as the main cause of any downturn in sales is disingenuous and suggests a good cover for other more likely causes, such as higher unemployment on the off-farm jobs or lower remittances sent back home by family members due to higher costs of living, general inflation and downturn in the economy, due to the mismanagement of the incumbent govt. Drought is such an easy scapegoat, because it is mute and will never answer for itself.
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Glad to see TAT are fully onboard with promoting the Sethakit Por Piang policy.
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As I understand it, Vatana Asavahame was in cahoots with the builders (if not one and the same directly) to bump up the costs of construction, as well as selling publically-owned land (that he had magically turned into his own private land) to the government at more ridiculously inflated prices to make humungous profits from this project, which were then laundered through a host of other personal projects, including casinos in Cambodia. So by paying off the constructor, the govt is in fact condoning corruption and it shows Prayuth is only underlining the lesson that corruption pays in Thailand and will be repeated ad infinitum.
This project not only involved the corruption of govt officials and politicians, but also corporate corruption and that of the Asian Development Bank, which gave the original loan to the government to pay for this crazy project. Which as can be seen in the photo, is now rapidly sinking under the waters of the Gulf of Thailand, as local villagers always warned it would, when their mangroves were destroyed to build it. Incredible, but not only corruption pays, but also technical incompetency by all the parties involved with this stinking project, from beginning to end.
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What's the Thai translation for 'aquifier'?
Sounds like: 'bore nam ba dan' is it 'bore water aquifier'? So is an aquifier a 'ba dan' or 'bore nam ba dan' or 'nam kaang'?
When I put 'aquifier' into my google translater it comes out in Thai with 'nam kaang' or what I would think is 'ice'.
Aquifier translation in Google is: น้ำแข็ง
If I go to the Thai government office, at least I need to know what the Thai name for aquifier is me thinks.
ALSO
I'm getting our bore water tested, by a kind person in Thailand, and also sent for a test kit from the States.
I'll publish the results here, so hopefully I can marry the water test results with the pic of the aquifers under us.
Answer my own question.
well water is: naamboo and well is: boonaam
underground water is: naambaadaan
city water is: naamprapaa
Pattaya water contains: naam asuci
Underground water can also be referred to as "naam dai din", but an aquifer is definitely not "naam kaeng", as indicated by your translator.
And Pattaya water will contain a lot else beside "naam asuci" that you would need to worry about, both before and after it comes out the taps. Jizz is just the icing on the cake, so to speak.
Definitely looks like you've got a dissolved iron problem in your own water, so a magnetic filter might be worth investing in, as maybe less troublesome than a fine-screen filter.....not sure about economics of options though, or whether it can be just tolerated for main domestic use water as it is, and get your drinking water elsewhere......though that can sometimes be dodgy in some locations in Thailand too.
Hope the test results come back with nothing too much to worry about.
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What is underway with monsoons, droughts, multiple large cyclones in the Pacific simultaneously is all part of a changed and still shifting hydrological pattern around the globe. More heat in the oceans sets up more moisture in the atmosphere, yet not so evenly distributed. Years with weak trade winds off South America set up bigger El Nino cycles, and these mean drier years for the Western Pacific - yet when trade winds are normal (preventing El Nino amplification) the warmer ocean waters end up in the Western Pacific and the added moisture results in more flooding regionally.
Building more big dams to store water is impractical and untimely, but more earthen dams high up on the tributaries of the river network can be done in weeks - once a decision is made. Those earthen dams can assist in storing water - and might yet be done this year while a few minor storms are yet to supply rain.
This year has been (and early 2016 surely will be) an El Nino event year... hence the drought. Northern Thailand is in the pivotal latitudes where rainfall will be more Feast/Famine than in the past. Southern Thailand extends into the regions where rainfall patterns will consistently exceed historical averages. Ignore what is happening globally, deny it, yet the science is sound. Past patterns will shift, indeed are already shifting.
Looking further into the future... as leaders gather soon in Paris to try to limit the warming to only 2ºC ... how much will become the new sea level around Bangkok at only 2ºC? ... and if it goes to 4ºC?
That's a nice infographic you have there, and, as for the "Global Warming"......George Carlin says it best.
Also,
The more enlightened a populace is, the less pollution you see, and the more they tend NOT turn their backyards into a garbage dump, or a cesspool.
I'm from the US... Prior planning does help in the short term (50 -100 years), but the global warming theory is a myth.
I think the planet invented people, because it wanted plastic bags.
The more enlightened a populace is, the less pollution you see, and the more they tend NOT turn their backyards into a garbage dump, or a cesspool.
Nah, Americans haven't turned their backyards into garbage dumps or cesspools, as you're "enlightened"!
Lou Reed captured the "enlightenment" best:
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There is a Department of Groundwater Resources, that I think maintain an office in each province. They are the authority with most detailed info on this subject. Go to them with a well-dressed Thai friend and politely request GW maps of your area - they will have them, but may need some persuasion to allow you to see them. If you know a government official (karachagan) who is prepared to go with you, then that would help in your quest.
Thanks for that.
Have you seen the maps and are they any good to get an idea of what size aquifer there is under your soil?
I saw some maps many years ago and they are pretty detailed, with geological formations, depths of aquifer, salt affected areas and potential FW yields, but cannot say how often they are updated or remember the scale at which they are produced. Fairly crude for precise locations I'd imagine, but maybe useful for getting a reasonable overview of a district and province. Large parts of the region overlie a large salt layer, as you may know, so establishing the extent of that in relation to your location may be a high priority. However, suspect you may be to the north of the main Mun-Chi basin salt dome and safe. But other dissolved minerals, like iron, may be a concern.
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There is a Department of Groundwater Resources, that I think maintain an office in each province. They are the authority with most detailed info on this subject. Go to them with a well-dressed Thai friend and politely request GW maps of your area - they will have them, but may need some persuasion to allow you to see them. If you know a government official (karachagan) who is prepared to go with you, then that would help in your quest.
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Is there really fish in the fishburger?
..possibly but it goes in a bun with:
Enriched Flour (Bleached Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup and/or Sugar, Yeast, Soybean Oil and/or Canola Oil, Contains 2% or Less: Salt, Wheat Gluten, Calcium Sulfate, Calcium Carbonate, Ammonium Sulfate, Ammonium Chloride, Dough Conditioners (May Contain One or More of: Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, DATEM, Ascorbic Acid, Azodicarbonamide, Mono and Diglycerides, Ethoxylated Monoglycerides, Monocalcium Phosphate, Enzymes, Guar Gum, Calcium Peroxide), Sorbic Acid (Preservative), Calcium Propionate and/or Sodium Propionate (Preservatives), Soy Lecithin.
So all healthy and fresh ingredients then.......
Can't beat a garnish of azodicarbonamide and sodium stearoyl lactylate on one's slave-caught fish. -
Excellent news for a change: McDonald's boycotts Thai fish and perhaps there is a chance of less slavery and human rights abuses in the Thai fishing industry, while Thais boycott McD's and there is a chance of less obesity, premature heart attacks and better health prospects for Thai population. Not to mention the environmental benefits. Win-win-win situation all round!
How can I find a lady in Maha Sarakham
in Isaan
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Well done Mick for not raising to the bait of the doubters and those with a distinct lack of empathy to your plight, even when you were very sick and trying to figure things out. You stuck with your quest and now it seems the Sarakham woman you were looking for is by your side in Australia. I am pleased for you and hope things work out, despite all the obstacles in your path.