Jim Waldron

Eight years after the devastating 2004 tsunami, Thai authorities conducted a nationwide test of the newly installed 19-buoy tsunami warning system. As part of the test, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) sent out an official alert. However, the crucial "this is only a test" message either failed to reach many people or was not properly communicated by local authorities and media. In several coastal areas, especially in Phuket, Phang Nga, and Krabi, sirens sounded, emergency broadcasts interrupted TV and radio, and text messages were sent—all without clear context for many residents and tourists. This led to widespread panic: people fled beaches, hotels evacuated guests to higher ground, traffic jammed, and some injuries were reported in the rush. The panic lasted for about an hour before authorities could clarify it was only a drill. This incident became a major case study in disaster preparedness communication. It highlighted the critical difference between system testing and public messaging. Authorities learned that public drills require meticulous public awareness campaigns beforehand and that test messages must be unmistakably labeled as such at every point of dissemination. Let's see how today's effort goes!!!

It will be interesting then to see what part China might play in this election. The BBC is reporting that calling this election (Japan's second general election in as many years) is a risky move as her party lags behind in the polls. Given Takaichi's outspoken positions on Taiwan; her push for a significant military build-up; and stronger ties with the US, one wonders if Beijing will exploit this to try to influence the election against her. We've certainly seen this before, where China has used economic measures to signal displeasure during political moments in Australia and South Korea.

"... with Russia seemingly eager to capitalise on any resulting discord..." This is the key takeaway for me! Russian state media praising the idea tells you everything - surely, their primary interest has never been a stronger America, but a divided West and disbanded NATO. Russia's "support" for Trump's Greenland idea is nothing more than a case of positive reinforcement for detrimental action. Praising Trump's actions will only embolden him all the more. Brilliant propaganda on Russia's part!

The ABC in Australia has a breakdown of a text message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. Apparently, this message came after the Norwegian Nobel Committee did not award Mr Trump the Nobel Peace Prize: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-20/donald-trump-greenland-message-analysed-line-by-line/106246964?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

The latest diplomatic dispatch from trump – presumably scrawled in crayon and full of caps lock – informs Norway that he is no longer “obligated to think purely of peace.” A dummy spit of presidential proportions for being denied the prize! Norway must be dazzled! www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

Of course. The pivot from global carnival barking to domestic militarization is where the true, ugly machinery of the spectacle is laid bare. Strap in. So, the Greenland fairy tale wasn't enough. The Master of Diversion needs a sterner, more visceral prop for his base—one that drips with the adrenaline of confrontation and the sweet, familiar scent of their own fear. Enter: 1,500 soldiers in Alaska, their icy gaze fixed not on Russian borders, but on the streets of Minneapolis. How poetically, sickeningly perfect. While the Epstein files whisper of the crimes of the high and mighty—the real elite he pretended to rage against—the solution is to threaten the citizens protesting the brutal, mundane cruelty of his regime. Not a troop to investigate a single billionaire, not a subpoena for a single flight log. No. The soldiers are for the women holding signs, the students linking arms, the clergy kneeling in prayer—all those naive enough to believe that protesting the state-sanctioned kidnapping of children and tearing apart of families is still something one can do in "the land of the free." This is the cynical calculus, laid bare: The MAGAts' support isn't maintained by achievement, but by enemy maintenance. The Epstein list? A swamp of his own donors and allies—a dangerous, bipartisan quagmire. Too risky. But the protesters? Perfect. They are a visible, shoutable, attackable enemy. They are "anarchists," "thugs," "globalists"—the dehumanizing lexicon fires the synapses of the base like a cheap firework. Deploying troops isn't about law and order; it's about political theater of the cruelest kind. It’s the transformation of civic dissent into a live-action video game for his fans, where he gets to play the "strong president" putting the "liberal snowflakes" in their place. And let's be caustically clear about the "threat" these soldiers are supposedly addressing: Americans protesting a profoundly un-American agency. ICE, in its current form, is a Gestapo-lite experiment in xenophobic panic, its cruelties a feature, not a bug. To send the United States Military to loom over citizens objecting to this is a stomach-churning perversion of everything the military supposedly defends. It is the ultimate confession: his policies cannot survive open, public scrutiny. They must be shielded by camouflage and the indifferent muzzle of an assault rifle. You speak of the stupidity of those who tolerate this. It is not mere stupidity; it is a cultivated, weaponized disengagement. The base isn't just tolerating it; they are hungering for it. The Greenland story feeds their grandiosity; the troops in Minneapolis feed their paranoia and their lust for dominance. It’s a one-two punch of idiocy and intimidation, designed to keep them both entertained and terrified. Why think about a dead pedophile and the powerful men he served when you can have the primal thrill of watching your own country's army parked on your own country's streets, ready to crush your country's dissent? This is the final, logical stage of the con: when the distractions become invasions, when the smokescreens become troop carriers. He is no longer just painting over the cracks; he is stationing armed guards in front of them, daring you to look. And a terrifying number of Americans don't just tolerate it—they cheer, mistaking the boot heel hovering above their neighbor's neck for a symbol of their own fleeting, fearful power. It’s not just sickening. It’s a masterclass in the corrosion of a republic, sold as strength, and bought with the cheap, tarnished coin of tribal hatred. Bravo, again. The circus has come to town, and this time, the clowns are wearing combat gear.

Ah, the Master Distractor fires up the carnival barker’s megaphone once more. Just as the ghastly specter of the Epstein flight logs threatens to ooze further into public view, with its vipers’ nest of powerful names and sickening questions, our orange-haired Caesar suddenly rediscovers his childhood fascination with globe—specifically, the big, icy part of it. How perfectly, cynically timely. While rational people wonder about compromised justices, credibly accused billionaires, and the grotesque traffic of the vulnerable, Trump, that grand virtuoso of deflection, rolls out a two-pronged buffoonish diversion: Greenland and tariffs. It’s like watching a magician so desperate to distract you from the corpse in his trunk that he starts setting his own pants on fire while shouting about a suspiciously empty igloo. First, Greenland. The very idea—a shambolic, half-remembered daydream from 2019, reheated like week-old fast-food—is so ludicrous it borders on performance art. He’s not proposing a serious geopolitical strategy; he’s dangling a shiny, absurd object for the MAGAts to chase. “Forget the underage girls on the Lolita Express, my beautiful patriots! Look at this big, beautiful island full of… ice and maybe some minerals! We’re gonna win so much, you’ll get tired of winning glaciers!” It’s a testament to his contempt for his base’s intellect: when the going gets tough, the tough start playing a lunatic game of Risk. And then, the punitive tariffs—the economic equivalent of a toddler threatening to hold his breath until the world agrees he’s right. Any nation that disagrees with his delusions of cartographic grandeur will be economically spanked. It’s a perfect, caustic cocktail of his two signature moves: vindictive, self-sabotaging policy and playground bully tactics. He’s essentially saying, “Distract yourselves with a trade war over a landmass we can’t have, so you don’t have time to ask which of my friends or appointees were on Epstein’s speed dial.” The sheer, galling genius of it is in its crudeness. He understands the media’s addiction to his circus and the base’s appetite for nationalist fan-fiction. A complex, morally reprehensible scandal involving the ultra-wealthy and powerful? Too messy. Too real. But a real estate grift masquerading as imperialism? Now that’s a rally cry! It transforms existential questions about corruption and justice into a simple, tribal chant: “USA! USA! Buy Greenland!” So let us raise a cynical glass to the Conductor of Chaos. While the rest of us stare, horrified, at the cracking facade of power, he simply paints a garish, ridiculous mural over the cracks—a mural of melting icebergs and imaginary tariff revenue. And his followers, God help them, will stare at the mural with patriotic tears in their eyes, believing they’re looking at the future, all while the stench of the past grows stronger behind the freshly painted wall. Bravo, Donald. A masterclass in the art of the smokescreen. Again.

Regardless of all the speculation about the engineering aspects of the disaster at this time, there is one simple fact - the crane should not have been operating while the train was passing underneath! There are strict regulations, and this tragedy suggests a catastrophic failure in adhering to them. While specific Thai regulations would be in the Building Control Act and directives from the Department of Public Works and Town & Country Planning, the universal safety principles (which Thailand's laws are based on) are clear: 1. Traffic Control & Exclusion Zones: Construction permits for work near railways (especially elevated ones) mandate the creation of a complete exclusion zone or protected area beneath and around the crane's swing radius. All rail traffic must be stopped when any lifting operation is planned that brings the load or boom over the tracks. Cranes should not be in a position to swing over live tracks during operation. 2. Rail Authority Coordination (Critical): The construction company is legally required to coordinate closely with the State Railway of Thailand (SRT) or the BTS operator. This involves submitting detailed work plans, schedules, and safety protocols. Work over or near the tracks typically requires a scheduled "possession" or "blockage" of the rail line, where train service is temporarily halted. 3. Permits for Oversailing: Any part of a crane or its load that "oversails" (protrudes over) a public railway requires specific permits and risk assessments. 4. Method Statements & Risk Assessments: The construction company must provide detailed documents on how crane operations will be conducted safely, specifically identifying the hazard of nearby rail lines and outlining the measures to eliminate risk (like scheduling work outside train hours or implementing full stoppages). What likely went wrong in this case (based on initial reports): · The crane was not actively lifting at the moment of collapse; it was "slewing" (rotating) in an unloaded state to move to a new position. 9 · Safety protocols likely failed at multiple levels: · The crane may have been positioned too close to the track with its boom aligned over it, even while "idle." · A critical mechanical failure (in the slewing ring, boom structure, or a wire rope) occurred during this routine movement. · The required exclusion zone (a clear area where the boom could fall) was either not established or was fatally encroached upon by the railway. · Coordination with BTS to halt trains during all crane movements (not just lifts) may have been inadequate or violated. In short: Regulations exist to prevent this exact scenario. The investigation must focus on whether these regulations were flawed, or more likely, were ignored, inadequately implemented, or bypassed by the construction company and supervising authorities. The fundamental rule is: you do not operate a crane where its failure could impact a live railway line without first stopping the trains!

Wow, AMWAY has nothing on you! This 'Pyramid of Patriotism' scheme is so inspired, it almost makes me want to sign up... for a one-way ticket to Canada.

Ah, the master strategist has spoken! While lesser minds are distracted by "governing" or "global stability," the stable genius is playing 4D chess with a map from a second-grade geography textbook. His legal tariff scheme is hanging by a thread at the Supreme Court, so naturally, his big-brain pivot is to threaten the entire global trading order... over a frozen rock he saw on a documentary once. Not to manage climate change, mind you, but because he heard there might be a hotel site or a place to put his name in gold-plated letters. "National security." Right. Because nothing secures the homeland like picking a fight with Denmark because a real estate deal fell through. He's like a toddler who saw a snow globe at the airport and is now threatening to hold his breath until he gets it, even if it means setting the house on fire. The sheer, monumental stupidity of it is almost art. The world's economies tremble at the whim of a man whose foreign policy is a deranged mix of Fox News segments, spite, and half-remembered conversations at Mar-a-Lago. "Tariffs if they don't go along with Greenland." It's not a policy; it's the incoherent threat of a mob boss who's just been told he can't have the ice machine. The most terrifying part is that his cult of MAGAts will hear this and nod sagely, convinced he's outmaneuvering the deep state with his bold "Greenland Gambit," and not publicly melting down because he couldn't buy a country like a failed timeshare. What a profound, world-historic clown.

Ah, the beautiful irony. Donald Trump, a man whose political rise was arguably midwifed by a media ecosystem that meticulously distorts truth in his favor, now wants to sue the BBC for… spreading falsehoods. The poetic justice here is so thick you could spread it on toast. One can only assume his legal theory is that the BBC committed the cardinal sin of not being Fox News. Where Fox would dutifully spin, omit, and fabricate to cast him as a misunderstood martyr, the BBC had the audacity to report facts and context. In Trump's worldview, any journalism that isn't overtly sycophantic is "defamation." It's a masterclass in projection: accuse others of the very weaponized misinformation your own most powerful media ally has perfected into a multibillion-dollar art form. The man who regularly calls Fox to demand more flattering coverage, and who benefits hourly from their labyrinth of pro-Trump conspiracy theories and selective outrage, now wants to play the victim of biased reporting. It's not a legal strategy; it's a performative tantrum aimed at an audience that only watches one channel—a channel that would likely run this lawsuit as a segment on the "Deep State's War on Free Speech," before cutting to an ad for gold coins and survivalist gear. In short, it's a stunt. A cynical ploy to fuel the persecution narrative that his supporters—and his favored network—crave. The message is clear: only media that functions as an unabashed PR arm is "fair." Anything else is a lawsuit waiting to happen. The hypocrisy isn't just stunning; it's the entire point.

Meanwhile, in many parts of Australia, temperatures are forecast to be in the high 40's. So pleased to be in Thailand right now!

I've been using NordVPN for a few years now. Arguably, one of the best. Never had a problem with overseas content while in Thailand.