chao choo

Long time ago my doctor told me that I had a small hole in eardrum. Since then I am experiencing that my right ear is having some problems in hearing. Usually the ruptured eardrum heals by itself in few weeks time, but as in my case it stands still and didn't heal. While in bangkok I am feeling some problem because weather is a bit humid here (specially in this season) so I have bought the cotton that I use to block my ear while taking shower. If anyone of you have the same problem, take my advice and avoid water from your ear.

Fresh lamb meat is available near the Saphan Thaksin BTS station. You have to go early in the morning otherwise it finishes very soon.

Be careful with this weather change, many ppl are getting flu, cold and soar throat these days and rushing to BOOTS for drugs....

Yesterday I was with one of my friends and she needed 40,000 baht in cash. She was having an account in Siam Commercial Bank and she took out 40,000 baht in two transactions, one after another, from the same machine, 20,000 baht each. So I guess if you have an account in SCB, you can take out 40,000 baht and thats my experience....

i have tried www.vazu.com but it sends only 5 msgs for free and after that you have to buy credits.

www.sms.ac is also an option, personally i didn't try it but some of my friends are using it.

Could anyone please write this in Thai

"Kor beer kuat neung na krap"

I just want to see how this "kor" has to be pronounced. I have used it once asking for a plate at KFC some time ago, but I forgot it leaw...

Thanks in advance!

I like .....mai long mai ruu !!

Never try never know !! 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

could anyone please write this in thai, i really like it

I think every one here knows the meaning of my nick

The main excuse (as one of the above replies has suggested) is the fact that they are not getting enough exposure to speak in English with Native Speakers. In my opinion this is absolutely not necessary though it may be helpful in learning proper pronunciation.

I think kwiz is right. I am also South-Asian (non native English speaker) and have not much exposure to speak english with native speaker, but still I think I can manage to speak English with good accent (who knows). The basic education in childhood in English is a must to speak it well. For adult person, yes exposure is required.

Stopping the israeli would go a long way to solving half the worlds problems no doubt.

100% agreed!

i can even say "Stopping the israeli would go a long way to solving MOST OF the worlds problems no doubt."

And lastly, waiting for a Thai girl to finish at the ATM - It isn't rocket science, it's a bloody ATM! Pin code, ask for money, get money, take card - sounds simple, doesn't it? So what on earth are they doing standing there for 5mins+ a time??? In a queue behind 5 girls, you're best of finding another ATM, even if the closest one's in Cambodia.

I've ranted far too much. Love it here really

hahahaahaha very true Insight... I was about to say this!!!

A take on Islam steers US into the abyss

by Abid Ullah Jan

Email: [email protected]

The 88-years old author of 20 books on Islam, Bernard Lewis, is a classic example of how intellectual horror of such individuals lead to physical horror of the kind we witness around the world today.

Bernard Lewis often proudly tells his audience about an insignificant encounter he once had in Jordan.

The insignificant encounter, however, becomes significant when Western public´s limited understanding of Islam is viewed in the context of their lead opinion-maker´s convoluted view about Muslims and Islam.

Lewis says one of his Arab friends argued: “We have time, we can wait. We got rid of the Crusaders. We got rid of the Turks. We´ll get rid of the Jews.”

Hearing this claim," Mr. Lewis says, he shot back, "Excuse me, but you´ve got your history wrong. The Turks got rid of the Crusaders. The British got rid of the Turks. The Jews got rid of the British. I wonder who is coming here next."

Turks and Arabs are irrelevant. What is undeniable is that Muslims got rid of the crusades. Period. On the other hand, the British not only got rid of Turks but also helped the whole Europe got rid of the centuries old Jewish problem.[1]

There is no need for Mr. Lewis to wonder who is coming next to replace America in the Middle East. It is the Zionists who did not get rid of British but will definitely get rid of America. Muslims will then get rid of them to prove the Jordanian friend of Mr. Lewis right in his observation.

Lewis and company use such sarcasm to underscore a serious point. Most Islamic countries have failed miserably at “modernizing” their societies, they contend, beckoning outsiders – this time, Americans – to intervene.

The Zionist inspired Lewis-doctrine of calling for a U.S. military invasion to reform Muslims has helped define the bloodiest shift in U.S. foreign policy in 50 years. The occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is the initial phase of this doctrine in operation. It means the Zionists are more than half way through their agenda of replacing the US as a Ruling State.

In the last decade of 20th century, the Zionists changed quick gears to take the US out of its doctrine-of-containment mode. Threat from Islam under many different labels replaced Moscow as the global foe. And now America, having replaced British as the Ruling State and outlasted the Soviets to become the sole superpower, no longer seeks to contain but to confront, defeat and transform the world of Islam.

The US failure in remolding Afghanistan, Iraq and the rest of the Mideast is the writing on the wall. In the coming years, the US will remain bold and assertive as long as it believes it can transform lives and culture of a people through force. Persistent losses and embarrassing failure of the baseless theories will gradually make the US inward, defensive, cut off and replaced by Israel in the end.

We are in the initial phase of moving towards this end. According to Peter Waldman of Wall Street Journal, “as mentor and informal adviser to some top U.S. officials, Mr. Lewis has helped coax the White House to shed decades of thinking about Arab regimes and the use of military power.”[2]

Lewis Doctrine of transforming a way of life of more than one billion people in the name of fostering democracy seems wise and imperative in his books alone. In reality, it is the beginning of re-colonisation of the Muslim world and the fall of the US power on the pattern of its predecessor, the United Kingdom.

It also sounds nice that the US has adopted this course only to be able to blunt terrorism and stabilize the Middle East. Instead, it has already sparked a much wider resistance — called terrorism. At an Al-Jazeera poll, 56 percent respondents clicked a resounding “no” to the question: “Should Arab countries yield to US reform plans?”[3]

Instead of engaging in honest soul-searching and identifying the enemies within, the US administration was led to holding Muslims responsible for 9/11 soon after the attacks occurred. Muslims´ “misunderstanding” of the US and Islamic threat was the answer to every question. “The only question left unanswered was how to frame the enemy,” says David Frum, who was a speechwriter for President Bush.[4]

At this critical juncture, Lewis told White House staffers, military aides and staff members of the National Security Council in a special meeting that anti-Americanism stemmed from Muslims´ “own inadequacies, not America´s.” Frum also recalls Lewis´s private meeting with national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney.

The fallacy of this doctrine is not limited only to closing eyes to the US injustice, failures and the enemies within. It leads a long way to the dangerous miscalculation that even the most aggressive enemy wouldn´t risk its own demise by provoking war with a powerful U.S. This doctrine blinds the Americans to the reality that the administration´s Zionists sponsored advisors are, in fact, the grave diggers for the seemingly invincible U.S. With advisors like these, the US needs no enemies.

The fallacy deepens with the fact that such insane doctrines envision not a clash of interests or even ideology, but of cultures, values and ways of life. The reason: surpassing the already well under-control-U.S. is not a problem for the Zionists. Doing the same to the divided, humiliated and mostly occupied Muslim world is a problem as long as its values, principles and identity is not substantially diluted.

As a result, exploiting weaknesses of the power wielders in Washington, the spokespersons for Zionists put only two choices before them: "Get tough or get out" of the Muslim world, knowing that the super ego of the the super tyrants would not let them admit their crimes and do the necessary course correction.

Mentality of these promoters of war can be judged from the fact that besides serving as intelligence officer for the British Empire, Bernard Lewis inherited some historic grudges before becoming a pawn in the grand Zionist game. He strongly believes that, notwithstanding the US excesses over the last century, Muslims hate the West only because the Ottomans failed for the second time to sack Christian Vienna in 1683.

Mr. Lewis is also the father of the “clash of civilisation” theory which he described in a 1990 essay called "The Roots of Muslim Rage." According to Lewis, Muslims do not feel cheated due to undeniable realities, such as the US out-right support to Israeli aggression, occupation and the worst kind of human rights violations. All Muslims are portrayed to hate the West as a whole for 300 years only because the Christian civilization has overshadowed them militarily, economically and culturally.[5] So, there is no need for a policy change to reverse or at least bring an end to the continuing U.S. hypocrisy, double standards and injustice.

Friedman, Pipes, Perle and many hypocrites among Muslims in the name of “moderates”[6] regurgitate the same convoluted theory that Muslims hate US because they are “not rich, not strong and not successful.”

The reality is that Christians and Muslims make only 55 per cent of the world population. [7] Even not all the 33 percent Christians are rich, strong and successful. If poverty, weakness and failure are the criteria for hating the US, more than 90 per cent of the world population is thus supposed to hate the US. The reason is clear. Far less than 10 per cent of the world population belongs to the corporate world of super tyrants and Zionist political-entrepreneurs.

What hurts members of this league of hypocrites, in Bernard Lewis words, is their concern: why do they [Muslims] neither fear nor respect us?" Only the most naïve would believe Lewis´s logic that instilling respect or at least fear through force is essential for America´s security.

According to Wall Street Journal, only eight days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Lewis and his friend, Ahmad Chalabi argued for a military takeover of Iraq to avert still-worse terrorism in the future. [8]

This fact alone is enough to show the years of planning, the scope of links, and creation of the most suitable moments for proposing the core ideas in this great Zionist game. Imagine, the Americans are still busy counting their dead and they have yet to focus on the real culprits of the 9/11, when Lewis — who is “close to government circles in Israel” (according to the Wall Street Journal) — goes to underline the need for Iraq´s occupation to their leader. Iraq is a country that has yet to be credibly linked with 9/11.

It shows that Bernard Lewis has not helped the world understand the complexity of the world of Islam. As a confidant of successive Israeli prime ministers, including Ariel Sharon, he simply worked as a tool for justifying Israeli crimes and occupations by and for Israel.

Mr. Wolfowitz has now signalled that the US administration accepted Mr. Lewis´s prescription for the Muslim world of “losers, helpless and enraged.” Ilan Pappe of Haifa University rightly argued that Mr. Lewis´s view that political cultures can be remade through force contributed to Israel´s decision to invade Lebanon in 1982.

It took Israel 18 years to abandon that strategy. Unfortunately, the US does not have that luxury at its disposal. Operating under the same assumption on a much wider scale, the US will fail far miserably than Israel in Lebanon.

As the US rose to touch the limits of its power, hundreds of thousands lost their lives as a result of its illegal sanctions and wars for transforming them in its own image. Millions more are destined to suffer as a result of the impending great fall of the final Titan.

The British got rid of the Turks and Jews. The US replaced the British. Lewis wonders who is coming next. The pragmatics, however, wonder if Lewis would live enough to see the Zionists, whom he served for so long, replace the arrogant American administrators, whom he pushed into digging America´s grave in the Middle East.

What scares U.S. the most?

by Abid Ullah Jan

Email: [email protected]

Despite the immense powers at its disposal, who or what scares America? The answer to this question has far-reaching implications for strategy, public diplomacy, and foreign and domestic policy of all nations. The answer is so obvious; but our denial makes it go up in smoke before our eyes.

The answer lies in the basic message of an official statement from Paul Bremer in Baghdad who declared that US will “veto Islamic law in Iraq.”[1]

The answer lies in the New York Times editorials. Earlier it called “not invoking Shari´ah” in Afghan constitution as ““promising aspirations,” and its reference to the Qur´an as “the troubling aspect.” [2]

What hurts the US? Two main culprits have emerged from global discourse since Sept. 11: terrorism and Islam. Some say the US is at war with terrorism. Others believe it is Islam. The truth, more subtle, lies between the two — it is application of the essence of Islam.

Daniel Pipes is one hundred per cent right when he says war on terrorism makes no sense. He is right when he says the establishment in the US pretends that the enemy is terrorism “because it finesses some delicate questions about Islam, thereby making it easier to build an international coalition or minimize domestic repercussions.”

It is however getting hard by the day to hide the real objectives of this war. The American dilemma is that Islam as a way of life cannot be defeated with missiles and bombs. Professing Islam is no problem at all. It is practicing Islam that threatens and is gradually made illegal.

So, the war is waged on those who want to live by Islam — Muslims, who live, in Daniel Pipes words, “with a specific set of beliefs.” Thomas Friedman considers them Muslim with specific ideas which should be defeated with a “war on ideas.”

In Daniel Pipes´s view, “the Western "street" prefers to see the problem lying with the Islamic religion.” Accordingly, “Muslims have been the leading enemy of Christians for more than a millennium, remain so now and will long continue to fill this role.”[3] Such pronouncements led to a strategic shift in the US approach. War on Islam was for nearly two millennia a European phenomenon; now it is basically an American one.

The establishment in Washington, however, is not naïve to publicly espouse Daniel Pipes´s description of the American “street.” The reasons:

a) A public declaration of a war on Islam will make them lose the military heads and their militantly secular culture in places like Turkey, Pakistan and Algeria;

It is impossible to convert 1.3 billion Muslim from Islam;

c) The US cannot quarantine all the Muslims living in the West, and

d) It can never win the clash with Islamic civilization, which many Americans now firmly believe is underway.

Fingering Islam directly, in short, neither explains the problem with Washington nor offers a solution. So, finger what undermines the status quo of the elite that rules the world. Target the alternative to the twisted democracy and laws of the global elite, which in fact threaten the entire humanity.

Thus, allies in the war on Islam embraced a third way of approaching the “problem,” which satisfies all these requirements.

That approach calls for publicly declaring that Islam itself is not the issue. At the same time, it requires the Western warriors to: a) thwart implementation of Islam and demonize development of an alternative model by delegitimizing it as “political Islam,” and to isolate Muslims who resist surrendering to the laws of global elite and refuse compromising the basic principles of the Qur´an and Sunnah.

The war on Islam can easily be won through labeling the essence of Islam the “political, extremist variant” and call the watered down, impracticable version as “moderate” and “liberal” Islam. “Followers of such a watered down version of Islam are hardly distinguishable from followers of other ideologies. Liberal Islam” is presented and advocated as the true Islam. In fact, it does not believe Shari´ah is any more implementable in modern world. It is anti-Jihad, anti-Hadith and anti-many basic principles of the Qur´an.

The reason for promoting such versions of Islam is obvious. For example, it takes out the concept of Jihad and all resistance to occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Palestine becomes terrorism. Take out Shari´ah and some basic principles of the Qur´an and Sunnah and the way of life and values advocated by Thomas Friedman suddenly become all too permissible. What else for him could be winning the war of ideas?

Allah orders Muslims to live by his laws otherwise they will be disbelievers, oppressors and wicked in His sight (Qur´an, 5:44 - 47). Paul Bremer tells them, “It can´t be law until I sign it."

Elevating themselves to this godly status is the result of an effective strategy: weaken the Muslim faith by keeping them away from the Qur´an. Rewrite their constitutions in which living by Shari´ah should be declared Haram (forbidden) by the respective chief occupiers of the land. Daniel Pipes suggests: “Fight it militarily, diplomatically, legally, intellectually and religiously. Fight it in Afghanistan, in Saudi Arabia, in the United States— in fact, everywhere.”

Pipes believes “moderate” Muslims as “key allies in this fight.” Yes, they are. According to the New York Times´ victorious tone, (editorial, Nov. 14, 2003) there is no reference to Shari´ah in Afghanistan constitution and Bremer has threatened that there would be no place for it in Iraq. “Moderates” have paved the way for it. “Moderates” accept it this way. Muslims did not.

Muslims clinging to their faith and Qur´an are labeled as “evil.” In Pipes´s view, “such euphemisms in wartime can be beneficial,” because it “shied away [the US government] from specifics lest they tie its hands.”

The beauty of Daniel Pipes write ups is that he does not twist words like Bush or Friedman. In this case he clearly says that by labeling the staunch believers of Islam as "evildoers" without “mentioning any names beyond Osama bin Laden” offers “maximum flexibility.”[4]

As a result, to neutralize what scares America the most — the application of Islam; the essence of Qur´an and Sunnah— Shari´ah has been reduced to a curse. It has no place in the modern world. The Qur´an is presented as a hard to interpret moral guide. No one´s interpretation of the Qur´an is valid, except the “moderates.”

On the other hand practicing Muslims are weak and intimidated these days, but they are crucial if the Muslim world has to help the West emerge from the current bout of radicalism and the Muslim world from the depth of humiliation.

Once the Americans understand the real objectives of their rulers behind the on going war, they can emerge as a formidable force. The going will remain tough unless besides Muslims, the Americans also identify proponents of this needless war and find the strength forthrightly to address the problem of American fear from the Islam´s potential to provide a far better alternative to the twisted democracy and descript secular way of life. This is what scares masters of international terror and control the most.

February 17, 2004

Abid Ullah Jan´s latest book, The End of Democracy, has just been released in Canada.

Notes

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] “U.S. May Veto Islamic Law in Iraq: Top U.S. Administrator in Iraq, Touting Women´s Rights, Threatens Veto of Islamic Law Measure,” The Associated Press, February 16, 2003.

[2] Editorial, November 14, 2003

[3] Daniel Pipes, “Aim the War on Terror at Militant Islam,” Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2002

[4] Daniel Pipes, “Who Is the Enemy?” Commentary, January 2002. http://www.danielpipes.org/article/103

What realy pisses me of is trying to talk to a Thai while they are excavating their brain via their nasal passage. 

...and then rolling the excavated raw materials between 2 fingers as if by chance a gold nugget or precious stone may have previously found it's way up there

You might see that anywhere.

Just watch out where they stick the bogeys afterwards; eat 'em or paste them under the table.

one more thing about nose....

abt 50% of Thais have their noses blocked all the time. thats why you can see them using nose inhalers (menthols). Some time even on taxis, you can smell that menthol that driver is using!!! smell sucks!

i hate discrimination between farangs and kheks....

i really hate the word "kheks"...

to be a south asian and working here is really a night mare. i think all the south asians might have experienced this thing in their real life.

Lack of common sense..........bloody annoying.

very true

i was addicted to bangkokchat and found the link over there....

btw, cant use bangkokchat now, the interface has been changed and my firewall doesn't allow me to use it any more na! very very sad

I always have to go to PathumThani area from airport. So never took the taxi from taxi-stand itself. Instead, I always go to 2nd floor, cross the bridge, and take taxi from other side of road (in front of train station). I always save almost 100 baht in doing so.

For the people going towards bangkok, I think MRMNP is giving a good advice.

while in thailand, do as the thais do...

while in thailand, eat as the thais eat..

germs germs germs -- every where

Hello everybody  .....this is my frirst post.

My first post, too...

Its a great forum. i have been reading the posts for last one month and now decided to join it. i really liked it! i also wanna make new frndz.. hope i will find soon...