Thirayuthism 1½ | 30.05.05
Tangentially searching “Kra Canal” while writing the last post, I came across this Asia Times editorial that recounts a feature debate at — where else? — the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand:
Proponents of the canal project — a Thai businessman who had participated in a recent re-study of its feasibility and a representative of Japan’s Global Infrastructure Fund research group — made a credible case for pushing the project forward. Unfortunately, the con-side, a high-ranking bureaucrat of the Thai Ministry of Communications and Transport and a professor of maritime studies at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, never came close to putting the ideas of the project proponents to a serious test. The bureaucrat’s project critique — to the extent it was comprehensible at all — seemed largely beside the point; the professor’s was puerile and banal to such a degree that a colleague of ours expressed his astonishment that a person producing such ”junior high school” stuff could be a professor at a respected university. But let that be. We’ll live down the disappointment. [emphasis added]
I’m not astonished in the least. After all, Thailand’s most famous “academic” and perennial headline maker, Thirayuth Boonmi, believes the Soviet Union is part of the West.
Thira… who?
Follow the link and you’ll learn much more about Thailand’s loudmouth-in-chief than a Bangkok Post front page splash (example below) will ever tell you.
For more, try the original Thirayuthism and my two posts at Thaivisa.com. If you’re anything like me, the feeling won’t be one of disappointment, but disgust. Be warned, though, that it’s tough to live that down.
PS As the title implies, this is something of a stopgap entry. With luck (and time) it will get the abortive Thirayuthism series off ground.
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