May 7, 2005
index of global islands
Beauties descend on Thailand for Miss Universe contest
BANGKOK, May 7 – Thailand’s love affair with beauty pageants was fuelled today when hopefuls for the title of Miss Universe 2005 began arriving from around the world for this year’s most important beauty competition.
Welcomed by Thailand’s former Miss Universe, Miss Apasara Hongsakul, and this year’s Thai entrant, Miss Chananporn Rosjan, the contestants descended on the Dusit Thani Hotel, the centre of this year’s pageant.
The first contestant to arrive, Miss Pham Thu Hang from Vietnam, told reporters that she was impressed by the warm reception she had received from the Thai delegation.
The main contest will be held on 30 May.
May 4, 2005
upei island studies
Island studies is not the mere study of events and
phenomena on sites which happen to be islands;
islands do not merely reproduce on a manageable scale
the dynamics and the behaviour which exist elsewhere.
Islandness is an intervening variable which contours
and conditions physical and social events in distinct,
and distinctly relevant, ways.
— Godfrey Baldacchino,
UPEI Canada Research Chair in Island Studies
April 28, 2005
debt crisis
BELMOPAN, Belize, April 27 – Belize’s prime minister has vowed to survive a wave of anti-government strikes and riots but warned that the tiny Central American nation’s debt crisis poses a serious threat to its economic future.
A popular beach and scuba diving center, Belize has been thrown into turmoil over the last week by riots, strikes at the main telephone company and opposition calls for Prime Minister Said Musa to step down due to unpopular tax increases and corruption scandals.
Musa defiantly blamed opposition leaders for the worst political crisis since independence from Britain in 1981 but said he will survive it and that the real threat is debt.
“The political crisis will be easier to weather than the economic but I am convinced we will work our way through it,” he told Reuters in an interview late on Tuesday.
“I am convinced that if tomorrow we called an election we’d win again,” said the 61-year-old Musa, who was elected to a second five-year term in 2003.
Musa, of Palestinian descent, said he had no intention of resigning, although he might reconsider his position if there were serious violence.
“If the situation became so disordered that life and limb were at stake, I love my country I love my people, I would certainly have to consider that option,” he said, adding he thought further violence unlikely.
Belize’s residents are famously laid-back and Belize City, the biggest town in this country of just 270,000 people, was calm on Wednesday morning after the unrest of the past week.
Telephone service was sporadic and a teachers’ strike went into a second day but more schools were open and more teachers working than on Monday.
CORRUPTION AND DEBT
At the heart of the crisis lies nearly $1 billion of public debt and persistent allegations of government corruption.
Belize’s fiscal deficit amounted to a huge 8 percent of gross domestic product last year and the Standard & Poor’s rating agency said this month that the country’s finances were in “dire” shape.
“We have to reduce the debt and we have to get the fiscal deficit under control and bring it below three percent,” said Musa, who was first elected in 1998.
Heavy government spending and a tourism boom have fueled steady economic growth in recent years but the fiscal deficit now poses a serious threat to stability and the government has been forced to cut back on projects and impose tax increases.
Musa said those hikes and spending cuts would close the financing gap and reduce the fiscal deficit over the next 18 months. “We are not going to depend on people forgiving debt.”
Much of the criticism of Musa’s government stems from allegations that money from the social security fund, which pays pensions, was used to back a short lived telecommunications company owned by an ex-minister.
Musa accepted that investigations would likely uncover irregularities but he did not believe there was any criminal offense and he rejected suggestions that a corruption scandal was enough to warrant new elections.
“If every time any government faces allegations of corruption they were to resign and call elections, I think just about every government would be calling elections every year,” he said.
April 25, 2005
Global Islands Project
An ongoing investigation of global islands accompanied by multi-media pdf-publications.
March 7, 2005
tsue tsunami
Victims Sue Thailand, U.S., Accor Over Tsunami
U.S. and Austrian lawyers have filed a lawsuit demanding Thailand, U.S. forecasters and the French Accor group answer accusations they failed in a duty to warn populations hit by December’s Tsunami disaster, a lawyer said Monday.
The lawsuit was filed Friday at a New York district court on behalf of tsunami victims by lawyers including U.S. attorney Edward Fagan, internationally renowned for 1990s lawsuits against Swiss banks over Holocaust-era accounts. It demanded an account of their actions on Dec. 26.
“We expect a hearing within 30 days,” Austrian lawyer Gerhard Podovsovnik told Reuters.
“We don’t earn any money on the lawsuit. We want to help people,” he said. “We are suing to get information.”
The disaster left about 300,000 people dead or missing in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Maldives, Bangladesh and East Africa. Hundreds of thousands lost their homes.
The text of the lawsuit is available on the Web site www.tsunamivictimsgroup.com.
The U.S. and Austrian lawyers filed the lawsuit on behalf of around 60 named plaintiffs from Austria, Germany, France, Netherlands and elsewhere. Podovsovnik said they were also acting on behalf of at least 40 more not named.
The lawsuit suggests the Thai government and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which operates a Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, failed to issue the requisite warnings.
“Respondent NOAA did not notify all involved countries which lay in the tsunami’s path. From public information it appears that … NOAA failed to issue an alert that would notify countries where the tsunami hit that the deadly wave was coming,” the lawsuit said.
“Published reports emerged that upon receipt of the NOAA alert and other data, the seismological and oceanographic experts of Thailand spent more than one hour talking about what the risk may or may not have been, instead of immediately issuing a warning to their population,” it said.
It also accused Thailand of failing to notify Sri Lanka that a tsunami wave was headed its way.
Among the charges leveled against Accor, the owner of the Sofitel hotel chain, was failure to equip its luxury resort and spa in Khao Lak, Thailand with state-of-the-art seismic detection and warning systems, despite its location “in an earthquake and tsunami fault zone.”
Last month, Accor issued a statement denying media reports of possible negligence in connection with the tsunami disaster. “The allegations concerning Accor are completely unfounded,” Accor said on its Web Site.
March 6, 2005
tsunami tsimulacra
Thailand to build tsunami attraction
The Thai government has unveiled plans to build a simulated tsunami attraction in the region worst hit by the disaster to draw tourists back to the area.
Authorities have spent $4 million to prove to 1,000 media and travel agents the nation has recovered after waves ravaged its shores, killing at least 5,300 people, following the December 26 earthquake in the Indian Ocean.
About 15 Australians died in Phuket, Phi Phi Island, Khao Lak and Krabi, the west coast areas worst hit in the Boxing Day Tsunami.
Phuket’s world famous Patong Beach – now stripped of its beachfront shops – was thrown open this weekend for a beach bash complete with fireworks to show the island was ready to move on.
Speaking on behalf of the Thai Prime Minister, Tourism Authority of Thailand Governor Juthamas Siriwan told the international delegation about large-scale plans to re-market the region to foreign and local tourists.
Authorities would open a tsunami memorial museum complete with a simulated tidal wave in Khao Lak, the region made infamous by post-tsunami photos of bodies and debris floating in the water.
“It would firstly educate everyone who comes to Phuket to make them aware of how these kinds of things happen,” Ms Siriwan told reporters at a conference on the island.
“And at the same time, because tourism is an enjoyable product, we would also… like to (use technology) to make the museum more attractive and interesting by making a simulation of a tidal wave.
“I talked to the architect and they say they are going to make something like that so maybe this will be the next Universal Studios of the tsunamis in Khao Lak.”
She said the region would now be remade as an exclusive beach resort for wealthy couples and families.
“The government will concentrate on making Khao Lak even better than before,” Ms Siriwan said.
Patong would be redesigned as a “modern beach city” with hotels and shops no longer on the beachfront.
“We don’t want to repeat the same mistakes again,” she said.
Kamala beach, a badly damaged strip of coast neighbouring Patong will be developed into a traditional culture hub while Phi Phi Island, largely wiped out by the wave would be returned to a “paradise island for relaxing”.
A tsunami early warning system based on marine monitoring and SMS warnings would be in place later this month and lifeguards would be installed on all tourist beaches.
She said regional airports and roads would be upgraded and international tourists would be offered complementary domestic flights to encourage people back.
March 4, 2005
return from Thailand
I’m back from three months in Thailand — mostly spent on a small squid-fishing island/village, as part of my ongoing multimedia project about Islands.
/:b
November 21, 2004
elephant banquet
World’s largest elephant banquet held in Thailand
11/21/2004 — 21:36(GMT+7)
Bangkok (VNA) – Over 10,000 Thai and foreign tourists flocked to Thailand’s northeastern province of Surin for a world record-breaking banquet involving over 300 elephants.
The banquet, which won a place in the Guinness Book of Records, took place in the centre of Surin town, and was presided over by a former defence minister on Friday.
Tourists packed the streets of the town to watch the procession of over 300 elephants wind its way throughout Surin to the banquet tables, where the hungry pachyderms were greeted with five tonnes of pineapples, five tonnes of bananas, 25 tonnes of sugarcane, five tonnes of watermelons, five tonnes of cucumbers, five tonnes of sweet potatoes and 10 tonnes of maize arranged on 400 tables stretching for one kilometre along the road.
Visitors to Surin will be able to witness the annual elephant show over the weekend.–Enditem
molotov
Five fire bombs explode southern Thailand
Five fire bombs exploded just minutes apart in southern Thailand’s Pattani town in what police said today was likely a coordinated attack by Muslim insurgents in the restive region.
No injuries were reported from the bombs, described by police as Molotov cocktails, which were thrown at four homes and a shop in the provincial capital at about 10:35 pm local time.
“Police are investigating the cause of the attacks,” a policeman in Pattani told AFP, adding that a preliminary investigation suggests the bombings were related to ongoing separatist violence in the south which has left more than 500 people dead this year.
Two policemen and a civil servant were among those who lived in the homes, which suffered minor damage from the bombings.
Thai television reported a sixth small bomb exploding in a Pattani district outside town, also causing no injuries.
Authorities have warned of reprisal attacks in the south after the deaths of at least 87 Muslim protesters following a riot at Tak Bai in the southern province of Narathiwat.
Most of them died from suffocation after being bound and piled into the backs of army trucks.
Meanwhile, Army Supreme Commander General Chaisit Shinawatra appealed on Thai radio today to the insurgents to end their campaign of violence and warned they could be jeopardising their “younger generations’ futures” by continuing to engage in militancy.
