April 04, 2004

• Excellent article; thanks for the link. I didn't realize that Thailand had problems with minorities or had "separatist" provinces. Or potentially a terrorism problem... For some reason, I'd never made the geographical link to Malaysia and so it hadn't occurred to me that there would be any sort of significant Muslim population in Thailand. Something to think about.
• Great post. Why the hell don't governments make some effort to keep marginal populations happy so they won't take up arms? The same goes for Burma -- the Brits were good to the hill tribes, but when the Burmans took over they went back to oppressing them, with predictable results. And look at the Shiites in Iraq, the Kurds in Turkey... ah well, the list is endless.
• Threat Names Thailand as Iraq Target 'After Spain'
• Iraq War Images Spur Muslim Attacks in Remote Thailand
• Islamist schools are blamed for bloody uprising in Thailand
• Thai beheading prompts patrols
• Fearful Buddhists rally in Thailand's Muslim south
• Military monks sent to Thailand's Muslim south
• That military monks article is fascinating. Apart from being useful additional information about devlopments in a story I've been following for some time now, how cool is it that their military elite are monks? A perfect news article, in that it stimulates both the part of me that says "indubitably" and the part that says "duuude". Cheers (for this and all the others).
• In the West, it has been little mentioned in recent times, but Islam's most basic tenets are often intolerant of non-monotheistic religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. "Allah is the one god; there is no god but Allah." Where civil authority is lax, and/or where Islamic sentiment is roused, there will be more of this, which has a long sad history in the East.
• *Idly wondering if certain of the differences between Islam, Christianity and Judaism can be explained by the fact that Islamic populations have historically had (and continue to have) far more contact with non-Abrahamic religions... must google history of Islam, again...*
• The part of me that says "indubitably" belongs to Bootsy, baby.
• More Thai terrorism. Fed to ducks! The idignity!
• Thailand: huge anti-gov demonstrations, media largely silent
• Thailand takes off the gloves. First, the Thai military overthrew a democracy. Now they're aiming at bigger game: Globalization
• YouTube unbanned in Thailand, will help gov block dissident sites
• Buddhists in southern Thailand fear for their lives
• Asia's bloodiest insurgency
• Thailand: Terror in the red-light district