OPINION

Hook, line and sinker

Re: "The root of Islamist terrorism", (BP, June 1).

Gwynne Dyer is exactly correct in pointing out a reality that many Western leaders don't want to admit. The west fell -- hook, line, and sinker -- for the trap that Osama bin Laden laid for them with the Sept 11 attacks. The irony is that bin Laden advertised to the world that his strategy was to suck the West into invading Middle Eastern Muslim countries as a way of draining Western resources and turning Muslims against the invaders. Unfortunately, Western leaders failed to avoid the trap. After more than a decade, trillions of dollars in expended resources, and tens of thousands of dead, the West is mired deeper than ever in its "war on terrorism".

Bin Laden may be dead and gone, but his strategy has proven highly effective.

Recently I was at Tha Phae Gate in Chiang Mai watching tourists feeding the pigeons. Suddenly, I saw a little boy chasing the pigeons and trying to kick them. If one of his kicks had landed it could have seriously harmed a bird. Yet his parents were standing a few feet away smiling and doing nothing to stop him.

On another occasion I saw two small boys chase a three-legged dog into the street and the dog almost got hit by a vehicle. It made me wonder how many dog attacks against children are provoked.

But I'm not blaming the children. I'm blaming the parents. Shouldn't teaching children to respect animals be an important part of bringing up a child to become a kind and decent adult?

Earth's climate changes naturally all the time. In the 1300s to the 1800s there was a "Little Ice Age" -- a period of very cold weather when the river Thames in England froze to the bottom and people roasted oxen on its surface. Pirates crossing the Isthmus of Panama on foot nearly froze to death (today it's a tropical climate).

Today they say "climate change", implying global warming, but they can't say that anymore. And they also imply that man is changing the climate by putting more CO2 into the air by burning fossil fuels. Water vapour is a much more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and there is way more water vapour in the atmosphere than CO2, so why not try to reduce water vapour?

The fact is, the biggest influence on our climate is the Sun, and the Sun varies in intensity. Why should we spend billions and billions of dollars to reduce one small influence on the earth's ability to retain heat? It's nonsensical. Trading "carbon credits" is just another way for Wall Street to make big money for themselves.

Re: "Democracy a work in progress", (PostBag, June 4).

I am delighted at P Jackson's thoughtful response to my recasting of PM Prayut Chan-o-cha's four questions.

Thus, I support his recasting of Gen Prayut's questions so that they are unbiased. For example, he asks, "How can we encourage and enable the general public to peacefully exert control over its elected officials (at all levels)... in order to hold them to account and ensure that they serve the needs of all sectors of society?"

I recasted Gen Prayut's questions to show that they were leading and could easily be used to engineer a specific outcome. I did not put words into Yingluck Shinawatra's mouth. Au contraire, I stated that I was recasting Gen Prayut's lines of thought to see them from her point of view, to show how leading the drafts were.

To achieve his aim of finding out what we the people wish, Gen Prayut should immediately substitute P Jackson's questions for his original ones. Better yet, Gen Prayut should encourage the different political colours to engage in extensive, inclusive, cross-colour discussion of P Jackson's version.