OPINION

Valuable forum

Re: "Peace in Deep south demands more than guns", (Opinion, Oct 4).

Contributions by BP News Editor Anucha Charoenpo or even contributions to the PostBag column by regular readers such as Burin Kantabutra or Felix Qui, greatly enhance the quality and variety of views on offer.

I am glad the Post provides such a forum for people to share their insights with the masses.

TRUE lets us down

I just don't get it. TRUE did broadcast the first two games of the Yankee-Red Sox series, now tied at one game apiece.

Today, with the decider being played in Yankee Stadium we get a rerun of yesterday's Dodgers-Reds game.

Never did see any of the Cubs games here.

So we have no NFL, no WNBA, no NCAA football, no NASCAR and not sure about the upcoming NBA season.

How many paid-for view streaming services do I have to buy to see American sports programming here?

Stopping the clock

Re: "No to carbon tax", (PostBag, Oct 3).

I have some questions to add to Anna Aart's letter about reducing CO2 emissions.

If we reach zero (or negligible) emissions, but the Earth's climate continues to change, as it has done by itself for millions of years, what would we do? With no more emissions to reduce, humans would have to adapt or perish.

Why aren't we doing that already, rather than trying to stop the climate from changing, something just as futile as trying to stop time?

Misleading claims

Re: "NSC backs border fences", (BP, Oct 3).

Defence Minister Gen Nattaphon Narkpanich dismisses a recent report in The New York Times, which claimed China had delivered rockets and artillery shells to Cambodia just weeks before the outbreak of clashes between Thailand and Cambodia.

Defence Minister Gen Nattaphon even stressed the weapons were delivered prior to the Thai-Cambodian conflict. The Anglo-Saxon press worldwide has long been a tool of Western domination, and The New York Times article "How Chinese Weapons Transformed a War Between Two Neighbors" (Sept 29), written by Sui Lee-Wee, demonstrates how powerful this tool can be and how opportunistically it is used.

The piece shows how Western media is used to shape perceptions to serve broader geopolitical aims, and illustrates its use to frame narratives and shape opinions.

On its own, it is doubtful that 99% of Thais would be aware of this article, much less read its English content. Thai television channels devoted extensive airtime to the piece, effectively amplifying a message that aligns with a particular geopolitical viewpoint. Thai audiences were unwittingly drawn into a narrative trap shaped by Western media interests in the United States.

In September 2024, Congress passed House Resolution 1157, the "Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund." This legislation authorises more than $1.6 billion for the State Department and USAID over the next five years to support media and civil-society efforts worldwide that counter Chinese "malign influence."

The aim, as stated, is to curate global discourse in ways that diminish China's perceived reach and impact. It is unfortunate that most Thai television news hosts cannot discern the underlying aims of this article.

The article asserts not just that new weapons appeared, but that China deliberately introduced them to escalate the conflict and advance its own strategic objectives, thereby "transforming the war." To support this, the NYT relies on its usual methods: accusations from unnamed sources, and high-tech yet unproven information from satellite images (no satellite images were actually featured as it is too cloudy this time of year).

Strangely, Thai newspapers cited no such evidence in their on-the-ground reporting. Instead, they reported Cambodia using Soviet-built 1990s BM-21 rockets. The article also includes quotes from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which has recently acknowledged receiving funding from USAID.

Thailand does not want to see its neighbours buying military equipment, but as a sovereign nation, Cambodia has been buying weapons from China since the 1990s drawn by China's cheap prices. In this article, the agency is placed almost entirely in China as the supplier with a clearly defined strategic plan to cause a further chasm between Thailand and Cambodia, casting China in a bad light by using Western news media.