Animal rights front PETA and British retailers and media have teamed up to deliver a collective and politically-motivated blow to Thailand’s agricultural exports and in particular its large coconut industry (second largest coconut exporter in the world).
PETA makes the absurd claim that Thailand’s immense coconut industry depends on “monkey labour” to collect coconuts from trees and that these alleged monkeys are regularly abused.
On July 12 of this year, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines Teodoro Locsin issued a statement that immediately garnered the attention of leading news outlets because it concerned the situation in the South China Sea (SCS), i.e. one of the most volatile parts of the world where (conflicting) interests of countries of the region as well as world powers collide.
One of Washington’s reoccuring dreams is creating a “pan-Asian alliance” to encircle and contain China’s economic and political rise. Unable to do this through regime change, economic incentives, military alliances, or even coercion and terrorism, it has drawn deeper and deeper from its “soft power” toolkit.
The US is also increasingly lumping its various regional assets together to fight in its growing rift with China.
Some twenty years ago, when I moved to Hanoi, the city was bleak, grey, covered by smog. The war had ended, but terrible scars remained.
I brought my 4WD from Chile, and insisted on driving it myself. It was one of the first SUVs in the city. Each time I drove it, it was hit by scooters, which flew like projectiles all over the wide avenues of the capital.
“We see that, with the changing world order, the rivalry between the current centers of power continues to intensify and so does the battle for leadership in the future. Unfortunately, the threat posed by the novel Coronavirus has not reduced these geopolitical tensions, exacerbating them instead. We would like to reiterate that, from our point of view, the COVID-19 pandemic has become an additional catalyst speeding up these changes…”
The Kingdom of Thailand plays a central role in the Southeast Asian ASEAN economic bloc. It has a population of nearly 70 million, the second largest economy in the region and hosts a key leg of China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative including high speed rail that will connect China (via Laos) to Malaysia and beyond.
Thus, regional recovery in the wake of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) depends on central nations like Thailand’s quick and orderly recovery.
In Jakarta, doctors are dying, while common people do not know which data to believe, anymore. It appears that even some government officials do not trust government statistics.
At the beginning of the pandemic, for weeks, the Indonesian government was pretending that there is no problem whatsoever, insisting that number of cases was zero, thanks to prayers and divine intervention.
The ten Southeast Asian states of ASEAN with a collective population of 622 million people has weathered the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) relatively well.
A combination of quick reactions, a hesitation to overreact and strong preexisting economic fundamentals, the region looks well on its way to returning to normal, that is, if it is able to resist the “new normal” the West seeks to impose globally.
Health Impact
Despite the unprecedented damage global panic over coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has caused to nations around the world, so-called “pro-democracy” protesters have vowed to immediately resume street mobs as soon as emergency measures are lifted in Thailand.
The move will almost certainly contribute to socioeconomic instability and only compound the plight faced by average Thais whom these “student protesters” claim they represent.
