I have a new story today at The Wall Street Journal’s Southeast Asia Real Time blog.
The headline is “As Rainy Season Approaches, Thailand Focuses on Floods,” and the story begins:
The Thai government says it is taking steps to prevent a repeat of last year’s massive flooding. But experts warn that some of the government’s big ideas – such as large-scale new dikes – probably won’t be completed before seasonal rains arrive in just a few months.
Give it a read.
For what it’s worth: There’s a new 50 baht note in town.
Here’s a snap of one I came across recently in the wild:
For reference, here’s what the old bill looked like:
According to this Jan. 12 press release (link is a PDF file) from the Bank of Thailand (BOT), new versions of the rest of Thailand’s denominations will be introduced later.
The BOT release says the new 50 baht note has “new advanced counterfeit deterrent features” such as a watermark, security thread, and more.
And the bill has “tactile marks” that “represent the Braille number 5…” to assist the visually impaired.
There’s more from the Phuket Gazette and the new-to-me Banknote News.
Two economics-related stories I suggest checking out:
1) This New York Times story by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, which was the toast of Twitter yesterday, is worth a read.
It’s called “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work.”
You’re probably familiar with many of the concepts here — higher labor costs and fewer engineers in the U.S., China’s nimble and powerful manufacturing capacity and supply chain integration, etc. — but this piece weaves things together quite nicely.
2) This piece, by Chrystia Freeland, was in the print edition of today’s IHT.
It’s a look at the ideas behind economist Jim O’Neill’s new book
As Freeland writes:
In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution and the opening of the American frontier created the Gilded Age and the robber barons who ruled it. Today, as the world economy is being reshaped by the technology revolution and globalization, the resulting economic transformation is creating a new gilded age and a new plutocracy.
The two forces are intricately related. Indeed we are living through slightly different gilded ages that are unfolding simultaneously. The West is experiencing a second gilded age, while the emerging markets, as Mr. O’Neill and others have documented, are experiencing their first gilded age.
(Emphasis mine.)
A recent New York Times story says:
KHLONG LUANG, Thailand — The floodwaters receded weeks ago from this sprawling industrial zone, but the streets are littered with detritus, the phones do not work and rusted machinery has been dumped outside warehouses that once buzzed with efficiency.
Before Thailand’s great flood of 2011, companies like Panasonic, JVC and Hitachi produced electronics and computer components that were exported around the world. Now of the 227 factories operating in the zone, only 15 percent have restarted production, according to Nipit Arunvongse Na Ayudhya, the managing director of the company that manages the Nava Nakorn industrial zone, one of the largest in Thailand and located just north of Bangkok.
“The recovery has not been that easy,” Mr. Nipit said in an interview Friday on the sidelines of a meeting where he sought to soothe anxious foreign factory managers.
The slow recovery here is having global consequences. Before the floods, Thailand produced about 40 percent to 45 percent of the world’s hard disk drives, the invaluable and ubiquitous storage devices of the digital age. It is now becoming clear that it will be months — significantly longer than initially expected — before production of hard drives returns to antediluvian levels.
(Emphasis mine.)
Worth a read.
Global intelligence firm STRATFOR has this report:
On Jan. 12, Thai authorities arrested a man they say was a member of the Lebanon-based Shiite militant group Hezbollah who was plotting an attack in Bangkok. In uncovering the plot, Thai police cite cooperation with the United States and Israel going back to December 2011. Bangkok is indeed a target-rich environment with a history of terrorist attacks, but today Hezbollah and other militant and criminal groups rely on the city as more of a business hub than anything else. If Hezbollah or some other transnational militant group were to carry out an attack in the city, it would have to be for a compelling reason that outweighed the costs.
(Emphasis mine.)
The AP reports:
A firebrand ‘Red Shirt’ leader charged with terrorism over the movement’s 2010 protests was appointed Wednesday to Thailand’s Cabinet, and a second appointee is a businesswoman blacklisted from certain U.S. financial transactions.
Worth a read.
A few stories to note today:
The Bangkok Post reports:
A detained Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist suspect was part of a planned attack on the Chabad Jewish community centre near Khao San road in Bangkok, according to a news website which specialises in intelligence reporting.
Debkafile said on Tuesday that its sources confirmed that Hussein Atris, who was arrested by Thai police at Suvarnabhumi airport on Friday night, was part of a planned attack along the lines of al Qaeda’s attack on the Mumbai Chabad [Jewish] centre in 2008, involving the taking of hostages and blowing up the building. Eight Jews were killed in the attack.
The DEBKAfile story, for the record, says:
The Thai police’s capture of a Lebanese-Swedish Hizballah suspect, who was charged Monday, Jan. 16, thwarted a terrorist attack on Bet Habad in Bangkok, involving the taking of hostages and blowing up the building. It was to have followed the same lines as al Qaeda’s 2008 assault on the Mumbai Habad center which killed 8 Israelis and Jews – only more ambitious. The Habad Bangkok is much larger: its hostel has rooms for dozens of lodgers. A second team was to have hit the Khao San Road restaurants popular with Israelis and Americans in a coordinated operation.
I am unfamiliar with DEBKAfile, but as I mentioned on Twitter earlier, this report relies exclusively on anonymous sources. Just noting it for the record. I have heard no official comment along these lines.
More info on Debka is available on their site. There’s also a Wikipedia page with more info on the site.
Meanwhile, CNN.com reports:
Thai police said Tuesday that they would seek court permission to extend the detention of a Lebanese man they have charged with illegal possession of explosive materials.
The move comes amid tension after the United States and Israel warned their citizens in Bangkok on Friday of the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.
The police charged the man, Atris Hussein, on Monday after finding “initial chemical materials that could produce bombs” in an area just outside Bangkok. The police said Hussein, who also holds a Swedish passport, led them to the location.
(All emphasis mine.)
(Thanks to @benjalord for pointing out the DEBKAfile story.)
Image via CNN.com
Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay (@wayne_hay) has a video package summing up the latest in the Bangkok terrorism threat story.
The report includes some pictures of police carting away the suspected bomb making materials. Worth a watch.
The YouTube video is embedded above and online here.
Here’s the latest on the Bangkok terror alert story, which I blogged about earlier.
Bloomberg reports today:
Thai police charged a Swedish- Lebanese man suspected of plotting a terrorist attack in Bangkok after finding bomb-making materials in a building on the capital’s outskirts.
Atris Hussein, 47, was charged with possessing illegal substances after being detained on Jan. 12 in connection with a plan to attack tourist sites frequented by Americans and Israelis, said Charamporn Suramanee, the assistant police chief. Thai police have linked him and a second suspect still on the run to the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement.
“We are monitoring the situation and have increased forces to look after public areas,” Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra told reporters today. “The situation is under control. There is no problem.”
And:
About 200 policeman surrounded a building in Samut Sakorn province on Bangkok’s outskirts today and found fertilizer and ammonium nitrate, a chemical compound used in explosives, Charamporn said. Police spokesman Piya Uthayo yesterday said a second suspect was being sought.
The U.S. said in a Jan. 13 “emergency message” to citizens that “foreign terrorists may be currently looking to conduct attacks against tourist areas in Bangkok in the near future.” Embassy spokesman Walter Braunohler today said the warning remains in effect.
Police Chief Priewphan Damaphong told reporters that he believed Thailand was not the intended target of the attackers. Two days ago, he named the tourist area of Khao San Road and the downtown street Sukhumvit 22 as potential targets.
The suspects may have planned to use a car bomb at the Israeli Embassy, Jewish places of worship, tourist companies or restaurants, Defense Minister Yuthasak Sasiprapha told reporters on Jan. 13.
The AP says:
A foreign suspect with alleged links to Hezbollah militants led Thai police Monday to a warehouse filled with materials commonly used to make bombs, as Thailand and the U.S. disagreed over whether Bangkok was the target of a terror plot.
Police confiscated more than 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate during the early morning raid of a warehouse in Samut Sakhon, on the western outskirts of Bangkok, according to police and media reports.
And:
The raid came after the U.S. Embassy issued an “emergency message” Friday warning of a possible terror threat against Americans in Bangkok, and Israel sent out a similar warning to its citizens. A dozen other embassies have since urged their citizens to exercise caution.
The warnings come during heightened tension over U.S. and Israeli responses to the prospect that Iran is moving ahead with its nuclear program.
Thai authorities were caught off-guard by the U.S. announcement, hastily revealing they had detained a Swedish national of Lebanese origin with alleged links to pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants on Thursday and that intelligence indicated a plot could be carried out between Jan. 13 and 15. The defense minister said the news was not released earlier to avoid panic that could hurt Thailand’s tourism industry, one of the country’s biggest revenue earners.
Damage control continued Monday, with the prime minister calling for calm.
And finally:
The U.S. Embassy said Monday it stood by its warning of a possible attack in Bangkok.
“Whenever we have specific, credible, not-counterable threats, it is our responsibility to inform Americans in Thailand,” said embassy spokesman Walter Braunohler. “That’s what we did Friday. We issued an emergency message, and that remains in effect.”
(All emphasis mine.)
To follow up on my last two posts…
The AP reports:
Thai police were on Friday questioning a Lebanese man with alleged links to Hezbollah militants as the U.S. Embassy warned of a “real and credible” threat of a terrorist attack against American citizens in Bangkok.
Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung said Thai authorities received a tip-off before New Year’s of a planned attack, which was said to target Israelis.
“At first we were told the Palestinians were behind it but it turned out to be the Hezbollah,” he told The Associated Press.
He said police detained on Thursday a Lebanese suspect with alleged links to Hezbollah, an avowedly anti-Israel militant group.
Bloomberg says:
Thailand said it arrested a Lebanese terror suspect less than three hours after the U.S. warned of a possible attack in Bangkok and urged citizens to exercise caution in public areas.
Thai police arrested a suspect linked to Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah, Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung told reporters. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra confirmed that police had made an arrest.
“The situation is normal,” Police Chief Priewpan Damapong told reporters. “There is nothing to worry about.”
(All emphasis mine.)