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Greens denounce 'Knight of the Chainsaw'

Environmental groups are demanding that the Queen withdraw the award of a knighthood to a Malaysian tycoon accused of making his fortune from the illegal destruction of huge areas of tropical rainforest.

The announcement of the honour for Tiong Hiew King, billionaire chairman of the Rimbunan Hijau conglomerate, comes just six weeks after Prince Charles launched an internet initiative to preserve the world’s dwindling rainforests and prevent “catastrophic climate change”.

To add to the embarrassment, Mr Tiong has been calling himself “Sir” Hiew King although, as the recipient of an honorary, rather than a full, knighthood, he is not entitled to use this style.

“Tiong Hiew King is commonly known to be one of the chief people responsible for widespread illegal logging in both Papua New Guinea and other countries,” said Lukas Straumann of the Bruno Manser Foundation, which campaigns for the indigenous inhabitants of the rainforests. “He is unfit for a knighthood and we call upon the Queen to deprive him of this honour.”

Mr Tiong, 71, was rated by Forbes magazine as the 20th  richest man in south-east Asia with a net worth of US dollars 1.1 billion in oil palm plantations, information technology, hotels and travel and newspapers in thirteen countries, including China, Indonesia and Russia,. But his biggest business is the one with which he founded his conglomerate in 1975 - logging tropical timber.

British Minister: Global Warming Could Bring War

[Here's a fuller version my piece from today's paper, which ran rather small . . .]

Global warming will increase the risk of war, conflict and terrorism and represents perhaps the greatest challenge to stability and security in the world, the British foreign office minister, Bill Rammell warned an international gathering yesterday.

Speaking at a conference on climate change and security in Tokyo, Mr Rammell said that climate change could ruin livelihoods, force entire populations out of their homes, and pitch poor nations against rich ones, increasing competition for land, food and resources. He predicted a ten-fold increase in piracy as suffering populations seized scarce resources form the high seas, and increased radicalisation of impoverished people leading to future terrorist attacks.

“Who, hand on heart, can say for sure that countries wouldn’t decide to use armed force to ensure that their citizens had access to life-giving resources taken away by their neighbours?’ he asked the audience of politicians, military officers and defence officials from Britain and Japan. “It’s not difficult to imagine how the ‘have-nots’ could be radicalised by someone saying, ‘Those rich western countries created global warming, and now they are buying up the world’s food stocks, leaving us to starve.’

He added: “We know all too well that it doesn’t take many radicals to disrupt our way of life – and that borders, or even oceans, are no barrier to those bent on killing innocent people and damaging our way of life.”

Abhisit at Oxford: the cow manure flies

The Thai prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, gave his speech on democracy at St John's College, Oxford on Saturday and, as I counselled in my op-ed the day before, no one threw a shoe - or even a sock - at him. But there was a contingent of protesters, including the character above, who made clear their scepticism about Mr Abhisit's version of democracy. The photograph above is from here (the text is all in Thai; scroll down past it for the pictures) which has more pictures of the demo.

I wasn't there, of course, but it sounds as if Abhisit gave a good account of himself. There's a very comprehensive report on the excellent New Mandala website here; and a few minutes of the Q&A session here on YouTube.

The highlight of the morning seems to have been the head-to-head between Abhisit and Giles Ji Ungpakorn, the left wing academic and professor of Chulalongkorn University, who went into exile in Britain after lèse-majesté charges were brought against him. In an email circular after the event, Prof Giles said that "the majority of Thais and anyone else in the international community with a simple knowledge about Thai politics would not have been taken in. Two exceptions were the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University and the President of St John’s College who, like a couple of bumbling fools, praised Abhisit’s ‘commitment to Democracy’.”

Also struck by Abhisit in Oxford was Britain's ambassador to Thailand, Quinton Quayle, who responded to questions from The Nation. "He showed, both by his words and actions, that he wants to promote democratic debate about the future of Thailand," the ambassador told the paper.

"His willingness to engage in an open and frank discussion, including on sensitive issues, impressed his audience. He showed that he is ready to listen to the point of view both of those who agree and disagree with his government and to give answers to the key questions of most concern in Thailand. The discussion that took place at Oxford University on March 14 is a good model for future debate in Thailand."

Now, one wouldn't ever expect an ambassador to be completely frank about the leader of the government to which he is credentialled. But this is rather more carefully phrased than The Nation's headline - 'PM wins hearts in UK by engaging in "open and frank discussion"' - allows. I don't know whether Mr Quayle was present at St John's or not. If he wasn't, he is not really in a position to speak on behalf of its audience. Even from a distance it is obvious that, far from being unanimously "impressed", it was deeply divided over what Abhisit had to say - as Thailand is about Abhisit in general.

And such an open, unfettered and fearless debate could never take place in Thailand at the moment. Giles Ungpakorn wouldn't be there, for a start: he'd be locked up, for writing a book. And no Thai who wished to stay out of jail would dare to stand up and ask the frank questions about lèse-majesté which the Oxford audience put on Saturday. Abhisit may have said that he wants to promote democratic debate in Thailand, but whether he really intends to, or even has the power to do so, is another question yet to be settled. Perhaps his hands are tied by his PAD/military supporters; perhaps, having achieved power, he now finds that a certain amount of fear and hesitancy on the part of the population is an advantage. I sense that Ambassador Quayle is aware of these subtleties, hence his nuanced reference to the St John's speech as "a good model for future debate in Thailand" (my italics).

Finally, my piece on Friday drew a rather baffling rebuttal in the Bangkok Post. The only bit I can properly follow is where the columnist likens my writing to "cow manure". Now that's what I call democratic debate!

The Ogre

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi exerting efforts for Confrontation, Utter Devastation, and Imposing All Kinds of Sanctions including Economic Sanctions against Myanmar - If she declares to give them up, the Senior General will personally meet her.

Headline in The New Light of Myanmar, the government-controlled newspaper, 5th October 2007.

The Ogre does what ogres can,

Deeds quite impossible for Man.

But one prize is beyond his reach,

The Ogre cannot master speech:

About a subjugated plain,

Among its desperate and slain,

The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,

While drivel gushes from his lips.

W.H Auden, August 1968

Give Him Sunshine

I am cursing myself for missing it, but I cannot tell a lie: my talented colleague Leo Lewis spotted it first here. After a year under the leadership of the actor Tom Conti, the next prime minister of Japan looks most likely to be another icon of the British showbiz scene. You thought he'd died in 1984, but yesterday he was back, launching his campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party under the unconvincing alias "Yasuo Fukuda". Isn't it obvious that this man:

is in fact -

- Eric Morecambe!

Apologies for the quality of the image. To increase the resolution, just screw up your eyes and squint a bit.

But what about his opponent? Who is this "Taro Aso" character, and what is his true identity?

After a certain amount of timewasting, er, brainstorming, Leo and I have come up with the following possibilities:

Uankaa yourself

People in politics are the objects of a lot of sneering and scepticism, and overall this is a healthy and necessary thing. But often, I suspect, even we sneerers have a touching and naive faith in those who lead us. We complain about them, of course, but they are doing a job that few of us could handle. Underneath it all, even if they're not particularly nice people, they are at least discriminating and perceptive and able, they know what they are doing, we are in safe hands . . . aren't we?

Then you come across someone like Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's long time spokesman and chief bully boy. And you realise how wrong all those cosy assumptions can be.

I was fuming over this in a bookshop in London the other week, so I am grateful to Kyodo News for their story today, which saves me from having to enrich Alastair Campbell. In July, the eminent flack published The Blair Years, extracts from the "diary" of his years at Tony's right hand (although doubts have been expressed about how much they may have been touched up for publication).

Flicking through the book in Waterstone's, I naturally looked up the references to Japan in the index. I wasn't expecting that any of this would raise my opinion of AC; I anticpated superficiality, glibness, and self-justification. What I hadn't expected was that both Campbell and Blair would come across as so pitifully low powered.

Man City boss: is he evil?

Until a few weeks ago months ago, when I wrote stories about Thaksin Shinawatra, I identified him with the simple formula "deposed prime minister of Thailand" and filed them to the Foreign Editor. Since then he has risen to become something much more important than a foreign head of government - the owner of a Premiership football team. These days in The Times, he is "Man City boss", first and foremost; my story in today's paper ran in the Sports pages.

Since Thaksin's footie acquisition, there's been a lot written about him in the British papers, a lot more than when he was merely one of the richest and most powerful men in south-east Asia. But no consensus has really emerged on what to make of him. Reduced to its essentials the question seems to be: is this man evil? or, put with a little more sophistication, is he fit for the honour of running one of our venerable Association Football clubs? Is he a classic Asian despot who has fled to our shores after being driven out by his brave people, and who is now sinking his blood-soaked talons into one a prized sporting institution? Or a brilliant businessman and visionary leader who has been shamefully tumbled from power by a clique of unelected generals?

It's a surprisingly difficult question to answer. But here is my stab at Thaksin-in-a-nutshell.

How do you spell Jap?

Be sure to read this characteristically intelligent piece in the Japan Times by David McNeill about the lurking racism in British and American media coverage of the Lindsay Hawker murder. A few extracts:

This story brimmed over with the best front-page ingredients: a violent crime with a hint of salacious color, a beautiful victim and a poisonous, clever villain who got away. It also had one other, more troubling component: race.

. . . To prove that underneath the stiff salaryman suit of everyman Japan lurks a slavering fantasist, several foreign journalists were dispatched to interview white hostesses in Roppongi, Tokyo's "social hub," as it was described in a British newspaper. After explaining that Hawker had been "repeatedly beaten over several hours" in a flat owned by Tatsuya Ishihashi (sic), The Daily Mail said that many of the hostesses were also worried about "weird" Japanese men.

"While some British women described the attitude of the men they encounter here as strange, uncomfortable and unpredictable, others talked of the awe and mystique Western women hold for the Japanese male," the reporter wrote.

The "taller" and "more liberated" British women have to "constantly put up with unwanted male attention — such as the endemic groping on trains."

"They want you to belong to them, but there is a frustration there because they know they can't have you," said one hostess. "The Japanese are so very different to us that I wonder if we will ever really understand them," said another.

Step carefully through the minefield of racial cliches. The devious, inscrutable Japanese man too cowardly to come out and ask for what he really wants: to have sex with an Englishwoman. And ask the obvious questions: Why visit a club district to investigate the life of a language teacher; why should a place designed to exploit and magnify sexual fantasies for money yield honest insights into racial relations; and what did the men think? We don't know because the reporter never bothered to interview a single Japanese person.

. . . A group of agitated Japanese bloggers dubbed this "Japan bashing." A less kind description might be racism.

Flying Seoul-o

Writing about foreign stereotypes last week, I made sceptical reference to the popular notion of Japan as a land awash in bizarre pornography, where every other salarymen spends his lunch break hunched over rape manga, downloading bukkake videos, and purchasing schoolgirls' underwear from his office vending machine. Japanese smut is certainly distinctive, I acknowledged, but if it really is more widely consumed than in the rest of the world - show us the evidence.

Committed Asia Exile reader Joseh Miller has taken up the challenge by sending me a link to this fascinating page on the website Internet Filter Review. It goes some way towards answering a profound question: who are the world's biggest wankers?

The answers will amaze and appal you.

'So why am I leaving?'

An old friend of mine, Laura Holland, recently left Japan after fifteen years as a student, journalist, editor, publisher, and promoter of Sailor Moon, the cartoon schoolgirl with the disturbingly shapely hips. At her sayonara party, instead of the conventional speech of valediction she handed out a written statement. It will ring true with anyone who has ever asked themselves the crucial question, 'Have I been in Japan too long?' With Laura's permission I reproduce it here, lightly bowdlerised and glossed for readers unfamiliar with Japan, Japanese and the world of the gaijin (foreigner in Japan).

So why am I leaving?

Imagine a nice comfy armchair. You know you should go jogging, but it's cold and wet outside. The armchair is Japan. The cold wet jog is England.

You know which one is better for you long term but it's hard to leave the present comfort of the armchair.

• I was feeling lazy and uninspired
• I missed unconditional, lifelong relationships with old friends and family
• I wanted more work responsibility and respect than I was getting here
• I didn’t want to end up a bitter old gaijin trout moaning down the pub about not getting laid.