Thailand's Long, Long Battle for a Phu Kradeung cable car

Go-o-o-o-d morning Thailand and World. Today is, or is about to become Tuesday, January 30.
We regret the lateness of Fishwrap but assure you that some jackas vital employee will soon have to learn to code.
  

Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing, they marry later, and for another thing, they die earlier. (H.L. Mencken)

Raise the Sukhothai
and pay a huge diplomatic price
Very top story this Tuesday morning:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2732210/
JUSMAG THAI -- many readers of Fishwrap are familiar with the term, and should know that the agency is alive if not well.
The U.S. government, using JUSMAG and -- specifically not -- the U.S. Embassy Bangkok that Thailand and its government should not use a Thai-Chinese company to try to raise and salvage the sunken Royal Thai Navy's HTMS Sukhothai, which sank in heavy seas, in the Gulf of Thailand on last December 22.
The Americans seem very serious. The Navy, up to this morning is deadly serious about using the Thai-Chinese salvage firm, which won a contract for 199 million baht -- equivalent to roughly US$5.6 million.

Using the China-linked firm 'could seriously violate' Thai-U.S. treaty agreements, and lead to cancellations of unspecified U.S. sales to Thailand.
PHOTO by Royal Thai Navy shows an attempt to raise the Sukhothai.

Thailand's very best Sunday columnist digs into the past.
There ain't no mountain high enough

Watching the sunrise on the Phu Kradeung mountain top in Loei province.
 Loei province mountain top.
 In the final weeks of 2023 the old chestnut of introducing a cable car system on Phu Kradeung (Bell Mountain) national park resurfaced.
 It came as no surprise when a Bangkok Post headline concluded on the very last day of the year that the project "faces uncertainty".
 For more than three decades the authorities have been trying to find an easy way of getting tourists up the Loei mountain.
 
 About 10 years ago I stood at the foot of Phu Kradeung, contemplating whether I was capable of making it all the way. The answer came quickly in the form of a pained expression from the wife which translated quite clearly as "Don't even think about it".
I didn't venture up. To reach the summit required a steep trek taking four hours for normal people and longer for less athletic mortals like myself.
In fact the next stop was to be a nearby refreshment area for a nice cold beer.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2731830/
The wife was right again.

OPINION ANALYSIS
Election winner Move Forward Party is prepared for its Dday Zero court hearing on Thursday.
 What about its supporters and Thailand?
Khao Sod (Fresh News) https://shorturl.at/atwz3
It is not unthinkable that the most popular political party in Thailand could be dissolved.
PHOTO: Pita Limjaroenrat: The almost-prime minister and the reason for most of the MFP election win last May 14.

Who are
radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq who killed 3 American and wounded 25 on Saturday?

Biden claims he doesn't know. Also, his statement eschews the word "terrorists' and adores that whoever they are or might be, the attackers are miliants.
Midiaite Summary: https://t.ly/tyTfr
Biden statement, Whitehouse.gov: https://t.ly/29PRi

[Link to the above: https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1751643715087520222]
Hawks in Congress and the U.S. Republican Party are trying to press Biden to target Iran itself.
Axios: https://shorturl.at/uHR56
Axios reports that the attack was by not-terrorists.

MIDEAST UNITED_NATIONS TERRORISM HAMAS
United Nations: Sorry About Our People Attacking Israel. Now How About Some More Big Dollars?
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2024/01/28/un-sorry-about-our-people-attacking-israel-now-how-about-some-more-n607947
Meanwhile in California, a lawsuit accuses the cesspit of hatred and bigotry University of California Berkeley of failing to protect its Jewish students.
https://instapundit.com/629094/
The Pew Report shows that four of every ten American adults (over 18) fervently believe humanity is 'living in the end times.'
Could they be right?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/08/about-four-in-ten-u-s-adults-believe-humanity-is-living-in-the-end-times/

UNRWA is a 75 year old United Nations program that is unique. No other group of refugees has a UN organization specifically dedicated to them, and there have been countless migrations away from wars and disasters in those 75 years.
https://www.unrwa.org/who-we-are
The United Nations cares not a whit for refugees except as they can be used to generate funding from the member countries.
The UNRWA, which now employs almost 30,000 people including Hamas terrorists, most of whom are themselves the descendants of those original refugees! How the great-grandchild of someone who left Israel in 1948 is considered a refugee is a question for the ages!
Many of the schools in Gaza are run directly by Hamas and funded by UNRWA.

FOURTH ESTATE
NOTE Fishwrap apologises but the following is mostly about the United States.
 The News Business Really Is Cratering
 The state of the industry is more dire than ever.
 Twenty percent of the Los Angeles Times' newsroom was laid off in January. What does that mean for the future of journalism?
             *****
NOTE: The daft American-language phrase "laid off" means fired, permanently. Or, Learn To Code.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire publisher of the Los Angeles Times, laid off 20 percent of his newsroom.
At Sports Illustrated the previous week as catastrophic layoffs were dispensed via email to most staffers.
At Time magazine, its billionaire owners Marc and Lynne Benioff, did the same for 15 percent of their unionised editorial employees.
Business Insider (owner Axel Springer) jettisoned 8 percent of its staff.
Workers at Condé Nast, Forbes, the New York Daily News and elsewhere walked out to protest against the fact most of them are about to be fired. (?!)
Nearly everywhere you look -- Washington Post, NPR, Vice, Vox, NBC News, Texas Tribune, WNYC, Barstool Sports just to name a few -- companies have axed huge swathes of staff.
 Newsroom employment is down more than 26 percent since 2008. Buzzfeed News is dead.
Politico Mag: https://t.ly/xsaF0

If great cities like Los Angeles, with its many prosperous, educated and engaged citizens, can't support a decent daily newspaper, what hope is there for the rest of the country?
 Are we belatedly learning that the great journalism empires -- the Times-Mirror chain, Knight Ridder, Gannett, Scripps-Howard, Tribune, McClatchy, Advance Publications, Hearst, Freedom Communications and the rest -- weren't journalism empires as much as they were advertising colossuses?

Quite Very Related
Tech layoffs are back, baby! (Tech Crunch)
Much as we enjoy shitting on the idiocy of the tech press, this is at least the second time that Tech Crunch has mocked itself for its September article proclaiming that tech layoffs were "almost a thing of the past".
Good for them.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/26/tech-layoff-surge/

USA POLITICS

Would-be Trump killer Nikki Haley (above) claims she's in it to win it -- at least until the March 5 'Super Tuesday' round of primary elections.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/28/haley-super-tuesday-2024-trump-00138238

As MacAlan 'Mac' Thompson (RIP) pointed out continuously, Snopes.com was a reliable source of fact-checking when Barbara Mikkelson was there. Encyclopedic.
After Barbara left after 2010, it's just another heavy-politics site that masquerades as a fact-checker but really is not.
Example, last Saturday
Snopes fact-check calls a true Biden story ‘false’ despite photos they included in the post
 THEN Snopes reverses it. Well, as they say,
 Oceania has never been at war with TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE, right?
Very imbecilic 'Fact Check'

The supercalifragilisticexpialidociousally boring 96th Academy Awards will be broadcast at 0700 Monday, March 11.
'Dirty Oppy' has earned 13 Oscar nominations. Far better, he has 'eliminated' the Barbie movie.

All nominations, every one: https://t.ly/RKBv-
Script of Dirty Oppy*
 You're thinking 'did he drop 6 bombs or 5?' Now to tell you the truth, I've forgotten myself in all this excitement.
 But being this is a 50-megatonne hydrogen bomb, the most powerful weapon in the world, you've gotta ask yourself a question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?
*Fishwrap cannot guarantee the accuracy of this late-breaking script.