MY 2026 PREDICTIONS FOR THE U.S. ECONOMY

The trends so far for 2025 have been:

  • Job losses and higher unemployment, now up to 4.6%.
  • Rising, but still manageable inflation, although still higher than the target 2%.

It would be reasonable to predict that these trends will continue into 2026. However, I don’t think they will.

Let’s start with job losses. AI will cost the jobs of millions of Americans. I predict the 2025 employment trends will continue, BUT…

As more and more immigrants and asylum seekers are deported, more and more low-paying jobs will be left unfilled – fruit pickers, hotel cleaners, and jobs that most Americans would not dream of touching. As Americans lose their jobs, they may stoop to accept the immigrants’ jobs, at much lower pay, but hey, a job is a job.

The result may even be that the unemployment rate will decline below 4%, even as workers’ standard of living will decline in those low-paying jobs. We may see a recession, even a depression, even as the unemployment rate looks like it’s doing fine.

I think that a key event was when the Korean Hyundai company brought its own trained workers to its Atlanta factory to help train American workers. ICE detained 475 of them and deported 300 of them in a cruel manner, creating a diplomatic dispute between South Korea and the US. That kind of incident is likely to be the norm in 2026, as Trump makes foreigners less and less welcome, through visa policies and deportations.    On September 12, 2025, The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board issued an opinion criticizing the Trump administration, writing that “raids like the one in Georgia are a deterrent to the foreign investment Donald Trump says he wants.”

Trump claims that his policies will bring more companies to America, but so far, it looks as though the reverse will be the case for 2026. As companies leave the US, there will be fewer jobs for Americans, thereby exacerbating the problems described above.

Now what happens during a depression? Demand for goods and services falls. Prices fall. Recall that during the Great Depression of the 1930s, people lost their jobs, had no money to buy goods, and forced prices dramatically downward. 2026 may see a decline in prices for some of the same reasons. Add to this the phenomenon that tariffs, while raising prices at their outset, do not continue to raise prices as long as the tariffs do not increase. Throughout 2025, companies have reduced existing inventories, so that prices due to tariffs have only risen slowly. When the inventories have been depleted, prices may hit their peak and then stabilize.

A word about interest rates. Trump is flooding the Fed with sycophants who will reduce rates. Such policies usually boost employment but raise inflation. In this way, Trump may partially offset the trends I have described above. I don’t see the lower leg of the K-shaped economy as benefiting much from lower rates. His goal, I suspect, is to make his rich business cronies (including, of course, himself) richer. Their bonds will decrease in interest rates while appreciating in value, and they will find it easier to invest in their huge AI data centers and other high-tech ventures.

The construction of these data centers will require huge amounts of energy and water, so that energy prices will rise. Add to this Trump’s betrothal to the fossil fuel industry, where he is cutting down the use of alternative energy sources like wind. The total amount of energy will be reduced, thereby further raising energy costs for the working people. The lower leg of the K will have to pay more for health care and for energy, and so they will have to cut back drastically on other everyday living expenses.

In all, I see an acceleration of the current K-shaped economy, where the rich (upper arm of the K) prosper while the poor (lower leg of the K) find their standard of living going down the tubes. The US could become a third-world economy, even while the statistics look good: inflation under control, unemployment steady. Trump and MAGA may even win the midterm elections.

WHY WOULD THAILAND WANT TO DESTROY A VISHNU STATUE?

Thai crane topples Cambodian sacred statue on Cambodian ground

This destruction was no accident, and was not done by F-16 fighters. It’s a simple crane toppling the statue – clearly on purpose. Thailand claims the statue was removed “solely for the purpose of area management and security”. Suuure!

I have been claiming that the Thai generals and politicians have been waging this war to stir up patriotic sentiment ahead of the elections in February.

However, this useless destruction of sacred objects must not sit well with the very religious Thai people. There must be some other reason for such sacrilege. There is no strategic goal in toppling a statue. Destroying a holy icon does not conquer more Cambodian territory. The only answer must be that this act sends a message. But what is the message, and to whom is it addressed? That’s what really puzzles me.

For one thing, it is clear that this action is designed to humiliate the Cambodian people. Khmer culture places great pride in its religion. The Vishnu statue is a familiar icon found all over Cambodia. Indeed, of the Brahma-Vishnu-Siva trio, Vishnu is the preserver and protector. Many homes and businesses across Cambodia have images of Vishnu to protect them. The destruction of the statue, along with the incursions deep into Siem Reap Province, may be a signal that Thailand could, if it wanted, destroy any place in Cambodia, even Angkor Wat. It is also highly symbolic that Thailand can destroy Cambodia’s preserver and protector.

Why, then, would Thailand, at this moment in time, choose to humiliate Cambodia?

Well, here’s a hypothesis: China. With China’s recent aggressive foreign policy, it is the elephant in every room these days. In recent years, Chinese influence in Cambodia has grown immensely. Maybe Thailand’s message to Cambodia is “Don’t get too buddy-buddy with China”. The invasion often appears sporadic and random, but it is performative to the extent that China and Cambodia will both understand clearly that Thailand could conquer all of Cambodia if they wanted to.

Thai support of jet fighters and bombers from the US, Korea, and Sweden mocks Cambodia, “Nyah, nyah, nyah! Where is China now? Why don’t you have Chinese fighter jets?” Cambodia is powerless to defend against these planes. Thus, the message to China and Cambodia comes not only from Thailand, but from the three Western nations.

China has remained remarkably silent throughout this invasion, making only the perfunctory ‘maximum restraint’ comments. However, if Thailand really invaded all of Cambodia, China might just step in. Therefore, Thailand is limiting its operations so as to poke the Chinese bear without any real consequences.

The Cambodian people are praying to their savior Donald Trump, but it’s clear Trump will do nothing. All he wants is to attach his name to a peace treaty or news headline, to make him more eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, why isn’t he reminding Thailand that American F-16s are not allowed to attack civilians? He is quietly allowing American bombers to (illegally) kill innocent Cambodian civilians, so you might infer that he is taking Thailand’s side in the dispute.

The fact that the US, South Korea, and Sweden are allowing their planes to kill civilians supports the hypothesis that all three are sending Cambodia and China the message not to increase their ties.

The above interpretation leads me to believe that Thailand may eventually decide that the message has been properly sent, and that no more performative hostilities are needed. For this to happen, Cambodia and China could indicate to Thailand that they have received the message. Some symbolic stepdown of Cambodian-Chinese relations might be the solution to the crisis.

THAILAND’S PERFORMATIVE ATTACKS ON CAMBODIA

‘Performative’ has become the word of year. Events around the world are seen more and more as motivated by the desire to present an image, a meme, a narrative, regardless of the truth or the facts.

This is precisely what is happening along the Thai-Cambodian border. Thailand is attacking Cambodia, not for any strategic reason, but to present one party’s tough-guy image of patriotism to the Thai electorate, just as elections are coming up. The world, however, can easily see through the lies of this propaganda.

Let’s examine some of the Thai propaganda blaming Cambodia for attacking first.

First, Cambodia has no reason to attack Thailand. The border issue is bogus, because that border has been officially established and recognized by international organizations for decades, if not centuries. Thailand has no legitimate claim to these lands. The areas disputed by Thailand are part of Cambodia, where ethnic Khmers have lived for years. Why should they want to expand their territory into Thailand? 

Thailand destroyed this bridge in Cambodia. Why?

Second, Thailand has attacked areas all along the 200-km border, far from the disputed zones. These attacks appear to be random and sporadic, with no visible motive. They now involve six provinces, from Koh Kong in the south to Preah Vihear in the north. There is no concerted strategy of invading and occupying any particular piece of land. Rather, the objective appears to be the creation of dramatic images of planes bombing villages, the destruction of bridges, the ruin of thousand-year-old temples, none of which are near or related to the disputed territories. These images are meant to be spread by internet to target audiences in Thailand, to demonstrate the military might of the party.

Destroyed Ta Krabei temple, before and after – to what strategic advantage?

Are Thai Buddhists happy about destroying sacred Buddhist temples?

Third, both stages of the fighting have been precipitated by Thai soldiers stepping on landmines. However, the Thai propaganda never quite states where these mines were located. Is there a hint that Cambodians are sneaking across the border and planting mines in Thailand? That makes no sense. On the other hand, if the Cambodians are planting mines on their own land, what are Thai soldiers doing in Cambodia stepping on mines? And why isn’t anyone investigating whether these were freshly-planted mines, or leftovers from the Khmer Rouge era some 40-50 years ago?

The infuriating thing about these theatric machinations is that pompous Thai politicians in back rooms are thinking only about how to gain a political advantage in the upcoming elections. They figure that ruining the lives of a million people will help them with their patriotic, bad-ass image. They have no compassion for all those displaced people whose homes they have destroyed, including those on the Thai side.

My fear is that those same Thai politicians are going to opine that the repetitious theatrics they have produced over the past week may be wearing thin on the bored Thai electorate. They have already escalated their memes to include the destroyed bridge and the ruined temple shown above. They may want to make even more outrageous attacks, in order to keep the public interested. Maybe a population center like Poipet or Pailin is next.

BEHAVIOR INFLUENCED IN THE WOMB: LGBTQ?

We almost always boil the questions of human behavior down to “Is it in the genes, or is it conditioned by society?” This is the common ‘nature-nurture’ debate. We seldom pause to think that there is a third way that human behavior can be explained: what happens in the womb between conception and birth.

Here’s a simple example: cocaine babies. Wikipedia describes the effects as

Babies exposed to cocaine may experience withdrawal symptoms at birth, including irritability, tremors, and feeding difficulties. They are also at risk for smaller head sizes, low      birth weight, and premature birth. 

Even more striking was the notorious ‘Thalidomide scandal’ back in the 1950s, in which some 10,000 babies were born with severe deformities due to the administration of the drug thalidomide to pregnant mothers. That was neither ‘nature’ nor ‘nurture’.

Thalidomide baby – neither nature (genes) nor nurture (environment)

I don’t think the effects of fetal brain chemistry during pregnancy have been adequately studied. This is undoubtedly because of our bias towards ‘nature-nurture’ thinking. ‘Nature-womb-nurture’ might be a better way of looking at it.

I believe that a lot of LGBTQ behavior can be linked to such changes in brain chemistry during pregnancy. While the body has been physically determined by the genes at conception, to be, say, male, the developing brain could conceivably turn out to have female characteristics, especially sexual orientation.

Almost all LGBTQ people will aver that they have felt that way as far back as they can remember. They do not ‘choose’ to be gay or transgender; that’s just the way they are.

For years, scientists have been searching for a ‘gay gene’, or at least some combination of genes that lead to LGBTQ behavior, but they have always come up empty handed. That is why so many binary-biased people claim, “See, if it isn’t genetic, it must be chosen or at least alterable behavior.”

There has been some research on the effect of brain chemistry on sexual orientation, and it supports pretty much what I have been saying. Here is an excerpt from an article from scitechdaily.com called Homosexuality Might Develop in the Womb Due to Epigenetic Changes

According to a newly released hypothesis, homosexuality might not lie in DNA itself. Instead, as an embryo develops, sex-related genes are turned on and off in response to fluctuating levels of hormones in the womb, produced by both mother and child. This benefits the unborn child, however if these epigenetic changes persist once the child is born, and has children of its own, some of these offspring may be homosexual.

The Wikipedia take on this is:

 The hormonal theory of sexuality holds that, just as exposure to certain hormones plays a role in fetal sex differentiation, such exposure also influences the sexual orientation that emerges later in the individual. Prenatal hormones may be seen as the primary determinant of adult sexual orientation, or a co-factor.

An endocrinology study by Garcia-Falgueras and Swaab postulated that “In humans, the main mechanism responsible of [sic] sexual identity and orientation involves a direct effect of testosterone on the developing brain.”

This theory explains how many individuals experience gender dysphoria: their biological sex (determined by their genes at conception) does not match their gender (determined within their brain during pregnancy).

It follows that it may even be possible to determine the gender (not sex) of a fetus by looking at its brain chemistry, and by considering what chemical changes in the mother might have led to their gender.

Blood test to determine the gender of the baby? Why not? (from shrewdmommy.com)

I truly wish that people and countries around the world would start to appreciate that LGBTQ is not a choice – that’s the way people are born. When a country like Uganda executes homosexuals as common criminals, I weep. That’s like executing cocaine babies. Many past cultures have executed left-handed babies (origin of the word ‘sinister’).

The more we turn towards ‘nature-womb-nurture’ thinking, the more we will appreciate that there may be many, many more influences on human behavior that occur during that nine-month stay inside the mother, whose chemistry is constantly changing.

DATs and SUBPRIME LOANS

DATs are companies whose business is hoarding cryptocurrencies

The more I delve into the intricacies of cryptocurrency, the more I am struck by its complexity. Like any other asset, there are all sorts of derivatives: funds of crypto, ETFs, futures contracts and on and on. As I pointed out last week, this complexity is far over the heads of ignorant, Dunning-Kruger congressmen, and Trump is hell-bent on removing any restrictions or regulations. The smart boys on Wall Street are licking their chops over ways to game the system.

I have already compared Stablecoin to the catastrophic Savings and Loan crisis. Today I want to look at DATs, or Digital Asset Treasury companies. The idea was made famous in 2020 by Michael Saylor with his company Strategy. His idea was to bundle together (called ‘hoarding’ in the media) several cryptocurrencies. The company’s share value is based on its holdings of crypto.

Some companies or countries are not allowed to trade in crypto, but they can buy shares in Strategy as an alternative to buying crypto directly. That is why Strategy (and its many look-alikes) are so appealing.

Strategy made billions on its model, so many other companies followed suit. They realized that simply by advertising that they are investing in crypto, their share value will increase. Once investors sink their capital into the company, the company can leverage even a small crypto holding into more investment capital. However, I flinch whenever I hear the word ‘leverage’. It is a dangerous word, because a small profit or loss in the underlying crypto can translate to a bigger profit or loss in the share value. As an article in MSN stated:

A flood of penny stocks and obscure microcap firms began using bitcoin as a headline tool, not an investment thesis. These companies had no real exposure to digital assets as a business — no mining rigs, no blockchain products. But they saw what happened to Strategy’s stock and tried to replicate it. The formula became familiar: issue a press release touting a pivot to crypto, announce a small Bitcoin or Solana purchase, and watch the stock briefly spike. In many cases, it worked — for a day or two.

Small companies have also started to dip into more thinly traded volatile tokens ⁠in a bid to boost their profits, creating more potential volatility risk for their share price

ALT5 Sigma, for example, is a company ‌that started a DAT strategy hoarding the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial.

If the Stablecoin phenomenon reminded me of the Savings and Loan scam, the complexities of DATs remind me of the Subprime Loan scam, in which highly risky loans and mortgages were bundled into Collateralized Debt Obligations, and somehow given super-safe AAA ratings. Of course, when the underlying mortgages went bust, so did the CDOs.

Today, we have highly risky cryptocurrencies hoarded by DATs, who then sell their shares at a premium. If the underlying cryptocurrencies go south, the leveraged DATs can lose their shirts, that is, the investors in the shares of the DATs lose their shirts.

So now we have Stablecoin looking like the S&L disaster, and DATs looking like the subprime disaster. I have only scratched the surface of the arcane world of cryptocurrencies. Who knows what other schemes are being hatched to siphon off billions of dollars, while ignorant politicians and Trump’s deregulators sit back and let it all happen. In fact, they are probably complicit in the scams.

STABLECOIN TETHER INVESTING IN RISKY ASSETS

Last week I wrote about the danger of Stablecoin, a variety of cryptocurrency that guarantees a base return of $1 for every dollar invested. I pointed out that they re-invest your dollars in high-risk assets which can make enormous profits for the issuer, but are protected by the Genius Act’s guarantee of a bailout in case they fail.

This scenario is taking place with the largest Stablecoin issuer: Tether (based in El Salvador, if that doesn’t already tell you something).

An article by Kim Jun-Hoong in Korea’s Chosunilbo put the details on Stablecoin’s gamble by stating that

S&P Global Ratings downgraded Tether’s stability rating from “constrained” to “weak,” the lowest of the agency’s five-tier scale for crypto assets.

Chosunilbo’s graphic describing the Stablecoin’s promised peg to the US dollar.

In fact, 5.5% of Tether’s collateral is invested in Bitcoin, which is quite volatile and has dropped a lot in recent weeks. If you think you are investing in Stablecoin for safety, you are partially investing in Bitcoin or other unstable cryptocurrencies. Chosunilbo warned that if Bitcoin’s value drops alongside other high-risk assets, Tether’s collateral capacity could rapidly deteriorate.

In general, 24% of Tether’s collateral consists of high-risk assets such as corporate bonds, other cryptocurrencies, and gold. That could be a recipe for disaster — your Tether coin would no longer be worth one dollar.

Are other Stablecoin issuers following the same risky investments of their collateral? I think we can surmise that they are, and that a drop in those risky assets could doom the issuers, forcing the US Government to bail them out, to the tune of exorbitant sums that the government cannot provide.

That’s exactly what happened in the Savings and Loan crisis in the 1980s, costing taxpayers some 132 billion dollars.

ACADEMIC CONFERENCES AND GIRLY BARS

I recently attended an academic conference on English teaching in Phnom Penh.

It was the stereotype of academic conferences:  plenary sessions by imported invited experts, parallel session by local presenters, panel discussions, etc. Participants know exactly what to expect. I’m not knocking it – there were some interesting and thought-provoking sessions, and I came away full of new ideas.

Later that night, my wife and I went to meet my old friend Stu who sings and plays the guitar down in the Girly-Bar district of town. Rows of sexily-clad girlS sitting out front on the street, while inside the bars, white-haired and white-skinned geezers sat in the low light with their floozies, drinking and listening to the live music. You can be sure that they were not discussing sustainable educational development.

Typical girly-bar scene

Both the conference and the girly-bar scene followed rather stereotyped rules in their formats, but wow! Were they different! It boggles my mind that the human psyche can embrace such disparate scenes. In fact, to say that you comprehend the girly-bar scene is quite a different kind of ‘comprehension’ than you feel from the conference. They can write the ‘Proceedings’ of a conference, and you will have an general understanding of what it was about. However, you could not read a description of the girly-bar scene and ‘understand’ what it’s about in any real sense of the term.

The girly-bar scene must be experienced first-hand, because it is a holistic experience of sights, sounds, smells, and general atmosphere. In other words, you experience it with your right brain, whereas the conference is mostly a left-brain phenomenon: rational analysis, evaluation of arguments, sequential programming, Venn diagrams, and new ideas.

The two types of understanding are so radically different, it makes me wonder whether a sociological analysis of the girly-bar scene is even possible. An academic paper or study may analyze aspects of the scene, but it will fall far short of conveying the ‘meaning’ of the scene, whatever that means.

For me, my weekend was eye-opening, in that I could witness myself engulfed in two completely different experiences. My brain was operating at two radically different levels, as though I were a split personality. It is to the credit of humankind that such variety of experience can be appreciated, just as the composer Johannes Brahms could play the honky-tonk piano in the 1850’s German equivalent of girly bars, and then go home to write ethereal symphonies and sonatas on a completely different level.

I DON’T UNDERSTAND CRYPTO. I FEAR IT.

I do not fully understand the whole cryptocurrency phenomenon. And what I do not understand, I tend to fear. As a result, I have not jumped into the crypto market. My wife, on the other hand, has read the glowing descriptions of crypto benefits, and has taken the plunge.

I think that my wife is typical of millions of people around the world who are jumping into the crypto market without fully understanding it.  I went looking for articles explaining crypto in more depth, and found an excellent piece by David Frum in today’s Atlantic: “How Crypto Could Trigger the Next Financial Crisis.”

Now most people understand that crypto is volatile, but that Stablecoin has been invented to erase some of that volatility. Another danger of crypto is that it is unregulated. We all know the frustration of dealing with the arcane regulations of banks, especially when dealing with currency exchange or foreign transfers. All that is avoided with crypto.

However, as in so many areas, lack of regulation leads to unscrupulous players taking advantage of the system. In the case of crypto, it is the money launderers who are having a field day, since they can transfer money around the world anonymously.

A big advantage of Stablecoin, especially in the US, is that the issuers’ assets are insured by the US Government. They can’t lose! But what that means is that when you deposit your money with a crypto issuer, they will invest your money, in order to make a profit. There is no ceiling on the risk involved in their investments, and the issuers are safe, because if their risky investment goes south, they will be reimbursed.

This situation reminds me exactly of the Savings-and-Loan crisis a few years back. Deposits in S&Ls were insured by the US Government, so the S&Ls made huge risky investments with their deposits. If they succeeded, they would make billions in profits, but if they failed – no problem – the government would bail them out. That’s precisely what happened, but when billions and billions of losses were incurred, the government’s Resolution Trust Fund couldn’t afford to pay off all the S&Ls. The S&Ls went bust, and local mom&pop investors lost their life savings.

That could happen with Stablecoin. If billions, even trillions of crypto dollars are invested in risky ways, the issuers, along with many banks, could go bankrupt.

Another thing that frightens me is that the regulation of financial instruments is done by politicians, including Donald Trump, who keeps taking actions to deregulate crypto. The fact that he is pushing crypto so strongly makes me suspect that he has some fishy way of making money for himself.

Would you trust this cryptocurrency?

Even without Trump, politicians around the world are not only corrupt, they are quite ignorant about many intricate financial matters. Crypto issuers and their lobbyists could easily sell a package of ‘regulations’ to the Dunning-Kruger politicians. I would not trust those regulations, because the issuers have already figured out ways to scam them.

In summary, I fear – no, I’m sure – that crypto will sooner or later crash bigtime, just like the Savings and Loan scandal and the Subprime Mortgage scandal. The process is always the same. Stupid politicians set up a system that looks good to voters and investors on the surface, while the smart boys figure out ways to game the system, rake off their billions, and bring the entire financial system crashing down, all without ever paying any penalty.

AM I A TEAM PLAYER?

Another birthday passes. (Actually, as I write, it’s still my birthday in the US, as the US is 12 hours behind us.) Time to reminisce on my life and evaluate where I went right or wrong. One tends to ask oneself, “What was my greatest achievement?”

My thoughts turned to being a ‘team player’, and it occurred to me that there are two diametrically opposed definitions of the term. The first is always to work towards the objectives of the team, in a win-win attitude. The other is blind obedience to an egotistical leader. I think that my greatest achievement has been to be a team player in the first sense and to avoid the second.

Job interviews and advertisements often refer to the term in the second sense. I have worked for projects and institutions that emphasized blind obedience, which they call ‘team playing’. They have tended to be high profile projects with career-climbing leaders whose aim is self-agrandizement rather than doing good. The team members are expected to massage the ego and enhance the career of the leader above all else.

I admit to playing the CV game, and I landed prestigious consultancies with World Bank, Asia Development Bank, UNDP, and USAID. They never achieved much, other than to enhance the career of the team leader and play the politics of the sponsor. I was often berated, or even fired, because I tended to suggest win-win solutions to enhance the project or institution, which is not what is required. On the other hand, my lower profile work with some institutions proved very satisfactory. I want to single out a couple:

  1. The University of East Asia, Macau, was set up by the late George Hines, whose leadership was aimed at promoting the university, not himself. He gathered around him a real team of dedicated win-win personalities, with whom I am still in contact today. And the university was very successful. It was eventually bought out by the Macau government and is now the University of Macau.
  2. Goroka Teachers’ College in Papua New Guinea took me on as a United Nations Volunteer. Under the leadership of Dr. Mark Solon and Dr. James Quarshie, we transformed the teachers’ college into Goroka University, often against the opposition of the powers-that-be down in Port Moresby. We all worked towards the common goal, so that the mountain university is still thriving today.

I ended up here in Cambodia, as part of a USAID project to set up the National University of Management in Phnom Penh. The project was full of interpersonal strife, with ‘team leaders’ pushing their own agenda with little regard for Cambodia. However, we lower-ranked team members persevered, and our efforts eventually led to the number one and most highly respected business university in Cambodia today. Several of those good team players are still in Cambodia today.

I moved to Battambang, in northern Cambodia, and helped set up a new private university. We had high ideals, but one founder bought out the shares of the others, and turned the university into a fake university, with phony programs and lies to promote a glitzy, international image. I persevered, especially after the owner named me ‘President’ of the university. Alas, that, too, was all phony imagery – I was the white-skinned academic with no actual authority.  I watched as the owner ran the quality of the university into the ground, while I persevered – or perseverated — in the hope that I could salvage something. I often used the following analogy:

Imagine a huge boulder rolling down the mountain towards a village. If I stand in front of the boulder, it will crush me and continue on to destroy the village. But if I stand to the side and give the boulder a nudge, it may miss the village.

Well, I saw my university about to be destroyed and I tried to be the ‘adult in the room’, in an attempt to save the university. My friends often criticized me for continuing to play along with the narcissistic owner, but I hoped, perhaps irrationally, that I might save the university I had founded. Finally, the owner started a new program that was so outrageous, impossible, and phony, that I could no longer attach my name as President to such fraud. I consider it to my credit that I got out, although I should have gotten out long before that.

Maybe my ego succumbed to the prestige of the title of University President, although I knew all along that it was all fake, so I played along with the game. Therefore, I feel no pride in being a ‘University President’, and I’m even ashamed that I played along with this fraudulent game, but am pleased that I eventually got out.

In summary, I consider that my life’s greatest accomplishment has been always to be a team player, in my own win-win sense of the word, and have never fallen prey to the suck-up, brown-nosing sense of the term.

THE THAI-CAMBODIA BORDER – WHAT’S GOING ON?

Thailand announced on Monday (Nov 10) it was suspending the implementation of a peace agreement with neighboring Cambodia after a landmine blast injured two Thai soldiers near the border.

The Peace Agreement had been widely praised, not least because of the involvement of U.S. President Donald Trump. (In fact, Trump had nothing to do with the Agreement.) The five main points were the following:

  1.  Commitment to peace.
  2. Military de-escalation
  3. Release of 18 soldiers
  4. Normal diplomatic relations
  5. Refrain from misinformation

Numbers 1, 4, and 5 are pretty much empty words.

Number 2 has actually been complied with. Reliable photos have been released, showing columns of armored vehicles being pulled back from the border.

Number 3 is still a mystery to me. Yesterday morning was scheduled to be the release date of the 18 hostages. Ambulances were brought to a pre-arranged border crossing, in anticipation of bringing the hostages into Cambodia. If it had happened, there would have been tremendous hoopla in the media. The absence of any news seems to indicate that the turnover never happened. Why not?

The Agreement is important for what it does NOT address: the underlying core issue of the border dispute. That dispute is not even mentioned in the agreement. This fact suggests that the Agreement was at best a patch job designed to shut the major parties up temporarily. At its most cynical, it was a staged photo-op for Trump to show off to the world that he had stopped another war.

Standoff between Thai soldiers and Khmer villages.

The usual modus operandi is for Thai soldiers to encroach upon Khmer-held land, and put up coils of barbed wire as a way of ‘claiming’ the land.

Thai internal politics is admittedly complex. To oversimplify the situation, let’s think of it as a Nice Guy Faction (siding with the Shinawatra family) versus a Tough Guy Faction. One of the triggers to the recent conflict was a conciliatory telephone call from Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra to Hun Sen, in which she called Hun Sen ‘uncle’, made some guarantees about the border dispute, and criticized a Thai general. This so infuriated the Tough Guys that the Prime Minister was forced to step down.

The following is a timeline of the past couple of days. It is rather mysterious:

Monday – Thai soldiers step on landmines

A word about the landmines: This border area was once one of the most heavily and densely mined places in the world. Much of the land around O Bey Chuan village was demined, and IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) were resettled there.

By sheer coincidence, several years ago I was sent to O Bey Chuan on a research consultancy to determine the profiles (especially skills) of the IDPs, along with the types of crops that could be grown and marketed from demined land in that area.

The fact that much of the land around O Bey Chuan had been demined does not prove that Thai soldiers stepped on newly-planted mines, as they claim. Indeed, there were border areas that had not been demined, so the Thai soldiers might have stepped on 30-year-old mines. However, no Khmers have been injured by mines there; they knew that the area was dangerous and didn’t go there. If there had been recently laid mines, that fact would be known, as the Thais and the international observers would have seen the mines being laid. I conclude that that the Thai generals knew that the area was mined.

Monday – Almost immediately after mine incident, the Thai Prime Minister announces cessation of the Peace Agreement. The timing here indicates to me that the mine incident, followed immediately by the announcement, was planned by the Tough Guy Faction.

Wednesday Morning – The scheduled release of the 18 hostages. Ambulances were brought to the handover point. This would have been a concession to the Nice Guy Faction, but apparently the Tough Guys blocked it. As far as the media have been telling us, no one was released.

Wednesday afternoon 4 p.m. – Thai troops open fire on unarmed villagers. This was clearly a victory for the Tough Guys. The Thai press reports that only rubber or plastic bullets were fired, and tear gas was used to disperse the crowd, but the Cambodian authorities report at least 29 people injured, and one woman killed. A video on Facebook by SreyLeak Loeung clearly shows the confrontation, where the Thai soldiers were firing point-blank at the villagers. If the bullets had been real, there would have been great loss of life.

It would seem, therefore, that the Nice Guys Faction, while gaining some leverage with the Peace Agreement, have lost out to the Tough Guys Faction.

In all of this, it seems that the whole dispute, war, and peace agreement had little to do with Cambodia, but everything to do with internal Thai politics. That will continue to be the case. If the Tough Guys continue to hold sway, we can expect continued skirmishes initiated by Thailand, just to show the Thai people what tough guys they are. If the Thai populace grows tired of these little skirmishes, the Tough Guys may resort to more major incursions and warfare.  Let’s hope not.

Sorry, Trump, you can no longer claim to have stopped 8 wars. (But you probably will continue that claim anyway.)