Paper Crane for Peace?

During the last few days, I was surprised to see so many people I know suddenly out of the blue been folding paper cranes like the picture I've posted below:





In our society where many of the younger generation choose to enjoy going to department stores, going to movies, playing video games, and other modern joys, its strange to see alot of people going back to the fine arts of paper folding or origami. Anyway, I've just got to the bottom of it when I just finally figured that this fad happened because our government annouced a peace initiative in which they will fold paper cranes inorder to show that they are trying to find a peaceful solution to the trouble southern provinces. In part of the speech, our PM made a reference to air-dropping all the paper cranes made by the rest of the country over Southern Thailand.

As usual, as being a rather skeptical person to unpractical ideas, I'll explain why this is not desirable. The first issue I want to raise is that air-lifting paper cranes over the southern border is dangerous to people living below the airdrops. I remembered distinctively about a newspaper report about the US airforce air dropping reasons to turn against the Talibans in Afganistan, in which they mentioned that some of the airdrop were done in densely populated areas in which some of these make-shift homes where literally destroyed by the weight of the paper stacked on the roof collapsing the whole structure. The second major issue I do want to raise is that air-dropping tons of paper cranes will pose a serious problem of litter down south as people has to clean up the mess from all the paper cranes. The last issue that I want to raise is that I do think it would be more well worth if the people in Bangkok would engage in recycling used paper instead of using paper in this rather wasteful show of support. However as typical to the current regime, I've learn to be rather tolerant of such media circus, and I'm not that cynical considering this one has the least dent on the tax-payer's money compared with many of the earlier policies implemented before.

Seriously I think there are many other ways of showing support. Holding mass peace rallies is one example. Having different institutes do collective petitions for peace and understanding is another cheap way to get it started. There are so many ways to show support, and I wonder why its all about paper cranes? Maybe I'm just out of touch with the current trends and fashion, but oh well, that is my viewpoint on this issue.

Anyway, I do think the show of love by our brothers and sisters in our country should help make the life down south more tolerable as it shows that no matter what the government, the police, the army, and all the seperatists are doing, the people of Thailand are still the people of Thailand, and it would take more than just a group of misguided gung-ho group of seperatists and terrorisms to divide this land.