WSJ:

Thailand's Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra pleaded Wednesday for the country's warring political factions to unite to combat a worsening flood crisis that now threatens to engulf parts of the capital.

Fighting back tears at an emotional news conference, Ms. Yingluck acknowledged the crisis was overwhelming her two-month-old administration and pleaded for help.

"We've been doing everything we can, but this is a big national crisis. On our own, we can't get it done," Ms. Yingluck said. "We need unity from every side and we must set politics aside."

The devastating floods already have claimed at least 315 lives in Thailand and decimated major industrial suburbs north of Bangkok...

This article in the NYT says the flooding is largely the fault of a fractured government and bad planning that let a heavy monsoon season become "a disaster":

The main factors, they say, are deforestation, overbuilding in catchment areas, the damming and diversion of natural waterways, urban sprawl, and the filling-in of canals, combined with bad planning. Warnings to the authorities, they say, have been in vain.

“I have tried to inform them many times, but they tell me I am a crazy man,” said Smith Dharmasaroja, former director general of the Thai Meteorological Department, who is famous here for predicting a major tsunami years before the one that devastated coastal towns in 2004.

Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippines are also suffering from flooding. And this ominous email, from a friend living in Bangkok, arrived in my inbox just a few minutes ago:

The dikes broke. We are having to hole up. Everything is going underwater. Luckily we are on the second floor. No water yet, but it is here tomorrow they say.