Comments

  1. nganadeeleg says:

    Chang Noi said it best in The Nation:
    ‘The Sufficiency Economy is not so much a theory about how the world works, more a set of simple maxims about what brings success, based on practical experience. Know what you’re doing. Act honestly. Work hard. Exercise moderation. Apply insight. Build up inner resilience.’

    How does that legitimise the poverty of the poor?

    OK I see it now – ‘acting honestly’, that might have kept some people poor.

  2. nganadeeleg says:

    Here we go again – democracy is great, hallelujah.
    Someone like Surayud would probably be unelectable the way ‘democracy’ works today – too much integrity and too little ego to be elected.
    Why cant you face it, Andrew, the country needed to be rid of Thaksin.
    OK so the process was not democratic, but what makes you think democracy was so great under Thaksin?

    l

  3. Vichai N says:

    Ant “legitimation of povety of the poor”. Your English and your conclusion disgust, filled with misspellings and misdirections. Have you been listening to Dr. Andrew Walker too about Dr. Walker’s personal theory on the subject?

    It shows Ant . . it shows.

  4. Vichai N says:

    Patiwat that Streisand song lyrics suddenly seem appropriate for Thaksin the tax finagler:

    “Can it be that it was all so simple then?
    Or has time re-written every line?”

    It seems Revenue Officials rewrote tax precedents conveniently to allow Thaksin to evade tax and we do remember the ‘Ruangkrai saga’ Patiwat, right?

    (To refresh your memory, Ruangkrai Leekitwattana is suing the Revenue Department for NOT accepting the return of his tax refund. Having purchased some shares at below-par prices from his father, he was originally taxed. However, after threatening to make a big political issue out of it by citing similarities between his share transfer and those between Thaksin and his children, the department refunded his payment. Claiming the department was guided by political motives and wanted to justify its decision not to tax the Shinawatras, Ruangkrai returned the refund cheque. The department, in turn, claimed that he had a political motive and refused to take back the Bt20,000 cheque.)

    The tax evasion is so blatant and obvious surely Patiwat you should be able to see why they want to retrace every Shin/AIS share transfer transaction during the past 10 years to see if the AmpleRich shenanigan above was repeatedly employed by the Shinawatras. It now also appears that income taxes were suspected of having been evaded too on the dividends earned by the Shinwatras or their nominee companies during the past many years.

    Perhaps tax evasion charges would be the sin that will put the Shinawatras away. I was hoping Thaksin himself would be put away for MURDER charges for that senseless slaughter of 2,500 innocents during the Y2003 anti-drugs………..

  5. patiwat says:

    Vichai, little finangling was needed to prevent the Revenue Department from charging capital gains tax on the ShinCorp sale. That’s because individuals don’t have to pay capital gains tax. It doesn’t matter how many shares are involved, it doesn’t matter how many days the shares are held, it doesn’t matter how much profit was made, it doesn’t matter who the father of the shareholders is, it doesn’t matter whether they worship Thai gods or Khmer gods – individuals do not have to pay capital gains tax. Just ask your broker or mutual fund manager or pension fund manager.

    Let me give you an example: If you buy 1,000 stock for 100 Baht, and sell them all for 150 Baht, that 500,000 Baht is profit. Technically, that profit is called a “capital gain.” Unlike in some countries, Thailand doesn’t charge a separate tax on the capital gain. This is a good thing – it incentivizes people to invest in the stock market.

    But that capital gain is also part of your personal income (“phaasee ngern dai”). Personal income in Thailand is taxed with a maximum rate of 37%. Unlike salaries, stock market profit isn’t necessarily taxed immediately upon earning it (i.e., it isn’t withheld; “kep na thee jai”). You pay it at the end of the tax year, or in some cases at 6 month intervals.

    That six month interval for the Shinawatra family ended about a week after the coup, at a time when the family was forced into exile abroad. Lets hope that they are allowed to return to Thailand to settle their income taxes.

    There are a lot of valid reasons not to like the Shinawatras. But evasion of capital gains tax isn’t one of them.

  6. Vichai N says:

    Thailand’s Revenue Department had always been notoriously corrupt and during Thaksin’s regime probably even more rampantly so. Thaksin had suborned constitutional checks & balances . . . so suborning the Revenue Department would have been particularly easy.

    The tax finagling of the 329 million shares transferred to the two Thaksin kids at Baht 1/share then resold 3 days later to Temasek at Baht 49/share, thru the stock exchange of Thailand, would not have passed ‘arms length’ measure of any sale transaction for purposes of tax determination. But surely by Thaksin’s Khmer voodoo black magic, billions of tax due on that particular 329 million share transfer transaction had been made to disappear.

    Perhaps we too all should be worshipping Khmer voodoo talismans devotedly, like Thaksin, to help with our tax returns.

  7. Tim says:

    There is more to it than that Tara, the moral claims of the backpacker, in fact the whole discourse of difference between back packer and “german Tourist” is irrlevant, but not on the grounds of who is informed or not but that the idea of the money “getting to the government” is more a notion of contagion and pollution and purity taboos than any discourse about the goings on in Burma…and discussion is kept ignorant by a failure of anyone to actually question the beginings of the whole discourse which unfortunately boils down to how the west is always so hysterically disturbed by the non-west’s recalcitrance regarding “Western Liberal Democracy”. Have a look at this stites reams of posts on the issue in Thailand…anything outside of a blanket acceptance of Demorcacy in the image of America is irrelevant not worthy of comment or analysis…see the debate on Thaksin and astrology and voodoo here…local beliefs and practices are irrelevant because the ral business of democracy is being interfered with…laughable..

    So bizarre is this paternalistic discourse around the issue of tourism in Burma that tourism is no longer under question in its own right…obviously it mustn’t be “neo-colonial”, disruptive, environmentally unsound or any other of the one pertinent issues that once surrounded it as a practice…nope, in the interest of western paternalism we can brush such considerations asde otherwise what would we have to contribute to the debate and how would we get to “go and see it all for real” to entertain our morbid fascination with other’s suffering…

  8. Tara says:

    That’s basically the same question I have, aiontay. The pro-boycott discourse doesn’t seem to make any distinction in types of tourist or tourism. I would even take the question a step further though, what’s the difference between the rich German tourist on a package tour, and the backpacker whose only marginally informed, and beleives they are avoiding businesses with ties to the government? Pro-Burma travel sources talk about staying in local guesthouses, not using package tours, but where is their money actually ending up?

    It seems many of these backpackers come back with stories about how wonderful the people are, how easy it is to keep your money local – but what do they know about the demographics of the region they visit? Re-settling ethnic Burmans in other areas, and removing local villagers to build infrastructure to support tourism is not unheard of. And to what extent are local ethnic minorities marginalized when their economy shifts to embrace tourism – are they the ones who start selling handicrafts in the former food markets – or is it outsiders? Even if they are involved in the shift, to what extent are their lives impacted by it?

    Balancing the impacts of tourism on local economies and cultures seems like tricky business anywhere, much less a place like Burma. It definitely would be refreshing to see some real investigation into these questions.

    I do also recall a quote from ASSK which talks about positive tourism – the first comment on this post at Bear Bites has a third-hand reference to such a stance. It’s possible I’ve never seen direct quotes from ASSK about the issue though, and am conflating different second and third-hand comments.

    Voices for Burma has several quotes on the issue from ASSK and other politicians.

  9. Tim says:

    Nic, I say don’t try and convince the skeptics and ask different questions…these very same questions were being bandied around in tour companies and on the backpacker streets and tourist hotels in the late eighties to early and mid nineties regarding Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Cambodia, who were either under US Embargo or invaded by Vietnam also when visits were only allowed for 7 days to Burma, Laos and Cambodia.

    These questions are the questions given to a voting public by their politicians (here Aungsan and their activists) and so have set very limited frameworks for conceptualising what is happening and so you end up exploring the options they want you to, that inevitably sees you taking their side and being morally upstanding, or you refute their position and occupy a seeming radical yet rational position of difference and meanwhile in Burma things remain the same. In effect the political myopia that is enforced through this makes it virtually impossible for people to think about the situation in any other terms and we get the agreed apon culture of how Burma must be talked about. Its is tantamount to subjecting the population to an imperialist discourse that has the effects of determining the level and the morality of their poverty.

    Why reduce the situation in Burma and people’s”place in it” down to a US born notion of embargo (or do what I say or else) attitude and politicise a practice in support for a politician whose own actions as a deposed political leader is having no effect on the “dictatorship” in power but is certainly prolonging the impasse that allows them to maintain power (the west having bought into the “free Aungsan first” mechanism that so long as the leaders have that to play with they needn’t do anything else in terms of real reform. If the votig public can’t get behind the political organisations of opposition to the Junta in their home countries why then burden them with a defacto responsibility that they have themselves rejected before they set out? It is very much a prozletysing mission of compliance to the will of the very few politically outraged and when it is allowed to be reduced to this/these terms the effort is totally ineffectual…you will not get consensus on tourism and even if you did it isn’t what it is all about…sorry for those of you who might think it is and thus be able to make through appropriation other’s experience your own, and thus constitute yourselves as more meaningful when the holiday ends and you tell your mates at the pup how you boycotted Burma.

    Anyway, how does “knowing” qualitatively and or quantitativly what tourism in Burma “does” make a difference to the issues…would you be looking of a burden of proof that actions are morally sound now becasue we have data? It is not possible to know even if research into it was permitted and there certainly isn’t a tipping point that with research guidance can be reached say the govt gets x percent of tourists money but the people get Y percent Y=x2 so there we can now visit Burma.

    What about thinking about just how moral the whole situation in Burma has gotten and how you are all buying into it wholesale with no real involvement, history or understanding of it and the on the ground details. It is Journalism and Tourism that are running these debates and they are guided by politicians…where is the healthy cynicism? Why are the debates remaining the same 15 years later… how many of you have actually questioned your own take on what’s happening?

    The hyper valorised images of slave gangs and all the other rhetoric that fuels the fires of outrage in your bellies and keeps you fascinated (orientalist fascination) have their parallels in the neighbouring countries of Thailand Laos and Bangladesh…the massmurders by the Thai military of HIV positive women on the border of Thailand and Burma doesn’t seem to be cause to boycott Tom Yum Goong and other Thai products, especially not the ecstasy filled amphetamine fuelld full moon parties of the countries south…and so on…

    Why is Aungsan daughter of a dictator seen as so immaculately clean when her social revisionist policies are more extreme than the recent Thaksin govt and onbviously aimed at social control…anyone…?

    What I am saying here is that you are all so caught up in your own self importance, and righteous debating of “what to do about Burma” that you can’t see just how well the situation has been played to your middleclass neoimperialist heart strings and how blind to the realities of the situation you are…your fantastical moments of excitement when a journalist produces a piece of film that REVEALS new capitals and what not is like a soap opera addiction and illustrates just how much of wht is happening here is about consumption/appropriation of other’s lives.

    The up shot of it all is that when it comes to tourism the discourse is not about whether it is morally right to travel based on where “your money” will get… into the hands of the Junta or the people, but a cheap political ploy to galvanise the world’s consuming middleclasses to a political cause that they otherwise don’t care about and that’s alternatives are not so different to what is happening now.

    If you want to reduce the issue to economics then it will go nowhere…If you think Aungsan Suchi is a liberal minded, democratic thinking panacea for Burma’s problems then you are naive.

  10. nganadeeleg says:

    This is going nowhere – I’m not sure where you are coming from, Nirut – why all this talk of colonialism?
    Since when does having an opinion on global matters ‘reek of colony making’ ?
    My concern that others on the planet don’t share my ‘rationality’ has nothing to do with colonialism – it is more a concern about the many things that are going wrong (my rationality guides me to not harm others in pursuit of my personal satisfaction – I do not kill, seek power or wealth, especially at the expense of others, and I do not just blindly believe – therefore some may say I have no ‘faith’, but am I irrational or a coloniser?)

    Life still has it’s mysteries and while no one has all the answers I choose not to ‘blindly’ believe – that’s my rationality.
    Of course it seems rational to me, just like other peoples beliefs and practices obviously seem rational to them.
    I can be irrational too, usually by choice. At that time am I being rational or irrational?
    As for superstitions (and religions), where there is no real ‘truth’, then I think rationalty can fall into three camps:
    1. I just believe
    2. I don’t know, but I choose to believe
    3. I don’t know, but I choose not to believe

    In my opinion, 2 & 3 are rational, but 1 is irrational.

    Multiple rationalities – I think that term would apply to Thaksin.

    There are also different levels of rationality, heres an example:
    Revenge – on the one hand it would seem perfectly rational, but on another it would be irrational because it is likely to escalate the situation.

    Your initial complaint was:
    ‘is it really necessary to refer to other people’s beliefs and practices in typically ethnocentric language?’
    Here is my response:
    Whilst this is an academic site, I am not an academic.
    Therefore I may not use the appropriate language because I am not aware of it.

    Hopefully, the above has explained where I am coming from.

  11. […] Rhett Butler┬ – the creator of mongabay.com, a rainforest website, and author of the article that originally prompted me to pose some questions about the idea of “avoided deforestation” in the Burmese scene┬ – has written me a short note which he is happy for me to post to New Mandala.┬ […]

  12. […] Rhett Butler┬ – the creator of mongabay.com, a rainforest website, and author of the article that originally prompted me to pose some questions about the idea of “avoided deforestation” in the Burmese scene┬ – has written me a short note which he is happy for me to post to New Mandala.┬ […]

  13. […] Just a brief post here to acknowledge a newish (almost 6 months) co-blog about contemporary mainland Southeast Asia, called “The New Mandala.” It looks extremely promising – in addition to more substantive postings, they also occasionally take care to skewer the nasty exoticization of folks that marks feral capitalism’s relationship to non-state peoples, such as this post, which is titled “The New Mandala Award for Insensitivity:” am not sure if this will become a regular feature but The Nation must surely be recognised for the insensitivity of this headline: Karen village loses popular tourist draw […]

  14. Thanakarn says:

    Thaksin was highly educated . . Ph.d. It dumbfounds to imagine a man this educated succumbing to voodoos and shamans, and black magic worship. But how else to explain his errors in judgement? Thaksin threw away all his educational upbringing and violated his pledge to uphold the rule of law by that horrific extrajudicially killings in the anti-drugs. Had his worship of Khmer black magic blackened his heart as well? What Vichai suggests above is that all that black magic worships may have caused demons to possess Thaksin as well . . . unless Vichai was merely being sarcastic with his posts.

  15. Nirut says:

    For a bit more of a context Evans-Pritchard’s work has been pivotal in shaping anthropology into what it is today in terms of much of contemporary notions of cultural relativism within anthropology…concomitantly the study of socery and witchcraft are a staple of anthropology, up there with kinship, and the ideas of multiple rationalities shouldn’t be foreign to anyone familiar with the discipline.

  16. aiontay says:

    Are there different types of toursts and what are the relative impacts of each variety? It seems to me that there is a qualitative difference between a Thai from Bangkok going a shopping day trip to Mae Sai and a German package tourist flying into Rangoon, exchanging money at an official money exchange, staying at a hotel owned by somebody with direct ties to the regime, and being sheparded around by tour guides for a few weeks.

    Also, it seems to me that at some point ASSK, or at least the NLD, have expressed a few caveats. If I remember correctly, they never said there should be a total ban on travel to Burma by foreigners. Maybe somebody can dig those statements up. Of course, my memory may not be correct.

  17. Vichai N. says:

    Frustrated it is OUR business to know whether our Prime Minister is a nut or not because the man makes very important decisions that would affect the lives of million of Thais.

    Take ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra who made a terrible mess of the Southern unrest situation (Thaksin provoked, by his ineptitude, a Muslim conflagration in this area and serial bombings that continue to this day) and directed the slaughter of thousands of village innocents in his much glamorized anti-ya ba Y2003 campaign.

    If you ask me, on these two matters above, Thaksin may have been guided by Khmer talisman worship that so corrupted his soul he caused so much loss of Thai lives. But that is my personal theory only and you may disagree.

  18. Ant says:

    It is appropriately fluid enough in definition as to enable it to be mobilised in all manner of legitimation of the povety of the poor…Song Phra Charoen…khondio…

  19. Nirut says:

    Put simply Evans-Pritchard writes of the beliefs and practices of the Azande with an interest in “reason” or “rationality”. He demonstrates through his ethnography how understanding other’s beliefs and practices, without submitting them to the “authority” of post enlightenment European thought /reason (or its contemporary post-modern cousin) illustrates how in earlier studies attempts to do so obfuscated much of what was going on and effectively blinded (to use your term) people to the fact that magic and sorcery and witchcraft are not about extraordinary phenomena at all and most importantly that there is no such thing as a single or ultimate form of rationality or practical reason.

    The act of labelling one practice in one part of the world with a term from another practice (that you see as being the same) from another part of the world, to imply or state explicitly that it is superstition (in fact do so to emphasise the perception of it being superstitious), is nothing less than a display of coneited ignorance of which the colonial predecessor from which the very language comes from embodied cum epitomised…

    So how do you “know” the allegations regarding irrational peasants and colonialism don’t apply to you , esp as you have stated that they worry you and are superstition (your global range of concern reeks of colony making my friend)?

    An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.
    A belief, practice, or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature or by faith in magic or chance. A fearful or abject state of mind resulting from such ignorance or irrationality. Idolatry.

    There is no interpretation of superstition implied or stated that isn’t born of conceit on behalf of those making the claim that something is superstitous…

  20. nganadeeleg says:

    Nirut,
    Please feel free to summarise Evan-Pritchards conclusions, especially how belief in superstition, voodoo etc is rational.

    If you are interested please look at the work of Bruce Hood, professor of experimental psychology at the University of Bristol (Google should produce some hits).

    I will let your comments about irrational peasants/colonialism pass as I know they do not apply to me.