Maratjp: The King accidentally killed his brother? Who gives a sh*t[?]
Quite a few people it seems. There has been 60 years of cover-up (if it is indeed true).
Wonder what the families of those executed for something they didn’t do feel?
Wasn’t Da Torpedo making this point when she was LM’ed?
Presumably not just Pridi was a political victim either as this event eventually led to the obliteration of the pro-Pridi faction of the People’s Party.
Maratjp: Bumiphol isn’t a democrat? Who cares?
Perhaps all the royalists and good bureaucrats who have spent decades (and investing tons of state funds) spinning a yarn that he is a democrat, that he protects democracy in Thailand and that monarchy defines Thai-style democracy, with the king as head of state.
Your shrillness when responding to any critical comment is very revealing.
I am neither of the “nutcases” you refer to here but most certainly did leave critical comments on your blog which never appeared. I assumed (and given your overbearing reaction here that assumption wasn’t misplaced) that you didn’t take criticism well.
To be completely frank I don’t really care what you do, what you write and what you do or don’t do on your Facebook page. All I would say is that if you do position yourself as part of a public discourse that you should expect some fair comment and criticism from the public. On the face of it you do seem a bit pathological in your responses so rather than get in the kind of unedifying and prolonged and abusive exchanges you seem so fond of on your twitter timeline I’ll bow out now and leave you to it.
One more thing to add, “Joel”: I have only ever censored the comments of two people from my blog. One was the notoriously crazy Tony Cartalucci and the other is a strange character who calls himself Gary Joseph Chandler and who is trying to promote what he calls “The Joseph Solution to Save Thailand”. Both are nutcases, which is why I censored them. Which one of them are you?
Thanks for your input “Joel”. Just for your information, the title “Thailand’s Moment of Truth” came from a U.S. cable, 08BANGKOK3289, which said:
“The battle lines in Thailand’s political environment are clearly drawn… The Thaksin machine faces off against a mix of royalists, Bangkok middle class, and southerners, with Queen Sirikit having emerged as their champion, as King Bhumibol largely fades from an active role…. They are positioning themselves for what key actors on both sides freely admit to us in private will be Thailand’s moment of truth – royal succession after the King passes away.”
I’m sure you can provide some evidence for your assertion that I have repeatedly claimed that my work will transform Thailand, particularly as you say I have made this claim “ad infinitum”.
Your helpful suggestions about how I should write and how I should behave on Facebook, and the suggestions of everybody else on this thread, might be more credible if you even had the courage to identify yourselves by your real names. If you can’t even do that, why should anybody bother to listen to what you have to say?
The location of this cemetery, more than 20 kms outside of the capital heading south on Route 13, will sadly not draw many visitors (local or foreign). I visited it twice while the Vietnamese labourers were touching up the relocated unknown soldier’s memorial. It was hot and empty, and the guards at the front gate were less than thrilled to have visitors. They wanted to remain in their cool gatehouse rather than venture out onto the scorching hot concrete. I wonder how many people will actually make the pilgrimage? Maybe Thaksin followers when they gather for their Phi Mai Red Shirt Fest at the National Sports Stadium. Few Vientiane locals bother to visit the Kaysone Museum which is at Km6, so how many will go an extra 15 kms? The role of the soldier’s memorial near the National Assembly is also a vague subject. Like most soldiers’ memorials around Laos the National Cemetery will probably be locked up 350 days of the year with wreaths left to fade and decay after Army Day. Recently the Vientiane Times mentioned efforts were being made to revive the Kaysone Memorial in Luang Phrabang, which in the past functioned as a major fire hazard rather than a pilgrimage site due to the high growing grass and scattered rubbish found within its fences. This memorial abandonment is also a problem for temple enthusiasts who often find sanctuaries locked up and the only key with the abbot who is off touring Myanmar or Cambodia. Having recently returned from the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, I find the Lao National Cemetery to be somewhat of a disappointment due to its barren layout and lack of information for visitors, be they Lao, Vietnamese, Thai or Western. I know many high ranking Lao prefer maintaining their own private mausoleums or frequenting their family temple to pay respects to their ancestors. One wonders if the ashes of revolutionary leaders have been divided up with some being kept close to home and the rest made available to the Party.
Thanks for the advice “Maratjp”. There are few things I appreciate more than people who presume to tell me what I should write and how I should write it. Your suggestions are very valuable to me.
I read parts 1-3 and then simply got tired. For the already initiated a rehash of what you or someone else has already written elsewhere is tedious. And to read “to be continued” was horrifying.
You need an editor to cut this down to 25% of where it is. Be succinct and original. Bring something new to the table. You have scans of original documents where you should simply link to them as a further reference after a brief summation/analysis by you (if there is something new). Stop lifting directly so much as it’s amateurish. Make sense of such material for your reader succinctly and get to the point and then move on.
Not that your work doesn’t have some good points.
Often we Westerners think that the sky is going to fall down here in Thailand because of our pulling the curtain back on some deep, dark secret only to discover that we in fact are simply scratching the surface of a very big iceberg of gossip and intrigue that most Thais absorb in the process of childbirth. The King accidentally killed his brother? Who gives a sh*t. Bumiphol isn’t a democrat? Who cares? He’s a King after all. Royalist factions? Military factions? The son doinking flight attendants? Thais have heard much worse.
Thais have been drinking from the chalice of gossip and intrigue for centuries.
What I did find important in the first three chapters and I feel worthy of a much more systematic study, is the writing out of Pridi in the national consciousness and his rejection by Royalists and R. IX. This is has been disgraceful and shameful. You want to get noticed? Bang on about that.
If anyone else has read IV and V and can say that they are worth reading to someone already familiar with the major events of Thai history speak up.
Dear “John Smith”. Many congratulations for noticing that my article is unfavourable to Thaksin Shinawatra. That’s not a hidden contradiction in my argument: I say it very openly throughout Part V of “The Tragedy of King Bhumibol”. And yet you regard my article as “one sided”. It seems to me that it’s you who is unable to comprehend any analysis of Thai politics that is critical of both Thaksin and his royalist foes.
Khong #4 You reference a work that is over 100 years old, so hardly the latest in a field rich in research, which has a limited remit of studying England between 1558 and 1718. So it makes no reference to Pope Innocent VIII’s bull against witches pronounced in 1484 or of events happening throughout Europe where the largest trials took place and in which role of the Catholic church was central. Perhaps you too are only “half learned” and do not yet have the “real history”.
In any case I am not sure what the point of your post was. I do not see Thai children being taught “real history” by Thais in the Thai school system. Instead they are fed a State authorised story which is passed off as history. And this is one part of the over-riding objective of the Thai education system which is all about producing docile conforming citizens. Anything else would be un-Thai.
I don’t think Thai universities, including Chula, are very good in the humanities and social sciences – although there are some faculty staff that are very good – but the same could be said for universities in the Philippines and definitively in neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam. Moreover, I think it is a bit pretentious of Chula to compare itself to the University of Peking but universiites like any other entity try and project a positive image of themselves so I suppose this is not surprising.
However, some universities are very good in the health sciences, agriculture and water resource development (these graduates cannot be blamed entirely for last year’s mismanagement of Thai floods) and almost all branches of engineering. Good Thai medical doctors and dentists are excellent as indeed are Thai nurses. Give me an average Thai trained engineer in at least civil engineering any day before one from India or Vietnam or indeed Australia. And in the field of agriculture (especially agronomy and agri-business) some Thai universities do an excellent job.
This might not be reflected in the rankings – that appear somewhat biased towards the humanities and the social sciences – but I for oen would willingly invest in an education in the fields I have mentioned above at a Thai university based on my professional experience working with such graduates. I don’t think I would waste my time or money in the humanities and social sciences although for Thai language studies and fine arts and music that would be different. But then again I am not sure whether I would invest in an education at internationally-ranked univesities unless they were a Yale or Oxford (well okay the ANU does quite well) either.
Martin, thanks for this insightful comment. It would indeed be interesting to know more about the selection process and the absence of ‘revolutionary ancestors’ such as Khamsaeng or Souk Vongsak.
While I share your sentiments, it’s both the great revolutions and evolution that the West has gone through that enable them to seize the moral high ground and constantly lecture us. In other words we do need some growing up to do and a lot of catching up. As a Burmese I may get nostalgic once in a while thinking of our monarchic past that ended just over 125 years ago, but do I wish it was restored? Hell, no. We have been under autocrats far worse than the old kings of yore for the last half century.
Granted ever since Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape, none of us has been left to our own devices to develop and evolve at our own pace our own sciences or democratic institutions. But we will all of us. We have our own contributions to make in the postmodern global village. The old expression in Burmese is, “ su tu pyu” ( gather, copy, create). And it will be undeniably Burmese.
It must be pretty enviable seeing that the unprecedented stability of Thailand has been underpinned by 18 military coups so far, a world record never likely to be even aspired to let alone broken. Trigger happy but no staying power.
As for the unifying value of the monarchy, Don Quixote, I doubt it there will be many takers in 21st C Burma. Perhaps you have in mind your kindred spirit Myanmar Patriots aka Schwebomin II (sic).
The gospel of “free trade” – like stability, all rigged up by iniquitous treaties, protectionism where and when we are weak but not you, just hand over your natural and human resources on the cheap and we’ll repatriate all our profits, tax holidays, sweeteners, land ownership next please…the whole nine yards, thank you very much.
Better to be exploited than not. And we’ve seen how your generals deal with China and the rest until now doing a roaring trade with them. Will they handle the lesser of two evils any better and can they be trusted with the guardianship of our country’s natural environment and human resources? You might be oh so willing to ignore the evidence of the last half century. Perhaps you are in good company, wealthy, powerful and rearing to go. Let’s just pimp the nation like Thailand. Remember one of Aung San’s unforgettable speeches? Happy days are here, mate. Haven’t you heard?
You are right, Khong (4) that one of the West’s big problems is that its promoters are ignorant of their own history. The promoters also have big problems with their ignorance of other peoples’ languages, and of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology (especially human behaviour). However, there is a disease that the West has managed to throw off that still cripples Thailand, and that is absolutism. It was Science that freed the West from absolutism by securing the divorce of truth from authority. Truth is something dearly worth striving for but forever out of reach. When we strive for it disinterestedly and submit our findings to open-minded criticism, increasingly useful ideas are selected. Truth cannot be defined, as it usually is in Thailand, as anything handed down by teachers, monks, or kings. History tells us that what a king, or any other kind of politician says in private or in public, is seldom disinterested. It may well be corrupted by his desire to hang onto power. The same goes for archbishops, generals, football coaches, and vice-chancellors. Thailand has some catching up to do here.
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Islamic fundamentalists, Christian threats, Freudian slips
Najib should change his catch phrase from “moderate muslim” to “paranoid, insecure muslim” for BN Malaysia. Would be so much more appropriate.
Critical review of King Bhumibol’s life
Maratjp: The King accidentally killed his brother? Who gives a sh*t[?]
Quite a few people it seems. There has been 60 years of cover-up (if it is indeed true).
Wonder what the families of those executed for something they didn’t do feel?
Wasn’t Da Torpedo making this point when she was LM’ed?
Presumably not just Pridi was a political victim either as this event eventually led to the obliteration of the pro-Pridi faction of the People’s Party.
Maratjp: Bumiphol isn’t a democrat? Who cares?
Perhaps all the royalists and good bureaucrats who have spent decades (and investing tons of state funds) spinning a yarn that he is a democrat, that he protects democracy in Thailand and that monarchy defines Thai-style democracy, with the king as head of state.
Critical review of King Bhumibol’s life
AMM
Your shrillness when responding to any critical comment is very revealing.
I am neither of the “nutcases” you refer to here but most certainly did leave critical comments on your blog which never appeared. I assumed (and given your overbearing reaction here that assumption wasn’t misplaced) that you didn’t take criticism well.
To be completely frank I don’t really care what you do, what you write and what you do or don’t do on your Facebook page. All I would say is that if you do position yourself as part of a public discourse that you should expect some fair comment and criticism from the public. On the face of it you do seem a bit pathological in your responses so rather than get in the kind of unedifying and prolonged and abusive exchanges you seem so fond of on your twitter timeline I’ll bow out now and leave you to it.
Hope you have fun.
Critical review of King Bhumibol’s life
One more thing to add, “Joel”: I have only ever censored the comments of two people from my blog. One was the notoriously crazy Tony Cartalucci and the other is a strange character who calls himself Gary Joseph Chandler and who is trying to promote what he calls “The Joseph Solution to Save Thailand”. Both are nutcases, which is why I censored them. Which one of them are you?
Critical review of King Bhumibol’s life
Thanks for your input “Joel”. Just for your information, the title “Thailand’s Moment of Truth” came from a U.S. cable, 08BANGKOK3289, which said:
“The battle lines in Thailand’s political environment are clearly drawn… The Thaksin machine faces off against a mix of royalists, Bangkok middle class, and southerners, with Queen Sirikit having emerged as their champion, as King Bhumibol largely fades from an active role…. They are positioning themselves for what key actors on both sides freely admit to us in private will be Thailand’s moment of truth – royal succession after the King passes away.”
I’m sure you can provide some evidence for your assertion that I have repeatedly claimed that my work will transform Thailand, particularly as you say I have made this claim “ad infinitum”.
Your helpful suggestions about how I should write and how I should behave on Facebook, and the suggestions of everybody else on this thread, might be more credible if you even had the courage to identify yourselves by your real names. If you can’t even do that, why should anybody bother to listen to what you have to say?
Critical review of King Bhumibol’s life
AMM
Oh come on Maratjp critique is pretty fair and your sneering sarcastic put down of it looks very silly.
Your work is over-long, too derivative and you’re just a little bit too fond of yourself.
You’ve claimed ad infinitum that your work would transform Thailand. You even trailed one of your pieces of work as “Thailand’s Moment of Truth”.
As Maratjp points out, it wasn’t. It was quickly absorbed back into the body politic and few ordinary Thais know of you or your work.
For a starter it might help if you got away from your Facebook fanclub and didn’t censor critical comments from your blog.
Revolutionary remains
The location of this cemetery, more than 20 kms outside of the capital heading south on Route 13, will sadly not draw many visitors (local or foreign). I visited it twice while the Vietnamese labourers were touching up the relocated unknown soldier’s memorial. It was hot and empty, and the guards at the front gate were less than thrilled to have visitors. They wanted to remain in their cool gatehouse rather than venture out onto the scorching hot concrete. I wonder how many people will actually make the pilgrimage? Maybe Thaksin followers when they gather for their Phi Mai Red Shirt Fest at the National Sports Stadium. Few Vientiane locals bother to visit the Kaysone Museum which is at Km6, so how many will go an extra 15 kms? The role of the soldier’s memorial near the National Assembly is also a vague subject. Like most soldiers’ memorials around Laos the National Cemetery will probably be locked up 350 days of the year with wreaths left to fade and decay after Army Day. Recently the Vientiane Times mentioned efforts were being made to revive the Kaysone Memorial in Luang Phrabang, which in the past functioned as a major fire hazard rather than a pilgrimage site due to the high growing grass and scattered rubbish found within its fences. This memorial abandonment is also a problem for temple enthusiasts who often find sanctuaries locked up and the only key with the abbot who is off touring Myanmar or Cambodia. Having recently returned from the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, I find the Lao National Cemetery to be somewhat of a disappointment due to its barren layout and lack of information for visitors, be they Lao, Vietnamese, Thai or Western. I know many high ranking Lao prefer maintaining their own private mausoleums or frequenting their family temple to pay respects to their ancestors. One wonders if the ashes of revolutionary leaders have been divided up with some being kept close to home and the rest made available to the Party.
Don’t stand out in Thailand
#6
“And it will be undeniably Burmese.” This will probably turn out to be an illusion. Or what is “undeniably Thai” in the lifestyle of Bangkok, etc.?
Don’t stand out in Thailand
It’s an open secret: Thailand is wired! And sometimes you get paid big for watching your neighbors…
Critical review of King Bhumibol’s life
Thanks for the advice “Maratjp”. There are few things I appreciate more than people who presume to tell me what I should write and how I should write it. Your suggestions are very valuable to me.
Burma’s changing equations
Thank you for your continuing doom gloom, with reminders to all here @ New Mandala with the ultimate “what’s the use!” sentiment.
Ko Moe Aung
Must surely make, according to your confession now OUR generals happy to maintain status quo regardless of the humanity within.
Hard to soar like an eagle working with a bunch of turkeys?
If every one in Myanmar shall acquire the basic necessity for freedom:
Education,
Health care and
Economic means to sustain hope
as in Thailand we will be discussing the higher degree of freedom such as this one
http://www.newmandala.org/2012/04/05/don%E2%80%99t-stand-out-in-thailand/
Do not be a turkey yet.
Crown Prince’s family update?
To Acid Burn,
R u a buffalo? If not hiding, do u know who r u playing with? If u r in Thailand, u might drag to jell!!
Critical review of King Bhumibol’s life
AMM,
I read parts 1-3 and then simply got tired. For the already initiated a rehash of what you or someone else has already written elsewhere is tedious. And to read “to be continued” was horrifying.
You need an editor to cut this down to 25% of where it is. Be succinct and original. Bring something new to the table. You have scans of original documents where you should simply link to them as a further reference after a brief summation/analysis by you (if there is something new). Stop lifting directly so much as it’s amateurish. Make sense of such material for your reader succinctly and get to the point and then move on.
Not that your work doesn’t have some good points.
Often we Westerners think that the sky is going to fall down here in Thailand because of our pulling the curtain back on some deep, dark secret only to discover that we in fact are simply scratching the surface of a very big iceberg of gossip and intrigue that most Thais absorb in the process of childbirth. The King accidentally killed his brother? Who gives a sh*t. Bumiphol isn’t a democrat? Who cares? He’s a King after all. Royalist factions? Military factions? The son doinking flight attendants? Thais have heard much worse.
Thais have been drinking from the chalice of gossip and intrigue for centuries.
What I did find important in the first three chapters and I feel worthy of a much more systematic study, is the writing out of Pridi in the national consciousness and his rejection by Royalists and R. IX. This is has been disgraceful and shameful. You want to get noticed? Bang on about that.
If anyone else has read IV and V and can say that they are worth reading to someone already familiar with the major events of Thai history speak up.
Critical review of King Bhumibol’s life
Dear “John Smith”. Many congratulations for noticing that my article is unfavourable to Thaksin Shinawatra. That’s not a hidden contradiction in my argument: I say it very openly throughout Part V of “The Tragedy of King Bhumibol”. And yet you regard my article as “one sided”. It seems to me that it’s you who is unable to comprehend any analysis of Thai politics that is critical of both Thaksin and his royalist foes.
Don’t stand out in Thailand
Khong #4 You reference a work that is over 100 years old, so hardly the latest in a field rich in research, which has a limited remit of studying England between 1558 and 1718. So it makes no reference to Pope Innocent VIII’s bull against witches pronounced in 1484 or of events happening throughout Europe where the largest trials took place and in which role of the Catholic church was central. Perhaps you too are only “half learned” and do not yet have the “real history”.
In any case I am not sure what the point of your post was. I do not see Thai children being taught “real history” by Thais in the Thai school system. Instead they are fed a State authorised story which is passed off as history. And this is one part of the over-riding objective of the Thai education system which is all about producing docile conforming citizens. Anything else would be un-Thai.
University rankings from Chula’s perspective
I don’t think Thai universities, including Chula, are very good in the humanities and social sciences – although there are some faculty staff that are very good – but the same could be said for universities in the Philippines and definitively in neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam. Moreover, I think it is a bit pretentious of Chula to compare itself to the University of Peking but universiites like any other entity try and project a positive image of themselves so I suppose this is not surprising.
However, some universities are very good in the health sciences, agriculture and water resource development (these graduates cannot be blamed entirely for last year’s mismanagement of Thai floods) and almost all branches of engineering. Good Thai medical doctors and dentists are excellent as indeed are Thai nurses. Give me an average Thai trained engineer in at least civil engineering any day before one from India or Vietnam or indeed Australia. And in the field of agriculture (especially agronomy and agri-business) some Thai universities do an excellent job.
This might not be reflected in the rankings – that appear somewhat biased towards the humanities and the social sciences – but I for oen would willingly invest in an education in the fields I have mentioned above at a Thai university based on my professional experience working with such graduates. I don’t think I would waste my time or money in the humanities and social sciences although for Thai language studies and fine arts and music that would be different. But then again I am not sure whether I would invest in an education at internationally-ranked univesities unless they were a Yale or Oxford (well okay the ANU does quite well) either.
Revolutionary remains
Martin, thanks for this insightful comment. It would indeed be interesting to know more about the selection process and the absence of ‘revolutionary ancestors’ such as Khamsaeng or Souk Vongsak.
Don’t stand out in Thailand
Khong,
While I share your sentiments, it’s both the great revolutions and evolution that the West has gone through that enable them to seize the moral high ground and constantly lecture us. In other words we do need some growing up to do and a lot of catching up. As a Burmese I may get nostalgic once in a while thinking of our monarchic past that ended just over 125 years ago, but do I wish it was restored? Hell, no. We have been under autocrats far worse than the old kings of yore for the last half century.
Granted ever since Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape, none of us has been left to our own devices to develop and evolve at our own pace our own sciences or democratic institutions. But we will all of us. We have our own contributions to make in the postmodern global village. The old expression in Burmese is, “ su tu pyu” ( gather, copy, create). And it will be undeniably Burmese.
Burma’s changing equations
plan B,
It must be pretty enviable seeing that the unprecedented stability of Thailand has been underpinned by 18 military coups so far, a world record never likely to be even aspired to let alone broken. Trigger happy but no staying power.
As for the unifying value of the monarchy, Don Quixote, I doubt it there will be many takers in 21st C Burma. Perhaps you have in mind your kindred spirit Myanmar Patriots aka Schwebomin II (sic).
The gospel of “free trade” – like stability, all rigged up by iniquitous treaties, protectionism where and when we are weak but not you, just hand over your natural and human resources on the cheap and we’ll repatriate all our profits, tax holidays, sweeteners, land ownership next please…the whole nine yards, thank you very much.
Better to be exploited than not. And we’ve seen how your generals deal with China and the rest until now doing a roaring trade with them. Will they handle the lesser of two evils any better and can they be trusted with the guardianship of our country’s natural environment and human resources? You might be oh so willing to ignore the evidence of the last half century. Perhaps you are in good company, wealthy, powerful and rearing to go. Let’s just pimp the nation like Thailand. Remember one of Aung San’s unforgettable speeches? Happy days are here, mate. Haven’t you heard?
Don’t stand out in Thailand
You are right, Khong (4) that one of the West’s big problems is that its promoters are ignorant of their own history. The promoters also have big problems with their ignorance of other peoples’ languages, and of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology (especially human behaviour). However, there is a disease that the West has managed to throw off that still cripples Thailand, and that is absolutism. It was Science that freed the West from absolutism by securing the divorce of truth from authority. Truth is something dearly worth striving for but forever out of reach. When we strive for it disinterestedly and submit our findings to open-minded criticism, increasingly useful ideas are selected. Truth cannot be defined, as it usually is in Thailand, as anything handed down by teachers, monks, or kings. History tells us that what a king, or any other kind of politician says in private or in public, is seldom disinterested. It may well be corrupted by his desire to hang onto power. The same goes for archbishops, generals, football coaches, and vice-chancellors. Thailand has some catching up to do here.