Ralph
She was stripped of royal title (HRH) the day she married her American husband. When she returned, there were “talks” about returning the title to her, but this never happened. Currently, she is enjoying a rather odd, invented title of р╕Чр╕╣р╕ер╕Бр╕гр╕░р╕лр╕бр╣Ир╕нр╕б — I have no idea how this should be translated into English.
Pavin
@Ralph:
I think Jon’s remark can be read in two ways, and you’ve picked the wrong one. Perhaps if he’d written “yes, Pavin, the royalists are clutching at straws” the meaning would have been clearer?
No, sorry. Can you write it in long hand?
By the way, the earlier comment I made seems to have gone.
And to add a question for Pavin: Has the status of “princess” been returned to her?
Ralph @6: My point could possibly be summed up in the final bit of each paragraph – “but it’s just a film! – They [hyper-royalists] can try all they like” – let me know if it still doesn’t work for you.
Jon @ 4: Can you have another go at your comment. I’m not sure I can understand it. What straws are being clutched? I’d like to be able to catch your point.
“Finally, Vichai, when will you be mounting your own public campaign to call for the complete abolition of LM and the freeing of all political prisoners?”
Me Vichai? Who listens to me?
Naah . . . I am NOT a Red Shirt. And I don’t go around (Red) villages provoking and enraging farmers against the establishment.
Thaksin and Yingluck and Chalerm had been elected just for this honor.
Nonetheless I have a feeling that the locals (around me anyway) will lap it up. This sort of rubbish is all they have been used to, it makes me cringe when I watch my family watching the ‘soaps’ on TV. If you have been inundated with such stuff for decades, more with a little bit of ‘royalty’ thrown in will probably go down very well.
Clutching at straws here Pavin? This is the Thai version of the King Arthur legends as far as I can tell (escapades with javelins, the appropriating of an ethnic her0). She was Mon or she might even have had Indian blood and was doing her stuff 200 years before the first Thais crossed the Mekong, right? Most likely she bore no resemblance to Ubolratana (Chinese blood, remember) – but it’s just a film!
> “Thai hyper-royalists have lately tried to substantiate their claim that Thailand has remained an independent nation thanks to the sacrifice and bravery of past kings and queens.”
More like the pragmatism of two past kings who Thailand was fortunate to have right at the point where the music was switched off (by the British and French) and the chairs happened to be arranged nicely. They can try all they like …
Unfortunately I never met Eve, Tony’s wife, but know all three of their sons and some of their grandkids too. There is an obit in The Guardian for Eve as well. Both remarkable people and her story is particularly powerful.
Andy, the son I am closest to, has been a staff photo-journalist at The Observer for a long time and we’ve worked together in places as diverse as Greenland and New York . We’re also both huge Tottenham Hotspur fans.
Can someone provide a link to a vendor in Thailand where the Fragile Palm Leaves books can be purchased? Their website (http://fpl.tusita.org/) gives no information about buying the six volumes.
I am simply pointing out what the political and LM prisoners told me and that the various HR NGOs and even Nitirat are also willing to make compromises on LM. And, given the recent revelations in the wikileaks cables regarding the likes of HRW (that they wouldn’t intervene on LM and were pro-coup and pro-army and the previous revelations and comments by AI’s Ben Zawacki on LM) how then can any effective campaign against LM be mounted when such HR NGOs are so discredited and lacking in principle themselves?
These same groups then accusing the government of “backsliding” seems very hollow (particularly when they were telling the US Ambassador they supported a coup) and actually reduces their efficacy at the exact moment when they are needed the most.
To be honest I don’t see anyone from PT, the Dems, the HR NGOs, the media (foreign and domestic) acting with any great principle on this.
Remember most of the foreign media corps – who now all seem so eager to attack Yingluck – have said nothing for years about LM. Nothing at all. Neither did AI or HRW. And 5months into her first term they say her govt is “backsliding”.
When the troops are back on the streets using snipers to shoot nurses and school kids in the head as they were under the unelected and unman dated Democrat Party maybe HRW will have a point.
Finally, Vichai, when will you be mounting your own public campaign to call for the complete abolition of LM and the freeing of all political prisoners? What’s your excuse for not doing that? I mean you don’t even sign your comments with your full name.
“Personally I’d like to know how much money is wasted on paint, billboards and plaques which acknowledge donations to temples, schools, roads and the like. Charitable giving is meant to be done without expecting anything.”
– Martin that might indeed be the biblical ideal, but I’m not sure it translates to Laos.
In rural areas even the most modest of donations by households for communal projects, such as 5,000 kip provided for the construction of a village temple outhouse, can be carefully and duly noted through a painted ‘list of donors’ on the external wall of the structure !
A really stupid question from a near stupid person…..
Apart from those who write and read publications like ASTV Manager in Thailand who in Thailand really wants the to experience the type of horrendous violence some of NM’s readers are referring to? I lack any real evidence but intuitively this is not what I hear in Thailand but perhaps because I have experienced civil war first-hand (Cambodia, Vietnam and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland) I don’t want to think Thai people actually want to experience what people in neighboring countries, especially Cambodia, experienced.
It’s very easy to speculate about high levels of domestic violence (and of course a war of words or wars of words are also symptomatic of forms of violence) but for those who have directly experienced violence it is not an abstract and esoteric issue.
Anyway having been proved totally wrong in the past I guess there is no reason why one should not be proved wrong again!
Not a few Royalists themselves were calling for the LM review and amendment. So too were many academics (one thread here at NM highlights this point). And this issue had been the focal mention by the Thai media for many months now.
Spooner and many other here are just writing overly long obfuscating excuses. Excuses and more excuses . . . and more to follow, definitely. But Spooner and Taylor gladly accomodates and obliges to explain for the backsliding Yingluck and PT Party.
CT is justified to feel betrayed and angry.
“NO YOU CAN’T” Chalerm threatens. “NO YOU CAN’T” Yingluck repeats.
Tell me folks . . . specially Spooner and Taylor when is exactly is the ‘perfect time’ for the PT Party and Yingluck to say “YES WE CAN”.
You’re correct. No 112 prisoners of any description have been sent to Laksi yet. In fact only those on remand and those whose cases are still on appeal for other political offences have been sent there.
So there is still some way to go but from all 112 and political prisoners we spoke to they viewed the opening of the prison as a significant and positive step.
We also spoke to Surachai and Somyot the other day in prison and will be publishing what they said in due course.
I never met Tony, no. He’s a well known figure, but well before my time. His newspaper The Rand Daily Mail caused all sorts of trouble for the Nats before dwindling advertising revenue eventually put an end to it. Many people just assume The Rand Daily Mail was shut down by the Nats, but that was simply not true. In fact, the Rand Daily Mail was allowed to continue unimpeded by censorship laws that hamstrung my own generation of reporters some 10 years later. It was a wonderful newspaper and Tony was a big part of it. He did eventually come back to SA when the ANC was unbanned in the 90s. I just did a google search and read his obit in The Guardian.
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Princess Ubolratana in Queen Jamadevi
Ralph
She was stripped of royal title (HRH) the day she married her American husband. When she returned, there were “talks” about returning the title to her, but this never happened. Currently, she is enjoying a rather odd, invented title of р╕Чр╕╣р╕ер╕Бр╕гр╕░р╕лр╕бр╣Ир╕нр╕б — I have no idea how this should be translated into English.
Pavin
Princess Ubolratana in Queen Jamadevi
@Ralph:
I think Jon’s remark can be read in two ways, and you’ve picked the wrong one. Perhaps if he’d written “yes, Pavin, the royalists are clutching at straws” the meaning would have been clearer?
Or am I misreading it too?
Princess Ubolratana in Queen Jamadevi
I have stopped going to cinema in Thailand ages ago. I don’t want to be forced to stand before the movie starts. So I won’t be going.
Princess Ubolratana in Queen Jamadevi
No, sorry. Can you write it in long hand?
By the way, the earlier comment I made seems to have gone.
And to add a question for Pavin: Has the status of “princess” been returned to her?
Princess Ubolratana in Queen Jamadevi
Ralph @6: My point could possibly be summed up in the final bit of each paragraph – “but it’s just a film! – They [hyper-royalists] can try all they like” – let me know if it still doesn’t work for you.
Princess Ubolratana in Queen Jamadevi
Jon @ 4: Can you have another go at your comment. I’m not sure I can understand it. What straws are being clutched? I’d like to be able to catch your point.
Pheua Thai but for lese majeste
“Finally, Vichai, when will you be mounting your own public campaign to call for the complete abolition of LM and the freeing of all political prisoners?”
Me Vichai? Who listens to me?
Naah . . . I am NOT a Red Shirt. And I don’t go around (Red) villages provoking and enraging farmers against the establishment.
Thaksin and Yingluck and Chalerm had been elected just for this honor.
Princess Ubolratana in Queen Jamadevi
Wait… shall the audience remains standing throughout the screening?! And um… did the whole filming crew prostrate to her?!
Princess Ubolratana in Queen Jamadevi
Nonetheless I have a feeling that the locals (around me anyway) will lap it up. This sort of rubbish is all they have been used to, it makes me cringe when I watch my family watching the ‘soaps’ on TV. If you have been inundated with such stuff for decades, more with a little bit of ‘royalty’ thrown in will probably go down very well.
Princess Ubolratana in Queen Jamadevi
Clutching at straws here Pavin? This is the Thai version of the King Arthur legends as far as I can tell (escapades with javelins, the appropriating of an ethnic her0). She was Mon or she might even have had Indian blood and was doing her stuff 200 years before the first Thais crossed the Mekong, right? Most likely she bore no resemblance to Ubolratana (Chinese blood, remember) – but it’s just a film!
> “Thai hyper-royalists have lately tried to substantiate their claim that Thailand has remained an independent nation thanks to the sacrifice and bravery of past kings and queens.”
More like the pragmatism of two past kings who Thailand was fortunate to have right at the point where the music was switched off (by the British and French) and the chairs happened to be arranged nicely. They can try all they like …
Princess Ubolratana in Queen Jamadevi
”The film, due to be released sometime in 2012…”
I think I’m busy that night.
Pheua Thai but for lese majeste
That’ll be never. If you don’t make it happen… it won’t. That’s democracy. Apparently that ‘s why there are no democratic states on this planet.
A catalogue of threats against the Khana Nitirat
Stuart
Unfortunately I never met Eve, Tony’s wife, but know all three of their sons and some of their grandkids too. There is an obit in The Guardian for Eve as well. Both remarkable people and her story is particularly powerful.
Andy, the son I am closest to, has been a staff photo-journalist at The Observer for a long time and we’ve worked together in places as diverse as Greenland and New York . We’re also both huge Tottenham Hotspur fans.
Review of Cicuzza and Shimizu
Can someone provide a link to a vendor in Thailand where the Fragile Palm Leaves books can be purchased? Their website (http://fpl.tusita.org/) gives no information about buying the six volumes.
Pheua Thai but for lese majeste
Vichai
Not sure what excuses I am making.
I am simply pointing out what the political and LM prisoners told me and that the various HR NGOs and even Nitirat are also willing to make compromises on LM. And, given the recent revelations in the wikileaks cables regarding the likes of HRW (that they wouldn’t intervene on LM and were pro-coup and pro-army and the previous revelations and comments by AI’s Ben Zawacki on LM) how then can any effective campaign against LM be mounted when such HR NGOs are so discredited and lacking in principle themselves?
These same groups then accusing the government of “backsliding” seems very hollow (particularly when they were telling the US Ambassador they supported a coup) and actually reduces their efficacy at the exact moment when they are needed the most.
To be honest I don’t see anyone from PT, the Dems, the HR NGOs, the media (foreign and domestic) acting with any great principle on this.
Remember most of the foreign media corps – who now all seem so eager to attack Yingluck – have said nothing for years about LM. Nothing at all. Neither did AI or HRW. And 5months into her first term they say her govt is “backsliding”.
When the troops are back on the streets using snipers to shoot nurses and school kids in the head as they were under the unelected and unman dated Democrat Party maybe HRW will have a point.
Finally, Vichai, when will you be mounting your own public campaign to call for the complete abolition of LM and the freeing of all political prisoners? What’s your excuse for not doing that? I mean you don’t even sign your comments with your full name.
Revolutionary statues reloaded
In comment 7 Martin wrote:
“Personally I’d like to know how much money is wasted on paint, billboards and plaques which acknowledge donations to temples, schools, roads and the like. Charitable giving is meant to be done without expecting anything.”
– Martin that might indeed be the biblical ideal, but I’m not sure it translates to Laos.
In rural areas even the most modest of donations by households for communal projects, such as 5,000 kip provided for the construction of a village temple outhouse, can be carefully and duly noted through a painted ‘list of donors’ on the external wall of the structure !
A catalogue of threats against the Khana Nitirat
A really stupid question from a near stupid person…..
Apart from those who write and read publications like ASTV Manager in Thailand who in Thailand really wants the to experience the type of horrendous violence some of NM’s readers are referring to? I lack any real evidence but intuitively this is not what I hear in Thailand but perhaps because I have experienced civil war first-hand (Cambodia, Vietnam and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland) I don’t want to think Thai people actually want to experience what people in neighboring countries, especially Cambodia, experienced.
It’s very easy to speculate about high levels of domestic violence (and of course a war of words or wars of words are also symptomatic of forms of violence) but for those who have directly experienced violence it is not an abstract and esoteric issue.
Anyway having been proved totally wrong in the past I guess there is no reason why one should not be proved wrong again!
Pheua Thai but for lese majeste
Timing. If not now, then when?
Not a few Royalists themselves were calling for the LM review and amendment. So too were many academics (one thread here at NM highlights this point). And this issue had been the focal mention by the Thai media for many months now.
Spooner and many other here are just writing overly long obfuscating excuses. Excuses and more excuses . . . and more to follow, definitely. But Spooner and Taylor gladly accomodates and obliges to explain for the backsliding Yingluck and PT Party.
CT is justified to feel betrayed and angry.
“NO YOU CAN’T” Chalerm threatens. “NO YOU CAN’T” Yingluck repeats.
Tell me folks . . . specially Spooner and Taylor when is exactly is the ‘perfect time’ for the PT Party and Yingluck to say “YES WE CAN”.
Pheua Thai but for lese majeste
Jim
You’re correct. No 112 prisoners of any description have been sent to Laksi yet. In fact only those on remand and those whose cases are still on appeal for other political offences have been sent there.
So there is still some way to go but from all 112 and political prisoners we spoke to they viewed the opening of the prison as a significant and positive step.
We also spoke to Surachai and Somyot the other day in prison and will be publishing what they said in due course.
A catalogue of threats against the Khana Nitirat
Andrew
I never met Tony, no. He’s a well known figure, but well before my time. His newspaper The Rand Daily Mail caused all sorts of trouble for the Nats before dwindling advertising revenue eventually put an end to it. Many people just assume The Rand Daily Mail was shut down by the Nats, but that was simply not true. In fact, the Rand Daily Mail was allowed to continue unimpeded by censorship laws that hamstrung my own generation of reporters some 10 years later. It was a wonderful newspaper and Tony was a big part of it. He did eventually come back to SA when the ANC was unbanned in the 90s. I just did a google search and read his obit in The Guardian.