The family had a residence in the UK while the boys were going to school there. It was probably sold when they came to the US, and they have been living off the proceeds. I imagine Ms. Sujarinee needed to sell off much of any jewelry she had as well to put the boys through school. It seems she’s put her heart and soul into preparing her sons for whatever life they may have, whether it is in Thailand, or elsewhere. I think their interest in returning to Thailand is a noble one.
20 years in Thailand have taught me that Thailand has family politics, family business, family employment, family senior military and family just about everything. It is social/cultural. When I speak to a Thai businessman and mention the name of another Thai, the usual response is “I/my wife/my son/my daughter was at school/university with him” In this culture relationships count for all and merit and ability count for little.
This is changing with the increasing number of Thais who go to school/university overseas and can see that there are alternatives. Problem is that some of these return to Thailand and find that to succeed in business/employment they have ot adopt old values.
It will take a long time to change.
And admittedly family based business/politics dominates many Asian/developing countries
[…] and rampaging militants were busy devastating the city.In fact, a recently “leaked” Thai military report, initially seized upon and cherry picked by Thailand’s opposition but quickly dropped and […]
Having the red-shirt leaders in the cabinet would serve to symbolise the firm alliance between the movement and the Pheu Thai.
It seems obvious that there is no firm alliance between the redshirts and Puea Thai. Puea Thai and the Democrats are not the clones that the US Republicans and Democrats are, different price points for essentially the same product – recently reversed, but they are more similar to each other than either is to the redshirts.
I look forward to a redshirt party… and this blatant betrayal ought to speed its delivery. Thailand is a country of coalition governments. No danger in splitting Puea Thai in two. No hope without doing so.
[…] effort over succeeding decades to resacralize the monarchy. The practice of prostration – officially abolished by King Chulalongkorn, Rama V, in 1873 – was encouraged: the behaviour of talkshow host Woody Milintachinda in his […]
Dear me ! Has nobody read the introduction to this commentry? The OECD stats would indicate that Thai’s should use simplified Chinese characters as in Shanghai (reading score 556) or perhaps throw in some un-simplified characters as one might expect in Singapore (526) or even Chinese with one or two alphabetic scripts for odd or foreign words as in Japan (520).
I studied Chinese at night school for 4 years and found it esay and fun to read and write. At the time I was doing this I started coming to Thailand for annual holidays and picked up speaking but reading I still find tortuous. I still find after 10 years living here I drive through a town and pass signs like “officeoftheministryofsillywalkscityofkrabi” for example and very seldom can I work out where I am. In China I will know straight away, assuming a reasonable knowledge of the characters because even though they are not spaced they are so very distinctive.
There are two other issues about reading which need consideration: font and scanning.
The lovely old curly traditional Thai font poses fewer difficulties for all readers than the silly modern ugly writing.
Separated words and especially capitals for proper nouns etc are a boon for the busy reader. Can the average reader scan Thai ?
@ She Fah: yes, and besides him some other representatives of old political families have lost their seats.
@ Stewie: you are right about the main point of the BP article and I don’t want to dispute this. I would however like to suggest that the way most commentators talk about this topic is too simplistic and denying the complexity that it actually has. In this post I was focusing on the qualification of MP’s to do so.
@ Simon: I understand how you derive at that conclusion. However, when looking at the numbers it becomes clear that the majority of political families win in constituencies (around 90%). These families rely on their local patronage networks to be elected being on the party list would actually be an disadvantage.
If we cannot base an argument on theoretical concepts (or don’t want to make these explicit), we construct an index. Such an index is usually neither based on theoretical grounds nor empirical data, but looks convincing and precise, especially if we use at least two decimal places. Thereby we can hide that it is in contradiction to logic and statistical basics, but perhaps we can sell it to organisations, media etc.
Concerning the logical faults: What, f.e. is the sum of three apples, two durian, one red snapper and three diamonds? Such sums are calculated in the failed states (and similar) index’! No theoretical argument is given, why these indicators have been selected. No information is given, why these indicators are scaled in such interval scales. No information is given why all distances between the intervals and indicators as well as all cases are equal. In short, the index is pure nonsense. May be it has a propaganda and ideological value, but it should not be used in any “scientific” argumentation, where we have to maintain at least the basic laws of logic!
It is time to scrap the lèse majesté law and end censorship of all kinds. Political prisoners must be immediately released and all charges dropped. The head of the army should be sacked and the generals and politicians who ordered the killings of unarmed pro-democracy Red Shirts last year must be brought to court, just like Mubarak in Egypt.
With all due respect, but if the current government attempted this, they wouldn’t last more than a few weeks before there would be another coup. No, but there are other methods to resolve the issues you bring up . . .
For example, instead of revoking Section 112, other laws can be passed to remove the teeth of 112. The Lese Majeste law would still exist, pacifying proponents of it, yet the law would become nearly useless/unenforceable. Another example, wait until the leaders of the crimes are no longer in power – it’s justice delayed, but they won’t be able to fight back with a military coup when they finally stand trial. Political prisoners should be released slowly and quietly over time, as to not draw media attention of yellow-shirted reporters.
There are other laws, such as 116 and the computer crimes law, which are also used to suppress freedom of speech. These are much less controversial and probably should be resolved first. Baby steps.
I totally agree with your analysis although I never really trying to explain it on NM. The king speech is so unstructured, so cryptic, and so vague that anyone can take it anyway, which is really bad for a country that really need a direction.
The answer to your question is “yes” – see comment 14 of the original post
I have a set of children’s books where each illustrated page has three lines of text: 1) Thai with occasional spaces, 2) English, and 3) pronunciation of English in Thai script with spaces between each word. The child presumably, at least as a by product, develops a facility for reading separated Thai words.
In addition, at the the recent International Conference of Thai Studies, one Thai academic who presented an analysis of Thai social studies text books was constrained to place markers between Thai words in her PowerPoint in order to get her message across.
It is worth recalling a quote from stuart (part of his informative comment 23 to the original post): Thai will evolve too. Without punctuation, there is simply no way that modern Thai can accommodate the agility of a fast-evolving society. I believe it will naturally select, over time, a set of punctuation and other hallmarks of an advanced modern language. If it doesn’t adopt punctuation – or is forced not to – then it will lose its ability to reflect and progress the increasingly compex discourse of Thai speakers as they transform from a rural agrarian society into a much more literate enterprise economy.
At the last count there were 46 comments to the original post.
This is a direct quote from the 2005 speech. It says, “Therefore sometimes you should violate…you’ll know who’s good, who’s bad.”
At issue is the overzealous and even insane at times vigor that protectors jump down the throats of people who have legitimate questions and pose legitimate issues to students re. the monarchy, etc. Given Thailand’s track record in this aspect, and the SS Troop-style methodology used nationwide to stomp out initiative, it’s going to be a long while before common sense finds a home here.
How come Nong Pipe wasn’t on the list? There he was, nattily dressed in his white uniform with his three rows of medal ribbons. Surely he could at least be appointed assistant defence minister, and as a little child, provide a little much-needed leadership.
Yes, I know your purpose, and thank you for your analysis. In fact, Khun Paul Handley had also said the same thing you said about ‘one needs to observe his distinct words’. In the documentary by Eric Campbell where Eric talked about the Black May 1992 when the King made an appearance to try to calm down the situation, Paul Handley said that the whole world interpreted his action in a way that he wanted to ‘intervene, to restore democracy’. However, Khun Paul said in the documentary that “if you observe his distinct words of what he said, you will notice that he was being very critical of the protest leader and not the military. And for the remainder of that year whenever he gave public speeched he always defended the military”.
So your analysis is very welcome and appreciated, although my concern is that because his speech is so muddled and contradictory, there will always be people who would object to your interpretation. But you are not the first person to observe this. Paul Handley has observed it before (as explained above). However there are also people like Ajarn Ji Ungpakorn who believes that the king is so cowardly and lacking in standing that he dares not to make it clear where he stands. Instead he speaks in a muddled and confusing manner that his words can be interpreted in both ways, so that he would not have to be responsible for his words.
The sexual preference of an individual should not matter. Najib Razak has rightly not acted on information that at least a member of his Cabinet was not heterosexual as are some of his senior aides. So, why the fuss about Anwar?
“Anwar’s prosecution is not part of a morals campaign. The GOM does not aggressively target non-heterosexual behaviour; if it did so, a recent cabinet minister, senior staff associated with PM Najib and other prominent citizens linked to the government also would find themselves under investigation,” US Ambassador James R Keith said in the diplomatic note to Washington that was leaked by whistleblower site Wikileaks through the Malaysia Today website.
@CT
I just recently read about statement analysis and the said real message suddenly became bloody apparent to me. The assumption is people do not want to lie, but do try to deceive. The king’s ‘apparent’ message against lese majeste is not a lie, but is certainly deceptive as I have pointed out.
This is not to play down your knowledge of the discrepancies between his words and actions. I just want to point out the hidden message that is not easily apparent to foreign observers (who normally don’t understand Thai and have to rely on translations which mostly cannot convey all the hidden messages.)
@Ricky.
Glad you asked. I became aware of the said microexpression once I saw this youtube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9374WSWYxmw&feature=related You can see that the King said the other parts of his speech with a blank expression, with eyes looking slightly downward, as if stressed and uninvolved in his own speech. However, his emotional involvement when he said “Actually, [they] should be jailed” is plain to see.
And PRC just happens to be my initials. I’m a Chinese Thai, but not affiliated with People’s Republic of China in any way.
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Letter to Thailand
The family had a residence in the UK while the boys were going to school there. It was probably sold when they came to the US, and they have been living off the proceeds. I imagine Ms. Sujarinee needed to sell off much of any jewelry she had as well to put the boys through school. It seems she’s put her heart and soul into preparing her sons for whatever life they may have, whether it is in Thailand, or elsewhere. I think their interest in returning to Thailand is a noble one.
Family business, Thai style
20 years in Thailand have taught me that Thailand has family politics, family business, family employment, family senior military and family just about everything. It is social/cultural. When I speak to a Thai businessman and mention the name of another Thai, the usual response is “I/my wife/my son/my daughter was at school/university with him” In this culture relationships count for all and merit and ability count for little.
This is changing with the increasing number of Thais who go to school/university overseas and can see that there are alternatives. Problem is that some of these return to Thailand and find that to succeed in business/employment they have ot adopt old values.
It will take a long time to change.
And admittedly family based business/politics dominates many Asian/developing countries
The military strategy at Ratchaprasong
[…] and rampaging militants were busy devastating the city.In fact, a recently “leaked” Thai military report, initially seized upon and cherry picked by Thailand’s opposition but quickly dropped and […]
Yingluck’s cabinet
It seems obvious that there is no firm alliance between the redshirts and Puea Thai. Puea Thai and the Democrats are not the clones that the US Republicans and Democrats are, different price points for essentially the same product – recently reversed, but they are more similar to each other than either is to the redshirts.
I look forward to a redshirt party… and this blatant betrayal ought to speed its delivery. Thailand is a country of coalition governments. No danger in splitting Puea Thai in two. No hope without doing so.
Measuring failed states
Wow, Burma is “In Danger” of becoming a failed state and Thailand is a “Borderline” failed state.
I think I prefer anecdotal indicators to statistics.
Chulalongkorn abolished prostration
[…] effort over succeeding decades to resacralize the monarchy. The practice of prostration – officially abolished by King Chulalongkorn, Rama V, in 1873 – was encouraged: the behaviour of talkshow host Woody Milintachinda in his […]
The military strategy at Ratchaprasong
[…] fact, a recently “leaked” Thai military report, initially seized upon and cherry picked by Thailand’s opposition but quickly dropped and […]
Find the gap
Dear me ! Has nobody read the introduction to this commentry? The OECD stats would indicate that Thai’s should use simplified Chinese characters as in Shanghai (reading score 556) or perhaps throw in some un-simplified characters as one might expect in Singapore (526) or even Chinese with one or two alphabetic scripts for odd or foreign words as in Japan (520).
I studied Chinese at night school for 4 years and found it esay and fun to read and write. At the time I was doing this I started coming to Thailand for annual holidays and picked up speaking but reading I still find tortuous. I still find after 10 years living here I drive through a town and pass signs like “officeoftheministryofsillywalkscityofkrabi” for example and very seldom can I work out where I am. In China I will know straight away, assuming a reasonable knowledge of the characters because even though they are not spaced they are so very distinctive.
There are two other issues about reading which need consideration: font and scanning.
The lovely old curly traditional Thai font poses fewer difficulties for all readers than the silly modern ugly writing.
Separated words and especially capitals for proper nouns etc are a boon for the busy reader. Can the average reader scan Thai ?
Family business, Thai style
@ She Fah: yes, and besides him some other representatives of old political families have lost their seats.
@ Stewie: you are right about the main point of the BP article and I don’t want to dispute this. I would however like to suggest that the way most commentators talk about this topic is too simplistic and denying the complexity that it actually has. In this post I was focusing on the qualification of MP’s to do so.
@ Simon: I understand how you derive at that conclusion. However, when looking at the numbers it becomes clear that the majority of political families win in constituencies (around 90%). These families rely on their local patronage networks to be elected being on the party list would actually be an disadvantage.
Measuring failed states
If we cannot base an argument on theoretical concepts (or don’t want to make these explicit), we construct an index. Such an index is usually neither based on theoretical grounds nor empirical data, but looks convincing and precise, especially if we use at least two decimal places. Thereby we can hide that it is in contradiction to logic and statistical basics, but perhaps we can sell it to organisations, media etc.
Concerning the logical faults: What, f.e. is the sum of three apples, two durian, one red snapper and three diamonds? Such sums are calculated in the failed states (and similar) index’! No theoretical argument is given, why these indicators have been selected. No information is given, why these indicators are scaled in such interval scales. No information is given why all distances between the intervals and indicators as well as all cases are equal. In short, the index is pure nonsense. May be it has a propaganda and ideological value, but it should not be used in any “scientific” argumentation, where we have to maintain at least the basic laws of logic!
Ji Ungpakorn on lese majeste
Ji writes:
With all due respect, but if the current government attempted this, they wouldn’t last more than a few weeks before there would be another coup. No, but there are other methods to resolve the issues you bring up . . .
For example, instead of revoking Section 112, other laws can be passed to remove the teeth of 112. The Lese Majeste law would still exist, pacifying proponents of it, yet the law would become nearly useless/unenforceable. Another example, wait until the leaders of the crimes are no longer in power – it’s justice delayed, but they won’t be able to fight back with a military coup when they finally stand trial. Political prisoners should be released slowly and quietly over time, as to not draw media attention of yellow-shirted reporters.
There are other laws, such as 116 and the computer crimes law, which are also used to suppress freedom of speech. These are much less controversial and probably should be resolved first. Baby steps.
Ji Ungpakorn on lese majeste
Ricky – 9
What do you suggest I do? Im not quite get it.
PRC
I totally agree with your analysis although I never really trying to explain it on NM. The king speech is so unstructured, so cryptic, and so vague that anyone can take it anyway, which is really bad for a country that really need a direction.
Find the gap
chris b #10
The answer to your question is “yes” – see comment 14 of the original post
I have a set of children’s books where each illustrated page has three lines of text: 1) Thai with occasional spaces, 2) English, and 3) pronunciation of English in Thai script with spaces between each word. The child presumably, at least as a by product, develops a facility for reading separated Thai words.
In addition, at the the recent International Conference of Thai Studies, one Thai academic who presented an analysis of Thai social studies text books was constrained to place markers between Thai words in her PowerPoint in order to get her message across.
It is worth recalling a quote from stuart (part of his informative comment 23 to the original post): Thai will evolve too. Without punctuation, there is simply no way that modern Thai can accommodate the agility of a fast-evolving society. I believe it will naturally select, over time, a set of punctuation and other hallmarks of an advanced modern language. If it doesn’t adopt punctuation – or is forced not to – then it will lose its ability to reflect and progress the increasingly compex discourse of Thai speakers as they transform from a rural agrarian society into a much more literate enterprise economy.
At the last count there were 46 comments to the original post.
Ji Ungpakorn on lese majeste
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This is a direct quote from the 2005 speech. It says, “Therefore sometimes you should violate…you’ll know who’s good, who’s bad.”
At issue is the overzealous and even insane at times vigor that protectors jump down the throats of people who have legitimate questions and pose legitimate issues to students re. the monarchy, etc. Given Thailand’s track record in this aspect, and the SS Troop-style methodology used nationwide to stomp out initiative, it’s going to be a long while before common sense finds a home here.
Family business, Thai style
The Party List system is also very helpful in ensuring that your relatives get “elected”.
Yingluck’s cabinet
How come Nong Pipe wasn’t on the list? There he was, nattily dressed in his white uniform with his three rows of medal ribbons. Surely he could at least be appointed assistant defence minister, and as a little child, provide a little much-needed leadership.
Ji Ungpakorn on lese majeste
@PRC,
Yes, I know your purpose, and thank you for your analysis. In fact, Khun Paul Handley had also said the same thing you said about ‘one needs to observe his distinct words’. In the documentary by Eric Campbell where Eric talked about the Black May 1992 when the King made an appearance to try to calm down the situation, Paul Handley said that the whole world interpreted his action in a way that he wanted to ‘intervene, to restore democracy’. However, Khun Paul said in the documentary that “if you observe his distinct words of what he said, you will notice that he was being very critical of the protest leader and not the military. And for the remainder of that year whenever he gave public speeched he always defended the military”.
So your analysis is very welcome and appreciated, although my concern is that because his speech is so muddled and contradictory, there will always be people who would object to your interpretation. But you are not the first person to observe this. Paul Handley has observed it before (as explained above). However there are also people like Ajarn Ji Ungpakorn who believes that the king is so cowardly and lacking in standing that he dares not to make it clear where he stands. Instead he speaks in a muddled and confusing manner that his words can be interpreted in both ways, so that he would not have to be responsible for his words.
Najib Razak, why the double standard?
The sexual preference of an individual should not matter. Najib Razak has rightly not acted on information that at least a member of his Cabinet was not heterosexual as are some of his senior aides. So, why the fuss about Anwar?
Extract from The Malaysian Insider, 10 August 2011
Ji Ungpakorn on lese majeste
@CT
I just recently read about statement analysis and the said real message suddenly became bloody apparent to me. The assumption is people do not want to lie, but do try to deceive. The king’s ‘apparent’ message against lese majeste is not a lie, but is certainly deceptive as I have pointed out.
This is not to play down your knowledge of the discrepancies between his words and actions. I just want to point out the hidden message that is not easily apparent to foreign observers (who normally don’t understand Thai and have to rely on translations which mostly cannot convey all the hidden messages.)
@Ricky.
Glad you asked. I became aware of the said microexpression once I saw this youtube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9374WSWYxmw&feature=related You can see that the King said the other parts of his speech with a blank expression, with eyes looking slightly downward, as if stressed and uninvolved in his own speech. However, his emotional involvement when he said “Actually, [they] should be jailed” is plain to see.
And PRC just happens to be my initials. I’m a Chinese Thai, but not affiliated with People’s Republic of China in any way.
Yingluck’s cabinet
Some quick googling on the new foreign minister reveals
A two year old interview (in Thai): http://www.4shared.com/get/U6b96kZS/DJ_Shanamy-DJ_Pitt_Interiew_Dr.html
And a profile:
http://mp.parliament.go.th/biographical/frontweb/Human_Resource/PersonDetail_Eng.aspx?Iden=H3GyEAxiZE9MK01KqJRtgA==