There are enough questions being raised about at least the Ubon City Hall burning to indicate that one should be be careful about what one regards as verifiable “facts” at this stage.
That the buildings burned is fact; who did all the burning is not.
If I remember right, (opinion) polls are prohibited in the week before the election. If that’s the case (and I’ve seen nothing released today) there won’t be any more reports until the real thing.
No matter how many times one has read about the 1976 Thammasat massacre, it is still harrowing to read about it again. I can still remember the newsreel clips of shirtless male and female students being kicked and beaten as they crawled on the ground shown overseas at the time. However, younger Thais are stunned and stupified when confronted with the facts of this story that is almost entirely eradicated from the national consciousness. It should be taught in schools as a key part of the history curriculum.
Part 2 is generally pretty good and doesn’t hesitate to show how Thaksin’s hubris led to his fall in detail. I only have minor quibbles such as the use, as in Part 1, of Nick Nostitz a highly partisan red shirt supporter, as a source. Also I am not sure that M855 red tipped rounds are only used by Thai special forces. They are NATO’s standard issue 5.56mm ammunition that is green tipped to distinguish it from orange tipped tracer rounds. I would think it likely that this ammo is used throughout the Thai military and could easily have been used by Men in Black also.
To A M Marshall – Whatever your genuine motive was in sacrificing the job you love, I appreciate your time and effort spent in compiling this 4 part series and sharing it to us at no cost. At least you’ll be safe from Khun Napas Na Pombejra when you wrote without the official Reuters journalist’s hat on (no guarantee though \:-)).
As a regular follower of your RSS feed at Reuters, I don’t see the problems with the US ambassador cables being quoted. Their accuracies aren’t really the ambassadors’ responsibility, but rather the truthfulness given to them by the persons present at the time of particular ‘talks’ or ‘interviews’ (and most of them were named, as RK #53 pointed out). Prudent readers have to judge by themselves how much weight they should give to each paragraph for its reliability. This is what most of us do all the time to information obtained from other sources.
Personally, if I have to make a choice, I’ll pick the cables as the more reliable sources when others on the list are mainstream Thai media.
If anyone could see tear from crocodile, then a few days ago, it happened in Ratchdamri. I think they should invite “The Guinness Book” to record those speeches from Suthep and Apisit. For me those tear from their eyes should have been shed from reptiles that craw in some army camps instead.
An entertaining read though I confess I have not quite finished. Isn’t this all rather irrelevant? And it still seems to be all smoke and mirrors. At the moment the country is facing an election. The problem now is who is going to carve up the country, because, whether Andrew knows this or not, that is what politicians, even in ‘honest’Abhisit’s circle, have been literally doing for the last decade on an unsurpassed level, while we are being asked to look at the Palace. The succession issue is one that has been discussed for the last 20 years, nothing new. And it may all turn to be totally irrelevant. Is there a conspiracy against Thailand? Yes. Just look in the right direction. A couple of posters here get it.
Sorry that you cannot download the article. If you were with an academic institution, you would be able to use your institution’s subscription to download it for free. However, there is a problem if you are not with an institution with a subscription. Therefore, if you want a free copy e-mail me at [email protected], and I will send you a pdf. Or, you can download it from LaoFAB’s website. It has been uploaded there and is freely available to all.
I only hope she is planning and preparing adequately while there still is an opportunity before the eventual and inevitable crackdown. No point at all in confining oneself to merely gesture politics, publicity and point scoring in a place like Burma.
Brings to mind Margaret Thatcher’s famous words “The lady is not for turning“. It’s so much easier to defy the world when you are in power.
We have witnessed that kind of defiance with the military regime that has just undergone a makeover but who are they kidding? A new leaf? A fig leaf so far as we can see.
An about face on a liberal’s total commitment to non-violence is long overdue. Her father never had any misgivings on that score. And she won’t be making a U turn in her most important commitment – fighting to win the ‘second struggle for independence’. “The Lady is not for turning“.
1. Andrew: It has taken a long read to get to the point p22 in part 2 the be precise where is written-
“Since 1932, Thailand’s history has been shaped by the shifting balance of power between three
institutions: the monarchy, the military, and parliament. For the vast majority of the time, the Royal
Thai Army has had the dominant role, usually – although not always – with the explicit backing of, and
in alliance with, King Bhumibol. As Federico Ferrara writes in Thailand Unhinged, “the symbiotic
relationship between the palace and the military has come at the expense of Thailand’s democracy”.
In order to justify and legitimize their persistent and destructive meddling in Thai politics, the military
and the network of powerful officials around the palace have fostered the myth that Bhumibol and the
monarchy are under threat. And in the name of protecting the monarchy, democracy has been been
repeatedly abrogated and freedom of speech denied.”
If you do a book I suggest you start with this. Then you will be closer to the position of Ji Ungpakorn.
Of course you would also need to remove your unsubstantiated praise of the King’s achievements (This is not a criticism of HM)
I especially wonder about his rural development efforts and dam advocacy. Is he a rank amateur in this field?
You give no information about his formal education to answer this question.
2. I have an update on: “We may attribute the failure of such efforts to divisions
within the royal family, or to the lack of mechanisms to effectively convey Palace views to
the public while maintaining plausible claims that the Chakri dynasty plays an appropriately
apolitical role.”
This past week on TV I saw a broadcast message with the palace pictured in a gilt frame quoting the
King as saying “Kham Kaeng Samkang..” Strength is most Important but really “Vote Democrat”; the
party which promoted “Thai Kham Kaeng” to launder its corruption money to stimulate the economy
and registered a new name Kham Kaeng in the event the old party was de-registered.
The palace appears to have given up the pretence entirely.
3. LesAbbey : “The great thing about these Wikileak cables is they were obviously only meant to be read by team players. That means there unlikely to be many reasons for the writer not to tell the what they think is the truth. We could probably imagine someone very ambitious ramping up the stories or someone not so smart just getting it totally wrong, but overall we should be able to expect mostly the truth.”
“Sometimes these checks and balances do not work as they should, for example the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, the Australian prime minister, by the Governor General John Kerr in 1975. In most cases though I think it’s more often the checks and balances not kicking in when they should rather than the other way round. In the UK this may have allowed Blair to lead the country into the Iraq adventure. In Thailand we do have a problem. The checks and balances are far from ideal. We see in America that their Supreme Court can be a powerful balance against a too powerful executive. The Thai judiciary has improved a lot but the real check and balance has resided with the army and palace. ”
My rejoinder to Les is that firstly he fails to realise how self delusional is the thinking of agents of the US State Department who write these cables.
Take this most recent example. Last Friday a former US ambassador to the UN and member of the Whitehouse staff who worked for both Bush father
and son gave a presentation to promote the sale of his book “Golden Bones” in Chiang Mai. The talk was sponsored by the US Consulate General here
and given at Payap University. Yes, an arch right wing Republican sponsored by a Democrat headed State Department.
The speaker was born in Cambodia but his loyalty is firmly with the USA judging from his refusal to comment on the present day troubles of that
country raised by the audience. He was asked a couple of ticklish questions. Had he read Noam Chomsky? Noam must be the most consistent well informed
and strident domestic critic of US imperial polocy of foreign intervention and support of military dictatorships and has written over 60 books. He answered
that he had heard the name but read none. And this fellow was US ambassador to the UN for 6 years and was unaware of the criticism.
He was aslo asked about what efforts he had made to have his country make reparations for the tremendous damage to Cambodia, Laos & VietNam inflicted
by the US attacks on those countries. He responded by ignoring this and accusing the Viet Cong of inflicting suffering on Cambodia and vietNam of twice invading
the country. (The latter statement is correct. The US puppet ARVN invaded Cambodia during the US war, but he failed to mention they were backed by the US.
The second occasion was when Socialist Vietnam invaded to destroy Deomcratic Kampuchea.) Then talk about pot calling kettle black, he proceeded to state
that invasion of one country by another as VietNam had done or Tanzania had to remove Idi Amin waas contrary to international law etc.
Yes we may be witnessing an honest interchange of State Department views, but no doubt we could find a UFO followers website from the USA with honestly
held opinions by the delusional.
We are seeing nothing about how the USA has built up the military of Thailand so that just as in the USA all governments are beholden to the men with guns.
Secondly the real checks and balances are not in instutions like the courts. I remember being taught history in Australia in junoir high school by a tall skinny
old spinster named Elvie Drummond. She taught us about the great shearers strike of the 1890’s and the lesson came loud and clear – the only defense of
democracy is a free trade union movement. Ask any dictator and you will find agreement that he will not tolerate such freedom. In the case of the Whitlam sacking
, it succeded because the then head of the trade unions was Robert Hawke who betrayed the country by refusing to allow a general strike to defend the government.
Later he became Prime Minister and took the country along the neo-Liberal path.
Jaruwan is no stranger to Bangkok’s nearly complete Suvarnabhumi airport blah blah blah
After the palace seized power, it appointed Jaruwan to lead a formal all-powerful investigation into Taksin’s alleged corruption. A specially-appointed court was established to hand out sentences. She was even given a prime-time reality TV show to ensure that her findings would be well publicized.
What corruption did she find? What charges did she file?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And now, suddenly, we have diplomatic cables of meetings with the Ambassador where she describes her iron-clad suspicions? LOL WTF If she had found anything solid, she would have announced it on her freaking reality TV show. Red faces indeed.
“I thought the King was rightfully dealt with in a positive light”
Overall, I think the jury is still out regarding the extent of involvement of various players, but I’m not so sure being painted as weak and unprincipled is all that positive.
(though I suppose it is slightly better than being shown to be the mastermind behind everything:)
‘ How can Abphisit claim to have any notion of the rule of law or democracy, when the deaths of 91 demonstrators and the injury of 1,000, over which he apparently shed tears, has not been met with the convening of an independent public enquiry? ‘
The election is in July and so gives new meaning to Karakadilekom tears. I fear Abhisit is going to be swimming with the Karakadiles Kome 3 July.
It must be acutely embarrassing for all Oxford alumni to see their PP&E product foolishly doing whatever the Brain Trust in the Royal Thai Army tells him to do. The only thing he seems to have learned at Oxford is how to keep on lying with a straight face, no matter how loud the whistles, catcalls, the jeers. I suppose that is an achievement of sorts.
This seems to be an advertisement for a $34 article on The Don Sahong Dam. There are pages and pages of links to freely available articles on The Don Sahong, and all the other proposed main channel dams on the Mekong, a scroogle search away.
Ninety percent of the ‘head’, the potential for generating power from the Lancang/Mekong, lies in China. These plans to lay waste to the human and overall ecology of the Mekong in pursuit of the remaining ten percent for the benefit of the very, very few… is mirrored in the scholarly articles on the process itself. Ninety percent ‘in the wild’ for free on the internet, ten percent damned behind a paywall for the profit of a very, very few.
From the point of view of historians or people interested in understanding the recent history, what we now know from the cables Khun Andrew already made public that is ‘new’?
I think we now have new information of at least three incidents that, in my view, are very important (chronologically):
– in early 2006 just prior to the sale of Shin Corp, Thaksin had told xxx privately of the sale. xxx reacted (according to Thaksin) quite badly. After that, as everyone knows, crises broke out. This means that, Thaksin must have known at the time that the opposition he was facing included xxx or was connected to xxx.
From what is just said, I now think that it’s quite possible that, when Thaksin came out in July of that year to renounce “people who have Charisma but are outside the Constitution”, he could in fact mean more than Prem (as I, for one, previously thought).
– in early June 2006 just before the 60th Anniversary Festivities, “Piya” made hundreds of pages print-out from the web-sites “Manusaya.com” and spent 3 days showing them to yyy, explaining to yyy that Thaksin was behind the websites.
– in mid-2008, just before the verdict on the Ratchada Land case was announced, Thaksin told the ambassador that he learned that xxx had issue order to have him convicted (he used the word “eliminate”, but I presumed he didn’t mean “kill”, just legally and politically eliminated).
Ok. You keep saying that his rally will “encourage some Thai voters to give Thaksin’s allies an even stronger and more stable electoral mandate.” And you keep repeating that.
BUT one cannot keep repeating a one-liner without any rationale and/or proof as to why that is.
If you wrote this article to try to persuade certain groups of people who are basically convinced by moronic one-liners, then this is just funny.
(Or was this meant as a joke?)
All power to Andrew Marshall for taking a bold position.
But am I the only one to be slightly disappointed?
My main concern is about the focus of the story. It’s all about a change in the Thai Monarchy, dissolute souls, tensions etc… Yet it reads like an episode from Dallas. There are people dying in Thailand from the military control, lack of regulation, or misplaced investment. But in this story we get all the details of who had which lover; what the Queen does; how the King misses the good old days. I think there is more to criticize in Thailand than the personalities of the Royal Family. What of the military (and I don’t just mean Prem)? What of the rise of other forces of inequality?
A lesser concern is that the story cites so much existing material (see comment 36).. and there are so many cliches (gathering storms… dreams turning to dust…). A tiny point too: the King is announced as being born in Brookline but later on in Cambridge. He was born in Cambridge (Mt Auburn Hospital – there is a square named after him).
And mixing all this with Al Quaeda early on? More sensationalism.
Andrew: good work and thanks for this. But please think if Thailand needs a version of ‘Princess in Love’ (the romantic book about Diana…) or something less like a soap opera.
I’m not sure what John means by the term “Marxist”, and certainly when I have read Margaret’s work before I have not felt I was reading works by a “Marxist historian”.
But nothing high-quality or original from me, I just want to offer thanks to both reviewers for thoughtful and thought-provoking reviews. Much appreciated.
Why can’t you guys do something for the betterment of our country rather than attacking Dr. Zarni like a child?
Look at which direction our country is going, the ruling military is incapable of running the country and thinking nothing but war and upgrading weapons. On the other hand, the opposition is just too morals in their ideology to lead our country forward.
With the ways things are going, I am very pessimistic for the future our country. I think assassinating Daw Suu is a very attractive option for the military led gov right now, they can certainly do a lot of things they want to do without her. Wouldn’t you be thinking the same thing if you were Than Shwe? But by assassinating her, the country can descent into chaos, much more restrictive economic sanctions will be imposed by the west and Burma or Myanmar (whatever you want to call) will turn to China for help as usual. Economically and politically, our country could become part of China.
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Democrat or democratic?
c4
There are enough questions being raised about at least the Ubon City Hall burning to indicate that one should be be careful about what one regards as verifiable “facts” at this stage.
That the buildings burned is fact; who did all the burning is not.
Abhisit’s blunder
c15
If I remember right, (opinion) polls are prohibited in the week before the election. If that’s the case (and I’ve seen nothing released today) there won’t be any more reports until the real thing.
Abhisit’s blunder
Is there any new poll showing that the Democrats’ popularity has improved after their Rajprasong rally ? Do their think-tank team read NM ?
Andrew Marshall’s Thai Story
No matter how many times one has read about the 1976 Thammasat massacre, it is still harrowing to read about it again. I can still remember the newsreel clips of shirtless male and female students being kicked and beaten as they crawled on the ground shown overseas at the time. However, younger Thais are stunned and stupified when confronted with the facts of this story that is almost entirely eradicated from the national consciousness. It should be taught in schools as a key part of the history curriculum.
Part 2 is generally pretty good and doesn’t hesitate to show how Thaksin’s hubris led to his fall in detail. I only have minor quibbles such as the use, as in Part 1, of Nick Nostitz a highly partisan red shirt supporter, as a source. Also I am not sure that M855 red tipped rounds are only used by Thai special forces. They are NATO’s standard issue 5.56mm ammunition that is green tipped to distinguish it from orange tipped tracer rounds. I would think it likely that this ammo is used throughout the Thai military and could easily have been used by Men in Black also.
Andrew Marshall’s Thai Story
To A M Marshall – Whatever your genuine motive was in sacrificing the job you love, I appreciate your time and effort spent in compiling this 4 part series and sharing it to us at no cost. At least you’ll be safe from Khun Napas Na Pombejra when you wrote without the official Reuters journalist’s hat on (no guarantee though \:-)).
As a regular follower of your RSS feed at Reuters, I don’t see the problems with the US ambassador cables being quoted. Their accuracies aren’t really the ambassadors’ responsibility, but rather the truthfulness given to them by the persons present at the time of particular ‘talks’ or ‘interviews’ (and most of them were named, as RK #53 pointed out). Prudent readers have to judge by themselves how much weight they should give to each paragraph for its reliability. This is what most of us do all the time to information obtained from other sources.
Personally, if I have to make a choice, I’ll pick the cables as the more reliable sources when others on the list are mainstream Thai media.
Abhisit’s blunder
If anyone could see tear from crocodile, then a few days ago, it happened in Ratchdamri. I think they should invite “The Guinness Book” to record those speeches from Suthep and Apisit. For me those tear from their eyes should have been shed from reptiles that craw in some army camps instead.
Andrew Marshall’s Thai Story
An entertaining read though I confess I have not quite finished. Isn’t this all rather irrelevant? And it still seems to be all smoke and mirrors. At the moment the country is facing an election. The problem now is who is going to carve up the country, because, whether Andrew knows this or not, that is what politicians, even in ‘honest’Abhisit’s circle, have been literally doing for the last decade on an unsurpassed level, while we are being asked to look at the Palace. The succession issue is one that has been discussed for the last 20 years, nothing new. And it may all turn to be totally irrelevant. Is there a conspiracy against Thailand? Yes. Just look in the right direction. A couple of posters here get it.
Don Sahong Dam in southern Laos
John Francis Lee,
Sorry that you cannot download the article. If you were with an academic institution, you would be able to use your institution’s subscription to download it for free. However, there is a problem if you are not with an institution with a subscription. Therefore, if you want a free copy e-mail me at [email protected], and I will send you a pdf. Or, you can download it from LaoFAB’s website. It has been uploaded there and is freely available to all.
Cheers,
Ian Baird
Zarni comes out firing at Burma experts, again
Take heart, Mg Myint.
Here’s an interesting departure in ASSK’s stance on non-violence.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-06-22/uk/29689405_1_aung-san-suu-kyi-junta-nobel-peace-laureate
I only hope she is planning and preparing adequately while there still is an opportunity before the eventual and inevitable crackdown. No point at all in confining oneself to merely gesture politics, publicity and point scoring in a place like Burma.
Brings to mind Margaret Thatcher’s famous words “The lady is not for turning“. It’s so much easier to defy the world when you are in power.
We have witnessed that kind of defiance with the military regime that has just undergone a makeover but who are they kidding? A new leaf? A fig leaf so far as we can see.
An about face on a liberal’s total commitment to non-violence is long overdue. Her father never had any misgivings on that score. And she won’t be making a U turn in her most important commitment – fighting to win the ‘second struggle for independence’. “The Lady is not for turning“.
Good luck to ASSK/NLD and the Burmese nation.
Andrew Marshall’s Thai Story
1. Andrew: It has taken a long read to get to the point p22 in part 2 the be precise where is written-
“Since 1932, Thailand’s history has been shaped by the shifting balance of power between three
institutions: the monarchy, the military, and parliament. For the vast majority of the time, the Royal
Thai Army has had the dominant role, usually – although not always – with the explicit backing of, and
in alliance with, King Bhumibol. As Federico Ferrara writes in Thailand Unhinged, “the symbiotic
relationship between the palace and the military has come at the expense of Thailand’s democracy”.
In order to justify and legitimize their persistent and destructive meddling in Thai politics, the military
and the network of powerful officials around the palace have fostered the myth that Bhumibol and the
monarchy are under threat. And in the name of protecting the monarchy, democracy has been been
repeatedly abrogated and freedom of speech denied.”
If you do a book I suggest you start with this. Then you will be closer to the position of Ji Ungpakorn.
Of course you would also need to remove your unsubstantiated praise of the King’s achievements (This is not a criticism of HM)
I especially wonder about his rural development efforts and dam advocacy. Is he a rank amateur in this field?
You give no information about his formal education to answer this question.
2. I have an update on: “We may attribute the failure of such efforts to divisions
within the royal family, or to the lack of mechanisms to effectively convey Palace views to
the public while maintaining plausible claims that the Chakri dynasty plays an appropriately
apolitical role.”
This past week on TV I saw a broadcast message with the palace pictured in a gilt frame quoting the
King as saying “Kham Kaeng Samkang..” Strength is most Important but really “Vote Democrat”; the
party which promoted “Thai Kham Kaeng” to launder its corruption money to stimulate the economy
and registered a new name Kham Kaeng in the event the old party was de-registered.
The palace appears to have given up the pretence entirely.
3. LesAbbey : “The great thing about these Wikileak cables is they were obviously only meant to be read by team players. That means there unlikely to be many reasons for the writer not to tell the what they think is the truth. We could probably imagine someone very ambitious ramping up the stories or someone not so smart just getting it totally wrong, but overall we should be able to expect mostly the truth.”
“Sometimes these checks and balances do not work as they should, for example the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, the Australian prime minister, by the Governor General John Kerr in 1975. In most cases though I think it’s more often the checks and balances not kicking in when they should rather than the other way round. In the UK this may have allowed Blair to lead the country into the Iraq adventure. In Thailand we do have a problem. The checks and balances are far from ideal. We see in America that their Supreme Court can be a powerful balance against a too powerful executive. The Thai judiciary has improved a lot but the real check and balance has resided with the army and palace. ”
My rejoinder to Les is that firstly he fails to realise how self delusional is the thinking of agents of the US State Department who write these cables.
Take this most recent example. Last Friday a former US ambassador to the UN and member of the Whitehouse staff who worked for both Bush father
and son gave a presentation to promote the sale of his book “Golden Bones” in Chiang Mai. The talk was sponsored by the US Consulate General here
and given at Payap University. Yes, an arch right wing Republican sponsored by a Democrat headed State Department.
The speaker was born in Cambodia but his loyalty is firmly with the USA judging from his refusal to comment on the present day troubles of that
country raised by the audience. He was asked a couple of ticklish questions. Had he read Noam Chomsky? Noam must be the most consistent well informed
and strident domestic critic of US imperial polocy of foreign intervention and support of military dictatorships and has written over 60 books. He answered
that he had heard the name but read none. And this fellow was US ambassador to the UN for 6 years and was unaware of the criticism.
He was aslo asked about what efforts he had made to have his country make reparations for the tremendous damage to Cambodia, Laos & VietNam inflicted
by the US attacks on those countries. He responded by ignoring this and accusing the Viet Cong of inflicting suffering on Cambodia and vietNam of twice invading
the country. (The latter statement is correct. The US puppet ARVN invaded Cambodia during the US war, but he failed to mention they were backed by the US.
The second occasion was when Socialist Vietnam invaded to destroy Deomcratic Kampuchea.) Then talk about pot calling kettle black, he proceeded to state
that invasion of one country by another as VietNam had done or Tanzania had to remove Idi Amin waas contrary to international law etc.
Yes we may be witnessing an honest interchange of State Department views, but no doubt we could find a UFO followers website from the USA with honestly
held opinions by the delusional.
We are seeing nothing about how the USA has built up the military of Thailand so that just as in the USA all governments are beholden to the men with guns.
Secondly the real checks and balances are not in instutions like the courts. I remember being taught history in Australia in junoir high school by a tall skinny
old spinster named Elvie Drummond. She taught us about the great shearers strike of the 1890’s and the lesson came loud and clear – the only defense of
democracy is a free trade union movement. Ask any dictator and you will find agreement that he will not tolerate such freedom. In the case of the Whitlam sacking
, it succeded because the then head of the trade unions was Robert Hawke who betrayed the country by refusing to allow a general strike to defend the government.
Later he became Prime Minister and took the country along the neo-Liberal path.
Wikileaks and Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn
Jaruwan is no stranger to Bangkok’s nearly complete Suvarnabhumi airport blah blah blah
After the palace seized power, it appointed Jaruwan to lead a formal all-powerful investigation into Taksin’s alleged corruption. A specially-appointed court was established to hand out sentences. She was even given a prime-time reality TV show to ensure that her findings would be well publicized.
What corruption did she find? What charges did she file?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And now, suddenly, we have diplomatic cables of meetings with the Ambassador where she describes her iron-clad suspicions? LOL WTF If she had found anything solid, she would have announced it on her freaking reality TV show. Red faces indeed.
Wikileaks and Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn
Les: You’d best be wary of relying too much on the word of Jaruvan lest you end up with a red face 🙂
http://saiyasombut.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/the-eternal-auditor-general-why-thailands-duck-lady-wont-retire-that-easily/
Andrew Marshall’s Thai Story
“I thought the King was rightfully dealt with in a positive light”
Overall, I think the jury is still out regarding the extent of involvement of various players, but I’m not so sure being painted as weak and unprincipled is all that positive.
(though I suppose it is slightly better than being shown to be the mastermind behind everything:)
Abhisit’s blunder
‘ How can Abphisit claim to have any notion of the rule of law or democracy, when the deaths of 91 demonstrators and the injury of 1,000, over which he apparently shed tears, has not been met with the convening of an independent public enquiry? ‘
The election is in July and so gives new meaning to Karakadilekom tears. I fear Abhisit is going to be swimming with the Karakadiles Kome 3 July.
It must be acutely embarrassing for all Oxford alumni to see their PP&E product foolishly doing whatever the Brain Trust in the Royal Thai Army tells him to do. The only thing he seems to have learned at Oxford is how to keep on lying with a straight face, no matter how loud the whistles, catcalls, the jeers. I suppose that is an achievement of sorts.
Don Sahong Dam in southern Laos
This seems to be an advertisement for a $34 article on The Don Sahong Dam. There are pages and pages of links to freely available articles on The Don Sahong, and all the other proposed main channel dams on the Mekong, a scroogle search away.
Ninety percent of the ‘head’, the potential for generating power from the Lancang/Mekong, lies in China. These plans to lay waste to the human and overall ecology of the Mekong in pursuit of the remaining ten percent for the benefit of the very, very few… is mirrored in the scholarly articles on the process itself. Ninety percent ‘in the wild’ for free on the internet, ten percent damned behind a paywall for the profit of a very, very few.
Andrew Marshall’s Thai Story
From the point of view of historians or people interested in understanding the recent history, what we now know from the cables Khun Andrew already made public that is ‘new’?
I think we now have new information of at least three incidents that, in my view, are very important (chronologically):
– in early 2006 just prior to the sale of Shin Corp, Thaksin had told xxx privately of the sale. xxx reacted (according to Thaksin) quite badly. After that, as everyone knows, crises broke out. This means that, Thaksin must have known at the time that the opposition he was facing included xxx or was connected to xxx.
From what is just said, I now think that it’s quite possible that, when Thaksin came out in July of that year to renounce “people who have Charisma but are outside the Constitution”, he could in fact mean more than Prem (as I, for one, previously thought).
– in early June 2006 just before the 60th Anniversary Festivities, “Piya” made hundreds of pages print-out from the web-sites “Manusaya.com” and spent 3 days showing them to yyy, explaining to yyy that Thaksin was behind the websites.
– in mid-2008, just before the verdict on the Ratchada Land case was announced, Thaksin told the ambassador that he learned that xxx had issue order to have him convicted (he used the word “eliminate”, but I presumed he didn’t mean “kill”, just legally and politically eliminated).
Abhisit’s blunder
Ok. You keep saying that his rally will “encourage some Thai voters to give Thaksin’s allies an even stronger and more stable electoral mandate.” And you keep repeating that.
BUT one cannot keep repeating a one-liner without any rationale and/or proof as to why that is.
If you wrote this article to try to persuade certain groups of people who are basically convinced by moronic one-liners, then this is just funny.
(Or was this meant as a joke?)
Andrew Marshall’s Thai Story
All power to Andrew Marshall for taking a bold position.
But am I the only one to be slightly disappointed?
My main concern is about the focus of the story. It’s all about a change in the Thai Monarchy, dissolute souls, tensions etc… Yet it reads like an episode from Dallas. There are people dying in Thailand from the military control, lack of regulation, or misplaced investment. But in this story we get all the details of who had which lover; what the Queen does; how the King misses the good old days. I think there is more to criticize in Thailand than the personalities of the Royal Family. What of the military (and I don’t just mean Prem)? What of the rise of other forces of inequality?
A lesser concern is that the story cites so much existing material (see comment 36).. and there are so many cliches (gathering storms… dreams turning to dust…). A tiny point too: the King is announced as being born in Brookline but later on in Cambridge. He was born in Cambridge (Mt Auburn Hospital – there is a square named after him).
And mixing all this with Al Quaeda early on? More sensationalism.
Andrew: good work and thanks for this. But please think if Thailand needs a version of ‘Princess in Love’ (the romantic book about Diana…) or something less like a soap opera.
Review of Economic History of Cambodia
I’m not sure what John means by the term “Marxist”, and certainly when I have read Margaret’s work before I have not felt I was reading works by a “Marxist historian”.
But nothing high-quality or original from me, I just want to offer thanks to both reviewers for thoughtful and thought-provoking reviews. Much appreciated.
Zarni comes out firing at Burma experts, again
Why can’t you guys do something for the betterment of our country rather than attacking Dr. Zarni like a child?
Look at which direction our country is going, the ruling military is incapable of running the country and thinking nothing but war and upgrading weapons. On the other hand, the opposition is just too morals in their ideology to lead our country forward.
With the ways things are going, I am very pessimistic for the future our country. I think assassinating Daw Suu is a very attractive option for the military led gov right now, they can certainly do a lot of things they want to do without her. Wouldn’t you be thinking the same thing if you were Than Shwe? But by assassinating her, the country can descent into chaos, much more restrictive economic sanctions will be imposed by the west and Burma or Myanmar (whatever you want to call) will turn to China for help as usual. Economically and politically, our country could become part of China.