Of ocurse Thaksin contributes money and is central to the movement. The money from inside or outside the country is misleading as there was lot of Thaksin money moving around in the country shortly before the April and May incidents.
Quite why the words of leaders of whatever generation of any poltical movement of any persuausion would be taken as sacrosanct and without skepticism is beyond me. It seems more an attempt at creating a meme by some who would wish the movment were a left wing pure one rather than the reality of a mix of the whole political spectrum including quite reactionary elements as well as left wing ones and at least contributing to holfding it together is Thaksin. Rather than talk to the various leaders I would suggest mixing with and talking to the ordinary farmers, workers, shop owners and business people who have and in amny cases continue to support the TRT/PPP/PTP where the popualrity of Thaksin although not what it used to be still far surpasses that of any leader of PTP or the reds and actually it is easy enough to find people who like Thaksin but dont like the reds. At times of change contradictions and odd alliances are often found (didnt Gramsci make some remark like this?). Things are not simple and never fit with what the ideologues would like. An analysis of other players (and there are more than two sides in this) would also reveal strange croos poltical spectrum alliances and also expose Thaksin as being still a central theme there too whether as symbol or because of action.
Take Thaksin out of the equation and the red movement and PTP lose support in the country. Take Thaksin out fo the equation and the demands of the red movement become acceptable to a lot more people. That is a conundrum. However, I would not expect Thaksin to withdraw himself or at least not in a way that wasnt different from his divorce. And while his funding and draw of popularity remains important the leadership will not distance from him too. That is a problem for purist leftists who fail to recognize the complexity of the movement and who would probably not want to be linked to someone with such a horrific human rights record. Then again the leftists aligned against this movement because of the links to Thaksin also have their own problems with being allied to what is an anti-democratic movement.
I have to agree with Somsak on this with regard to Jim Taylor’s statement. What’s wrong with denying the fact that some money has been donated from out side the country? If we are to be better than those mindless yellow shirt conservative royalist, be better be able to project ourselves better than them.
No, there’s nothing wrong with Thaksin giving money to the Red Shirts. Why would any sane person (let alone one who claims to be Res sympathizer) has to deny this?
Jim Taylor and others on the left have to deny this Somsak otherwise the left’s support of the red shirts begins to look opportunistic to say the least.
You end up with a comparison I made more than a year ago. Would the left in Italy support a movement to reinstall Berlusconi if he was removed by non-constitutional means? Maybe they would, but how much cleaner a policy of ‘a plague on both your houses’ would have been.
Somsak- this is my recent research last few months, much of this in the field where I i/v’d many red shirt leaders & former guards inside prison and second and third level leaders outside and front line provincial red shirt UDD members. What we need is not further ruminations from the comfort zone of places such as yours in Thammasat and preformed opinions, but primary, discrete & ethical ethnographic research to understand directly from the people how they think, feel and act…At the centre of reflection we need truth and to put the Thaksin card back on the table & see if, as I suggest, what many of us have understood over the past five years was not purely pro-statist/amaat media fiction (means justification). We should all be prepared to reflect and re-position our views if need be otherwise we will never realise truth. Anything else is speculation. For security reasons I will not disclose names and place of my informants give the trust shown to me, but some of this research is currently in process of being reviewed for publication. Do we take the blue or the red pill as Morpheus offered to Neo in the Matrix: or do we stay in wonderland?
“Unfortunately, the written Lao which accompanied English in the conference program included pre-revolutionary spelling, which no doubt served to marginalise the few Lao participants in attendance.”
The name of the conference in Lao could pass for old or new spelling. However, the only Lao writing I see at the conference was the welcoming letter on the program booklet written by Dr. Vinya Sysamouth, who is a Lao American. Most Lao oversees were educated in the old system and therefore retained the old writing system when they fled the country. Thus it is not surprise to see Dr. Vinya, an overseas Lao, uses the older system instead of the newer form.
after recent research it was evident that funding came from the participants and domestic supporters, not from outside the country.
which ‘research’ leads to such conclusion? I think I have read or followed the report of, virtually all the ‘researches’ or presentation of research on the Red Shirt movement (I even know some of the researchers personally), but never once I encounter any research that asserts that there was no ‘funding from outside the country’, or even that is able to show that funding from supporters inside the country is bigger than from the outside.
Everyone knows that Red Shirts and sympathizers inside the country (including Phua Thai politicians) contributes money to the rally – there is no need for any ‘research’ to confirm that!(Donations were read out at rally!) But, please Jim Taylor, produce or cite any research that would deny that there’s no funding from outside the country, as you insist here.
Once again, to ‘defend’ Red Shirts the way you do, is wrong. You never realize that you effectively give grounds to the government and Red Shirts enemy, by operating on the same grounds as theirs’, i.e. funding from Thaksin (or any involvement by Thaksin) is the wrong thing, an evil thing. No, there’s nothing wrong with Thaksin giving money to the Red Shirts. Why would any sane person (let alone one who claims to be Res sympathizer) has to deny this? Thank goodness, Jakkraphob and most of the Red Shirts masses themselves (ask them!) are not as inept as Jim Taylor, the latter would quite defiantly say to the gov and to you that ‘Thaksin contributes money, so what?”
What did Senior Mentor Lee Kuan Yew had in mind when he fought the Malaysian counterparts over this same ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ idea? He went ahead with this idea in Singapore, ‘Majulah Singapura!’ achieved via equality and unity when Singapore was booted out. He was a menace to the Malaysians, wasn’t he? The Singaporean opposition is hiring shyster Robert Amsterdam to handle him. A debate between LKY & RA could be marketed as the ‘Debate of the Century’. NM might become really famous to pull that off. Pay-per-View windfall. My bet is on the Senior Lee to win!
Btw, the name ‘Kuan Yew’ in Thai is ‘to agitate;to trouble’ If I add another Thai word ‘tin’ to give ‘Kuan tin Yew’ (still pulling your leg).
Politician “A person with whose politics you don’t agree. If you agree with him, he a stateman.” -David Lloyd George-
Here’s a guess – to open discussion – about why Jakrapob has suddenly come out of the woodwork, to give such a high profile interview :
polarisation is gathering pace – Jakrapob, who a high-profile journalist @FCCT told me has long harboured ambitions of becoming PM ! – needs to make his move now.
The Democrat Party may be dissolved, leaving PAD’s New Politics Party as the major opponent of Peua Thai.
See Voranai re this : http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/188888/the-bright-yellow-washing-detergent
David Brown, as I said in my posts, although I don’t necessarily agree with your position, I can agree with what you say here.
You are correct in saying, Thaksin is a business man (and I would say in lots of ways, a good one – other aspects, including his propensity to over bend the rules, not so good). I would add, he is also (or at least, has been) an expert marketer.
I also applaud his desire to modernize Thailand.
My issue is with his methods.
This includes, employing people such as Mr. Amsterdam.
If he hadn’t overplayed his hand (and continues to do so), he could have been, just what Thailand needed (and still does).
To take a “passive” approach to his predicament, at this time and wait out events that will happen in the next few years, would in my mind, be far more effective. But of course, that would require a major rejig of his business modes operendi.
How likely is that?
In the end, I feel sad for Thailand.
But, I do have enough faith in the Thai people (at all levels) to believe, eventually (and this might not be for several years), they will create a society, which is quite special and the envy of many other countries
There are two types of people I admire and despise the most; the first is a nationalist, the second – a nationalist. Thanks, a good speech indeed. It renders an essential combination between political leadership and a passion of youth.
I had a privilege of meeting two Malaysian prime ministers, one of whom was Tunku Abdul Rahman. Regrettably, I was too young to make a meaningful conversation with him (not that I understood who he was.) It was much later that I studied about him. Nostalgia isn’t my trait, but the thought of Tunku and other Asian leaders of his generation does remind you that once politics was defined by passion, belief, vocation, integrity – good old stuffs politicians of today seriously lack.
I share the same belief with Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah that the hope of my society rests with the future generations. Present day Thai politicians and social figures are too eager to have themselves go down in history as “statesmen”, forgetting that statesmanship will be measured by the gift you left to your next generations.
I find it difficult to criticise the quality of many things I hear or read about Laos in an academic forum precisely because there isn’t a great deal out there. When something of reasonable analytical and theoretical quality does come along it’s like Christmas. I will relish, for example, Grant’s next coffee table tribute. While last time it was to the lost Monarchy this time it could well be to the lost indochina communist party at the hands of Chinese economic imperialism. But what in the world are we going to do when the Evans era is finally over? Few younger academics seem to show any significant interest in theorising the politics of social change in Laos (and most of those who do were absent from the conference. The Canadian contingent was nowhere to be seen). The Germans have something happening. Bioke is interesting, but like every student of Bourdieu, and every student of a student of Bourdieu, he seems rather more interested in ‘Bourdieu’ than in Laos. The more open research environment of recent years in Laos has produced a few notably snobbish (and definitely very loud) American types who ride buck whip-cracking on the arse end of the anti-politics machine posing as critics of ‘the development industry’ whilst paradoxically propping this industry up with their complete lack of theoretical alternative to the idea of development. Are we all still supposed to look ‘shocked’ when they expose ‘failed’ projects?! They would be put to better use exposing all the failed bombs still laying around. Embezzlement and resource exploitation are certainly not failing in Laos and two decades of ‘development’ seem to have only strengthened these things. Land tenure is a site for the production of some fascinating new geopolitical ideas about Laos but rather than treading too deeply into this muddy quagmire (the one where most of the rural population of Laos are currenty languishing) the conference plenary session tiptoed around it, failing to emerge from a rather anti-political debate about what the propper role of an EIA is. Few, if any, questions were asked about the notion of power and the relationships that constitute this notion in Laos and in other global spaces and places that constitute the study of the Lao. This may be because a world where critical questions could be asked of authoritarianism is fast dissappearing. The western insititutions that gave space and rigour to debate about power in Evans’ day are more likely to be funded by those same sources of power today. The next generation of Australians are hardly carrying the torch for Grant. One might be tempted to write off the few piecemeal articles on Laos from Australian authors that have been published in recent years as being the result of mediocre theoretical immersion in an underfunded second tier university system. But it might just be that the ‘lack’ of a new generation of little Evanses is largely a result of the extraordinarily critical approach Evans himself seems to take to anything writen on Laos that does not agree with his own perspective. He might want to interpret some of that disagreement as love. There is a world of possibility when it comes to the study of the Lao and Laoness. It was not particularly noticeable at this conference.
“After reading the prevailing political and military situations correctly, General Aung San, the 30-year-old willing ally of the invading Japanese, secretly met with British Field Marshall William Slim and sold his former masters into the hands of rapidly approaching British 14th Army.”
I would suggest Hla Oo to read Thein Pe Myint’s “Wartime Traveller” and “Allied Forces and a Burmese Messenger” sequel to understand how our young Burmese Thakhins, including Burma Independent Army (BIA) commanders, scrambled to get rid of the Japanese they invited soon after the invasion. Thein Pe Myint travelled to India to seek British assistance. BIA headquarters in Mandalay created an Internal Auditor post for Capt. Tin Mya (Thakhin Tin Mya – still lives today in Yangon) to escort Thein Pe Myint to Arakan border. Thein Pe Myint recorded that Tin Mya and Soe (Communist leader) went back to mainland Burma in 11th July 1942 (read this timing).
According to Thein Pe Myint, in October 1944, Force 136 of British army trained dozens of Burman and Arakan youths in Peshawar for an advance mission. Among them was messenger Maung Kyi, a Burma Defence Army (BDA) soldier, who later parachuted near Pegu to convey a detail plan stored in a micro film.
Note: English language readers could find these sources in Robert H. Taylor (ed.), Marxism and Resistance in Burma 1942-5: Thein Pe Myint’s Wartime Traveller (Athens, Ohio Univ. Press, 1984) and Thein Pe (Myint), What Happened in Burma (Allahabad, 1943), both cited in Martin Smith. Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity (White Lotus, 1999)
Another first hand account is Brigadier Kyaw Zaw’s auto-biography . Kyaw Zaw was a member of Thirty Comrades and a BDA commander who was later to become a communist and now lives in Kunming. His record reveals that in 1944 (August ?) , Soe and Aung San secretly met for three days at his house in Pegu to finalize plans for anti-fascist movement. Kyaw Zaw also confirmed that it was Aung San who earlier ordered him to make arrangements for the meeting as well as to escort Soe in and out of his hiding place.
So when Aung San and Slim met at latter’s headquarters at Meiktila in 15th May 1945 (cited in Shelby Tucker, The Curse of Independence), both sides, Aung San in particular, had already prepared for what to expect and what to bargain. That is, all the groundwork leading up to that meeting were laid long ago. It was never a last minute switch as Hla Oo alleged.
For accusations of bayoneting a village headman in Thaton in 1942, Aung San had never denied that he carried out the execution. I believe Mountbatten saw more than a political reason for him to declare “[I]n the unsettled conditions which must have existed, it was only to be expected, I suppose, that summary justice would rule, and that old scores would be paid off” (Tucker, p- 114) . Perhaps Aung San’s case was not the only misdeed committed among the ranks of BIA commanders during the heights of Japanese militarism spell. Kyaw Zaw has admitted one for himself. Those atrocities were more to do with juncture of wartime urgency than systematic human right abuses.
Hla Oo’s illuminative story that his father received three line letter from Aung San to kill their Japanese teachers will remain as one of WWII personal tales among many. Hla Oo’s father no longer lives to verify these accounts. Neither a written note was cited with regard to that claim. Kyaw Htin passed away in Yangon in late 1990s. Perhaps in one day, the story will be made into a movie in Burma for our children or grandchildren’s cinema outing.
While we shall learn to expose prejudice of our heroes, as much as we do of their pride, one must be mindful to recognize importance of “local settings” that existed in the backdrop of these events. An argument without any effort to empathize indigenous representation simply lacks essence of originality. Like many “Burma debates” today, at best they offer “deadlock” or “limbo” in Hla Oo’s word.
Lastly, why independent Burma is not a prosperous country? In fact Burma has never been prosperous under the Western measures (save Harvey and Hall for being British, read Dijk’s “Seventeenth-century Burma and
the Dutch East India Company” ). And so called the claims of “having the best potential to be prosperous in post WWII Southeast Asia” is far from being prosperous. Until both sides (in the present conflict) come to acknowledge such realities to forge a common ground, Burma is set to remain in the realms of poverty and turbulence as it has been for centuries.
not sure what J is getting at in this i/v, but red shirt leaders and front line activists in Thailand agree that Thaksin was a symbolic figure to the masses and after recent research it was evident that funding came from the participants and domestic supporters, not from outside the country. The UDD [р╕Щр╕Ыр╕К] is skint; even alternative media is trying to consider ways of selling small shares to the people to generate funding…dont take J’s comments too literally. There is some movement going on with the splinter group “Red Siam” [р╣Бр╕Фр╕Зр╕кр╕вр╕▓р╕б] as Surachai also came out a few weeks back. Remember most of the core UDD are in prison (though Veera, charged with terrorism, recently released on bail a Bt 6m, but needs to report very 15 days). 26 people are being charged on terrorism including Thaksin (and Saedaeng)/
Conceit and patronising other NM readers is rather unbecoming of any NM reader.
You seem to be talking through your hat if in your opinion very specific periods in anybody’s life without a log of some sort or an alibi must necessarily be not only dodgy but positively sinister. Guilty until proven innocent?
Hero worship and needing heroes, though part of human nature, is completely beside the point. Nobody forgets ASSK is a competent and elected (by her followers as their leader, not in the 1990 elections) politician, not even the foreigners. There never was a personality cult in Burma, not of Aung San the hero or even Ne Win the dictator. Heroes we have plenty, but we know them warts and all.
Besides, Aung San was never portrayed as perfect to us. It is common knowledge that he was the awkward unsociable type and his idea of naming his children was considered quirky and even weird. Dagon Taya, the famous author and his contemporary, wrote very early on about “Aung San the Untamed”, the man he knew.
So it is nothing personal either to say that Hla Oo has an agenda.
a. He has been consistently peddling the line of the Burmese being inherently violent if you read all the threads he is involved in past and present, either as a guest contributor or in the comments. From U Thant’s funeral riots of 1974 through the 8888 Uprising to now Aung San, the first two allegedly ‘eye witness accounts’.
b. By his own admission, he’d had contact and shady business dealings with the Burmese Military Intelligence after he’d left the country and having lived abroad for several years.
c. He does have something unique to offer to both Burmese and non-Burmese readers. He happens to be an ex-Tatmadaw man with so many tales to tell, most of what he has to tell unknown to most of us until now.
d. He is a very good story teller with a vivid imagination and delivers a ripping yarn, supposedly factual, but in truth fiction based on fact (faction), such as the execution of the Japanese officers. His father, by his own admission, would never have told him the real story in such graphic detail.
e. He often contradicts himself and takes liberty with the chronolgy of events to suit the ‘moral’ of his story line.
f. He has been at pains to convey the message that the Burmese generals today are really only so many chips of the old block, a violent race that cannot help being brutal and ruthless.
It’s in the genes. Just look at the murderous students during U Thant’s funeral. Look at the mob violence in 1988. Look at their national hero Aung San who brutally committed a ‘racist murder’ of an Indian headman allegedly for his crimes of repression in collaboration with the colonialists, and left this sort of legacy to the army.
Strangely enough, today’s members of the Burmese junta, who cannot possibly claim to be Aung San’s protégé but actually Ne Win’s, appear to have got away scot free.
At least the people are just as violent as the rulers. So it’s all right then. They deserve each other, a match made in heaven or hell if you prefer.
It is worth noting that it is not only Aung San but Ne Win that the junta is distancing themselves from thus disowning their true father figure who had transformed what was left of the national liberation army that Aung San founded to the modern Burmese army which instead of defending its own people embarked upon a path of blatant exploitation, brutal repression and above all interminable bloody wars against both Burmese and ethnic minorities, of which Hla Oo has been a youthful and willing if ignorant instrument. There’s no way he can plead youthful ignorance today.
My original comment was off the cuff, and maybe a bit unclear, so I’ll clarify it, in part because it is relevant to NM Reader’s last observation.
What Hla Oo says regarding Aung San’s faults is not really that new, or original. Shelby Tucker, in his book “Burma: the Curse of Independence” goes in to much greater detail about Aung San’s actions during WWII and comes to much more negative conclusions. As for whether Tucker’s analysis is right or wrong, I’ll leave to for others to decide, but it isn’t substantively different than Hla Oo’s basic point.
As for Mika Rolly, I’d have to check through my back issues of the Karenni Journal, but I believe he at one point made rather similar observations. I’d tend to agree in general with John Lee Francis’ point about Hla Oo’s writing largely being a work of fiction, although I’d be more inclined to apply that to some of his previous writings. With regard to Aung San, if it is fiction, it is a fiction believed by some of the ethnic minority people I’ve dealt with.
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ABC Interview with Jakrapob
Of ocurse Thaksin contributes money and is central to the movement. The money from inside or outside the country is misleading as there was lot of Thaksin money moving around in the country shortly before the April and May incidents.
Quite why the words of leaders of whatever generation of any poltical movement of any persuausion would be taken as sacrosanct and without skepticism is beyond me. It seems more an attempt at creating a meme by some who would wish the movment were a left wing pure one rather than the reality of a mix of the whole political spectrum including quite reactionary elements as well as left wing ones and at least contributing to holfding it together is Thaksin. Rather than talk to the various leaders I would suggest mixing with and talking to the ordinary farmers, workers, shop owners and business people who have and in amny cases continue to support the TRT/PPP/PTP where the popualrity of Thaksin although not what it used to be still far surpasses that of any leader of PTP or the reds and actually it is easy enough to find people who like Thaksin but dont like the reds. At times of change contradictions and odd alliances are often found (didnt Gramsci make some remark like this?). Things are not simple and never fit with what the ideologues would like. An analysis of other players (and there are more than two sides in this) would also reveal strange croos poltical spectrum alliances and also expose Thaksin as being still a central theme there too whether as symbol or because of action.
Take Thaksin out of the equation and the red movement and PTP lose support in the country. Take Thaksin out fo the equation and the demands of the red movement become acceptable to a lot more people. That is a conundrum. However, I would not expect Thaksin to withdraw himself or at least not in a way that wasnt different from his divorce. And while his funding and draw of popularity remains important the leadership will not distance from him too. That is a problem for purist leftists who fail to recognize the complexity of the movement and who would probably not want to be linked to someone with such a horrific human rights record. Then again the leftists aligned against this movement because of the links to Thaksin also have their own problems with being allied to what is an anti-democratic movement.
ABC Interview with Jakrapob
I have to agree with Somsak on this with regard to Jim Taylor’s statement. What’s wrong with denying the fact that some money has been donated from out side the country? If we are to be better than those mindless yellow shirt conservative royalist, be better be able to project ourselves better than them.
ABC Interview with Jakrapob
Somsak – 5
No, there’s nothing wrong with Thaksin giving money to the Red Shirts. Why would any sane person (let alone one who claims to be Res sympathizer) has to deny this?
Jim Taylor and others on the left have to deny this Somsak otherwise the left’s support of the red shirts begins to look opportunistic to say the least.
You end up with a comparison I made more than a year ago. Would the left in Italy support a movement to reinstall Berlusconi if he was removed by non-constitutional means? Maybe they would, but how much cleaner a policy of ‘a plague on both your houses’ would have been.
ABC Interview with Jakrapob
Somsak- this is my recent research last few months, much of this in the field where I i/v’d many red shirt leaders & former guards inside prison and second and third level leaders outside and front line provincial red shirt UDD members. What we need is not further ruminations from the comfort zone of places such as yours in Thammasat and preformed opinions, but primary, discrete & ethical ethnographic research to understand directly from the people how they think, feel and act…At the centre of reflection we need truth and to put the Thaksin card back on the table & see if, as I suggest, what many of us have understood over the past five years was not purely pro-statist/amaat media fiction (means justification). We should all be prepared to reflect and re-position our views if need be otherwise we will never realise truth. Anything else is speculation. For security reasons I will not disclose names and place of my informants give the trust shown to me, but some of this research is currently in process of being reviewed for publication. Do we take the blue or the red pill as Morpheus offered to Neo in the Matrix: or do we stay in wonderland?
“The Bangkok Massacres: A call for accountability”
Interesting that StanG can write of several posts on Amsterdam and his report and then tell us that he hasn’t read it and isn’t going to. Here’s Amsterdam’s response to Somtow: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/08/02/politics/A-novelists-fantasy-30135017.html
Lao studies conference 2010: the fascination of the marginal
“Unfortunately, the written Lao which accompanied English in the conference program included pre-revolutionary spelling, which no doubt served to marginalise the few Lao participants in attendance.”
The name of the conference in Lao could pass for old or new spelling. However, the only Lao writing I see at the conference was the welcoming letter on the program booklet written by Dr. Vinya Sysamouth, who is a Lao American. Most Lao oversees were educated in the old system and therefore retained the old writing system when they fled the country. Thus it is not surprise to see Dr. Vinya, an overseas Lao, uses the older system instead of the newer form.
ABC Interview with Jakrapob
Jim Taylor #3 writes:
after recent research it was evident that funding came from the participants and domestic supporters, not from outside the country.
which ‘research’ leads to such conclusion? I think I have read or followed the report of, virtually all the ‘researches’ or presentation of research on the Red Shirt movement (I even know some of the researchers personally), but never once I encounter any research that asserts that there was no ‘funding from outside the country’, or even that is able to show that funding from supporters inside the country is bigger than from the outside.
Everyone knows that Red Shirts and sympathizers inside the country (including Phua Thai politicians) contributes money to the rally – there is no need for any ‘research’ to confirm that!(Donations were read out at rally!) But, please Jim Taylor, produce or cite any research that would deny that there’s no funding from outside the country, as you insist here.
Once again, to ‘defend’ Red Shirts the way you do, is wrong. You never realize that you effectively give grounds to the government and Red Shirts enemy, by operating on the same grounds as theirs’, i.e. funding from Thaksin (or any involvement by Thaksin) is the wrong thing, an evil thing. No, there’s nothing wrong with Thaksin giving money to the Red Shirts. Why would any sane person (let alone one who claims to be Res sympathizer) has to deny this? Thank goodness, Jakkraphob and most of the Red Shirts masses themselves (ask them!) are not as inept as Jim Taylor, the latter would quite defiantly say to the gov and to you that ‘Thaksin contributes money, so what?”
We were once ‘Malaysians’
What did Senior Mentor Lee Kuan Yew had in mind when he fought the Malaysian counterparts over this same ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ idea? He went ahead with this idea in Singapore, ‘Majulah Singapura!’ achieved via equality and unity when Singapore was booted out. He was a menace to the Malaysians, wasn’t he? The Singaporean opposition is hiring shyster Robert Amsterdam to handle him. A debate between LKY & RA could be marketed as the ‘Debate of the Century’. NM might become really famous to pull that off. Pay-per-View windfall. My bet is on the Senior Lee to win!
Btw, the name ‘Kuan Yew’ in Thai is ‘to agitate;to trouble’ If I add another Thai word ‘tin’ to give ‘Kuan tin Yew’ (still pulling your leg).
Politician “A person with whose politics you don’t agree. If you agree with him, he a stateman.” -David Lloyd George-
ABC Interview with Jakrapob
Here’s a guess – to open discussion – about why Jakrapob has suddenly come out of the woodwork, to give such a high profile interview :
polarisation is gathering pace – Jakrapob, who a high-profile journalist @FCCT told me has long harboured ambitions of becoming PM ! – needs to make his move now.
The Democrat Party may be dissolved, leaving PAD’s New Politics Party as the major opponent of Peua Thai.
See Voranai re this :
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/188888/the-bright-yellow-washing-detergent
“The Bangkok Massacres: A call for accountability”
David Brown, as I said in my posts, although I don’t necessarily agree with your position, I can agree with what you say here.
You are correct in saying, Thaksin is a business man (and I would say in lots of ways, a good one – other aspects, including his propensity to over bend the rules, not so good). I would add, he is also (or at least, has been) an expert marketer.
I also applaud his desire to modernize Thailand.
My issue is with his methods.
This includes, employing people such as Mr. Amsterdam.
If he hadn’t overplayed his hand (and continues to do so), he could have been, just what Thailand needed (and still does).
To take a “passive” approach to his predicament, at this time and wait out events that will happen in the next few years, would in my mind, be far more effective. But of course, that would require a major rejig of his business modes operendi.
How likely is that?
In the end, I feel sad for Thailand.
But, I do have enough faith in the Thai people (at all levels) to believe, eventually (and this might not be for several years), they will create a society, which is quite special and the envy of many other countries
We were once ‘Malaysians’
There are two types of people I admire and despise the most; the first is a nationalist, the second – a nationalist. Thanks, a good speech indeed. It renders an essential combination between political leadership and a passion of youth.
I had a privilege of meeting two Malaysian prime ministers, one of whom was Tunku Abdul Rahman. Regrettably, I was too young to make a meaningful conversation with him (not that I understood who he was.) It was much later that I studied about him. Nostalgia isn’t my trait, but the thought of Tunku and other Asian leaders of his generation does remind you that once politics was defined by passion, belief, vocation, integrity – good old stuffs politicians of today seriously lack.
I share the same belief with Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah that the hope of my society rests with the future generations. Present day Thai politicians and social figures are too eager to have themselves go down in history as “statesmen”, forgetting that statesmanship will be measured by the gift you left to your next generations.
Lao studies conference 2010: the fascination of the marginal
I find it difficult to criticise the quality of many things I hear or read about Laos in an academic forum precisely because there isn’t a great deal out there. When something of reasonable analytical and theoretical quality does come along it’s like Christmas. I will relish, for example, Grant’s next coffee table tribute. While last time it was to the lost Monarchy this time it could well be to the lost indochina communist party at the hands of Chinese economic imperialism. But what in the world are we going to do when the Evans era is finally over? Few younger academics seem to show any significant interest in theorising the politics of social change in Laos (and most of those who do were absent from the conference. The Canadian contingent was nowhere to be seen). The Germans have something happening. Bioke is interesting, but like every student of Bourdieu, and every student of a student of Bourdieu, he seems rather more interested in ‘Bourdieu’ than in Laos. The more open research environment of recent years in Laos has produced a few notably snobbish (and definitely very loud) American types who ride buck whip-cracking on the arse end of the anti-politics machine posing as critics of ‘the development industry’ whilst paradoxically propping this industry up with their complete lack of theoretical alternative to the idea of development. Are we all still supposed to look ‘shocked’ when they expose ‘failed’ projects?! They would be put to better use exposing all the failed bombs still laying around. Embezzlement and resource exploitation are certainly not failing in Laos and two decades of ‘development’ seem to have only strengthened these things. Land tenure is a site for the production of some fascinating new geopolitical ideas about Laos but rather than treading too deeply into this muddy quagmire (the one where most of the rural population of Laos are currenty languishing) the conference plenary session tiptoed around it, failing to emerge from a rather anti-political debate about what the propper role of an EIA is. Few, if any, questions were asked about the notion of power and the relationships that constitute this notion in Laos and in other global spaces and places that constitute the study of the Lao. This may be because a world where critical questions could be asked of authoritarianism is fast dissappearing. The western insititutions that gave space and rigour to debate about power in Evans’ day are more likely to be funded by those same sources of power today. The next generation of Australians are hardly carrying the torch for Grant. One might be tempted to write off the few piecemeal articles on Laos from Australian authors that have been published in recent years as being the result of mediocre theoretical immersion in an underfunded second tier university system. But it might just be that the ‘lack’ of a new generation of little Evanses is largely a result of the extraordinarily critical approach Evans himself seems to take to anything writen on Laos that does not agree with his own perspective. He might want to interpret some of that disagreement as love. There is a world of possibility when it comes to the study of the Lao and Laoness. It was not particularly noticeable at this conference.
Burma in Limbo, Part 1
“After reading the prevailing political and military situations correctly, General Aung San, the 30-year-old willing ally of the invading Japanese, secretly met with British Field Marshall William Slim and sold his former masters into the hands of rapidly approaching British 14th Army.”
I would suggest Hla Oo to read Thein Pe Myint’s “Wartime Traveller” and “Allied Forces and a Burmese Messenger” sequel to understand how our young Burmese Thakhins, including Burma Independent Army (BIA) commanders, scrambled to get rid of the Japanese they invited soon after the invasion. Thein Pe Myint travelled to India to seek British assistance. BIA headquarters in Mandalay created an Internal Auditor post for Capt. Tin Mya (Thakhin Tin Mya – still lives today in Yangon) to escort Thein Pe Myint to Arakan border. Thein Pe Myint recorded that Tin Mya and Soe (Communist leader) went back to mainland Burma in 11th July 1942 (read this timing).
According to Thein Pe Myint, in October 1944, Force 136 of British army trained dozens of Burman and Arakan youths in Peshawar for an advance mission. Among them was messenger Maung Kyi, a Burma Defence Army (BDA) soldier, who later parachuted near Pegu to convey a detail plan stored in a micro film.
Note: English language readers could find these sources in Robert H. Taylor (ed.), Marxism and Resistance in Burma 1942-5: Thein Pe Myint’s Wartime Traveller (Athens, Ohio Univ. Press, 1984) and Thein Pe (Myint), What Happened in Burma (Allahabad, 1943), both cited in Martin Smith. Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity (White Lotus, 1999)
Another first hand account is Brigadier Kyaw Zaw’s auto-biography . Kyaw Zaw was a member of Thirty Comrades and a BDA commander who was later to become a communist and now lives in Kunming. His record reveals that in 1944 (August ?) , Soe and Aung San secretly met for three days at his house in Pegu to finalize plans for anti-fascist movement. Kyaw Zaw also confirmed that it was Aung San who earlier ordered him to make arrangements for the meeting as well as to escort Soe in and out of his hiding place.
So when Aung San and Slim met at latter’s headquarters at Meiktila in 15th May 1945 (cited in Shelby Tucker, The Curse of Independence), both sides, Aung San in particular, had already prepared for what to expect and what to bargain. That is, all the groundwork leading up to that meeting were laid long ago. It was never a last minute switch as Hla Oo alleged.
For accusations of bayoneting a village headman in Thaton in 1942, Aung San had never denied that he carried out the execution. I believe Mountbatten saw more than a political reason for him to declare “[I]n the unsettled conditions which must have existed, it was only to be expected, I suppose, that summary justice would rule, and that old scores would be paid off” (Tucker, p- 114) . Perhaps Aung San’s case was not the only misdeed committed among the ranks of BIA commanders during the heights of Japanese militarism spell. Kyaw Zaw has admitted one for himself. Those atrocities were more to do with juncture of wartime urgency than systematic human right abuses.
Hla Oo’s illuminative story that his father received three line letter from Aung San to kill their Japanese teachers will remain as one of WWII personal tales among many. Hla Oo’s father no longer lives to verify these accounts. Neither a written note was cited with regard to that claim. Kyaw Htin passed away in Yangon in late 1990s. Perhaps in one day, the story will be made into a movie in Burma for our children or grandchildren’s cinema outing.
While we shall learn to expose prejudice of our heroes, as much as we do of their pride, one must be mindful to recognize importance of “local settings” that existed in the backdrop of these events. An argument without any effort to empathize indigenous representation simply lacks essence of originality. Like many “Burma debates” today, at best they offer “deadlock” or “limbo” in Hla Oo’s word.
Lastly, why independent Burma is not a prosperous country? In fact Burma has never been prosperous under the Western measures (save Harvey and Hall for being British, read Dijk’s “Seventeenth-century Burma and
the Dutch East India Company” ). And so called the claims of “having the best potential to be prosperous in post WWII Southeast Asia” is far from being prosperous. Until both sides (in the present conflict) come to acknowledge such realities to forge a common ground, Burma is set to remain in the realms of poverty and turbulence as it has been for centuries.
“The Bangkok Massacres: A call for accountability”
StanG
“It was not produced for my consumption, doesn’t address my interests or needs”
“I haven’t read and I’m not going to”
This is classic, here you are on your 9th or 10th post discussing a report you haven’t read and that doesn’t interest you. Brilliant.
ABC Interview with Jakrapob
not sure what J is getting at in this i/v, but red shirt leaders and front line activists in Thailand agree that Thaksin was a symbolic figure to the masses and after recent research it was evident that funding came from the participants and domestic supporters, not from outside the country. The UDD [р╕Щр╕Ыр╕К] is skint; even alternative media is trying to consider ways of selling small shares to the people to generate funding…dont take J’s comments too literally. There is some movement going on with the splinter group “Red Siam” [р╣Бр╕Фр╕Зр╕кр╕вр╕▓р╕б] as Surachai also came out a few weeks back. Remember most of the core UDD are in prison (though Veera, charged with terrorism, recently released on bail a Bt 6m, but needs to report very 15 days). 26 people are being charged on terrorism including Thaksin (and Saedaeng)/
Burma in Limbo, Part 1
NM Reader
Conceit and patronising other NM readers is rather unbecoming of any NM reader.
You seem to be talking through your hat if in your opinion very specific periods in anybody’s life without a log of some sort or an alibi must necessarily be not only dodgy but positively sinister. Guilty until proven innocent?
Hero worship and needing heroes, though part of human nature, is completely beside the point. Nobody forgets ASSK is a competent and elected (by her followers as their leader, not in the 1990 elections) politician, not even the foreigners. There never was a personality cult in Burma, not of Aung San the hero or even Ne Win the dictator. Heroes we have plenty, but we know them warts and all.
Besides, Aung San was never portrayed as perfect to us. It is common knowledge that he was the awkward unsociable type and his idea of naming his children was considered quirky and even weird. Dagon Taya, the famous author and his contemporary, wrote very early on about “Aung San the Untamed”, the man he knew.
So it is nothing personal either to say that Hla Oo has an agenda.
a. He has been consistently peddling the line of the Burmese being inherently violent if you read all the threads he is involved in past and present, either as a guest contributor or in the comments. From U Thant’s funeral riots of 1974 through the 8888 Uprising to now Aung San, the first two allegedly ‘eye witness accounts’.
b. By his own admission, he’d had contact and shady business dealings with the Burmese Military Intelligence after he’d left the country and having lived abroad for several years.
c. He does have something unique to offer to both Burmese and non-Burmese readers. He happens to be an ex-Tatmadaw man with so many tales to tell, most of what he has to tell unknown to most of us until now.
d. He is a very good story teller with a vivid imagination and delivers a ripping yarn, supposedly factual, but in truth fiction based on fact (faction), such as the execution of the Japanese officers. His father, by his own admission, would never have told him the real story in such graphic detail.
e. He often contradicts himself and takes liberty with the chronolgy of events to suit the ‘moral’ of his story line.
f. He has been at pains to convey the message that the Burmese generals today are really only so many chips of the old block, a violent race that cannot help being brutal and ruthless.
It’s in the genes. Just look at the murderous students during U Thant’s funeral. Look at the mob violence in 1988. Look at their national hero Aung San who brutally committed a ‘racist murder’ of an Indian headman allegedly for his crimes of repression in collaboration with the colonialists, and left this sort of legacy to the army.
Strangely enough, today’s members of the Burmese junta, who cannot possibly claim to be Aung San’s protégé but actually Ne Win’s, appear to have got away scot free.
At least the people are just as violent as the rulers. So it’s all right then. They deserve each other, a match made in heaven or hell if you prefer.
It is worth noting that it is not only Aung San but Ne Win that the junta is distancing themselves from thus disowning their true father figure who had transformed what was left of the national liberation army that Aung San founded to the modern Burmese army which instead of defending its own people embarked upon a path of blatant exploitation, brutal repression and above all interminable bloody wars against both Burmese and ethnic minorities, of which Hla Oo has been a youthful and willing if ignorant instrument. There’s no way he can plead youthful ignorance today.
Burma in Limbo, Part 1
My original comment was off the cuff, and maybe a bit unclear, so I’ll clarify it, in part because it is relevant to NM Reader’s last observation.
What Hla Oo says regarding Aung San’s faults is not really that new, or original. Shelby Tucker, in his book “Burma: the Curse of Independence” goes in to much greater detail about Aung San’s actions during WWII and comes to much more negative conclusions. As for whether Tucker’s analysis is right or wrong, I’ll leave to for others to decide, but it isn’t substantively different than Hla Oo’s basic point.
As for Mika Rolly, I’d have to check through my back issues of the Karenni Journal, but I believe he at one point made rather similar observations. I’d tend to agree in general with John Lee Francis’ point about Hla Oo’s writing largely being a work of fiction, although I’d be more inclined to apply that to some of his previous writings. With regard to Aung San, if it is fiction, it is a fiction believed by some of the ethnic minority people I’ve dealt with.
The logic of lese majeste
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Either repeal the LM laws are send him to jail with Da Torpedo.
Commentary on Thailand’s Crown Prince
The fact is the Crown Prince didn’t qualify to graduate from Duntroon either academically or physically. Thats the reality.
ABC Interview with Jakrapob
Very interesting that’s Jakrapob has stuck his head up above the parapet at this juncture, after lying low for so long.