Monday, July 26, 2010 12:17:50 AM (Thai local time)
Protestors Manage To Set Klong Alight
BANGKOK – A group of mostly teenage protestors living along Klong San Saeb managed to set the canal on fire this afternoon without the use of lighter fluid.
Several early morning attempts by the local residents had initially failed. But after temperatures rose, and the refuse and sewage in the canal began to congeal with the stagnant water, a teenager dropped a single match from a pedestrian bridge, igniting the water and resulting in a small explosion.
The fire then spread down the Klong all the way from the Jim Thompson House to Bo Bae Market. The toxic smoke and stench resulting from the burning water has reportedly driven thousands of slum dwellers from their homes into the Ratchaprasong area where they risk being shot.
Television footage also showed a dead dog, completely in flames, slowly floating down the canal.
Andrew #47 very droll! But I think you should be a little wary of exercising your humour – too many NM fans are thick as bricks & will take you literally.
‘Concrete thought’ seems to be very prevalent these days. I received a ‘forward’ recently, railing against the stupidity of an Oz govt minister. It was in the form of a video-clip in which the ‘minister’ was being interviewed on ABC. The original sender had attached some scathing comments. It was actually from John Clarke’s weekly satirical segment on 7.30 Report. Despite the very straight faces of Clarke & his interviewer, there were rather large slabs of absurdist nonsense, & I found it very hard to believe that anyone could possibly believe it was ‘real’, even if they they didn’t know J.C. But people were getting quite upset about it. Similarly with this sketch from Oz TV (“Gay Scientists isolate Christian Gene.”) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCzbNkyXO50&feature=related
(read the vigorous comments) Maybe the rest of the world doesn’t understand Oz humour?
The Thai government will not be happy with so many of its Bangkok citizens voting for someone who is imprisoned under terrorism charges.
It is a huge black eye for them and, given that fact one candidate wasn’t allowed to campaign and that he had been persistently demonised in the Thai media, anything less than a massive majority is a huge defeat.
Agree with Ralph #10 and thank you Andrew for the updates
Question is, now what?
My personal analysis is, the government would be a little relieve but continue to pursuit because the result is not that different. Many of Phue Thai supporters are being monitored by the “secret agents”. As recent murder of one of the party strong supporter (I can’t remember the name, but he was shot dead recently).
In Thailand politics, a key player for each election is called “Hua Ka Nan” (like lobbyist who locally run campaign for each candidate). If you can control these people, you win election.
You will see a big reshuffle of civil servants, high ranking officials, to make sure that they will win election.
This government has many “tools” to help them win next general election. They don’t want to fail like the previous one.
Hold on, is your 2007 pie chart wrong? My comment followed that. Now you have different figures in your comment at 10 PM.
[No, the 2007 pie chart is correct. My 10 PM comments refer to the 2007 result but ignoring the vote for other parties. Or, to put it another way, “distributing” the 2007 minor party vote according to the percentages received by the major parties.]
Constant Petit #37 – What a silly thing to say! If every university were to be held responsible for the actions of its graduates, I hate to think of the consequences. Safer to remind people that Mark Veg was not a particularly bright student (I’ve never seen any evidence that he shone – in fact I think he was probably rather dull), and obviously only learnt to play the necessary games, but not much really rubbed off on him and he didn’t get it to any significant extent, as witnessed by his current actions. He simply learnt a whole lot of useful rhetoric, but doesn’t really understand what it means, beyond being useful in Press Releases as a smoke-screen for his diabolical and inhuman actions.
Both candidates are spectacularly low quality and both deserved to lose in my opinion. Panich’s background is extremely dubious, according to most people who have had the misfortune to deal with him, and Korkaew only campaigned on red shirt issues unrelated to the constituency, making clear that he couldn’t care less about the constituents. Anyway, he is likely to be in prison for many years and unable to represent them, if he wins. If they were the best that the two major parties could field for a critical by-election, then there is little hope for the future.
If the results stay as they are then I think it largely reflects the feeling of the country as a whole – polarised. Clearly the whole constituency doesn’t see the dems as a murderous junta, neither have PPT been tarnished by the actions of whoever burnt down Bangkok.
I don’t really buy the whole ‘they didn’t even allow Korkeaw to campaign’ thing. PPT could have chosen any one of their members to run, it didn’t have to be someone under lock and key. In fact to suggest otherwise discredits PPT’s campaign strategists who knew the emotional advantage that could be played by fielding a victim. I don’t think it would have mattered who was fielded, on either side, as this was always about more than just personalities.
Abhisit’s opponent is locked up, can’t campaign and can’t get recordings out. The invisible man. Yet the best the miserable Abhisit can do is pick up a few extra votes that didn’t vote for PPP last time anyway, and probably wouldn’t vote other than yellow while their bottoms point downwards, while the invisible man increases the PTP vote from a prison cell.
If I were brother Abhisit I would be more than a little depressed. And worried. And not a little frightened. Lets see if he lifts the now semi-permanent emergency regulations shall we? My bet is he doesn’t dare, not while there are still ‘political groups’ at work in fascist Thailand anyway, can’t have any opposition – can we?
If I still lived in Thailand I think I probably wouldn’t be laughing quite so hard.
A turnout that appears to be less than 50% of the registered voters probably tells you more than anything about how people view thai politics and the choice between Abhisit’s man and a guy who is banged up indefinately.
The other 51% were celebrating the long weekend (or at the malls).
The most worrying event of the day is the small bomb at Big C. Both sides will likely claim that the other side placed it. But for Suthep it will mean he can continue to justify the CRES and of course the SoE in BKK.
A rambling and dreary report that was obviously largely written by a research assistant, since Amsterdam, himself, has displayed mind boggling ignorance about Thailand in interviews. The only legal points he attempts to make are his theories relating to the international treaties on human rights and the International Court of Justice. As he points out himself, Thailand has never ratified the treaty relating to the ICJ and even, if it had, the chances of any government figures ever being indicted in the Hague are as good as Thaksin’s chances of being indicted for his own infamous human rights abuses while in office, i.e. nil. Amsterdam knows this but continues to promote these hopeless ideas for the consumption of red shirt sympathisers in Thailand who are less well versed in international law than himself.
The 1997 constitution is praised with no mention of Thaksin’s systematic efforts to dismantle all the checks and balances set up the constitution while he was in office. The details of the SHIN sale are glossed over without proper explanation of why the author felt that the off market sale of shares by a BVI company to individuals resident in Thailand at a huge discount to market value was not a taxable event, while there are plenty of precedents in Thailand for the taxation of “in-the-money” options which are technically the same thing. And no, the waiver on capital gains on listed shares does not apply to offshore sales made by BVI corporations. There is also no mention of how the shares came to be offshore in the first place.
All in all just what one would expect from a sleazeball like Amsterdam being paid to glamorise a sleazeball like Thaksin.
Ralph in an election where voting is compulsory I would agree with your comments.
However, I think it is a given the Red shirts are very good at organizing numbers. The Democrats tend to be a lot less capable in this area = today was an indication of that.
If PT had not chosen Korkaew, but one of their own, how do you think they would have done?
This a an important question, if running the country is going to revert from the politics of the street to a more orderly parliamentary system.
I don’t think this vote tells very much at all, except to indicate that Thailand seems to be divided.
Spin the numbers however you like, but only 49.5% of people voted.
This is not an Australian election where 98% vote – it being compulsory.
This was touted as being a poll to see what Thai , more precisely Bangkok people, thought of the Rajaprasong events.
You could say if you want, that because 45% voted PT, it showed great support for the Reds. But it also showed 55% didn’t.
Then how can you judge how many more of the 50.5% were in support of either side?
Sri #19 – thanks. I must admit that I have to agree with your comments re. 2002 etc. My real point is that he doesn’t look quite so bad in comparison with the current incumbent.
It’s all very depressing, really. Who is there to take the reins, who can be trusted to be fair & decent?
BTW, there have been reports on BBC of a bomb exploding “in Central Bangkok” this afternoon. No details yet.
Pheu Thai Candidate is still in a jailed…..
how could they gonna win this election??
for me it seems like everything has set it up for that already
just another Idiot Thai drama soap from the Dems Party thou.
So both parties get larger percentages of the vote. That tells us that the division remains as strong as ever.
It is interesting that PTP gets a higher percentage despite all of the regime’s actions against the red shirts. And despite the fact that the candidate couldn’t do anything to campaign.
I think that counts as a “loss” for the Democrat Party. They had all the advantages and couldn’t do better than this. More significantly, a loss of face. Expect more crunching of the red shirts and PTP for this is the only way the govt can win.
I finally got to begin reading the Amsterdam et al report – not finished yet – and have to agree with the Andrew Marshall quote above. It is exceptionally well written and logical. It leaves the nonsense from the MFA and Kasit’s laments for dead for style and substance.
Thaksin’s preface doesn’t sound like him, and he backdates his connection to the masses, while not mentioning TRT’s role as defender of the remaining tycoons.
The 3 objectives of the report are clearly stated and this is the measure of the report – how it addresses them. I was somewhat surprised that the Exec Summary was rather even-handed on international law, using words that suggested less than certainty.
yes, I get it now…they are parody, a way of saying the opposite through irony and satire……….he’s probably being paid by “T” or his lackey, Amsterdam……………
as Sutthep has told us several times now, the Thai Army shot no one, not a single person, and, furthermore, the Minister of Information Panitan’s position is that the Thai Army never used “live” rounds and that any other point of view is “incorrect” information…….
maybe Martino Ray’s been writing their material as well……..
it’s interesting to note that the only response from the government to the Bangkok Massacres paper so far has been to “accuse” Mr. Amsterdam of being a “farang”………I would guess their next response will be to also label Mr. Amsterdam as a “Jew”…anything to distract from the actual coherency of the content and the facts being discussed………
I agree with your view expressed in the first para.
Re the second, I might say that I had a need recently to re-read newspaper clippings about events that occurred under Thaksin in February to March 2002 (Far Eastern Economic Review crisis, banning of an Economist edition, Amlor investigation of The Nation and NGOs, banning of Nation progams on TV and radio, visits by police and military personnel at Abac poll to check their surveys about the popularity of the Thaksin government).
That was, as far as I can see, the time when “Hitler’s mustache” was attached to Thaksin’s face. And I recall that, during that period, I had stomach aches for many weeks, because the “climate of fear” created by Thaksin’s seemingly sustained attempts to close down the public sphere was just so immensily disturbing. Every morning, with getting the Bangkok Post, I had to read about new attacks on the freedom of expression.
That period of Thaksin’s rule was no fun at all. So, it is a bit difficult for me to see Thaksin as an “attractive alternative.”
Finally, I would like to repeat a para from my earlier post: “At the same time, it has been pursuing a policy of indoctrination-cum-denunciation right down to every village countrywide (example: the monarchy protection volunteers). I wonder whether anybody can provide concrete information about how these things work at the provincial/district/tambon/village level.”
Is there really nobody around on New Mandala, who not only has opinions but also some concrete information about this really important issue?
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A Chinese perspective on the damned Mekong
Monday, July 26, 2010 12:17:50 AM (Thai local time)
Protestors Manage To Set Klong Alight
BANGKOK – A group of mostly teenage protestors living along Klong San Saeb managed to set the canal on fire this afternoon without the use of lighter fluid.
Several early morning attempts by the local residents had initially failed. But after temperatures rose, and the refuse and sewage in the canal began to congeal with the stagnant water, a teenager dropped a single match from a pedestrian bridge, igniting the water and resulting in a small explosion.
The fire then spread down the Klong all the way from the Jim Thompson House to Bo Bae Market. The toxic smoke and stench resulting from the burning water has reportedly driven thousands of slum dwellers from their homes into the Ratchaprasong area where they risk being shot.
Television footage also showed a dead dog, completely in flames, slowly floating down the canal.
“The Bangkok Massacres: A call for accountability”
Andrew #47 very droll! But I think you should be a little wary of exercising your humour – too many NM fans are thick as bricks & will take you literally.
‘Concrete thought’ seems to be very prevalent these days. I received a ‘forward’ recently, railing against the stupidity of an Oz govt minister. It was in the form of a video-clip in which the ‘minister’ was being interviewed on ABC. The original sender had attached some scathing comments. It was actually from John Clarke’s weekly satirical segment on 7.30 Report. Despite the very straight faces of Clarke & his interviewer, there were rather large slabs of absurdist nonsense, & I found it very hard to believe that anyone could possibly believe it was ‘real’, even if they they didn’t know J.C. But people were getting quite upset about it. Similarly with this sketch from Oz TV (“Gay Scientists isolate Christian Gene.”) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCzbNkyXO50&feature=related
(read the vigorous comments) Maybe the rest of the world doesn’t understand Oz humour?
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
The Thai government will not be happy with so many of its Bangkok citizens voting for someone who is imprisoned under terrorism charges.
It is a huge black eye for them and, given that fact one candidate wasn’t allowed to campaign and that he had been persistently demonised in the Thai media, anything less than a massive majority is a huge defeat.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
Agree with Ralph #10 and thank you Andrew for the updates
Question is, now what?
My personal analysis is, the government would be a little relieve but continue to pursuit because the result is not that different. Many of Phue Thai supporters are being monitored by the “secret agents”. As recent murder of one of the party strong supporter (I can’t remember the name, but he was shot dead recently).
In Thailand politics, a key player for each election is called “Hua Ka Nan” (like lobbyist who locally run campaign for each candidate). If you can control these people, you win election.
You will see a big reshuffle of civil servants, high ranking officials, to make sure that they will win election.
This government has many “tools” to help them win next general election. They don’t want to fail like the previous one.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
Hold on, is your 2007 pie chart wrong? My comment followed that. Now you have different figures in your comment at 10 PM.
[No, the 2007 pie chart is correct. My 10 PM comments refer to the 2007 result but ignoring the vote for other parties. Or, to put it another way, “distributing” the 2007 minor party vote according to the percentages received by the major parties.]
Abhisit’s talk in Oxford: From the inside
Constant Petit #37 – What a silly thing to say! If every university were to be held responsible for the actions of its graduates, I hate to think of the consequences. Safer to remind people that Mark Veg was not a particularly bright student (I’ve never seen any evidence that he shone – in fact I think he was probably rather dull), and obviously only learnt to play the necessary games, but not much really rubbed off on him and he didn’t get it to any significant extent, as witnessed by his current actions. He simply learnt a whole lot of useful rhetoric, but doesn’t really understand what it means, beyond being useful in Press Releases as a smoke-screen for his diabolical and inhuman actions.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
Both candidates are spectacularly low quality and both deserved to lose in my opinion. Panich’s background is extremely dubious, according to most people who have had the misfortune to deal with him, and Korkaew only campaigned on red shirt issues unrelated to the constituency, making clear that he couldn’t care less about the constituents. Anyway, he is likely to be in prison for many years and unable to represent them, if he wins. If they were the best that the two major parties could field for a critical by-election, then there is little hope for the future.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
If the results stay as they are then I think it largely reflects the feeling of the country as a whole – polarised. Clearly the whole constituency doesn’t see the dems as a murderous junta, neither have PPT been tarnished by the actions of whoever burnt down Bangkok.
I don’t really buy the whole ‘they didn’t even allow Korkeaw to campaign’ thing. PPT could have chosen any one of their members to run, it didn’t have to be someone under lock and key. In fact to suggest otherwise discredits PPT’s campaign strategists who knew the emotional advantage that could be played by fielding a victim. I don’t think it would have mattered who was fielded, on either side, as this was always about more than just personalities.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
@Ralph Kramden #10
Yes, I think you’re right. Let’s have a think.
Abhisit’s opponent is locked up, can’t campaign and can’t get recordings out. The invisible man. Yet the best the miserable Abhisit can do is pick up a few extra votes that didn’t vote for PPP last time anyway, and probably wouldn’t vote other than yellow while their bottoms point downwards, while the invisible man increases the PTP vote from a prison cell.
If I were brother Abhisit I would be more than a little depressed. And worried. And not a little frightened. Lets see if he lifts the now semi-permanent emergency regulations shall we? My bet is he doesn’t dare, not while there are still ‘political groups’ at work in fascist Thailand anyway, can’t have any opposition – can we?
If I still lived in Thailand I think I probably wouldn’t be laughing quite so hard.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
A turnout that appears to be less than 50% of the registered voters probably tells you more than anything about how people view thai politics and the choice between Abhisit’s man and a guy who is banged up indefinately.
The other 51% were celebrating the long weekend (or at the malls).
The most worrying event of the day is the small bomb at Big C. Both sides will likely claim that the other side placed it. But for Suthep it will mean he can continue to justify the CRES and of course the SoE in BKK.
“The Bangkok Massacres: A call for accountability”
A rambling and dreary report that was obviously largely written by a research assistant, since Amsterdam, himself, has displayed mind boggling ignorance about Thailand in interviews. The only legal points he attempts to make are his theories relating to the international treaties on human rights and the International Court of Justice. As he points out himself, Thailand has never ratified the treaty relating to the ICJ and even, if it had, the chances of any government figures ever being indicted in the Hague are as good as Thaksin’s chances of being indicted for his own infamous human rights abuses while in office, i.e. nil. Amsterdam knows this but continues to promote these hopeless ideas for the consumption of red shirt sympathisers in Thailand who are less well versed in international law than himself.
The 1997 constitution is praised with no mention of Thaksin’s systematic efforts to dismantle all the checks and balances set up the constitution while he was in office. The details of the SHIN sale are glossed over without proper explanation of why the author felt that the off market sale of shares by a BVI company to individuals resident in Thailand at a huge discount to market value was not a taxable event, while there are plenty of precedents in Thailand for the taxation of “in-the-money” options which are technically the same thing. And no, the waiver on capital gains on listed shares does not apply to offshore sales made by BVI corporations. There is also no mention of how the shares came to be offshore in the first place.
All in all just what one would expect from a sleazeball like Amsterdam being paid to glamorise a sleazeball like Thaksin.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
Ralph in an election where voting is compulsory I would agree with your comments.
However, I think it is a given the Red shirts are very good at organizing numbers. The Democrats tend to be a lot less capable in this area = today was an indication of that.
If PT had not chosen Korkaew, but one of their own, how do you think they would have done?
This a an important question, if running the country is going to revert from the politics of the street to a more orderly parliamentary system.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
I don’t think this vote tells very much at all, except to indicate that Thailand seems to be divided.
Spin the numbers however you like, but only 49.5% of people voted.
This is not an Australian election where 98% vote – it being compulsory.
This was touted as being a poll to see what Thai , more precisely Bangkok people, thought of the Rajaprasong events.
You could say if you want, that because 45% voted PT, it showed great support for the Reds. But it also showed 55% didn’t.
Then how can you judge how many more of the 50.5% were in support of either side?
Reconciliation, Thai style
Sri #19 – thanks. I must admit that I have to agree with your comments re. 2002 etc. My real point is that he doesn’t look quite so bad in comparison with the current incumbent.
It’s all very depressing, really. Who is there to take the reins, who can be trusted to be fair & decent?
BTW, there have been reports on BBC of a bomb exploding “in Central Bangkok” this afternoon. No details yet.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
Pheu Thai Candidate is still in a jailed…..
how could they gonna win this election??
for me it seems like everything has set it up for that already
just another Idiot Thai drama soap from the Dems Party thou.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
So both parties get larger percentages of the vote. That tells us that the division remains as strong as ever.
It is interesting that PTP gets a higher percentage despite all of the regime’s actions against the red shirts. And despite the fact that the candidate couldn’t do anything to campaign.
I think that counts as a “loss” for the Democrat Party. They had all the advantages and couldn’t do better than this. More significantly, a loss of face. Expect more crunching of the red shirts and PTP for this is the only way the govt can win.
“The Bangkok Massacres: A call for accountability”
I finally got to begin reading the Amsterdam et al report – not finished yet – and have to agree with the Andrew Marshall quote above. It is exceptionally well written and logical. It leaves the nonsense from the MFA and Kasit’s laments for dead for style and substance.
Thaksin’s preface doesn’t sound like him, and he backdates his connection to the masses, while not mentioning TRT’s role as defender of the remaining tycoons.
The 3 objectives of the report are clearly stated and this is the measure of the report – how it addresses them. I was somewhat surprised that the Exec Summary was rather even-handed on international law, using words that suggested less than certainty.
Bangkok Constituency 6: judgement day
So if both parties have made gains, is this evidence of the polarization of Thai society you are either Red or Yellow now, no middle ground.
“The Bangkok Massacres: A call for accountability”
re: the Martino Ray posts…….
yes, I get it now…they are parody, a way of saying the opposite through irony and satire……….he’s probably being paid by “T” or his lackey, Amsterdam……………
as Sutthep has told us several times now, the Thai Army shot no one, not a single person, and, furthermore, the Minister of Information Panitan’s position is that the Thai Army never used “live” rounds and that any other point of view is “incorrect” information…….
maybe Martino Ray’s been writing their material as well……..
it’s interesting to note that the only response from the government to the Bangkok Massacres paper so far has been to “accuse” Mr. Amsterdam of being a “farang”………I would guess their next response will be to also label Mr. Amsterdam as a “Jew”…anything to distract from the actual coherency of the content and the facts being discussed………
Reconciliation, Thai style
Michael #18
I agree with your view expressed in the first para.
Re the second, I might say that I had a need recently to re-read newspaper clippings about events that occurred under Thaksin in February to March 2002 (Far Eastern Economic Review crisis, banning of an Economist edition, Amlor investigation of The Nation and NGOs, banning of Nation progams on TV and radio, visits by police and military personnel at Abac poll to check their surveys about the popularity of the Thaksin government).
That was, as far as I can see, the time when “Hitler’s mustache” was attached to Thaksin’s face. And I recall that, during that period, I had stomach aches for many weeks, because the “climate of fear” created by Thaksin’s seemingly sustained attempts to close down the public sphere was just so immensily disturbing. Every morning, with getting the Bangkok Post, I had to read about new attacks on the freedom of expression.
That period of Thaksin’s rule was no fun at all. So, it is a bit difficult for me to see Thaksin as an “attractive alternative.”
Finally, I would like to repeat a para from my earlier post: “At the same time, it has been pursuing a policy of indoctrination-cum-denunciation right down to every village countrywide (example: the monarchy protection volunteers). I wonder whether anybody can provide concrete information about how these things work at the provincial/district/tambon/village level.”
Is there really nobody around on New Mandala, who not only has opinions but also some concrete information about this really important issue?