i wouldn’t worry about what this loony media magician says right now: Abhisit just announced (Khaosot online) that due to unrest in the country he will…(wait for it!)…postpone elections until, sometime next year (possibly)/5555!!
Pro-Red because, like Lee pointed out, the intellectual default position of most Westerners (who tend to over simplify the situation here and perpetuate this in the media) is to be ‘pro-poor’ – this is also Thaksin’s default position. This over simplification of ‘poor verses the elite rich, down trodden rural verses the spoilt urban’ does no justice to how truly disturbing and messy this situation actually is. In fact, by appealing to people’s natural humanistic tendencies to support the down trodden, it colours the entire picture, and therefore distorts it, with a red filter. It seems quite evident, that in actual fact, and yet again, ‘poor people’ (the rank and file of the red shirts) have been used as political pawns, in fact many have died as political pawns, for yet another corrupt and autocratic politician. Thaksin.
“The Western press here in Thailand is hopelessly (and condescendingly) pro-Red>pro-Thaksin.
I don’t think Nick’s presence or non-presence is of any consequence/importance to the prime minister at all. Do you?”
The Thai press here in Thailand is hopelessly (and condescendingly) pro-government, pro-Ahbisit, pro-PAD, pro-Monarchy.
I agree that Nick’s or any foreign journalist is of no importance to the PM, their presence is of so little consequence to him, it doesn’t even bother him that his security forces are shooting them.
As with many other royalist academics or spokesman, pronouncements mentioning the king are not made without checking with the palace first. Would it be safe to assume that this is also now palace policy.
Srithanonchai # 222.
The Western press here in Thailand is hopelessly (and condescendingly) pro-Red>pro-Thaksin.
I don’t think Nick’s presence or non-presence is of any consequence/importance to the prime minister at all. Do you?
One part of the Nation report I found interesting:
“In regard to six bodies inside Pathum Wanaram Temple, Abhisit said a “full investigation still needs to be made”. His vow came despite a government document handed to journalists yesterday concluding that what took place was the result of attacks by “those armed with weapons of war” but people who were not soldiers. ”
So Ahbisit wants a full investigation, although a government document has already reached a conclusion with no investigation having taken place.
The logic here escapes me, must be my inability to understand Thai culture, but to reach the conclusion before you have investigated seems bizarre.
Has Sondhi forgotten that his king has been in a hospital for half a year and, from what we’ve seen, can’t manage more than 10 minutes in a public audience?
The wonderful antidote to failed representative government: restore power to the monarchy. What exactly is this type of power this King would have anyway in his condition? Sondhi is a monarchist, not a democrat. Sondhi should be less concerned with “restoring power the the king” as if the king has ever lost any power, and reread his nation’s history with its monarchical subversion of the voice of the people for eighty years with the help of the military.
Had this king truly loved his people he would have spent the last 60 years gradually developing democracy throughout Thailand preparing them for the modern world. He could have put a stop to the cult of personality developed, strengthened, and maintained by monarchists for the last 60 years. He could have promoted the people better by having their photographs on billboards everywhere in Thailand not just pictures of him playing the clarinet, or him fishing, or him sailing. He could have promoted the education of schoolchildren in a way where students could freely debate what exactly a constitutional monarchy meant in Thailand. He could have encouraged that he was also not free from criticism and thus provide the Thai people with an example of the virtue of discussion and debate. He could have rejected the “King shall be an object of divine worship” clause in the constitution instead arguing that kings, like everyone, earn their respect not by threat of bayonet, but through righteous action, with respect freely given by the people, not mandated by law. He could have promoted the publishing of a wide range of opinions on a host of sensitive topics. Instead he published coffee table books about dogs or Chulalongkorn’s travels to Europe.
Thailand could have developed more democratically, over time. The Thai people would have still kept their monarchy
but it would be a monarchy that the people would maintain not the other way around. Thailand would also have citizens better prepared for the responsibility of participatory democracy where they could argue openly about candidates or ideas without killing each other or gossiping.
What is the end result of this mind control of the last 80 years?
A vacuous opinion like the one above from Sondhi, the elite making up laws on the spot, and mobs burning down buildings
“The PM replied by saying soldiers did fire warning shots but live bullets were used in self defence and on clear targets.”
How can Abhisit still insist on this line? Incredible! Sure, Nick was a “clear target,” and the soldiers had to defend themselves against his camera. The insured Nation photographer (as reported in the Nation) endured a very similar situation. And sure: with every of the killed protesters, they found M 16 or AK 47 lying next to them, which the dead had used to shoot at the soldiers. Which is why the numbers of dead civilians and dead soldiers is almost equal (Ha!).
It seems that Abhisit came to the press conference unprepared–he neither seemed to have anticipated Nick’s presence, nor did he kn0w his NM report, nor did he even know that Prachatai etc. has been closed. Is he still in charge, and what does he do all day?
Interestingly, the Bangkok Post “reported” on its front page what the PM had said about his meeting with the envoys. No word whatsoever about the press conference with the journalists. Apparently, the BP’s editors must have thought that “foreign poison of the mind” should not reach readers in Bangkok…
Thailand’s ‘legitimacy’ as a ‘democracy’ has always been questionable from the ground. The illusion of ‘democracy’ has been carefully cultivated so as to place the country as acceptable to receive foreign aid. The illusion was furthered strengthened during the cold war, with hundreds and millions of USD harvested by the elite and a portion poured into a very successful and royal propaganda campaign during the war against communism. For that money, though more recently more known as foreign development aid, the status quo has to maintain its ‘democracy’ status, even as it ruthlessly cling on to power. Hence the dismissive: that the country folk are ‘too stupid’ attitude. Foreign aid money are simple too easy and too much to give up easily. What the status quo want is authoritarian rule with a monarchic front. Such a potential state is not necessarily dictatorial or tyrannic – not with a good leader. But the status quo wanted to believe that they would be egalitarian – which they could never be, because the Bangkok status quo is usually and simply not the cream of the crop Thailand has to offer, and they certainly do not know how to manage a country economically much less effectively. I would say, Thailand did well in-spite of the leadership it has, rather than because of the leadership it has. All the status quo know is how to skim off 30% of any mega government projects – just like the army taking a 30% cut of all army gear purchases.
The cracks that is now appearing in the middle class Bangkok, is in part a result of this discrepancy – that inherent want and desire to be authoritarian, yet must pretend to be democracy by western definition so that they can continue to get access to foreign aid for cheap money for mega projects so they can continue to loot the country’s coffers in that semi-legit way. The result is the current illogical narrative that is being played in Bangkok right now: every thing the status quo is doing is ‘educated’, ‘legal’, and ‘democratic’. Whereas everything the non-status quo and un-accepted status quo did is ‘stupid’, ‘uneducated’, ‘illegal’ and ‘terrorism’. Seriously, Taksin and Ahbisit are the same in sheer political ambitiousness – one bought his votes with his decades of hard work bribing his way to wealth and effectively using that wealth, while the other played the I am weak can’t do anything clean guy card so you can use me and wait for the likes of the army and status quo to put him on the PM chair. The difference is: the former one can see what one get, the latter one vote for an Oxford Grad but actually gets a list of fighting de-facto powers that can only be ‘verified’ via heresy and conjectures.
As a matter of fact, the narrative that Thailand is the biggest democracy in SEA has been playing for decades, as is the myth of the King’s tireless efforts to improve the lot of the improvished – both legends grow more frayed and less convincing over the years. In 1992 (and before) at least Thailand has the comfort of General Suchinda, leader by a coup, firing into the protesters to hide behind and emerge a little battered but with the ‘democracy-illusion’ fairly intact. Now in 2010, it was a CIVILIAN government (Abhisit did not do Thai military service just like all other rich Thais sons, he is also born in England and graduated from Oxford, and is really as civilian as can be) that ordered snipers (I do not know why but this sniper thing upset me more than the idea of the army using machine guns – perhaps it is the calculativeness of it, that sheer slowness and torture of wondering when the next sniper bullet will come, and who will be targeted etc) to take down civilians.
This time, Thailand can no longer hide behind the illegal coup and army firing at protesters story; the ‘democracy-illusion’ has taken a big battering, even as the status quo desperately tries to find comfort in the Terrorism Narrative so crudely borrowed from the US post-911. Taksin at once took on a bigger than life evil guy who could remote-control the destruction of Thailand (Bangkok) from afar, but yet powerless to come home and had to travel the world on a set of passports of some literally unknown countries – one of the many paradoxes the status quo had no problem believing in.
The fractures can no longer be covered with cheap paste and hence the deep divide down middle class urban Bangkokians. Those who agreed with status quo narrative are fine and would never understand those who felt queasy with the illogicalness of the current narrative. The simple reason is that because they agree with the establishment, they need not fear what they think and say being overheard or recorded that may one day come back to hurt them. Those on the other side understood that fear, and hence kept quiet for self-defence. Those who wants to believe, believe that the Reds have hundreds of M79 grenade launchers and Taksin paid millions to people to bomb various parts of Bangkok. Those who are more honest or less naive will tell you if they trust you, that lives are cheap in Thailand. You really don’t need to spend millions of hire someone to fire a grenade launcher in Bangkok, tens of thousands will do, and hitmen? Coupa of grand baht each…
My father told me as a child about Thailand:
You cannot help Thailand if you are Thai – Life is cheap and no one will care if you disappear. That was why we migrated.
Has he not seen the Canadian journalist getting shot in the leg on CNN? Still claiming self defence and clear targets is hilarious. Self-defence of his regime, and the protestors were very clear targets, sure.
Someone should have screened him the video taken from above you hosted on facebook and your report Nick at the time he was answering questions. Well done for putting the question of accountability to him though Nick!
If the UDD did not “burn down” Bangkok, why did you want to sell us this view as the truth? You should realize the processes of propaganda (emphasizing the buildings, ignoring the dead, etc.) that have been going on, government-guided (including strong censorship) and others, and you should, in your small social sphere, resist not parrot them. I do not tolerate vandalism and violence, neither from the PAD nor from the UDD. I assume that you agree with me that the PAD leaders and associates should immediately be arrested (and ASTV and ASTVPhuchatkan closed) and share the cells with their UDD counterparts, and that Abhisit’s role during the PAD protests was deplorable.
#57
“If the Democrats would have resigned already after 1 week into the UDD’s demonstration, there would not have been any violence. And if PAD would have been attacked at the Suvarnabhumi, there surely would have been.”
How true! Moreover, if Abhisit had had a better democratic mind and more political ethics, he would never have accepted the position of prime minister as the result of a chain of political-judicial-military trickery either. And if he knew history, he would have learned from the risk that Suchinda Kraprayoon had taken in 1992. Suchinda badly lost–Abhisit’s loss is even worse.
Abhisit asks Nostitz for evidence (from The Nation):
Foreign correspondents who met with Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva yesterday in an hour-long session to hear the PM discuss the political crisis remained sceptical about events leading up to the May 19 crackdown on red shirt protesters and the prospects of national reconciliation.
Many questions by mostly Western reporters focused on whether the government used excessive and disproportionate force to bring an end to the red-shirt protest at Rajprasong intersection or not.
German freelance photographer Nick Nostitz claimed he was with unarmed protesters “who merely want to exercise their political rights” but were shot at by soldiers. He asked Abhisit about accountability under the Emergency Decree.
The PM replied by saying soldiers did fire warning shots but live bullets were used in self defence and on clear targets.
He asked Nostitz to submit evidence.
“If you have that please submit [it] to the investigating committee. You’re welcome to provide the testimony,” the PM said.
David Johnson, where is this ‘well documented’ evidence that Bhumibol prefers the military regime of Myanmar? Situations in Thailand and Burma are not consistent beyond a very, very broad level (broad in the sense that we commonly are all breathing) for there to be “Westerners” legitimately claiming for a boycott of Thailand.
And what does your comment have to do with Kean’s article? More to life than what’s going on in Thailand?
Doyle2499 #32: thanks for the info on the 8 soldiers who were killed. To see this in one hit certainly puts things in a quite different perspective. A very useful post!
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Sondhi – return parliamentary powers to the king
i wouldn’t worry about what this loony media magician says right now: Abhisit just announced (Khaosot online) that due to unrest in the country he will…(wait for it!)…postpone elections until, sometime next year (possibly)/5555!!
Nick Nostitz in the killing zone
Pro-Red because, like Lee pointed out, the intellectual default position of most Westerners (who tend to over simplify the situation here and perpetuate this in the media) is to be ‘pro-poor’ – this is also Thaksin’s default position. This over simplification of ‘poor verses the elite rich, down trodden rural verses the spoilt urban’ does no justice to how truly disturbing and messy this situation actually is. In fact, by appealing to people’s natural humanistic tendencies to support the down trodden, it colours the entire picture, and therefore distorts it, with a red filter. It seems quite evident, that in actual fact, and yet again, ‘poor people’ (the rank and file of the red shirts) have been used as political pawns, in fact many have died as political pawns, for yet another corrupt and autocratic politician. Thaksin.
Sondhi – return parliamentary powers to the king
Absolutely agree with Maratjp!!!
Nick Nostitz in the killing zone
@SimonSays
“The Western press here in Thailand is hopelessly (and condescendingly) pro-Red>pro-Thaksin.
I don’t think Nick’s presence or non-presence is of any consequence/importance to the prime minister at all. Do you?”
The Thai press here in Thailand is hopelessly (and condescendingly) pro-government, pro-Ahbisit, pro-PAD, pro-Monarchy.
I agree that Nick’s or any foreign journalist is of no importance to the PM, their presence is of so little consequence to him, it doesn’t even bother him that his security forces are shooting them.
Thailand in crisis – ANU video series
Of course one could always look back to the burning of Central Chidlom…. was there any recent sex tape involving a general?
Sondhi – return parliamentary powers to the king
As with many other royalist academics or spokesman, pronouncements mentioning the king are not made without checking with the palace first. Would it be safe to assume that this is also now palace policy.
Enemies, foreign and domestic
So many “ifs” from Srithanonchai.
Speculating on ‘what ifs’ is a waste of time.
Nick Nostitz in the killing zone
Srithanonchai # 222.
The Western press here in Thailand is hopelessly (and condescendingly) pro-Red>pro-Thaksin.
I don’t think Nick’s presence or non-presence is of any consequence/importance to the prime minister at all. Do you?
Nick Nostitz in the killing zone
AW
One part of the Nation report I found interesting:
“In regard to six bodies inside Pathum Wanaram Temple, Abhisit said a “full investigation still needs to be made”. His vow came despite a government document handed to journalists yesterday concluding that what took place was the result of attacks by “those armed with weapons of war” but people who were not soldiers. ”
So Ahbisit wants a full investigation, although a government document has already reached a conclusion with no investigation having taken place.
The logic here escapes me, must be my inability to understand Thai culture, but to reach the conclusion before you have investigated seems bizarre.
Sondhi – return parliamentary powers to the king
Has Sondhi forgotten that his king has been in a hospital for half a year and, from what we’ve seen, can’t manage more than 10 minutes in a public audience?
This guy has gone as wacky as Stevenson.
Sondhi – return parliamentary powers to the king
The wonderful antidote to failed representative government: restore power to the monarchy. What exactly is this type of power this King would have anyway in his condition? Sondhi is a monarchist, not a democrat. Sondhi should be less concerned with “restoring power the the king” as if the king has ever lost any power, and reread his nation’s history with its monarchical subversion of the voice of the people for eighty years with the help of the military.
Had this king truly loved his people he would have spent the last 60 years gradually developing democracy throughout Thailand preparing them for the modern world. He could have put a stop to the cult of personality developed, strengthened, and maintained by monarchists for the last 60 years. He could have promoted the people better by having their photographs on billboards everywhere in Thailand not just pictures of him playing the clarinet, or him fishing, or him sailing. He could have promoted the education of schoolchildren in a way where students could freely debate what exactly a constitutional monarchy meant in Thailand. He could have encouraged that he was also not free from criticism and thus provide the Thai people with an example of the virtue of discussion and debate. He could have rejected the “King shall be an object of divine worship” clause in the constitution instead arguing that kings, like everyone, earn their respect not by threat of bayonet, but through righteous action, with respect freely given by the people, not mandated by law. He could have promoted the publishing of a wide range of opinions on a host of sensitive topics. Instead he published coffee table books about dogs or Chulalongkorn’s travels to Europe.
Thailand could have developed more democratically, over time. The Thai people would have still kept their monarchy
but it would be a monarchy that the people would maintain not the other way around. Thailand would also have citizens better prepared for the responsibility of participatory democracy where they could argue openly about candidates or ideas without killing each other or gossiping.
What is the end result of this mind control of the last 80 years?
A vacuous opinion like the one above from Sondhi, the elite making up laws on the spot, and mobs burning down buildings
Nick Nostitz in the killing zone
“The PM replied by saying soldiers did fire warning shots but live bullets were used in self defence and on clear targets.”
How can Abhisit still insist on this line? Incredible! Sure, Nick was a “clear target,” and the soldiers had to defend themselves against his camera. The insured Nation photographer (as reported in the Nation) endured a very similar situation. And sure: with every of the killed protesters, they found M 16 or AK 47 lying next to them, which the dead had used to shoot at the soldiers. Which is why the numbers of dead civilians and dead soldiers is almost equal (Ha!).
It seems that Abhisit came to the press conference unprepared–he neither seemed to have anticipated Nick’s presence, nor did he kn0w his NM report, nor did he even know that Prachatai etc. has been closed. Is he still in charge, and what does he do all day?
Interestingly, the Bangkok Post “reported” on its front page what the PM had said about his meeting with the envoys. No word whatsoever about the press conference with the journalists. Apparently, the BP’s editors must have thought that “foreign poison of the mind” should not reach readers in Bangkok…
Sondhi – return parliamentary powers to the king
… says the guy who used to practice “pampers voodoo”.
Thailand’s full-blown crisis of legitimacy
Thailand’s ‘legitimacy’ as a ‘democracy’ has always been questionable from the ground. The illusion of ‘democracy’ has been carefully cultivated so as to place the country as acceptable to receive foreign aid. The illusion was furthered strengthened during the cold war, with hundreds and millions of USD harvested by the elite and a portion poured into a very successful and royal propaganda campaign during the war against communism. For that money, though more recently more known as foreign development aid, the status quo has to maintain its ‘democracy’ status, even as it ruthlessly cling on to power. Hence the dismissive: that the country folk are ‘too stupid’ attitude. Foreign aid money are simple too easy and too much to give up easily. What the status quo want is authoritarian rule with a monarchic front. Such a potential state is not necessarily dictatorial or tyrannic – not with a good leader. But the status quo wanted to believe that they would be egalitarian – which they could never be, because the Bangkok status quo is usually and simply not the cream of the crop Thailand has to offer, and they certainly do not know how to manage a country economically much less effectively. I would say, Thailand did well in-spite of the leadership it has, rather than because of the leadership it has. All the status quo know is how to skim off 30% of any mega government projects – just like the army taking a 30% cut of all army gear purchases.
The cracks that is now appearing in the middle class Bangkok, is in part a result of this discrepancy – that inherent want and desire to be authoritarian, yet must pretend to be democracy by western definition so that they can continue to get access to foreign aid for cheap money for mega projects so they can continue to loot the country’s coffers in that semi-legit way. The result is the current illogical narrative that is being played in Bangkok right now: every thing the status quo is doing is ‘educated’, ‘legal’, and ‘democratic’. Whereas everything the non-status quo and un-accepted status quo did is ‘stupid’, ‘uneducated’, ‘illegal’ and ‘terrorism’. Seriously, Taksin and Ahbisit are the same in sheer political ambitiousness – one bought his votes with his decades of hard work bribing his way to wealth and effectively using that wealth, while the other played the I am weak can’t do anything clean guy card so you can use me and wait for the likes of the army and status quo to put him on the PM chair. The difference is: the former one can see what one get, the latter one vote for an Oxford Grad but actually gets a list of fighting de-facto powers that can only be ‘verified’ via heresy and conjectures.
As a matter of fact, the narrative that Thailand is the biggest democracy in SEA has been playing for decades, as is the myth of the King’s tireless efforts to improve the lot of the improvished – both legends grow more frayed and less convincing over the years. In 1992 (and before) at least Thailand has the comfort of General Suchinda, leader by a coup, firing into the protesters to hide behind and emerge a little battered but with the ‘democracy-illusion’ fairly intact. Now in 2010, it was a CIVILIAN government (Abhisit did not do Thai military service just like all other rich Thais sons, he is also born in England and graduated from Oxford, and is really as civilian as can be) that ordered snipers (I do not know why but this sniper thing upset me more than the idea of the army using machine guns – perhaps it is the calculativeness of it, that sheer slowness and torture of wondering when the next sniper bullet will come, and who will be targeted etc) to take down civilians.
This time, Thailand can no longer hide behind the illegal coup and army firing at protesters story; the ‘democracy-illusion’ has taken a big battering, even as the status quo desperately tries to find comfort in the Terrorism Narrative so crudely borrowed from the US post-911. Taksin at once took on a bigger than life evil guy who could remote-control the destruction of Thailand (Bangkok) from afar, but yet powerless to come home and had to travel the world on a set of passports of some literally unknown countries – one of the many paradoxes the status quo had no problem believing in.
The fractures can no longer be covered with cheap paste and hence the deep divide down middle class urban Bangkokians. Those who agreed with status quo narrative are fine and would never understand those who felt queasy with the illogicalness of the current narrative. The simple reason is that because they agree with the establishment, they need not fear what they think and say being overheard or recorded that may one day come back to hurt them. Those on the other side understood that fear, and hence kept quiet for self-defence. Those who wants to believe, believe that the Reds have hundreds of M79 grenade launchers and Taksin paid millions to people to bomb various parts of Bangkok. Those who are more honest or less naive will tell you if they trust you, that lives are cheap in Thailand. You really don’t need to spend millions of hire someone to fire a grenade launcher in Bangkok, tens of thousands will do, and hitmen? Coupa of grand baht each…
My father told me as a child about Thailand:
You cannot help Thailand if you are Thai – Life is cheap and no one will care if you disappear. That was why we migrated.
Nick Nostitz in the killing zone
Has he not seen the Canadian journalist getting shot in the leg on CNN? Still claiming self defence and clear targets is hilarious. Self-defence of his regime, and the protestors were very clear targets, sure.
Someone should have screened him the video taken from above you hosted on facebook and your report Nick at the time he was answering questions. Well done for putting the question of accountability to him though Nick!
Enemies, foreign and domestic
#44
If the UDD did not “burn down” Bangkok, why did you want to sell us this view as the truth? You should realize the processes of propaganda (emphasizing the buildings, ignoring the dead, etc.) that have been going on, government-guided (including strong censorship) and others, and you should, in your small social sphere, resist not parrot them. I do not tolerate vandalism and violence, neither from the PAD nor from the UDD. I assume that you agree with me that the PAD leaders and associates should immediately be arrested (and ASTV and ASTVPhuchatkan closed) and share the cells with their UDD counterparts, and that Abhisit’s role during the PAD protests was deplorable.
#57
“If the Democrats would have resigned already after 1 week into the UDD’s demonstration, there would not have been any violence. And if PAD would have been attacked at the Suvarnabhumi, there surely would have been.”
How true! Moreover, if Abhisit had had a better democratic mind and more political ethics, he would never have accepted the position of prime minister as the result of a chain of political-judicial-military trickery either. And if he knew history, he would have learned from the risk that Suchinda Kraprayoon had taken in 1992. Suchinda badly lost–Abhisit’s loss is even worse.
Sondhi – return parliamentary powers to the king
So the question for Sondhi is: could Vajiralongkorn do as well as ANU’s Lee Kuan Yew?
Nick Nostitz in the killing zone
Abhisit asks Nostitz for evidence (from The Nation):
Water shortages in Burma
David Johnson, where is this ‘well documented’ evidence that Bhumibol prefers the military regime of Myanmar? Situations in Thailand and Burma are not consistent beyond a very, very broad level (broad in the sense that we commonly are all breathing) for there to be “Westerners” legitimately claiming for a boycott of Thailand.
And what does your comment have to do with Kean’s article? More to life than what’s going on in Thailand?
Thailand’s terrorists
Doyle2499 #32: thanks for the info on the 8 soldiers who were killed. To see this in one hit certainly puts things in a quite different perspective. A very useful post!