Comments

Srithanonchai’s comments strike me as the best of those above.
It’s is pretty unfair to criticise Baker and Pasuk for treading carefully on the issue of Crown wealth – and there’s also the difficulty of how much accurate information is available. Though I’m sure foreign intelligence agencies, especially the United States, have almost ALL details. That the Economist was able to fire such a direct shot across the Thai Royal bar, so soon after British Airways lost millions due to the Suvarnabhumi closure, suggest British inbtelligence may release a whole lot more should such a silly episode happen again.
But let’s return to Srithanochai’s point. He’s indeed correct. This struggle between “the rich and the poor”, and “populist policies
for the poor” is less and less seen as simply such by the poor
themselves. It is increasingly seen as the poor Isaarn Lao, and the Lanna, against the richer “Thai”. Their consciousness is increasingly class ethnic incipient break-away nationalist, not simply class. Apart from their allegiance to Peua Thai, and “red shirt”, their most burning identity is their region – especially Isaarn, now almost a nation in-itself, and for itself.
Only in Pasuk’s failure to grasp this, can she be seen as a functionary.

His Royal Highness is well-prepared, and will probably make a good king – perhaps even a great one.
But it’s one of the world’s toughest jobs.
After all, who could have guessed that when Bumiphol ascended the throne, in very difficult circumstances, that this young man would become the undoubtedly great king that He has turned out to be.
Handley pays too much attention to rumours re. The Crown Prince – and does n’t give sufficient weight to the fact this sort of thing is par-for-the-course political jockeying in Thailand.
Indeed Handley stretches credulity on the rumour front.
His Royal Highness studied and trained in Australia – there’s no better recommendation than that, in my book.

UnfaithfulReader – thank you for this information, which I did not know. I stand corrected and apologise to you and Handley.

Interesting thing about that Chengdu Military Region is that it used to be called the South-Western Army of PLA many years ago. The troops from that army were heavily involved in long years of brutal war against Burmese Army in the seventy’s and eighty’s.

But since the ninety’s and up to now, that army has been serving as a transit point and also a conduit for massive arms delivery into Burma after Burmese Army purchased more than three billion dollars worth of arms from China.

PLA must have been reorganized and the Chengdu Military Region is now a military administrative command for the southwest regions of China, covering Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, and the Xizang/Tibet Autonomous Region. It has 180,000 regular troops and many more irregular troops as militia, military police, and labor brigades.

Just a couple of weeks ago its Chief-of-Staff Ai Husheng was in Burma meeting the generals during a friendly visit prior to the last weekend visit of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping.

Chinese troops must be watching across the border, but I don’t think they are spoiling for fight, yet.

“Chinese volunteers, thousands of whom had made up the bulk of the Communist Party of Burma’s People’s Army during its 1968-79 heydays”

A rather dubious claim since thousands of Wa fighters actually made up the bulk of CPB troops, unless they want to maintain that the Wa involved were Chinese nationals and not Burmese. A pretty moot point since these people live on both sides of the border ( Mao first met these erstwhile headhunters in his Long March to Yenan). Only a sprinkling of Han Chinese volunteers in leadership positions, such as Lin Mingxian and Li Ziru, were mentioned in Bertil Lintner’s books on the CPB.

Just keep your mouth shut while you are in Thailand. Only one place in the world that Royal family had law to protect them form criticized and sue. Not all of Thai people love royal family, recent Military coup in 2006 make it clear, who is big and important in Thai no matter how many people love you will be kick out of country or go in jail so easily.

I’ve read Utusan Malaysia countless of times, from my opinion, its no difference from Sin Chew or any of the Chinese newspaper in M’sia, just different viewpoint.

“If after autonomy, the violence doesn’t stop, then what?”

Simple, then the new Muslim power holders will have to deal with it themselves, i.e. without the help of the Thai Army, budget, etc. It will be “their” business. However, this might not be what the proponents of the autonomy proposal have in mind.

Its interesting to see the flag bearers dressed in white! and what looks like white officer’s caps!

I agree wih Somsak that Pasuk’s rhetoric of “rich and poor” can obscure a lot. It’s not, in my opinion, that “rich and poor” doesn’t matter, but to me Pasuk never presents a convincing analysis of what causes “rich and poor.” Being a middle-of-the-road social democrat, she doesn’t seem to think that basic dynamics of capitalism are at stake here–she rarely uses the word “capitalism”–and she doesn’t talk about class, which doesn’t mean exactly the same thing as “rich and poor.” She interprets the smaller disparities in income distribution of some countries as evidence that they “value equity”–what does it mean to say a country values equity?–rather than as the outcomes of social struggles over distribution. (Does the United States have less disparity than Thailand because “the United States values equity”–and does this even make any sense–or because successful struggles by labor in the past resulted in some redistribution, while more recent successful struggles by capitalists have increased disparity again?) Avoiding discussion of class struggle and substituting this kind of feel-good moral rhetoric makes it sound like all Thailand needs is for every Thai to magically “value equity,” rather than for poorer people in Thailand to continue struggling–as many of them are now through the Red Shirt movement–to improve their lot. And no, she doesn’t mention the monarchy. How can one fail to do this in a discussion of income distribution when the Crown Property Bureau is far and away the richest crony capitalist organization in the country–with untaxed wealth that puts Thaksin, the obssession of Pasuk and Chris Baker’s newly revised book, to shame.