Actions are far better than just words. The Thai illegal military junta tell the world lies about Thailand under the military regime.
Whatever happened to the big ship that was arrested and brought to port only to sail sublimely out to sea under the eyes of the coast guards?
In this case I believe the EU.
I am just wondering – who the authors are listening to and where they observed? At the same day as this is posted the EU in the form of Fisheries Commissioner Karmenu Vella and Social Affairs Commissioner Marianne Thyssen has issued an statement saying: “swift and determined action” by next month to improve its fisheries and labour practices” according to Bangkok Post.
Being an EU citizen, you know that when the commissioners goes on to say that somebody in a month need to do something swift, and starts talking about tangible results. The fact is that the patience finally is running out for the European Union.
So who is right the European Union evaluating that basically the Thai military regime has done nothing or Vandergeest and Marschke
Not sure where Godfree gets his numbers from but seems he sat down one day or night and dreamed such figures up. And 2 and 3 refers to three countries but only mentions both: hate to have him teaching me “political arithmetic” or worse still my kids)
There is an interesting comparison with the case of the recent Chinese attempt to interfere in the European Association for Chinese studies (EACS) conference, held in Portugal in July 2014.
On arriving at the conference, the director of the Chinese government-run Confucius Institutes, which had contributed some costs, ordered her people to collect and rip out certain pages from the already-printed program booklets, for political reasons (for details see: http://chinesestudies.eu/?p=584). There was an uproar, and a sharp formal protest by the EACS (http://chinesestudies.eu/?p=585).
This example shows the dangers of both open blatant censorship and also of hidden compromises that could likewise arise from accepting money from shady sources.
Another comparable case, which I experienced directly, at the conference of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Assn in Siem Reap in Cambodia, in January 2014, involved the association leadership itself preemptively forbidding members’ discussion of Cambodian contemporary affairs at this international association’s member-only internal meeting (!). This was for fear of antagonizing the hosts, and shows the dangers of self-censorship and censorship of discussion when hosting meetings in dubious places.
I don’t have an opinion on whether to boycott Thailand as a venue, but I do think it is imperative for academic organization leaders and members to defend freedom of expression, and to stand against censorship, whether openly visible or –perhaps even more dangerous — self-censorship compromises hidden in the shadows.
CMU is completely powerless with respect to guarantees about the academic environment that will prevail during this conference. They may have assurances of forbearance, but I bet not, and those would not be promises. This government does not make such promises. Not to say, “Don’t go.” Might still be good to go, but … powerless. A chance to live like a Thai for a week. Powerless.
An optimistic view of the Thai fishing industry.
It doesn’t matter how many rules and regulations are put in place as the big players go untouched and are still free from prosecution.
Corruption abounds within the military (allegedly) and where are the prosecutions?
I’ve been surprised by how few Thai restaurants in Sydney, these days, hang Bumiphol’s portrait, compared to in the past, when they were universal. Portraits of the great King Chulalongkorn remain universal in Sydney Thai restaurants. I am sure Bumiphol has been a great and good King. But it does seem various Thai military and political factions appropriating his prestige for their own nefariousness, has dented His Majesty’s image among diaspora Thais, here in Sydney at least.
The racist core that drives Thai labour and immigration policy is well-evidenced here. Excellent op-ed piece.
Legal protections are only for Thai nationals. Namely, hire a Burmese without rights, exploit with impunity, withhold wages, lock them up at night, rape them (witnessed all against Karen workers in Mae Sot).
Defamation charges suppress media reports.
National and personal image takes priority over basic foundational issues of right and wrong.
More professional type workers such as teachers have no real protection from exploitation either. After failure to pay for their work, for example, a work visa expires 7 days after employment terminates and the teacher is illegal after that. This translates into inability to attract the best talent and high employee turnover rates, failure to rejuvenate school with new ideas and expertise in teaching and continued reproduction of old worn out ideas from the past.
Immigration law often makes the forever non-Thai foreigners who do find a permanent place in this system into sycophantic reproducers of essentializing lies using excuses like” “Well, Thai people don’t want to hear or read about that.” And they are largely right, “educated” public opinion comes from political ideology embedded in the educational system, so among the so-called “educated” class trying to interest them in, let’s say, the Pulitzer Prize winning AP series on slavery in the Thai fishing industry is impossible because they will only view it as ruining the national image, not as a foundational issue of right or wrong.
BTW this is a perfect supplement in the globalization of regulation component of the ANU RegNet regulatory state reading list where cross-country comparisons such as New Zealand-Thailand must be reckoned essential to any analysis.
“But it in turn poses the question as to how amenable will such movements be to suggestions they should exercise restraint, tolerance, and obey the law.”
Talking about the last paragraph, who should write the law? To absolutely, absolute obeeeey. UN? NGO’s. New Age Australian and American “educated” hot shots?
At almost every ICAS convention that has taken place, the ICAS Secretariat has received messages from concerned scholars who have, for a variety of reasons, called for a boycott of the meeting. It is in this light that we regard the post of Prof. Dr. Thongchai Winichakul of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (US) and former President of the Association for Asian Studies (Ann Arbor, US), asking to either boycott ICAS 10 in Chiang Mai (Thailand) or “to make this event into an academically vibrant meetingâ€. The latter is of course precisely the intention of the organizers, Chiang Mai University, and the ICAS Secretariat.
By organizing ICAS 10 in Chiang Mai, centrally located in Asia, the organizers have sought to make it easier for intellectuals and academics from Thailand and other counties in the region to meet, to interact, and to participate in the kind of intellectually free environment the ICAS meetings have always been in the past 20 years. Events like ICAS cannot only be held in supposedly ‘safe’ countries, which are often financially out of reach for most people in the region. Whether in Shanghai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Macao or Honolulu, ICAS has never once been accused of curtailing the freedom of expression.
The questions Thongchai raises in his first two points will surely be answered by our co-organizers at Chiang Mai University, but as for the issue raised by Thongchai pertaining to the ‘close eye’ the ICAS Secretariat should keep on the conduct of the host organization, we say: ICAS is not a nanny. The decision to organize ICAS in a particular place is only taken after a rigorous review of the intellectual environment and potential partner. In this instance, IIAS, the host of the ICAS Secretariat, has had a long and very meaningful academic collaboration with our colleagues at CMU, which stands as one of our most significant partners in the region.
We appreciate Thongchai’s insistence on guaranteeing top-notch conditions of intellectual freedom at an academic event such as ICAS. And we agree. We have full faith in our partners at CMU to guarantee the academic environment we all have come to expect at ICAS, where all participants can enjoy a free and meaningful exchange of thoughts.
On behalf of the ICAS Secretariat,
Dr Paul van der Velde
ICAS Secretary
Too close for comfort, certainly. And thick as thieves many of them are, with the masters of the universe, or proxies.
The last paragraph is prescient as popular struggle in the fight for “land, food and peace”, and against injustice and unjust laws, continues unabated despite the exhortations, indeed condemnation and outright abuse, from the hero worshipping fans of the Lady “not to rock the boat” besides taking it personally as attacks on their idol and her “benevolent authoritarianism”. The new found freedoms have only whetted the public’s appetite for more.
Outsiders can help or hinder. The people will take whatever helps and reject what doesn’t, including political leadership and guidance, domestic or international. The genie is well and truly out and there’s no going back. And when it comes to the crunch there will be no holding back.
Re: What is Thai studies? So many issues not typically addressed in so-called “thai Studies”: agricultural policies such as price supports, food safety regulation, transportation issues, mining regulation, Sangha regulation, telecoms and broadcasting regulation, central bank issues such as the Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF) where the 1997 crisis debt is stashed with no principal payments made so far or the proposed investment fund using foreign exchange reserves, the impact of global regulatory regimes such as civil aviation of EU fishing regulations. And all these issues are **in the news everyday** and **need the well-reasoned and thought out input of academic specialists** and BTW the “Introductory readings on regulation theory” from the RegNet School of Regulation and Global Governance, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific contains ideas that draw all these issues in the news together.
A very good question considering that BDS is controversial within the wider pro-Palestinian movement.
So in 2014, Israeli military action killed over 2000 Palestinians and forced half a million out of their homes.
The world’s media organizations act almost as if they were under the control of the Israeli government and only grudgingly ever allow the news of the real Palestinian situation leak out.
Recently some western governments and organizations have begun to shut down normal free speech, apparently in response to the Israelis’ successful lobbying to have BDS promotion defined as “racist hate speech”.
A great number of Palestinians in Israel are more or less alienated from the Israeli economy and so would not likely suffer from a successful boycott and divestment as much as Israelis in general.
In Thailand, a few high-level associates of some very high-level folks have died under suspicious circumstances in prison.
A few other, comparatively wealthy people, have had their bank accounts frozen and their travel privileges removed.
A few thousand journalists and “activists” have been picked up and detained, sometimes for hours and sometimes for a few days.
A couple of those detained have been tortured. And many have chosen to leave the country.
International media is united in its condemnation of the junta and there has been a convenient concatenation of very negative journalist ‘exposes’ of long-standing realities in Thailand with the dictatorship, thus creating an overwhelming sense of malfeasance on the part of the government.
Any boycott and divestment movement to give pain to the Thai economy would effect the Thai people immediately and profoundly, the very same people in most cases who have been disenfranchised by the coup.
Given the above admittedly brief and biased comparison I would suggest that putting the Thai situation “into the BDS and Israel context” would be a form of moral and political idiocy.
There are people in the media/social media world who have made great hay of comparing Thailand with North Korea and giving great guffaws of ironic delight at some fantasy image of Thailand becoming Burma while Burma becomes Thailand.
One effect of these exaggerations and the no-doubt heartfelt animus they conceal is to add fuel to the ultra-nationalist xenophobes in Thailand who use them as proof of the world’s misunderstanding of Thailand.
Another effect of course is to insult and demean the peoples of North Korea and Myanmar by equating their very real and very longstanding suffering with the Thai situation.
The very suggestion that there is some similarity between the Thai return to more authoritarian military government with its very real but relatively mild approach to repression with the situation of the Palestinians within Israel is staggeringly wrongheaded to say the least.
Thai Studies people for years rested content with the blarney put out and about by the royalist establishment and now seem to be settling into a comfortable relationship with the blarney that would have us believe that ShinCorp was actually running a democracy rather than an electocracy.
Why should anyone care where they hold their conference?
The UN is completely discredited over Yemen. HRW, ICRC and other NGOs are unofficial agents of the Western intelligence community. The OECD, National Endowment for Democracy and the Open Society Initiative are official agents. RFA and the VOA are propaganda vehicles. Although the outward forms are maintained and personal freedoms are, for the time being, largely intact, it is seriously doubtful whether real democracy exists anywhere in the Western world.
Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss
Ending labour abuse at sea
Actions are far better than just words. The Thai illegal military junta tell the world lies about Thailand under the military regime.
Whatever happened to the big ship that was arrested and brought to port only to sail sublimely out to sea under the eyes of the coast guards?
In this case I believe the EU.
Ending labour abuse at sea
I am just wondering – who the authors are listening to and where they observed? At the same day as this is posted the EU in the form of Fisheries Commissioner Karmenu Vella and Social Affairs Commissioner Marianne Thyssen has issued an statement saying: “swift and determined action” by next month to improve its fisheries and labour practices” according to Bangkok Post.
Being an EU citizen, you know that when the commissioners goes on to say that somebody in a month need to do something swift, and starts talking about tangible results. The fact is that the patience finally is running out for the European Union.
So who is right the European Union evaluating that basically the Thai military regime has done nothing or Vandergeest and Marschke
Questions about international conferences in Thailand in 2017
Not sure where Godfree gets his numbers from but seems he sat down one day or night and dreamed such figures up. And 2 and 3 refers to three countries but only mentions both: hate to have him teaching me “political arithmetic” or worse still my kids)
Questions about international conferences in Thailand in 2017
There is an interesting comparison with the case of the recent Chinese attempt to interfere in the European Association for Chinese studies (EACS) conference, held in Portugal in July 2014.
On arriving at the conference, the director of the Chinese government-run Confucius Institutes, which had contributed some costs, ordered her people to collect and rip out certain pages from the already-printed program booklets, for political reasons (for details see: http://chinesestudies.eu/?p=584). There was an uproar, and a sharp formal protest by the EACS (http://chinesestudies.eu/?p=585).
This example shows the dangers of both open blatant censorship and also of hidden compromises that could likewise arise from accepting money from shady sources.
Another comparable case, which I experienced directly, at the conference of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Assn in Siem Reap in Cambodia, in January 2014, involved the association leadership itself preemptively forbidding members’ discussion of Cambodian contemporary affairs at this international association’s member-only internal meeting (!). This was for fear of antagonizing the hosts, and shows the dangers of self-censorship and censorship of discussion when hosting meetings in dubious places.
I don’t have an opinion on whether to boycott Thailand as a venue, but I do think it is imperative for academic organization leaders and members to defend freedom of expression, and to stand against censorship, whether openly visible or –perhaps even more dangerous — self-censorship compromises hidden in the shadows.
Questions about international conferences in Thailand in 2017
CMU is completely powerless with respect to guarantees about the academic environment that will prevail during this conference. They may have assurances of forbearance, but I bet not, and those would not be promises. This government does not make such promises. Not to say, “Don’t go.” Might still be good to go, but … powerless. A chance to live like a Thai for a week. Powerless.
Ending labour abuse at sea
An optimistic view of the Thai fishing industry.
It doesn’t matter how many rules and regulations are put in place as the big players go untouched and are still free from prosecution.
Corruption abounds within the military (allegedly) and where are the prosecutions?
The voice of the voiceless
I’ve been surprised by how few Thai restaurants in Sydney, these days, hang Bumiphol’s portrait, compared to in the past, when they were universal. Portraits of the great King Chulalongkorn remain universal in Sydney Thai restaurants. I am sure Bumiphol has been a great and good King. But it does seem various Thai military and political factions appropriating his prestige for their own nefariousness, has dented His Majesty’s image among diaspora Thais, here in Sydney at least.
Slavery and seafood
The racist core that drives Thai labour and immigration policy is well-evidenced here. Excellent op-ed piece.
Legal protections are only for Thai nationals. Namely, hire a Burmese without rights, exploit with impunity, withhold wages, lock them up at night, rape them (witnessed all against Karen workers in Mae Sot).
Defamation charges suppress media reports.
National and personal image takes priority over basic foundational issues of right and wrong.
More professional type workers such as teachers have no real protection from exploitation either. After failure to pay for their work, for example, a work visa expires 7 days after employment terminates and the teacher is illegal after that. This translates into inability to attract the best talent and high employee turnover rates, failure to rejuvenate school with new ideas and expertise in teaching and continued reproduction of old worn out ideas from the past.
Immigration law often makes the forever non-Thai foreigners who do find a permanent place in this system into sycophantic reproducers of essentializing lies using excuses like” “Well, Thai people don’t want to hear or read about that.” And they are largely right, “educated” public opinion comes from political ideology embedded in the educational system, so among the so-called “educated” class trying to interest them in, let’s say, the Pulitzer Prize winning AP series on slavery in the Thai fishing industry is impossible because they will only view it as ruining the national image, not as a foundational issue of right or wrong.
BTW this is a perfect supplement in the globalization of regulation component of the ANU RegNet regulatory state reading list where cross-country comparisons such as New Zealand-Thailand must be reckoned essential to any analysis.
Bringing democracy to Myanmar
You can be sure the state will exercise legitimised violence in dealing with ‘excesses of political activism’ as defined by itself.
Whither Daw Suu? Wouldn’t want to quote Lord Acton, heaven forfend. And it’s only power sharing at its best.
Bringing democracy to Myanmar
“But it in turn poses the question as to how amenable will such movements be to suggestions they should exercise restraint, tolerance, and obey the law.”
Talking about the last paragraph, who should write the law? To absolutely, absolute obeeeey. UN? NGO’s. New Age Australian and American “educated” hot shots?
The land like no others!
Questions about international conferences in Thailand in 2017
At almost every ICAS convention that has taken place, the ICAS Secretariat has received messages from concerned scholars who have, for a variety of reasons, called for a boycott of the meeting. It is in this light that we regard the post of Prof. Dr. Thongchai Winichakul of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (US) and former President of the Association for Asian Studies (Ann Arbor, US), asking to either boycott ICAS 10 in Chiang Mai (Thailand) or “to make this event into an academically vibrant meetingâ€. The latter is of course precisely the intention of the organizers, Chiang Mai University, and the ICAS Secretariat.
By organizing ICAS 10 in Chiang Mai, centrally located in Asia, the organizers have sought to make it easier for intellectuals and academics from Thailand and other counties in the region to meet, to interact, and to participate in the kind of intellectually free environment the ICAS meetings have always been in the past 20 years. Events like ICAS cannot only be held in supposedly ‘safe’ countries, which are often financially out of reach for most people in the region. Whether in Shanghai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Macao or Honolulu, ICAS has never once been accused of curtailing the freedom of expression.
The questions Thongchai raises in his first two points will surely be answered by our co-organizers at Chiang Mai University, but as for the issue raised by Thongchai pertaining to the ‘close eye’ the ICAS Secretariat should keep on the conduct of the host organization, we say: ICAS is not a nanny. The decision to organize ICAS in a particular place is only taken after a rigorous review of the intellectual environment and potential partner. In this instance, IIAS, the host of the ICAS Secretariat, has had a long and very meaningful academic collaboration with our colleagues at CMU, which stands as one of our most significant partners in the region.
We appreciate Thongchai’s insistence on guaranteeing top-notch conditions of intellectual freedom at an academic event such as ICAS. And we agree. We have full faith in our partners at CMU to guarantee the academic environment we all have come to expect at ICAS, where all participants can enjoy a free and meaningful exchange of thoughts.
On behalf of the ICAS Secretariat,
Dr Paul van der Velde
ICAS Secretary
Bringing democracy to Myanmar
Too close for comfort, certainly. And thick as thieves many of them are, with the masters of the universe, or proxies.
The last paragraph is prescient as popular struggle in the fight for “land, food and peace”, and against injustice and unjust laws, continues unabated despite the exhortations, indeed condemnation and outright abuse, from the hero worshipping fans of the Lady “not to rock the boat” besides taking it personally as attacks on their idol and her “benevolent authoritarianism”. The new found freedoms have only whetted the public’s appetite for more.
Outsiders can help or hinder. The people will take whatever helps and reject what doesn’t, including political leadership and guidance, domestic or international. The genie is well and truly out and there’s no going back. And when it comes to the crunch there will be no holding back.
Bringing democracy to Myanmar
“Global values”
Thanks for the joke!
Remembering Depayin and other tragedies
Is that Optimism thingy wilting?
Bringing democracy to Myanmar
How very Un-New Mandela!
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/02/26/the-united-nations-exposed-who-is-in-control/
Questions about international conferences in Thailand in 2017
Re: What is Thai studies? So many issues not typically addressed in so-called “thai Studies”: agricultural policies such as price supports, food safety regulation, transportation issues, mining regulation, Sangha regulation, telecoms and broadcasting regulation, central bank issues such as the Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF) where the 1997 crisis debt is stashed with no principal payments made so far or the proposed investment fund using foreign exchange reserves, the impact of global regulatory regimes such as civil aviation of EU fishing regulations. And all these issues are **in the news everyday** and **need the well-reasoned and thought out input of academic specialists** and BTW the “Introductory readings on regulation theory” from the RegNet School of Regulation and Global Governance, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific contains ideas that draw all these issues in the news together.
Remembering Depayin and other tragedies
The textbox: “Current ye@r: * 3.5” blocks posts on Thailand related articles, nto this article on Myanmar.
Wonder whether it is a Thai government hack or New Mandala hack?
Bringing democracy to Myanmar
When salaries are fat, expensive hotels de rigueur, and money is short, any institution’s policies are up for sale to the highest bidder.
Questions about international conferences in Thailand in 2017
A very good question considering that BDS is controversial within the wider pro-Palestinian movement.
So in 2014, Israeli military action killed over 2000 Palestinians and forced half a million out of their homes.
The world’s media organizations act almost as if they were under the control of the Israeli government and only grudgingly ever allow the news of the real Palestinian situation leak out.
Recently some western governments and organizations have begun to shut down normal free speech, apparently in response to the Israelis’ successful lobbying to have BDS promotion defined as “racist hate speech”.
A great number of Palestinians in Israel are more or less alienated from the Israeli economy and so would not likely suffer from a successful boycott and divestment as much as Israelis in general.
In Thailand, a few high-level associates of some very high-level folks have died under suspicious circumstances in prison.
A few other, comparatively wealthy people, have had their bank accounts frozen and their travel privileges removed.
A few thousand journalists and “activists” have been picked up and detained, sometimes for hours and sometimes for a few days.
A couple of those detained have been tortured. And many have chosen to leave the country.
International media is united in its condemnation of the junta and there has been a convenient concatenation of very negative journalist ‘exposes’ of long-standing realities in Thailand with the dictatorship, thus creating an overwhelming sense of malfeasance on the part of the government.
Any boycott and divestment movement to give pain to the Thai economy would effect the Thai people immediately and profoundly, the very same people in most cases who have been disenfranchised by the coup.
Given the above admittedly brief and biased comparison I would suggest that putting the Thai situation “into the BDS and Israel context” would be a form of moral and political idiocy.
There are people in the media/social media world who have made great hay of comparing Thailand with North Korea and giving great guffaws of ironic delight at some fantasy image of Thailand becoming Burma while Burma becomes Thailand.
One effect of these exaggerations and the no-doubt heartfelt animus they conceal is to add fuel to the ultra-nationalist xenophobes in Thailand who use them as proof of the world’s misunderstanding of Thailand.
Another effect of course is to insult and demean the peoples of North Korea and Myanmar by equating their very real and very longstanding suffering with the Thai situation.
The very suggestion that there is some similarity between the Thai return to more authoritarian military government with its very real but relatively mild approach to repression with the situation of the Palestinians within Israel is staggeringly wrongheaded to say the least.
Thai Studies people for years rested content with the blarney put out and about by the royalist establishment and now seem to be settling into a comfortable relationship with the blarney that would have us believe that ShinCorp was actually running a democracy rather than an electocracy.
Why should anyone care where they hold their conference?
Bringing democracy to Myanmar
The UN is completely discredited over Yemen. HRW, ICRC and other NGOs are unofficial agents of the Western intelligence community. The OECD, National Endowment for Democracy and the Open Society Initiative are official agents. RFA and the VOA are propaganda vehicles. Although the outward forms are maintained and personal freedoms are, for the time being, largely intact, it is seriously doubtful whether real democracy exists anywhere in the Western world.