Marco #4: I went to Ancient City a few months ago. The Thai people I was with told me that one of the reproductions we looked at was Preah Vihear. I remember being rather skeptical – it seems scaled down – but maybe it was.
On May 28, PM Abhisit, at the Army auditorium, in his capacity as director of ISOC, opened the project “Fighting the economic crisis by the philosophy of sufficiency economy.” This project is implemented by ISOC, and the government has allotted one billion baht for it. The initial perriod of this project is six months. (Matichon, May 30, 2009:11)
Portman makes a big claim: “Some senior red shirts were allegedly muttering in private that Thaksin failed to provide all the funding he promised for the Songkran riots which they claim is the reason they failed in their big push for the capital.” Is there any evidence at all for this claim? Again, this is a real question, not a criticism.
Maybe the Thai govt can persuade the owners of Ancient City in Samut Prakan to add a copy of Prah Viharn to their theme park, if it’s not too provocative. Didn’t India get angry with Bangladesh over a replica of the Taj Mahal earlier this year?
Thanks, Sidh. I didn’t think you’d suddenly changed sides – just couldn’t see the point. I do now. I had no idea Thaksin (& Kasit, too) had elevated himself in this way. What a sleaze!
It is an intriguing puzzle whether the junta discovered the madman Yettaw and deliberately let him swim over the lake or even gave him the idea, or whether their security is so incompetent that he really slipped through.
“No responsibility nor accountability – I understand not even money to treat and support the maimed Red protesters (please correct me if I am wrong).”
This is quite believable, Sidh. Thaksin has a reputation for being extremely tight fisted with his own money. Some senior red shirts were allegedly muttering in private that Thaksin failed to provide all the funding he promised for the Songkran riots which they claim is the reason they failed in their big push for the capital. Another 100,000 protesters trucked in would have made all the difference.
He brought the coup on himself by refusing to compromise over the profits from his dubious sale of Shin Corp which most urban people rightly or wrongly thought he should have been willing to pay tax on. His greed and selfishness is his undoing. This is a weakness that Newin knows well from bitter experience and is now aggressively seeking to exploit. Thaksin has provided Newin with the opportunity to attract more and more corrupt provincial politicians away from Thaksin in the hope that he will deliver the spoils that the Big Boss only ever promised to most of them as jam tomorrow.
Predictably Thaksin’s Building for a Better Future Foundation that you pointed out above appears to have done nothing apart from its initial PR puff.
Sidh: Can you remind which phone-in this was where Thaksin compared himself to Mandela and give me a place where I can find it? I think I missed it, but I can’t claim to have listened to all of them in detail. I do recall Suthep saying that Thaksin had done this and I did see Kasit make the comparison. Real request.
Michael#195, Ralph#196 and Scott#197, PMThaksin has himself made the comparison in one of his many phone-ins to his Red audiences.
Internationally, PMThaksin has been involved in a very conscious self-refashioning effort as the “peaceful fighter for true democracy” and also for the betterment of poor people in developing countries best captured in his Dubai and Hong Kong based organization website (which is very rarely updated!) launched with much fanfare last year:
In this self-penned media myth, PMThaksin, like Nelson Mandela, is peace-loving democracy and freedom fighter. The Songkran Red Riots? Nothing to do with him as it was all masterfully orchestrated by the Democrats, PAD, Newin’s Blue Shirts, the military, the Privy Counsellors etc…etc… whoever his enemies are. All those people in Red committing the violence – all soldiers and PAD in red shirts! No responsibility nor accountability – I understand not even money to treat and support the maimed Red protesters (please correct me if I am wrong).
Yet at the same time he still market the inhumane Wars on Drugs as one of his major achievement as prime minister. Yet, when the opportunity has really arise to show the world he is a ‘changed man’ in the recent Burmese Junta’s actions against Aung San Syu Kyi. Nothing either from the Red Elite nor Pheu Thai leadership. The reality is PMThaksin hasn’t changed from the man who thought Syu Kyi’s detention “reasonable” in 2004:
Don’t get me wrong, Nelson Mandela is also one of my personal heroes. As a Thai, I would also like to apologize to South Africans that a former Thai prime minister is abusing Mandela’s name in this manner. I can be accused of doing so too, even if meant as extreme sarcasm as part of engaging in discussions with many of his ardent supporters in NM who sees him as a saint.
I will say again that if the progressive Red elements want to fight for true democracy and social equity, they must distance themselves from PMThaksin. It is best if they pick another color altogether. In fact, if they mean well, there’s an opportunity to join forces with the disparate but many poor rural and urban communities countrywide that are trying very hard to build democracy from the grassroots.
Sidh S, Comparing a good effective yet ultimately too greedy millionaire ex Prime Minister with a saint who spent half his life in jail in protest against apartheid is simply ludicrous & shows how far you have slipped from reality.
Democracy works when you get your revenge in the poll booth on election day. The ppl & the army of Thailand & other struggling democracies have got to learn Patience.
Thaksin should never have been ousted before his term was up but constant fighting & division isn’t going to fix everything up.
Thaksin was good but he had faults like all politicians, he was certainly no saint & not worth shedding your blood over.
Wake up & smell the roses (jasmine 😉 ) Thailand.
“… India was not the only villain. China was selling arms to the Burmese military and buying natural gas. Thailand was paying the military dictators $2.8 billion a year for natural gas. Singapore maintained what one expert calls “an intimate engagement with the regime” and remained the favored shopping destination for the dictators and their families. Burma’s state-owned oil company was pumping natural gas for the junta. So was Chevron, the American oil company. It enjoyed a grandfather exemption from American sanctions because it had been operating there for so long…
Last week, after Burma arrested Suu Kyi for allowing John Yattaw, that odd American, to stay in her house for a day after he swum across a lake to see her, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and Australia called for her release.
But, predictably, the nations that keep the junta in power, the enablers – China, India and Thailand – had nothing to say. With those trusty allies in the junta’s back pocket, all the ranting from the rest of the world means nothing…
… Maybe, under the Klieg lights and the skeptical gaze of a thousand reporters, China and India and Thailand might be shamed into doing the right thing.”
… opposition community outside Burma as well, financed by the US Congress to the tune of about US$10 million a year (Bt344million) with US taxpayers’ money. There are such groups all over the world that are funded not only by Congress but by other organisations such as the Soros Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy based in Washington…
somehow I always get the feeling that something is quite fishy there with Aung San Suu Kyi, or not as simple as Western media presents it.
another point is: Obama would better first take care of his own soldiers RAPING (not only women but men and kids too), torturing and killing people in Iraq before trtying to lecture someone else on “human rights”.
meanwhile Thais have already taken care of their own HR abuse cases, and I guess have a clean consience in lecturing Burmese junta: Court clears military in Tak Bai case
Sidh S #193, could you explain your use of the doctored name for Thaksin, please. If it’s an attempt to mix in ‘Nelson Mandela,’ perhaps you could explain why. Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t get it. Be explicit, & keep it simple. Thanks.
Please, no more protests, every protest from either side now is simply damaging Thailands democracy & reputation.
My view is a faulty democracy is better than none at all, time to stand back, look at the big picture & stop giving the army reason to be out of their barracks.
You’ve done a really good job Nick but I hate to see continuing division like this.
It’s time for everyone to burn their red & yellow shirts & don orange. 😉
I don’t care how naive or simplistic this may sound but it’s the simple truth.
This is absurd.Mr PM and Mr Kasit better recall what they said about
Pheah Vihear.Yes,they do know so well but it is the only way to discredit
Nopadol.Besides,people do not know much about the Pheah Vihear.I have been there many years ago and frankly speaking this historical work cannot be copied.The environment and wild life will be devastated.
This is the temple of lord Shiva.For the hindu,if you could the temple of the lord should be built on the mountain top because you could be near to the lord. But this Govt want to attract tourists.
This goes beyond online petitions and blogging. That the internationalisation of Burma’s politics, “international awareness” and international “pressure” will lead to positive State-level change in Burma is little supported by the evidence of the last twenty years. However, it remains a central tenet of most mainstream Burma activists that such an approach not only works but is the most plausible (for some, only) way that the human rights situation in Burma will improve.
There was (and remains) a debate about whether the reason the the SPDC opened up some humanitarian space in the Irrawaddy Delta after Cyclone Nargis was because of international censure or because it realised for itself that to do so was in its best (domestic) interest.
Likewise, to what extent can the SPDC’s allowance of former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma Sergio Pinheiro into the country following the September/October 2007 crackdown (after having been barred from entering for four years) be seen as “evidence” that international condemnation and pressure can lead to positive reform?
Interestingly, Jonathan Head wrote in a BBC article yesterday that
Faced with a barrage of criticism over their prosecution of the country’s most popular politician, the Burmese authorities have made small concessions – for example allowing journalists and diplomats to observe two days of the mainly closed trial.
How can we know that these “small concessions” were a result of “a barrage of [international] criticism” and not done for domestic reasons?
Fortunately I don’t have to go through the mental gymnastics that you do, although the “(0r even 2005?)” might make it easier for you… but then what were the Marxists doing supporting the PAD before the coup?
So was the PAD extra-parliamentary or not? Was it in opposition to those shining lights of democracy Thaksin, Samart and Somchai or not? Was it successful or not? What’s your argument?
Oh, I see it’s because they were backed by all those guys and Chamlong has great organizational skills. (He certainly was the most honest and efficient Governor that Bangkok has had.) But does that change any of the above?
As I said what they have achieved for better or worse, depending on where you stand over Thaksin, doesn’t make them in my opinion suitable as parliamentary political party. But I could say the same about the anti-war movement in the US in the sixties. Would it have made a good political party? I suspect not.
I guess what I’m trying to tell you is whether you like it or not, the PAD has done things that no other opposition movement has done. You can say it had support from the army, industrialists or the palace but then again you can say that the red-shirts had support from crooked politicians, police, gangsters and Thaksin’s wealth and friends but didn’t manage to achieve much at all.
Apart from its architectural splendour, historical and cultural significance etc. isn’t Preah Vihear justly famous because it is built upon a cliff top? The ‘replica’ will have none of these qualities, it sounds like the lamest idea ever conceived. Is it a wind up?
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Replica heritage
Marco #4: I went to Ancient City a few months ago. The Thai people I was with told me that one of the reproductions we looked at was Preah Vihear. I remember being rather skeptical – it seems scaled down – but maybe it was.
$ufficiency economy
On May 28, PM Abhisit, at the Army auditorium, in his capacity as director of ISOC, opened the project “Fighting the economic crisis by the philosophy of sufficiency economy.” This project is implemented by ISOC, and the government has allotted one billion baht for it. The initial perriod of this project is six months. (Matichon, May 30, 2009:11)
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Portman makes a big claim: “Some senior red shirts were allegedly muttering in private that Thaksin failed to provide all the funding he promised for the Songkran riots which they claim is the reason they failed in their big push for the capital.” Is there any evidence at all for this claim? Again, this is a real question, not a criticism.
Replica heritage
Maybe the Thai govt can persuade the owners of Ancient City in Samut Prakan to add a copy of Prah Viharn to their theme park, if it’s not too provocative. Didn’t India get angry with Bangladesh over a replica of the Taj Mahal earlier this year?
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Thanks, Sidh. I didn’t think you’d suddenly changed sides – just couldn’t see the point. I do now. I had no idea Thaksin (& Kasit, too) had elevated himself in this way. What a sleaze!
Update on Inya Lake’s aquatic intruder
It is an intriguing puzzle whether the junta discovered the madman Yettaw and deliberately let him swim over the lake or even gave him the idea, or whether their security is so incompetent that he really slipped through.
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Sidh #199
“No responsibility nor accountability – I understand not even money to treat and support the maimed Red protesters (please correct me if I am wrong).”
This is quite believable, Sidh. Thaksin has a reputation for being extremely tight fisted with his own money. Some senior red shirts were allegedly muttering in private that Thaksin failed to provide all the funding he promised for the Songkran riots which they claim is the reason they failed in their big push for the capital. Another 100,000 protesters trucked in would have made all the difference.
He brought the coup on himself by refusing to compromise over the profits from his dubious sale of Shin Corp which most urban people rightly or wrongly thought he should have been willing to pay tax on. His greed and selfishness is his undoing. This is a weakness that Newin knows well from bitter experience and is now aggressively seeking to exploit. Thaksin has provided Newin with the opportunity to attract more and more corrupt provincial politicians away from Thaksin in the hope that he will deliver the spoils that the Big Boss only ever promised to most of them as jam tomorrow.
Predictably Thaksin’s Building for a Better Future Foundation that you pointed out above appears to have done nothing apart from its initial PR puff.
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Sidh: Can you remind which phone-in this was where Thaksin compared himself to Mandela and give me a place where I can find it? I think I missed it, but I can’t claim to have listened to all of them in detail. I do recall Suthep saying that Thaksin had done this and I did see Kasit make the comparison. Real request.
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Michael#195, Ralph#196 and Scott#197, PMThaksin has himself made the comparison in one of his many phone-ins to his Red audiences.
Internationally, PMThaksin has been involved in a very conscious self-refashioning effort as the “peaceful fighter for true democracy” and also for the betterment of poor people in developing countries best captured in his Dubai and Hong Kong based organization website (which is very rarely updated!) launched with much fanfare last year:
http://www.buildingbetterfuture.org/
In this self-penned media myth, PMThaksin, like Nelson Mandela, is peace-loving democracy and freedom fighter. The Songkran Red Riots? Nothing to do with him as it was all masterfully orchestrated by the Democrats, PAD, Newin’s Blue Shirts, the military, the Privy Counsellors etc…etc… whoever his enemies are. All those people in Red committing the violence – all soldiers and PAD in red shirts! No responsibility nor accountability – I understand not even money to treat and support the maimed Red protesters (please correct me if I am wrong).
Yet at the same time he still market the inhumane Wars on Drugs as one of his major achievement as prime minister. Yet, when the opportunity has really arise to show the world he is a ‘changed man’ in the recent Burmese Junta’s actions against Aung San Syu Kyi. Nothing either from the Red Elite nor Pheu Thai leadership. The reality is PMThaksin hasn’t changed from the man who thought Syu Kyi’s detention “reasonable” in 2004:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9258-2004Dec17.html
Don’t get me wrong, Nelson Mandela is also one of my personal heroes. As a Thai, I would also like to apologize to South Africans that a former Thai prime minister is abusing Mandela’s name in this manner. I can be accused of doing so too, even if meant as extreme sarcasm as part of engaging in discussions with many of his ardent supporters in NM who sees him as a saint.
I will say again that if the progressive Red elements want to fight for true democracy and social equity, they must distance themselves from PMThaksin. It is best if they pick another color altogether. In fact, if they mean well, there’s an opportunity to join forces with the disparate but many poor rural and urban communities countrywide that are trying very hard to build democracy from the grassroots.
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Somehow methinks Sidh was not comparing Thaksin to Mandela – certainly not in a favorable light anyway:)
Perhaps a sarcastic jibe at the way Thaksin does appear to be seen by a few here as saintly and a beacon of democracy????
Burma watching and the internet
Bangkok Pundit has a relevant post on this issue:
http://bangkokpundit.blogspot.com/2009/05/atiya-on-burma-part-ii.html#comments
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Sidh S, Comparing a good effective yet ultimately too greedy millionaire ex Prime Minister with a saint who spent half his life in jail in protest against apartheid is simply ludicrous & shows how far you have slipped from reality.
Democracy works when you get your revenge in the poll booth on election day. The ppl & the army of Thailand & other struggling democracies have got to learn Patience.
Thaksin should never have been ousted before his term was up but constant fighting & division isn’t going to fix everything up.
Thaksin was good but he had faults like all politicians, he was certainly no saint & not worth shedding your blood over.
Wake up & smell the roses (jasmine 😉 ) Thailand.
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Sidh joins Foreign Minister Kasit in likening Thaksin to Mandela?
Andrew Selth on conspiracies and cock-ups
Thailand is “enabler” of Burmese junta.
read also curious article :
somehow I always get the feeling that something is quite fishy there with Aung San Suu Kyi, or not as simple as Western media presents it.
another point is: Obama would better first take care of his own soldiers RAPING (not only women but men and kids too), torturing and killing people in Iraq before trtying to lecture someone else on “human rights”.
meanwhile Thais have already taken care of their own HR abuse cases, and I guess have a clean consience in lecturing Burmese junta: Court clears military in Tak Bai case
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Sidh S #193, could you explain your use of the doctored name for Thaksin, please. If it’s an attempt to mix in ‘Nelson Mandela,’ perhaps you could explain why. Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t get it. Be explicit, & keep it simple. Thanks.
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Please, no more protests, every protest from either side now is simply damaging Thailands democracy & reputation.
My view is a faulty democracy is better than none at all, time to stand back, look at the big picture & stop giving the army reason to be out of their barracks.
You’ve done a really good job Nick but I hate to see continuing division like this.
It’s time for everyone to burn their red & yellow shirts & don orange. 😉
I don’t care how naive or simplistic this may sound but it’s the simple truth.
Replica heritage
This is absurd.Mr PM and Mr Kasit better recall what they said about
Pheah Vihear.Yes,they do know so well but it is the only way to discredit
Nopadol.Besides,people do not know much about the Pheah Vihear.I have been there many years ago and frankly speaking this historical work cannot be copied.The environment and wild life will be devastated.
This is the temple of lord Shiva.For the hindu,if you could the temple of the lord should be built on the mountain top because you could be near to the lord. But this Govt want to attract tourists.
Burma watching and the internet
This goes beyond online petitions and blogging. That the internationalisation of Burma’s politics, “international awareness” and international “pressure” will lead to positive State-level change in Burma is little supported by the evidence of the last twenty years. However, it remains a central tenet of most mainstream Burma activists that such an approach not only works but is the most plausible (for some, only) way that the human rights situation in Burma will improve.
There was (and remains) a debate about whether the reason the the SPDC opened up some humanitarian space in the Irrawaddy Delta after Cyclone Nargis was because of international censure or because it realised for itself that to do so was in its best (domestic) interest.
Likewise, to what extent can the SPDC’s allowance of former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma Sergio Pinheiro into the country following the September/October 2007 crackdown (after having been barred from entering for four years) be seen as “evidence” that international condemnation and pressure can lead to positive reform?
Interestingly, Jonathan Head wrote in a BBC article yesterday that
How can we know that these “small concessions” were a result of “a barrage of [international] criticism” and not done for domestic reasons?
PAD tries a political party
@ antipadshit
Fortunately I don’t have to go through the mental gymnastics that you do, although the “(0r even 2005?)” might make it easier for you… but then what were the Marxists doing supporting the PAD before the coup?
So was the PAD extra-parliamentary or not? Was it in opposition to those shining lights of democracy Thaksin, Samart and Somchai or not? Was it successful or not? What’s your argument?
Oh, I see it’s because they were backed by all those guys and Chamlong has great organizational skills. (He certainly was the most honest and efficient Governor that Bangkok has had.) But does that change any of the above?
As I said what they have achieved for better or worse, depending on where you stand over Thaksin, doesn’t make them in my opinion suitable as parliamentary political party. But I could say the same about the anti-war movement in the US in the sixties. Would it have made a good political party? I suspect not.
I guess what I’m trying to tell you is whether you like it or not, the PAD has done things that no other opposition movement has done. You can say it had support from the army, industrialists or the palace but then again you can say that the red-shirts had support from crooked politicians, police, gangsters and Thaksin’s wealth and friends but didn’t manage to achieve much at all.
Replica heritage
Apart from its architectural splendour, historical and cultural significance etc. isn’t Preah Vihear justly famous because it is built upon a cliff top? The ‘replica’ will have none of these qualities, it sounds like the lamest idea ever conceived. Is it a wind up?