The latest lese majeste arrest I am aware of is Ms. Papatchanan Chingin, or “Daeng,” in Korat on 8 April 2009. she led a group of Red Shirts to Lady Mo pavilion and burned a coffin in effigy with words written on it..”His Majesty…General Prem…The PAD…Government of Crooks…born…died 8 April 2009.” According to local reports, her efforts were supported by public transportation baron Jae Kiew Cherdchai, but this has not yet been confirmed.
Chingin is the same person who formerly filed fraudulent lese majeste charges against me.
I agree lawless mobs need to be kept in check, but both Somchai previously & now Abhisit were indecisive because DEEP DOWN they both knew they they had NOT addressed the GENUINE concerns of their opponents – therefore they lacked the moral authority to act decisively.
@nganadeeleg #70
we take back the word ‘troublemaker’
as far as any negative implications are connected with it.
there are indeed a few constructive troublemakers,
without this world would be a sadder place.
we have read your review and found it well thought out.
we recommend it (the review, NOT the book!) to other readers.
the succession is the biggest problem
and openly discussed here in thailand,
just not in public, thais would not like that!
your suggestion is the widely preferred option.
but it’s all up to the king and it is a difficult decision.
he himself said: “i’m only human”.
what we do not understand is just one little aspect.
you know that this ‘biography’ is not authorized by the king
and not welcome by the majority of thai people who love HIM.
nonetheless you don’t mention it and owe an explanation. why?
and finally: did you ever ask any believer WHY he believes?
strange question, isn’t it?
“you really behave like an incorrigible troublemaker.
this book is the opinion of just ONE single man.
it is contrary to the believes of 63 million thais”
If those 63 million read the book they might get a better understanding of WHY they believe what they believe.
I accept that I am a little bit of a troublemaker, but my motive is not to cause harm, rather to try to make things better for the many (which might mean that things are a little worse for a few).
@nganadeeleg #63 & 64
you really behave like an incorrigible troublemaker.
this book is the opinion of just ONE single man.
it is contrary to the believes of 63 million thais.
YOU can read and believe what YOU want,
but why do you want to force your lectures & believes on others?
why don’t you provide its contents for all of us?
perhaps not allowed by laws in your country??
check out the ‘lese majesty’ laws of those
whose ‘majesty’ is ‘god mammon’.
far more worshipped than information, freedom & democracy
do you recite from the ‘satanic verses’ to a muslim?
or bring some caricatures of muhammad into an islamic country?
thailand, its buddhists (95%of the thai population)
& the king as patron, protector,
“Upholder of the Buddhist religion, and Defender of the Faith”.
are much more liberal than other societies.
but you push on & on to force everybody to worship YOUR god
and read your dirty books and hatred pamphlets.
look how you behave when someone just doesn’t WANT to obey.
seems to be integral part of a ‘christian education’
to know the difference between good & evil, heaven & hell
but we do NOT believe in YOUR hell……
btw: you may find this book, together with Harry Nicolaides’
Verisimilitude in the thai national library in bangkok,
because in thailand, as in every country
subscribing to international copyright conventions,
a publisher is required to submit
two copies of a printed work to the national library.
and finally, we (the author & his friends)
don’t like neither unions nor censorship.
but we believe that weak people like
children & exploited need to be protected,
by the strong & by the law, but not by troublemakers!
I forget to mention that my last posting is just an outline that I will go -further- in detail.
Let’s get this on a record -> I never stated that democracy is bad.
What I am trying to do is trying to figure out what Thailand needs to do to flourish under democratic system. A lot of the Thai Laws are plain dumb. I’m trying to avoid calling Thai people and the Thai scholar DUMB, but I’ll let you make your own conclusion after I give you some examples.
When I say “dumb” what I meant is lack of info. When you lack info then you can not make any good conclusion on anything.
I’m running out time and will do more posting later.
Well, successful change is by nature incremental. Any examples of revolting mobs that brought progress? Does anybody really belief that politics of burning bridges is of any benefit? The masses might be “brave” in their terms … but how about the vast majority of Thais who are really sick of them (UDD and PAD)?
-A niece of a friend of my friend was invited to wear red and come to BKK from PhaYao with 1000 Baht per day.
-A food-stall owner in KangKhoi Saraburi told me while I ate at hers that she would like to join her friends who came to BKK just to wear red and join the mob and earn 500 baht a day. But she was afraid she could never come back home so she refused the temptation to earn the 500. And she said those friends who joined did not know the details but just to wear red.
-A driver told me his little boy was invited to wear red and join the mob as a child of that acquaintance in exchange for 500 a day, but the driver was angry and refused that man’s invitation.
-My cousin told me her friends from Udorn invited some other 20 friends to earn 500 a day and wear red and drive to join the red army. But they joined only 1 day because they were not provided with food and drink. They complained that their immediate stomach’s need is more important than their money need of 500 Baht per day.
-Lastly, but shockingly, my mother just told me yesterday that an old daily-waged employee of hers took a one-day leave because he was invited to have a tour visit to BKK with meals and 500 Baht just to wear red and attend the mob.
-Should I laugh or should I cry?
I would be fascinated to hear if the majority of Thaksin enthusiasts are still using the same definition of ‘terrorism’ today as they were after the PAD airport seizure.
Instead, over 100,000 people joined the march after they made conscious decision that despite the fact that this was going to be a direct attact on the King’s Chief Adviser they would be going to join it anyway.
In other word, over one hundred thousand people still came knowing full well what the march was about. In the context of Thai political history – a historic achievement indeed!
Amberwaves, the taxi-drivers will have a lot to answer to. PMThaksin and the Red elites have already shifted the blame on to the ‘small people’ (‘we didn’t order the blockage of the Victory Monument’)… PMThaksin, the Red’s real leader and the man who incited the crowds is also conveniently absent from the Victory Monument or at Pattaya – so are all of the Shinawatra clan I understand.
“The people of Thailand will get what they want….”
Well, from the polling data I have seen what “the people of Thailand” want is an end to this idiotic political posturing and constant instability caused by the mobs in the streets of whatever color shirt they happen to be wearing. Even if Thaksin and the red shirts get what they want do you really think it will end there? All of these wrongs (on both sides) are never going to make a right. And the people who have paid the price all along will continue to do so.
“I would appreciate if you could provide me, and readers, with the list of events (site and date) you refer to, including their respective attendance figures, for future checks with reports published at that time, and in the interest of historical accuracy.”
Don’t restrict yourself to voicing your frustration about alledged “hypocrisy” when you could contribute something constructive.
Pro-Pad huys are now condemning the reds for being half as disruptive as the PAD had been. They were full of praise for the PAD and demanded that the govt of the day resign.
The logic and arguments are now twisted around with only one inviolable. “PAD can do no wrong” Get real!
As long as the public can be manipulated, courts corrupted, spurious judgements etc etc and political parties refusing to accept election results, this charade will never end.
If this conference is that important, they would have moved it elsewhere at the first sign of trouble. There’s no particular reason why it has to be in Thailand. Rather, it is a gamble by the Abhisit government. If he can pull it off, it is a big plus for him. But he failed apparently. It’s increasingly clear that he’s no more than a glorified spokesperson.
Strategically, the PAD is the one gaining here. Democrats are damaged and their internal divisions will only worsen. Thaksin and the reds are demonstrated as a potent force, and the democrat demonstrated to be too soft, too moderate, and ineffectual against the reds. In the near future, the PAD will formally emerge as a bona fide political party to scoop up all the former voters of the then-wrecked democrat party.
Further extremization is to be expected. The center cannot hold.
The sisters, especially Somchai’s wife, are probably needed in Thailand to channel funds and control things on the ground. Thaksin’s children and “ex” wife are the ones who left the country. Perhaps he thought he could create enough chaos that there would be a backlash against his family. The children finished their most recent assignment which was to promote their ghosted book,”Others Call Him Prime Minister but We Call Him Dad” at the Bangkok Book Fair. They are not intellectual giants and have no credibility with red shirts or Pheua Thai. Therefore their further presence must have been considered a liability. Pojaman may have lost credibility following Newin’s well publicised refusal to take her calls.
Apparently the concept of irony was lost on Regular Reader.
The point is, people who were able to tolerate and even praise the PAD’s disruptive and seemingly illegal activities don’t have a lot of moral authority to denounce the disruption of traffic.
Maybe people just have really short memories.
Sidh S, I think, understood the point and was trying to provide context, which is appreciated. And he’s probably right that it was a tactical blunder for the Reds.
Regular Reader and “Bangkok people were genuinely annoyed” — so what?
As the kids say, BFD. The age of tolerance is over — didn’t you notice?
A lot of people have been “genuinely annoyed” at a lot of other things — the coup, the biased judiciary, the impunity of the PAD. The list goes on and on.
Abhisit hasn’t offered them a single scrap in way of even a gesture toward reconciliation.
I think he has more to answer for than some taxi-drivers do.
P.S. A minor aside to Dickie Simpkins. My own observation is that the Red Shirt leaders are no more or less in the front lines than were the top PAD leaders. When the going got tough, it was the second tier PAD leaders who stayed and took the heat (and encouraged followers to stay as well.)
Sondhi did indeed lead some marches, but rarely hung around. I’ve seen less of the UDD activities, but a similar situation seems to be the case with them.
Chamlong rarely marched, which was noted in the press at the time and led to speculation of a disagreement within the group.
Most of the top guys in fact stayed at Government House (or snuck off home) much of the time. They certainly didn’t have a high profile at the airports. Does anyone recall if the PAD leaders went to the airports at all?
Obviously I’m generalizing, but believe me, I’ve watched a lot of hours of demonstration video, live and taped, and I believe my observation is accurate.
Someone once wisely said that there is only one type of democracy based on the complete freedom of people, and other sorts of so-called democracy like what they now have in Singapore will eventually fail.
Now the brave masses of Thailand are proving correct that statement by forcefully protesting against the illegitimate government and all overpowering monarchy backing that illegal government.
Freedom and rule of law has to be complete, or people will rise up if the ruling class have given them only a partial freedom. As long as Thai Army is not willing to shoot fellow Thais like brutal Burmese Army has been doing to its own people the people of Thailand will get what they want in a very near future.
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Suwicha Thakor and lese majeste: In Thai
The latest lese majeste arrest I am aware of is Ms. Papatchanan Chingin, or “Daeng,” in Korat on 8 April 2009. she led a group of Red Shirts to Lady Mo pavilion and burned a coffin in effigy with words written on it..”His Majesty…General Prem…The PAD…Government of Crooks…born…died 8 April 2009.” According to local reports, her efforts were supported by public transportation baron Jae Kiew Cherdchai, but this has not yet been confirmed.
Chingin is the same person who formerly filed fraudulent lese majeste charges against me.
East Asia Summit off; what next in Thai drama?
Its been more than a few hours since the “civil disobedience” in Pattaya, but why are reports still “unclear”?
East Asia Summit off; what next in Thai drama?
I agree lawless mobs need to be kept in check, but both Somchai previously & now Abhisit were indecisive because DEEP DOWN they both knew they they had NOT addressed the GENUINE concerns of their opponents – therefore they lacked the moral authority to act decisively.
On lèse majesté
@nganadeeleg #70
we take back the word ‘troublemaker’
as far as any negative implications are connected with it.
there are indeed a few constructive troublemakers,
without this world would be a sadder place.
we have read your review and found it well thought out.
we recommend it (the review, NOT the book!) to other readers.
the succession is the biggest problem
and openly discussed here in thailand,
just not in public, thais would not like that!
your suggestion is the widely preferred option.
but it’s all up to the king and it is a difficult decision.
he himself said: “i’m only human”.
what we do not understand is just one little aspect.
you know that this ‘biography’ is not authorized by the king
and not welcome by the majority of thai people who love HIM.
nonetheless you don’t mention it and owe an explanation. why?
and finally: did you ever ask any believer WHY he believes?
strange question, isn’t it?
On lèse majesté
“you really behave like an incorrigible troublemaker.
this book is the opinion of just ONE single man.
it is contrary to the believes of 63 million thais”
If those 63 million read the book they might get a better understanding of WHY they believe what they believe.
Stephan: FWIW, here is a copy of my review of the book:
http://nganadeeleg.blogspot.com/2009/01/revisiting-touchy-subject.html
(originally posted as comment #33 on New Mandala’s longest thread)
I accept that I am a little bit of a troublemaker, but my motive is not to cause harm, rather to try to make things better for the many (which might mean that things are a little worse for a few).
On lèse majesté
@nganadeeleg #63 & 64
you really behave like an incorrigible troublemaker.
this book is the opinion of just ONE single man.
it is contrary to the believes of 63 million thais.
YOU can read and believe what YOU want,
but why do you want to force your lectures & believes on others?
why don’t you provide its contents for all of us?
perhaps not allowed by laws in your country??
check out the ‘lese majesty’ laws of those
whose ‘majesty’ is ‘god mammon’.
far more worshipped than information, freedom & democracy
do you recite from the ‘satanic verses’ to a muslim?
or bring some caricatures of muhammad into an islamic country?
thailand, its buddhists (95%of the thai population)
& the king as patron, protector,
“Upholder of the Buddhist religion, and Defender of the Faith”.
are much more liberal than other societies.
but you push on & on to force everybody to worship YOUR god
and read your dirty books and hatred pamphlets.
look how you behave when someone just doesn’t WANT to obey.
seems to be integral part of a ‘christian education’
to know the difference between good & evil, heaven & hell
but we do NOT believe in YOUR hell……
btw: you may find this book, together with Harry Nicolaides’
Verisimilitude in the thai national library in bangkok,
because in thailand, as in every country
subscribing to international copyright conventions,
a publisher is required to submit
two copies of a printed work to the national library.
and finally, we (the author & his friends)
don’t like neither unions nor censorship.
but we believe that weak people like
children & exploited need to be protected,
by the strong & by the law, but not by troublemakers!
The King Never Smiles?
I forget to mention that my last posting is just an outline that I will go -further- in detail.
Let’s get this on a record -> I never stated that democracy is bad.
What I am trying to do is trying to figure out what Thailand needs to do to flourish under democratic system. A lot of the Thai Laws are plain dumb. I’m trying to avoid calling Thai people and the Thai scholar DUMB, but I’ll let you make your own conclusion after I give you some examples.
When I say “dumb” what I meant is lack of info. When you lack info then you can not make any good conclusion on anything.
I’m running out time and will do more posting later.
East Asia Summit off; what next in Thai drama?
Well, successful change is by nature incremental. Any examples of revolting mobs that brought progress? Does anybody really belief that politics of burning bridges is of any benefit? The masses might be “brave” in their terms … but how about the vast majority of Thais who are really sick of them (UDD and PAD)?
East Asia Summit off; what next in Thai drama?
-A niece of a friend of my friend was invited to wear red and come to BKK from PhaYao with 1000 Baht per day.
-A food-stall owner in KangKhoi Saraburi told me while I ate at hers that she would like to join her friends who came to BKK just to wear red and join the mob and earn 500 baht a day. But she was afraid she could never come back home so she refused the temptation to earn the 500. And she said those friends who joined did not know the details but just to wear red.
-A driver told me his little boy was invited to wear red and join the mob as a child of that acquaintance in exchange for 500 a day, but the driver was angry and refused that man’s invitation.
-My cousin told me her friends from Udorn invited some other 20 friends to earn 500 a day and wear red and drive to join the red army. But they joined only 1 day because they were not provided with food and drink. They complained that their immediate stomach’s need is more important than their money need of 500 Baht per day.
-Lastly, but shockingly, my mother just told me yesterday that an old daily-waged employee of hers took a one-day leave because he was invited to have a tour visit to BKK with meals and 500 Baht just to wear red and attend the mob.
-Should I laugh or should I cry?
East Asia Summit off; what next in Thai drama?
I would be fascinated to hear if the majority of Thaksin enthusiasts are still using the same definition of ‘terrorism’ today as they were after the PAD airport seizure.
Reuters on the Thai political unrest
Sidh S.:
it may have already backfired in a sense that the Red crowd might have been much bigger than the said 100,000+ on the 8th.
So the number of Red Shirts does not depend on size of Thaksin’s money contribution to the march, as you previously implied after all?
(“Either PMThaksin has not ‘invested’ enough and/or the Red leadership took too large commissions” http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/2009/03/24/901-royal-politics-and-thaksin-shinawatra/#comment-634012
Instead, over 100,000 people joined the march after they made conscious decision that despite the fact that this was going to be a direct attact on the King’s Chief Adviser they would be going to join it anyway.
In other word, over one hundred thousand people still came knowing full well what the march was about. In the context of Thai political history – a historic achievement indeed!
Closing the streets at Victory Monument
Amberwaves, the taxi-drivers will have a lot to answer to. PMThaksin and the Red elites have already shifted the blame on to the ‘small people’ (‘we didn’t order the blockage of the Victory Monument’)… PMThaksin, the Red’s real leader and the man who incited the crowds is also conveniently absent from the Victory Monument or at Pattaya – so are all of the Shinawatra clan I understand.
East Asia Summit off; what next in Thai drama?
“The people of Thailand will get what they want….”
Well, from the polling data I have seen what “the people of Thailand” want is an end to this idiotic political posturing and constant instability caused by the mobs in the streets of whatever color shirt they happen to be wearing. Even if Thaksin and the red shirts get what they want do you really think it will end there? All of these wrongs (on both sides) are never going to make a right. And the people who have paid the price all along will continue to do so.
Red shirts on the march
Careful Observer #9
May I repeat my simple request from #2:
“I would appreciate if you could provide me, and readers, with the list of events (site and date) you refer to, including their respective attendance figures, for future checks with reports published at that time, and in the interest of historical accuracy.”
Don’t restrict yourself to voicing your frustration about alledged “hypocrisy” when you could contribute something constructive.
Closing the streets at Victory Monument
Pro-Pad huys are now condemning the reds for being half as disruptive as the PAD had been. They were full of praise for the PAD and demanded that the govt of the day resign.
The logic and arguments are now twisted around with only one inviolable. “PAD can do no wrong” Get real!
As long as the public can be manipulated, courts corrupted, spurious judgements etc etc and political parties refusing to accept election results, this charade will never end.
East Asia Summit off; what next in Thai drama?
If this conference is that important, they would have moved it elsewhere at the first sign of trouble. There’s no particular reason why it has to be in Thailand. Rather, it is a gamble by the Abhisit government. If he can pull it off, it is a big plus for him. But he failed apparently. It’s increasingly clear that he’s no more than a glorified spokesperson.
Strategically, the PAD is the one gaining here. Democrats are damaged and their internal divisions will only worsen. Thaksin and the reds are demonstrated as a potent force, and the democrat demonstrated to be too soft, too moderate, and ineffectual against the reds. In the near future, the PAD will formally emerge as a bona fide political party to scoop up all the former voters of the then-wrecked democrat party.
Further extremization is to be expected. The center cannot hold.
Imagine the gridlock: Is this how it’s going to happen?
The sisters, especially Somchai’s wife, are probably needed in Thailand to channel funds and control things on the ground. Thaksin’s children and “ex” wife are the ones who left the country. Perhaps he thought he could create enough chaos that there would be a backlash against his family. The children finished their most recent assignment which was to promote their ghosted book,”Others Call Him Prime Minister but We Call Him Dad” at the Bangkok Book Fair. They are not intellectual giants and have no credibility with red shirts or Pheua Thai. Therefore their further presence must have been considered a liability. Pojaman may have lost credibility following Newin’s well publicised refusal to take her calls.
Thai workers in the Kachin State
Is this construction taking place in the Tiger Reserve in the Hukawng Valley?
Closing the streets at Victory Monument
Apparently the concept of irony was lost on Regular Reader.
The point is, people who were able to tolerate and even praise the PAD’s disruptive and seemingly illegal activities don’t have a lot of moral authority to denounce the disruption of traffic.
Maybe people just have really short memories.
Sidh S, I think, understood the point and was trying to provide context, which is appreciated. And he’s probably right that it was a tactical blunder for the Reds.
Regular Reader and “Bangkok people were genuinely annoyed” — so what?
As the kids say, BFD. The age of tolerance is over — didn’t you notice?
A lot of people have been “genuinely annoyed” at a lot of other things — the coup, the biased judiciary, the impunity of the PAD. The list goes on and on.
Abhisit hasn’t offered them a single scrap in way of even a gesture toward reconciliation.
I think he has more to answer for than some taxi-drivers do.
P.S. A minor aside to Dickie Simpkins. My own observation is that the Red Shirt leaders are no more or less in the front lines than were the top PAD leaders. When the going got tough, it was the second tier PAD leaders who stayed and took the heat (and encouraged followers to stay as well.)
Sondhi did indeed lead some marches, but rarely hung around. I’ve seen less of the UDD activities, but a similar situation seems to be the case with them.
Chamlong rarely marched, which was noted in the press at the time and led to speculation of a disagreement within the group.
Most of the top guys in fact stayed at Government House (or snuck off home) much of the time. They certainly didn’t have a high profile at the airports. Does anyone recall if the PAD leaders went to the airports at all?
Obviously I’m generalizing, but believe me, I’ve watched a lot of hours of demonstration video, live and taped, and I believe my observation is accurate.
East Asia Summit off; what next in Thai drama?
Someone once wisely said that there is only one type of democracy based on the complete freedom of people, and other sorts of so-called democracy like what they now have in Singapore will eventually fail.
Now the brave masses of Thailand are proving correct that statement by forcefully protesting against the illegitimate government and all overpowering monarchy backing that illegal government.
Freedom and rule of law has to be complete, or people will rise up if the ruling class have given them only a partial freedom. As long as Thai Army is not willing to shoot fellow Thais like brutal Burmese Army has been doing to its own people the people of Thailand will get what they want in a very near future.
Keep up the good fight for your freedom!