It is all about Thaksin and if you are not for the proto-fascist, elite-mongering, royal arse-polishers then you must be supporting Thaksin, the war on drugs, murder and so on
I’m not sure what provoked your rather defensive comment, with all the name-calling and stuff. If you care to look at the history of my conversation with RNE, you will realise that I had politely invited him to have a meaningful discussion of the issue which he had avoided and then finally came out with a rather surprisingly emotional #19 for which I felt my response to that at #20 was put in restrained terms.
And so you claim that I am believer that RNE is a supporter of the war on drugs? In fact, if he was a real supporter of the war on drugs, my #20 would have been futile in provoking some thoughts in him which I hoped it would do. Get it? perhaps not.
anyways, one of the main points of the story is you’ve got to look at a court’s ruling to determine whether it was fair or not. Let’s say some white judges decides the case of a black man and sentences him for a crime. Now, anyone can easily point the finger at the white judges and say they were racist elitists who wants to put all poor blacks that live off their tax money in jail. But the point is, if we look at a court ruling and it shows that the court was applying the law as they are supposed to in accordance with the known methods of legal reasoning/ interpretation, then the question of what race the judges were is mute one, ie. if a black man really did commit a crime, then he should be sentenced for it, and whether the judges were white, mexican, latino or whatever doesn’t make a difference.
Another point I was also trying to make through that story is, well, do we really want to revert back to the old days when the Constitutional Court was not doing its job? So would one prefer the ending to be this: “We find the defendant’s arguments convincing. The rule of law and human rights is an import that has not flourished in Thailand. Thais also show less taste for mutually abstract rules. The Court therefore decides that the government’s war on drugs was constitutional and the victims’ families are not entitled to any compensation whatsoever. We are also looking forward to the third phase of war on drugs.”
But to be a bit more positive, I really do think Business Owner has made some good points. It’s also very fashionable amongst the Thai Ultra-Nationalist Forum Posies to slam the critical work of Thais gone abroad without even reading it. Thus the likes of Thongchai Wanichayakul are portrayed as dangerous radicals in a most McCarthyite manner. This sort of talk shuts people up just as heavily as burning radicals in flaming oil barrels back in the 60s. PAD does it! Thaksin does it!
Very good article… that would likely fall on deft ear.
Critical thinking is the require skill in education.
Never ask why on a question, it force teacher to read and spend more time grading exam. Then later student would come to beg for more grade and have to be individually explain. Better stick with multiple choice.
Yes, Turner’s work is often, even usually, a painful read at the level of rhetoric, clarity, etc. Munn’s is most impressive in the sense of a fully developed model deployed in a thick ethnographic description and analysis. And Graeber’s is the most suggestive, in part because he widens out his historical, comparative and theoretical focus. At the same time, Graeber doesn’t provide an ethnographically rich exemplification of his analytic and theoretical musings like Munn and Turner. Which is a particular trajedy for those thinking about the production and reproduction of value under ‘Buddhist regimes’ since Munn and Turner’s ethnographic work is focused on social worlds that are relatively small in scale, simple in complexity and bounded in sociality compared to the usual horizon of Buddhist studies scholars. No one has, to my knowledge, worked up an ethnographically and historically informed account of value on the scale of pre-modern polity, a modern nation-state or a civilizational imaginary / regime.
As you might have guessed, I tend to find the presumptions behind symbolic anthropology a bit too constraining given many current theoretical and analytical questions. Practice theory and other related approaches to semiotic forms and collective action I find more amenable, especially when thinking about value. It seems to me actually hard to find anthropologists now self-consciously expanding upon the tradition of symbolic anthropology as a coherent, integrated body of work.
Actually, I do think that ‘modernity’ seriously challenges Buddhism and its regimes of values (both importantly plural, in my opinion). Although the concept of modernity is too diffuse to help analytically. Rather, both a capitalist mode of production and a nation-state mode of sociality / governance create quite distinct yet robustly competitive orders of value and value production that do, in my opinion, challenge the established institutional and discursive modes of value / value production under ‘classical’ (Theravada) Buddhism, as that has been canonically understood. The former challenge tends to be highlighted much more currently, but both have been crucial to the reworking of Buddhism in the 20th century as I see it.
By the way, if you haven’t had a chance, you should check out the March 2008 issue of Anthropological Theory. The issue is devoted to value in anthropological theory. In addition to a Turner article on Marxian value theory, there are other articles by Robert Foster, Webb Keane and other anthropologists working on the anthropology of value.
Thanks for the example of the PAD response to rule of law which speak for themselves. I thought I’d add in some of PPP’s responses to rule of law, which also speak for themselves. And put the two lists side by side for comparison.
PAD gathers signatures to:
1. impeach 2 Civil Court judges (even if successful, other judges can continue the work of the court)
PPP gathers signatures to:
1. impeach (hoping to paralyse) the Constitutional Court
2. impeach (hoping to paralyse) Election Commission
3. impeach (hoping to paralyse) the Office of Auditor-General
4. impeach (hoping to paralyse) NCCC
Yes, so PAD = Bad, and TRT/PPP = Bad, but one is less bad than the other, no?
btw, I too am eagerly awaiting your response to kuson’s “dumb” question.
As a small business owner specializing in high-end and specialized consulting, I and my colleagues have been employers in the Thai knowledge economy. My feeling from living and working here for many years is that education is the most significant, most fundamental, and most intractable problem Thailand faces; and I do not believe the problem will ever be solved.
Critical thinking and problem solving skills are just too rare for Thailand to develop. Firstly, excellent Thai individuals leave the country, perhaps work at international organizations where their skills are appreciated, or become corrupt officials; and secondly, Thai society suffers from lack of motivation in all walks of life, because there really is no profit in intellectual pursuits or having a strong work ethic due to institutional failings.
Finally, I believe that this situation in fact intentional, by whom I couldn’t say. But I think it is the true process by which the powerful remain entrenched.
I doubt that this book is supposed to be read prior to a PAD meeting. It has been published in the context of Phibul’s nationalism, which was quite different from the current nationalist hipe. In fact, even though the nationalism of the 40’s certainly had a strong fashist background, it was certainly not allied with the monarchy (rather on the contrary).
Sidh, I agree – I haven’t read all of Reg’s but he does write like a Thaksinite;
Reg (or any other persons in New Mandala), I think its ok to be a Thaksinite (if you are) — as long as you didn’t get any $$$ to write your stuff. If it were any consolation, I believed in Thaksin in the first 2-3 years- even I was fooled! He said many things sincerely [I could have sworn they looked genuine], and then you see him contradicting himself over and over. Then he redefined english term ‘Double-Standard’. I will not be surprised if a foreigner takes 10 years, a smart one 5 years. With PAD’s information, I think it becomes easier — but apparently not so simple.
It reminds me of my youth again – I was in a quarrel with my Aunt when I saw pro-wrestling for the first few times and was on the [swearing] side that these Wrestlers are Really Fighting when my Aunt said they were only acting. Its only when I grew up I could tell the difference — that no way was Hulk Hogan. It takes -not a trained eye, and in Thaksin’s case, experience in following his Trail of Lies to actually pinpoint – Ah! the most corrupt Con Artist ever!
Perhaps Changnoi is on somebody’s payroll? As long as he is not bought $$$, he’s fine. But Buyer Beware: don’t forget the rule of thumb: “Check the prices at a few shops before you buy”.
Sidh, PAD does focus on the “Educated Gullibles” and much more.
Now I’m waiting anxiously: Put Thaksin in Jail. Next step: Making sure he lives as Democratic as other inmates, no Golden Pillow for the rest of his life… (or until he really redeems himself).
“Is this the arrogance you criticise or just a case of being caught within your own “logic” and not being able to see outside it?”
Both Reg – I often get caught in my own logic. I try not to, but I can’t help it. I have been criticized for my arrogance too – and will readily admit to it as well… I readily admit (as I used “we”) that I write as a hypocrite.
Reg, you chose to use those strong terms. You can’t expect a break for that from a Thai critical monarchist. The most I suspect of you until you address Kuson’s question is a ‘Thaksinite’. I would be quite careful not to use ‘Thaksin arse-polisher’…
Sondhi L. – not too sure. Ajarn Ji Ungpakorn said something along the lines of “I’m not Thai, I’m half Chinese-English and I am proud to be Chinese and English”. I actually think this is a good trend – as the Thai-Laos , Thai-Khmers, Thai-Malays should be proud of their cultural roots. But I’m not sure about your question. I have to think about it further.
Reg, apologies for my misunderstanding, as you write like a Thaksinite. Whatever you are, please just answer Kuson’s question as best you could. It’s no longer a “dumb question” you dismiss it to be as you claim to “support the rule of law”. If you choose to be quiet and dismissive again, we can conclude that you are a Thaksinite.
Hla Oo reminds me of the same ill-founded optimism proclaimed by the communists in the early days of the civil war – ‘Victory in 2 years’. Would that things could be that simple! By the time the ABSDF came into being the communists knew better from long and bitter experience that Rome would not be built overnight.
I couldn’t agree more it’s been a tragic loss of generations of good men and women still in their prime in most cases. But it won’t stop people looking towards and fighting for a new society where peace, freedom, fairness, justice, prosperity, and opportunities to fulfil the genetic potential of the Burmese nation can all come true.
Sidh: I claim to have been defamed. I most certainly do not “assume that we have all the answers and prescriptions.” And I continue to find your assertions that you know best about each bloggers motivations etc. to be little different from that position you claim to criticise. Is this the arrogance you criticise or just a case of being caught within your own “logic” and not being able to see outside it?
I met Aung Naing Oo in Sydney in 1991 while he was visiting Australia as the Foreign Minister of ABSDF. By then he was not fighting any more in the jungle and he seemed pretty well fit and full of confidence for the imminent success of their revolution. We and most of the Burmese community here were mesmerized by his youthful enthusiasm. We saw no traces of malaria’s effect on his serious and often smiling face then.
He was then telling us the military government in Rangoon would be overthrown in less than 2 years, if I still remember correctly. Only a few years later I read an article he wrote about factional fights in the ABSDF and the killing of some students by others and realized that he was putting a brave face during his foreign visits.
Later someone told me he took a scholarship from some university and studying in the west. He is a very decent man and he definitely loves his country. At least he wasn’t uselessly killed in the jungle and did survive to continue his political struggle. I wish him good luck as we definitely need a young man like him for the bright future of Burma.
Indeed, the graveyard of anyone who stays too long.
There was a time when if you couldn’t hack it you became something like a philosophical streetsweeper or a lolly-pop person. Here they are reserved occupations. In the ever-so wonderful west that kind of job no longer exists or has been farmed out to some cheaper nationality. Now we all have to be superman and also remember to keep the greedy freemarket fanatics happy by spending money all the time. Decidedly shallow!
Some world isn’t it where the only decent job a lot of lesser grads can find is boring yourself to death teaching English to folks who will never really use it for sums of money which won’t pay for one’s retirement anywhere.
We got on our bikes and pedalled, and Richard Branson copped the benefit.
Army rum laced with quinine is well known in Burma, and alcohol related illnesses unfortunately common among military personnel. Drinking now becoming less of a taboo and more fashionable in more materialistic times bodes ill for the young and not so young alike.
A degree of immunity to malaria is shared among the Burmese who have been exposed from young particularly to the common vivax strain, but the virulent and drug-resistant falciparum malaria is the killer. The Andaman islanders are believed to have innate immunity aginst this strain, even stronger than that of Africans with the haemoglobin S gene, leading to American efforts to patent their DNA. Makes you wonder if this is the final frontier of capitalist exploitation.
For more about malaria along the Thailand-Burma border, Aung Naing Oo (a former ABSDF leader) has a great piece about this “No 1 Enemy” over at The Irrawaddy. Well worth a look. As he intimates in the final flourish, “For years, malaria remained the main life-threatening enemy of the ABSDF members rather than the solders in the Burmese army.”
He also relates that he took quinine to beat off his malaria – but that was almost two decades ago and under conditions of an ongoing jungle “revolution”. In areas of mainland Southeast Asia where malaria remains a serious threat I have, over the years, tended to take doxy, as Moe Aung recommends. Thus far, it has always seemed to do its job. But it isn’t, as understand it, always feasible to take it for long periods of time. And it does cost. By the sounds of it, it wasn’t like the ABSDF had a great deal of spare cash for medicines of any sort.
Sidh: You remain confused and confusing. My comments here promise to be similarly confused.
On the point of the post, I was simply trying to say, in strong terms, that there are not just two positions on this stuff.
But please do give me a break on this all-knowing Thais vs. dumb foreigners stuff. Scratch a cultural relativist and they become “charming and generous” nationalists? You could go back to Pattana Kitiarsa’s paper on this stuff right after the coup and rehash all of that (it was on NM somewhere back then), but we know that there are dumb Thais, smart Thais, polite Thais, dumb “foreigners”, smart “foreigners”, polite “foreigners”, etc. etc. We can choose to find Thais “charming and generous” or the nicest people money can buy (was that Kissinger?) or something else again.
While on this culturalist thread, as someone interested in this stuff, why do you think Sondhi Lim is putting so much emphasis on his Chinese roots at present, including his “Luk chin rak chat” t-shirt?
Sidh: You want me to make up a story? You say: “Please answer it as a “Thaksinite” if you wish – we know you don’t speak for them.” You want me to pretend to be a Thaksinite? The point is that one can see the PADites as a very nasty bunch (a la Chang Noi in the Nation) and not be a Thaksin supporter just as one can support rule of law and election results without having to support those who win elections and who are in power.
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“Let the electorate judge”
Re #21
It is all about Thaksin and if you are not for the proto-fascist, elite-mongering, royal arse-polishers then you must be supporting Thaksin, the war on drugs, murder and so on
I’m not sure what provoked your rather defensive comment, with all the name-calling and stuff. If you care to look at the history of my conversation with RNE, you will realise that I had politely invited him to have a meaningful discussion of the issue which he had avoided and then finally came out with a rather surprisingly emotional #19 for which I felt my response to that at #20 was put in restrained terms.
And so you claim that I am believer that RNE is a supporter of the war on drugs? In fact, if he was a real supporter of the war on drugs, my #20 would have been futile in provoking some thoughts in him which I hoped it would do. Get it? perhaps not.
anyways, one of the main points of the story is you’ve got to look at a court’s ruling to determine whether it was fair or not. Let’s say some white judges decides the case of a black man and sentences him for a crime. Now, anyone can easily point the finger at the white judges and say they were racist elitists who wants to put all poor blacks that live off their tax money in jail. But the point is, if we look at a court ruling and it shows that the court was applying the law as they are supposed to in accordance with the known methods of legal reasoning/ interpretation, then the question of what race the judges were is mute one, ie. if a black man really did commit a crime, then he should be sentenced for it, and whether the judges were white, mexican, latino or whatever doesn’t make a difference.
Another point I was also trying to make through that story is, well, do we really want to revert back to the old days when the Constitutional Court was not doing its job? So would one prefer the ending to be this: “We find the defendant’s arguments convincing. The rule of law and human rights is an import that has not flourished in Thailand. Thais also show less taste for mutually abstract rules. The Court therefore decides that the government’s war on drugs was constitutional and the victims’ families are not entitled to any compensation whatsoever. We are also looking forward to the third phase of war on drugs.”
An essay on “the dismal state of Thai education”
But to be a bit more positive, I really do think Business Owner has made some good points. It’s also very fashionable amongst the Thai Ultra-Nationalist Forum Posies to slam the critical work of Thais gone abroad without even reading it. Thus the likes of Thongchai Wanichayakul are portrayed as dangerous radicals in a most McCarthyite manner. This sort of talk shuts people up just as heavily as burning radicals in flaming oil barrels back in the 60s. PAD does it! Thaksin does it!
An essay on “the dismal state of Thai education”
Very good article… that would likely fall on deft ear.
Critical thinking is the require skill in education.
Never ask why on a question, it force teacher to read and spend more time grading exam. Then later student would come to beg for more grade and have to be individually explain. Better stick with multiple choice.
Time to go home
sorry, i meant Re #54
“The treasures of man are women, wine, cars and villas…”
Erik,
Yes, Turner’s work is often, even usually, a painful read at the level of rhetoric, clarity, etc. Munn’s is most impressive in the sense of a fully developed model deployed in a thick ethnographic description and analysis. And Graeber’s is the most suggestive, in part because he widens out his historical, comparative and theoretical focus. At the same time, Graeber doesn’t provide an ethnographically rich exemplification of his analytic and theoretical musings like Munn and Turner. Which is a particular trajedy for those thinking about the production and reproduction of value under ‘Buddhist regimes’ since Munn and Turner’s ethnographic work is focused on social worlds that are relatively small in scale, simple in complexity and bounded in sociality compared to the usual horizon of Buddhist studies scholars. No one has, to my knowledge, worked up an ethnographically and historically informed account of value on the scale of pre-modern polity, a modern nation-state or a civilizational imaginary / regime.
As you might have guessed, I tend to find the presumptions behind symbolic anthropology a bit too constraining given many current theoretical and analytical questions. Practice theory and other related approaches to semiotic forms and collective action I find more amenable, especially when thinking about value. It seems to me actually hard to find anthropologists now self-consciously expanding upon the tradition of symbolic anthropology as a coherent, integrated body of work.
Actually, I do think that ‘modernity’ seriously challenges Buddhism and its regimes of values (both importantly plural, in my opinion). Although the concept of modernity is too diffuse to help analytically. Rather, both a capitalist mode of production and a nation-state mode of sociality / governance create quite distinct yet robustly competitive orders of value and value production that do, in my opinion, challenge the established institutional and discursive modes of value / value production under ‘classical’ (Theravada) Buddhism, as that has been canonically understood. The former challenge tends to be highlighted much more currently, but both have been crucial to the reworking of Buddhism in the 20th century as I see it.
By the way, if you haven’t had a chance, you should check out the March 2008 issue of Anthropological Theory. The issue is devoted to value in anthropological theory. In addition to a Turner article on Marxian value theory, there are other articles by Robert Foster, Webb Keane and other anthropologists working on the anthropology of value.
Time to go home
Re #57
Thanks for the example of the PAD response to rule of law which speak for themselves. I thought I’d add in some of PPP’s responses to rule of law, which also speak for themselves. And put the two lists side by side for comparison.
PAD gathers signatures to:
1. impeach 2 Civil Court judges (even if successful, other judges can continue the work of the court)
PPP gathers signatures to:
1. impeach (hoping to paralyse) the Constitutional Court
2. impeach (hoping to paralyse) Election Commission
3. impeach (hoping to paralyse) the Office of Auditor-General
4. impeach (hoping to paralyse) NCCC
Yes, so PAD = Bad, and TRT/PPP = Bad, but one is less bad than the other, no?
btw, I too am eagerly awaiting your response to kuson’s “dumb” question.
An essay on “the dismal state of Thai education”
As a small business owner specializing in high-end and specialized consulting, I and my colleagues have been employers in the Thai knowledge economy. My feeling from living and working here for many years is that education is the most significant, most fundamental, and most intractable problem Thailand faces; and I do not believe the problem will ever be solved.
Critical thinking and problem solving skills are just too rare for Thailand to develop. Firstly, excellent Thai individuals leave the country, perhaps work at international organizations where their skills are appreciated, or become corrupt officials; and secondly, Thai society suffers from lack of motivation in all walks of life, because there really is no profit in intellectual pursuits or having a strong work ethic due to institutional failings.
Finally, I believe that this situation in fact intentional, by whom I couldn’t say. But I think it is the true process by which the powerful remain entrenched.
PAD’s book of the week
I doubt that this book is supposed to be read prior to a PAD meeting. It has been published in the context of Phibul’s nationalism, which was quite different from the current nationalist hipe. In fact, even though the nationalism of the 40’s certainly had a strong fashist background, it was certainly not allied with the monarchy (rather on the contrary).
Time to go home
Sidh, I agree – I haven’t read all of Reg’s but he does write like a Thaksinite;
Reg (or any other persons in New Mandala), I think its ok to be a Thaksinite (if you are) — as long as you didn’t get any $$$ to write your stuff. If it were any consolation, I believed in Thaksin in the first 2-3 years- even I was fooled! He said many things sincerely [I could have sworn they looked genuine], and then you see him contradicting himself over and over. Then he redefined english term ‘Double-Standard’. I will not be surprised if a foreigner takes 10 years, a smart one 5 years. With PAD’s information, I think it becomes easier — but apparently not so simple.
It reminds me of my youth again – I was in a quarrel with my Aunt when I saw pro-wrestling for the first few times and was on the [swearing] side that these Wrestlers are Really Fighting when my Aunt said they were only acting. Its only when I grew up I could tell the difference — that no way was Hulk Hogan. It takes -not a trained eye, and in Thaksin’s case, experience in following his Trail of Lies to actually pinpoint – Ah! the most corrupt Con Artist ever!
Perhaps Changnoi is on somebody’s payroll? As long as he is not bought $$$, he’s fine. But Buyer Beware: don’t forget the rule of thumb: “Check the prices at a few shops before you buy”.
Sidh, PAD does focus on the “Educated Gullibles” and much more.
Now I’m waiting anxiously: Put Thaksin in Jail. Next step: Making sure he lives as Democratic as other inmates, no Golden Pillow for the rest of his life… (or until he really redeems himself).
Have you had enough of sufficiency?
“Is this the arrogance you criticise or just a case of being caught within your own “logic” and not being able to see outside it?”
Both Reg – I often get caught in my own logic. I try not to, but I can’t help it. I have been criticized for my arrogance too – and will readily admit to it as well… I readily admit (as I used “we”) that I write as a hypocrite.
“Let the electorate judge”
Reg, you chose to use those strong terms. You can’t expect a break for that from a Thai critical monarchist. The most I suspect of you until you address Kuson’s question is a ‘Thaksinite’. I would be quite careful not to use ‘Thaksin arse-polisher’…
Sondhi L. – not too sure. Ajarn Ji Ungpakorn said something along the lines of “I’m not Thai, I’m half Chinese-English and I am proud to be Chinese and English”. I actually think this is a good trend – as the Thai-Laos , Thai-Khmers, Thai-Malays should be proud of their cultural roots. But I’m not sure about your question. I have to think about it further.
Time to go home
Reg, apologies for my misunderstanding, as you write like a Thaksinite. Whatever you are, please just answer Kuson’s question as best you could. It’s no longer a “dumb question” you dismiss it to be as you claim to “support the rule of law”. If you choose to be quiet and dismissive again, we can conclude that you are a Thaksinite.
More Japanese tales
Hla Oo reminds me of the same ill-founded optimism proclaimed by the communists in the early days of the civil war – ‘Victory in 2 years’. Would that things could be that simple! By the time the ABSDF came into being the communists knew better from long and bitter experience that Rome would not be built overnight.
I couldn’t agree more it’s been a tragic loss of generations of good men and women still in their prime in most cases. But it won’t stop people looking towards and fighting for a new society where peace, freedom, fairness, justice, prosperity, and opportunities to fulfil the genetic potential of the Burmese nation can all come true.
Have you had enough of sufficiency?
Sidh: I claim to have been defamed. I most certainly do not “assume that we have all the answers and prescriptions.” And I continue to find your assertions that you know best about each bloggers motivations etc. to be little different from that position you claim to criticise. Is this the arrogance you criticise or just a case of being caught within your own “logic” and not being able to see outside it?
More Japanese tales
I met Aung Naing Oo in Sydney in 1991 while he was visiting Australia as the Foreign Minister of ABSDF. By then he was not fighting any more in the jungle and he seemed pretty well fit and full of confidence for the imminent success of their revolution. We and most of the Burmese community here were mesmerized by his youthful enthusiasm. We saw no traces of malaria’s effect on his serious and often smiling face then.
He was then telling us the military government in Rangoon would be overthrown in less than 2 years, if I still remember correctly. Only a few years later I read an article he wrote about factional fights in the ABSDF and the killing of some students by others and realized that he was putting a brave face during his foreign visits.
Later someone told me he took a scholarship from some university and studying in the west. He is a very decent man and he definitely loves his country. At least he wasn’t uselessly killed in the jungle and did survive to continue his political struggle. I wish him good luck as we definitely need a young man like him for the bright future of Burma.
An essay on “the dismal state of Thai education”
Thai Universities = Expat’s Graveyard
Indeed, the graveyard of anyone who stays too long.
There was a time when if you couldn’t hack it you became something like a philosophical streetsweeper or a lolly-pop person. Here they are reserved occupations. In the ever-so wonderful west that kind of job no longer exists or has been farmed out to some cheaper nationality. Now we all have to be superman and also remember to keep the greedy freemarket fanatics happy by spending money all the time. Decidedly shallow!
Some world isn’t it where the only decent job a lot of lesser grads can find is boring yourself to death teaching English to folks who will never really use it for sums of money which won’t pay for one’s retirement anywhere.
We got on our bikes and pedalled, and Richard Branson copped the benefit.
More Japanese tales
Army rum laced with quinine is well known in Burma, and alcohol related illnesses unfortunately common among military personnel. Drinking now becoming less of a taboo and more fashionable in more materialistic times bodes ill for the young and not so young alike.
A degree of immunity to malaria is shared among the Burmese who have been exposed from young particularly to the common vivax strain, but the virulent and drug-resistant falciparum malaria is the killer. The Andaman islanders are believed to have innate immunity aginst this strain, even stronger than that of Africans with the haemoglobin S gene, leading to American efforts to patent their DNA. Makes you wonder if this is the final frontier of capitalist exploitation.
More Japanese tales
For more about malaria along the Thailand-Burma border, Aung Naing Oo (a former ABSDF leader) has a great piece about this “No 1 Enemy” over at The Irrawaddy. Well worth a look. As he intimates in the final flourish, “For years, malaria remained the main life-threatening enemy of the ABSDF members rather than the solders in the Burmese army.”
He also relates that he took quinine to beat off his malaria – but that was almost two decades ago and under conditions of an ongoing jungle “revolution”. In areas of mainland Southeast Asia where malaria remains a serious threat I have, over the years, tended to take doxy, as Moe Aung recommends. Thus far, it has always seemed to do its job. But it isn’t, as understand it, always feasible to take it for long periods of time. And it does cost. By the sounds of it, it wasn’t like the ABSDF had a great deal of spare cash for medicines of any sort.
“Let the electorate judge”
Sidh: You remain confused and confusing. My comments here promise to be similarly confused.
On the point of the post, I was simply trying to say, in strong terms, that there are not just two positions on this stuff.
But please do give me a break on this all-knowing Thais vs. dumb foreigners stuff. Scratch a cultural relativist and they become “charming and generous” nationalists? You could go back to Pattana Kitiarsa’s paper on this stuff right after the coup and rehash all of that (it was on NM somewhere back then), but we know that there are dumb Thais, smart Thais, polite Thais, dumb “foreigners”, smart “foreigners”, polite “foreigners”, etc. etc. We can choose to find Thais “charming and generous” or the nicest people money can buy (was that Kissinger?) or something else again.
While on this culturalist thread, as someone interested in this stuff, why do you think Sondhi Lim is putting so much emphasis on his Chinese roots at present, including his “Luk chin rak chat” t-shirt?
Time to go home
Sidh: You want me to make up a story? You say: “Please answer it as a “Thaksinite” if you wish – we know you don’t speak for them.” You want me to pretend to be a Thaksinite? The point is that one can see the PADites as a very nasty bunch (a la Chang Noi in the Nation) and not be a Thaksin supporter just as one can support rule of law and election results without having to support those who win elections and who are in power.