This behaviour is typical of the Mafia. No legitimate authority would ever engage in it. The more it is reported, the more people will wake up to the fact the Thai people are subject to the rule of criminals.
Duncan, do you understand Indonesian? You don’t have to be a fluent Bahasa speaker but at least you should understand what these people at ILC forum talk about non-Indonesians and certainly about Jokowi.
“This will skew development in favour of the major cities”
“Development” is a guarded word here. Now who is cynical! In fact sad thing is this is realty.
IMF/ WB/ ADB are in win- win situation. Their job is to “Think Global” meaning for the international corporations to plant and produce at one advantageous- raw material, soil and weather, energy, other resources, transportation, slave density, etc.- place and sell those in others.
Doing so will have literally every single person on earth totally dependent on them. A particular type of food produced in one place and of a particular product in the other and they are going to be the only one with access to all.
The winning formula is that for such devious and macabre deed all countries have people- academics, some are called, and technocrats others are known as and leaders of the local communities- eg NLD are keen to work along with them to screw their own populace in the name of those fancy and totally meaningless words- “Democracy”, “Equality”, “Modernization” and still the best “Poverty Alleviation”.
One more thing of Ms Marsudi who seem to be blunder prone – on internstional level, at one stage, she proposed to the EU that Indonesian to be given visa free access. This request was made around the time of the height of the migrant crisis, oblivious to the fact that as the world’s largest muslim country by population, this couldve been deemed insensitive. Not to mention the lack of consideration that Indonesia is poverty ridden developing nation. The fact that she served in the Netherlands only adds to the questioning of her credential.
NLD, now in charged, must study the principles of “Barefoot Doctor” concept (yes the one by PRC under Mao) and adapt the ideal to the benefit of the rural citizenry.
There are already civil society sending out such volunteers who live among the people they were sent back to serve.
I guess you may call the Yellow Shirts and Red Shirts of Thailand conflicting civil society or its internal contradictions, ugly and nasty or otherwise. The USDA (and its not quite paramilitary but thuggish arm Swan Arr Shin) of Burma was under direct control of the military junta whereas the Ma Ba Tha monks were supposed to be independent in ‘new Burma’.
The picture often is complicated, more so in as diverse a society as Burma. We had competing groups of students organisations, workers and peasants organisations in the earlier parliamentary era of the Hpa Hsa Pa La (AFPFL – Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League) governments too.
I think that what we are dealing with here is a question of western media propaganda in support of the “rebalancing”, the “pivot to Asia”, the “let’s find someone to hail as a Democratic Beacon of the Region” movement that seems to determine the framing for almost all “reportage” emanating out of SE Asia.
If Indonesian folks are anything as politically savvy as the lower middle- and working-class Thais I know, they never expected the kind of miraculous transformations nor the democratic enhancement that readers of the NY Times were bludgeoned into expecting from ol’ Joko all the way back in 2012.
At the moment, MSM has gone silent on Indonesia, the way they almost always are on Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It is no longer even remotely possible to raise a democratic banner over his presidency and wave it to show the world that SE Asia CAN be democratic, therefore western, therefore under the Yanqui thumb and therefore friendly.
Thailand is now the regional demon (no matter how much of the junta’s “evil” is just a slightly expanded version of business as usual in Thailand), replacing Myanmar, which is now the beacon of democracy that Indonesia was when Joko was still running and just after he won.
It will be much harder for the Fullers and the Fishers of the western propaganda machine to let go of “The Lady” the way they have shamelessly dumped Widodo. So I fear the Rohingya and various other repressed, murdered and vilified minorities in Myanmar will have to go invisible for a longish while in order to keep the Beacon of Democracy banner raised high over the head of the daughter of the father of Myanmar as she plays Mom to the masses.
If Vietnam turns out to be a good little partner in the TPP scam, I wonder if there is any way MSM correspondents will be able to find a way to spin Vietnam as the next regional bright-spot? Politburo: Beacon of Democracy?
After all, as Thaksin was killing thousands in a drug war, buying up and shutting down media and placing family members and corporate flunkies throughout the Thai army and bureaucracy, Thailand was apparently the Democratic Beacon du Jour according to the bright lights that cover the region for their editors and the State Department and all the sympathetic folks back home.
So anything is possible in the media. Change you can believe in.
Right, so, if civil society is not always so “civil”, does that mean we need to call it something else? Again, perhaps, we do. Yet, I suspect not so much.
Much of this, I guess, has to do more with any reckoning of political democratization that does not fully embrace political liberalization as well.
At the very least, I don’t see anything happening within Myanmar that particularly requires new theories of civil society or democratization or so on. This is not to say that the Burmese case is not special–only, perhaps, that it is not THAT special.
When the Ma Ba Tha happens to be in the league of the USDA (remember them? practically its civilian counterpart) like any other similar forms of a ruling party’s proxy it’s more than ‘strictly speaking’ not a civil society group. It acts in tandem with the quango Sangha Maha Nayaka as the strong arms body almost a militia on behalf of its creators in government circles with official blessing. It’s common knowledge that it can with special dispensation, latitude and funding operate within a legal and political space with parameters set by the very regime.
There have been many a dissenting voice among the Sangha most notably the intrepid and outspoken Shwe Nya War Sayadaw a.k.a. U Pyinnathiha.
I hardly believe there is an effective civil society in the country. Whatever is translated into action is the order from the sources of power, local and national level. It is disappointing that the governments since Ne Win have drastically denied all the suggestions and criticisms of the civil society. Aung Gyi in 1988 sounded the bell. Later Ne Win went to action by handing over power to butchers, who never paid heed to the warnings and the paths of doom. The tradition is still there. Guarding the interests of the dictators does not make a civil society as effective as it should be in a democratically viable government.
Duncan. While I acknowledge that those who wear socks in their sandals are in an unassailable position to mock those who wear batik shirts, I have to disagree with everything else.
Widodo managed to have his country taken off the Terrorism Financing and Money Laundering blacklist at the very same time as executing foreign citizens from those very same countries whose votes he needed to get off the blacklist. What an expression of power that was. Iran and North Korea must have been astounded. Iran only kidnaps foreigners to gain leverage. What could this man in batik, or someone like him do, if they had nukes? Behind the folksy batik shirt is a man of steel, ruthless, rat cunning, a winner.
Pearshaped wins a toffee apple. pls refer to Sinjai ppl smuggler H.Ambo first exposed in NM –
Nice to know somebody reads this stuff.
Meanwhile, the trial of the smugglers allegedy bribed to return to Rote has mysteriously vanished. After having been delayed because they couldn’t find a lawyer, then again because the alleged bribe money had gone ‘missing,’ the latest excuse is they’re looking for expert witnesses. Feel free to speculate the men in batik shirts have been doing deals.
(Wikileaks-Thailand’s Moment of Truth)
‘…The King quietly said, “I have four children. But she is the only one who ’sits on the ground with the people.’…
[05BANGKOK868]
Beginning to envy Nich, now widely travelled inside Burma. Couldn’t agree more about the provincial cities’ need to grow and prosper, not least in the ethnic homelands. Look no farther than Mong La or Panghsang outwardly at least.
Ultimately it’s the urban rural divide that needs to be addressed as a matter of priority except that things appear to be going in the opposite direction evicting farmers off their land and impoverishing the countryside. This will skew development in favour of the major cities, swelling the ranks of the urban poor in competition for jobs in the expanding SEZs driving down wages.
With the farmers impoverished and enslaved as wage labourers, food security will suffer as the agribusiness industry will be geared to cash crops and exports. The country will come to rely on food aid and imports, get into debt up to the eyeballs as global trade and prices slump for exports, go cap in hand to the IMF/World Bank for a bail out, austerity measures imposed on the people leading to civil unrest and street protests followed by a bloody crackdown, in other words, the old vicious circle of the New World Order.
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Thailand’s iron fist and an academic’s family
This behaviour is typical of the Mafia. No legitimate authority would ever engage in it. The more it is reported, the more people will wake up to the fact the Thai people are subject to the rule of criminals.
Myanmar: where civil society and democracy collide
Ma Ba Ta is as much a civil society than Muslim Brotherhood is an ecumenical movement for all religion let alone Islam.
Similarly the plight of Kala in Yakhine does not represent the real quagmire that NLD is wading into with the victory.
if you read Nic article you will realize that KIY is not a litmus teat tor success of anything call Freedom
Polishing the plin-plan president
Duncan, do you understand Indonesian? You don’t have to be a fluent Bahasa speaker but at least you should understand what these people at ILC forum talk about non-Indonesians and certainly about Jokowi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tt_t8Qqlmw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6W3VOkjZHk
Polishing the plin-plan president
Free the Jis teachers and cleaners.
Why the NLD needs to look beyond city lights
“This will skew development in favour of the major cities”
“Development” is a guarded word here. Now who is cynical! In fact sad thing is this is realty.
IMF/ WB/ ADB are in win- win situation. Their job is to “Think Global” meaning for the international corporations to plant and produce at one advantageous- raw material, soil and weather, energy, other resources, transportation, slave density, etc.- place and sell those in others.
Doing so will have literally every single person on earth totally dependent on them. A particular type of food produced in one place and of a particular product in the other and they are going to be the only one with access to all.
The winning formula is that for such devious and macabre deed all countries have people- academics, some are called, and technocrats others are known as and leaders of the local communities- eg NLD are keen to work along with them to screw their own populace in the name of those fancy and totally meaningless words- “Democracy”, “Equality”, “Modernization” and still the best “Poverty Alleviation”.
Polishing the plin-plan president
One more thing of Ms Marsudi who seem to be blunder prone – on internstional level, at one stage, she proposed to the EU that Indonesian to be given visa free access. This request was made around the time of the height of the migrant crisis, oblivious to the fact that as the world’s largest muslim country by population, this couldve been deemed insensitive. Not to mention the lack of consideration that Indonesia is poverty ridden developing nation. The fact that she served in the Netherlands only adds to the questioning of her credential.
Why the NLD needs to look beyond city lights
NLD, now in charged, must study the principles of “Barefoot Doctor” concept (yes the one by PRC under Mao) and adapt the ideal to the benefit of the rural citizenry.
There are already civil society sending out such volunteers who live among the people they were sent back to serve.
Myanmar: where civil society and democracy collide
I guess you may call the Yellow Shirts and Red Shirts of Thailand conflicting civil society or its internal contradictions, ugly and nasty or otherwise. The USDA (and its not quite paramilitary but thuggish arm Swan Arr Shin) of Burma was under direct control of the military junta whereas the Ma Ba Tha monks were supposed to be independent in ‘new Burma’.
The picture often is complicated, more so in as diverse a society as Burma. We had competing groups of students organisations, workers and peasants organisations in the earlier parliamentary era of the Hpa Hsa Pa La (AFPFL – Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League) governments too.
The current Kachin Baptist Pat Jasan anti-opium poppy movement looks like a yet another facet in the vibrant civil society of Burma today.
Polishing the plin-plan president
I think that what we are dealing with here is a question of western media propaganda in support of the “rebalancing”, the “pivot to Asia”, the “let’s find someone to hail as a Democratic Beacon of the Region” movement that seems to determine the framing for almost all “reportage” emanating out of SE Asia.
If Indonesian folks are anything as politically savvy as the lower middle- and working-class Thais I know, they never expected the kind of miraculous transformations nor the democratic enhancement that readers of the NY Times were bludgeoned into expecting from ol’ Joko all the way back in 2012.
At the moment, MSM has gone silent on Indonesia, the way they almost always are on Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It is no longer even remotely possible to raise a democratic banner over his presidency and wave it to show the world that SE Asia CAN be democratic, therefore western, therefore under the Yanqui thumb and therefore friendly.
Thailand is now the regional demon (no matter how much of the junta’s “evil” is just a slightly expanded version of business as usual in Thailand), replacing Myanmar, which is now the beacon of democracy that Indonesia was when Joko was still running and just after he won.
It will be much harder for the Fullers and the Fishers of the western propaganda machine to let go of “The Lady” the way they have shamelessly dumped Widodo. So I fear the Rohingya and various other repressed, murdered and vilified minorities in Myanmar will have to go invisible for a longish while in order to keep the Beacon of Democracy banner raised high over the head of the daughter of the father of Myanmar as she plays Mom to the masses.
If Vietnam turns out to be a good little partner in the TPP scam, I wonder if there is any way MSM correspondents will be able to find a way to spin Vietnam as the next regional bright-spot? Politburo: Beacon of Democracy?
After all, as Thaksin was killing thousands in a drug war, buying up and shutting down media and placing family members and corporate flunkies throughout the Thai army and bureaucracy, Thailand was apparently the Democratic Beacon du Jour according to the bright lights that cover the region for their editors and the State Department and all the sympathetic folks back home.
So anything is possible in the media. Change you can believe in.
(If you’re getting your news from these lads)
Polishing the plin-plan president
Indonesia deserves him.
It’s a basket case afterall.
Myanmar: where civil society and democracy collide
Hmmm… the idea that “civil society” may have an ugly side to it is, perhaps, not such a new idea?
I’m thinking of Sheri Berman’s insightful little piece on “Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic”, found here: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic793411.files/Wk%2011_Nov%2012th/Berman_1997_Weimar_Civil_Society.pdf Others could be cited as well.
Right, so, if civil society is not always so “civil”, does that mean we need to call it something else? Again, perhaps, we do. Yet, I suspect not so much.
Much of this, I guess, has to do more with any reckoning of political democratization that does not fully embrace political liberalization as well.
At the very least, I don’t see anything happening within Myanmar that particularly requires new theories of civil society or democratization or so on. This is not to say that the Burmese case is not special–only, perhaps, that it is not THAT special.
Myanmar: where civil society and democracy collide
When the Ma Ba Tha happens to be in the league of the USDA (remember them? practically its civilian counterpart) like any other similar forms of a ruling party’s proxy it’s more than ‘strictly speaking’ not a civil society group. It acts in tandem with the quango Sangha Maha Nayaka as the strong arms body almost a militia on behalf of its creators in government circles with official blessing. It’s common knowledge that it can with special dispensation, latitude and funding operate within a legal and political space with parameters set by the very regime.
There have been many a dissenting voice among the Sangha most notably the intrepid and outspoken Shwe Nya War Sayadaw a.k.a. U Pyinnathiha.
Myanmar: where civil society and democracy collide
I hardly believe there is an effective civil society in the country. Whatever is translated into action is the order from the sources of power, local and national level. It is disappointing that the governments since Ne Win have drastically denied all the suggestions and criticisms of the civil society. Aung Gyi in 1988 sounded the bell. Later Ne Win went to action by handing over power to butchers, who never paid heed to the warnings and the paths of doom. The tradition is still there. Guarding the interests of the dictators does not make a civil society as effective as it should be in a democratically viable government.
Polishing the plin-plan president
Duncan. While I acknowledge that those who wear socks in their sandals are in an unassailable position to mock those who wear batik shirts, I have to disagree with everything else.
Widodo managed to have his country taken off the Terrorism Financing and Money Laundering blacklist at the very same time as executing foreign citizens from those very same countries whose votes he needed to get off the blacklist. What an expression of power that was. Iran and North Korea must have been astounded. Iran only kidnaps foreigners to gain leverage. What could this man in batik, or someone like him do, if they had nukes? Behind the folksy batik shirt is a man of steel, ruthless, rat cunning, a winner.
Pearshaped wins a toffee apple. pls refer to Sinjai ppl smuggler H.Ambo first exposed in NM –
http://www.newmandala.org/2015/08/18/who-is-behind-the-bangkok-blast/
Then earlier this month while plotting to send anothe boat via Kupang, Ambo collared by Kodim Sinjai’s finest
http://kodam-wirabuana.mil.id/2016/02/15/intel-kodim-1424sinjai-gagalkan-20-orang-imigran-gelap/
Nice to know somebody reads this stuff.
Meanwhile, the trial of the smugglers allegedy bribed to return to Rote has mysteriously vanished. After having been delayed because they couldn’t find a lawyer, then again because the alleged bribe money had gone ‘missing,’ the latest excuse is they’re looking for expert witnesses. Feel free to speculate the men in batik shirts have been doing deals.
The Thai princess and her loo by the lake
Reports in are that princess didn’t even use it.
Pathetic.
The Thai princess and her loo by the lake
The quote here is a classic:
“If you have a king–well, just, normal people can’t use the king’s toilet,”
The Princess & The Privy
Najib and Malaysia’s road to redemption?
[…] http://www.newmandala.org/2016/02/19/najib-and-malaysias-road-to-redemption/ […]
The Thai princess and her loo by the lake
(Wikileaks-Thailand’s Moment of Truth)
‘…The King quietly said, “I have four children. But she is the only one who ’sits on the ground with the people.’…
[05BANGKOK868]
Polishing the plin-plan president
Great piece. Cutting and brutal. About time someone told it as it is. Sad for Indonesia..and the region.
Why the NLD needs to look beyond city lights
Beginning to envy Nich, now widely travelled inside Burma. Couldn’t agree more about the provincial cities’ need to grow and prosper, not least in the ethnic homelands. Look no farther than Mong La or Panghsang outwardly at least.
Ultimately it’s the urban rural divide that needs to be addressed as a matter of priority except that things appear to be going in the opposite direction evicting farmers off their land and impoverishing the countryside. This will skew development in favour of the major cities, swelling the ranks of the urban poor in competition for jobs in the expanding SEZs driving down wages.
With the farmers impoverished and enslaved as wage labourers, food security will suffer as the agribusiness industry will be geared to cash crops and exports. The country will come to rely on food aid and imports, get into debt up to the eyeballs as global trade and prices slump for exports, go cap in hand to the IMF/World Bank for a bail out, austerity measures imposed on the people leading to civil unrest and street protests followed by a bloody crackdown, in other words, the old vicious circle of the New World Order.
So much for democracy and the Third World debt now visiting the shores of Europe itself. The chickens have already come home to roost.