Surely your loaded question can be resolved by remembering Thai humidity. If you bring Thai academics to the ANU, of course they will be up for it. With Canberra temperatures, unbiased thinking is much more feasible. Also, the cold nights will give the academics the opportunity to pursue an avenue of cruelty against dear R9(R9R9R9R9 etc) through existentialist critiques of ‘love’, HAH!
Before finishing “eye, ear, (and then) leg work” on the new government’s policies, may I request a privilege on saying something based on what I learn in the past?
If I may borrow jonfernquest’s comment on “A Wake-up Call” post:
“If the intellectuals with their disdain for populism, soaps, sleaze, and low standards, weren’t there, they would have to be invented, or the system would slip down a rat hole”,
and if “low standard” is a real important issue, it looks like most part of the system has already there in that rat hole.
After we have heard a lot of those in academia’s laments on populism, I was very surprised to learn that many (if not most) Thai intellectuals(?) who criticize populism equate the term with “popular(ity).” They think that populist policies are merely “policies that people like (hence р╕Ыр╕гр╕░р╕Кр╕▓ (subj) р╕Щр╕┤р╕вр╕б (v)).” (Maybe if we ask them about the meaning of “socialism” and “capitalism,” we might be given similar answers.) It is plausible that after some of these people simply learned of the term via newspaper and heard such a P-word over the wine, they are able to come out in herd to give public outcry on the matter.
One thing that I can agree with Walden Bello is that Thaksin is not qualified as a true/real populist. (For that matter, some NM readers might recall that I denied credit of inventing the terms “royal populism”–which, in my opinion, is clearly an oxymoron.)
As I recall, while Thaksin and Co. seemed to be proud with the term “Thaksinomics,” they never admit or label their policies with “populism” during their two terms.
It has been interesting to note that, after populism had been bashed for a long time, the last election witnessed at least a few parties willingly associate the term with their campaigns.
“…academics and other public policy commentators might hold off on their pre-programmed anti-populist stance and actually engage in some meaningful analysis of the implementation and impacts of these policies?”
Sinking their fangs in at this early stage is a bit premature. IMHO
Worldwide academics who get their act together and become public intellectual blogging academics are slated to usurp part of the domain of journalists, the op-ed section of newspapers, and the more op-edish parts of the business section, for instance. And also radio and tv. Brad De Long, professor of economics at UC Berkeley has already done this and this blog has done this on certain topics.
“Academic blogging” should be considered “being a public intellectual in my discipline.”
An essential sharing of one’s expertise with the outside world.
I’m afraid only the whip of management types will get it to happen though.
(I posted something similar to this on Sunday but it never appeared. Please let me know if is considered inappropriate for New Mandala) .
I agree with jonfernquest’s second para/sentence. Personally and professionally, I have been a strong critic of the TRT’s implementation of the 30 Baht Scheme, that tended to pay more attention to maximize votes than to make the scheme a reliable and dependable for all. (Even that, many researches–including my team’s both quantitative and qualitative ones, tend to agree that, in many aspects, it is superior to the older schemes, which explain its huge success and popularity.)
I have also criticized the fake “12-year free education” scheme in which many, if not most, parents ended up paying even more than before.
As for now, I anticipate that, besides the PPP-led “ugly cabinet” and Samak’s ugly and irresponsible remarks on the 1976 October 6th event, many things will get even uglier. Therefore “we” will have to monitor them closely and be ready to speak out when it needs to be done.
However, when one looks (or reads/hears) around in the intelligentsia street these days (and a few years back), one would see many bullish–yet popular–comments (many of which also fall in a “low standard” category) from people in “academic circle” who has done little rigorous research but are ready to pass their elitist judgments to the rural poor/villagers and especially children/youths–I have been really disturbed by the popular and never-ending youth polls undertaken just before every Valentine/Loy-Krathong days. On the contrary, how many times you have seen such an “unpopular” comments/critiques like this one? I know (and know of) others in acedemia who think like me, but most probably know the Thai society better to keep their mouths shut.
Am l trying to get other people off the seesaw so that I can take their places? If anyone can find that I ever made (or received) a contact or have any ties with any political parties (or other types of parties) in Thailand beyond ones for research purposes, it would be a good service to let that info out to the public. The mere places that I have attempted to take people out are the two false-dilemma horns that many had climbed up and have stayed up there so long (See “Punyachon bon Kai Kwai” Matichon April 10 ’07 or, for those who do not read Thai, a glimpse from Khun Nantiya’s piece in The Nation last January
Am I merely a technocrat? I am not sure if I am even qualified for the term (at least in the eyes of the real/professional ones). My piece attempts to point out that intelligence is everywhere, with a hope that it would make people look for answer at the horizon as much as at their arm’s length. Of course, my belief (or bias) is that we have some of very intelligent intellectuals in the city as well. Actually, the one that I have the utmost respect even used a pen-name “Ivory Tower” and I am sure that he has his pride to stay there.
PS. As anyone would realize, my article was an opinion piece. It was not not disguided as academic research or anything. Given what I have seen in the past few years, I am kind of surprised to see that some singled it out as a “tabloid” from a “mean bully” while I have rarely seen this kind of response to lot of judgmental comments masked as “academic comments” flying around in the past few years.
Word on the Streets of Mae Sot is surprisingly quiet over this affair. If it was politically motivated, what was the purpose? Is this further evidence of a Christian/Buddhist divide in the KNU?
What are populist policies? Frankly, Samak could learn a thing or two about appealing to voters by the use of populist policies by listening to Obama, Clinton and Edwards in the USA.
Hi Nich.
Not sure what the copyright status of this is but it came out
today.
Mahn Sha La Phan: Resistance leader of Burma’s Karen people, he tried to keep the opposition united
Ashley South
The Guardian, Monday February 18 2008
This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday February 18 2008 on p33 of the Obituaries section.
In 2000, Mahn Sha La Phan, who has been assassinated aged 64, became general secretary of Burma’s most significant insurgent organisation, the Karen National Union (KNU). With the death of its chairman, General Bo Mya, in 2006, Mahn Sha, a man of talent and integrity, had become the most significant figure within the KNU, and its chief ideologue. He was also a leader of the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB), and other opposition movements. Unlike most leaders of the Christian-dominated KNU, he came from a Buddhist background and was a speaker of the Pwo dialect. His murder is a great setback to the KNU, and for the wider Burmese opposition, whose strained unity he did so much to support.
The KNU went underground in 1949, a year after Burmese independence. Sixty years on, the Burmese civil war is the longest-running such conflict in the world, and the country’s ethnic minority populations, such as the Karen, have suffered greatly.
Following the collapse of the Communist party of Burma in 1989, some two dozen of the country’s ethnic insurgent organisations agreed ceasefires with the military government, which had seized power in 1962, and, most recently, in September 2007, crushed the popular protests led by Buddhist monks. Mahn Sha was among those KNU leaders who argued that such ceasefire agreements have achieved little, and that any peace deal must involve a comprehensive settlement of the country’s political problems, and the freeing of political prisoners, including the democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
Mahn Sha was born in Taw Gyaung village, Maubin district, in the Irrawaddy delta. He studied history at Rangoon University, and went underground in the mid-1960s. The young activist was identified with a left-leaning, Karen nationalist faction, before uniting with the KNU in the mid-1970s, and becoming a central committee member in 1984. Always popular with the rank and file, he was for many years treated with some suspicion by the rightwing KNU leadership. When, between 1985 and 1986, he led efforts to unite the fractious ethnic nationalist movement with the then strong communist insurgency, he was rebuked and demoted by Bo Mya.
By the late 1980s Mahn Sha had been reinstated to the leadership. This was a period of optimism in insurgent and opposition circles along the Thailand-Burma border. Between 1988 and 1990, large numbers of university students and other activists fled to “liberated zones” controlled by the KNU and other ethnic insurgent groups, following the brutal suppression of the 1988 “democracy uprising” and the government’s failure to recognise the results of the 1990 elections. Mahn Sha was one of the main contact points between the armed ethno-nationalist movement, which promoted federal solutions to the country’s political crises, and members of a new generation of democracy activists, who fled from urban areas to join the insurgency in the Karen hills and forests of eastern Burma.
But during the 1990s, the KNU lost control of the remaining “liberated zones”, as hundreds of thousands of Karen and other villagers were displaced in the army’s brutal but effective counter-insurgency.
The KNU was also racked by several internal disputes, which saw disaffected factions agree separate ceasefires with the military government and a questioning of the relevance of the KNU’s alliance with the Burmese opposition in exile. These voices came both from within the KNU, and from the wider Karen community, including those living in government-controlled areas. Nevertheless – demonstrating the Karen qualities of loyalty and steadfastness – Mahn Sha insisted on maintaining the opposition alliance.
Following Bo Mya’s death, by 2007 violent inter-Karen factionalism undermined the remaining unity of the nationalist movement. Last month, the son-in-law of ex-KNU faction leader Htein Maung was assassinated – probably by KNU members.
Mahn Sha was murdered by two gunmen while he was sitting on his veranda in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, home to many Burmese opposition leaders, and traditionally a haven from the fighting in Burma.
He is survived by a son and two daughters, who are active in Karen and Burmese politics.
┬╖ Mahn Sha La Phan, politician and freedom fighter, born July 5 1943; died February 14 2008
And furthermore, Republican- “moral outrage” be buggered.
We’re not talking about an interesting hypothetical concept here, or somebody pinching an office-worker’s bum; we’re talking about a Head of Government lying to the world about the massacre of possibly hundreds of talented and well-intentioned young people who were unarmed & peacefully stating their opposition to the return, IN ORANGE ROBES, of a brutal dictator, who had 3 years previously been responsible for the murder of 77 (official figure); diminishing the massacre of 78 Muslims who were suffocated by being stacked up like carcasses in the back of a truck on a very hot day, by inferring that it was the victims’ fault for engaging in such a strange religious practise as Ramadan, which made them weak; and the slaughter of 38 Muslims who had taken sanctuary in a mosque.
P.S. With regards to government monitoring, the ICT ministry hasn’t caught the people who hacked their website in defiance of the Cyber Crime Act, right? Even with that three day deadline set by Minister Sittichai…
Nor have they been able to identify the people who posted those YouTube videos. So why bother with minnows like me. Heck, even those on Samesky are still going at it!
“…credibility with the military leadership…”; “…credentials …as an unreconstructed rightist-royalist…”; “…I don’t know whether the former student leaders-leftists-communists in PPP-TRT would necessarily “cringe” at Samak’s statements…”
My God!!! Are you kidding? Crawl out of your burrow.
And yes, Dickie-boy: RIGHT ON!
“on this issue maybe ***we*** need to separate moral outrage and political necessity”
With regards to Phra Pinang, the fact that she did not meddle in politics or play a role (or so it seems) and actually did spend time (not as publicized while she was alive) promoting the charities and organizations that interested her is credit to her. But once again, her death was an opportunity for the royalist propaganda machine to exploit. She was a good influence on Thai society as you say, but not an exceedingly great one as the propaganda machine exaggerates it to be. But that is not her fault as it was all done post-mortem. To be clear, that is a criticism of the propaganda machine. Phra Pinang’s legacy is better celebrated in her good initiatives and her relative distance from politics.
And ditto with regards to your last paragraph. So many Thais love to blame others when it comes to why “chart mai charoen”.
Thank you Teth. My interpretation of what you have written was in line with your comments in #52. My intention was to caution you that others who may be monitoring this site may choose to conveniently misinterpret, if you give them openings to do so.
In the current political climate, one doesn’t like to see people being unnecessarily reckless. Even in Britain & France (2 democracratic countries which you refer to), at present the security forces are inclined have their own agenda, & to be somewhat hyperactive & make erroneous assumptions based on their citizens’ use of the internet.These are 2 countries with fairly good justice systems, administered by people who in many cases have a love of law & liberty, so it is possible for some of those who are victims of unjust accusations to regain their freedom…after lengthy & expensive legal procedures. Here, things may be somewhat different.
You may be interested to look at the Reporters Without Borders site (http:www.rsf.org ). They have some interesting Media downloads.
Jonfernquest, I couldn’t agree with you more re. Phra Pinang. She was indeed a positive influence. Her encouragement & promotion of civil society organisations, for example, was a real & active contribution to the development of a more democratic society, in which everyone can actively participate. Those who choose to interpret such effort as mere PR for the Establishment are cynical & stupid. The organisations she worked with still exist, & will continue, some of them will provide models for other democracy-promoting projects, & they will be training people in skills necessary for change.
Those who think that a healthy society can come from political parties, revolutions, coups, etc. (i.e. from above), are seriously deluded. Fundamental change in society can only come from fundamental change in the behaviour & thinking of individuals and communities.
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A new look at “populist” policies
Surely your loaded question can be resolved by remembering Thai humidity. If you bring Thai academics to the ANU, of course they will be up for it. With Canberra temperatures, unbiased thinking is much more feasible. Also, the cold nights will give the academics the opportunity to pursue an avenue of cruelty against dear R9(R9R9R9R9 etc) through existentialist critiques of ‘love’, HAH!
A new look at “populist” policies
Before finishing “eye, ear, (and then) leg work” on the new government’s policies, may I request a privilege on saying something based on what I learn in the past?
If I may borrow jonfernquest’s comment on “A Wake-up Call” post:
“If the intellectuals with their disdain for populism, soaps, sleaze, and low standards, weren’t there, they would have to be invented, or the system would slip down a rat hole”,
and if “low standard” is a real important issue, it looks like most part of the system has already there in that rat hole.
After we have heard a lot of those in academia’s laments on populism, I was very surprised to learn that many (if not most) Thai intellectuals(?) who criticize populism equate the term with “popular(ity).” They think that populist policies are merely “policies that people like (hence р╕Ыр╕гр╕░р╕Кр╕▓ (subj) р╕Щр╕┤р╕вр╕б (v)).” (Maybe if we ask them about the meaning of “socialism” and “capitalism,” we might be given similar answers.) It is plausible that after some of these people simply learned of the term via newspaper and heard such a P-word over the wine, they are able to come out in herd to give public outcry on the matter.
One thing that I can agree with Walden Bello is that Thaksin is not qualified as a true/real populist. (For that matter, some NM readers might recall that I denied credit of inventing the terms “royal populism”–which, in my opinion, is clearly an oxymoron.)
As I recall, while Thaksin and Co. seemed to be proud with the term “Thaksinomics,” they never admit or label their policies with “populism” during their two terms.
It has been interesting to note that, after populism had been bashed for a long time, the last election witnessed at least a few parties willingly associate the term with their campaigns.
A wake-up call
Viroj – apologies, for some reason your previous comment was diverted automatically to spam. We are trying to solve this problem.
A new look at “populist” policies
“…academics and other public policy commentators might hold off on their pre-programmed anti-populist stance and actually engage in some meaningful analysis of the implementation and impacts of these policies?”
Sinking their fangs in at this early stage is a bit premature. IMHO
Worldwide academics who get their act together and become public intellectual blogging academics are slated to usurp part of the domain of journalists, the op-ed section of newspapers, and the more op-edish parts of the business section, for instance. And also radio and tv. Brad De Long, professor of economics at UC Berkeley has already done this and this blog has done this on certain topics.
“Academic blogging” should be considered “being a public intellectual in my discipline.”
An essential sharing of one’s expertise with the outside world.
I’m afraid only the whip of management types will get it to happen though.
A wake-up call
(I posted something similar to this on Sunday but it never appeared. Please let me know if is considered inappropriate for New Mandala) .
I agree with jonfernquest’s second para/sentence. Personally and professionally, I have been a strong critic of the TRT’s implementation of the 30 Baht Scheme, that tended to pay more attention to maximize votes than to make the scheme a reliable and dependable for all. (Even that, many researches–including my team’s both quantitative and qualitative ones, tend to agree that, in many aspects, it is superior to the older schemes, which explain its huge success and popularity.)
I have also criticized the fake “12-year free education” scheme in which many, if not most, parents ended up paying even more than before.
As for now, I anticipate that, besides the PPP-led “ugly cabinet” and Samak’s ugly and irresponsible remarks on the 1976 October 6th event, many things will get even uglier. Therefore “we” will have to monitor them closely and be ready to speak out when it needs to be done.
However, when one looks (or reads/hears) around in the intelligentsia street these days (and a few years back), one would see many bullish–yet popular–comments (many of which also fall in a “low standard” category) from people in “academic circle” who has done little rigorous research but are ready to pass their elitist judgments to the rural poor/villagers and especially children/youths–I have been really disturbed by the popular and never-ending youth polls undertaken just before every Valentine/Loy-Krathong days. On the contrary, how many times you have seen such an “unpopular” comments/critiques like this one? I know (and know of) others in acedemia who think like me, but most probably know the Thai society better to keep their mouths shut.
Am l trying to get other people off the seesaw so that I can take their places? If anyone can find that I ever made (or received) a contact or have any ties with any political parties (or other types of parties) in Thailand beyond ones for research purposes, it would be a good service to let that info out to the public. The mere places that I have attempted to take people out are the two false-dilemma horns that many had climbed up and have stayed up there so long (See “Punyachon bon Kai Kwai” Matichon April 10 ’07 or, for those who do not read Thai, a glimpse from Khun Nantiya’s piece in The Nation last January
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/01/19/politics/politics_30024500.php
Am I merely a technocrat? I am not sure if I am even qualified for the term (at least in the eyes of the real/professional ones). My piece attempts to point out that intelligence is everywhere, with a hope that it would make people look for answer at the horizon as much as at their arm’s length. Of course, my belief (or bias) is that we have some of very intelligent intellectuals in the city as well. Actually, the one that I have the utmost respect even used a pen-name “Ivory Tower” and I am sure that he has his pride to stay there.
PS. As anyone would realize, my article was an opinion piece. It was not not disguided as academic research or anything. Given what I have seen in the past few years, I am kind of surprised to see that some singled it out as a “tabloid” from a “mean bully” while I have rarely seen this kind of response to lot of judgmental comments masked as “academic comments” flying around in the past few years.
Assassination of Mahn Sha
Word on the Streets of Mae Sot is surprisingly quiet over this affair. If it was politically motivated, what was the purpose? Is this further evidence of a Christian/Buddhist divide in the KNU?
A new look at “populist” policies
What are populist policies? Frankly, Samak could learn a thing or two about appealing to voters by the use of populist policies by listening to Obama, Clinton and Edwards in the USA.
A new look at “populist” policies
Where can we find “serious” research in the social sciences in Thailand?
Assassination of Mahn Sha
Hi Nich.
Not sure what the copyright status of this is but it came out
today.
Mahn Sha La Phan: Resistance leader of Burma’s Karen people, he tried to keep the opposition united
Ashley South
The Guardian, Monday February 18 2008
This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday February 18 2008 on p33 of the Obituaries section.
In 2000, Mahn Sha La Phan, who has been assassinated aged 64, became general secretary of Burma’s most significant insurgent organisation, the Karen National Union (KNU). With the death of its chairman, General Bo Mya, in 2006, Mahn Sha, a man of talent and integrity, had become the most significant figure within the KNU, and its chief ideologue. He was also a leader of the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB), and other opposition movements. Unlike most leaders of the Christian-dominated KNU, he came from a Buddhist background and was a speaker of the Pwo dialect. His murder is a great setback to the KNU, and for the wider Burmese opposition, whose strained unity he did so much to support.
The KNU went underground in 1949, a year after Burmese independence. Sixty years on, the Burmese civil war is the longest-running such conflict in the world, and the country’s ethnic minority populations, such as the Karen, have suffered greatly.
Following the collapse of the Communist party of Burma in 1989, some two dozen of the country’s ethnic insurgent organisations agreed ceasefires with the military government, which had seized power in 1962, and, most recently, in September 2007, crushed the popular protests led by Buddhist monks. Mahn Sha was among those KNU leaders who argued that such ceasefire agreements have achieved little, and that any peace deal must involve a comprehensive settlement of the country’s political problems, and the freeing of political prisoners, including the democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
Mahn Sha was born in Taw Gyaung village, Maubin district, in the Irrawaddy delta. He studied history at Rangoon University, and went underground in the mid-1960s. The young activist was identified with a left-leaning, Karen nationalist faction, before uniting with the KNU in the mid-1970s, and becoming a central committee member in 1984. Always popular with the rank and file, he was for many years treated with some suspicion by the rightwing KNU leadership. When, between 1985 and 1986, he led efforts to unite the fractious ethnic nationalist movement with the then strong communist insurgency, he was rebuked and demoted by Bo Mya.
By the late 1980s Mahn Sha had been reinstated to the leadership. This was a period of optimism in insurgent and opposition circles along the Thailand-Burma border. Between 1988 and 1990, large numbers of university students and other activists fled to “liberated zones” controlled by the KNU and other ethnic insurgent groups, following the brutal suppression of the 1988 “democracy uprising” and the government’s failure to recognise the results of the 1990 elections. Mahn Sha was one of the main contact points between the armed ethno-nationalist movement, which promoted federal solutions to the country’s political crises, and members of a new generation of democracy activists, who fled from urban areas to join the insurgency in the Karen hills and forests of eastern Burma.
But during the 1990s, the KNU lost control of the remaining “liberated zones”, as hundreds of thousands of Karen and other villagers were displaced in the army’s brutal but effective counter-insurgency.
The KNU was also racked by several internal disputes, which saw disaffected factions agree separate ceasefires with the military government and a questioning of the relevance of the KNU’s alliance with the Burmese opposition in exile. These voices came both from within the KNU, and from the wider Karen community, including those living in government-controlled areas. Nevertheless – demonstrating the Karen qualities of loyalty and steadfastness – Mahn Sha insisted on maintaining the opposition alliance.
Following Bo Mya’s death, by 2007 violent inter-Karen factionalism undermined the remaining unity of the nationalist movement. Last month, the son-in-law of ex-KNU faction leader Htein Maung was assassinated – probably by KNU members.
Mahn Sha was murdered by two gunmen while he was sitting on his veranda in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, home to many Burmese opposition leaders, and traditionally a haven from the fighting in Burma.
He is survived by a son and two daughters, who are active in Karen and Burmese politics.
┬╖ Mahn Sha La Phan, politician and freedom fighter, born July 5 1943; died February 14 2008
Samak’s disgrace
And furthermore, Republican- “moral outrage” be buggered.
We’re not talking about an interesting hypothetical concept here, or somebody pinching an office-worker’s bum; we’re talking about a Head of Government lying to the world about the massacre of possibly hundreds of talented and well-intentioned young people who were unarmed & peacefully stating their opposition to the return, IN ORANGE ROBES, of a brutal dictator, who had 3 years previously been responsible for the murder of 77 (official figure); diminishing the massacre of 78 Muslims who were suffocated by being stacked up like carcasses in the back of a truck on a very hot day, by inferring that it was the victims’ fault for engaging in such a strange religious practise as Ramadan, which made them weak; and the slaughter of 38 Muslims who had taken sanctuary in a mosque.
“Political necessity”? Get a grip!
More on the 2008 Thai Studies conference
P.S. With regards to government monitoring, the ICT ministry hasn’t caught the people who hacked their website in defiance of the Cyber Crime Act, right? Even with that three day deadline set by Minister Sittichai…
Nor have they been able to identify the people who posted those YouTube videos. So why bother with minnows like me. Heck, even those on Samesky are still going at it!
Samak’s disgrace
Republican:
“…credibility with the military leadership…”; “…credentials …as an unreconstructed rightist-royalist…”; “…I don’t know whether the former student leaders-leftists-communists in PPP-TRT would necessarily “cringe” at Samak’s statements…”
My God!!! Are you kidding? Crawl out of your burrow.
And yes, Dickie-boy: RIGHT ON!
“on this issue maybe ***we*** need to separate moral outrage and political necessity”
Who is this “we”? I’M not a sociopath.
More on the 2008 Thai Studies conference
Snarls, thank you for your concern.
With regards to Phra Pinang, the fact that she did not meddle in politics or play a role (or so it seems) and actually did spend time (not as publicized while she was alive) promoting the charities and organizations that interested her is credit to her. But once again, her death was an opportunity for the royalist propaganda machine to exploit. She was a good influence on Thai society as you say, but not an exceedingly great one as the propaganda machine exaggerates it to be. But that is not her fault as it was all done post-mortem. To be clear, that is a criticism of the propaganda machine. Phra Pinang’s legacy is better celebrated in her good initiatives and her relative distance from politics.
And ditto with regards to your last paragraph. So many Thais love to blame others when it comes to why “chart mai charoen”.
Samak’s disgrace
Republican said:
“on this issue maybe we need to separate moral outrage and political necessity”
slimy…
very very slimy…
so much for idealism.
Samak’s disgrace
I have translated Ajarn’s Somsak’s statement in this post and also an op-ed from Ajarn Thongchai.
Samak’s disgrace
Reply – Somsak’s letter to Dan River.
Very good point. Why stop at Samak?
But that would means thai newspapers would have to report the whole truth.
And I think that would seriously breach the current thai journalism standard of half-truth and who-say-what.
“What’s all the fuss about?”
[…] his discussion of Handley’s The King Never Smiles at the 10th International Thai Studies Conference, Craig […]
Samak’s disgrace
I actually was inclined to think that the interview was made up, simply because it looked too much like a persiflage of Samak.
More on the 2008 Thai Studies conference
Thank you Teth. My interpretation of what you have written was in line with your comments in #52. My intention was to caution you that others who may be monitoring this site may choose to conveniently misinterpret, if you give them openings to do so.
In the current political climate, one doesn’t like to see people being unnecessarily reckless. Even in Britain & France (2 democracratic countries which you refer to), at present the security forces are inclined have their own agenda, & to be somewhat hyperactive & make erroneous assumptions based on their citizens’ use of the internet.These are 2 countries with fairly good justice systems, administered by people who in many cases have a love of law & liberty, so it is possible for some of those who are victims of unjust accusations to regain their freedom…after lengthy & expensive legal procedures. Here, things may be somewhat different.
You may be interested to look at the Reporters Without Borders site (http:www.rsf.org ). They have some interesting Media downloads.
Jonfernquest, I couldn’t agree with you more re. Phra Pinang. She was indeed a positive influence. Her encouragement & promotion of civil society organisations, for example, was a real & active contribution to the development of a more democratic society, in which everyone can actively participate. Those who choose to interpret such effort as mere PR for the Establishment are cynical & stupid. The organisations she worked with still exist, & will continue, some of them will provide models for other democracy-promoting projects, & they will be training people in skills necessary for change.
Those who think that a healthy society can come from political parties, revolutions, coups, etc. (i.e. from above), are seriously deluded. Fundamental change in society can only come from fundamental change in the behaviour & thinking of individuals and communities.
Thai election special
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