What concerns me about this whole conversation is, firstly, the grand generalisations about the conceit, arrogance, ignorance, disrespectful behaviour of ‘Westerners’. This sweeping generalisation is almost racist, branding a substantial proportion of humanity in this highly negative way based only on their racial or national (or whatever) origins. Unfortunately, I have found, after spending more than a decade living in Asia, that racist attitudes are rife in Asia. Perhaps ‘racist’ is not the best word to use, but Asian culture is rife with prejudice and bias, with feelings of superiority towards others with darker skin, towards others with differing religious views, towards others from other countries (not just western countries), towards others in different ‘castes’ and attitudes based on social ‘status’. For example I cannot remember the last time there was widespread murder and mayhem based purely on religious or racial intolerance in any ‘western’ country, yet the institutionalised hatred of hardline Buddhists against Muslims in Myanmar, the dreadful anti-Chinese riots by Indonesian Muslims, even the race riots which led to Singapore being expelled from the Malaysian Federation are all events in recent memory. The many rapes and murders in India of women of ‘low caste’, the burning alive of Christian missionaries by hardline Hindus in India and so on all indicate that there are many aspects of various Asian culture and religion that are frankly brutal and disgraceful. Even today we read of Chinese airlines sharing lists of unruly Chinese passengers and the Chinese government issuing essentially a Code of Behaviour for Chinese tourists in other countries. Some local authorities and institutions in Thailand are now restricting or refusing access to Chinese visitors.
So please … let’s draw back a bit from those borad generalisations about ‘westerners’! Such sweeping insults have no place in a reasonable conversation.
Palestinian refugees from Syria in Thailand looking to an average 7-8 years for resettlement by UNHCR to a third country. Not just Indonesia, not just Australia.
Perhaps so, but you also will not find any Asians jailed in any Western country because they showed disrespect for Jesus. In any case, the idea that Asians as a whole have a special reverence for Christian or Western symbology that is not reciprocated by Westerners is so.
Case in point, just look at how frequently we see stories about Asians using Nazi imagery (dressing up like Nazis, using Hitler as a brand name, Nazi flags, etc.), despite that being seen as extremely distasteful and disrespectful to most Westerners.
Your list of suggested “reasons” for the “Westerner” having earned himself a stay in prison– ignorance, insensitivity, arrogance, conceit– while it may fit the eternal narrative of the evil colonialist white man swaggering about amongst the spiritual and humble natives of the “East”, seems to be missing a more likely cause of his action: a simple lack of imagination.
Perhaps it is difficult for folks who are not yet “ready” to respect human rights to understand how deeply ingrained the assumptions about liberty and human dignity that are entailed therein can be in the makeup of a human personality.
The Greeks, of course, tended to punish adulterous males by shaving their rectums and inserting a radish.
Nobody’s condoning imprisonment for mockery here. The whole point is don’t go asking for it, so the point you’re missing is you can’t do it with impunity even when you feel you’re safe in the West like Rushdie did.
Holier than thou ain’t gonna cut no ice. You can preach freedom of expression blah, blah till you go blue in the face. These societies will only change when they’re ready. So feel free to carry on feeling smug and superior since the Spanish Inquisition or even McCarthyism is a thing of the past.
Education beside as a mean to a trade to survive is also the shortest route to understand basic HR to to freedom.
The more freedom a person experience the less likely to let go.
At the Nadir of Ne Win BSPP BRTD there were reported 90+% of population with reading writing ability (Ah T_own L_own ).
HR org, that help with the useless careless west actions has now make Myanmar rural citizenry to a 60% educated. Mainly due to the monastery taking over the education aspect even the reading and writing ability are not gear toward acquiring more freedom.
All the HR org must take note to provide the relevant Education so needed if they were so eager to do away with, albeit and hopefully unintended, has no more excuse to help with the most basic right of education, a true redemption.
Once the citizenry realize the taste of freedom from fear, and the individual and collective abilities to not give up this aspect of freedom that can only be realize through education, change will come rapidly.
A glass half full or half a loaf sounds fine. Hopefully it’s not half baked. Ceasefire capitalism with international characteristics may be just the ticket for a growing peace industry especially in the Burmese scenario. The MPC is certainly loving it. Besides it will work to the advantage of all those investors who can hardly wait to tap the labour market and develop the land.
Having said that people are by and large grateful for the political education in either voting or standing up for their rights, not least for the opportunities opening up just as in the major cities.
If caveat emptor applies to the elites on both sides of the divide it does more to the powerless. Beggars should still try and be choosers. After all it’s still their ancestral land.
This is not just about legislating a curb on the consumption of liquor but also about a tightening of liquor licenses issued. Kings Cross (NSW, Sydney) has not seen any new F&B/entertainment establishments approved to serve liquor in the past 2 years!
Cannabis (also known as hashish) and Heroin (derived from the opium poppy plant) are classified as Class A controlled drugs in Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act. This is the set of Statutes that govern drug trafficking activities within the borders of Singapore and even extends to Singaporeans who are outside of the country.
Hi Peter, just to clarify your comments, need your help to elaborate on statistics (eg figures, sources etc) of liquor usage (eg sale, distribution and consumption) in these two countries. Thanks!
Taking liberties with your own religious icons is one thing, extending it across the boundaries like ‘free trade’ is quite another.
Self mockery may be an admirable thing, mocking or disrespecting others cannot be without consequences in certain aspects. At least this man, or even Salman Rushdie for that matter, are individuals reaping what they themselves sowed. It’s unfair when ordinary members of the public have to pay the price and bear the brunt of indiscriminate retaliation for their leaders’ folly.
I think it is a failure of imagination on the part of these “Westerners” more than anything else.
Coming as they do from societies where religious images as well as those of political leaders and other celebrities are used for scatological art and satirical humor on a regular basis, they fail to manage to believe that people who appear to be otherwise sane and decent would actually be prepared to imprison someone for playing around with such things.
Not everyone is open-minded enough to realize that this sort of fascistic urge to control thought and expression is actually quite common and that people who support it don’t have horns, crimson skin or sulfurous flatulence.
Temasek was forced by the corrupt Thai court to sell its Shin Corp shares. That meant a rock-bottom price, because there were so many of them, and because many investors were scared off by the way Temasek was screwed. The shares were soon picked up by the Crown Property Bureau, also at a rock-bottom price. The whole deal was one the Mafia would have been proud of. The Thai effort to smear Temasek was bound to backfire, given the relative positions of Thailand and Singapore on the world corruption scale.
Thailand’s sovereign risk went up as a result of that scandal, and has stayed up because the people who screwed Temasek have consolidated their power. The high sovereign risk attached to investment in Thailand has contributed strongly to the economic hardship the Thai people are now enduring. That will continue until the Thai national patronage system is replaced by the rule of law.
More Malays drink liquor in Singapore than Chinese in Malaysia, proportionally. Laws were either meant to police society or to be circumvented. Prohibition never worked in the United States and likely won’t in Singapore, regarding any illicit substance, as in Confucian tradition, almost anything can be deemed illicit. Note that in all dynasties, heavy use of Opium and Hashish by regents, Emperors and Empresses was ubiquitous.
This kind of irony could be fatal to the overly sensitive, Jim.
I agree that it is time to move beyond the nonsense because, while already-existing liberal democracies can stand up to the gales and tornadoes of nonsense that contemporary politics provides in much of the world, yet-to-be democratic polities like Thailand need a calm period of relative realism to make the transition.
So, for example, the pretense that coups are undertaken for the sake of democracy needs to be laughed out of the public arena just as loudly and vigorously as the pretense that Thaksinite administrations represent a step in right direction.
As long as you have nothing other than two parties of dedicated liars on either side in Thailand’s political conflict, those who genuinely want to see a democracy here are left without representation.
This article must become a ‘Sticky” for future reminder.
Thanks to Mr G Cathcast, more freedom for all, can be advanced without waiting for a perfect time, with a perfect set of solutions, an improbable future.
Most NGOs has become the surrogates for useless careless interventions of the west. Instead of advancing the 3 legged stool that most Myanmar citizenry use, insinuating into politics to advance their own means instead of serving the citizenry.
The 3 legged stool which Myanmar citizenry will need are:
1) Education
2) Health care
3) Economic development.
Mr G Cathcart clearly see that these can be advanced within the already agreed upon principles of NCA.
There are numerous religious and none religious based as groups that has been performing the 3 needed aspects with out much ado. Knowing that the road to ultimate freedom from fear entail the 3 aspects. These group of contributors are limited only by the funding.
NLD victory in the electoral process promise the proper political process as witness by recent DASSK efforts to keep friends and enemy close and closer.
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Southeast Asian snapshots
A radish! Ouch!!!!
Southeast Asian snapshots
What concerns me about this whole conversation is, firstly, the grand generalisations about the conceit, arrogance, ignorance, disrespectful behaviour of ‘Westerners’. This sweeping generalisation is almost racist, branding a substantial proportion of humanity in this highly negative way based only on their racial or national (or whatever) origins. Unfortunately, I have found, after spending more than a decade living in Asia, that racist attitudes are rife in Asia. Perhaps ‘racist’ is not the best word to use, but Asian culture is rife with prejudice and bias, with feelings of superiority towards others with darker skin, towards others with differing religious views, towards others from other countries (not just western countries), towards others in different ‘castes’ and attitudes based on social ‘status’. For example I cannot remember the last time there was widespread murder and mayhem based purely on religious or racial intolerance in any ‘western’ country, yet the institutionalised hatred of hardline Buddhists against Muslims in Myanmar, the dreadful anti-Chinese riots by Indonesian Muslims, even the race riots which led to Singapore being expelled from the Malaysian Federation are all events in recent memory. The many rapes and murders in India of women of ‘low caste’, the burning alive of Christian missionaries by hardline Hindus in India and so on all indicate that there are many aspects of various Asian culture and religion that are frankly brutal and disgraceful. Even today we read of Chinese airlines sharing lists of unruly Chinese passengers and the Chinese government issuing essentially a Code of Behaviour for Chinese tourists in other countries. Some local authorities and institutions in Thailand are now restricting or refusing access to Chinese visitors.
So please … let’s draw back a bit from those borad generalisations about ‘westerners’! Such sweeping insults have no place in a reasonable conversation.
Stuck fast; review of Troubled transit
Palestinian refugees from Syria in Thailand looking to an average 7-8 years for resettlement by UNHCR to a third country. Not just Indonesia, not just Australia.
Southeast Asian snapshots
Perhaps so, but you also will not find any Asians jailed in any Western country because they showed disrespect for Jesus. In any case, the idea that Asians as a whole have a special reverence for Christian or Western symbology that is not reciprocated by Westerners is so.
Case in point, just look at how frequently we see stories about Asians using Nazi imagery (dressing up like Nazis, using Hitler as a brand name, Nazi flags, etc.), despite that being seen as extremely distasteful and disrespectful to most Westerners.
Stuck fast; review of Troubled transit
The Authors very clear agenda shines through beautifully.
I hope someone playing the devils advocate, has the command of English to offer a counter argument.
I wish I did.
The NLD’s iron-fisted gerontocracy
An excellent summary of all the bad points..
Now for some positive points
Southeast Asian snapshots
Your list of suggested “reasons” for the “Westerner” having earned himself a stay in prison– ignorance, insensitivity, arrogance, conceit– while it may fit the eternal narrative of the evil colonialist white man swaggering about amongst the spiritual and humble natives of the “East”, seems to be missing a more likely cause of his action: a simple lack of imagination.
Perhaps it is difficult for folks who are not yet “ready” to respect human rights to understand how deeply ingrained the assumptions about liberty and human dignity that are entailed therein can be in the makeup of a human personality.
The Greeks, of course, tended to punish adulterous males by shaving their rectums and inserting a radish.
So there is that.
Southeast Asian snapshots
Nobody’s condoning imprisonment for mockery here. The whole point is don’t go asking for it, so the point you’re missing is you can’t do it with impunity even when you feel you’re safe in the West like Rushdie did.
Holier than thou ain’t gonna cut no ice. You can preach freedom of expression blah, blah till you go blue in the face. These societies will only change when they’re ready. So feel free to carry on feeling smug and superior since the Spanish Inquisition or even McCarthyism is a thing of the past.
Myanmar’s future can be built in the interim
Education beside as a mean to a trade to survive is also the shortest route to understand basic HR to to freedom.
The more freedom a person experience the less likely to let go.
At the Nadir of Ne Win BSPP BRTD there were reported 90+% of population with reading writing ability (Ah T_own L_own ).
HR org, that help with the useless careless west actions has now make Myanmar rural citizenry to a 60% educated. Mainly due to the monastery taking over the education aspect even the reading and writing ability are not gear toward acquiring more freedom.
All the HR org must take note to provide the relevant Education so needed if they were so eager to do away with, albeit and hopefully unintended, has no more excuse to help with the most basic right of education, a true redemption.
Once the citizenry realize the taste of freedom from fear, and the individual and collective abilities to not give up this aspect of freedom that can only be realize through education, change will come rapidly.
Myanmar’s future can be built in the interim
A glass half full or half a loaf sounds fine. Hopefully it’s not half baked. Ceasefire capitalism with international characteristics may be just the ticket for a growing peace industry especially in the Burmese scenario. The MPC is certainly loving it. Besides it will work to the advantage of all those investors who can hardly wait to tap the labour market and develop the land.
Having said that people are by and large grateful for the political education in either voting or standing up for their rights, not least for the opportunities opening up just as in the major cities.
If caveat emptor applies to the elites on both sides of the divide it does more to the powerless. Beggars should still try and be choosers. After all it’s still their ancestral land.
Southeast Asian snapshots
“Taking liberties with your own religious icons is one thing, extending it across the boundaries like ‘free trade’ is quite another.”
Yes, indeed. And then there is imprisonment for “mockery”.
You seem to have missed the point altogether.
Living in sin in Singapore?
This is not just about legislating a curb on the consumption of liquor but also about a tightening of liquor licenses issued. Kings Cross (NSW, Sydney) has not seen any new F&B/entertainment establishments approved to serve liquor in the past 2 years!
Living in sin in Singapore?
Cannabis (also known as hashish) and Heroin (derived from the opium poppy plant) are classified as Class A controlled drugs in Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act. This is the set of Statutes that govern drug trafficking activities within the borders of Singapore and even extends to Singaporeans who are outside of the country.
Living in sin in Singapore?
Hi Peter, just to clarify your comments, need your help to elaborate on statistics (eg figures, sources etc) of liquor usage (eg sale, distribution and consumption) in these two countries. Thanks!
Southeast Asian snapshots
Taking liberties with your own religious icons is one thing, extending it across the boundaries like ‘free trade’ is quite another.
Self mockery may be an admirable thing, mocking or disrespecting others cannot be without consequences in certain aspects. At least this man, or even Salman Rushdie for that matter, are individuals reaping what they themselves sowed. It’s unfair when ordinary members of the public have to pay the price and bear the brunt of indiscriminate retaliation for their leaders’ folly.
Southeast Asian snapshots
I think it is a failure of imagination on the part of these “Westerners” more than anything else.
Coming as they do from societies where religious images as well as those of political leaders and other celebrities are used for scatological art and satirical humor on a regular basis, they fail to manage to believe that people who appear to be otherwise sane and decent would actually be prepared to imprison someone for playing around with such things.
Not everyone is open-minded enough to realize that this sort of fascistic urge to control thought and expression is actually quite common and that people who support it don’t have horns, crimson skin or sulfurous flatulence.
Go figure, eh?
The trouble with Thailand’s new democracy
I’ll explain in more detail.
Temasek was forced by the corrupt Thai court to sell its Shin Corp shares. That meant a rock-bottom price, because there were so many of them, and because many investors were scared off by the way Temasek was screwed. The shares were soon picked up by the Crown Property Bureau, also at a rock-bottom price. The whole deal was one the Mafia would have been proud of. The Thai effort to smear Temasek was bound to backfire, given the relative positions of Thailand and Singapore on the world corruption scale.
Thailand’s sovereign risk went up as a result of that scandal, and has stayed up because the people who screwed Temasek have consolidated their power. The high sovereign risk attached to investment in Thailand has contributed strongly to the economic hardship the Thai people are now enduring. That will continue until the Thai national patronage system is replaced by the rule of law.
Living in sin in Singapore?
More Malays drink liquor in Singapore than Chinese in Malaysia, proportionally. Laws were either meant to police society or to be circumvented. Prohibition never worked in the United States and likely won’t in Singapore, regarding any illicit substance, as in Confucian tradition, almost anything can be deemed illicit. Note that in all dynasties, heavy use of Opium and Hashish by regents, Emperors and Empresses was ubiquitous.
The trouble with Thailand’s new democracy
“Time to move to facts, to truth.”
This kind of irony could be fatal to the overly sensitive, Jim.
I agree that it is time to move beyond the nonsense because, while already-existing liberal democracies can stand up to the gales and tornadoes of nonsense that contemporary politics provides in much of the world, yet-to-be democratic polities like Thailand need a calm period of relative realism to make the transition.
So, for example, the pretense that coups are undertaken for the sake of democracy needs to be laughed out of the public arena just as loudly and vigorously as the pretense that Thaksinite administrations represent a step in right direction.
As long as you have nothing other than two parties of dedicated liars on either side in Thailand’s political conflict, those who genuinely want to see a democracy here are left without representation.
Myanmar’s future can be built in the interim
This article must become a ‘Sticky” for future reminder.
Thanks to Mr G Cathcast, more freedom for all, can be advanced without waiting for a perfect time, with a perfect set of solutions, an improbable future.
Most NGOs has become the surrogates for useless careless interventions of the west. Instead of advancing the 3 legged stool that most Myanmar citizenry use, insinuating into politics to advance their own means instead of serving the citizenry.
The 3 legged stool which Myanmar citizenry will need are:
1) Education
2) Health care
3) Economic development.
Mr G Cathcart clearly see that these can be advanced within the already agreed upon principles of NCA.
There are numerous religious and none religious based as groups that has been performing the 3 needed aspects with out much ado. Knowing that the road to ultimate freedom from fear entail the 3 aspects. These group of contributors are limited only by the funding.
NLD victory in the electoral process promise the proper political process as witness by recent DASSK efforts to keep friends and enemy close and closer.