I just finished reading an article written by Taylor in 2003 about how Burma was on the right track. With the luxury of hindsight, it is easy to see Taylor got it wrong. It seems very difficult for “scholars” from a certain generation to condemn tyranny and authoritarian, possibly due to their support of leftist movements in their youth.
I agree with Taylor that the situation n Burma is more complicated than the simplistic good guys and bad guys divide the media uses, but it must be somewhat disconcerting for Taylor to having to be an apologist for one of the worst regimes currently operating in the world.
Taylor, “he ain’t going to learn what he don’t what to know.” The evidence that democracy is strongly correlated with economic growth and improvements in human rights while the opposite is true of dictatorships like seen in Burma has been well established and supported empirically in study after study. But, when the evidence contradicts leftist philosophy, Taylor like so many of his generation stick with their leftist beliefs over accepting the evidence.
I agree with all of your points Jon. I was not knowing your great works related with poor kids. It does not matter you did Ph.D. or not? Your works are worth hundred Ph.D.’s . Please accept my sincere thanks for doing great works for my fellow thousands of poor rural kids of Asia. You know Jon, even India’s one of the greatest scholar, poet, painter, philosopher – Gurudev Ravindranath Tagore also didn’t do any Ph.D. or formal education. But he was one of the foremost person together with greatest Japanese scholar – Okakura Tenshin to think about the unity of Asia without any Ph.D. degree and more than thousands Ph.D. had been completed on Gurudev Tagore. So please don’t waste your time given by the almighty God in acquiring Ph.D. but continue with your great social and academic work and one day many Ph.D. degree’s would be awarded on your academic achievements. America will not remember Prof Michael’s interpretation on the contemporary situation of Burma and soon it will be forgotten the moment democracy gets restored in Burma. But America lives in the philosophy of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Jefferson and in the great works of persons like John F. Kennedy etc.
Well, kiddos, I guess it’s time to close shop. As certified eggheads (or aspiring eggheads, or wanna-be-eggheads, as the case may be) we must avoid anything that isn’t peer-reviewed like the plague. And that includes footwear and toilet paper. I guess even when you aren’t peer reviewed, you’re still peer-reviewed (i.e. trashed by people who are comfortably tenured).
It is certainly correct to point out that under an open economy system, people are free to spend their money as they see fit–regardless of what observers may think is useless or wasteful.
However, when the money being spent comes from a financial institution (bank or village fund committee) in the form of a loan that the borrower is expected to repay, then it is not unreasonable to question whether the money is used in a way that will produce some financial benefit. I know that if I were to go to a bank seeking a loan, the bank would certainly be interested.
Unfortunately, so far as I am aware, there has been only limited work done on examining what village fund recipients purchased with their loans, never mind to what use those purchases were put. Without that information, it’s hard to draw any reliable conclusions. Nevertheless, it would be a legitimate area of inquiry.
For people who are interested in statistics and regression analysis:
Looking at the paper to which the Economist article refers (Waverman et. al., The Impact of Telecoms on Growth in Developing Countries at http://web.si.umich.edu/tprc/papers/2005/450/L%20Waverman-%20Telecoms%20Growth%20in%20Dev.%20Countries.pdf), it appears that Thailand is one of the countries upon which the conclusions are based. Unfortunately, the version above does not single out results of particular countries, so we don’t know how strongly mobile phone penetration has affected economic growth in Thailand.
In terms of predictions, I think the downfall of Thai governments fits one pattern whether they are bought down by coup or democratically – alleged corruption. Even PMThaksin who ingeniously found an almost foolproof method of staying in power while being perceived as ‘corrupt’ succumbed in the end. He may come back via the Samak-Chalerm nominees, but just the choice of these two already laid the path towards PPP’s inevitable downfall. PMThaksin has already made the same mistake of wanting absolute control and loyalty. I would say a Chaturon-Sudarat team would have been more sustainable – but PMThaksin probably realizes that they’ll respect the court rulings on corruption cases against him. It’s a safe bet that Samak-Chalerm would not.
Well it looks like I’ve got the Thongchai fan-club against me today. Allow me some replies.
Reply to Paul Handley: “… So far in your comments you have yet to offer any news or insight into current events …” You may be right. But that has never been the reason for my postings on this site. My objective, as anyone following my posts could clearly see, has been academic criticism. The big question for me is why most Thai academics, and perhaps also most non-Thai academics in Thai Studies, failed to support a democratically-elected government last year, with large numbers of them supporting either openly or in private the September 19 coup. Almost all my posts follow from this problem. Why have so many Thai academics willingly served on the junta-appointed NLC, CDA and other bodies? Why did SOAS and ANU host propaganda teams sent by the junta, and not from Thai Rak Thai? Why are so many academics, both Thai and non-Thai, helping the regime’s propaganda by their enthusiasm for sufficiency economy? Why are academics like Thongchai writing newspaper articles basing their argument on the validity of the lese majeste law when arguing that the existing lese majeste law should be abolished is not against the law? Everyone knows the immense status that academics have in Thai society. Unlike you (#137), yes, I do cast judgment on these academics’ decisions. I believe they should be judged. Why not? They are people of the world like you and me with desires and weaknesses. And on an academic website! I’m surprised that there should be such shock when I merely criticize an argument presented by an academic.
Reply to David W.: thank you for pointing out that “others fail to address the logical content of your attack.” But can you point out where in this series of posts I have used “abusive, dismissive language”?
For my part I have been called “thick”, “silly”, “chickenshit”, and Thongchai has called me or my argument: “child’s play”, “sad”, “hopeless”, “abuse”, “superficial”, “absurd”, “pseudo-reasoning”, “bashing”, “narrow-minded”, “hypocrite”, “scary”. Now I don’t mind being called names, but to be consistent will you also say that that these posters have also been using “abusive dismissive language”?
In reply to your question, I am not asking Thongchai to commit lese majeste and endanger himself and his family. But I am questioning why in public he presents arguments that in effect support the validity of the lese majeste law; ie. we should reject the amendments to the lese majeste law because it would mean that “violation of lèse majesté could not be punished”. In my opinion this is a dangerous argument to make in public. Dangerous for me too!
By all means criticize the amendment to lese majeste! I support Thongchai 100% in that. But just don’t base your argument on the legitimacy of the existing lese majeste law. What that means is that the hundreds of thousands of people who read Thongchai’s article will think, yes, we should reject this amendment because it will mean that those terrible people who criticize the monarchy can not be punished. In effect it reinforces the legitimacy of the existing law.
Reply to Historicus: I’m not quite clear what you mean, but I think I already answered this point in #133. Re. attacking newspaper articles written by academics, in my opinion these should be attacked all the more strongly because the readership is much greater than for a journal article, its political effects much more immediate, and the readership sometimes less familiar with the complexity of the issue.
Teth, let us both stop “bleating”.
I will agree to disagree here as my relativism and your notion of ‘one standard across time’ can never be reconciled. It’s comparable to debates I’ve heard between pro- and anti- capital punishment or even for and against vegetarianism (extending the notion of “murder” to animal rights). Here people often forget there are many who don’t necessary take either stance for it is not something they see as important – or they take the relativist position for they find both sides of the argument ‘logical’. This is possible as I believe in the rationality of my comments while finding yours rational. But no, you don’t have to agree with me on that! I am ok with you branding me as having ‘not very modern values’ – as I am never quite sure what it really is.
You made reference to my book in #100 in setting up your attack on Khun Thongchai. For the record, I find Thongchai’s work and his willingness to push barriers admirable, while I find your sniping at him and others for not going as far as you would like tedious and unmerited. Even as I pointed out in my book that few academics and activists had dared take public their criticisms of the monarchy, I have never cast judgement on them for their decisions. Everyone has their reasons — you included, whoever you are.
Thongchai’s article on the proposed expansion of the lese majeste law brought the attention of myself and others to it. So far in your comments you have yet to offer any news or insight into current events, to what is happening in Thailand and with the monarchy. Such information and insight might be more useful than sniping and “scoring points”.
Prof Taylor : “Some of the meetings have proved fruitful, however, as with Mary Callahan getting access to the military archives for her thesis and eventual book. I was glad to have been able to have been of assistance.”
Thanks a lot Nicholas!! I now understand that why Mary P. Callahan wrote in one of her article entitled, “On Time Warps and Warped Time: Lessons from Democratic Era” (In the book edited by Robert I. Rotberg – Burma: Prospect for a Democratic Future) that, “For Burma’s young leaders, the overriding priority in the drafting of the first constitution was not to establish democracy but to get the British out of Burma once and for all…In actuality, the leaders of Burma at independence had no interest in the promotion of liberal democracy.” (pp.51-52)
I can understand and know Prof. Robert’s connections with SPDC , but how much any academician would turn bankrupt in analyzing history for profits in the name of accessing research facilities is alarming and shocking for me? And even if you have acquired these facilities and interprets wrongly hiding the historical fact to maintain relations with military is not the job of a true and genuine academician. I don’t want to comment more on Prof. Robert, he is an old man but I sometime thinks that, is it the same Britain and West which produced persons like – C.F. Andrews popularly known as “Deenabandhu” (friend of the poor) and great scholar – Romain Rolland? How they would have reacted seeing scholar like Prof. Robert enjoying more in the company of Premier Oil officials saying, “Actually, some of the most enlightened, broadminded and intelligent people I have worked with during my career have not been academics who can often be quite blinkered ideologically, but business people.”
Why not Prof. Robert or Prof. David understands that all money and profits, which one acquires always remain here after death.
That’s even worse, Andrew W. I was out of my skull when the unflushable turd finally got flushed, which is why I feel some justification for the reckless commentary that I engaged in when I finally realised JWH had bobbed down past the S-Bend. But even in my my most drugged moments, I never would have proposed this had lessons for Thailand. G’arn! You’re a secret drinker!
Republican: I thought your enemy was the monarchy? Wouldn’t it be better to attack that enemy? On your logic in attacking a single newspaper article, you detach it from its context. That is poor form – I don’t call it “scholarship” because this is a blog and you are attacking a newspaper article. That is why, as others have explained, you ain’t getting the yes/no answers you crave.
Bob, watching, as in Human Rights Watching, takes a whole lot of effort. Really productive all that watching.
I am not lambasting peoples practical efforts to combat AIDS at all. I am attacking desensitization; 1000 people a day – I can’t imagine all these peoples lives so it just seems like a block of cheese has gone in the bin. Makes it easier to drive to uni. If I were to imagine them all I would not bother getting up. You can only have compassion for people you meet, and not because of some words from some wankers living in (or are from) Manhatten drinking latté’s and claiming all ills of (wo)man as violations of human rights. If you really believe in this human rights thing, maybe Thai drug addicts need some civil rights before all this love can be bestowed upon them. Just like the African-American civil rights movement – didn’t those American ‘citizens’ have universal human rights before they had civil rights?
Sure, HRW provides information and inspiration for cosmopolitan people to go out and do something, those cosmopolitan peoples who can travel anywhere and spread the righteous word of the human rights religion – come home and go back to lattes, sleeping in a good bed, earn valuable money, care about the football, protest to governments and find that rage you felt while that little girl who died of typhoid while her aunt gave birth in a ditch (OK a little personal) become sickeningly distant… Or these people could just turn on the news for 2 mins, be inspired, realise that their beliefs don’t mean anything till they’ve walked them and decide to go physically help an organisation with non-contradictory principals like Medecins Sans Frontiers so they can actually feel some un muted compassion.
I have debated with you before about the ethics and hypocrisy of you attacking others for not taking public stances critical of the monarchy while you write from behind an alias. I do, however, recognize why you must use an alias and respect that decision.
I do not, however, understand how you can think that Thongchai is free of such dangers, as he himself has made clear. He is still a Thai citizen, he still no doubt wishes to return to the country, and he does still have family there. He himself raised these issues, but you have failed to address them directly. So please, do so. Why and how exactly does he have less to fear than you do?
And for that matter, why does any non-Thai citizen academic, if they ever wish to return to Thailand and carry out more research? Or is the need to abolish the monarchy more important than sustaining an academic career? Because if that is the case, then why don’t you leave Thailand, publish a sustained attack on the monarchy, and resign yourself never to set foot in Thailand again? If you aren’t willing to do that (as your own previous post indicates), then why do you think others should be braver than you?
By the way, I think others fail to address the logical content of your attack on Thongchai because your abusive, dissmissive language becomes the more obvious target of response. But I’ve ‘argued’ this with you before, so I won’t do so again, either.
Please don’t attack my intelligence, integrity or logic. Just answer my questions.
I am a wholehearted supporter of employing logic in debates and always emphasize it in my teaching. However, as many grade schoolers and undergrad students probably realize, logic with false premises can carry one as far as one wants to go. In my opinion, this thread has provided such a good example.
Fortunately I don’t have AIDS. But I know people in Thailand who do. There, unlike in our comfortable west, it is still a virtual death sentence for most.
At the current rate, just under 1000 of their fellow suffers worldwide died of AIDS today.
Your attempted justification for lambasting others’ efforts against AIDS, and rationalization of your own inaction, only confirms my original assessment.
Reply to Historicus (#129): Re. your point: “… I think you are fighting the wrong fight on this one….”
So you are implying that if I’m “fighting” the military junta I can question their logic, but that it is the “wrong fight” to hold leading academics to the same standards?
I ask you again (see #110), please point out where I have got it wrong in post #100.
Reply to Polo (#131): you say I was “flaming” (Thongchai says I was “bashing” him). I’m a bit surprised because in my post #100 I thought that I was merely examining the logical basis of Thongchai’s argument in his article in The Nation against the amendment to the lese majeste law, which is based on the validity of the existing lese majeste law.
Thongchai could have argued in the same article that the existing lese majeste law should be abolished, but he didn’t. Arguing that lese majeste should be abolished is not a lese majeste offense, nor any other kind of offense. People argue all the time for laws to be changed. Even if one does not want to “make waves” by calling for the law to be abolished, is it necessary to show such public support for the existing law?
So far no-one on this blog, not even Thongchai himself, has demonstrated that my argument is wrong: either Thongchai is taking a royalist stance in arguing for the validity of the existing lese majeste law (“…The amendment bill may be in breach of lèse majesté itself…”; “…Yet they cannot be punished, even when they do harm to the monarchy…” + all the other examples that I list in my post), OR his argumentation is faulty.
(In his reply Thongchai seems to be retreating to the latter position by arguing that logic is not important – I wonder what his students think of this position).
Whatever you think of me, of my “past history”, of my lack of intelligence, etc., I ask you to consider the validity of my criticism of Thongchai’s article in post #100. Is Thongchai’s argumentation for the amendment to the lese majeste law based on the validity of the existing law? Yes or No.
If an academic publicly accepts and indeed bases his argument upon the validity of the existing lese majeste law, then it is hard to escape the accusation of royalism.
In my opinion if one wishes to get rid of the existing lese majeste law leading academics should not be arguing in national newspapers based on its validity. That is all I am saying.
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Interview with Professor Robert Taylor
I just finished reading an article written by Taylor in 2003 about how Burma was on the right track. With the luxury of hindsight, it is easy to see Taylor got it wrong. It seems very difficult for “scholars” from a certain generation to condemn tyranny and authoritarian, possibly due to their support of leftist movements in their youth.
I agree with Taylor that the situation n Burma is more complicated than the simplistic good guys and bad guys divide the media uses, but it must be somewhat disconcerting for Taylor to having to be an apologist for one of the worst regimes currently operating in the world.
Taylor, “he ain’t going to learn what he don’t what to know.” The evidence that democracy is strongly correlated with economic growth and improvements in human rights while the opposite is true of dictatorships like seen in Burma has been well established and supported empirically in study after study. But, when the evidence contradicts leftist philosophy, Taylor like so many of his generation stick with their leftist beliefs over accepting the evidence.
Interview with Professor Michael Aung-Thwin
To Jonfernquest,
I agree with all of your points Jon. I was not knowing your great works related with poor kids. It does not matter you did Ph.D. or not? Your works are worth hundred Ph.D.’s . Please accept my sincere thanks for doing great works for my fellow thousands of poor rural kids of Asia. You know Jon, even India’s one of the greatest scholar, poet, painter, philosopher – Gurudev Ravindranath Tagore also didn’t do any Ph.D. or formal education. But he was one of the foremost person together with greatest Japanese scholar – Okakura Tenshin to think about the unity of Asia without any Ph.D. degree and more than thousands Ph.D. had been completed on Gurudev Tagore. So please don’t waste your time given by the almighty God in acquiring Ph.D. but continue with your great social and academic work and one day many Ph.D. degree’s would be awarded on your academic achievements. America will not remember Prof Michael’s interpretation on the contemporary situation of Burma and soon it will be forgotten the moment democracy gets restored in Burma. But America lives in the philosophy of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Jefferson and in the great works of persons like John F. Kennedy etc.
Best wishes & regards,
Rajshekhar
Interview with Professor Michael Aung-Thwin
Well, kiddos, I guess it’s time to close shop. As certified eggheads (or aspiring eggheads, or wanna-be-eggheads, as the case may be) we must avoid anything that isn’t peer-reviewed like the plague. And that includes footwear and toilet paper. I guess even when you aren’t peer reviewed, you’re still peer-reviewed (i.e. trashed by people who are comfortably tenured).
One-2-grow
It is certainly correct to point out that under an open economy system, people are free to spend their money as they see fit–regardless of what observers may think is useless or wasteful.
However, when the money being spent comes from a financial institution (bank or village fund committee) in the form of a loan that the borrower is expected to repay, then it is not unreasonable to question whether the money is used in a way that will produce some financial benefit. I know that if I were to go to a bank seeking a loan, the bank would certainly be interested.
Unfortunately, so far as I am aware, there has been only limited work done on examining what village fund recipients purchased with their loans, never mind to what use those purchases were put. Without that information, it’s hard to draw any reliable conclusions. Nevertheless, it would be a legitimate area of inquiry.
For people who are interested in statistics and regression analysis:
Looking at the paper to which the Economist article refers (Waverman et. al., The Impact of Telecoms on Growth in Developing Countries at http://web.si.umich.edu/tprc/papers/2005/450/L%20Waverman-%20Telecoms%20Growth%20in%20Dev.%20Countries.pdf), it appears that Thailand is one of the countries upon which the conclusions are based. Unfortunately, the version above does not single out results of particular countries, so we don’t know how strongly mobile phone penetration has affected economic growth in Thailand.
Thinking like a Thai Army general
In terms of predictions, I think the downfall of Thai governments fits one pattern whether they are bought down by coup or democratically – alleged corruption. Even PMThaksin who ingeniously found an almost foolproof method of staying in power while being perceived as ‘corrupt’ succumbed in the end. He may come back via the Samak-Chalerm nominees, but just the choice of these two already laid the path towards PPP’s inevitable downfall. PMThaksin has already made the same mistake of wanting absolute control and loyalty. I would say a Chaturon-Sudarat team would have been more sustainable – but PMThaksin probably realizes that they’ll respect the court rulings on corruption cases against him. It’s a safe bet that Samak-Chalerm would not.
The King Never Smiles?
Well it looks like I’ve got the Thongchai fan-club against me today. Allow me some replies.
Reply to Paul Handley: “… So far in your comments you have yet to offer any news or insight into current events …” You may be right. But that has never been the reason for my postings on this site. My objective, as anyone following my posts could clearly see, has been academic criticism. The big question for me is why most Thai academics, and perhaps also most non-Thai academics in Thai Studies, failed to support a democratically-elected government last year, with large numbers of them supporting either openly or in private the September 19 coup. Almost all my posts follow from this problem. Why have so many Thai academics willingly served on the junta-appointed NLC, CDA and other bodies? Why did SOAS and ANU host propaganda teams sent by the junta, and not from Thai Rak Thai? Why are so many academics, both Thai and non-Thai, helping the regime’s propaganda by their enthusiasm for sufficiency economy? Why are academics like Thongchai writing newspaper articles basing their argument on the validity of the lese majeste law when arguing that the existing lese majeste law should be abolished is not against the law? Everyone knows the immense status that academics have in Thai society. Unlike you (#137), yes, I do cast judgment on these academics’ decisions. I believe they should be judged. Why not? They are people of the world like you and me with desires and weaknesses. And on an academic website! I’m surprised that there should be such shock when I merely criticize an argument presented by an academic.
Reply to David W.: thank you for pointing out that “others fail to address the logical content of your attack.” But can you point out where in this series of posts I have used “abusive, dismissive language”?
For my part I have been called “thick”, “silly”, “chickenshit”, and Thongchai has called me or my argument: “child’s play”, “sad”, “hopeless”, “abuse”, “superficial”, “absurd”, “pseudo-reasoning”, “bashing”, “narrow-minded”, “hypocrite”, “scary”. Now I don’t mind being called names, but to be consistent will you also say that that these posters have also been using “abusive dismissive language”?
In reply to your question, I am not asking Thongchai to commit lese majeste and endanger himself and his family. But I am questioning why in public he presents arguments that in effect support the validity of the lese majeste law; ie. we should reject the amendments to the lese majeste law because it would mean that “violation of lèse majesté could not be punished”. In my opinion this is a dangerous argument to make in public. Dangerous for me too!
By all means criticize the amendment to lese majeste! I support Thongchai 100% in that. But just don’t base your argument on the legitimacy of the existing lese majeste law. What that means is that the hundreds of thousands of people who read Thongchai’s article will think, yes, we should reject this amendment because it will mean that those terrible people who criticize the monarchy can not be punished. In effect it reinforces the legitimacy of the existing law.
Reply to Historicus: I’m not quite clear what you mean, but I think I already answered this point in #133. Re. attacking newspaper articles written by academics, in my opinion these should be attacked all the more strongly because the readership is much greater than for a journal article, its political effects much more immediate, and the readership sometimes less familiar with the complexity of the issue.
The King Never Smiles?
Teth, let us both stop “bleating”.
I will agree to disagree here as my relativism and your notion of ‘one standard across time’ can never be reconciled. It’s comparable to debates I’ve heard between pro- and anti- capital punishment or even for and against vegetarianism (extending the notion of “murder” to animal rights). Here people often forget there are many who don’t necessary take either stance for it is not something they see as important – or they take the relativist position for they find both sides of the argument ‘logical’. This is possible as I believe in the rationality of my comments while finding yours rational. But no, you don’t have to agree with me on that! I am ok with you branding me as having ‘not very modern values’ – as I am never quite sure what it really is.
The King Never Smiles?
Republican,
You made reference to my book in #100 in setting up your attack on Khun Thongchai. For the record, I find Thongchai’s work and his willingness to push barriers admirable, while I find your sniping at him and others for not going as far as you would like tedious and unmerited. Even as I pointed out in my book that few academics and activists had dared take public their criticisms of the monarchy, I have never cast judgement on them for their decisions. Everyone has their reasons — you included, whoever you are.
Thongchai’s article on the proposed expansion of the lese majeste law brought the attention of myself and others to it. So far in your comments you have yet to offer any news or insight into current events, to what is happening in Thailand and with the monarchy. Such information and insight might be more useful than sniping and “scoring points”.
Interview with Professor Robert Taylor
Prof Taylor : “Some of the meetings have proved fruitful, however, as with Mary Callahan getting access to the military archives for her thesis and eventual book. I was glad to have been able to have been of assistance.”
Thanks a lot Nicholas!! I now understand that why Mary P. Callahan wrote in one of her article entitled, “On Time Warps and Warped Time: Lessons from Democratic Era” (In the book edited by Robert I. Rotberg – Burma: Prospect for a Democratic Future) that, “For Burma’s young leaders, the overriding priority in the drafting of the first constitution was not to establish democracy but to get the British out of Burma once and for all…In actuality, the leaders of Burma at independence had no interest in the promotion of liberal democracy.” (pp.51-52)
I can understand and know Prof. Robert’s connections with SPDC , but how much any academician would turn bankrupt in analyzing history for profits in the name of accessing research facilities is alarming and shocking for me? And even if you have acquired these facilities and interprets wrongly hiding the historical fact to maintain relations with military is not the job of a true and genuine academician. I don’t want to comment more on Prof. Robert, he is an old man but I sometime thinks that, is it the same Britain and West which produced persons like – C.F. Andrews popularly known as “Deenabandhu” (friend of the poor) and great scholar – Romain Rolland? How they would have reacted seeing scholar like Prof. Robert enjoying more in the company of Premier Oil officials saying, “Actually, some of the most enlightened, broadminded and intelligent people I have worked with during my career have not been academics who can often be quite blinkered ideologically, but business people.”
Why not Prof. Robert or Prof. David understands that all money and profits, which one acquires always remain here after death.
Rajshekhar
Editor, Burma Review
http://www.burmareview.com
How to get rid of a government
That’s even worse, Andrew W. I was out of my skull when the unflushable turd finally got flushed, which is why I feel some justification for the reckless commentary that I engaged in when I finally realised JWH had bobbed down past the S-Bend. But even in my my most drugged moments, I never would have proposed this had lessons for Thailand. G’arn! You’re a secret drinker!
The King Never Smiles?
Republican: I thought your enemy was the monarchy? Wouldn’t it be better to attack that enemy? On your logic in attacking a single newspaper article, you detach it from its context. That is poor form – I don’t call it “scholarship” because this is a blog and you are attacking a newspaper article. That is why, as others have explained, you ain’t getting the yes/no answers you crave.
Thailand’s “deadly denial”
Bob, watching, as in Human Rights Watching, takes a whole lot of effort. Really productive all that watching.
I am not lambasting peoples practical efforts to combat AIDS at all. I am attacking desensitization; 1000 people a day – I can’t imagine all these peoples lives so it just seems like a block of cheese has gone in the bin. Makes it easier to drive to uni. If I were to imagine them all I would not bother getting up. You can only have compassion for people you meet, and not because of some words from some wankers living in (or are from) Manhatten drinking latté’s and claiming all ills of (wo)man as violations of human rights. If you really believe in this human rights thing, maybe Thai drug addicts need some civil rights before all this love can be bestowed upon them. Just like the African-American civil rights movement – didn’t those American ‘citizens’ have universal human rights before they had civil rights?
Sure, HRW provides information and inspiration for cosmopolitan people to go out and do something, those cosmopolitan peoples who can travel anywhere and spread the righteous word of the human rights religion – come home and go back to lattes, sleeping in a good bed, earn valuable money, care about the football, protest to governments and find that rage you felt while that little girl who died of typhoid while her aunt gave birth in a ditch (OK a little personal) become sickeningly distant… Or these people could just turn on the news for 2 mins, be inspired, realise that their beliefs don’t mean anything till they’ve walked them and decide to go physically help an organisation with non-contradictory principals like Medecins Sans Frontiers so they can actually feel some un muted compassion.
The King Never Smiles?
Republican,
I have debated with you before about the ethics and hypocrisy of you attacking others for not taking public stances critical of the monarchy while you write from behind an alias. I do, however, recognize why you must use an alias and respect that decision.
I do not, however, understand how you can think that Thongchai is free of such dangers, as he himself has made clear. He is still a Thai citizen, he still no doubt wishes to return to the country, and he does still have family there. He himself raised these issues, but you have failed to address them directly. So please, do so. Why and how exactly does he have less to fear than you do?
And for that matter, why does any non-Thai citizen academic, if they ever wish to return to Thailand and carry out more research? Or is the need to abolish the monarchy more important than sustaining an academic career? Because if that is the case, then why don’t you leave Thailand, publish a sustained attack on the monarchy, and resign yourself never to set foot in Thailand again? If you aren’t willing to do that (as your own previous post indicates), then why do you think others should be braver than you?
By the way, I think others fail to address the logical content of your attack on Thongchai because your abusive, dissmissive language becomes the more obvious target of response. But I’ve ‘argued’ this with you before, so I won’t do so again, either.
Please don’t attack my intelligence, integrity or logic. Just answer my questions.
Thanks.
One-2-grow
As I expected.
The King Never Smiles?
I am a wholehearted supporter of employing logic in debates and always emphasize it in my teaching. However, as many grade schoolers and undergrad students probably realize, logic with false premises can carry one as far as one wants to go. In my opinion, this thread has provided such a good example.
Thailand’s “deadly denial”
Fortunately I don’t have AIDS. But I know people in Thailand who do. There, unlike in our comfortable west, it is still a virtual death sentence for most.
At the current rate, just under 1000 of their fellow suffers worldwide died of AIDS today.
Your attempted justification for lambasting others’ efforts against AIDS, and rationalization of your own inaction, only confirms my original assessment.
The King Never Smiles?
Reply to Historicus (#129): Re. your point: “… I think you are fighting the wrong fight on this one….”
So you are implying that if I’m “fighting” the military junta I can question their logic, but that it is the “wrong fight” to hold leading academics to the same standards?
I ask you again (see #110), please point out where I have got it wrong in post #100.
The King Never Smiles?
Reply to Polo (#131): you say I was “flaming” (Thongchai says I was “bashing” him). I’m a bit surprised because in my post #100 I thought that I was merely examining the logical basis of Thongchai’s argument in his article in The Nation against the amendment to the lese majeste law, which is based on the validity of the existing lese majeste law.
Thongchai could have argued in the same article that the existing lese majeste law should be abolished, but he didn’t. Arguing that lese majeste should be abolished is not a lese majeste offense, nor any other kind of offense. People argue all the time for laws to be changed. Even if one does not want to “make waves” by calling for the law to be abolished, is it necessary to show such public support for the existing law?
So far no-one on this blog, not even Thongchai himself, has demonstrated that my argument is wrong: either Thongchai is taking a royalist stance in arguing for the validity of the existing lese majeste law (“…The amendment bill may be in breach of lèse majesté itself…”; “…Yet they cannot be punished, even when they do harm to the monarchy…” + all the other examples that I list in my post), OR his argumentation is faulty.
(In his reply Thongchai seems to be retreating to the latter position by arguing that logic is not important – I wonder what his students think of this position).
Whatever you think of me, of my “past history”, of my lack of intelligence, etc., I ask you to consider the validity of my criticism of Thongchai’s article in post #100. Is Thongchai’s argumentation for the amendment to the lese majeste law based on the validity of the existing law? Yes or No.
If an academic publicly accepts and indeed bases his argument upon the validity of the existing lese majeste law, then it is hard to escape the accusation of royalism.
In my opinion if one wishes to get rid of the existing lese majeste law leading academics should not be arguing in national newspapers based on its validity. That is all I am saying.
Interview with Professor Michael Aung-Thwin
He sure got more than he had bargained for. This was probably his last interview on a blog.
One-2-grow
Teth . . . my cellphone has no camera nor internet features. I am that unimaginative and that dull.
My cellphone and my car in exchange for the rustic life . . . sincerely!