Restorationist said: “Your comment on the title suggests that you haven’t been around Thailand for long. I thought the title was a bit old-fashioned when it came out, harking back to a story that after his brother’s death, the king didn’t smile. Not sure if that is why Handley chose it. But, as they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
Your comment above suggests you may not have even read the book.
IMHO, why the king doesn’t smile is part of one of the main themes of the book.
I agree with the previous post. Imagine a French guy living ion Texas who would have named his dog ┬лGeorge Bush┬╗ at the beginning of the Irak war! What would have happened to him?
But you have to look at the larger picture. Lao people are slowly but surely getting fed up with this kind of ┬лwise guy┬╗ behaviour. This way of acting in a superior or ┬лI know best┬╗ way is not only deeply ennoying, but also offensive! Andrew, did the colleagues you mention really laugh WITH you, or did they laugh out of embarassment, because – out of their natural politeness to foreigners and limited command of English – they did not know how to react otherwise?
In Thailand, the reaction to behaviour like yours has become known as farang fatigue!
Good old Col Jeru can always be baited. I actually through in that line about the disinterested kids for Jeru. But I think it is true and it is good that Jeru agrees. The Thaksin kids were by no means as voracious as the Suharto kids, and they showed little interest or knowledge of the old man’s businesses. At last, Jeru, we agree.
I wonder if anyone will ever be able to check how much money the rapacious royals in Thailand get out of the governments (including Thaksin’s)? All those trips to Europe and China, all those palaces, the jewelery and cars, the land, shares, etc. Not to mention the cost of security, closing roads, building roads, etc. etc.
Alan: Like other critics of the Handley book, you are not specific. What are the errors? By this post, you show that you accept the propaganda on the king. That Handley doesn’t is troubling for you, but try to be specific. What, exactly, is wrong with the book? Most of the generalisations you make are the same as those that have been put around since the book emerged (and even before it was published). What are the assumptions that bother you? make a point that can be checked and assessed.
Your comment on the title suggests that you haven’t been around Thailand for long. I thought the title was a bit old-fashioned when it came out, harking back to a story that after his brother’s death, the king didn’t smile. Not sure if that is why Handley chose it. But, as they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover.
Hundreds of king’s speeches available? Not sure I agree on this. It is a bit hard to find them at times (especially prior to the internet) and in the past the press didn’t always publish them in full. Many of his speeches in the 1970s were really short. Those in recent years have been long, tedious and confused. Most of the royalist propaganda does that, so I’m not sure why a biography should do the same?
Your comment on the king saying he could be criticised is one that makes little sense. When has he been directly criticised since 2005? And being criticised is not the same has some drunk defacing a poster.
P.S.: I have read a few chapters of the book, and think that it opens an important perspective on the Thai monarchy. However, I was also at times annoyed by the gossip. Finally, I did not continue reading simply because increasingly I found the writing style boring.
“In his birthday address of 2005, the King stated quite clearly that he can be criticized and that those who say he can’t be criticized are insulting him because they are saying that he is not human. One shouldn’t confuse the way Thai governments abuses lese majeste laws with how the King feels.”
1) That statement re criticism seemed to be clearly designed as a criticism of Thaksin’s attitudes and actions, and thus politically instrumental.
2) So, should we believe that over all these decades, the king has merely been a prisoner of the governments and the bureaucrats? Would it not have been easy for him to create an atmosphere of public openness of the monarchy, if he had desired so? Or is the king powerless vis-a-vis the above-mentioned groups? Could he act to lift the ban on Handley’s book in Thailand and make it freely available in the bookshops here? But note what Prem had said about the book in the FEER interview: “I don’t like it. The nation doesn’t like it. It’s a hearsay book and is not based on the fact. We are worried [about] the foreigners who read it. My suggestion is–please ignore that book. It’s useless.”
Boycotting the Olympics would only increase polarity in the international arena. Surely more international polarity is not good for Burma in the long term because it does not provide a united front for confrontation of the Junta and instead plays into their pocket because we present them with lots of options to be manipulated.
Burma’s drug racketeering and ‘spreading HIV’ is not a sufficient international threat to have a UNSC resolution. How is it a threat when it seems that a good proportion of Westerners are happy to continue buying their drugs? Maybe the threat is social disintegration in the West… because clearly we must have our self-indulgent hallucinations of love or power.
Now everyones second sentence includes Burma/Myanmar. One might say this is not a bad thing, but it now simply becomes another issue for everybody pretending to be an international relations theorist to poke at rather than to simply observe the beauty of what might take place. Nobody can ever let anything be it seems, and this includes the national self determination of Burma. Just because self determination is used by the Junta to re-enforce their stranglehold on power does not make it an issue of irrelevance post-Junta. Especially with neo-colonial perceptions that have been imposed on so many people. Imagine if everyone in Cabramatta were told that Toohey’s was not really that important.
China’s foreign policy is non-interference to ensure stability. The demonisation of China by so many people is sickening. AS LIBERALS WE SHOULD NOT JUDGE THE ACTION OF A FEW TO BE REPRESENTATION OF ACTION FROM A WHOLE NATION. Yet with the language being used we are doing it. Why? Because we do not understand. We do not understand we are not really liberals and we don’t even see that we jump when mass media inadvertently tells us too. Furthermore, because the CCP is to the outside, enigmatic and semi-autocratic does not mean that people in China are devoid of free will. It is the same here in the West.
Why can’t we start referring to Chinese corrupt officials themselves as we do in the West? I won’t criticize every American for fire bombing Cambodia, I will criticize Kissinger. We can afford this respect to our ‘own’ liberal kind, but not Chinese? Why? Because ‘they’ don’t afford it to us? Oh.
If you really want to understand rather than have a whole nation to define your goodness and ‘freedom’ against, please take Mandarin 101.
Contrast Bush “calling on all civilised nations” with the latest business (as usual) news:
“Chevron’s interest in the Yadana project is “a long-term commitment that helps meet the critical energy needs of millions in people in the region,” said Nicole Hodgson, corporate media adviser for Asia.”
Or:
“The Chinese prefer to separate business and politics,” said Kuen-Wook Paik, an energy analyst at Chatham House, a think tank in London. “They want to take a neutral stance. They don’t want to risk the relationship with the Myanmar authorities.”
[Express the appropriate emotional response at the appropriate time and then, after a decent interval, turn around and be a hypocrit.]
Boycott of Olympics in China would be nice way to back words up with action.
I’m really interested in seeing how ***honest and serious the EU and the US expressions of outrage actually are***. Not very serious in the past. Momentary outrage and then forget about the place and allow its population to simmer in economic sanctions.
Healthcare, for instance, is one area where the place is ante-diluvian. Whatever happens, let’s pray it happens quick, because after a certain interval people will just zone out, and we’ll be back to another 20 years of mindnumbing platitudes while the country falls further and further behind and the lives of people get worse and worse and worse.
Obvioulsy, the motivations of Burmese soldiers are complex, but one story I heard from a Canadian in one of the Karenni refugee camps might provide some explanation for their behavior. The Canadian was talking to four Burmese Army deserters that had deserted about a month previous. As he said, they were extremely nice guys, but in the course of their conversation, they started telling him all the atrocities they had committed. He was shocked, and asked them why they had done what they had done. They told him that originally there had been five of them, and being poor and without any job prospects, they had joined the army. The training was so brutal, one of them had deserted. He was caught, and his punishment was that he was beaten to death- by his friends. They had to do it, or they would be killed themselves. After that, they said they didn’t care what they did.
If true that could be good news.
We all know the leaders of the junta are bad, but I have always wondered why soldiers seem to follow orders that are clearly wrong.
I know there are some conscientious objectors, but are military recruiting & training processes so good that they are able to weed out freethinkers, so that they are mainly left with ‘professional soldiers’ who will serve blindly?
(or possibly freethinkers just steer clear of the military in the first place – might be something to do with all that discipline & being trained to kill)
BTW, that question applies to other armies, not just the Burmese (or Thai).
I think I must have received the same email as you with these reports. Unfortunately it looks like all the most recent media references to this issue is referencing this same, single, message. I hope that we’re able to get more reports one way or the other soon.
“We are going to prosper, you are going to prosper. But if I ALLOW YOU TO RUN MY COUNTRY IT WILL SPIRAL DOWNWARDS AND WILL HIT ROCK BOTTOM”” ? Didn’t you know the media spun this to make it look like he was speaking to the ‘whole of Australia’ when he was just talking to the hostile crowd?
—
You ‘forgot’ to quote the first part of the statement Luther. “I’m quite accustomed to a hostile group… it’s not going to change me and I’m not going to change you – ” Even without knowing who the other party is he’s addressing, through a logical process of ensuring credibility of a statement, you can see he’s clearly speaking to the ‘hostile group,’ not the Australian people collectively. Go do your research. I don’t think a foreign politician would accept an award and insult the country that confers it upon him. No wonder so many ‘graduates’ are coming out of school with paper not worth the crap its wiped with.
What is credibility of your source guys? A joke excuse of an Australian newspaper? Read the entire quote in context and prove you’re not an ignorant gossip monger. Don’t be a media slave. What is the point of liberty if you don’t know how to think for yourself?
Like others I have problems with a biography filled with assumptions based on gossip. And I have problems with the way Handley tries to rationalize his use of it–whether the monarchy benefits from gossip itself is no justification for a serious biographer to wander into that territory.
On reading the book I could clearly see that it was written by a “Bangkok foreigner” and not someone who spent much time living and mingling among rural folk. I found Handley perspectives on Thailand and the Thai people (their psychology and sociology) very narrow, which in turn led to very dubious generalizations. Just the title of the book itself I found absurd.
There are hundreds of billboards around Isaan with the King smiling. Is it a wide toothed grin? No, of course not. Show me a reigning monarch who runs around flashing one. But there is a gentle smile there; and it’s one I have seen countless times when the King has given is annual royal birthday address and in many photos. When compared to Queen Elizabeth of England, I would say it’s the Queen who comes of much more dour. When the simple title of the book can be so far from reality, it does little to build confidence in the rest of Handley’s analysis.
Lastly, when it comes to the King cultivating a god-like image or not allowing criticism, I think with regards to this issue we should let the King do the talking. Something which Handley rarely, if ever, does in his book–even though there were hundreds of royal addresses at his disposal. In his birthday address of 2005, the King stated quite clearly that he can be criticized and that those who say he can’t be criticized are insulting him because they are saying that he is not human. One shouldn’t confuse the way Thai governments abuses lese majeste laws with how the King feels. He constantly frees foreigners who are arrested on these charges, as was just shown again when he recently freed a man jailed for spaypainting over a billboard with his image.
The proposed constitution for the kingdom of Bhutan is a beacon of light to all the world and a torch of enlightenment to humanity regarding our ultimate potential and responsibility as humans. Bravo!
James, that is certainly a possibility. On the other hand, it might really reflect real differences between the two – also referring to the recent army c-in-c succession saga. I suspect that each actually preferred a different candidate between GenAnupong and GenSaprang. These differences may be subtle (reflecting their roles as a temping PM and a coup-maker, trying to dismount the tiger) – but could be quite critical…
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Paul Handley replies to comments
Restorationist said: “Your comment on the title suggests that you haven’t been around Thailand for long. I thought the title was a bit old-fashioned when it came out, harking back to a story that after his brother’s death, the king didn’t smile. Not sure if that is why Handley chose it. But, as they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
Your comment above suggests you may not have even read the book.
IMHO, why the king doesn’t smile is part of one of the main themes of the book.
Strange but true in Laos
I agree with the previous post. Imagine a French guy living ion Texas who would have named his dog ┬лGeorge Bush┬╗ at the beginning of the Irak war! What would have happened to him?
But you have to look at the larger picture. Lao people are slowly but surely getting fed up with this kind of ┬лwise guy┬╗ behaviour. This way of acting in a superior or ┬лI know best┬╗ way is not only deeply ennoying, but also offensive! Andrew, did the colleagues you mention really laugh WITH you, or did they laugh out of embarassment, because – out of their natural politeness to foreigners and limited command of English – they did not know how to react otherwise?
In Thailand, the reaction to behaviour like yours has become known as farang fatigue!
Japanese reaction to journalist’s death
[…] ┘Е╪з┘Ж╪п┘Д╪з ┘Е█М ┌п┘И█М╪п ┌й┘З ┌Ш╪з┘╛┘Ж ╪з╪▓ ┘Е┘З┘Е╪к╪▒█М┘Ж ╪│╪▒┘Е╪з█М┘З ┌п╪░╪з╪▒╪з┘Ж ╪п╪▒ ┘Е█М╪з┘Ж┘Е╪з╪▒ ╪з╪│╪к ┘И […]
Paul Handley replies to comments
Good old Col Jeru can always be baited. I actually through in that line about the disinterested kids for Jeru. But I think it is true and it is good that Jeru agrees. The Thaksin kids were by no means as voracious as the Suharto kids, and they showed little interest or knowledge of the old man’s businesses. At last, Jeru, we agree.
I wonder if anyone will ever be able to check how much money the rapacious royals in Thailand get out of the governments (including Thaksin’s)? All those trips to Europe and China, all those palaces, the jewelery and cars, the land, shares, etc. Not to mention the cost of security, closing roads, building roads, etc. etc.
Paul Handley replies to comments
Alan: Like other critics of the Handley book, you are not specific. What are the errors? By this post, you show that you accept the propaganda on the king. That Handley doesn’t is troubling for you, but try to be specific. What, exactly, is wrong with the book? Most of the generalisations you make are the same as those that have been put around since the book emerged (and even before it was published). What are the assumptions that bother you? make a point that can be checked and assessed.
Your comment on the title suggests that you haven’t been around Thailand for long. I thought the title was a bit old-fashioned when it came out, harking back to a story that after his brother’s death, the king didn’t smile. Not sure if that is why Handley chose it. But, as they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover.
Hundreds of king’s speeches available? Not sure I agree on this. It is a bit hard to find them at times (especially prior to the internet) and in the past the press didn’t always publish them in full. Many of his speeches in the 1970s were really short. Those in recent years have been long, tedious and confused. Most of the royalist propaganda does that, so I’m not sure why a biography should do the same?
Your comment on the king saying he could be criticised is one that makes little sense. When has he been directly criticised since 2005? And being criticised is not the same has some drunk defacing a poster.
Paul Handley replies to comments
P.S.: I have read a few chapters of the book, and think that it opens an important perspective on the Thai monarchy. However, I was also at times annoyed by the gossip. Finally, I did not continue reading simply because increasingly I found the writing style boring.
Japanese reaction to journalist’s death
[…] Mandala has summary of reactions from Japan on the Japanese Video journalists killing by Myanmar troops. Share […]
Paul Handley replies to comments
“In his birthday address of 2005, the King stated quite clearly that he can be criticized and that those who say he can’t be criticized are insulting him because they are saying that he is not human. One shouldn’t confuse the way Thai governments abuses lese majeste laws with how the King feels.”
1) That statement re criticism seemed to be clearly designed as a criticism of Thaksin’s attitudes and actions, and thus politically instrumental.
2) So, should we believe that over all these decades, the king has merely been a prisoner of the governments and the bureaucrats? Would it not have been easy for him to create an atmosphere of public openness of the monarchy, if he had desired so? Or is the king powerless vis-a-vis the above-mentioned groups? Could he act to lift the ban on Handley’s book in Thailand and make it freely available in the bookshops here? But note what Prem had said about the book in the FEER interview: “I don’t like it. The nation doesn’t like it. It’s a hearsay book and is not based on the fact. We are worried [about] the foreigners who read it. My suggestion is–please ignore that book. It’s useless.”
Unconfirmed report from Burma
Boycotting the Olympics would only increase polarity in the international arena. Surely more international polarity is not good for Burma in the long term because it does not provide a united front for confrontation of the Junta and instead plays into their pocket because we present them with lots of options to be manipulated.
Burma’s drug racketeering and ‘spreading HIV’ is not a sufficient international threat to have a UNSC resolution. How is it a threat when it seems that a good proportion of Westerners are happy to continue buying their drugs? Maybe the threat is social disintegration in the West… because clearly we must have our self-indulgent hallucinations of love or power.
Now everyones second sentence includes Burma/Myanmar. One might say this is not a bad thing, but it now simply becomes another issue for everybody pretending to be an international relations theorist to poke at rather than to simply observe the beauty of what might take place. Nobody can ever let anything be it seems, and this includes the national self determination of Burma. Just because self determination is used by the Junta to re-enforce their stranglehold on power does not make it an issue of irrelevance post-Junta. Especially with neo-colonial perceptions that have been imposed on so many people. Imagine if everyone in Cabramatta were told that Toohey’s was not really that important.
China’s foreign policy is non-interference to ensure stability. The demonisation of China by so many people is sickening. AS LIBERALS WE SHOULD NOT JUDGE THE ACTION OF A FEW TO BE REPRESENTATION OF ACTION FROM A WHOLE NATION. Yet with the language being used we are doing it. Why? Because we do not understand. We do not understand we are not really liberals and we don’t even see that we jump when mass media inadvertently tells us too. Furthermore, because the CCP is to the outside, enigmatic and semi-autocratic does not mean that people in China are devoid of free will. It is the same here in the West.
Why can’t we start referring to Chinese corrupt officials themselves as we do in the West? I won’t criticize every American for fire bombing Cambodia, I will criticize Kissinger. We can afford this respect to our ‘own’ liberal kind, but not Chinese? Why? Because ‘they’ don’t afford it to us? Oh.
If you really want to understand rather than have a whole nation to define your goodness and ‘freedom’ against, please take Mandarin 101.
Unconfirmed report from Burma
Contrast Bush “calling on all civilised nations” with the latest business (as usual) news:
“Chevron’s interest in the Yadana project is “a long-term commitment that helps meet the critical energy needs of millions in people in the region,” said Nicole Hodgson, corporate media adviser for Asia.”
Or:
“The Chinese prefer to separate business and politics,” said Kuen-Wook Paik, an energy analyst at Chatham House, a think tank in London. “They want to take a neutral stance. They don’t want to risk the relationship with the Myanmar authorities.”
[Express the appropriate emotional response at the appropriate time and then, after a decent interval, turn around and be a hypocrit.]
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/apwire/D8RV1BE03.htm
Unconfirmed report from Burma
Boycott of Olympics in China would be nice way to back words up with action.
I’m really interested in seeing how ***honest and serious the EU and the US expressions of outrage actually are***. Not very serious in the past. Momentary outrage and then forget about the place and allow its population to simmer in economic sanctions.
Healthcare, for instance, is one area where the place is ante-diluvian. Whatever happens, let’s pray it happens quick, because after a certain interval people will just zone out, and we’ll be back to another 20 years of mindnumbing platitudes while the country falls further and further behind and the lives of people get worse and worse and worse.
Unconfirmed report from Burma
Obvioulsy, the motivations of Burmese soldiers are complex, but one story I heard from a Canadian in one of the Karenni refugee camps might provide some explanation for their behavior. The Canadian was talking to four Burmese Army deserters that had deserted about a month previous. As he said, they were extremely nice guys, but in the course of their conversation, they started telling him all the atrocities they had committed. He was shocked, and asked them why they had done what they had done. They told him that originally there had been five of them, and being poor and without any job prospects, they had joined the army. The training was so brutal, one of them had deserted. He was caught, and his punishment was that he was beaten to death- by his friends. They had to do it, or they would be killed themselves. After that, they said they didn’t care what they did.
Unconfirmed report from Burma
If true that could be good news.
We all know the leaders of the junta are bad, but I have always wondered why soldiers seem to follow orders that are clearly wrong.
I know there are some conscientious objectors, but are military recruiting & training processes so good that they are able to weed out freethinkers, so that they are mainly left with ‘professional soldiers’ who will serve blindly?
(or possibly freethinkers just steer clear of the military in the first place – might be something to do with all that discipline & being trained to kill)
BTW, that question applies to other armies, not just the Burmese (or Thai).
Unconfirmed report from Burma
I think I must have received the same email as you with these reports. Unfortunately it looks like all the most recent media references to this issue is referencing this same, single, message. I hope that we’re able to get more reports one way or the other soon.
Burma protest in Sydney
I also would like to protest peacefully….any more?
Lee’s degree broke ANU rules
“We are going to prosper, you are going to prosper. But if I ALLOW YOU TO RUN MY COUNTRY IT WILL SPIRAL DOWNWARDS AND WILL HIT ROCK BOTTOM”” ? Didn’t you know the media spun this to make it look like he was speaking to the ‘whole of Australia’ when he was just talking to the hostile crowd?
—
You ‘forgot’ to quote the first part of the statement Luther. “I’m quite accustomed to a hostile group… it’s not going to change me and I’m not going to change you – ” Even without knowing who the other party is he’s addressing, through a logical process of ensuring credibility of a statement, you can see he’s clearly speaking to the ‘hostile group,’ not the Australian people collectively. Go do your research. I don’t think a foreign politician would accept an award and insult the country that confers it upon him. No wonder so many ‘graduates’ are coming out of school with paper not worth the crap its wiped with.
What is credibility of your source guys? A joke excuse of an Australian newspaper? Read the entire quote in context and prove you’re not an ignorant gossip monger. Don’t be a media slave. What is the point of liberty if you don’t know how to think for yourself?
Paul Handley replies to comments
Like others I have problems with a biography filled with assumptions based on gossip. And I have problems with the way Handley tries to rationalize his use of it–whether the monarchy benefits from gossip itself is no justification for a serious biographer to wander into that territory.
On reading the book I could clearly see that it was written by a “Bangkok foreigner” and not someone who spent much time living and mingling among rural folk. I found Handley perspectives on Thailand and the Thai people (their psychology and sociology) very narrow, which in turn led to very dubious generalizations. Just the title of the book itself I found absurd.
There are hundreds of billboards around Isaan with the King smiling. Is it a wide toothed grin? No, of course not. Show me a reigning monarch who runs around flashing one. But there is a gentle smile there; and it’s one I have seen countless times when the King has given is annual royal birthday address and in many photos. When compared to Queen Elizabeth of England, I would say it’s the Queen who comes of much more dour. When the simple title of the book can be so far from reality, it does little to build confidence in the rest of Handley’s analysis.
Lastly, when it comes to the King cultivating a god-like image or not allowing criticism, I think with regards to this issue we should let the King do the talking. Something which Handley rarely, if ever, does in his book–even though there were hundreds of royal addresses at his disposal. In his birthday address of 2005, the King stated quite clearly that he can be criticized and that those who say he can’t be criticized are insulting him because they are saying that he is not human. One shouldn’t confuse the way Thai governments abuses lese majeste laws with how the King feels. He constantly frees foreigners who are arrested on these charges, as was just shown again when he recently freed a man jailed for spaypainting over a billboard with his image.
Japanese reaction to journalist’s death
[…] Chen wrote an interesting post today on Japanese reaction to journalistâАЩs deathHere’s a quick […]
Constitutions, happiness and sufficiency
The proposed constitution for the kingdom of Bhutan is a beacon of light to all the world and a torch of enlightenment to humanity regarding our ultimate potential and responsibility as humans. Bravo!
Kurt Littlewood
(Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)
Thailand’s mad junta
James, that is certainly a possibility. On the other hand, it might really reflect real differences between the two – also referring to the recent army c-in-c succession saga. I suspect that each actually preferred a different candidate between GenAnupong and GenSaprang. These differences may be subtle (reflecting their roles as a temping PM and a coup-maker, trying to dismount the tiger) – but could be quite critical…