1. I am not aware of any studies on the impact of missionaries on the hill peoples.
While I seen very short commentaries they are usually written in articles where the journalist is trying for a “balanced – make everyone happy, no one a villain” kind of comment, some even claiming that the missionaries could be saving the culture, which of course is a joke.
The missions work hand in hand with the state policies to destroy the Akha community, to displace it and of course to displace its culture.
Removal of children is of course the most violent aspect of this. The money collected when posing these children as orphans shows that there is money out there but it is being subverted.
Once in years gone by I saw a convention on the social economy of missions, but nothing on the hill people that I know of.
I see very little direct critical writing of what missionaries are doing in their corrupt function for imperial and colonial powers and mindsets.
I seldom if ever saw any introspection on the part of missions in Thailand of themselves.
2. As to anthropological work on the tribes, I don’t think this can be attributed to missions. Certainly they had opportunity. In the case of the Akha there was quite a bit written by Paul W. Lewis but much of it is not available. However missions positioned themselves as anthropologists, but this runs directly in contradiction that CONVERTED villages are destroyed as to identity, so they destroy what they study? Basically would be the best case.
On the case of Lewis, we do in fact have copies of his rather rare ethnic notes on the Akhas of Burma, and maybe those can be passed around later. Certainly from his notes it is clear that he knew what he was destroying and I personally believe this came from racist thinking and personal character that made it ok to claim to be an anthropologist at one time while willfully destroying what one studies in the same moment. I was told by Akhas in Burma that Paul W. Lewis had many village gates burnt and of course there are the sterilizations of Akha women.
Aje and Yot continue feeding Lewis’ policy of cultural destruction in Chiangrai province.
I know of no other evidence of study of the hill people that is much published. Matisoff published Lahu dictionary, and of course the Lahu are predominantly destroyed as to culture by Paul W. Lewis and his tribe.
3. Of the 100 plus orgs in Chiangrai, most all of them are supported by Catholic, protestant or independent missions.
If there were many much more critical studies of the missions affects then it would be harder for them to do what they are doing, we can hope that the number of studies increases with linking it to the actions of the Thai government, which missions never take a stand to oppose.
There are easily over a hundred religious missions in north Thailand targeting Akha and other hilltribes, but leaning the heaviest on the Akha hill tribe.
We have recently received complaints from Ban Chavit Mai females complaining of abuse by “donors”.
Bakery located across from the Bus Station.
We campaigned successfully for Rotary International to pull support for Children of the Golden Triangle mission, they pulled that support one month ago after we confronted the leaders of Rotary at a NW Conference in the US.
Currently we are campaigning against Akha Outreach, and a couple of missionaries called Lori Crouch and Paul Vernon at http://www.loriandpaul.hopedenver.com
We have complained to the parent churches and continue that effort.
Akha Outreach is the mission that they work with in Chiangrai.
This mission is run by Aje and Nancy, an Akha and an American missionary, Aje is brother to Yot, an Akha running Dapa, known of course for his cars and 500 baht women.
Don’t be a girl in his school or hostel.
Dapa was started by Paul W. Lewis, the American Baptist missionary who stated in his thesis that an Akha woman was easier to sterilize if you made her a christian first, maybe like a labotomy, mental sterilization, extracting the soul, etc?
Most missions extract children from the villages and use them for money bait as make believe orphans.
Vern McCauley runs Eden House Children’s Home near Chiangrai, http://www.akha.org has a link to his project on YouTube.com so it is probably blocked.
Vern has at least 16 teen and preteen GIRLS ONLY PLEASE saved from something in an Akha village.
This is the status quo.
Naturally if someone runs a real NGO in Chiangrai and lets kids trapped in town stay there this is helpful, loosely structured, but not as a means to bring them down when the grip on the land should not be weakened at this time. Forestry loves churches and missions that move Akha off the land for any reason.
I have stated for a long time that I am not aware of any of the missions which support human rights.
We need more well run NGO’s, less missions.
Missions have done more to destroy Akha culture and help the Akha loose their land or remain silent about human rights abuses, over the last 30 years, so I am not sure that we can add up much more than defacto benefit for the Akha from this compared to what wealth has been built by these missions in the same time, which is for the most part not owned by the Akha for any productive use.
We are talking millions of dollars here to give you some idea.
Millions per YEAR.
Without an emphasis on human rights, the Akha will continue to loose land and other resources.
The removal of children should not be tolerated. Assistance to young people in town can be useful, but should not promote a land exodus.
Hmm…Grasshopper, I’m guessing Catch-22 is maybe, 22 years old? Although she looks more like 16 in that picture. It is an interesting approach though. I mean, for the last 100 years everyone has struggled to publicise human rights abuses in attempts to expose the perpetrators and incite some kind of action or aid. But, here, all along we’ve just been making it worse! Everyone should just lay low, keep their mouths shut, and hope that the junta just forgets they are even there.
The Free Burma Rangers are the ones who first started photographing and videotaping everything in order to show the outside world, though. Here the BBC is being blamed when the medics are clearly the irresponsible ones.
Does anyone else get tired of ‘cease-fire’ getting bandied about as if it actually means anything? Didn’t the KNU and the junta agree to a verbal ceasefire? As far as I can tell, cease-fires just mean increased militarization and all the negative that goes with it. It’s kind of meaningless in terms of actually providing any peace to civilians.
3) I am not aware of any studies that directly enagage with your first question. However, it is true that some of the early ethnography of northern Thailand (c. 1950s/1960s and before) was undertaken by missionaries. As for the number of NGOs working in the hills that are funded by Christian organisations – I am not sure, but it’s a good question. I will invite Matthew McDaniel to join this conversation and, with any luck, he will be able to provide an answer for us.
New Mandala readers with more than a passing interest in these questions may find this novel by Mischa Berlinski is worth the effort: http://www.berlinski.com/mischa/thebook/
Missionaries and hill-tribe people:
Have there been any anthropological/sociological studies done on the impact of missionaries,or of Christianity, on hill-tribe people?
Is it true that much of the early anthropological work in Northern Thailand [pre-1970’s]was done by Christian missionaries?
Of the 100 odd NGOs that Daniel [or is it Matthew?] McDaniel mentioned in his interview,how many are funded by Christian denominations?
At least that is how my girlfriend explained it to me how this ‘yellow uniform culture’ grew in her architectural firm (Australian). She said at about November last year, the office workers just sort of started wearing yellow nearly daily on their own volition, copying the growing yellow phenomenon in government & private companies. My GF said that the Thai women employees particularly like the yellow unitorm daily . . saves them money because now they don’t have to wear fashion and chic clothes in the offices. The farang bosses did not like it and right after the King’s celebrations, started asking the employees to only wear yellow Mondays. At least in her office, there are less office employees wearing yellow every Monday.
On my way to work on Monday I notice that more than 90% of people on the bus wear yellow. If you get on BTS, the number come down to about 60-70%. Not sure how this can be interpreted.
Catch 22’s post read like Little Britain’s “YEAH BUT, NO BUT” skit. I don’t think she can be very old in order to have this very rigid view of how chess in national politics is played.
Regarding the BBC, they’ve been creating the news for a while now; why don’t we all simply receive raw data as news rather than biased and skewed information? Obviously any sane, rational person would much rather look at binary than get a daily fix of the ‘THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM WE(BRITISH) SCULPTED IS CRUMBLING” comedy routine!
A couple of weeks ago, a blog on the Guardian website had this one wonderful post:
EgalitarianDreamer, June 22, 2007 6:33 AM, Bangkok/tha
Before I could even see, my vision was tainted sky blue. Hours after I was born my Dad’s mate registered me as a junior blue (Man city junior supporters club). One of my first images is of a poster on my wall as a young boy. I remember a black guy with an afro who stood out on the team photo (I think his name was Dave Bennett?). There are plenty of picture as me as a small boy, beaming in my sky blue kit, sponsored by Phillips, or was it saab?
Throughout all of those 26 years It’s never been much fun to be a city fan. We’re the team that gets relegated, that always manages to mess everything up, that employed such footbal luminaries as Alan Ball, Frank Clarke, Phil Neal, Alfons Gronendike, Laurent Charvet and Gerry Creaney. At school it was cool to support United, but for me that made it much cooler to support City. I went even when we were in the third division and getting beat by Lincoln and Barnet. In spite of all the shit I never wavered from my dedication to the cause. We were the family club, the real manchester club. We didn’t care if we lost as long as we played with heart. While we were falling through the divisions our local rivals were cheating and moaning their way to countless trophies. Not once did I ever wish I was a United fan. They won trophies by employing players like Roy Keane, Paul Ince and Mark Hughes and having a whingeing manager with a stopwatch and a frown.
Today that has all changed.
I should be delighted. Twenty six years might be finally coming to an end. Twenty six years of no trophies, hardly any good players and public ridicule may be over as our night in shining armour has rolled into town. Thaksin Shinawat, former Prime Minister of Thailand has bought out the controlling stake in the club and promised to spend big on renovating the squad, most fans are delighted. After all of these years we may be able to compete with the big boys and win something, that should make me feel great. It doesn’t. Quite the opposite in fact.
I lived under Thaksin’s rule and saw first hand the kind of person he is and how he has made his money. I’m not sure what my favourite ‘Thaksin moment’ is, perhaps the death squads roaming the streets during his infamous ‘war on drugs’? Perhaps it was when he gave government aid to the burmese military junta in order for them to buy satellitte acess from his personal company? The destruction of democracy? The mess of an airport that stands as monument to his corruption? Mass media manipluation? Or was it him using the country as his own personal piggy bank in oder to further the wealth of him and his family? There are so many examples of that final one it’s untrue. Selling government land to his wife at a massively reduced price, subsidising his private television station with governmet money, buying a 50% stake in AirAsia in order to grant them a license to fly within the country. There are plenty more……
I can’t support him. I can’t watch Manchester City knowing that everything that I am seeing is funded by him. I won’t pay for another piece of merchandise or a ticket until he’s gone. I know it’s a big statement but I just can’t support what he stands for. If that means cutting off a part of my life which has been me since birth, then so be it. I can’t imagine watching a game and seeing that smug square faced wanker in the stands while he is wanted for arrest over here. If a man has no morals how can he truly be a man?
So that’s it. I’m an official football widower. I can never remarry, there will be no other, but my one true love has turned into a cheap whore on the arm of the local crook and I can’t overlook it. It’s like the man who raped your wife (she was a cheap hussy but that’s not the point) offering to pay for a night on the town for you to make up for it. Or the man who robbed your life savings giving you a 100 quid back to ease the pain.
I hope for all my friends and family that the team go on to do great things, win the trophies that I have dreamed about us winning, sign the players I have dreamt about us signing and thoroughly stuff United every time they play them. Maybe this is just an initial reaction and it will become easier with time. I doubt it.
[…] And then, a translation in english of this bill (still a draft, not yet voted by the NLA) done by Chris Baker.┬ It’s a PDF document, available on New Mandala. […]
Nobody’s mentioned that it’s easier for women to get a free pass than men. Well, in government agencies they don’t, but in private companies they do. No matter what the shade, it’s a godawful color. Men can get away with a yellow tie and then, after work, take it off.
In some very large foreign companies, if men forget on Mondays, the boss will make some joking remark. You don’t have to don something yellow, but it’s a reminder not to do it again.
A friend of a friend is a rather simple country boy. Orphaned, dirt poor, but somehow with some luck and foreign friends, he and his brother now have their own store. I don’t think he has any interest in politics or the king, one way or another. He just thinks wearing yellow is stupid. He gets asked all the time on Monday why he isn’t wearing yellow. He got asked on other days of the week some months ago.
He’s got a stock response: “Oh, I carry the king in my heart.” He says that he can do it because he has his own business but he couldn’t get away with it if he worked for the government or a company.
“Mr Fernquest is no expert on “what we do in villages” I’m sure, for I have been to a few villages lately”
Just because I’m a Farang doesn’t mean I haven’t lived in Thai villages and know what people do in some, but not all, Thai villages. Gossip pretty much ensures you learn the whole history of a village good and bad whether you want to or not.
We have a house in a Thai village land my mother-in-law has a house in another Thai village. I haven’t taken a statistical survey of villages. Neither have you. We both draw on our limited experience in the villages we live in.
“Coercive” is a word that could apply to a lot of things in village life and **it was this way during the Thaksin era and before.**
Do I like this? No. Do I see the Thai system as generally an effective one that works? Yes. **I have also lived in a lot more dysfunctional places than you will ever live in**, like Burma, for instance.
It is interesting how colour became an emblem (or at least symptomatic) of harmony or discord, fight or retreat, and health or ill health. I am reminded of Cory Aquino’s yellow revolution which turned the yellow in the “tie a yellow ribbon” on-some-tree song into an emblem of struggle/fight against an oppressive regime. Then later, yellow became her official fashion colour. I can imagine seeing her in a yellow casket in not too distant future!
When do grasshoppers morph to be locusts . . to swarm and infestate and consume everything in sight, whether they be green, red and yes YELLOW!
i don’t know if you realize Grasshopper how imbecillic your #19 poster sounds. Color yellow traditionally meaning sickness to the farangs??? Surely Grasshopper you jest or you hallucinate!
Yellow is sunshine, yellow is gold and yellow to a yankee can be used to denigrate a coward.
Let’s take Thaksin . . . I could easily call him yellow for refusing to face the courts and face his accusers while during his rule he cowardly allowed the cold blooded murder of thousands by his extrajudicial edict against very poor blacklisted village suspects!
I would also think yellow may take a more romantic theme to the die-hard red-shirts waiting for the return of their Thaksin with a Tony Orlando song: ”
I’m coming home I’ve done my time (not yet but may soon happen) . . . . Tie a yellow riboon on all Suvarnabhumi trees and poles . . . et al (I forgot the lyrics, sorry!)
Historicus you have not answered my question: Was that a fact, was that a deliberate lie, that you have been abused by a yellw-shirt at a cinema just because you were not in fashion yellow? I thought that was one b.s. that should not just slip away unchallenged.
An interesting story. So was the one in the Nation that began:
Sonthi ‘has right to be a politician’
Ally of CNS chief says fight against Thai Rak Thai only half finished
Defence Minister Boonrawd Somtas yesterday said Council for National Security chairman Sonthi Boonyaratglin had every right to enter politics at the next election. He added that Sonthi might consider it essential to ensure he achieves the objectives declared by the CNS.
Boonrawd said the objectives of the coup had yet to be fully achieved and the “old power clique was moving full steam to win the next election”. “It will pour everything into winning the election so it can come back. Nobody currently has as many resources as it does. We can see from its movements now that it must return,” he said. “It’s not what we planned. We planned to clear them out and clean up the dirt,” he added.
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Ayui Foundation in Chiang Rai
Answer to a couple of questions.
1. I am not aware of any studies on the impact of missionaries on the hill peoples.
While I seen very short commentaries they are usually written in articles where the journalist is trying for a “balanced – make everyone happy, no one a villain” kind of comment, some even claiming that the missionaries could be saving the culture, which of course is a joke.
The missions work hand in hand with the state policies to destroy the Akha community, to displace it and of course to displace its culture.
Removal of children is of course the most violent aspect of this. The money collected when posing these children as orphans shows that there is money out there but it is being subverted.
Once in years gone by I saw a convention on the social economy of missions, but nothing on the hill people that I know of.
I see very little direct critical writing of what missionaries are doing in their corrupt function for imperial and colonial powers and mindsets.
I seldom if ever saw any introspection on the part of missions in Thailand of themselves.
2. As to anthropological work on the tribes, I don’t think this can be attributed to missions. Certainly they had opportunity. In the case of the Akha there was quite a bit written by Paul W. Lewis but much of it is not available. However missions positioned themselves as anthropologists, but this runs directly in contradiction that CONVERTED villages are destroyed as to identity, so they destroy what they study? Basically would be the best case.
On the case of Lewis, we do in fact have copies of his rather rare ethnic notes on the Akhas of Burma, and maybe those can be passed around later. Certainly from his notes it is clear that he knew what he was destroying and I personally believe this came from racist thinking and personal character that made it ok to claim to be an anthropologist at one time while willfully destroying what one studies in the same moment. I was told by Akhas in Burma that Paul W. Lewis had many village gates burnt and of course there are the sterilizations of Akha women.
Aje and Yot continue feeding Lewis’ policy of cultural destruction in Chiangrai province.
I know of no other evidence of study of the hill people that is much published. Matisoff published Lahu dictionary, and of course the Lahu are predominantly destroyed as to culture by Paul W. Lewis and his tribe.
3. Of the 100 plus orgs in Chiangrai, most all of them are supported by Catholic, protestant or independent missions.
If there were many much more critical studies of the missions affects then it would be harder for them to do what they are doing, we can hope that the number of studies increases with linking it to the actions of the Thai government, which missions never take a stand to oppose.
Matthew McDaniel
Ayui Foundation in Chiang Rai
There are easily over a hundred religious missions in north Thailand targeting Akha and other hilltribes, but leaning the heaviest on the Akha hill tribe.
We have recently received complaints from Ban Chavit Mai females complaining of abuse by “donors”.
Bakery located across from the Bus Station.
We campaigned successfully for Rotary International to pull support for Children of the Golden Triangle mission, they pulled that support one month ago after we confronted the leaders of Rotary at a NW Conference in the US.
Currently we are campaigning against Akha Outreach, and a couple of missionaries called Lori Crouch and Paul Vernon at http://www.loriandpaul.hopedenver.com
We have complained to the parent churches and continue that effort.
Akha Outreach is the mission that they work with in Chiangrai.
This mission is run by Aje and Nancy, an Akha and an American missionary, Aje is brother to Yot, an Akha running Dapa, known of course for his cars and 500 baht women.
Don’t be a girl in his school or hostel.
Dapa was started by Paul W. Lewis, the American Baptist missionary who stated in his thesis that an Akha woman was easier to sterilize if you made her a christian first, maybe like a labotomy, mental sterilization, extracting the soul, etc?
Most missions extract children from the villages and use them for money bait as make believe orphans.
Vern McCauley runs Eden House Children’s Home near Chiangrai, http://www.akha.org has a link to his project on YouTube.com so it is probably blocked.
Vern has at least 16 teen and preteen GIRLS ONLY PLEASE saved from something in an Akha village.
This is the status quo.
Naturally if someone runs a real NGO in Chiangrai and lets kids trapped in town stay there this is helpful, loosely structured, but not as a means to bring them down when the grip on the land should not be weakened at this time. Forestry loves churches and missions that move Akha off the land for any reason.
I have stated for a long time that I am not aware of any of the missions which support human rights.
We need more well run NGO’s, less missions.
Missions have done more to destroy Akha culture and help the Akha loose their land or remain silent about human rights abuses, over the last 30 years, so I am not sure that we can add up much more than defacto benefit for the Akha from this compared to what wealth has been built by these missions in the same time, which is for the most part not owned by the Akha for any productive use.
We are talking millions of dollars here to give you some idea.
Millions per YEAR.
Without an emphasis on human rights, the Akha will continue to loose land and other resources.
The removal of children should not be tolerated. Assistance to young people in town can be useful, but should not promote a land exodus.
Matthew McDaniel
Catch 22 takes aim at the BBC, the KNU, the SPDC…Annie Lennox
Hmm…Grasshopper, I’m guessing Catch-22 is maybe, 22 years old? Although she looks more like 16 in that picture. It is an interesting approach though. I mean, for the last 100 years everyone has struggled to publicise human rights abuses in attempts to expose the perpetrators and incite some kind of action or aid. But, here, all along we’ve just been making it worse! Everyone should just lay low, keep their mouths shut, and hope that the junta just forgets they are even there.
The Free Burma Rangers are the ones who first started photographing and videotaping everything in order to show the outside world, though. Here the BBC is being blamed when the medics are clearly the irresponsible ones.
Does anyone else get tired of ‘cease-fire’ getting bandied about as if it actually means anything? Didn’t the KNU and the junta agree to a verbal ceasefire? As far as I can tell, cease-fires just mean increased militarization and all the negative that goes with it. It’s kind of meaningless in terms of actually providing any peace to civilians.
Ayui Foundation in Chiang Rai
Dear Jeplang,
2) As I understand it, Sumalee is now a Thai citizen. According to “Asian Currents”, “Two years ago, she successfully applied for Thai citizenship”: Source: http://iceaps.anu.edu.au/ac/asian-currents-07-06.html#4
3) I am not aware of any studies that directly enagage with your first question. However, it is true that some of the early ethnography of northern Thailand (c. 1950s/1960s and before) was undertaken by missionaries. As for the number of NGOs working in the hills that are funded by Christian organisations – I am not sure, but it’s a good question. I will invite Matthew McDaniel to join this conversation and, with any luck, he will be able to provide an answer for us.
New Mandala readers with more than a passing interest in these questions may find this novel by Mischa Berlinski is worth the effort: http://www.berlinski.com/mischa/thebook/
Best wishes to all,
Nich
Ayui Foundation in Chiang Rai
Missionaries and hill-tribe people:
Have there been any anthropological/sociological studies done on the impact of missionaries,or of Christianity, on hill-tribe people?
Is it true that much of the early anthropological work in Northern Thailand [pre-1970’s]was done by Christian missionaries?
Of the 100 odd NGOs that Daniel [or is it Matthew?] McDaniel mentioned in his interview,how many are funded by Christian denominations?
Ayui Foundation in Chiang Rai
Has Sumalee been granted Thai citizenship?
National jaundice
It is mainly economics.
At least that is how my girlfriend explained it to me how this ‘yellow uniform culture’ grew in her architectural firm (Australian). She said at about November last year, the office workers just sort of started wearing yellow nearly daily on their own volition, copying the growing yellow phenomenon in government & private companies. My GF said that the Thai women employees particularly like the yellow unitorm daily . . saves them money because now they don’t have to wear fashion and chic clothes in the offices. The farang bosses did not like it and right after the King’s celebrations, started asking the employees to only wear yellow Mondays. At least in her office, there are less office employees wearing yellow every Monday.
National jaundice
On my way to work on Monday I notice that more than 90% of people on the bus wear yellow. If you get on BTS, the number come down to about 60-70%. Not sure how this can be interpreted.
Catch 22 takes aim at the BBC, the KNU, the SPDC…Annie Lennox
Catch 22’s post read like Little Britain’s “YEAH BUT, NO BUT” skit. I don’t think she can be very old in order to have this very rigid view of how chess in national politics is played.
Regarding the BBC, they’ve been creating the news for a while now; why don’t we all simply receive raw data as news rather than biased and skewed information? Obviously any sane, rational person would much rather look at binary than get a daily fix of the ‘THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM WE(BRITISH) SCULPTED IS CRUMBLING” comedy routine!
Nelson paper on “people’s sector politics”
[…] the title of “Thai Junta Going the Burma Way?” there are comments from Michael Nelson, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Chang Noi and […]
Citeh Citeh on the Manchester City bid
A couple of weeks ago, a blog on the Guardian website had this one wonderful post:
EgalitarianDreamer, June 22, 2007 6:33 AM, Bangkok/tha
Before I could even see, my vision was tainted sky blue. Hours after I was born my Dad’s mate registered me as a junior blue (Man city junior supporters club). One of my first images is of a poster on my wall as a young boy. I remember a black guy with an afro who stood out on the team photo (I think his name was Dave Bennett?). There are plenty of picture as me as a small boy, beaming in my sky blue kit, sponsored by Phillips, or was it saab?
Throughout all of those 26 years It’s never been much fun to be a city fan. We’re the team that gets relegated, that always manages to mess everything up, that employed such footbal luminaries as Alan Ball, Frank Clarke, Phil Neal, Alfons Gronendike, Laurent Charvet and Gerry Creaney. At school it was cool to support United, but for me that made it much cooler to support City. I went even when we were in the third division and getting beat by Lincoln and Barnet. In spite of all the shit I never wavered from my dedication to the cause. We were the family club, the real manchester club. We didn’t care if we lost as long as we played with heart. While we were falling through the divisions our local rivals were cheating and moaning their way to countless trophies. Not once did I ever wish I was a United fan. They won trophies by employing players like Roy Keane, Paul Ince and Mark Hughes and having a whingeing manager with a stopwatch and a frown.
Today that has all changed.
I should be delighted. Twenty six years might be finally coming to an end. Twenty six years of no trophies, hardly any good players and public ridicule may be over as our night in shining armour has rolled into town. Thaksin Shinawat, former Prime Minister of Thailand has bought out the controlling stake in the club and promised to spend big on renovating the squad, most fans are delighted. After all of these years we may be able to compete with the big boys and win something, that should make me feel great. It doesn’t. Quite the opposite in fact.
I lived under Thaksin’s rule and saw first hand the kind of person he is and how he has made his money. I’m not sure what my favourite ‘Thaksin moment’ is, perhaps the death squads roaming the streets during his infamous ‘war on drugs’? Perhaps it was when he gave government aid to the burmese military junta in order for them to buy satellitte acess from his personal company? The destruction of democracy? The mess of an airport that stands as monument to his corruption? Mass media manipluation? Or was it him using the country as his own personal piggy bank in oder to further the wealth of him and his family? There are so many examples of that final one it’s untrue. Selling government land to his wife at a massively reduced price, subsidising his private television station with governmet money, buying a 50% stake in AirAsia in order to grant them a license to fly within the country. There are plenty more……
I can’t support him. I can’t watch Manchester City knowing that everything that I am seeing is funded by him. I won’t pay for another piece of merchandise or a ticket until he’s gone. I know it’s a big statement but I just can’t support what he stands for. If that means cutting off a part of my life which has been me since birth, then so be it. I can’t imagine watching a game and seeing that smug square faced wanker in the stands while he is wanted for arrest over here. If a man has no morals how can he truly be a man?
So that’s it. I’m an official football widower. I can never remarry, there will be no other, but my one true love has turned into a cheap whore on the arm of the local crook and I can’t overlook it. It’s like the man who raped your wife (she was a cheap hussy but that’s not the point) offering to pay for a night on the town for you to make up for it. Or the man who robbed your life savings giving you a 100 quid back to ease the pain.
I hope for all my friends and family that the team go on to do great things, win the trophies that I have dreamed about us winning, sign the players I have dreamt about us signing and thoroughly stuff United every time they play them. Maybe this is just an initial reaction and it will become easier with time. I doubt it.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/06/21/a_filthyrich_saviour_for_longs.html
“No warrant, and no reporting”
[…] And then, a translation in english of this bill (still a draft, not yet voted by the NLA) done by Chris Baker.┬ It’s a PDF document, available on New Mandala. […]
National jaundice
Nobody’s mentioned that it’s easier for women to get a free pass than men. Well, in government agencies they don’t, but in private companies they do. No matter what the shade, it’s a godawful color. Men can get away with a yellow tie and then, after work, take it off.
In some very large foreign companies, if men forget on Mondays, the boss will make some joking remark. You don’t have to don something yellow, but it’s a reminder not to do it again.
A friend of a friend is a rather simple country boy. Orphaned, dirt poor, but somehow with some luck and foreign friends, he and his brother now have their own store. I don’t think he has any interest in politics or the king, one way or another. He just thinks wearing yellow is stupid. He gets asked all the time on Monday why he isn’t wearing yellow. He got asked on other days of the week some months ago.
He’s got a stock response: “Oh, I carry the king in my heart.” He says that he can do it because he has his own business but he couldn’t get away with it if he worked for the government or a company.
Great content from around the Southeast Asia blogs
In between the buffoonery, how on earth does Sittichai sound like Tom Jones, bloody ‘ell !!
National jaundice
Dearest Vichai, as it seems I cannot out-ponce you; I must simply say: whatever.
National jaundice
“Mr Fernquest is no expert on “what we do in villages” I’m sure, for I have been to a few villages lately”
Just because I’m a Farang doesn’t mean I haven’t lived in Thai villages and know what people do in some, but not all, Thai villages. Gossip pretty much ensures you learn the whole history of a village good and bad whether you want to or not.
We have a house in a Thai village land my mother-in-law has a house in another Thai village. I haven’t taken a statistical survey of villages. Neither have you. We both draw on our limited experience in the villages we live in.
“Coercive” is a word that could apply to a lot of things in village life and **it was this way during the Thaksin era and before.**
Do I like this? No. Do I see the Thai system as generally an effective one that works? Yes. **I have also lived in a lot more dysfunctional places than you will ever live in**, like Burma, for instance.
National jaundice
It is interesting how colour became an emblem (or at least symptomatic) of harmony or discord, fight or retreat, and health or ill health. I am reminded of Cory Aquino’s yellow revolution which turned the yellow in the “tie a yellow ribbon” on-some-tree song into an emblem of struggle/fight against an oppressive regime. Then later, yellow became her official fashion colour. I can imagine seeing her in a yellow casket in not too distant future!
National jaundice
When do grasshoppers morph to be locusts . . to swarm and infestate and consume everything in sight, whether they be green, red and yes YELLOW!
i don’t know if you realize Grasshopper how imbecillic your #19 poster sounds. Color yellow traditionally meaning sickness to the farangs??? Surely Grasshopper you jest or you hallucinate!
Yellow is sunshine, yellow is gold and yellow to a yankee can be used to denigrate a coward.
Let’s take Thaksin . . . I could easily call him yellow for refusing to face the courts and face his accusers while during his rule he cowardly allowed the cold blooded murder of thousands by his extrajudicial edict against very poor blacklisted village suspects!
I would also think yellow may take a more romantic theme to the die-hard red-shirts waiting for the return of their Thaksin with a Tony Orlando song: ”
I’m coming home I’ve done my time (not yet but may soon happen) . . . . Tie a yellow riboon on all Suvarnabhumi trees and poles . . . et al (I forgot the lyrics, sorry!)
National jaundice
Historicus you have not answered my question: Was that a fact, was that a deliberate lie, that you have been abused by a yellw-shirt at a cinema just because you were not in fashion yellow? I thought that was one b.s. that should not just slip away unchallenged.
Strategic comment on Thai politics
An interesting story. So was the one in the Nation that began:
Sonthi ‘has right to be a politician’
Ally of CNS chief says fight against Thai Rak Thai only half finished
Defence Minister Boonrawd Somtas yesterday said Council for National Security chairman Sonthi Boonyaratglin had every right to enter politics at the next election. He added that Sonthi might consider it essential to ensure he achieves the objectives declared by the CNS.
Boonrawd said the objectives of the coup had yet to be fully achieved and the “old power clique was moving full steam to win the next election”. “It will pour everything into winning the election so it can come back. Nobody currently has as many resources as it does. We can see from its movements now that it must return,” he said. “It’s not what we planned. We planned to clear them out and clean up the dirt,” he added.