Comments

  1. Reader says:

    >> There is no constitution. There is no rule of law. The government is capriciously censoring websites without court orders. People are prevented from traveling to political rallies. The junta has secret slush funds for its own rallies and its own propaganda purposes.

    Tosakon, with the exception of the first clause, this doesn’t sound much different from what was going on before. Of course, the fact that Thaksin was doing most of the above (undermining laws; censoring websites; funding rallies and propaganda) doesn’t justify the imposition of a military junta, but I think you’re being hysterical in calling the current regime “quasi-fascist”.

    Mind you, on re-reading the definition of “fascism” (this from Webster’s), I can see how you feel justified in engaging in hysterics:

    fascism: “a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition”

    I suppose this definition could (very loosely) be applied to the junta, especially if you preface “fascist” with the weasel word “quasi”. However, given that fascism is a word that has very precise and terrifying historical associations, don’t you think you’re going overboard in comparing the current mob of buffoons with the murderous regimes of Hitler/Mussolini/Stalin etc? They are in different leagues.

    All in all, if you were mocked when you first aired your “theory”, I feel that you richly deserved it. Furthermore, I think you’re even sillier to bring the point up again. Sorry if I sound tetchy, but I have an impacted wisdom tooth and an extreme dislike for the causal flinging about of terminology which has motivated the killing of millions of people, including members of my own family.

  2. […] the latest example of sufficiency madness the Bangkok Metropolitan Adminstration (controlled by the Democrat-except-when-we-cannot-win-an-election-and-then-a-coup-is-ok Party) is offering one million baht to communities that can demonstrate their self-sufficiency!! The […]

  3. Reader says:

    New to this forum. Thanks for the resource. It’s entertaining to watch academics get snarky with each other. Such ferocity! Please keep up the good work.

    Just an observation: my Thai wife works for one of the big state universities and received an edict yesterday that yellow shirts are compulsory (Monday to Friday) until at least the end of the year. Not sure what to make of this, but it seems to indicate some degree of nervousness among those who have the power to create such edicts. My wife doesn’t attach much significance to it apart from the fact that she hates yellow and is sick of wearing it.

    Jon: I really am curious about why you choose to wear a yellow shirt. Many of my farang acquaintances also wear them (to work, no less!) and it just looks horribly sycophantic to me. Do you do this because you genuinely respect the Thai monarchy, or is it because you feel it will make a good impression on the locals?

  4. Republican says:

    Reply to #30: It doesn’t answer your question, but one rather radical scenario that I have heard (I have no idea how widespread this view is, but the source quoted “inside military sources”) is that if the CP ever got into a position of being RX then there is a likelihood of him being “JFK-ed”, and the possibility of a republic sooner rather than later would be on the cards, given that, while most people are either neutral or sick of the institution, they retain respect for the current occupant. The propaganda around the personality is a lot more effective than the propaganda that promotes the institution.

    Re. Jakraphop’s views on the “war against the aristocracy” expressed in The Nation’s interview the other day: whatever one thinks of Jakraphop’s political views, it is significant that he is one of the leading figures in the PTV-Thai Rak Thai rallies at Sanam Luang – so one would assume that his views are not confined to Jakraphop alone. Obviously right now Thaksin has to play the statesman, loyal to the monarchy, ready for compromise and reconciliation, and that came across in his recorded address on Friday night. One would assume that negotiations at the highest levels are going on now, and that if anything, ironically Thaksin is negotiating from a position of power, given the way the CNS has enabled him to portray himself as a democratic figure internationally, and increasingly domestically. So far he has been careful not to touch the monarchy, but if the CNS is unwilling to concede, and they continue with their intention to wipe out Thai Rak Thai, it would not surprise me if there were public revelations designed to implicate the monarchy’s involvement in the coup, its support of the regime, and the many other skeletons that fill its closet. The irony is, despite the regime’s attempt to censor Thaksin and destroy his party, his influence now is greater than at any time since September 19.

    If it is a fight to the death, I can’t see Thaksin rolling over and letting the royalists destroy him in this way.

  5. wasan says:

    ok let me play a word,
    I said ethnicity is not useful but did not day that you cannot use it
    for me, I would rather prefer to use some thing like ‘cultural or social identity’, and these are different, conceptually.

    Sipsongpanna is gone, but the Lue senses of thier homelands of course are still there, in thier minds. but what kinds of these homelands?

    the Lue, to me, in Xishuangbanna, have been redrawn, they are really disappearing, or becoming the Dai, not Lue.
    Of course there are still lots of people called Lue in Burma, Laos, and Thailand, and overseas. But these people have also been transformed.

    you have to say in plural because there are lots of fractions, and they are so fragmented

    so who are the Lue? this is perhaps not really a good question, but what have they been doing, or how could these people around the globe, in different places, maintain and perform to be ‘Lue’ that should be paid attention to, to me.

  6. Of course!

  7. Pam Burrage says:

    Please may I use the above photo on a powerpoint presentation on globalization for A sociology level students on http://www.mysociology.co.uk?

  8. roger p says:

    Andrew, sorry for such a late response to your question –I hope you get to read this new post, and that you and Wasan are willing to continue the discussion.

    I agree “ethnicity” is as objectable a tool as any other –but still believe it may be necessary to understand, at least partly, “what is going on” in Sipsong Panna, for ethnic categories are constructed and re-constructed not only as a “statecraft” on the part of the CCP, but also, as Wasan has acknowledged, by the locals themselves.

    And this is true not only regarding the “new”, state categorization which has labelled the Tai Lue as “Dai”, but also the “old” one, which I related to the traditional categorization imposed by the Tai Lue through the muang system, and which would roughly classify peoples as “civilized” and “uncivilized”, according to their possesion or lack of sasana. This categorization –again an ideal tool that we reproduced as we understand it served as an ideology for the ruling Tai, even if it is never found completely realized in the field–, is also still partially valid to understand social relations in Sipsong Panna, as shown for instance in the contempt with which some Tai Lue still regard other ethnic groups in the area –a contempt not understandable, for example, merely in socioeconomic terms.

    In this sense, we cannot say that “Sipsong Panna” or the “Tai Lue” are gone, or dissapeared; how could we say this when so many locals still use the latter when referring to their homeland? There┬┤s a big deal of surviving elements from social structures –including conceptions about ethnicity– previous to 1953, and these will remain here for a long time –even if the CCP has gone to great lengths to dismantle these structures. Coming back to “ethnicity”, the ways people understand and make use of these different categorizations are undoubtedly very complex, and surely taking “ethnicity” as a point of view is not enough to obtain a more or less complete picture of what is going on in Sipsong Panna. But I don┬┤t see why we cannot use it as a tool to understand socioeconomic relations when these are undoubtedly still determined to a certain extent by ethnic conceptions.

  9. Doubtful but... says:

    Has anyone found anything referring to how Anand Panyarachun, Bowornsak Uwanno, and others in that phuak predict the Crown Prince’s ability to be a dhammaraja, adhere to the thotsaphit rajatham, use his pharatchamnat samrong, and generally display pharatcha baramee? The ‘Thaksin vs. Rama IX’ discussion is getting a little worn out now and it would be nice if it could turn to Rama X, even before ICTS.

  10. anonymous says:

    I’m surprised No. 2 (Duantemduang Na Chiangmai) is running for a local seat. She ran in the 2005 parliamentary election and lost to TRT.

    Given the junta banned her former competition from politics for 5 years, she has a good chance of winning the next parliamentary election. Don’t forget that she was a former high-level military officer as well (р╕Ьр╕╣р╣Йр╕Кр╣Ир╕зр╕вр╣Вр╕Жр╕йр╕Бр╕Бр╕нр╕Зр╕Чр╕▒р╕Юр╕Ър╕Б).

  11. Republican says:

    #25: That of course should be *Saturday* 16th.

  12. Srithanonchai says:

    Jeru: Rep is harmless rhetoric, and of course I don’t read every detail of what he writes. On the other hand, Thai politics during the past few years have been rather real.

  13. jeru says:

    Srithanonchai (#26) I must wonder how you sicken so easily . . . when you can endure Republican bloviate daily with such thunderous flatulence you have enough advance warning to escape the sickening stench to follow.

  14. Srithanonchai says:

    It makes me sick seeing all these groups playing their political games.

  15. […] was one year ago that Andrew made the first post to New Mandala – “Some thoughts on the political crisis in Thailand“. Back then the argument was that: Election boycotts, calls for Royal intervention in the […]

  16. Republican says:

    Another important, and maybe ominous piece of news from a post on Fa Dio Kan [http://www.sameskybooks.org/webboard/show.php?Category=sameskybooks&No=14316; see the Manager article at http://www.manager.co.th/Politics/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9500000069785&#Opinion%5D. On Sondhi Limthongkul’s “Yam Fao Phaendin” program yesterday he announced that from Sunday 16th June a group calling itself the “Phalang ngiap rak phaendin” (Silent Power that Loves the Kingdom) will rally at the Equestrian Monument as a “show of strength of people who love the monarchy and the nation”.

  17. nganadeeleg says:

    Jakrapop is spin merchant & hypocrite to boot.

    He can talk all he likes about fighting for democracy, but the reality is that he too is tainted because of his years serving Thaksin’s ‘policy corruption’ .

  18. Republican says:

    Thai Republicanism: I don’t normally pay any attention to The Na-chua anymore, though I used to have a lot of respect for Sutthichai Yoon. But I noticed in today’s edition there was a downloadable audio interview with Jakraphop Penkair, the head of PTV and one of the leaders of the Sanam Luang demonstration. I’ve been having trouble accessing the audiocast of the demonstration and had been wanting to listen to what the speakers were saying so I clicked on the Jakraphop interview rather than trust the untrustworthy govt. and print media. At first I wondered why they had the interview in audio rather than transcript orsummarised form. But if you listen to the first 5 minutes you will immediately understand why. I have never heard someone with such a high profile public image express such direct, uncompromising criticism of the monarchy. It’s well worth a listen. Excerpts: “I see this not as a struggle, but as a war, against aristocracy”. I want to rid aristocrats and dictators who join hands in robbing the liberty and power of the people in the September 19 coup…” It’s available at http://www.nationmultimedia.com/specials/sound/file/chak1.mp3 (this certainly makes NM’s Republican sound very mild in comparison)

    I’m not sure if he was tired or stressed (he mentioned that he had had death threats, and was ready to die in the fight for democracy) or even if the whole thing was made up (I doubt it – in any case, these sentiments are widely expressed now on political discussion websites). Compared to Jakraphop Thaksin’s speech last night sounded positively royalist, conciliatory, ready for compromise. The “good cop, bad cop” approach, maybe.

    On a related topic, the front cover of Matichon’s weekly magazine this week featured a soft lens, very homely photo of Thaksin and his family with the caption (sic) “Holocaust: The Killing of the Whole Clan” (recall the PAD’s and some of the media’s portrayal of Thaksin as “Hitler” before the coup). These things are designed deliberately to have more than one reading, but my reading of it was that it was sympathetic to Thaksin – haven’t had a chance yet to read the story. This would be interesting, as it would mean that at the same time as much of the mass media is turning against the CNS, some of the middle class media is starting to take a less anti-Thaksin line.

  19. […] relation to the ongoing discussion of the 10th International Thai Studies Conference there has been some concern expressed about the […]

  20. Republican says:

    Back to business. While we are on the topic of royalist propoganda, for those of you living outside of Thailand you may not be aware of the extent of the propaganda situation within the country. Saraburian, who has posted some interesting comments on NM, has this one on Fa Dio Kan (http://www.sameskybooks.org/webboard/show.php?Category=sameskybooks&No=13702). Posted : 2007-06-14 21:22:59

    р╣Ар╕Юр╕╖р╣Ир╕нр╕Щр╕Чр╕╡р╣Ир╕Шр╕Щр╕▓р╕Др╕▓р╕гр╣Бр╕лр╣Ир╕Зр╕лр╕Щр╕╢р╣Ир╕З р╕кр╣Ир╕Зр╕бр╕▓р╣Гр╕лр╣Й

    р╣Ар╕гр╕╡р╕вр╕Щ р╣Ар╕Юр╕╖р╣Ир╕нр╕Щр╕Юр╕Щр╕▒р╕Бр╕Зр╕▓р╕Щxxxx

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