Comments

Thaksin has recently been made president of the Thai PGA. Surely this is just another slap in the face to the monarchy. After all, wasn’t it Rama VII who was the patron of golf in Thailand? Surely Thaksin is doing this just to show more disrespect! Dastardly devil.

Interestingly, R VII was on the HUa Hin course when the 1932 revolution began….

“This results from a lack of capacity in many government agencies and the Mekong River Commission, where there are **high staff turnover** rates and a **dependence on short-term experts** with limited experience in the basin.”

People on the ground, with long-term involvement, doing participatory development, with their eyes open, with a direct line to Bangkok that bypasses local rentseeking interests, would seem to be the key element that makes stats in well designed studies meaningful.

I’m frankly dizzy from, for instance, stats on climate change or US income inequality. Both sides bowling you over with stats, and you almost need a PhD to tell which side is calling your bluff.

Thanks for the beautiful photo.

More critically question, what is the difference between ‘Sufficiency Conference’ held by Chulalongkorn and the controversial ‘Thai Stidies Conference’ of Thammasart?

Is the conference boycott relevant to institutionalism? I means the former is royalist and the latter was founded by the commoner. I was an alumni from both institutions and see it is nonsense to ban the Thai Studies conference in Bangkok.

This also relates to Andrew comments on sufficiency economy and the negative responses regarding ‘how can the farang criticize Thai King?’ or something along this line. (though Andrew’s correlated statistic seems unsound and needs more indexs to support.)

Recently, I got forward mail from one of my Thai friend about time magazine vote for the most ‘influential person’ in the world. The king was nominated as a candidature. I posted this link to many friends and also got negative feed back on ‘lese majesty’.

I understand that it is not a good time to touch symbolic meaning of Thai people but I do want to see more ‘open minded’ Thai academic communities.

I am one of Thai academic who want to see academic freedom in my country. In fact, Thai Studies’s themes are broadly concerns under the main theme ‘transnationalism’.

My point is if the Thai and non-Thai can’t speak or discuss this issue in Thailand because of that law. Should it be otherwise discussed elsewhere? I’m sure it is under discussion everywhere accept Thailand!! Why?

Should we reconsider the issue of liberal thought, idea and constructive criticism in Thailand? Or should we reconsider lese majesty law?

I think we have many critical Thai academic like Ajarn Thongchai who feel free to be critical from outside his/her homeland.

I read HM’s speech posted in new mandala somewhere. Even his majesty himself understood the distinction between argument and consultation. Why most Thai interpret everything into ‘insult’?

I do support this conference and did submmit my propersal to Thammasart for the sake of intellect that detachs itself from politics.

Jeh luay

I get a big blank space, both at home and at work in Bangkok, with no indication even of what player or service you’re using, Google Video, You Tube, etc.

Thank you very much for this – the eye needs some food too!
😉

The author must have put in a good amount of swift work…

Both the Southern Thai and Malaysian economies have a serious gap in income and opportunity between ethnic Chinese and the local Malay. Is this because both Thailand and Malaysia use an abrasive version of capitalism? Or because of cultural or social factors?

Will this be a permanent link for the constitution?

I would like to link to it on my site. If not, I’ll download it and upload it someplace else.