The Konrad Adenauer Foundation was very close to Sonthi Limthongkul and his buddy Chai-anand Samudavanija. KAF funded a lot of programs of Chai-anand’s Institute for Public Policy Studies back in the 1990’s.
“I can perceive nothing but simpering condescension for anything Thai emanating from this website.”
At this conference:
Where are the Thai farmers?
Where are the most reknown Thai scholars like Pasuk?
This looks more like a prestige show where people are not going to dare disagree or challenge each other. I could be wrong.
The actual wise words of HMK? Where are they going to be? Will it be a homage of free thought for him? Or will they be frightened by lese majeste laws to speak within narrowly conscribed limits?
One can have condescension for shows that Thai elite put on and not have condescension for the Thai people.
That the university I worked at was built by squatter camps of Burmese labourers, that was contempt for the Thai people. Thai farmers who often asked me if it was possible to get a job building the university (during the Alliance Francaise photo shoot I participated in). Ha, ha.
We used to have prestige-status events like this at the university also, which were always followed by contempt for the Thai and foreign Ajaans at the university, plopping a cassette tape of garbled English of the big-money giving Japanese OTOP guy’s speech which I was supposed to listen to and transcribe….and then rewrite because it was incoherent, yes, plagiarise, my words for his, just like when a student tries to hire a teacher to write an essay for them, or when the born-again christian language academy at the bottom of the hill of the university coaches the fledgling christian student’s writing so that they get an A, all without a work visa, because missionaries don’t need them. I ask, why must Thai universities have so many expensive external examiners for joint degree programmes with foreign universities?
Probing for the truth, trying to peek behind the curtain to see what is actually going on, condescension? Hardly
Many organizations from other countries, and supra-national organizations, “meddle” in the “internal affairs” of Thailand, not merely German organizations. This is not more strange than tourists coming to Thailand, foreign direct investment, or academic cooperation, etc. One “positive impact” might be seen in the existence of an administrative court.
There is something strange about German political parties meddling in the internal affairs of Thailand. It’s not like they made a positive impact in the past!
I can’t imagine US, British or Australian political party think tanks coming to Thailand to have a love in about sufficiency theory, especially with all the hypocrisy and phoniness surrounding it.
Also, why would any western think tank want to affiliate with that anti-farang crusader Sulak?
What is Sulak going to do? Welcome the Germans for coming and then turn around and blame them for all of Thailand’s problems?
Hi Warren
Nice your pic and graet topic of Vientiane scooter club to Vietnam ,like me now I make Thai magazine online on webpage and crazy VDO from bkk to vietnam on youtube ,
I think for the next trip from Thai we can join for travel by scoot with you again.
Cheers
Morris lambretta
It seems that some Germans who are in the business of promoting a green and sustainability agenda will meet with some representatives of Thai NGOs under the umbrella of “sufficiency economy.” The two core Thai NGO figures at the seminar are Surichai Wun ‘Gaeo and Gothom Ariya. Both let themselves be appointed by the military to the National Legislative Assembly, for which they were attacked by other NGO people.
The Heinrich Boell Foundation ist the political foundation of the Green Party of Germany. The other German parties also have their respective foundations, namely Konrad Adenauer Foundation (Christian Democrats), Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Social Democrats), Friedrich Naumann Foundation (Free Democrats), and Hanns Seidel Foundation (Christian Social Union). The KAF and the FEF have representative offices in Bangkok. The FNF has a regional office in Bangkok. HBF’s office is in Chiang Mai. HSF does nor have an office in Thailand, only a Thai representative. All of them are funded my the German taxpayer to conduct political-educational activities, be it in Germany or abroad. The German names would figure “Stiftung” instead of foundation (KAS, FES, FNS, HBS).
Bangchak was once headed by Sophon Suphaphong, that senator who once claimed Thaksin said something “outrageous” to him during their private dinner that if revealed to the public, could cost Thaksin his job (a thinly veiled message suggesting that Thaksin was disloyal to the throne)
To date, to my knowledge, Sophon has not disclosed what was said during that dinner…
I am not suggesting anything untoward in this sufficiency network… University sponsored events should be prompting critical and diverse perspectives. This looks more like a love-in.
Well, but I think you are, Andrew. Though you come to praise Caesar not to bury him. We know there’s no love lost for the sufficiency economy on your side. You seem unable to resist the kiss of death even at the stage of “draft program”. You seem to be trying to make sure there’s a negative perception hanging over the conference before it begins… before its defined.
Forgive me, but I can perceive nothing but simpering condescension for anything Thai emanating from this website. Perhaps if the poor benighted souls just turned everything over to the Australians.
[…] this event and kicking up a fuss over this issue such as Andrew Walker of RSPAS (great pics on his blog). Thanks also to the Singapore Democratic Party and Singabloodypore for putting the word out in […]
One useful and straightforward paper would be to collect old newspaper clippings of articles that refer to lese majeste but which, apparently as an act of self-censorship, never provide the details of what the offending party actually did, i,.e what everyone wants to know. This is what Streckfuss seems to do sometimes. I haven’t read his dissertation yet. Just a surgical enumeration of facts without emotion. As a controlled experiment you could have a Farang give the paper in one room and a Thai in another and a Burmese in another, the same paper that is, and see if the respective audiences heard completely different papers, despite the papers being identical.
We need more papers/ panels that are critical to the coup, the military, Prem, the undemocracy, the new and old constitutions, the judiciary, the Crown Property Bureau, the super-conservative cultural trend and the “Cultural Surveillance” Department, the call for Buddhism as the National Religion, widespread censorship of internet accesses, the crisis among Thai intelligentsia, Thai-style democracy, the “Yellow Fever”, and the past, present and future of the monarchy, and more.
Here’s a topic for you academics to consider:
– Does the King pay lip service to the Thai people, or the Thai people pay lip sevice to the King?
On your first post: What that lady meant to say is that the Islamistic militants kill both Muslims and Buddhists (that’s well known and is reported about daily in the papers), not that the Muslims normally were killed by state authorities. And she complains about what she perceives as unequal distribution of attention. Thus there is no inconsistency.
On Nidhi: I read his piece a while ago. I found some elements quite interesting, especially references to religious motives. However, I tend to agree with a friend of mine who has been doing field research in Pattani. He asserts that Nidhi is rather naive. That same friend wrote about the “unorderly border region” which enabled a number of shadowy elements, amongst them police and soldiers, but also smugglers, drug traders, etc., to go about their business more easily than in other parts of the country. However, that does decidedly not mean that police, military or bureaucrats, for that matter, serving in other parts of the country are clean.
Thanks for making the effort of identifying and reading additional sources of information on the south.
How are a couple of papers at conference really going to change anything?
Conference attending? A slight variation on the “research trip” funded with pot of cash received to do research which, in the end, no one does. How many of those meaningless reports have I picked up off the shelves, only to put them back immediately.
The Thais who “really” do research who I know, live and breathe their subject matter, but e.g. thei linguistic research was dismissed by the administration for not generating money for research trips. A big joke.
The university I worked at got a grant from the Keenan Institute for an international collaborative project to get people started doing research. What did most Thai Ajaans do? Research? No, they assumed this haute air of **supervising the research** of the visitors from other SEAsian countries who received grants to do research. I presented a paper, even though I had already left after being thoroughly ripped off, cheated, and lied to, like countless other foreigners in the education sector.
The real problem is that there are bad people doing bad things everyday and only making a show of honourable behaviour to their King. (immigration police who slept with the Karen children/workers at a guesthouse near Mae Sot I was staying at before going upriver to Manerplaw was perhaps the first nauseating instance, I can remember) IMHO the institution of kingship is not the problem, the problem is selfish people using the institution of kingship for their own selfish goals, and also just plain laziness. Observations from a grunt working on the front lines, IMHO where more people need to be if they want to change things.
This one incident does not prove that all of the Thai military in South Thailand are corrupt, but it does show that some of them are. Certainly double dealing such as this helps to sow the seeds of resentment of the Central authorities pretty deeply.
The major wounded during a police drug bust in Bangkok is an Army anti-narcotics agent running an illicit drug syndicate in the strife-torn South, Metropolitan Police chief Lt-General Adisorn Nonsee said yesterday.
Major Chanont Chinnawong and his alleged accomplices, Sukhum Juajaemjan and Withoon Niyakij, have been charged with possessing drugs with intent to sell, murder of an officer on duty, attempted murder of officers on duty and possession of firearms without a permit. This combination of offences carries the death penalty.
…
Adisorn said Chanont had long trafficked drugs in Pattani and neighbouring Yala and Narathiwat provinces, capitalising on his expertise and status as a military narcotics suppression officer.
Chanont was familiar with the three provinces and always talked himself out of vehicle searches at police checkpoints every time he was pulled over, Adisorn said.
These last two, topical posts were predeeded by a posting about a paper by Nidhi Aeusrivongse, ‘ Understanding the Situation in the South as a “Millenarian Revolt” ‘, which I found over-the-wire, at your urging.
That posting doesn’t seem to have been accepted, although it is now refused when I try to resubmit it on the grounds that it’s already been submitted.
I think that article is both very soundly reasoned and presented and am interested to hear what your opinion of it is.
>
– “Most of those killed may have died at the hands of the security forces.” Would anybody in his or her right mind make such an outrageous statement? And where is his supporting evidence or analysis?
seems to be contradicted in the course of The Nation’s on the 14 April bombing in Yala that left 11 dead :
A young Muslim woman in downtown Yala, who asked not to be named, pointed out that more than half of the 2000-plus people killed since January 2004 were Muslims but their deaths did not attract the same kind of media attention or public sympathy as those of the Buddhist victims.
The Nation does not contradict her assertion. I know that reportorial standards world wide are not what we might wish, but I can’t imagine The Nation printing that if it were patently untrue.
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Sufficiency network
The Konrad Adenauer Foundation was very close to Sonthi Limthongkul and his buddy Chai-anand Samudavanija. KAF funded a lot of programs of Chai-anand’s Institute for Public Policy Studies back in the 1990’s.
Sufficiency network
“I can perceive nothing but simpering condescension for anything Thai emanating from this website.”
At this conference:
Where are the Thai farmers?
Where are the most reknown Thai scholars like Pasuk?
This looks more like a prestige show where people are not going to dare disagree or challenge each other. I could be wrong.
The actual wise words of HMK? Where are they going to be? Will it be a homage of free thought for him? Or will they be frightened by lese majeste laws to speak within narrowly conscribed limits?
One can have condescension for shows that Thai elite put on and not have condescension for the Thai people.
That the university I worked at was built by squatter camps of Burmese labourers, that was contempt for the Thai people. Thai farmers who often asked me if it was possible to get a job building the university (during the Alliance Francaise photo shoot I participated in). Ha, ha.
We used to have prestige-status events like this at the university also, which were always followed by contempt for the Thai and foreign Ajaans at the university, plopping a cassette tape of garbled English of the big-money giving Japanese OTOP guy’s speech which I was supposed to listen to and transcribe….and then rewrite because it was incoherent, yes, plagiarise, my words for his, just like when a student tries to hire a teacher to write an essay for them, or when the born-again christian language academy at the bottom of the hill of the university coaches the fledgling christian student’s writing so that they get an A, all without a work visa, because missionaries don’t need them. I ask, why must Thai universities have so many expensive external examiners for joint degree programmes with foreign universities?
Probing for the truth, trying to peek behind the curtain to see what is actually going on, condescension? Hardly
Sufficiency network
Many organizations from other countries, and supra-national organizations, “meddle” in the “internal affairs” of Thailand, not merely German organizations. This is not more strange than tourists coming to Thailand, foreign direct investment, or academic cooperation, etc. One “positive impact” might be seen in the existence of an administrative court.
Sufficiency network
There is something strange about German political parties meddling in the internal affairs of Thailand. It’s not like they made a positive impact in the past!
I can’t imagine US, British or Australian political party think tanks coming to Thailand to have a love in about sufficiency theory, especially with all the hypocrisy and phoniness surrounding it.
Also, why would any western think tank want to affiliate with that anti-farang crusader Sulak?
What is Sulak going to do? Welcome the Germans for coming and then turn around and blame them for all of Thailand’s problems?
Lao explorers reach Vietnam on Italian Scooters
http://motorscooterridersgroup-.pantown.com/
Cheers
Morris lambretta
Lao explorers reach Vietnam on Italian Scooters
Hi Warren
Nice your pic and graet topic of Vientiane scooter club to Vietnam ,like me now I make Thai magazine online on webpage and crazy VDO from bkk to vietnam on youtube ,
I think for the next trip from Thai we can join for travel by scoot with you again.
Cheers
Morris lambretta
Sufficiency network
It seems that some Germans who are in the business of promoting a green and sustainability agenda will meet with some representatives of Thai NGOs under the umbrella of “sufficiency economy.” The two core Thai NGO figures at the seminar are Surichai Wun ‘Gaeo and Gothom Ariya. Both let themselves be appointed by the military to the National Legislative Assembly, for which they were attacked by other NGO people.
Sufficiency network
The Heinrich Boell Foundation ist the political foundation of the Green Party of Germany. The other German parties also have their respective foundations, namely Konrad Adenauer Foundation (Christian Democrats), Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Social Democrats), Friedrich Naumann Foundation (Free Democrats), and Hanns Seidel Foundation (Christian Social Union). The KAF and the FEF have representative offices in Bangkok. The FNF has a regional office in Bangkok. HBF’s office is in Chiang Mai. HSF does nor have an office in Thailand, only a Thai representative. All of them are funded my the German taxpayer to conduct political-educational activities, be it in Germany or abroad. The German names would figure “Stiftung” instead of foundation (KAS, FES, FNS, HBS).
Sufficiency network
Bangchak was once headed by Sophon Suphaphong, that senator who once claimed Thaksin said something “outrageous” to him during their private dinner that if revealed to the public, could cost Thaksin his job (a thinly veiled message suggesting that Thaksin was disloyal to the throne)
To date, to my knowledge, Sophon has not disclosed what was said during that dinner…
Sufficiency network
I am not suggesting anything untoward in this sufficiency network… University sponsored events should be prompting critical and diverse perspectives. This looks more like a love-in.
Well, but I think you are, Andrew. Though you come to praise Caesar not to bury him. We know there’s no love lost for the sufficiency economy on your side. You seem unable to resist the kiss of death even at the stage of “draft program”. You seem to be trying to make sure there’s a negative perception hanging over the conference before it begins… before its defined.
Forgive me, but I can perceive nothing but simpering condescension for anything Thai emanating from this website. Perhaps if the poor benighted souls just turned everything over to the Australians.
“Lee Kuan Yew – ANU is not for you!”
[…] this event and kicking up a fuss over this issue such as Andrew Walker of RSPAS (great pics on his blog). Thanks also to the Singapore Democratic Party and Singabloodypore for putting the word out in […]
More on the 2008 Thai Studies conference
One useful and straightforward paper would be to collect old newspaper clippings of articles that refer to lese majeste but which, apparently as an act of self-censorship, never provide the details of what the offending party actually did, i,.e what everyone wants to know. This is what Streckfuss seems to do sometimes. I haven’t read his dissertation yet. Just a surgical enumeration of facts without emotion. As a controlled experiment you could have a Farang give the paper in one room and a Thai in another and a Burmese in another, the same paper that is, and see if the respective audiences heard completely different papers, despite the papers being identical.
More on the 2008 Thai Studies conference
Re: #13 I wonder
I think Somsak conceded openly before that he’s not brave enough and he’s scared of the jail term. Who wouldn’t?
More on the 2008 Thai Studies conference
Here’s a few more possible topics:
– Honest incompetents, or corrupt Demagogue – what’s better for Thailand?
– Is the King being made a scapegoat for the failure of democracy in Thailand?
– What do the King, Thaksin & the Jatukam Ramathep amulet all have in common?
– Why is a super-rich capitalist seen as the saviour of the rural poor?
and most important:
– How to stop the southern insurgency turning into another Sri Lanka or Palestine?
More on the 2008 Thai Studies conference
We need more papers/ panels that are critical to the coup, the military, Prem, the undemocracy, the new and old constitutions, the judiciary, the Crown Property Bureau, the super-conservative cultural trend and the “Cultural Surveillance” Department, the call for Buddhism as the National Religion, widespread censorship of internet accesses, the crisis among Thai intelligentsia, Thai-style democracy, the “Yellow Fever”, and the past, present and future of the monarchy, and more.
Here’s a topic for you academics to consider:
– Does the King pay lip service to the Thai people, or the Thai people pay lip sevice to the King?
More on the 2008 Thai Studies conference
If somsak brave/dare enough, why don’t he present his critical paper esp his critical point to the monarchy in this conference …
Offending the mainstream
JFL:
On your first post: What that lady meant to say is that the Islamistic militants kill both Muslims and Buddhists (that’s well known and is reported about daily in the papers), not that the Muslims normally were killed by state authorities. And she complains about what she perceives as unequal distribution of attention. Thus there is no inconsistency.
On Nidhi: I read his piece a while ago. I found some elements quite interesting, especially references to religious motives. However, I tend to agree with a friend of mine who has been doing field research in Pattani. He asserts that Nidhi is rather naive. That same friend wrote about the “unorderly border region” which enabled a number of shadowy elements, amongst them police and soldiers, but also smugglers, drug traders, etc., to go about their business more easily than in other parts of the country. However, that does decidedly not mean that police, military or bureaucrats, for that matter, serving in other parts of the country are clean.
Thanks for making the effort of identifying and reading additional sources of information on the south.
More on the 2008 Thai Studies conference
How are a couple of papers at conference really going to change anything?
Conference attending? A slight variation on the “research trip” funded with pot of cash received to do research which, in the end, no one does. How many of those meaningless reports have I picked up off the shelves, only to put them back immediately.
The Thais who “really” do research who I know, live and breathe their subject matter, but e.g. thei linguistic research was dismissed by the administration for not generating money for research trips. A big joke.
The university I worked at got a grant from the Keenan Institute for an international collaborative project to get people started doing research. What did most Thai Ajaans do? Research? No, they assumed this haute air of **supervising the research** of the visitors from other SEAsian countries who received grants to do research. I presented a paper, even though I had already left after being thoroughly ripped off, cheated, and lied to, like countless other foreigners in the education sector.
The real problem is that there are bad people doing bad things everyday and only making a show of honourable behaviour to their King. (immigration police who slept with the Karen children/workers at a guesthouse near Mae Sot I was staying at before going upriver to Manerplaw was perhaps the first nauseating instance, I can remember) IMHO the institution of kingship is not the problem, the problem is selfish people using the institution of kingship for their own selfish goals, and also just plain laziness. Observations from a grunt working on the front lines, IMHO where more people need to be if they want to change things.
Offending the mainstream
Srithanonchai :
This one incident does not prove that all of the Thai military in South Thailand are corrupt, but it does show that some of them are. Certainly double dealing such as this helps to sow the seeds of resentment of the Central authorities pretty deeply.
Army anti-narcotics agent held after deadly shootout
These last two, topical posts were predeeded by a posting about a paper by Nidhi Aeusrivongse, ‘ Understanding the Situation in the South as a “Millenarian Revolt” ‘, which I found over-the-wire, at your urging.
That posting doesn’t seem to have been accepted, although it is now refused when I try to resubmit it on the grounds that it’s already been submitted.
I think that article is both very soundly reasoned and presented and am interested to hear what your opinion of it is.
Offending the mainstream
Srithanonchai :
You previous statement :
seems to be contradicted in the course of The Nation’s on the 14 April bombing in Yala that left 11 dead :
The Nation does not contradict her assertion. I know that reportorial standards world wide are not what we might wish, but I can’t imagine The Nation printing that if it were patently untrue.