Comments

I just hope that in the new year we don’t get the tired and boring comments on how great the illegal military junta in Thailand is and how neccessary these criminals took over the country.
See you next year as long as I am free.

@CBeale – ‘Chulalongkorn a democrat?” Where is the evidence for such a claim? Can you recall, towards the beginning of his reign in the early 1880s, when he nixed a modest proposal to establish a constitutional monarchy? Absolutism, not democracy, was Chula’s bag. A Thai Lincoln! You jest.

As for ‘freeing’ Siam’s slaves – sure, that’s an important component to the official nationalist narrative, if you happen to subscribe to that sort of two-dimensional palaver. The idea of the sagacious monarch plays well with the punters and those in thrall of the ‘Great Man’ approach to history. Chulalongkorn, together with a number of his brothers, was certainly an extraordinary figure although the ‘abolition; of slavery was more to do with freeing up Thai labour to meet new economic needs and conditions as Siam was incorporated within the broader capitalist global order than a demonstration by the monarch of selfless compassion towards his fellow Siamese.

Furthermore your admiration, if that’s the correct word, for R5 as a ‘federalist’ seems rather odd given your propensity for banging on about ‘1sarn separatism’. Events, especially over the last decade (eg. the ‘red’ and ‘yellow’ divide), can, in large measure be seen as a form of ‘blowback’ from the process of internal colonisation launched under that ‘great’ clandestine federalist Chulalongkorn – bringing the Lao regions of the north and northeast under the control of Bangkok as the country’s borders were formally drawn up with the British and French.

Of course then there is another key element of the standard nationalist line – Chulalongkorn et. al outwitting the colonialists by playing the British off against the French and maintaining Siamese independence in contrast to their hapless neighbours. Great story. Reads better than the more complex notion of a ‘buffer state’. The French had their hands full and British more or less got what they wanted without the need for more direct intervention; for a number of decades into the1930s various British economic advisors virtually determined Siam’s economic policy with respect to the wider world (this relates to the ‘semi-colony’ thesis).

This sort of ‘hands off approach’ was foreshadowed by Lord Palmerston following the Bowring Treaty in the mid-nineteenth century when he dismissed the idea of direct British control over Siam saying something like – ‘! don’t need to own all the pubs along the road to enjoy drinking in them.’

Simply said, CPM wanted to wreck havoc on society thru continuous labour strikes, student protests and industrial actions. On the other hand, they had bomb squads and assassinations teams targeting policemen. Some would have advocated that the normal course of law take place to arrest and charge these people only with sufficient evidence.

But Singapore is not Ulster. Singapore is as small a European town. Continuous havoc will destroy this island state making it hard to rebuild what has been achieved. Some might not agree with detention without trial but it has served Singapore well, although we cannot take for granted that this law will forever be applicable.

Especially this politician. Meet Malaysia’s newest National Socialist, an ex-Mufti in the fine traditions of Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini. All that is missing is the brown shirt and the Malay einsatzgruppen:

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/ex-perlis-mufti-posts-hitler-video-accuses-us-of-manipulating-history#sthash.1YUV5oC9.dpuf

notdisappionted, you never answered my question. Are you too scared to? I know you are on here all the time by the rate you post.

Its a simple ‘yes or no’ question:

Do you believe the King should be allowed to be criticized, even if the criticism is based on truth?

It’s great Neptunian ! The Malay Jihadists and their supporters in Government aren’t seditious, but everyone else is. You have to love Malaysian “justice”. That Prime Minister Najib is terrified of Kassim Ahmad, is obviously not because the 81-year old intellectual is a physical threat, it is because his novel and creative ideas threaten all the material perquisites and corrupt ideologies upon which the Prime Minister and his semi-fascist cohorts rely on to maintain power.
Thus, Kassim Ahmad is the “worst” offender, a la Franz Kafka, the man who dares to point out the cracks in the wall built by a system that only sees a seamless wall, and does not realize that wall may fall on the whole nation.
Speech in Malaysia is VERY expensive,
these days, if you are at the short end of the stick.

Mr Gafoor is correct. Unless anyone on NM actually dealt with Chin Peng or Lai Tek, who managed to murder several innocent Malayans, while selling out to anyone, willing to pay him enough, then you have no conception of the brutality of the CPM and its cohorts. Whether in Singapore or in the jungles of Malaysia, the CPM and its local supporters deserve no praise, and the same naive revisionist academic embellishment of the achievements of the Left is no different than the same blind allegiance that Chin Peng relied on to do Mao Zedong’s bidding in Singapore and Malaya, as a whole.

“Attempts by Dr Poh and revisionists to recast the struggle and deny its roots in the communist strategy for domination including the use of violence, are misleading and disingenuous. Their disregard of the facts is disrespectful to the many Singaporeans who chose a non-communist path at great risk to themselves, and contributed to the success of modern Singapore”.

I could not agree more with this statement by Mr Gafoor and I saw more than my share of dead bodies in Malaya, to know that Mr Gafoor is both accurate, and deserving of a much wider audience, that would wish to deny historical reality in favor of ideological phantasmagoria.

Pandit, having been 18 years as a monk doesn’t mean what you said is true. I have taught at a monk university in Thailand. I am buddhist too. it is clear that Buddhism in Thailand involves politics. Even in the area of the religious is so much concerned with politics. How the high rank of the monk is appointed.

In Malaysia, a non-Democracy, it is even more imperative that every citizen challenge politicians and their government, whether they do so through the “ballot box”, writing, journalism, art, or street protest. Given the Malaysian Government’s desire to dominate the conversation, and exclude any views it deems “unacceptable”, the greater the diversity of means of challenging the Government, the better the likelihood for a Malaysia, where citizens can be freely heard. At the present moment, they are not.

In a democracy, it is duty of every citizen to challenge the politicians. In doing so, everybody is a politician.