“Junta’s attempt to ‘return forest’ hurts the poor”
“On 23 September, three Pakayaw Karen families were left destitute after their farmland in Mae Ngao National Park in the northern province of Mae Hong Son, which they claimed to use for subsistence farming, was reclaimed by officials from the Royal Forest Department (RFD). Prior to their eviction, these Karen families had been ordered by the RFD to move down from their traditional homes up on the mountains to the river basin only to be evicted again several years later.”
I’m not a big supporter of special economic zones, but The Myanmar International Terminals Thilawa are running under capacity and have the required depth for most of the ships likely to dock in Myanmar. It’s therefore an excellent location for the future expansion of the city’s industry.
I doubt the Nation and Bangkok Post are top of the heap for Embassy referrals back to home HQs. More likely more secretive referrals to Thai language press go back with implicit and explicit interpretations. These are far more valuable than English as published.
You might like to make a comparison with the Inscription of Manukaya, still ideologically and symbolically important in Bali for certain villages. According to Schoenfelder (2004:400):
“The inscription of Manukaya is and has been a used object, a product and playing piece, in ideological campaigns used in political maneuvering. Made to aggrandize the accomplishments of a king a millenium ago, the stone had changed purpose and changed master by the time the Dutch conquered the southern Balinese principalities in the first decade of the twentieth century. It was, by then, incorporated into the ritual paraphernalia supporting the social cohesion of a group of villages concerned with maintaining autonomy in internal matters.”
The parallels between the two stones seem remarkable, except the clear difference between which group/s has now co-opted the stone for their particular ideological purposes. It is interesting to note the following broader statement in the conclusion (p.410):
For Southeast Asia, the apparently self-conscious planning of artworks and monuments hints that design was controlled by small elite classes that reorganized Indian ideas ‘to fit local notions’ (Brown 1994:7). More broadly, Indianization featured elites borrowing ‘packages’ from India, then making modifications to redirect the ‘points’ to realign them with local beliefs and priorities. The deification of Indonesian Classic Period kings is one of many phenomena shaped by interaction between imported Indian concepts and indigenous knowledge traditions – in this case, Indian funerary rites and indigneous ancestor worship (Soekmono 1971:16; Stutterheim 1931, 1935: xiii, 21-5). In Bali, the long-term dynamic of mutual borrowing between courts and villages, done in the service of ideological campaigns, contributed to a further development: traits of Indian Hinduism moved beyond priests and princes to become inextricably blended into the practices of common farmers.”
Ref: Schoenfelder, J. W. (2004). “New dramas for the theatre state: the shifting roles of ideological power sources in Balinese polities.” World Archaeology 36(3): 399 – 415
Pope Francis is the most liberal Pope in Vatican history. All mainstream Anglian, Protestant Church are far more liberal now than before. Hindu-Muslim violence is sporadic, as is Buddhist-Muslim violence, despite the hype surrounding U Wirathu
and the Bengali Rohingya. I have yet to see, anyone other than a Muslim, rape Yazidi girls, enslave and enforce conversion to Islam, behead or hack other people’s heads off, attack Parliament buildings, gloat about genocide of non-Muslims, and create havoc for the whole world. It is a typical deflection and scapegoat, among many Muslims to refer to what Jews and Christians did 1000 years ago. The patent reality is that only Muslims DIDN’T stop stoning women, beheading people, whipping people, condoning Religious-based misogyny, and assaulting and killing totally innocent people en masse. NO, only Islam does that, and state otherwise, is a lie, fabrication and a delusion.
“Two Burmese men accused of murdering a pair of young British tourists in Thailand only confessed to the killings after police threatened to douse them in petrol and set them alight, or dismember them and dump their bodies in a river, according to the father of one of the suspects.”
Unfortunately it is wildly inaccurate, as a legal proposition, to claim that (as Mr Russell does in the comment above) If a country has signed up to and ratified this law then it becomes automatically the law of that land.
Hai Plan B – that was the middle ages.. this is the 21st century. That’s the problem with Islam now.. it is still in the middle ages and the practitioners still have Middle ages mind set of mayhem and violence – That basically qualifies Islam as a religion of violence NOT peace.
Thanks Saowapha for this obituary of Gen Kong Le. He certainly was a charismatic little man, with an idealistic vision for Laos. Its a shame that his passing was not more widely known.
There was some “ethnic cleansing” done in Kyaukphru (that’s the way locals spell it!) done in order to accommodate Chinese settlers and junta cronies.
Half my ancestors are from the Arakan coast, so I know a few things that I am not allowed to say on New Mandala (my comments were censored), probably because these “Burma experts” know less.
Those who know don’t tell, those who tell don’t know.
Rangoon, where I was born, is still the commercial center of Burma. Moving the capital to Naypyidaw was a costly mistake. Than Shwe was just too neurotic about US cruise missiles.
Christianity has had, Crusades, the dark ages, Inquisition, Divine rights —- to WWI, arguably the most wasteful war, now stand to judge Islam as such!
I agree with Greg
Instead of having a superiority complex while the past is as shameful and violent, the approach to the question ought to be why has not Islam progressed with the Industrialization, and changes that drive all other religion to evolve accordingly?
Otherwise, this topic will be similarly lead to persecution of all Christians during the Roman Empire.
Or to put it more bluntly : what happens under the current regime, when a tourist is arrested for a LM complaint, filed for comments made outside Thailand ?
There are many pictures of people prostrating before general Prem, in exactly the same way as prostrating before the king. This was mocked in a lot of Redshirt publications.
The writer also are blind about the facts that Chulalongkorn University, parts of its personnel, is the main and vital factor to destroy Democracy in Thailand, not police force.
Chulalongkorn cooperated and conspired with the anti-democracy gang hand-in-hand during demonstration.
Since this thread has been revived by Keith, I thought it might be relevant to consider what Karl Wittfogel had to say about prostration in his 1957 work, “Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power”. He considered it a typical characteristic of hydraulic states, as the following passage indicates:
“Education teaches man to obey without question, when despotic authority so demands. It also teaches him to perform gestures of reverence when the symbol rather than the submissive action is required. True, all cultures have ways of demonstrating respect; and many gestures indicate subordination. But no symbol has expressed total submission as strikingly, and none so consistently accompanied the spread of agrarian despotism, as has prostration.
Total submission is ceremonially demonstrated whenever a subject of a hydraulic state approaches his ruler or some other representative of authority. The inferior man, aware that his master’s wrath may destroy him, seeks to secure his good will by humbling himself; and the holder of power is more than ready to enforce and standardize the symbols of humiliation.”
The question then becomes, can Thailand be conceived as a representative example of a hydraulic society or not? Wittfogel thought it might be, back in its pre-modern form as Siam, but didn’t pay it much attention in his book compared to other states he studied in far more detail.
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Forest evictions under Prayuth?
A new article in Prachatai.com/english asserts that the latest round of forest evictions by the military hurt the poor.
http://www.prachatai.com/english/node/4441
“Junta’s attempt to ‘return forest’ hurts the poor”
“On 23 September, three Pakayaw Karen families were left destitute after their farmland in Mae Ngao National Park in the northern province of Mae Hong Son, which they claimed to use for subsistence farming, was reclaimed by officials from the Royal Forest Department (RFD). Prior to their eviction, these Karen families had been ordered by the RFD to move down from their traditional homes up on the mountains to the river basin only to be evicted again several years later.”
From Yudhoyono to Jokowi: Can Indonesia keep rising?
[…] Amitav Acharya recently wrote in New Mandala, there are ‘growing challenges to Indonesia’s foreign policy and international […]
Myanmar Special Economic Zones, Part III
This is a really great piece.
I’m not a big supporter of special economic zones, but The Myanmar International Terminals Thilawa are running under capacity and have the required depth for most of the ships likely to dock in Myanmar. It’s therefore an excellent location for the future expansion of the city’s industry.
Andrew Marshall’s Thai Story
I doubt the Nation and Bangkok Post are top of the heap for Embassy referrals back to home HQs. More likely more secretive referrals to Thai language press go back with implicit and explicit interpretations. These are far more valuable than English as published.
Another view of the Ramkhamhaeng inscription
You might like to make a comparison with the Inscription of Manukaya, still ideologically and symbolically important in Bali for certain villages. According to Schoenfelder (2004:400):
“The inscription of Manukaya is and has been a used object, a product and playing piece, in ideological campaigns used in political maneuvering. Made to aggrandize the accomplishments of a king a millenium ago, the stone had changed purpose and changed master by the time the Dutch conquered the southern Balinese principalities in the first decade of the twentieth century. It was, by then, incorporated into the ritual paraphernalia supporting the social cohesion of a group of villages concerned with maintaining autonomy in internal matters.”
The parallels between the two stones seem remarkable, except the clear difference between which group/s has now co-opted the stone for their particular ideological purposes. It is interesting to note the following broader statement in the conclusion (p.410):
For Southeast Asia, the apparently self-conscious planning of artworks and monuments hints that design was controlled by small elite classes that reorganized Indian ideas ‘to fit local notions’ (Brown 1994:7). More broadly, Indianization featured elites borrowing ‘packages’ from India, then making modifications to redirect the ‘points’ to realign them with local beliefs and priorities. The deification of Indonesian Classic Period kings is one of many phenomena shaped by interaction between imported Indian concepts and indigenous knowledge traditions – in this case, Indian funerary rites and indigneous ancestor worship (Soekmono 1971:16; Stutterheim 1931, 1935: xiii, 21-5). In Bali, the long-term dynamic of mutual borrowing between courts and villages, done in the service of ideological campaigns, contributed to a further development: traits of Indian Hinduism moved beyond priests and princes to become inextricably blended into the practices of common farmers.”
Ref: Schoenfelder, J. W. (2004). “New dramas for the theatre state: the shifting roles of ideological power sources in Balinese polities.” World Archaeology 36(3): 399 – 415
Myanmar Special Economic Zones, Part II
tocharian
Please define “ethnic cleansing” as you have described here.
Reminding yourself that why there is still a healthy segment of “ethnically cleansed’ Yakhine Muslim within Kyaukphyu.
Forced displacement and such are suffered by all under this regime. Kyaukphyu more so than other none coveted area.
Ethnic Cleansing is a serious descriptive term abused by HR organization that now a day it mean almost NOTHING.
Islam, a religion of peace
Plan B,
Pope Francis is the most liberal Pope in Vatican history. All mainstream Anglian, Protestant Church are far more liberal now than before. Hindu-Muslim violence is sporadic, as is Buddhist-Muslim violence, despite the hype surrounding U Wirathu
and the Bengali Rohingya. I have yet to see, anyone other than a Muslim, rape Yazidi girls, enslave and enforce conversion to Islam, behead or hack other people’s heads off, attack Parliament buildings, gloat about genocide of non-Muslims, and create havoc for the whole world. It is a typical deflection and scapegoat, among many Muslims to refer to what Jews and Christians did 1000 years ago. The patent reality is that only Muslims DIDN’T stop stoning women, beheading people, whipping people, condoning Religious-based misogyny, and assaulting and killing totally innocent people en masse. NO, only Islam does that, and state otherwise, is a lie, fabrication and a delusion.
Thai Police: Intent to reform?
“Two Burmese men accused of murdering a pair of young British tourists in Thailand only confessed to the killings after police threatened to douse them in petrol and set them alight, or dismember them and dump their bodies in a river, according to the father of one of the suspects.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/24/burmese-men-koh-tao-murders-confessed-death-threats-thai-police-torture-claims
The Embassy: A review
Unfortunately it is wildly inaccurate, as a legal proposition, to claim that (as Mr Russell does in the comment above) If a country has signed up to and ratified this law then it becomes automatically the law of that land.
Islam, a religion of peace
Hai Plan B – that was the middle ages.. this is the 21st century. That’s the problem with Islam now.. it is still in the middle ages and the practitioners still have Middle ages mind set of mayhem and violence – That basically qualifies Islam as a religion of violence NOT peace.
The colonel from Savannakhet
Thanks Saowapha for this obituary of Gen Kong Le. He certainly was a charismatic little man, with an idealistic vision for Laos. Its a shame that his passing was not more widely known.
Myanmar Special Economic Zones, Part II
There was some “ethnic cleansing” done in Kyaukphru (that’s the way locals spell it!) done in order to accommodate Chinese settlers and junta cronies.
Half my ancestors are from the Arakan coast, so I know a few things that I am not allowed to say on New Mandala (my comments were censored), probably because these “Burma experts” know less.
Those who know don’t tell, those who tell don’t know.
Myanmar Special Economic Zones, Part III
Rangoon, where I was born, is still the commercial center of Burma. Moving the capital to Naypyidaw was a costly mistake. Than Shwe was just too neurotic about US cruise missiles.
Myanmar Special Economic Zones, Part III
The spellings of Kyaukphyu is wrong.
Why are my comments censored?
Islam, a religion of peace
Christianity has had, Crusades, the dark ages, Inquisition, Divine rights —- to WWI, arguably the most wasteful war, now stand to judge Islam as such!
I agree with Greg
Instead of having a superiority complex while the past is as shameful and violent, the approach to the question ought to be why has not Islam progressed with the Industrialization, and changes that drive all other religion to evolve accordingly?
Otherwise, this topic will be similarly lead to persecution of all Christians during the Roman Empire.
Myanmar Special Economic Zones, Part I
Did the author raise any ‘objections’ when Myanmar Citizenry was synonymously associated with the present regime.
The Dawei project and many other more that are ongoing, SEZ, has root in the ‘throw away the key’ approach the west has pursued.
Remember RTP, Axis of evil, Nuclear Myanmar, N Korean lackey?
The last 2 possibilities scared the bejesus out of the west, giving then SG Than Shwe ” Steps to DD” the upper hand.
This is the reverberating result of manifesting “DD” appear to be ‘DP” to the Citizenry by the Chinese and this regime.
The Embassy: A review
Or to put it more bluntly : what happens under the current regime, when a tourist is arrested for a LM complaint, filed for comments made outside Thailand ?
Chulalongkorn abolished prostration
There are many pictures of people prostrating before general Prem, in exactly the same way as prostrating before the king. This was mocked in a lot of Redshirt publications.
Thai Police: Intent to reform?
The writer also are blind about the facts that Chulalongkorn University, parts of its personnel, is the main and vital factor to destroy Democracy in Thailand, not police force.
Chulalongkorn cooperated and conspired with the anti-democracy gang hand-in-hand during demonstration.
How comes that Khemkhong lied to the reader.
Chulalongkorn abolished prostration
Since this thread has been revived by Keith, I thought it might be relevant to consider what Karl Wittfogel had to say about prostration in his 1957 work, “Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power”. He considered it a typical characteristic of hydraulic states, as the following passage indicates:
“Education teaches man to obey without question, when despotic authority so demands. It also teaches him to perform gestures of reverence when the symbol rather than the submissive action is required. True, all cultures have ways of demonstrating respect; and many gestures indicate subordination. But no symbol has expressed total submission as strikingly, and none so consistently accompanied the spread of agrarian despotism, as has prostration.
Total submission is ceremonially demonstrated whenever a subject of a hydraulic state approaches his ruler or some other representative of authority. The inferior man, aware that his master’s wrath may destroy him, seeks to secure his good will by humbling himself; and the holder of power is more than ready to enforce and standardize the symbols of humiliation.”
The question then becomes, can Thailand be conceived as a representative example of a hydraulic society or not? Wittfogel thought it might be, back in its pre-modern form as Siam, but didn’t pay it much attention in his book compared to other states he studied in far more detail.