All my, as you aptly put it, rants were all directed at Thaksin … who is the root (in my opinion the Thaksin danger to Thailand could never be underestimated or Thailand could be ruined ala Philippines/Marcos)… and it perplexes me that THAT (my venom directed at Thaksin) could vex you, and the many Red symphatizers here, so. If you could explain to me why … this blind very defensive adoration of Thaksin by the Reds … that would be enlightening.
Another thing that perplexes me to an equal degree is the palpable venom being directed at the Thai monarchy by the Red Shirts leaders. I have been following New Mandala articles about the Thai monarchy from the NM’s onset, and, there’s nothing deliberately anti-Isan nor anti-poor that could be ascribed to HMK Bhumibhol nor had the Thai monarchy manifested any malice towards your (Isan) ilk (not meaning to offend nor demean nor differentiate by use of this word ilk). What exactly are the Red Shirts gripes against the Thai monarchy that would provoke such incendiary declaration from Red leaders Arisman/Nattawut urging their followers “to march with their petrol-filled plastic bottles to Sririraj Hospital (where HMK was convaslescing)” during Year2010 very violent lunatic anarchic Red protests?
And I apologize for being deliberately provocative and impatiently offensive in my many NM posters. As for my statement that I merely mimic Red leaders/Peau Thai Party parliamentarians oratory style, that’s Vichai N pure b/s.
I’ve found most of Grant Evans’ analysis of Thailand in recent years to be incredibly weak, particularly his uncomprehending and dismissive comments on The King Never Smiles (did he even bother to read the book at all?) and his inexplicably admiring review of King Bhumibol Adulyadej: A Life’s Work which he claimed was written soberly and without an “adulatory tone”, adding that it “attempts to deal frankly with the monarchy’s critics and to speak openly about difficult issues” (again, did he bother to read it?). He entered full-blown delusional territory with his claim that KBAALW is “it is a remarkable feat, and hopefully a model to be emulated by future ‘official’ histories – of the Thai army, for example”. He has deliberated obfuscated the truth about events like the death of King Ananda Mahidol in 1946 when surely (if he has any decent sources at all) he must know what really happened, and he has always seemed perfectly happy writing cliches about the saintliness of King Bhumibol, but he now accuses Andrew Walker of writing “apologetics for Thaksin”. I have plenty of differences with Andrew but that is a total misrepresentation of his views.
If Grant Evans is finding the current crisis difficult to comprehend, perhaps it is because the pro-monarchy propaganda he has been so enthusiastically regurgitating in recent years is totally inadequate to the task of understanding what is going on. His paradigm was always wrong, and now we are watching it unravel.
I liked PPT’s take on this. In a nutshell, this policeman should be congratulated for a statement like this while Abhisit, Suthep and the military have repeatedly lied since 2010. They should be condemned.
I’m not sure what’s different now from, say, 2005 or 2008. There’s much analysis of the dissatisfaction then, and little seems to have changed. The motivations, groups involved, numbers, tactics, etc. seem pretty much congruent with earlier efforts.
What interests me is the claim that all that is said about middle classes is cliche. I’d be interested to know why the correspondent would discount the role of those who populate this class in Bangkok.
Kamnan Thep? He may be your Kamnan, Vichai, but didn’t both the Tambon Council and Tambon Administrative Authority just recently denounce Suthep as a fake Kamnan?
I’m not going to respond to your hectoring and ignorant questions and comments here when you can’t even be bothered to read my article, in which all these issues are discussed in detail. If you want to know my views, read р╕Бр╕ер╕╡р╕вр╕╕р╕Д.
You seem to be fighting a lone battle here to explain the political verities to people who don’t seem to want to listen, and I wonder why that is, Khun Vichai?
Is what happened when the mini-Yugoslavia “Empire” collapsed and disintegrated along ethnic/linguistic fault lines something that could happen to the Thailand “mini-internal-Empire”?
1. Lanna(or Lanna with Isan)
2. Isan/NE/Chonburi/Eastern Seaboard/Pattaya/Jomtien/NE half of BKK
3. The Khmer-speaking area along the Cambodia border around Surin, Sisaket, Buri Ram (Newin’s fiefdom)
4. The 3 southern ethnic Malay provinces/Pattani, and Central/Southern Thailand?
5. The Southeast/Thai-Chinese/Central Thai area of of BKK, some of Central Thailand and Southern Thailand except for Pattani
And if this were to happen, would the violence/tragedy level reach the very high level experienced in Yugoslavia?
Or would it be more negotiated like the present possible secession of Scotland from UK?
How would Suvarnabhumi with its passenger, cargo and surrounding infrastructure as well as the container port Laem Chanbaeng be divided up.
Where exactly in Bangkok could a line be drawn?
What would happen in the areas of Bangkok and Chonburi where ethnic populations are very intermingled? Would it end up as horribly as the partition of India into Pakistan and India?
What about Chantaburi and Trat/Ko Chang which would be cut of from Central Thailand if Chonburi becomes part of Isan/NE (due to the very heavy Isan population there now working in the Eastern Seaboard, Laem Chabaeng and Pattaya/Jomtien).
What happens to the National Treasury Reserves, the 50 billion of assets in the CPB, the military equipment and infrastructure and other “National Assets”?
Forbes estimated Thaksin’s wealth to $1.2 Billion in 2001. Bt15 B may be his wealth after transferring Shin Corp shares to other family members. I don’t know.
Bt76 B ($1.8 B at the time) was the amount Temasek paid Thaksin for his share in Shin Corp in 2006. After AEC froze his bank accounts, his wealth was estimated to $300 million. That may be the Bt20 B, referred to by AEC in The Nation article, withdrawn before the freeze.
Since fortunes turn north, the Bangkok elites and Suthep are afraid of what to come after the Isaan and Lanna people have been made to be aware of their needs and desires. The people now are demanding the very same things of what the rest of the Thais have so long been enjoying: better education, better opportunities for a job, better infrastructure, and equal representation in government, etc. The idea of democracy at the local/village level may have been influenced by contact with Westerners through marriage, NGOs, missionaries, and movements of tourists from Japan, S. Korea, the US, and Europe. It is simply the effect of globalization. The wealthy people of Thailand and the supposed “educated people”are afraid of change. They are fearful of the increasing economic power of the N/NE people, possibly out of jealousy or may be of the prophecy made long ago about Thailand’s demise. To prevent change from happening is simply ludicrous. I saw Suthep attending to the Buddhist’s prayer at the temple. Mr. Suthep and probably the majority of Thais know not the Buddha’s teaching of “impermanence.” They know not what the Buddha’s definition of a “noble person” is. For an average, supposed, “educated” Thais, noble person is a person with lot of wealth, lot of barami (divine blessing), all the outward appearance of the success and beauty: simply put, shallow and superficial characteristics of nobleness. And don’t forget, one must kowtow to, too. What happening in Thailand at present is about one group of Thai who does not want to share prosperity and is afraid of losing power and influence.
How much of economic growth in Northeast Thailand is attributable to growing transportation links with China via Laos?
Historically the southern regions benefitted from their proximity to seaports and the northeast suffered because it had no ports, only communist neighbors and for a long time not even a bridge to cross the river. That’s been changing and will continue to change. Just recently they broke ground in Laos on a rail line to connect Savannakahet to Lao Bao in Vietnam. Northeast Thailand would benefit as much or more than Laos from connections like this.
So one would expect that because you’re starting from a much lower base and finally getting transportation links to growing economies, particularly China, that growth in the northeast region will outpace growth in the south. With or without Thaksin…
Of course Police General Adul was not apologizing for ‘imaginary’ police misdeeds Ron Torrence. Police General Adul was apologizing for those rogue riot policemen smashing vehicles and the rogue police-men-in-black he confirmed were on top of the Labor Ministry roofs firing their weapons at the protesters … and maybe the hapless traffic policemen-pretending-to-be-riot-control-officers below too.
Men-in-Black are mercenary rogue police units, and, mercenary rogue army men, who viciously attack any or anyone against Thaksin period.
Those are the facts Ron Torrence. Rebut me please.
First, I find the idea funny that all people have to be satisfied with (the) government. Surely, there are always people who dislike the government (often, trust in a particular government decreases over time, with the record, I think, held by France’s Holland). But most people will wait until the next election to express their dissatisfaction rather than instigating a civilian coup d’état.
Second, I wonder who are those who are not Democrat voters but feel disenfranchised.
Third, more interesting than the number of people who follow Suthep (South is Democrat mobilization, BKK “middle class” does play a role, but one will have to contextualize this with 1973, 1992, 2006, 2008, and 2010–there is a lot of class, discourse, and personnel continuity here) is the puzzle why so many people feel that their political opinion is the absolute and objective truth, that the opinions of the majority do not count since they harm the nation, and that, therefore, they have the right to impose their particular opinion on everybody else, denying them their basic political rights.
It is abysmally sorrowful to read “The Bhikkhuni are heavily involved in family counseling, assisting in solving everyday problems that are facing people in society today, particularly in regards to child and family issues. They are enabling dhamma to be used as a means to live by for the benefit of the individual, family, and community.”
It appears our current “Greed based” society (happy, elated victims to Paul Mazur) has produced Everest of misery everywhere and counting, as being breathlessly promoted by all, necessitating invocation of this guy Buddha’s sayings and some select women folks to sooth our pain and soul.
Buddha being so immaculately dead, it does not matter what he (was it she?) said or intended or whatever regarding the legality or rule conformity of this proposal, may be to the disappointment of Sally. Just like in any interpretation of juristic minutiae, loudest voice with force to carry on will win.
Now to your call.
That Prophet of market-ism Paul Mazur also helpfully hinted that women, being 80% of consumers, were key to target. And of course to the/ their emotional side. Ed Barneys’ truism urges appealing to the emotion to make people do TOTALLY IRRATIONAL things. And his own work produced/ and is still producing legendary results in all fields, money, politics, power, etc.
To those end, feminism and such lofty ideals of “Equality” (something people talk about all the time just in case they might one day inadvertently believe themselves) and women being victimized all through those centuries are easiest clarion calls for women themselves and other who want to use them to do acts which may or may not make sense in reality.
So there dawns a movement. We see it with promotion of cigarette smoking “torches of freedom” happily causing lung cancer in liberated women (and only in liberated women) all over the world and still rising especially in “new territories” like Burma and indeed Thailand. Other famous feminism wave riders are cervical smear campaigns and breast screening*.
Another glaring use of feminism (gender equality, equal opportunity, etc, etc) and other righteous strides is of course for reduction of (or even legal absence of, not that people affected have any say) minimal wage worldwide (less now than at 80’s! Bravo!!!) by almost doubling the workforce. http://www.epi.org/publication/declining-federal-minimum-wage-inequality/
For sure whatever is the “wonderful technical advances” people crow nonstop about, majority people now have to work their butt off just to feed themselves with GM food as opposed to father alone earning for the comfortable family life of most people in those pathetic, backward old, old days (pre-iPAD/ pre-computer days).
So to come back to your question, yes, there is this feminism readily available and potent at your service and working very well here. Just as Gene Sharp (still alive) has eloquently demonstrated, evil-ly planned exploitation/ manipulation/ down right abuse does not require any appearance of physical or even verbal aggressiveness. (Suzanne Nossal and Joseph Nye’s Smart Power.)
Indeed some of these social developments/ manipulations are like giving kids fully loaded machine guns for Christmas. There are other areas with little consequence of meddling.But
the consequences here could be devastating even if unintended.
[* Cervical cancer killed 5.4/ 100000 women in 1976 in US reduced to 2.3 in 2010 with around 4000 women more out of 178,000,000 saved because of a trillion dollar spending for Cervical Screening Inc. Ltd. vocally and incessantly supported by the benefiting industry with ever virulent and articulate feminists. Meanwhile death by suicide in the United States is 12/1000,000.
80% of treated abnormal smears would not progress to lethal disease.
For another trillion dollar business of breast screening, that torture like super painful procedure is likely to find 122 “extra” cases of which mere 8 will progress to damage health of the woman. Again the benefiting industry is propped up well by the same crowd. http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa1206809
Of course mindless childish tit-for-tat prostate screening by equivalent man folks doubles the wastage.
That on the face of 48 million Americans (both man and women included in the count)with no health insurance (resulting in deaths?)]
I guess what’s new is that somebody in the Thai press openly acknowledged it. We all know that the dominant institutions have long sought to de-identify those regions as anything but regional Thai. But once they start using the term “Lao” we know that something is changing.
Perhaps it’s an acknowledgement that the Pan-Thai experiment has failed, that the Lao regions were never fully incorporated and will never be allowed to be incorporated because of the obvious threat to the power of what is now a minority population of Central Thai/Siamese. It’s a democracy and the people they conquered 200 years ago or whatever now have more votes than they do. Kinda sucks doesn’t it?
Hi Grant, we would welcome a post exploring some the reasons people are disillusioned with the government and support Suthep. I would love to be able to do some first hand research on that very issue, but am not in a position to. AW
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Another big weekend for Thailand
Apologies are not necessary K. Nomi.
All my, as you aptly put it, rants were all directed at Thaksin … who is the root (in my opinion the Thaksin danger to Thailand could never be underestimated or Thailand could be ruined ala Philippines/Marcos)… and it perplexes me that THAT (my venom directed at Thaksin) could vex you, and the many Red symphatizers here, so. If you could explain to me why … this blind very defensive adoration of Thaksin by the Reds … that would be enlightening.
Another thing that perplexes me to an equal degree is the palpable venom being directed at the Thai monarchy by the Red Shirts leaders. I have been following New Mandala articles about the Thai monarchy from the NM’s onset, and, there’s nothing deliberately anti-Isan nor anti-poor that could be ascribed to HMK Bhumibhol nor had the Thai monarchy manifested any malice towards your (Isan) ilk (not meaning to offend nor demean nor differentiate by use of this word ilk). What exactly are the Red Shirts gripes against the Thai monarchy that would provoke such incendiary declaration from Red leaders Arisman/Nattawut urging their followers “to march with their petrol-filled plastic bottles to Sririraj Hospital (where HMK was convaslescing)” during Year2010 very violent lunatic anarchic Red protests?
And I apologize for being deliberately provocative and impatiently offensive in my many NM posters. As for my statement that I merely mimic Red leaders/Peau Thai Party parliamentarians oratory style, that’s Vichai N pure b/s.
How bad is Thaksinomics?
I’ve found most of Grant Evans’ analysis of Thailand in recent years to be incredibly weak, particularly his uncomprehending and dismissive comments on The King Never Smiles (did he even bother to read the book at all?) and his inexplicably admiring review of King Bhumibol Adulyadej: A Life’s Work which he claimed was written soberly and without an “adulatory tone”, adding that it “attempts to deal frankly with the monarchy’s critics and to speak openly about difficult issues” (again, did he bother to read it?). He entered full-blown delusional territory with his claim that KBAALW is “it is a remarkable feat, and hopefully a model to be emulated by future ‘official’ histories – of the Thai army, for example”. He has deliberated obfuscated the truth about events like the death of King Ananda Mahidol in 1946 when surely (if he has any decent sources at all) he must know what really happened, and he has always seemed perfectly happy writing cliches about the saintliness of King Bhumibol, but he now accuses Andrew Walker of writing “apologetics for Thaksin”. I have plenty of differences with Andrew but that is a total misrepresentation of his views.
If Grant Evans is finding the current crisis difficult to comprehend, perhaps it is because the pro-monarchy propaganda he has been so enthusiastically regurgitating in recent years is totally inadequate to the task of understanding what is going on. His paradigm was always wrong, and now we are watching it unravel.
How bad is Thaksinomics?
re: #4. the phrase “and Central/Southern Thailand” is a typo/error and should be deleted as Central/Southern Thailand part of #5.
Storming the DSI building
I liked PPT’s take on this. In a nutshell, this policeman should be congratulated for a statement like this while Abhisit, Suthep and the military have repeatedly lied since 2010. They should be condemned.
How bad is Thaksinomics?
I’m not sure what’s different now from, say, 2005 or 2008. There’s much analysis of the dissatisfaction then, and little seems to have changed. The motivations, groups involved, numbers, tactics, etc. seem pretty much congruent with earlier efforts.
What interests me is the claim that all that is said about middle classes is cliche. I’d be interested to know why the correspondent would discount the role of those who populate this class in Bangkok.
Storming the DSI building
Kamnan Thep? He may be your Kamnan, Vichai, but didn’t both the Tambon Council and Tambon Administrative Authority just recently denounce Suthep as a fake Kamnan?
How to understand Thailand’s conflict
boon
I’m not going to respond to your hectoring and ignorant questions and comments here when you can’t even be bothered to read my article, in which all these issues are discussed in detail. If you want to know my views, read р╕Бр╕ер╕╡р╕вр╕╕р╕Д.
Best wishes
Another big weekend for Thailand
You seem to be fighting a lone battle here to explain the political verities to people who don’t seem to want to listen, and I wonder why that is, Khun Vichai?
How bad is Thaksinomics?
A recent poll suggest that so many people follow Suthep mainly because they hate Thaksin.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/117604/asia-foundation-survey-part-2-what-do-the-protesters-want/
Isn’t it then appropriate to debate whether this hate is based or real perceived issues?
How bad is Thaksinomics?
Is what happened when the mini-Yugoslavia “Empire” collapsed and disintegrated along ethnic/linguistic fault lines something that could happen to the Thailand “mini-internal-Empire”?
1. Lanna(or Lanna with Isan)
2. Isan/NE/Chonburi/Eastern Seaboard/Pattaya/Jomtien/NE half of BKK
3. The Khmer-speaking area along the Cambodia border around Surin, Sisaket, Buri Ram (Newin’s fiefdom)
4. The 3 southern ethnic Malay provinces/Pattani, and Central/Southern Thailand?
5. The Southeast/Thai-Chinese/Central Thai area of of BKK, some of Central Thailand and Southern Thailand except for Pattani
And if this were to happen, would the violence/tragedy level reach the very high level experienced in Yugoslavia?
Or would it be more negotiated like the present possible secession of Scotland from UK?
How would Suvarnabhumi with its passenger, cargo and surrounding infrastructure as well as the container port Laem Chanbaeng be divided up.
Where exactly in Bangkok could a line be drawn?
What would happen in the areas of Bangkok and Chonburi where ethnic populations are very intermingled? Would it end up as horribly as the partition of India into Pakistan and India?
What about Chantaburi and Trat/Ko Chang which would be cut of from Central Thailand if Chonburi becomes part of Isan/NE (due to the very heavy Isan population there now working in the Eastern Seaboard, Laem Chabaeng and Pattaya/Jomtien).
What happens to the National Treasury Reserves, the 50 billion of assets in the CPB, the military equipment and infrastructure and other “National Assets”?
How bad is Thaksinomics?
Forbes estimated Thaksin’s wealth to $1.2 Billion in 2001. Bt15 B may be his wealth after transferring Shin Corp shares to other family members. I don’t know.
Bt76 B ($1.8 B at the time) was the amount Temasek paid Thaksin for his share in Shin Corp in 2006. After AEC froze his bank accounts, his wealth was estimated to $300 million. That may be the Bt20 B, referred to by AEC in The Nation article, withdrawn before the freeze.
http://www.forbes.com/profile/thaksin-shinawatra/
How bad is Thaksinomics?
Since fortunes turn north, the Bangkok elites and Suthep are afraid of what to come after the Isaan and Lanna people have been made to be aware of their needs and desires. The people now are demanding the very same things of what the rest of the Thais have so long been enjoying: better education, better opportunities for a job, better infrastructure, and equal representation in government, etc. The idea of democracy at the local/village level may have been influenced by contact with Westerners through marriage, NGOs, missionaries, and movements of tourists from Japan, S. Korea, the US, and Europe. It is simply the effect of globalization. The wealthy people of Thailand and the supposed “educated people”are afraid of change. They are fearful of the increasing economic power of the N/NE people, possibly out of jealousy or may be of the prophecy made long ago about Thailand’s demise. To prevent change from happening is simply ludicrous. I saw Suthep attending to the Buddhist’s prayer at the temple. Mr. Suthep and probably the majority of Thais know not the Buddha’s teaching of “impermanence.” They know not what the Buddha’s definition of a “noble person” is. For an average, supposed, “educated” Thais, noble person is a person with lot of wealth, lot of barami (divine blessing), all the outward appearance of the success and beauty: simply put, shallow and superficial characteristics of nobleness. And don’t forget, one must kowtow to, too. What happening in Thailand at present is about one group of Thai who does not want to share prosperity and is afraid of losing power and influence.
How bad is Thaksinomics?
How much of economic growth in Northeast Thailand is attributable to growing transportation links with China via Laos?
Historically the southern regions benefitted from their proximity to seaports and the northeast suffered because it had no ports, only communist neighbors and for a long time not even a bridge to cross the river. That’s been changing and will continue to change. Just recently they broke ground in Laos on a rail line to connect Savannakahet to Lao Bao in Vietnam. Northeast Thailand would benefit as much or more than Laos from connections like this.
So one would expect that because you’re starting from a much lower base and finally getting transportation links to growing economies, particularly China, that growth in the northeast region will outpace growth in the south. With or without Thaksin…
Storming the DSI building
Of course Police General Adul was not apologizing for ‘imaginary’ police misdeeds Ron Torrence. Police General Adul was apologizing for those rogue riot policemen smashing vehicles and the rogue police-men-in-black he confirmed were on top of the Labor Ministry roofs firing their weapons at the protesters … and maybe the hapless traffic policemen-pretending-to-be-riot-control-officers below too.
Men-in-Black are mercenary rogue police units, and, mercenary rogue army men, who viciously attack any or anyone against Thaksin period.
Those are the facts Ron Torrence. Rebut me please.
How bad is Thaksinomics?
First, I find the idea funny that all people have to be satisfied with (the) government. Surely, there are always people who dislike the government (often, trust in a particular government decreases over time, with the record, I think, held by France’s Holland). But most people will wait until the next election to express their dissatisfaction rather than instigating a civilian coup d’état.
Second, I wonder who are those who are not Democrat voters but feel disenfranchised.
Third, more interesting than the number of people who follow Suthep (South is Democrat mobilization, BKK “middle class” does play a role, but one will have to contextualize this with 1973, 1992, 2006, 2008, and 2010–there is a lot of class, discourse, and personnel continuity here) is the puzzle why so many people feel that their political opinion is the absolute and objective truth, that the opinions of the majority do not count since they harm the nation, and that, therefore, they have the right to impose their particular opinion on everybody else, denying them their basic political rights.
Time for a bhikkhuni sangha?
2 missing reference for the appendage of comment#6.1
http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/cervix.html
http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7395/901.pdf%2Bhtml
Time for a bhikkhuni sangha?
Really John G.
Here is a long winded version.
It is abysmally sorrowful to read “The Bhikkhuni are heavily involved in family counseling, assisting in solving everyday problems that are facing people in society today, particularly in regards to child and family issues. They are enabling dhamma to be used as a means to live by for the benefit of the individual, family, and community.”
It appears our current “Greed based” society (happy, elated victims to Paul Mazur) has produced Everest of misery everywhere and counting, as being breathlessly promoted by all, necessitating invocation of this guy Buddha’s sayings and some select women folks to sooth our pain and soul.
Buddha being so immaculately dead, it does not matter what he (was it she?) said or intended or whatever regarding the legality or rule conformity of this proposal, may be to the disappointment of Sally. Just like in any interpretation of juristic minutiae, loudest voice with force to carry on will win.
Now to your call.
That Prophet of market-ism Paul Mazur also helpfully hinted that women, being 80% of consumers, were key to target. And of course to the/ their emotional side. Ed Barneys’ truism urges appealing to the emotion to make people do TOTALLY IRRATIONAL things. And his own work produced/ and is still producing legendary results in all fields, money, politics, power, etc.
To those end, feminism and such lofty ideals of “Equality” (something people talk about all the time just in case they might one day inadvertently believe themselves) and women being victimized all through those centuries are easiest clarion calls for women themselves and other who want to use them to do acts which may or may not make sense in reality.
So there dawns a movement. We see it with promotion of cigarette smoking “torches of freedom” happily causing lung cancer in liberated women (and only in liberated women) all over the world and still rising especially in “new territories” like Burma and indeed Thailand. Other famous feminism wave riders are cervical smear campaigns and breast screening*.
Another glaring use of feminism (gender equality, equal opportunity, etc, etc) and other righteous strides is of course for reduction of (or even legal absence of, not that people affected have any say) minimal wage worldwide (less now than at 80’s! Bravo!!!) by almost doubling the workforce. http://www.epi.org/publication/declining-federal-minimum-wage-inequality/
For sure whatever is the “wonderful technical advances” people crow nonstop about, majority people now have to work their butt off just to feed themselves with GM food as opposed to father alone earning for the comfortable family life of most people in those pathetic, backward old, old days (pre-iPAD/ pre-computer days).
So to come back to your question, yes, there is this feminism readily available and potent at your service and working very well here. Just as Gene Sharp (still alive) has eloquently demonstrated, evil-ly planned exploitation/ manipulation/ down right abuse does not require any appearance of physical or even verbal aggressiveness. (Suzanne Nossal and Joseph Nye’s Smart Power.)
Indeed some of these social developments/ manipulations are like giving kids fully loaded machine guns for Christmas. There are other areas with little consequence of meddling.But
the consequences here could be devastating even if unintended.
[* Cervical cancer killed 5.4/ 100000 women in 1976 in US reduced to 2.3 in 2010 with around 4000 women more out of 178,000,000 saved because of a trillion dollar spending for Cervical Screening Inc. Ltd. vocally and incessantly supported by the benefiting industry with ever virulent and articulate feminists. Meanwhile death by suicide in the United States is 12/1000,000.
80% of treated abnormal smears would not progress to lethal disease.
For another trillion dollar business of breast screening, that torture like super painful procedure is likely to find 122 “extra” cases of which mere 8 will progress to damage health of the woman. Again the benefiting industry is propped up well by the same crowd.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa1206809
Of course mindless childish tit-for-tat prostate screening by equivalent man folks doubles the wastage.
That on the face of 48 million Americans (both man and women included in the count)with no health insurance (resulting in deaths?)]
How bad is Thaksinomics?
I guess what’s new is that somebody in the Thai press openly acknowledged it. We all know that the dominant institutions have long sought to de-identify those regions as anything but regional Thai. But once they start using the term “Lao” we know that something is changing.
Perhaps it’s an acknowledgement that the Pan-Thai experiment has failed, that the Lao regions were never fully incorporated and will never be allowed to be incorporated because of the obvious threat to the power of what is now a minority population of Central Thai/Siamese. It’s a democracy and the people they conquered 200 years ago or whatever now have more votes than they do. Kinda sucks doesn’t it?
How bad is Thaksinomics?
Hi Grant, we would welcome a post exploring some the reasons people are disillusioned with the government and support Suthep. I would love to be able to do some first hand research on that very issue, but am not in a position to. AW
How bad is Thaksinomics?
There was the Shan rebellion in 1902, but it was hardly a Lanna revolt. Here are a couple of recent New Mandala posts relating to it:
http://www.newmandala.org/2013/01/22/regional-networks-and-the-shan-rebellion/
http://www.newmandala.org/2013/02/05/siamese-atrocities-in-chiang-kham/