johninbkk insinuates that in Thailand, apparently, no one is allowed to use shoelaces in a hired murder. Not so. In fact, shoelace jail cell killings are not unusual in the LOS. It is also one particularly insulting way of telling everyone that impunity does exist.
Bob Carr and Greg Sheridan could be candidates for Australia’s version of Laurel and Hardy:
GREG SHERIDAN: Can I ask you one question about our region? The Malaysian election recently, a lot of hysterical comment in Australia, not least by Senator Nick Xenophon, that Malaysia is a dictatorship, and Anwar Ibrahim was the Nelson Mandela of Southeast Asia.
Do you regard the Malaysian elections as credible, and do you regard the Malaysian Government as a credible Government for you to deal with in its re-elected form?
BOB CARR: Well they certainly are a credible Government. I rang my friend Foreign Minister Anifah only on Friday to congratulate him and to say I look forward to working with him at Brunei at the East Asia summit and in other forums.
But they were the Malaysian elections. As I said in the Senate, answering a question from Senator Xenophon, we’re not the electoral commission for Malaysia. And we can’t be making decision about the fairness or unfairness of its distribution. And we’re not the court of disputed returns able to make a determination of whether someone with ink on their fingers after voting was capable of making another vote or not, we can’t get into these things.
These were Malaysian elections conducted under rules different from those Australians would understand. But the Government – we simply cannot drive ourselves into what are the domestic affairs of a country with which we enjoy friendly relations.
The Malaysian people themselves will make decisions in the future about the rules under which their elections will be conducted, and Australia won’t have a role in that.
“Dhammapiya said that while several monks had taken part in anti-Muslim attacks, others were mistaken for perpetrators as they tried to intervene to halt the mob violence…..At the same time, senior clerics distanced themselves from a call from controversial Mandalay monk Wirathu for restrictions on inter-faith marriage.” http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/17613450/
Many Burmese do not like this particular version of the flag. Having grown up with flags in pretty red and blue with white color stars or socialist symbolic insignia still denoting multi-ethnicity.
But this African inspired looking color pattern is indeed related to an old Burmese flag of colonial times.
And one can be sure the decision to use this particular design lies not with Thein Sein or any other visible ones on the stage today, (Burmese public did not and never will feature in such a decision unless they are fortune tellers). But it must have at the very least been approved by Than Shwe.
There is though this curiosity of the Lone Star!
The decision making elite of Burma were well recorded to be deft at treachery. Aung San did back and forth swaying and all Burmese today rejoice in his treacherous speech of “fighting the nearest enemy”. (For the uninitiated that was Japanese when Aung San was in Japanese puppet government.)
And Than Shwe double crossing the Chinese regarding the Myitsone dam.
Now the Americans (surely along with the usual entourage following the Yanks) are the newest best friends.
Unfortunately the inspiration for that Lone Star most likely would have been North Korea. Curious!
Fair point, however there is a very strong consensus of opinion that he was murdered to ‘frame’ the Regent(Pridi Phanomyong)- thereby weakening Pridi’s democratic reforms.
Thanks for providing this forum with some much needed local (i.e. Thai) opinion. My freshie BA students here in Bangkok overwhelmingly share your views.
Activist’s disappearance gives vientiane a black eye in asean
Six months after the abduction of activist Sombath Somphone, the nation appears to be falling behind its neighbours and stuck in the grip of a self-serving regime ruling on fear.
Fact: Ekayuth was the only witness to come forward about the meeting between Yingluck and her “business advisors” at the Four Seasons Hotel.
Fact: Yingluck has just launched a lawsuit against 3 Democrats MPs for talking about the Four Seasons meeting on their TV show.
Fact: Ekayuth is thus a defence witness for this lawsuit.
Fact: Ekayuth is murdered, allegedly in a robbery gone wrong.
Fact: Police implicated in the disappearance of Somchai Neelapaijit are “involved” in the Ekayuth “investigation”, as identified by Somchai’s widow Angkhana.
Fact: Ekayuth’s personal computer servers all disappear…
Does it not look like somebody didn’t want Ekayuth to take the stand as a defence witness and talk about the Four Seasons hotel visit (among other things)?
Again, we’ve been here before: Shipping Moo, Somchai Neelapaijit.
“I also think the policy has other strategic benefits as it improves Thailand’s food security and re-distributes wealth to wider parts of the country rather than accumulating all with Bangkok-based traders – which will develop the economy more evenly.”
I hadn’t realised Thailand was considered food insecure as a country. In fact, I was under the impression that it was one of the most food secure nations in the world, as one of its major food exporters across a variety of agricultural products. Why encouraging even more production of a narrow range of export-oriented HYV rice strains, (NB: that actually reduce resilience of Thailand’s agriculture and by extension, farmers by encouraging farmers to abandon native varieties in favour of pesticide, chemical fertiliser and water hungry strains)in an already bloated international rice market with prices falling, should be anything but counter to your assertions, is beyond me.
As someone else has pointed out, it has led to a rise in the domestic price of rice, which has had negative impacts on the poorest sectors of society that spend most of their h/hold income on food staples, thus reducing food security for the vulnerable urban poor. It will also lead to water insecurity, moving water away from valuable ecosystem services and higher value uses of water to the incredibly inefficient and wasteful irrigation of second and third crop rice, which again is likely to lead to food and income insecurity amongst certain vulnerable rural poor groups. This effect I have witnessed first hand in the Nam Songkhram Basin and other wetland areas of Isaan during the last decade of irrigated rice promotion by state agencies and allied elite groups.
And instead of Bangkok-based rice traders capturing the main profit from the rice subsidy scheme, it is now corrupt politicians-cum-businessmen reaping the rewards, invariably allied to the Pheua Thai Party patronage network/s.
As an August 15, 2012 Economist article opined:
“There have been reports that the small farmers whom the scheme was designed to benefit lack the means to send their grain to the main state buying centres where they can receive the official price. Instead, they sell to middlemen who make a big profit on simply moving the grain around. Finally, the Bangkok Post has reported extensively on incidents of corruption, where truckloads of cheap imported rice were sold into the programme to receive the government’s price.”
Having visited Kampong Thom province of Cambodia in late February this year, I saw a similar dry season irrigated rice boom occurring there, much of which was apparently destined for the Thai market to take advantage of the Cambodian farmgate price ($200 / tonne) differential with the Thai purchase price ($480 / tonne). Quite a nice little markup for the importers, who can pass it off as “Thai rice”.
Again, these perverse rice subsidies are not primarily accumulating in the hands of farmers, which perhaps distinguishes the Thai case from that of EU CAP subsidies.
I’ve thought about it and I don’t see any fundamental change: Especially not in education – which is the real litmus test.
I recently compared the state education system to the state railway system and my class of freshie B.A. students cheered – just as they did when I referred to PM Yingluck by the nickname the Thai media gave her, ‘NOK GAEW’, i.e. the talking parrot.
hope has hit the nail on the head. AMM, this is your next major project.
I think what I would like to read from you – as you are a former senior Reuters employee – is how the structures/interests inherent in the foreign media in Bangkok prevent a proper dissection of the situation in Thailand. What prevented you when you were based in Thailand? Editorial control? Cultural/social pressure? Fear of being kicked out?
We need deconstruction, analysis, case studies, names, evidence. We need this published not only in Thailand but also internationally by the very organs you rightly vilify in this regard. And of course when they refuse you have another worthwhile campaign.
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White masks, red masks and royalist communists
johninbkk insinuates that in Thailand, apparently, no one is allowed to use shoelaces in a hired murder. Not so. In fact, shoelace jail cell killings are not unusual in the LOS. It is also one particularly insulting way of telling everyone that impunity does exist.
Bob Carr and electoral reforms in Malaysia
Bob Carr and Greg Sheridan could be candidates for Australia’s version of Laurel and Hardy:
GREG SHERIDAN: Can I ask you one question about our region? The Malaysian election recently, a lot of hysterical comment in Australia, not least by Senator Nick Xenophon, that Malaysia is a dictatorship, and Anwar Ibrahim was the Nelson Mandela of Southeast Asia.
Do you regard the Malaysian elections as credible, and do you regard the Malaysian Government as a credible Government for you to deal with in its re-elected form?
BOB CARR: Well they certainly are a credible Government. I rang my friend Foreign Minister Anifah only on Friday to congratulate him and to say I look forward to working with him at Brunei at the East Asia summit and in other forums.
But they were the Malaysian elections. As I said in the Senate, answering a question from Senator Xenophon, we’re not the electoral commission for Malaysia. And we can’t be making decision about the fairness or unfairness of its distribution. And we’re not the court of disputed returns able to make a determination of whether someone with ink on their fingers after voting was capable of making another vote or not, we can’t get into these things.
These were Malaysian elections conducted under rules different from those Australians would understand. But the Government – we simply cannot drive ourselves into what are the domestic affairs of a country with which we enjoy friendly relations.
The Malaysian people themselves will make decisions in the future about the rules under which their elections will be conducted, and Australia won’t have a role in that.
http://foreignminister.gov.au/transcripts/2013/bc_tr_130602_sky_news.html
Conversations after Lashio
“Dhammapiya said that while several monks had taken part in anti-Muslim attacks, others were mistaken for perpetrators as they tried to intervene to halt the mob violence…..At the same time, senior clerics distanced themselves from a call from controversial Mandalay monk Wirathu for restrictions on inter-faith marriage.”
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/17613450/
Royal power arrangement
“She never once get involved in political issues and therefore wouldnt be used as a political tool for those dirty politicians(of both sides)”
How about as a military tool?
Flags: Old and new
Many Burmese do not like this particular version of the flag. Having grown up with flags in pretty red and blue with white color stars or socialist symbolic insignia still denoting multi-ethnicity.
But this African inspired looking color pattern is indeed related to an old Burmese flag of colonial times.
And one can be sure the decision to use this particular design lies not with Thein Sein or any other visible ones on the stage today, (Burmese public did not and never will feature in such a decision unless they are fortune tellers). But it must have at the very least been approved by Than Shwe.
There is though this curiosity of the Lone Star!
The decision making elite of Burma were well recorded to be deft at treachery. Aung San did back and forth swaying and all Burmese today rejoice in his treacherous speech of “fighting the nearest enemy”. (For the uninitiated that was Japanese when Aung San was in Japanese puppet government.)
And Than Shwe double crossing the Chinese regarding the Myitsone dam.
Now the Americans (surely along with the usual entourage following the Yanks) are the newest best friends.
Unfortunately the inspiration for that Lone Star most likely would have been North Korea. Curious!
White masks, red masks and royalist communists
The murder weapon was a shoelace and I’ve seen no reports of guns involved. Does that really sound like a hired assassination to you?
An article worth reading:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/355312/crooks-come-in-all-colours-and-masks
Royal power arrangement
Fair point, however there is a very strong consensus of opinion that he was murdered to ‘frame’ the Regent(Pridi Phanomyong)- thereby weakening Pridi’s democratic reforms.
Royal power arrangement
Thanks for providing this forum with some much needed local (i.e. Thai) opinion. My freshie BA students here in Bangkok overwhelmingly share your views.
What’s brewing in Thailand?
Paul Carsten and Pairat Temphairojana
Reuters:
-Thailand’s boom: To the northeast, the spoils
chicago tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-thailand-northeastbre95f00h-20130615,0,558716.story
Open letter on Sombath Somphone
Activist’s disappearance gives vientiane a black eye in asean
Six months after the abduction of activist Sombath Somphone, the nation appears to be falling behind its neighbours and stuck in the grip of a self-serving regime ruling on fear.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/investigation/355334/activist-disappearance-gives-vientiane-a-black-eye-in-asean.
Open letter on Sombath Somphone
Caught on Camera: The Enforced Disapearance of Sombath Somphone.
Amnesty International Report
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA26/002/2013/en/0b45a8ea-0ef3-4e3c-a8a4-eebbaf8ab9e7/asa260022013en.pdf
White masks, red masks and royalist communists
Fact: Ekayuth was the only witness to come forward about the meeting between Yingluck and her “business advisors” at the Four Seasons Hotel.
Fact: Yingluck has just launched a lawsuit against 3 Democrats MPs for talking about the Four Seasons meeting on their TV show.
Fact: Ekayuth is thus a defence witness for this lawsuit.
Fact: Ekayuth is murdered, allegedly in a robbery gone wrong.
Fact: Police implicated in the disappearance of Somchai Neelapaijit are “involved” in the Ekayuth “investigation”, as identified by Somchai’s widow Angkhana.
Fact: Ekayuth’s personal computer servers all disappear…
Does it not look like somebody didn’t want Ekayuth to take the stand as a defence witness and talk about the Four Seasons hotel visit (among other things)?
Again, we’ve been here before: Shipping Moo, Somchai Neelapaijit.
What’s brewing in Thailand?
“I also think the policy has other strategic benefits as it improves Thailand’s food security and re-distributes wealth to wider parts of the country rather than accumulating all with Bangkok-based traders – which will develop the economy more evenly.”
I hadn’t realised Thailand was considered food insecure as a country. In fact, I was under the impression that it was one of the most food secure nations in the world, as one of its major food exporters across a variety of agricultural products. Why encouraging even more production of a narrow range of export-oriented HYV rice strains, (NB: that actually reduce resilience of Thailand’s agriculture and by extension, farmers by encouraging farmers to abandon native varieties in favour of pesticide, chemical fertiliser and water hungry strains)in an already bloated international rice market with prices falling, should be anything but counter to your assertions, is beyond me.
As someone else has pointed out, it has led to a rise in the domestic price of rice, which has had negative impacts on the poorest sectors of society that spend most of their h/hold income on food staples, thus reducing food security for the vulnerable urban poor. It will also lead to water insecurity, moving water away from valuable ecosystem services and higher value uses of water to the incredibly inefficient and wasteful irrigation of second and third crop rice, which again is likely to lead to food and income insecurity amongst certain vulnerable rural poor groups. This effect I have witnessed first hand in the Nam Songkhram Basin and other wetland areas of Isaan during the last decade of irrigated rice promotion by state agencies and allied elite groups.
And instead of Bangkok-based rice traders capturing the main profit from the rice subsidy scheme, it is now corrupt politicians-cum-businessmen reaping the rewards, invariably allied to the Pheua Thai Party patronage network/s.
As an August 15, 2012 Economist article opined:
“There have been reports that the small farmers whom the scheme was designed to benefit lack the means to send their grain to the main state buying centres where they can receive the official price. Instead, they sell to middlemen who make a big profit on simply moving the grain around. Finally, the Bangkok Post has reported extensively on incidents of corruption, where truckloads of cheap imported rice were sold into the programme to receive the government’s price.”
Source: http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=519427636&Country=Thailand&topic=Economy
Having visited Kampong Thom province of Cambodia in late February this year, I saw a similar dry season irrigated rice boom occurring there, much of which was apparently destined for the Thai market to take advantage of the Cambodian farmgate price ($200 / tonne) differential with the Thai purchase price ($480 / tonne). Quite a nice little markup for the importers, who can pass it off as “Thai rice”.
Again, these perverse rice subsidies are not primarily accumulating in the hands of farmers, which perhaps distinguishes the Thai case from that of EU CAP subsidies.
What’s brewing in Thailand?
I’ve thought about it and I don’t see any fundamental change: Especially not in education – which is the real litmus test.
I recently compared the state education system to the state railway system and my class of freshie B.A. students cheered – just as they did when I referred to PM Yingluck by the nickname the Thai media gave her, ‘NOK GAEW’, i.e. the talking parrot.
Bottom Line: ‘The Kids are Alright’
What’s brewing in Thailand?
Thailand is about assimilation: they’re all ‘Thais’ of one stripe or another – which I believe Vichai was trying to say.
What’s brewing in Thailand?
You make good strong points both for and against – however most of them are very disputable (too many in fact to bother responding to).
White masks, red masks and royalist communists
hope has hit the nail on the head. AMM, this is your next major project.
I think what I would like to read from you – as you are a former senior Reuters employee – is how the structures/interests inherent in the foreign media in Bangkok prevent a proper dissection of the situation in Thailand. What prevented you when you were based in Thailand? Editorial control? Cultural/social pressure? Fear of being kicked out?
We need deconstruction, analysis, case studies, names, evidence. We need this published not only in Thailand but also internationally by the very organs you rightly vilify in this regard. And of course when they refuse you have another worthwhile campaign.
How about it?
What’s brewing in Thailand?
Yeah Bernd … like The Man said: “In Thailand, it is cool to be corrupt, yeah!”
White masks, red masks and royalist communists
the weels begin to turn….
http://2bangkok.com/the-wheel-begins-to-turn-weekly-rallies-and-disapproving-academics.html
What’s brewing in Thailand?
@Vichai N
– If you want to have an ethically pure state – then you must not live in Thailand –
– Thailand is a mixed people
– and nothing else
– so – you are nothing special –
– just PEOPLE – human – like everyone else on this small planet.
…… the only thing that is special about the Thai people – you have to let you cheat the last 65 years – but that will now hopefully come to an end …
– Think about it …