“(6) what exactly do you mean by your impression that “Their behaviour left something to be desired but, by and large, they represented the spirit community with style”?
I am not sure what AW meant, but I assume that he thought they lacked previous experience with Halloween.
Since we now seem to be in basic epistemology, one might add that the symbol of a spirit does not represent it, because spirits do not exist. The symbol of a spirit only represents the image of a spirit that people have constructed themselves. Therefore, a spirit does not have any power, and there cannot be any power relations with it. Only the images have “power,” and they merely relate to themselves. It becomes a little more tricky when one says that the word “tree” does not “represent” the “tree,” but also merely is an image. The shift here is one in emphasis. “Representation” refers back to the “thing,” while “image” puts the emphasis on those who construct it. Though I by and large agree with this view, I gladly leave the details to the constructivists.
” . . .Here are two filthy forest spirits that I saw with my own eyes. They were invited to attend a large festival in Ban Tiam as representatives of the spirit world. Their behaviour left something to be desired but, by and large, they represented the spirit community with style. . .” – AW
With this admission, AW has entered a very exclusive (blessed or cursed?) group who had seen or could see ‘spirits’. For many of us such encounters with the spirits or ghosts are second-hand, or close relatives and friends who tell us of their encounters.
But do tell us more AW of your particular experience with the two forest spirits. You are usually very eloquent on most matters and your readers, myself included, want more: (1) how long was the encounter (2) how did those two forest apparitions look (human or unhuman features?) (3) do they float or do they walk? (4) were they naked or were they clothed? (5) do they make any sounds at all? (6) what exactly do you mean by your impression that “Their behaviour left something to be desired but, by and large, they represented the spirit community with style”?
Yes I am projecting what I think you think back onto you as are you with me! No, you didn’t write all Americans are fiends, but you have written repeatedly decrying the USA/UK and Thailand with hindsight. The USA, UK and Thailand are thankfully not just their governments at particular points in time. Reducing the behaviour of fiendish administrations to the behaviour of nations can allow for such assumptions.
Thank you for your insightful post Dr Andrew. It’s good to know that the contract farming could also create many positive effects on the local economy/individual farmers. From what I have heard so far in Thai media, academic circle, the story is quite the opposite.
Maybe it might just be the case of variations from places to places/company to company. Some companies might offer a good deal, some might not. If this is really the case, I only hope the the market is kept opened so that those companies would compete to offer ever better/fairer contract to farmers.
But you’re assuming and then projecting your own version of what you think I think onto me.
I’ve never once made any statement that “all Americans are fiends” or come close to doing so. I would suggest that those who think any criticism of US foreign interventions is therefore anti-American are caught up in their own dichotomous thinking.
It was war. Killing poor farmers can be war if those poor farmers are not definitely on the right side!! Trying to apply legality to war is ridiculous. Sanitized, PG13+ war. Pfft.
Not just anyone could create a rationale for justifying the narrative dear Andrew, don’t diminish the importance of the special hounds in office! Nobody’s apologising or excusing it! Especially not an Indonesian ojek who well understands Robert McNamara’s support of Suharto’s purging of communists in 1965.
What I am trying to emphasise though is that not all Americans are fiends, or that the system that both allows for these crimes and change has to be a negative. Again, I am not refuting that America’s actions in Cambodia and Laos were abhorrent, I am just refuting that it can be reduced so simply. It creates a false dichotomy with good and evil – exactly what those hounds in office saw… That didn’t work out so well, did it?
Fully agree but want to clarify one point. The symbol representing a spirit is not the same as the spirit itself any more than an avatar on a computer is the person it represents.
“When, for example, did the female floating-organ Kra Sur “spirit” emerge?”
Your example asks a reasonable question but would be better phrased as: “When, for example, did the symbol of the female floating-organ Kra Sur “spirit” emerge and what spirit does it represent or what former representation did it replace?”.
The answer to this question is indeed to be found in the cultural roots of a society, and in the way the culture developed (and what it developed into) along the way.
Sure “spirits” have power but like all power relations they exist within a historical and cultural context.
This idea that somehow they are just ahistorical independent “phenomena” to be judged by some adequately trained and discerning Western academic doesn’t stand up without looking at this wider context.
What I’d be more interested in is a historicisation of these “spirits”.
When, for example, did the female floating-organ Kra Sur “spirit” emerge? There are multiple “spirits” like this supposedly proliferating all over Thailand. Like the endless political rumours and conspiracy theories that circulate in Bangkok they remain elusive and beyond the ken of earthly things like “evidence”. Just like the unearthly Men in Black during 2010 who provided the context of a massacre the elusiveness of evidence certainly does have real-life consequences.
I also find the huge and very profitable “amulet” market intriguing. Who controls it? Who makes the money?
Like most things when you look for the people who benefit the most you can begin to understand the context.
Absolving any cultural phenomena of context is like trying to forecast next week’s weather by only looking at the sky above your head.
The bombing of Laos/Cambodia wasn’t “war” – it was an illegal, criminal and indiscriminate bombing campaign by the world’s most powerful nation against peasant rice farmers.
As for Vietnam – well I’m sure anyone could create some kind of rationale for the slaughter of civilians as part and parcel of a necessary strategy to “protect” something or other (from both a left or right position), but I’m sure the actual people doing the dying feel different.
The KR’s crimes were pretty obvious, as you say, post 1979.
And the excuses of the West as to why they aided, armed and supported them post-1979 are pretty thin. What was it Thatcher said about there being “different kinds of KR”?
But this was in keeping with US/Western policy in the region – support any group/govt that claimed to be “anti-communist” or, more pertinently, anti-USSR, no matter how fascistic, brutal, murderous and anti-democratic. Red Gaurs, Suharto, KR etc
As for context – a bit you missed out was the KR slaughtering 10s of 1000s of ethnic Vietnamese and that is was the decisive action of Vietnam that stopped the genocide.
I would also say that it is self-evident that Vietnam have been far less of a threat to SE Asia than the US who always seem to back the nastiest regimes… I can’t remember Vietnam indiscriminately bombing farmers in Isaan never mind the USA but maybe I missed something.
Personally, I find apologists for the USA’s interventions in SE Asia every bit as abhorrent as KR historical revisionists.
But at least Shamir doesn’t anonymise his schtick, eh?
Thailand is in “unquestionable decline,” New Mandala has become a rotten “club,” the world in general has been going down the drain. Time to move on to outer space, I guess. I also wonder whether there are spirits in an environment void of humans.
A dubious mysticism, associated by design with the king, has been present in Thai and other cultures for a long time.
In Thailand, perhaps mediaeval in origin, perhaps a throw-back to the Sukhothai or other ‘golden age’, it has been successfully resurrected in modern times through a persistent, pernicious and sometimes quite subtle propaganda campaign, supported by copious governance by self-interest from the palace and its hangers-on. There has been a clear and deliberate attempt at the deification or semi-deification of the present king in order to embed this idea in the minds of the Thai people for the purposes of enhanced control by the establishment, who fully understand the state of education and superstition of the relatively primitive people of up-country Thailand. Key to the art of effective propaganda is to so embed key ideas into the unconscious mind of people that their habitual behaviour is changed in favour of the desired responses. If you can somehow keep the people poor, uneducated and under-intelligent then this makes the job even easier. It’s social engineering on a breathtaking scale in Thailand.
We can see the consequences of these principles in Thailand now – today. It isn’t a matter of whether or not the spirits exist (some people say yay, others say nay) – this is a personal belief stance (manipulated or otherwise by those in power) – but the way in which the spirits are propitiated (mainly the rituals and images) is a feature of the local custom and culture. In Thailand, it has clearly been co-opted to prop up a (now) predictably failing monarchy in order to underwrite its longevity.
There are at least 2 debates:
1. Does the spirit world exist? Is it beneficial to have contact with it? and how may this be effectively done?
2. How can this train of thought, common to 95% of the worlds peoples across all cultures and nations, to be co-opted to be of benefit to those (including the churches) and the establishment?
It is no surprise to see that traditionally, monarchs of all stripes have been declared, or declared themselves, to be ‘defenders of the faith’ or at the head of a national mysticism as well as the head of the national government – an ‘identity’ figure, or totem, possessed of a mystical or magical power or capability. The present Thai king is no exception. Hence the film clips of magic rice seeds and attempts to identify with Hindu/Thai legends by film clips seen at cinemas. Vide also the recent prognostication that floods in Thailand would “not be as bad as last year”. A transparent attempt to suggest the king has access to sources of knowledge denied the common folk.
Last year while touring around Thailand after the major floods had subsided, I spoke with one of the prominent ‘paw-mot’ (soothsayer, shaman or folk-magician) in the region. He said that that floods and other natural tribulations would continue, and that Thailand would continue to have bad luck and continue to decline in various ways because the spirits of the land were angry that the leadership had abandoned their mission to develop the Thai people, choosing instead to develop themselves and their bank accounts. He predicted there would be a general background of decline and bad luck until Thailand changed its course, but that against this background, some catastrophic single event would happen from time to time. Is this latter prediction a genuine prognostication or engaging in the time-honoured way of soothsayers everywhere of stating the perfectly bloody obvious based on the normal behaviour of mother nature but shrouded with a cloak of mystery and mysticism? I don’t know.
But I suspect we will see yet more severe floods this tear and Thailand appears to me to be in unquestionable decline. Who knows why? According to metaphysical tradition, the spirits inhabit an invisible dimension, co-existing with but invisible to our own. This being the case, they are obliged to interact with the ‘here and now’ through the use of natural laws. None of the spooky looking ‘undead pee’ so beloved of the Thai soapies, just a shift in the natural behaviour of things. Spirits? Global warming? Global warming harnessed by spirits? Who can say? Not me.
I don’t think the policy of the US, UK, Thailand is misunderstood or forgotten.Interestingly and unaccountably Andrew omits reference to China, the most fervent supporter of the KR. As to the comparison of the KR and the US,once again Andrew indulges in the kind of cartoon lefty moral equivalence that exasperates but doesn’t inform.If Andrew wishes to be taken seriously and not just another silly agitprop merchant he should tone down the aggression and think more honestly and independently.
Firstly, if you’re referring to US, UK and Thai support for containing communism in late 1978, you can understand the narrative, right? The context of being defeated in the Vietnamese War and not wanting Thailand to fall to communism, that support for transition to a new regime (although admittedly not entirely new!) in Kampuchea would make sense, no? Surely the guiding principle is to not let the rest of Southeast Asia become communist. Surely having some influence in Phnom Penh post Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, would be good for containing communism to the Vietnamese border, no? I’m not defending the action, only the principle that we must understand the context with which decisions are made and not conflate them with some broader Western guilt bent.
Secondly, post 1978 the KR became a different beast to what it was in 1975 (not saying it was no longer a beast, and everything was peaches and cream). People involved in governance would have been aware of this. Sure the leadership was still the KR leadership of old, but it was not purging. They were surely much easier to talk to — and what would have been the consequences of not engaging? Again re context of anti-communist narrative. Perhaps the US, UK and Thailand had Kampuchean state collapse on their minds, even at that stage.
The rest of my reply was a response to nonsense. Sure it is a bit abstract re war being an institution, but equally so is saying the USA had a policy of annihilating civilian populations.
“But there’s also no doubt whatsoever that the USA’s policy of annihilating civilian populations in SE Asia was also a criminal act of mass murder.
To condemn one and make excuses for the other – either way you play it – looks like an abject failure of any kind of guiding principle.
The USA has almost as much Cambodian blood on its hands as the KR.”
What rot. Comparisons of states’ bloodied hands is callous and disgusting. Where does it get anyone? Also, who’s making excuses? War is partly an institution of criminal acts and nobody’s excusing it for being what it is.
If you want to talk about injustice/fraudulent reasoning in the decision-making for support for the KR, which is what I think you’re inferring, then we need to be specifically referring to decision-makers, the context in which they made decisions, and not states.
If you see that as a cute way of avoiding blame, then feel free to wallow in guilt!
It’s reasonable to compare how people relate to spirits and rulers /gov’t. This certainly holds in the Mien areas where I used to work. But doing so may upset educated westerners’ convictions regarding politics and religion and how oh-so-well they can tell these apart. In my experience, people do this in a realist manner; they have no blind faith but are willing, interested, or compelled to try to make and manage such relations, in the same way that they may try to influence the Tambol Admin Org or provincial dignitaries with a sports festival, a spiked-up dance show, or a nice meal with alcohol. Once you have done this over some years, you have more experience and have perhaps created familiarity across ethnic and political lines. And then you may even re-name a local mountain Doi Thewada in order to try to draw a Thai crowd to the area in the cold season. As with spirits, the encounters sometimes succeed and at other times they flop, and the benefits are usually unevenly distributed. The Doi Thewada (‘spirit mtn’) that “came about” in my area by 2005, was, to reach another Thai crowd, also said to be locally known as Doi Nom Sao (“Mount Maiden’s Breasts). People were trying to draw the Thai into a minority region, and a Thai contractor with connections was granted 20M Baht to lay a road up the mountain. Reading the Thai language tourism literature, I find mostly interest in temples and waterfalls, and it seems to me that the appeal to Buddhist spirituality and male sexuality is a two-pronged local Mien theory about who are the Thai and what might move them to visit.
‘ ASEAN as a single trade entity also has the potential to strongly influence world affairs through its trade strength.’
that sentence could not resist to a thorough examination of detailed trade patterns. Most trade is intra-ASEAN, and exposure to international trade is on a very narrow export basket basis- much of it feeding manufacturing supply chains dominated by Chinese or Japanese interests.
This however very good article could also have highlighted one key issue, which is and will remian for long constraining regional integration and achieving a single market alike. As long as ASEAN leader don’t get rid of the two funding blocs of ASEAN, namely consensus decision making and absolute priority to sovereignty, niothing much will happen in terms of actual achievements, and China will have a smooth ride in pulling the strings (see recent examples of Cambodia behaviour re Spratleys)
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The power of spirits
“(6) what exactly do you mean by your impression that “Their behaviour left something to be desired but, by and large, they represented the spirit community with style”?
I am not sure what AW meant, but I assume that he thought they lacked previous experience with Halloween.
The power of spirits
Since we now seem to be in basic epistemology, one might add that the symbol of a spirit does not represent it, because spirits do not exist. The symbol of a spirit only represents the image of a spirit that people have constructed themselves. Therefore, a spirit does not have any power, and there cannot be any power relations with it. Only the images have “power,” and they merely relate to themselves. It becomes a little more tricky when one says that the word “tree” does not “represent” the “tree,” but also merely is an image. The shift here is one in emphasis. “Representation” refers back to the “thing,” while “image” puts the emphasis on those who construct it. Though I by and large agree with this view, I gladly leave the details to the constructivists.
The power of spirits
” . . .Here are two filthy forest spirits that I saw with my own eyes. They were invited to attend a large festival in Ban Tiam as representatives of the spirit world. Their behaviour left something to be desired but, by and large, they represented the spirit community with style. . .” – AW
With this admission, AW has entered a very exclusive (blessed or cursed?) group who had seen or could see ‘spirits’. For many of us such encounters with the spirits or ghosts are second-hand, or close relatives and friends who tell us of their encounters.
But do tell us more AW of your particular experience with the two forest spirits. You are usually very eloquent on most matters and your readers, myself included, want more: (1) how long was the encounter (2) how did those two forest apparitions look (human or unhuman features?) (3) do they float or do they walk? (4) were they naked or were they clothed? (5) do they make any sounds at all? (6) what exactly do you mean by your impression that “Their behaviour left something to be desired but, by and large, they represented the spirit community with style”?
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
Yes I am projecting what I think you think back onto you as are you with me! No, you didn’t write all Americans are fiends, but you have written repeatedly decrying the USA/UK and Thailand with hindsight. The USA, UK and Thailand are thankfully not just their governments at particular points in time. Reducing the behaviour of fiendish administrations to the behaviour of nations can allow for such assumptions.
The benefits of contract farming
Thank you for your insightful post Dr Andrew. It’s good to know that the contract farming could also create many positive effects on the local economy/individual farmers. From what I have heard so far in Thai media, academic circle, the story is quite the opposite.
For example in this post (http://sadathailand.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=23&Itemid=77), it says that the farmer has to also bear the risk of debt in the event of fish farming failure. There are also problem of unwritten contract, environmental issues and health hazard associate with this mode of production etc.
Maybe it might just be the case of variations from places to places/company to company. Some companies might offer a good deal, some might not. If this is really the case, I only hope the the market is kept opened so that those companies would compete to offer ever better/fairer contract to farmers.
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
Indo
But you’re assuming and then projecting your own version of what you think I think onto me.
I’ve never once made any statement that “all Americans are fiends” or come close to doing so. I would suggest that those who think any criticism of US foreign interventions is therefore anti-American are caught up in their own dichotomous thinking.
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
It was war. Killing poor farmers can be war if those poor farmers are not definitely on the right side!! Trying to apply legality to war is ridiculous. Sanitized, PG13+ war. Pfft.
Not just anyone could create a rationale for justifying the narrative dear Andrew, don’t diminish the importance of the special hounds in office! Nobody’s apologising or excusing it! Especially not an Indonesian ojek who well understands Robert McNamara’s support of Suharto’s purging of communists in 1965.
What I am trying to emphasise though is that not all Americans are fiends, or that the system that both allows for these crimes and change has to be a negative. Again, I am not refuting that America’s actions in Cambodia and Laos were abhorrent, I am just refuting that it can be reduced so simply. It creates a false dichotomy with good and evil – exactly what those hounds in office saw… That didn’t work out so well, did it?
The power of spirits
Fully agree but want to clarify one point. The symbol representing a spirit is not the same as the spirit itself any more than an avatar on a computer is the person it represents.
“When, for example, did the female floating-organ Kra Sur “spirit” emerge?”
Your example asks a reasonable question but would be better phrased as: “When, for example, did the symbol of the female floating-organ Kra Sur “spirit” emerge and what spirit does it represent or what former representation did it replace?”.
The answer to this question is indeed to be found in the cultural roots of a society, and in the way the culture developed (and what it developed into) along the way.
Annie
The more people I meet, the more I like my dog.
The power of spirits
Sure “spirits” have power but like all power relations they exist within a historical and cultural context.
This idea that somehow they are just ahistorical independent “phenomena” to be judged by some adequately trained and discerning Western academic doesn’t stand up without looking at this wider context.
What I’d be more interested in is a historicisation of these “spirits”.
When, for example, did the female floating-organ Kra Sur “spirit” emerge? There are multiple “spirits” like this supposedly proliferating all over Thailand. Like the endless political rumours and conspiracy theories that circulate in Bangkok they remain elusive and beyond the ken of earthly things like “evidence”. Just like the unearthly Men in Black during 2010 who provided the context of a massacre the elusiveness of evidence certainly does have real-life consequences.
I also find the huge and very profitable “amulet” market intriguing. Who controls it? Who makes the money?
Like most things when you look for the people who benefit the most you can begin to understand the context.
Absolving any cultural phenomena of context is like trying to forecast next week’s weather by only looking at the sky above your head.
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
Indo
The bombing of Laos/Cambodia wasn’t “war” – it was an illegal, criminal and indiscriminate bombing campaign by the world’s most powerful nation against peasant rice farmers.
As for Vietnam – well I’m sure anyone could create some kind of rationale for the slaughter of civilians as part and parcel of a necessary strategy to “protect” something or other (from both a left or right position), but I’m sure the actual people doing the dying feel different.
The KR’s crimes were pretty obvious, as you say, post 1979.
And the excuses of the West as to why they aided, armed and supported them post-1979 are pretty thin. What was it Thatcher said about there being “different kinds of KR”?
But this was in keeping with US/Western policy in the region – support any group/govt that claimed to be “anti-communist” or, more pertinently, anti-USSR, no matter how fascistic, brutal, murderous and anti-democratic. Red Gaurs, Suharto, KR etc
As for context – a bit you missed out was the KR slaughtering 10s of 1000s of ethnic Vietnamese and that is was the decisive action of Vietnam that stopped the genocide.
I would also say that it is self-evident that Vietnam have been far less of a threat to SE Asia than the US who always seem to back the nastiest regimes… I can’t remember Vietnam indiscriminately bombing farmers in Isaan never mind the USA but maybe I missed something.
Personally, I find apologists for the USA’s interventions in SE Asia every bit as abhorrent as KR historical revisionists.
But at least Shamir doesn’t anonymise his schtick, eh?
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
“Interestingly and unaccountably Andrew omits reference to China, the most fervent supporter of the KR.”
I really dig the conspiracy inference. Very funny.
I think China’s support for the KR is well-documented, undeniable and certainly abhorrent.
The West’s support for the KR is less well-know and hadn’t been introduced to this discussion before my comment.
It’s not “cartoon lefty” to bring that into the debate but just a reference to an uncomfortable historical fact.
The power of spirits
Thailand is in “unquestionable decline,” New Mandala has become a rotten “club,” the world in general has been going down the drain. Time to move on to outer space, I guess. I also wonder whether there are spirits in an environment void of humans.
The power of spirits
A dubious mysticism, associated by design with the king, has been present in Thai and other cultures for a long time.
In Thailand, perhaps mediaeval in origin, perhaps a throw-back to the Sukhothai or other ‘golden age’, it has been successfully resurrected in modern times through a persistent, pernicious and sometimes quite subtle propaganda campaign, supported by copious governance by self-interest from the palace and its hangers-on. There has been a clear and deliberate attempt at the deification or semi-deification of the present king in order to embed this idea in the minds of the Thai people for the purposes of enhanced control by the establishment, who fully understand the state of education and superstition of the relatively primitive people of up-country Thailand. Key to the art of effective propaganda is to so embed key ideas into the unconscious mind of people that their habitual behaviour is changed in favour of the desired responses. If you can somehow keep the people poor, uneducated and under-intelligent then this makes the job even easier. It’s social engineering on a breathtaking scale in Thailand.
We can see the consequences of these principles in Thailand now – today. It isn’t a matter of whether or not the spirits exist (some people say yay, others say nay) – this is a personal belief stance (manipulated or otherwise by those in power) – but the way in which the spirits are propitiated (mainly the rituals and images) is a feature of the local custom and culture. In Thailand, it has clearly been co-opted to prop up a (now) predictably failing monarchy in order to underwrite its longevity.
There are at least 2 debates:
1. Does the spirit world exist? Is it beneficial to have contact with it? and how may this be effectively done?
2. How can this train of thought, common to 95% of the worlds peoples across all cultures and nations, to be co-opted to be of benefit to those (including the churches) and the establishment?
It is no surprise to see that traditionally, monarchs of all stripes have been declared, or declared themselves, to be ‘defenders of the faith’ or at the head of a national mysticism as well as the head of the national government – an ‘identity’ figure, or totem, possessed of a mystical or magical power or capability. The present Thai king is no exception. Hence the film clips of magic rice seeds and attempts to identify with Hindu/Thai legends by film clips seen at cinemas. Vide also the recent prognostication that floods in Thailand would “not be as bad as last year”. A transparent attempt to suggest the king has access to sources of knowledge denied the common folk.
Last year while touring around Thailand after the major floods had subsided, I spoke with one of the prominent ‘paw-mot’ (soothsayer, shaman or folk-magician) in the region. He said that that floods and other natural tribulations would continue, and that Thailand would continue to have bad luck and continue to decline in various ways because the spirits of the land were angry that the leadership had abandoned their mission to develop the Thai people, choosing instead to develop themselves and their bank accounts. He predicted there would be a general background of decline and bad luck until Thailand changed its course, but that against this background, some catastrophic single event would happen from time to time. Is this latter prediction a genuine prognostication or engaging in the time-honoured way of soothsayers everywhere of stating the perfectly bloody obvious based on the normal behaviour of mother nature but shrouded with a cloak of mystery and mysticism? I don’t know.
But I suspect we will see yet more severe floods this tear and Thailand appears to me to be in unquestionable decline. Who knows why? According to metaphysical tradition, the spirits inhabit an invisible dimension, co-existing with but invisible to our own. This being the case, they are obliged to interact with the ‘here and now’ through the use of natural laws. None of the spooky looking ‘undead pee’ so beloved of the Thai soapies, just a shift in the natural behaviour of things. Spirits? Global warming? Global warming harnessed by spirits? Who can say? Not me.
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
I don’t think the policy of the US, UK, Thailand is misunderstood or forgotten.Interestingly and unaccountably Andrew omits reference to China, the most fervent supporter of the KR. As to the comparison of the KR and the US,once again Andrew indulges in the kind of cartoon lefty moral equivalence that exasperates but doesn’t inform.If Andrew wishes to be taken seriously and not just another silly agitprop merchant he should tone down the aggression and think more honestly and independently.
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
erratum: “Secondly, post 1979*” rather
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
Spooner,
Firstly, if you’re referring to US, UK and Thai support for containing communism in late 1978, you can understand the narrative, right? The context of being defeated in the Vietnamese War and not wanting Thailand to fall to communism, that support for transition to a new regime (although admittedly not entirely new!) in Kampuchea would make sense, no? Surely the guiding principle is to not let the rest of Southeast Asia become communist. Surely having some influence in Phnom Penh post Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, would be good for containing communism to the Vietnamese border, no? I’m not defending the action, only the principle that we must understand the context with which decisions are made and not conflate them with some broader Western guilt bent.
Secondly, post 1978 the KR became a different beast to what it was in 1975 (not saying it was no longer a beast, and everything was peaches and cream). People involved in governance would have been aware of this. Sure the leadership was still the KR leadership of old, but it was not purging. They were surely much easier to talk to — and what would have been the consequences of not engaging? Again re context of anti-communist narrative. Perhaps the US, UK and Thailand had Kampuchean state collapse on their minds, even at that stage.
The rest of my reply was a response to nonsense. Sure it is a bit abstract re war being an institution, but equally so is saying the USA had a policy of annihilating civilian populations.
“But there’s also no doubt whatsoever that the USA’s policy of annihilating civilian populations in SE Asia was also a criminal act of mass murder.
To condemn one and make excuses for the other – either way you play it – looks like an abject failure of any kind of guiding principle.
The USA has almost as much Cambodian blood on its hands as the KR.”
What rot. Comparisons of states’ bloodied hands is callous and disgusting. Where does it get anyone? Also, who’s making excuses? War is partly an institution of criminal acts and nobody’s excusing it for being what it is.
If you want to talk about injustice/fraudulent reasoning in the decision-making for support for the KR, which is what I think you’re inferring, then we need to be specifically referring to decision-makers, the context in which they made decisions, and not states.
If you see that as a cute way of avoiding blame, then feel free to wallow in guilt!
The power of spirits
It’s reasonable to compare how people relate to spirits and rulers /gov’t. This certainly holds in the Mien areas where I used to work. But doing so may upset educated westerners’ convictions regarding politics and religion and how oh-so-well they can tell these apart. In my experience, people do this in a realist manner; they have no blind faith but are willing, interested, or compelled to try to make and manage such relations, in the same way that they may try to influence the Tambol Admin Org or provincial dignitaries with a sports festival, a spiked-up dance show, or a nice meal with alcohol. Once you have done this over some years, you have more experience and have perhaps created familiarity across ethnic and political lines. And then you may even re-name a local mountain Doi Thewada in order to try to draw a Thai crowd to the area in the cold season. As with spirits, the encounters sometimes succeed and at other times they flop, and the benefits are usually unevenly distributed. The Doi Thewada (‘spirit mtn’) that “came about” in my area by 2005, was, to reach another Thai crowd, also said to be locally known as Doi Nom Sao (“Mount Maiden’s Breasts). People were trying to draw the Thai into a minority region, and a Thai contractor with connections was granted 20M Baht to lay a road up the mountain. Reading the Thai language tourism literature, I find mostly interest in temples and waterfalls, and it seems to me that the appeal to Buddhist spirituality and male sexuality is a two-pronged local Mien theory about who are the Thai and what might move them to visit.
ASEAN’s missed opportunities
‘ ASEAN as a single trade entity also has the potential to strongly influence world affairs through its trade strength.’
that sentence could not resist to a thorough examination of detailed trade patterns. Most trade is intra-ASEAN, and exposure to international trade is on a very narrow export basket basis- much of it feeding manufacturing supply chains dominated by Chinese or Japanese interests.
This however very good article could also have highlighted one key issue, which is and will remian for long constraining regional integration and achieving a single market alike. As long as ASEAN leader don’t get rid of the two funding blocs of ASEAN, namely consensus decision making and absolute priority to sovereignty, niothing much will happen in terms of actual achievements, and China will have a smooth ride in pulling the strings (see recent examples of Cambodia behaviour re Spratleys)
Crown Prince’s family update?
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Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
Indo
“Spooner, how were they to know things were going to get ugly with the KR? ”
I think, by 1989, when the debate took place in the UK Parliament, it was pretty obvious what the KR were all about.
I can’t work out what you’re trying to say in the rest of your reply.