Firstly, let me offer my thanks and appreciation for such a cogent and thoughtful piece of writing.
The physical manifestation of the Sino-isation of ASEAN has no better, or rather bleaker example than that of Laos. Vientiane surely offers the starkest illustration of the utterly corrupting influence of Beijing. A small, land-locked and thus poor country has mysteriously become home to more banks, loony construction projects, and luxury motor cars than it’s minuscule domestic economy could ever hope to shoulder. The place reeks of corruption, whether it be the sickeningly sanctimonious NGO variety or the more subtle but infinitely more corrosive kind that comes across the border in a never ending convoy of Chinese 4×4’s, all heading for the nearest bank and a quick ‘clean’, before being shipped on-ward ‘clean as a whistle’ into the international financial system.
The price to be exacted on SE Asia’s citizens will in the years to come make America’s most-war hegemony seem like a vicars tea party. Something I find – as an ex-member of the UKCP rather jarring to have to admit, but if I can do it, then others can have no excuse for seeing China and it’s leadership for what they are, out and out imperialists.
The proliferating ironies involved whenever someone decides to go for the “Orwell Option” in writing about Thai politics would make for belly laughs and snorts of glee were there not so many dead and incarcerated human beings connected directly to the subject.
The constant repetition of the phrase “democratically elected” as a modifier for the government that was overthrown in the most recent coup is, without a doubt, classic Orwellianism:
“The word FASCISM has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.” The words DEMOCRACY, SOCIALISM, FREEDOM, PATRIOTIC, REALISTIC, JUSTICE, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like DEMOCRACY, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”
To begin, Yingluck’s administration bragged about its having shut down more websites than any previous government, so any facile suggestion that “democratically elected” must somehow involve a commitment to freedom of expression should be questioned.
Unlike the administrative autonomy that we tend to associate with governments that are “democratically elected”, the Yingluck administration from day one kowtowed left and right to attempt to appease what it saw as its “real” constituency.
Soon after being elected, the Shins bought a piece of highly symbolic land in Ayuthaya to submit as a gift to HRM who “accepted” the gift wearing a military uniform. Perhaps a cultural anthropologist could give us a reading of the significance of this quickly improvised (and just as quickly ignored) ritual. Of course, anyone who misses the obvious is not likely to be enlightened by an obscurantist elevation of language anyway.
At no time during the Yingluck administration was there an effort to expose and oppose the obvious fact that the military was not only independent of the civilian administration but acting as an overseer to that “democratically elected” body.
Previous “democratically elected” administrations in Thailand have been responsible for media intimidation, extrajudicial executions and have quite accurately been described as “electoral authoritarianism”, which is absolutely not what is being transmitted by the constant drone of “democratically elected” used to contrast the authoritarianism of the junta.
This website and its tendency to publish such things as the purely fantastical rumor-mongering regarding the “succession crisis”, thus lending a patina of academic respectability to tabloid journalism, engages in a particularly modern form of “Orwellianism”: there is a comment section to create the illusion of “discussion and debate”.
The majority of posts concerning Thailand are riddled with what Orwell called “meaningless words”. Never is there an article questioning or problematizing the way words such as “democracy” and “fascism” are used to obscure the far more complex moral and political realities of Thai society and politics.
One result of this simplistic barrage of Orwellian “journalism” is the almost staggering ignorance of Thai realities that is evinced in so many of the comments on the site.
But then again, that is the point of propaganda, is it not?
You might want to add the Muslim man was beheaded for speaking the truth that there was no evidence of Muslims being killed. And people wonder why everyone lies.
“Shu Na Myar and other village elders told the journalists that they had not seen any evidence of Muslims being killed or beaten.”
Burmese reporters who participated in a three-day government-organized trip to northern Maungdaw beginning on Dec. 20 told The Irrawaddy on Friday that U Shuna Myar was one of their interviewees from the Rohingya Muslim community in Ngakhura.
My belief is this PRB Computer is going to cause KSC more problems than it bargained for. Middle class support for Prayut rests largely on the belief that the dictatorship will protect the financial advantages they have achieved by maintaining a more peaceful society. But younger yellow leaning people will not accept this intrusion into their personal use of the web and when the downside of single gateway-more difficulties in doing business- become apparent, they will become dissatisfied.
As an anecdote, I know of a person who abstained from any political involvement or critical thought, discouraged from thinking anything would ever change. But this month when discussion of social sanction- in lieu of functioning democratic judicial system- became talk of the town and the Red Skull site closed down and Citizens Opposed to Single Gateway became talk of the town suddenly they have become self politicized. New generation middle classers who previously didn’t care which semi-illegitimate political players was dominating the system will now care and oppose this top down structure. Basically, a sense of ownership of basic personal freedoms in the narrow sense of media use can not be separated from the larger umbrella of personal freedom. This is turning many people from being apolitical or apathetic politically into becoming supporters of activists and activists themselves.
The Burmese military has conducted a campaign of arson, killings, and rape against ethnic Rohingya that has threatened the lives of thousands more, Human Rights Watch said today. Refugees who fled the recent violence told Human Rights Watch that since the October 9, 2016 attacks by Rohingya militants on government border guard posts in northern Rakhine State, Burmese security forces have retaliated by inflicting horrific abuses on the Rohingya population.
Orwell (keeping to the theme) said that the most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. The royalists have done just that through incessant propaganda. Unfortunately the only way to make sense of the double-speak coming out of Thailand on the here and now mostly by “yellow” academics, (those who now bemoan the excesses of the military, such as with the computer crime act, yet were enthusiastically cheering the military to overthrow an elected government), is to reflect on how the past has shaped the present mess that Thailand is now in,,,
The less popular the king, the more repression is needed to keep the monarchist régime in power. The more pressure in the cooker, the more likely it is to blow up.
It’s simply sad the way so much commentary on New Mandala degenerates into discussion / debates about the past. When the HERE and NOW is now SO
crucially important.
Jatuphat’s nickname is “Pai” ( “Go” in English). Not for nothing does he have
this nickname. When “go” comes, those who have stood by you – and those who have NOT – will be remembered.
It is not up to you to decide what happiness means for somebody else, neither it is up to you
to judge about somebody else physical pain. Pain is as subjective as happiness. When i go to reflection
i ask them to hurt me, so it makes me feel alive.
How many hearts got broken by marriage? It makes people having pain for the rest of their life. Should we ban marriage?
Everybody has the right for love and affection. And if two people fit together in their desires while they nobody hurt,
then let them do. Instead of judging somebody else life, try to be a better person yourself. That’s the only path God gave to you. Let others people free, and you will free yourself.
In a secret trial, a provincial court has revoked bail of a lèse majesté suspect, ruling that the suspect insulted authorities in his Facebook post.
On 22 December 2016, Khon Kaen Provincial Court approved police request to revoke bail permission for Jatuphat Boonpattaraksa, the first person charged with lèse majesté under King Maha Vajiralongkorn regime. The court tried the case in secret and ruled that the suspect has violated the bail condition.
The request stated that after being released, Jatuphat post a message deemed satirical against authorities on his Facebook account. The message leading to the revocation reads “Economy is in poor but they (authorities) took my money for bail.”
For the record I never found my Burmese backwards useless teachers boring at any time and I learned so much I reached at the top of my chosen profession. And for the record I totally resent the fact of disparaging my teachers in Burma who we treat the same as Buddha and take it all as an insult.
YANGON — New satellite imagery suggests that the burning of villages in northern Rakhine State was conducted by members of security forces, not by villagers as the government has claimed, New York-based Human Rights Watch has said.
Interesting! That’s amazing work you’re doing. It must be quite a process to train a local teacher to be engaging when he himself grew up rote learning like everyone else there.
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The east is red
Firstly, let me offer my thanks and appreciation for such a cogent and thoughtful piece of writing.
The physical manifestation of the Sino-isation of ASEAN has no better, or rather bleaker example than that of Laos. Vientiane surely offers the starkest illustration of the utterly corrupting influence of Beijing. A small, land-locked and thus poor country has mysteriously become home to more banks, loony construction projects, and luxury motor cars than it’s minuscule domestic economy could ever hope to shoulder. The place reeks of corruption, whether it be the sickeningly sanctimonious NGO variety or the more subtle but infinitely more corrosive kind that comes across the border in a never ending convoy of Chinese 4×4’s, all heading for the nearest bank and a quick ‘clean’, before being shipped on-ward ‘clean as a whistle’ into the international financial system.
The price to be exacted on SE Asia’s citizens will in the years to come make America’s most-war hegemony seem like a vicars tea party. Something I find – as an ex-member of the UKCP rather jarring to have to admit, but if I can do it, then others can have no excuse for seeing China and it’s leadership for what they are, out and out imperialists.
Inching toward Orwell
I don’t think there is any mistake in attributing that bit of sententiousness to Santayana.
The mistake is in failing to interrogate it to see whether indeed there is any truth in it.
Inching toward Orwell
The proliferating ironies involved whenever someone decides to go for the “Orwell Option” in writing about Thai politics would make for belly laughs and snorts of glee were there not so many dead and incarcerated human beings connected directly to the subject.
The constant repetition of the phrase “democratically elected” as a modifier for the government that was overthrown in the most recent coup is, without a doubt, classic Orwellianism:
“The word FASCISM has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.” The words DEMOCRACY, SOCIALISM, FREEDOM, PATRIOTIC, REALISTIC, JUSTICE, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like DEMOCRACY, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”
To begin, Yingluck’s administration bragged about its having shut down more websites than any previous government, so any facile suggestion that “democratically elected” must somehow involve a commitment to freedom of expression should be questioned.
Unlike the administrative autonomy that we tend to associate with governments that are “democratically elected”, the Yingluck administration from day one kowtowed left and right to attempt to appease what it saw as its “real” constituency.
Soon after being elected, the Shins bought a piece of highly symbolic land in Ayuthaya to submit as a gift to HRM who “accepted” the gift wearing a military uniform. Perhaps a cultural anthropologist could give us a reading of the significance of this quickly improvised (and just as quickly ignored) ritual. Of course, anyone who misses the obvious is not likely to be enlightened by an obscurantist elevation of language anyway.
At no time during the Yingluck administration was there an effort to expose and oppose the obvious fact that the military was not only independent of the civilian administration but acting as an overseer to that “democratically elected” body.
Previous “democratically elected” administrations in Thailand have been responsible for media intimidation, extrajudicial executions and have quite accurately been described as “electoral authoritarianism”, which is absolutely not what is being transmitted by the constant drone of “democratically elected” used to contrast the authoritarianism of the junta.
This website and its tendency to publish such things as the purely fantastical rumor-mongering regarding the “succession crisis”, thus lending a patina of academic respectability to tabloid journalism, engages in a particularly modern form of “Orwellianism”: there is a comment section to create the illusion of “discussion and debate”.
The majority of posts concerning Thailand are riddled with what Orwell called “meaningless words”. Never is there an article questioning or problematizing the way words such as “democracy” and “fascism” are used to obscure the far more complex moral and political realities of Thai society and politics.
One result of this simplistic barrage of Orwellian “journalism” is the almost staggering ignorance of Thai realities that is evinced in so many of the comments on the site.
But then again, that is the point of propaganda, is it not?
Confronting genocide in Myanmar
You might want to add the Muslim man was beheaded for speaking the truth that there was no evidence of Muslims being killed. And people wonder why everyone lies.
“Shu Na Myar and other village elders told the journalists that they had not seen any evidence of Muslims being killed or beaten.”
http://frontiermyanmar.net/en/muslim-man-found-dead-after-meeting-reporters
Confronting genocide in Myanmar
Muslim Interviewee Found Beheaded in Maungdaw
Burmese reporters who participated in a three-day government-organized trip to northern Maungdaw beginning on Dec. 20 told The Irrawaddy on Friday that U Shuna Myar was one of their interviewees from the Rohingya Muslim community in Ngakhura.
http://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/muslim-interviewee-found-beheaded-in-maungdaw.html
Inching toward Orwell
My belief is this PRB Computer is going to cause KSC more problems than it bargained for. Middle class support for Prayut rests largely on the belief that the dictatorship will protect the financial advantages they have achieved by maintaining a more peaceful society. But younger yellow leaning people will not accept this intrusion into their personal use of the web and when the downside of single gateway-more difficulties in doing business- become apparent, they will become dissatisfied.
As an anecdote, I know of a person who abstained from any political involvement or critical thought, discouraged from thinking anything would ever change. But this month when discussion of social sanction- in lieu of functioning democratic judicial system- became talk of the town and the Red Skull site closed down and Citizens Opposed to Single Gateway became talk of the town suddenly they have become self politicized. New generation middle classers who previously didn’t care which semi-illegitimate political players was dominating the system will now care and oppose this top down structure. Basically, a sense of ownership of basic personal freedoms in the narrow sense of media use can not be separated from the larger umbrella of personal freedom. This is turning many people from being apolitical or apathetic politically into becoming supporters of activists and activists themselves.
Inching toward Orwell
Indeed the quote which is often mistakenly attributed to George Santayana is Thailand to a T
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
this is why I say that the only people the Thai’s are fooling are themselves .
Decades of denial as Rohingya genocide continues
Fri, 23/12/2016
The Burmese military has conducted a campaign of arson, killings, and rape against ethnic Rohingya that has threatened the lives of thousands more, Human Rights Watch said today. Refugees who fled the recent violence told Human Rights Watch that since the October 9, 2016 attacks by Rohingya militants on government border guard posts in northern Rakhine State, Burmese security forces have retaliated by inflicting horrific abuses on the Rohingya population.
http://www.prachatai.com/english/node/6801
Another year over
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to All
Thank-you NM for giving us a place to comment
Inching toward Orwell
Orwell (keeping to the theme) said that the most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. The royalists have done just that through incessant propaganda. Unfortunately the only way to make sense of the double-speak coming out of Thailand on the here and now mostly by “yellow” academics, (those who now bemoan the excesses of the military, such as with the computer crime act, yet were enthusiastically cheering the military to overthrow an elected government), is to reflect on how the past has shaped the present mess that Thailand is now in,,,
Henry VIII of Thailand
No, it’s not ไป pai ‘go’ but ไผ่ phai (low tone) ‘bamboo’
ไผ่ ดาวดิน Phai Dao Din ‘Phai, the Star of the Earth’
Henry VIII of Thailand
The less popular the king, the more repression is needed to keep the monarchist régime in power. The more pressure in the cooker, the more likely it is to blow up.
Inching toward Orwell
It’s simply sad the way so much commentary on New Mandala degenerates into discussion / debates about the past. When the HERE and NOW is now SO
crucially important.
Henry VIII of Thailand
Jatuphat’s nickname is “Pai” ( “Go” in English). Not for nothing does he have
this nickname. When “go” comes, those who have stood by you – and those who have NOT – will be remembered.
The criminalisation of LGBT people in Indonesia
It is not up to you to decide what happiness means for somebody else, neither it is up to you
to judge about somebody else physical pain. Pain is as subjective as happiness. When i go to reflection
i ask them to hurt me, so it makes me feel alive.
How many hearts got broken by marriage? It makes people having pain for the rest of their life. Should we ban marriage?
Everybody has the right for love and affection. And if two people fit together in their desires while they nobody hurt,
then let them do. Instead of judging somebody else life, try to be a better person yourself. That’s the only path God gave to you. Let others people free, and you will free yourself.
Henry VIII of Thailand
In a secret trial, a provincial court has revoked bail of a lèse majesté suspect, ruling that the suspect insulted authorities in his Facebook post.
On 22 December 2016, Khon Kaen Provincial Court approved police request to revoke bail permission for Jatuphat Boonpattaraksa, the first person charged with lèse majesté under King Maha Vajiralongkorn regime. The court tried the case in secret and ruled that the suspect has violated the bail condition.
The request stated that after being released, Jatuphat post a message deemed satirical against authorities on his Facebook account. The message leading to the revocation reads “Economy is in poor but they (authorities) took my money for bail.”
http://prachatai.org/english/node/6799
Engaging young learners in rural Myanmar
For the record I never found my Burmese backwards useless teachers boring at any time and I learned so much I reached at the top of my chosen profession. And for the record I totally resent the fact of disparaging my teachers in Burma who we treat the same as Buddha and take it all as an insult.
Decades of denial as Rohingya genocide continues
13 Dec 2016
YANGON — New satellite imagery suggests that the burning of villages in northern Rakhine State was conducted by members of security forces, not by villagers as the government has claimed, New York-based Human Rights Watch has said.
http://frontiermyanmar.net/en/military-conducted-reprisal-arson-attacks-in-rakhine-hrw-says
Engaging young learners in rural Myanmar
Kudos Chloe ,
and thank-you for sharing .
Engaging young learners in rural Myanmar
Interesting! That’s amazing work you’re doing. It must be quite a process to train a local teacher to be engaging when he himself grew up rote learning like everyone else there.