Rohingya Inc. Ltd. is a runaway highly profitable business. Now of long duration since 2011 and showing explosive growth. All “Rights” businesses, University businesses, Media businesses and of course individuals and UN businesses. At the very least a billion dollar business.
Those “Rohingya” people on the ground. They are like those beggars with bandaged stumps on the streets. People who “champion” them need then exactly where they are.
1.”Due to the underrepresentation of employees”
“Given the lack of political space in Thailand”
These translate as labor existing in more or less a terror state, where any serious organizing from the bottom up will be met with violence. You can talk about it in nice words like this, or you can call it a vicious ultra right wing dictatorship. One that is loved by business, multinational corporations who can’t get enough of the cheap labor, and the toadies in the various embassies and foreign news outlets who would rather sip tea than support the Thai working class in any substantial form.
2. ” major labour confederations, have shown very little interest in participating in public campaigns on the minimum wage”
Because they are completely co-opted company unions?
3. “minimum wage has increased by 33 per cent for agricultural workers, 30 per cent for small factory workers, 25 per cent for restaurant workers, and 24 per cent for security guards.”
Which barely makes up for the nearly 33% increase in the BOT money supply under Abhisit alone from 2008-2011. Which is already over 5 years old. Since then, things have only gotten worse and more expensive. It’s a polite way of saying that the poorest workers can eat dust, and if they try to organize, they’ll be brutalized.
4. “Thai labour groups leading the campaign would be well advised to form alliances of working class people” AROUND THE WORLD. Meaning that there needs to be a lot more international cooperation between committed organizers who militantly push for comprehensive reform of the industrial system on a world – wide scale. Not only limited to Thailand. Thai workers need to study English. American, UK, Canadian and Austrialian organizers need to study Thai, and come see for themselves what the conditions are in Thailand so that collective pressure can be brought to bear from the boardrooms in developed countries that host the multinationals who come to take advantage of the terror conditions that exist for Thai labor. — And an audit needs to be made of domestic companies who export, so that they can be reviewed and subjected to potential, and hopefully punitive tariffs from the incoming Trump administration.
Thanks for the background information regarding your experience with BIN which I find very interesting. I am definitely interested in further private exchanges. You can email me first on: bradleywood (at) y7mail.com (saves time and the hassle of going to editors as they are on leave). If the small publication your talking about is condemned to crisis, I have already read it and enjoyed it. I await your email, and have a response/query to some of your points here that I would prefer to discuss privately.
Thanks for your kind remarks. I am always happy to engage in an exchange with an author.
I first came into contact with BIN (then Bakin) in 1982, and had quite a lot to do with it in the 1990s. I have visited its HQ several times and admired the deer grazing on the property.
Incidentally, one of the most impressive officers I knew, Burhan Mohamed, became ambassador to Pakistan a few years ago and then lost his life as the result of a helicopter crash in which several other heads of mission based in Islamabad also died. Burhan’s wife perished at the crash site, while he himself was taken alive to Singapore where he eventually died of his terrible burn injuries. He once offered me a training job at BIN, which I declined.
Although I have had nothing to do with BIN since 2005, I imagine that some of the problems from which that organisation suffered as an intelligence-collecting and -analysing body were not ameliorated when Jokowi appointed Sutiyoso as its head and then replaced him after a ridiculously short tenure with Budi Gunawan.
Sutiyoso’s appointment seemed to me to defy all logic, given that his party didn’t have a single seat in parliament. Nor did anything in his TNI background point to the possibility that he would be a good head of BIN. An American acquaintance of mine once interviewed Sutiyoso for a book and told me in disgust that Sutiyoso had his eyes glued on some MTV program throughout the interview.
Presumably Jokowi appointed Budi Gunawan to placate Megawati, but he seemed scarcely more qualified for the job than Sutiyoso was. But I am not suggesting Budi has acted against Jokowi.
When he came to office, Jokowi should have overhauled BIN to make it more professional, but he went in the opposite direction. In consequence, I doubt that BIN was capable of providing shrewd advice before the November and December demonstrations.
When you mention TNI, I think you should see Gatot Nurmantyo as a loose cannon. He is strongly anti-China and some of the things that he says in his public speeches are astonishing. When I watch him, I am reminded of Burt Lancaster, the chairman of the joint chiefs in the 1960s movie, Seven Days in May.
If you want to read something of mine somewhat longer than my New Mandala comments, there was a small publication that came out last year.
I would be quite happy for the editors to give you my email address, if you are interested in further exchanges.
Burmese Buddhists must be really bad at committing a genocide that the Muslim population in Burma more than doubles or even triples last 60 years, while Bangladeshis are so very good at the genocide business the Buddhist population there basically disappears in last 60 years.
From nearly 99% in 1950 to less than 15% in today Chittagong hills and no one – not a single country – raises a complaint.
And people like Falang and S.Park and Nancy Hudson-Rodd are loudly claiming a Muslim genocide in Burma. They must be high on something or even a Saudi-Payroll for promoting such a wild fantasy.
Good comments but I think in hindsight we should never overlook in ASEAN the keenness with which lots of people during the major soccer league matches in Europe keep their underground brokers busy as “millions” (in Vietnam “trillions” because of the VND) spend on football matches.
Aung Moe is 100 % correct and I have trying with little help from NM to point out the ACTUAL genocide of tribal Buddhists in Chittagong, as well as Bengaki Hindus and Christians in Bangladesh. NM apparently isn’t upset about this in order to continue the bogus “Rohingya” myth.
A propos the picture at the top of your post — can you comment all on the impact of the junta’s attempts to push vendors off the streets and sidewalks in Bangkok and other areas? Is that pushing people back into the job market? Is it costing low wage jobs, like for the girl in the picture? How does that sector of the economy figure into what you are discussing? Thanks.
Mainstream media has become increasingly unreliable in recent decades to the extent that credible information now requires quite a bit of research.
I wonder at your purpose in visiting this website ‘S.Park’? Your contributions consist of little more than vacuous counter-statements. Your chosen photograph is however quite appropriate as this is how I feel when I read your commentary.
Simon: Thailand managing to draw with Australia in their recent encounter was indeed a great achievement for Thailand given the fact that Australian football can draw on good players from European football (also perhaps a reflection of Australia’s multicultural society). However, when Thailand plays Vietnam or Indonesia there is much excitement in these countries – well at least among football fans – such as when Vietnam beat Thailand at the SEA Games in Ho Chi Minh in 2011 or Myanmar beat Vietnam last year in the SEA Games. I was not a spectator in 2015 but was in Ho Chi Minh in 2011 and Vietnamese were wildly jubilant after that victory. The streets of Ho Chi Minh were awash with jubilant fans and even the generally stern police were joining in. For the record I prefer Rugby over Football but I love watching crowds go wild before, during or after football matches.
I think, whoever want to make an analysis about Xanana or Timor Leste, it is better to stay in Timor and experience it or see it with his or her own eyes about what was and is really happen in Timor not to just rely of the many false reports and unreliable sources and then make an analysis base on it.
I suggest to all the foreign researchers who want to do study or analysis or research about Timor Leste and its government may be better to come to Timor and see the reality and experience what was and is like.
It’s not so surprising the Internet has n’t proved to be such a great liberator as some tech evangelicals prophesied. As Edward Snowden revealed, it’s basically the most sophisticated spying device ever invented (to quote Julian Assange).
Is it just me or no mention of 1MDB is a pretty glaring oversight? Kinda important, isn’t it? Anyway, with Andre Xavier Justo (the key source and pivotal actor in 1MDB) set to receive a pardon from Rama X/Vajiralongkorn, the 1MDB scandal is about to have its second wind. See: https://asiancorrespondent.com/2016/12/thailand-justo-1mdb-royal-pardon/
So you would equate “Thais” with journalists and junta spokesmen as opposed to the 65 million other folks in the country who for some of us pro-democracy types actually make up what we think of as “Thais”?
From my limited experience talking with top people at the Attorney General’s office and high-level functionaries in the Thai “news gathering” business, I get the impression that the only people fooling themselves are “falang” like yourself who don’t quite get the difference between what one has to say and what one actually thinks.
You should visit some time and meet some actual “Thais”.
Known as the “Quiet Genocide of Buddhists in Bangladesh” the more than 60-years long genocide has been going on so long at such intensity that Buddhist population in Bangladesh has been annihilated from a substantial 20% in the 1950s to a negligible 0.7% today.
Please read the ongoing genocide of Buddhist people (Yakhine and Burmese-like people) in the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh at following link.
As you mentioned them aren’t your “security arrangements” that you live safely in Scotland whilst your estranged wife and son live in Bangkok?
Also the previous comment didn’t attack you personally in anyway whatsoever – so it wasn’t ad hom.
In your piece you yourself raised the issue of your family, so it’s hardly stepping over the line to raise a question about your placing them alongside your work on your FB page.
You’re a public figure now – that’s clearly been something you’re pushed for and you clearly placed your family at the center of that effort. You should be able to answer polite questions about that, surely?
I don’t follow any professional sports and haven’t taken part in amateur sport for a very long time, but as someone who has played a lot of hockey, both ice and ball, who ran 30 to 50 kms a week for decades, and who first came to Thailand on a rock-climbing holiday, I do tend to notice sport and fitness activities taking place in public spaces.
Where I live and where I have traveled around in Thailand, I have always noticed that there are usually at least as many, and often more, young men playing takraw as playing 5-a-side football or futsal in the tiny concrete sport fields under elevated roadways in the evenings.
In our muban, you can almost always see someone out batting a shuttlecock around and lots of boys and girls waiting to take a turn.
And there was the fad, which seems to have faded, for huge public aerobics classes accompanied by ear-splitting music and colorful, often katoey, instructors.
Successful professional athletes in team games like football cannot be produced by the application of family or even state money as is the case with such elite individual sports as tennis and golf.
Sports infrastructure like school programs and public facilities are necessary but not sufficient to produce world-class athletes in team sports. Without a cultural component, it just won’t happen.
Canada produces world-class hockey players and teams because hockey culture is very close to congruent with Canadian culture. If Canadians are ever going to produce football players and teams to become a recognized “power” in global football, young men will have to stop switching from “soccer” to hockey once they reach puberty.
Girls in Canada continue playing football and Canadian women’s football is a far more serious endeavor than the men’s version.
I don’t know about other ASEAN countries but Thailand’s sports culture is oriented toward muay thai, takraw, badminton and volleyball much more than it is towards football. And this shows up in the international performance of Thai athletes in boxing, women’s badminton and volleyball as opposed to the lacklustre performance of Thai football teams.
Rather than looking at the lack of managers and coaches to explain ASEAN’s poor performance in international football, it might be better to begin by looking at whether or not football is played rather than watched obsessively by young Thai men.
Thais, both men and women, apparently love to watch football and wear the heavily marketed promotional materials that Hollywood and its derivative entertainment industries (like pro sports) around the world have excelled at producing and marketing since kids everywhere wanted their first Light Saber™.
But no one expects a plastic light saber and repeated viewings of Star Wars to produce a warrior capable of wielding The Force and defeating the Evil Empire.
It does seem rather silly to expect a population that loves wearing ManU™ shirts and watching Premiere League football to also produce a clutch of Paolo Rossis to represent the nation in the World Cup.
So maybe not all that different an article for New Mandala after all.
Sounds more like a simple mix of Sinophobia and hatred of Christianity to me; what would you say if white Christians in London rallied against their Mayor? I doubt if theories would come into it – that would be racist Islamophobia.
Knocking down a straw man . . . Who is it, exactly, that understands Singapore politics and society in the simplistic terms that Mr Wah attacks? No one serious.
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Decades of denial as Rohingya genocide continues
Rohingya Inc. Ltd. is a runaway highly profitable business. Now of long duration since 2011 and showing explosive growth. All “Rights” businesses, University businesses, Media businesses and of course individuals and UN businesses. At the very least a billion dollar business.
Those “Rohingya” people on the ground. They are like those beggars with bandaged stumps on the streets. People who “champion” them need then exactly where they are.
Post-300 baht Thailand
1.”Due to the underrepresentation of employees”
“Given the lack of political space in Thailand”
These translate as labor existing in more or less a terror state, where any serious organizing from the bottom up will be met with violence. You can talk about it in nice words like this, or you can call it a vicious ultra right wing dictatorship. One that is loved by business, multinational corporations who can’t get enough of the cheap labor, and the toadies in the various embassies and foreign news outlets who would rather sip tea than support the Thai working class in any substantial form.
2. ” major labour confederations, have shown very little interest in participating in public campaigns on the minimum wage”
Because they are completely co-opted company unions?
3. “minimum wage has increased by 33 per cent for agricultural workers, 30 per cent for small factory workers, 25 per cent for restaurant workers, and 24 per cent for security guards.”
Which barely makes up for the nearly 33% increase in the BOT money supply under Abhisit alone from 2008-2011. Which is already over 5 years old. Since then, things have only gotten worse and more expensive. It’s a polite way of saying that the poorest workers can eat dust, and if they try to organize, they’ll be brutalized.
4. “Thai labour groups leading the campaign would be well advised to form alliances of working class people” AROUND THE WORLD. Meaning that there needs to be a lot more international cooperation between committed organizers who militantly push for comprehensive reform of the industrial system on a world – wide scale. Not only limited to Thailand. Thai workers need to study English. American, UK, Canadian and Austrialian organizers need to study Thai, and come see for themselves what the conditions are in Thailand so that collective pressure can be brought to bear from the boardrooms in developed countries that host the multinationals who come to take advantage of the terror conditions that exist for Thai labor. — And an audit needs to be made of domestic companies who export, so that they can be reviewed and subjected to potential, and hopefully punitive tariffs from the incoming Trump administration.
Jokowi’s calculated soft approach to Jakarta’s radicals
Dear Ken,
Thanks for the background information regarding your experience with BIN which I find very interesting. I am definitely interested in further private exchanges. You can email me first on: bradleywood (at) y7mail.com (saves time and the hassle of going to editors as they are on leave). If the small publication your talking about is condemned to crisis, I have already read it and enjoyed it. I await your email, and have a response/query to some of your points here that I would prefer to discuss privately.
Jokowi’s calculated soft approach to Jakarta’s radicals
Dear Brad,
Thanks for your kind remarks. I am always happy to engage in an exchange with an author.
I first came into contact with BIN (then Bakin) in 1982, and had quite a lot to do with it in the 1990s. I have visited its HQ several times and admired the deer grazing on the property.
Incidentally, one of the most impressive officers I knew, Burhan Mohamed, became ambassador to Pakistan a few years ago and then lost his life as the result of a helicopter crash in which several other heads of mission based in Islamabad also died. Burhan’s wife perished at the crash site, while he himself was taken alive to Singapore where he eventually died of his terrible burn injuries. He once offered me a training job at BIN, which I declined.
Although I have had nothing to do with BIN since 2005, I imagine that some of the problems from which that organisation suffered as an intelligence-collecting and -analysing body were not ameliorated when Jokowi appointed Sutiyoso as its head and then replaced him after a ridiculously short tenure with Budi Gunawan.
Sutiyoso’s appointment seemed to me to defy all logic, given that his party didn’t have a single seat in parliament. Nor did anything in his TNI background point to the possibility that he would be a good head of BIN. An American acquaintance of mine once interviewed Sutiyoso for a book and told me in disgust that Sutiyoso had his eyes glued on some MTV program throughout the interview.
Presumably Jokowi appointed Budi Gunawan to placate Megawati, but he seemed scarcely more qualified for the job than Sutiyoso was. But I am not suggesting Budi has acted against Jokowi.
When he came to office, Jokowi should have overhauled BIN to make it more professional, but he went in the opposite direction. In consequence, I doubt that BIN was capable of providing shrewd advice before the November and December demonstrations.
When you mention TNI, I think you should see Gatot Nurmantyo as a loose cannon. He is strongly anti-China and some of the things that he says in his public speeches are astonishing. When I watch him, I am reminded of Burt Lancaster, the chairman of the joint chiefs in the 1960s movie, Seven Days in May.
If you want to read something of mine somewhat longer than my New Mandala comments, there was a small publication that came out last year.
I would be quite happy for the editors to give you my email address, if you are interested in further exchanges.
Decades of denial as Rohingya genocide continues
Burmese Buddhists must be really bad at committing a genocide that the Muslim population in Burma more than doubles or even triples last 60 years, while Bangladeshis are so very good at the genocide business the Buddhist population there basically disappears in last 60 years.
From nearly 99% in 1950 to less than 15% in today Chittagong hills and no one – not a single country – raises a complaint.
And people like Falang and S.Park and Nancy Hudson-Rodd are loudly claiming a Muslim genocide in Burma. They must be high on something or even a Saudi-Payroll for promoting such a wild fantasy.
In the shadow of football giants
Good comments but I think in hindsight we should never overlook in ASEAN the keenness with which lots of people during the major soccer league matches in Europe keep their underground brokers busy as “millions” (in Vietnam “trillions” because of the VND) spend on football matches.
Decades of denial as Rohingya genocide continues
I, too do not enjoy engaging in these meaningless discussions. If you can refrain from post offensive conspiracy theories, I will respond in kind.
Decades of denial as Rohingya genocide continues
Aung Moe is 100 % correct and I have trying with little help from NM to point out the ACTUAL genocide of tribal Buddhists in Chittagong, as well as Bengaki Hindus and Christians in Bangladesh. NM apparently isn’t upset about this in order to continue the bogus “Rohingya” myth.
Post-300 baht Thailand
Good topic, thank you.
A propos the picture at the top of your post — can you comment all on the impact of the junta’s attempts to push vendors off the streets and sidewalks in Bangkok and other areas? Is that pushing people back into the job market? Is it costing low wage jobs, like for the girl in the picture? How does that sector of the economy figure into what you are discussing? Thanks.
Decades of denial as Rohingya genocide continues
Mainstream media has become increasingly unreliable in recent decades to the extent that credible information now requires quite a bit of research.
I wonder at your purpose in visiting this website ‘S.Park’? Your contributions consist of little more than vacuous counter-statements. Your chosen photograph is however quite appropriate as this is how I feel when I read your commentary.
In the shadow of football giants
Simon: Thailand managing to draw with Australia in their recent encounter was indeed a great achievement for Thailand given the fact that Australian football can draw on good players from European football (also perhaps a reflection of Australia’s multicultural society). However, when Thailand plays Vietnam or Indonesia there is much excitement in these countries – well at least among football fans – such as when Vietnam beat Thailand at the SEA Games in Ho Chi Minh in 2011 or Myanmar beat Vietnam last year in the SEA Games. I was not a spectator in 2015 but was in Ho Chi Minh in 2011 and Vietnamese were wildly jubilant after that victory. The streets of Ho Chi Minh were awash with jubilant fans and even the generally stern police were joining in. For the record I prefer Rugby over Football but I love watching crowds go wild before, during or after football matches.
The changing face of Xanana Gusmao
I think, whoever want to make an analysis about Xanana or Timor Leste, it is better to stay in Timor and experience it or see it with his or her own eyes about what was and is really happen in Timor not to just rely of the many false reports and unreliable sources and then make an analysis base on it.
I suggest to all the foreign researchers who want to do study or analysis or research about Timor Leste and its government may be better to come to Timor and see the reality and experience what was and is like.
What next for the theatrics of Thailand?
It’s not so surprising the Internet has n’t proved to be such a great liberator as some tech evangelicals prophesied. As Edward Snowden revealed, it’s basically the most sophisticated spying device ever invented (to quote Julian Assange).
An alliance to secure electoral victory
Is it just me or no mention of 1MDB is a pretty glaring oversight? Kinda important, isn’t it? Anyway, with Andre Xavier Justo (the key source and pivotal actor in 1MDB) set to receive a pardon from Rama X/Vajiralongkorn, the 1MDB scandal is about to have its second wind. See: https://asiancorrespondent.com/2016/12/thailand-justo-1mdb-royal-pardon/
The futility of Prayuth’s war on truth
So you would equate “Thais” with journalists and junta spokesmen as opposed to the 65 million other folks in the country who for some of us pro-democracy types actually make up what we think of as “Thais”?
From my limited experience talking with top people at the Attorney General’s office and high-level functionaries in the Thai “news gathering” business, I get the impression that the only people fooling themselves are “falang” like yourself who don’t quite get the difference between what one has to say and what one actually thinks.
You should visit some time and meet some actual “Thais”.
Decades of denial as Rohingya genocide continues
Known as the “Quiet Genocide of Buddhists in Bangladesh” the more than 60-years long genocide has been going on so long at such intensity that Buddhist population in Bangladesh has been annihilated from a substantial 20% in the 1950s to a negligible 0.7% today.
Please read the ongoing genocide of Buddhist people (Yakhine and Burmese-like people) in the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh at following link.
http://www.angelfire.com/ab/jumma/genocide.html
The futility of Prayuth’s war on truth
As you mentioned them aren’t your “security arrangements” that you live safely in Scotland whilst your estranged wife and son live in Bangkok?
Also the previous comment didn’t attack you personally in anyway whatsoever – so it wasn’t ad hom.
In your piece you yourself raised the issue of your family, so it’s hardly stepping over the line to raise a question about your placing them alongside your work on your FB page.
You’re a public figure now – that’s clearly been something you’re pushed for and you clearly placed your family at the center of that effort. You should be able to answer polite questions about that, surely?
In the shadow of football giants
A different sort of article for New Mandala.
I don’t follow any professional sports and haven’t taken part in amateur sport for a very long time, but as someone who has played a lot of hockey, both ice and ball, who ran 30 to 50 kms a week for decades, and who first came to Thailand on a rock-climbing holiday, I do tend to notice sport and fitness activities taking place in public spaces.
Where I live and where I have traveled around in Thailand, I have always noticed that there are usually at least as many, and often more, young men playing takraw as playing 5-a-side football or futsal in the tiny concrete sport fields under elevated roadways in the evenings.
In our muban, you can almost always see someone out batting a shuttlecock around and lots of boys and girls waiting to take a turn.
And there was the fad, which seems to have faded, for huge public aerobics classes accompanied by ear-splitting music and colorful, often katoey, instructors.
Successful professional athletes in team games like football cannot be produced by the application of family or even state money as is the case with such elite individual sports as tennis and golf.
Sports infrastructure like school programs and public facilities are necessary but not sufficient to produce world-class athletes in team sports. Without a cultural component, it just won’t happen.
Canada produces world-class hockey players and teams because hockey culture is very close to congruent with Canadian culture. If Canadians are ever going to produce football players and teams to become a recognized “power” in global football, young men will have to stop switching from “soccer” to hockey once they reach puberty.
Girls in Canada continue playing football and Canadian women’s football is a far more serious endeavor than the men’s version.
I don’t know about other ASEAN countries but Thailand’s sports culture is oriented toward muay thai, takraw, badminton and volleyball much more than it is towards football. And this shows up in the international performance of Thai athletes in boxing, women’s badminton and volleyball as opposed to the lacklustre performance of Thai football teams.
Rather than looking at the lack of managers and coaches to explain ASEAN’s poor performance in international football, it might be better to begin by looking at whether or not football is played rather than watched obsessively by young Thai men.
Thais, both men and women, apparently love to watch football and wear the heavily marketed promotional materials that Hollywood and its derivative entertainment industries (like pro sports) around the world have excelled at producing and marketing since kids everywhere wanted their first Light Saber™.
But no one expects a plastic light saber and repeated viewings of Star Wars to produce a warrior capable of wielding The Force and defeating the Evil Empire.
It does seem rather silly to expect a population that loves wearing ManU™ shirts and watching Premiere League football to also produce a clutch of Paolo Rossis to represent the nation in the World Cup.
So maybe not all that different an article for New Mandala after all.
Explaining the mass anti-Ahok rally turnouts
Sounds more like a simple mix of Sinophobia and hatred of Christianity to me; what would you say if white Christians in London rallied against their Mayor? I doubt if theories would come into it – that would be racist Islamophobia.
Stubbornly separate
Knocking down a straw man . . . Who is it, exactly, that understands Singapore politics and society in the simplistic terms that Mr Wah attacks? No one serious.