Thailand: BBC will cooperate with police in royal defamation probe – source
The BBC Thai source informed The Nation that staff members typically work remotely and rarely enter the office.
The source also said that the offending article that had been translated from its original English version had been published from the UK and did not involve any of the outlet’s local Thailand-based staff.
“If the police want to interrogate concerned staff, they have to contact those based in the UK. Any police move against BBC’s Thai office would make the staff panic for no reason,” the source was quoted as saying.
Excellent article – even if the dispute is rather older than four or five decades; slave-raiding adventures of the past by Moslem sultans are part of the story too.
This is President Duterte’s first significant error in a political system that is based heavily on sentiment and emotion. It will be of great interest (at leats to me) to see what the opinion polls report in the coming days. Whereas insulting world leaders, declaring the war on drugs, becoming cosy with China (and even Russia), setting aside seats in his Cabinet for the left, and tackling issues in Mindanao seem to have (so far) surfed the emotional wave of Filipino politics rather successfully, one suspects that the Marcos burial will not have done so. However, the left would be rather foolish (politically) to fall out with the only president in living memory who has given them a reason to hope over the Marcos burial issue.
The PM – Najib is good at making slogans (or at least his speech and policy writers)
Malaysia already has Cyberjaya, that is suppose to spearhead the digital economy, why a tiny cyberhub? There is also the Multimedia super corridor emanating from cyberjaya complete with cyber-centres, cyber-cities etc. Does changing the slogan from cyber to digital really make a difference?
Innovations in Malaysia move at a snail pace because of several factors. These factors do not need political upheavel to change, but they do remove some of the structural avenues for corrupt practice. Removal of structural avenues for corrupt practice is not an attractive proposition for people benefiting from the system.
One simple example relating to the MSC status cyber-centre certification ( and there are many many more);
To obtain a cyber-centre status from MSC, there is one requirement, which is “provide a value proposition to your tenants” You have to describe how you are going to provide a “value proposition” to your tenants. There is no specific explanation and no example of what that means. The MSC people will however “recommend” to you a consultant who can help you fill that application form!!!
Once you pay that “recommended consultant”, any crap that is written is approved!
That is an example of “structural” corruption.
Here is another detailed report of ‘strong evidence’ of a genocide being coordinated against the Rohingya. Or is AlJazeera another Western human rights propoganda outlet? Actually, I already know what you will say – they’re part of a ‘Muslim conspiracy’ to sow unnecessary discord and divide communities. Is that close? So what news outlets would you actually trust of this ‘evidence’ you ask for?
Sorry but the article that you linked has no real relevance to what I said. No matter what you think about HRW, you asked for evidence that Rohingya are being killed and abused by government forces. If you had even bothered to open the document, there are pages and pages of reports detailing accounts and interviews with survivors illustrating this point. Or do you suggesting that HRW fabricated those accounts? (Out of what, a sense of ‘moral superiority?)
Please try to focus on the topic at hand and not go off ranting about some irrelevant point about Western arrogance.
Activist Says She Faces Arrest for Sharing Stories Online
December 8, 2016
“If you dare write, I dare share,” Chanoknan wrote along with her share of the BBC Thai biography, which has already led to charges against another activist who shared it.
Reached for comment, Chanoknan said she had been warned by her lawyers Sunday to remove the articles from her Facebook profile after the arrest of Jatupat “Pai” Boonpattararaksa, a member of community rights group Dao Din, one week earlier.
Authorities intimidate Facebook followers of exiled monarchy critic
Thu, 08/12/2016
Authorities have summoned or visited at least six people across the country who follow the Facebook page of an exiled academic. Authorities informed them that following the academic could be considered lèse majesté.
Understanding what the events means, also means looking at it from a different point of view. You and A.S. Hikam may see it that way, but me, and others here see it the other way.
You know recent survey said 88% doesn’t really listen to words Ahok said that is now being prosecuted for blasphemy.
This whole Ahok blasphemy thing is a good test for Indonesian democracy. When they begun the trial of Ahok, it would be closely followed and more people would really listen to what Ahok really said. Then people can made their own conclusion and not just follow the crowd like what we see in 212 and 411.
The arrest of Pai for sharing the biography on his Facebook account caused a public panic since the post was shared by over 2,700 users. The arrest begs the question: is sharing the post illegal? Many users have subsequently deleted the article from their timeline, as shown in the post’s share count dropping by hundreds after the arrest.
Whether users who shared the article are liable remains unclear. According to a report from the police, what warranted the lèse majesté charge was actually the caption that accompanied Pai’s post. Yet Pai’s caption was merely the last four paragraphs of the biography — does this mean that the biography contains illegal content?
BBC Thai later removed the biography from its Facebook page, though it remains published on its main website. Ministry of Digital for Economy and Society (DE) currently bans access to the biography from Thailand.
After meeting with some famous and not-so-famous political science professors in the US, I strongly believe that Disability Adjusted Life Year should include time spent in graduate school.
Myanmar needs a government that works. Nobody cares whatever the West labels it. Economic growth and poverty alleviation should be high on agenda while any thought of chasing “Western ideals” should be thrown out of the window. Unless Myanmar grows, it will continue to be ‘a cat to kick’ whenever the West needs to. Unless Myanmar grows, global warming and all climate change threats the West has engineered will haunt its future.
Yes. Basically, NLD should commit suicide to prove that they are Western puppets. In the same day NLD amends these laws, protests would be in order at a time Rakhine issue is burning. And another nonsense is that the laws probably hinder 0.00001% of marriages. So, let’s create a mess in the country so that the West will reward Myanmar with “human rights points.”
The author asks whether the moderate form of the religion will prevail. I have news for him. There is no such thing as a moderate form of Islam. The only reason he thinks so is because he fails to recognize what has kept the it at bay. The Malay people have always been a good, and decent people, and so their strong ethnic roots have mitigated and softened the type of Islam that they have embraced. But with all of this trending globally toward a more religious apex, the cultural mitigating factors are receding, and this means the end result will be that the historically softening influences of culture will recede into the background, and the true nature of the hideous pure form of the religion will surface. When that does happen, and it will, at the state level, from which it will be imposed, your country will become another Saudi Arabia, with all its horrors. I know you dream it will not be so, but it will happen in less than one generation.
You are both far too optimistic about the direction that this is headed. Just because economics and cultural rights are under threat does not mean that Islam will not take its ultimate root. Your country has survived all these years because the cultural aspects of your Malay roots have been strong, but the trend is toward finding identity in Islam itself. And this is the global trend of Islam. Don’t think that you will be a hold-out. The cancer will reach you, too, and the result will be a transformation into the dreaded form of the Islam that it is headed toward. Any thought that it could head in a moderate direction is not in keeping with the tendency of this religion to go in the more authoritarian direction. The very nature of the religion is authoritarian, and its earliest practitioners were tyrants. So it is returning to its roots. And its final form will come from the Wahhabi school. That is the true nature of the beast. Only non-Muslims are able to see this clearly.
The eight people the police have declared suspects are a particularly dangerous group that deserve to be labelled ‘Conspirators of the Third Age’.
Jokowi has a fondness for appointing ministers or heads of BIN who are in their late sixties or over. The last BIN head, Sutiyoso, has been the oldest. Understandably, then, Jokowi quickly detected the threat emanating from activists like Sri Bintang Pamungkas, who’ll never see seventy again.
Dismissing criticism of the arrests on the grounds of the suspects’ advanced age, national police chief Tito Karnavian turned the argument on its head to claim that their very seniority in time spent on earth had given the conspirators the maturity to develop concepts that younger people could apply.
He could have added that wheelchair-bound Rachmawati Sukarnoputri, Megawati’s younger sister, runs the Bung Karno University. Perhaps it doesn’t rate highly in international university comparisons. But no matter, it is probably a hotbed of cutting-edge Marhaenist thought and a convenient location for developing dangerous concepts.
This article misses one key point perhaps – Does the NLD have the inclination or motivation to “capitalize” on this reported waning of power of Ma Ba Tha?
It presupposes that Ma Ba Tha and the NLD are from totally opposite ideologies. I would say this would be very big assumption to make.
In recent conversations I’ve had with NLD members, MPs have openly defended Wirathu against criticism. Nothing overly controversial was said, but the MPs jumped to Ma Ba Tha’s defence. I suggest therefore that, despite the political difference and battles of the election period, the NLD is not so inclined to address the issues of Buddist extremism or Ma Ba Tha at this time, or perhaps ever. If it represents a political threat, then yes, perhaps the NLD will take on Ma Ba Tha. In the interests of addressing freedom of religion and anti-Muslim rhetoric, we can be sure the NLD sees it as completely politically inexpedient – regardless, many in the party probably ascribe to the same theories.
I think it worth making a comparison between Arab and Malay societies. They have one big thing in common. Their rules-based behaviour is shaped largely by the same religion: one with many punitive practices that allow it and its derivative secular cultures to be hi-jacked by violent ratbags. Punitive cultures are naturally xenophobic because they see the non-compliant behaviour of outsiders as worthy of punishment. You may think I’m being unfair to Islam. Well, don’t let me start on the West!
Polygamy raises the intensity of personal competition in Arab and Malay cultures to higher levels than in monogamous or polyandrous cultures. The main difference is probably that the Malays remain less competitive (and therefore in less desperate need of rules) than the Arabs. One could speculate that that is due to the fact that Malay populations tend to be limited by disease (the wet tropics being full of competing life), and Arab populations by starvation (the usual fate of life in the desert). These differences, which come before religion or rather, shape its evolution, suggest that Islam would be less compatible with Malay than with Arab culture.
Rules-based behaviour in both cultures is corrupted by patronage. Both have Sultans.
Oh, somebody mentioned HRW. To say it frankly, you don’t understand the issue an iota. And for all your self-righteousness and sense of moral superiority, just like hundreds of millions of Westerners before you, history will hold you all accountable for rendering the conflict unsolvable. THEY are the hypocrites. THEY are the snobbish pathological liars. THEY are the genocidal murderers.
“By their well-intentioned activism, they [human rights fighers] have given murderous rebel militias – not only in Darfur but around the world – the idea that even if they have no hope of military victory, they can mobilise useful idiots around the world to take up their cause, and thereby win in the court of public opinion what they cannot win on the battlefield. The best way to do this is to provoke massacres by the other side, which Darfur rebels have dome quite successfully and remorselessly. This mobilises well-meaning American celebrities and the human rights groups behind them. It also prolongs war and makes human rights groups accomplices to great crimes.”
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Henry VIII of Thailand
Thailand: BBC will cooperate with police in royal defamation probe – source
The BBC Thai source informed The Nation that staff members typically work remotely and rarely enter the office.
The source also said that the offending article that had been translated from its original English version had been published from the UK and did not involve any of the outlet’s local Thailand-based staff.
“If the police want to interrogate concerned staff, they have to contact those based in the UK. Any police move against BBC’s Thai office would make the staff panic for no reason,” the source was quoted as saying.
https://asiancorrespondent.com/2016/12/thailand-bbc-will-cooperate-police-royal-defamation-probe-source/
Growing insecurity in Muslim Mindanao
Excellent article – even if the dispute is rather older than four or five decades; slave-raiding adventures of the past by Moslem sultans are part of the story too.
Who built Marcos’ tomb?
This is President Duterte’s first significant error in a political system that is based heavily on sentiment and emotion. It will be of great interest (at leats to me) to see what the opinion polls report in the coming days. Whereas insulting world leaders, declaring the war on drugs, becoming cosy with China (and even Russia), setting aside seats in his Cabinet for the left, and tackling issues in Mindanao seem to have (so far) surfed the emotional wave of Filipino politics rather successfully, one suspects that the Marcos burial will not have done so. However, the left would be rather foolish (politically) to fall out with the only president in living memory who has given them a reason to hope over the Marcos burial issue.
The futility of Prayuth’s war on truth
seems theguardian wants to test the waters also 🙂
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2016/dec/09/king-maha-vajiralongkorn-thailand-majestic-crop-top
……………………….
thank-you for the article Andrew , as I have stated elsewhere on NM , the only people the Thai’s are fooling are themselves .
sooner or later the realisation will come that Democracy must be fought for and once obtained protected .
to steal a quote from another :
it’s not a perfect system BUT it is the best one we have .
Malaysia’s digital economy: can entrepreneurship be unleashed?
The PM – Najib is good at making slogans (or at least his speech and policy writers)
Malaysia already has Cyberjaya, that is suppose to spearhead the digital economy, why a tiny cyberhub? There is also the Multimedia super corridor emanating from cyberjaya complete with cyber-centres, cyber-cities etc. Does changing the slogan from cyber to digital really make a difference?
Innovations in Malaysia move at a snail pace because of several factors. These factors do not need political upheavel to change, but they do remove some of the structural avenues for corrupt practice. Removal of structural avenues for corrupt practice is not an attractive proposition for people benefiting from the system.
One simple example relating to the MSC status cyber-centre certification ( and there are many many more);
To obtain a cyber-centre status from MSC, there is one requirement, which is “provide a value proposition to your tenants” You have to describe how you are going to provide a “value proposition” to your tenants. There is no specific explanation and no example of what that means. The MSC people will however “recommend” to you a consultant who can help you fill that application form!!!
Once you pay that “recommended consultant”, any crap that is written is approved!
That is an example of “structural” corruption.
Confronting genocide in Myanmar
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/exclusive-strong-evidence-genocide-myanmar-151024190547465.html
Here is another detailed report of ‘strong evidence’ of a genocide being coordinated against the Rohingya. Or is AlJazeera another Western human rights propoganda outlet? Actually, I already know what you will say – they’re part of a ‘Muslim conspiracy’ to sow unnecessary discord and divide communities. Is that close? So what news outlets would you actually trust of this ‘evidence’ you ask for?
Confronting genocide in Myanmar
Sorry but the article that you linked has no real relevance to what I said. No matter what you think about HRW, you asked for evidence that Rohingya are being killed and abused by government forces. If you had even bothered to open the document, there are pages and pages of reports detailing accounts and interviews with survivors illustrating this point. Or do you suggesting that HRW fabricated those accounts? (Out of what, a sense of ‘moral superiority?)
Please try to focus on the topic at hand and not go off ranting about some irrelevant point about Western arrogance.
Henry VIII of Thailand
Activist Says She Faces Arrest for Sharing Stories Online
December 8, 2016
“If you dare write, I dare share,” Chanoknan wrote along with her share of the BBC Thai biography, which has already led to charges against another activist who shared it.
Reached for comment, Chanoknan said she had been warned by her lawyers Sunday to remove the articles from her Facebook profile after the arrest of Jatupat “Pai” Boonpattararaksa, a member of community rights group Dao Din, one week earlier.
http://www.khaosodenglish.com/politics/2016/12/08/activist-says-shes-threatened-arrest-sharing-stories/
Intimidation of Somsak Jeamteerasakul
Authorities intimidate Facebook followers of exiled monarchy critic
Thu, 08/12/2016
Authorities have summoned or visited at least six people across the country who follow the Facebook page of an exiled academic. Authorities informed them that following the academic could be considered lèse majesté.
http://prachatai.org/english/node/6765
Jokowi’s calculated soft approach to Jakarta’s radicals
Finally an academia who viewed 212 event as most Indonesian viewed it.
Has Jokowi handed a strategic victory to radicals?
Understanding what the events means, also means looking at it from a different point of view. You and A.S. Hikam may see it that way, but me, and others here see it the other way.
You know recent survey said 88% doesn’t really listen to words Ahok said that is now being prosecuted for blasphemy.
This whole Ahok blasphemy thing is a good test for Indonesian democracy. When they begun the trial of Ahok, it would be closely followed and more people would really listen to what Ahok really said. Then people can made their own conclusion and not just follow the crowd like what we see in 212 and 411.
Henry VIII of Thailand
Lèse majesté under King Rama X
2. Public panic after arrest
The arrest of Pai for sharing the biography on his Facebook account caused a public panic since the post was shared by over 2,700 users. The arrest begs the question: is sharing the post illegal? Many users have subsequently deleted the article from their timeline, as shown in the post’s share count dropping by hundreds after the arrest.
Whether users who shared the article are liable remains unclear. According to a report from the police, what warranted the lèse majesté charge was actually the caption that accompanied Pai’s post. Yet Pai’s caption was merely the last four paragraphs of the biography — does this mean that the biography contains illegal content?
BBC Thai later removed the biography from its Facebook page, though it remains published on its main website. Ministry of Digital for Economy and Society (DE) currently bans access to the biography from Thailand.
http://prachatai.org/english/node/6763
Marvelling at Indonesian democracy in Myanmar
Nobody cares.
After meeting with some famous and not-so-famous political science professors in the US, I strongly believe that Disability Adjusted Life Year should include time spent in graduate school.
Myanmar needs a government that works. Nobody cares whatever the West labels it. Economic growth and poverty alleviation should be high on agenda while any thought of chasing “Western ideals” should be thrown out of the window. Unless Myanmar grows, it will continue to be ‘a cat to kick’ whenever the West needs to. Unless Myanmar grows, global warming and all climate change threats the West has engineered will haunt its future.
Managing a declining threat
Yes. Basically, NLD should commit suicide to prove that they are Western puppets. In the same day NLD amends these laws, protests would be in order at a time Rakhine issue is burning. And another nonsense is that the laws probably hinder 0.00001% of marriages. So, let’s create a mess in the country so that the West will reward Myanmar with “human rights points.”
The rise and rise of Muslim politics
The author asks whether the moderate form of the religion will prevail. I have news for him. There is no such thing as a moderate form of Islam. The only reason he thinks so is because he fails to recognize what has kept the it at bay. The Malay people have always been a good, and decent people, and so their strong ethnic roots have mitigated and softened the type of Islam that they have embraced. But with all of this trending globally toward a more religious apex, the cultural mitigating factors are receding, and this means the end result will be that the historically softening influences of culture will recede into the background, and the true nature of the hideous pure form of the religion will surface. When that does happen, and it will, at the state level, from which it will be imposed, your country will become another Saudi Arabia, with all its horrors. I know you dream it will not be so, but it will happen in less than one generation.
The rise and rise of Muslim politics
You are both far too optimistic about the direction that this is headed. Just because economics and cultural rights are under threat does not mean that Islam will not take its ultimate root. Your country has survived all these years because the cultural aspects of your Malay roots have been strong, but the trend is toward finding identity in Islam itself. And this is the global trend of Islam. Don’t think that you will be a hold-out. The cancer will reach you, too, and the result will be a transformation into the dreaded form of the Islam that it is headed toward. Any thought that it could head in a moderate direction is not in keeping with the tendency of this religion to go in the more authoritarian direction. The very nature of the religion is authoritarian, and its earliest practitioners were tyrants. So it is returning to its roots. And its final form will come from the Wahhabi school. That is the true nature of the beast. Only non-Muslims are able to see this clearly.
Jokowi’s calculated soft approach to Jakarta’s radicals
The eight people the police have declared suspects are a particularly dangerous group that deserve to be labelled ‘Conspirators of the Third Age’.
Jokowi has a fondness for appointing ministers or heads of BIN who are in their late sixties or over. The last BIN head, Sutiyoso, has been the oldest. Understandably, then, Jokowi quickly detected the threat emanating from activists like Sri Bintang Pamungkas, who’ll never see seventy again.
Dismissing criticism of the arrests on the grounds of the suspects’ advanced age, national police chief Tito Karnavian turned the argument on its head to claim that their very seniority in time spent on earth had given the conspirators the maturity to develop concepts that younger people could apply.
He could have added that wheelchair-bound Rachmawati Sukarnoputri, Megawati’s younger sister, runs the Bung Karno University. Perhaps it doesn’t rate highly in international university comparisons. But no matter, it is probably a hotbed of cutting-edge Marhaenist thought and a convenient location for developing dangerous concepts.
Managing a declining threat
This article misses one key point perhaps – Does the NLD have the inclination or motivation to “capitalize” on this reported waning of power of Ma Ba Tha?
It presupposes that Ma Ba Tha and the NLD are from totally opposite ideologies. I would say this would be very big assumption to make.
In recent conversations I’ve had with NLD members, MPs have openly defended Wirathu against criticism. Nothing overly controversial was said, but the MPs jumped to Ma Ba Tha’s defence. I suggest therefore that, despite the political difference and battles of the election period, the NLD is not so inclined to address the issues of Buddist extremism or Ma Ba Tha at this time, or perhaps ever. If it represents a political threat, then yes, perhaps the NLD will take on Ma Ba Tha. In the interests of addressing freedom of religion and anti-Muslim rhetoric, we can be sure the NLD sees it as completely politically inexpedient – regardless, many in the party probably ascribe to the same theories.
Sorry for the pessimism
Lessons of the Arab Spring for Muslim Southeast Asia
I think it worth making a comparison between Arab and Malay societies. They have one big thing in common. Their rules-based behaviour is shaped largely by the same religion: one with many punitive practices that allow it and its derivative secular cultures to be hi-jacked by violent ratbags. Punitive cultures are naturally xenophobic because they see the non-compliant behaviour of outsiders as worthy of punishment. You may think I’m being unfair to Islam. Well, don’t let me start on the West!
Polygamy raises the intensity of personal competition in Arab and Malay cultures to higher levels than in monogamous or polyandrous cultures. The main difference is probably that the Malays remain less competitive (and therefore in less desperate need of rules) than the Arabs. One could speculate that that is due to the fact that Malay populations tend to be limited by disease (the wet tropics being full of competing life), and Arab populations by starvation (the usual fate of life in the desert). These differences, which come before religion or rather, shape its evolution, suggest that Islam would be less compatible with Malay than with Arab culture.
Rules-based behaviour in both cultures is corrupted by patronage. Both have Sultans.
And so on.
Confronting genocide in Myanmar
Oh, somebody mentioned HRW. To say it frankly, you don’t understand the issue an iota. And for all your self-righteousness and sense of moral superiority, just like hundreds of millions of Westerners before you, history will hold you all accountable for rendering the conflict unsolvable. THEY are the hypocrites. THEY are the snobbish pathological liars. THEY are the genocidal murderers.
“By their well-intentioned activism, they [human rights fighers] have given murderous rebel militias – not only in Darfur but around the world – the idea that even if they have no hope of military victory, they can mobilise useful idiots around the world to take up their cause, and thereby win in the court of public opinion what they cannot win on the battlefield. The best way to do this is to provoke massacres by the other side, which Darfur rebels have dome quite successfully and remorselessly. This mobilises well-meaning American celebrities and the human rights groups behind them. It also prolongs war and makes human rights groups accomplices to great crimes.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/31/human-rights-imperialism-james-hoge