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Ralph – if you check those pages carefully, in McCoy’s PRINTED original you will see he’s QUITE CLEARLY refering to the mid-late 1940’s, as well as the 1950’s. But he does n’t go into detail. Obviously he probably would not have lived to tell the tale, had he crossed that boundary.

I gave Dr Davies the benefit of the doubt.

Bishop’s Manila speech, as outlined above, is more about how ASIAN ought to behave if they want a good outcome, not how they are likely to behave and get a mess. The Rudd influence is detectable, which is not surprising as it was probably prepared by DFAT. I agree that the message is somewhat undermined by its coming from Bishop, who has form as an agent of the failed Pax Americana. The mistake is the knee-jerk poo-pooing of everything she says, when the odd thing she says is true.

Chris Beale,
Chulalongkorn realised he was a pipsqueak compared with Queen Victoria. He just wanted to be a bit more like her. That involved more somewhat more civilised behaviour than normal Chakri traditions. But unlike her, he would never have tolerated any challenge to his power by elected representatives of “his” people. In that respect the Chakris have not changed.

I am no fan of Julie Bishop but what she says on this subject is absolutely right. Of course, bullying and blandishments are part of diplomacy, as governments advance their special interests. But the world has suffered greatly from this kind of behaviour, especially by superpowers. The prospect of more suffering, this time at the hands of China, is on everybody’s mind. The only way to alleviate superpower dictatorship is to strongly promote multilateral solidarity based on mutually agreed rules. And the only way to achieve it is by a great deal evidence-based persuasion involving all parties. Enforcing rules by punishment inevitably leads to failure of the kind that has resulted from US supremacy. The US had the most rules-based culture the world has ever seen, but it failed to bring peace at home and abroad because of its addiction to punishment. No great culture can exist without positively and widely supported rules-based behaviour. China too has peaceful rules-based traditions based on Confucianism. Confucius lived in feudal times, but he would work only for lords who respected the rules. The whole world can learn from Confucianism, especially wretched patronage-based cultures where lying and murder are OK as long as they are in the patron’s interest. Melding Confucianism with Western rules-based traditions is the key to peaceful cooperation between the West and China.

Incidentally, Dr Davies is probably cringing at the words put into his mouth by the editor’s headline on the NM home page. How often do editors do that to people?

In Oz also , there are Thai’s who will not speak publicly of politics out of fear for family still in country.

Quite probably the same Thai’s whom Chris has mentioned as having the obligatory pics …..

I’ve heard similar things about Pridi though I’m not a historian. Agree about Thaksin too – an opportunist as you say. Yet, in order to gain electoral leverage, he had to get a lot of Thais on side, and he chose the rural poor(er), It was a shrewd choice, and the fears of the amaat that he would supplant their figurehead king in the affections of the people were well founded. The prosecution was a stitch-up, this much is widely accepted about an even more widely corrupt judiciary, and of course he was allowed to go into exile via the Olympics in China as I recall.

Since then, as I have noted before, the red-shirts have become little more than a talk-fest with the possible exception of the so-called ‘assassination plot’, widely seen to be a misdirection from the dreadul rollocking Thailand got from the UN, Sadly, that’s all the UN can do, it’s hampered by being eunuch-like in its virility and much of its usefulness, and is obliged to work within diplomatic convention, which the Thais effectively take no notice whatever of. They give the middle finger to the world and they get away with it time after time. Remarkable really.

I liked the comparison with Trump, but Thaksin was at least basically smart and minimally competent despite his misjudgments about people. I’m not so sure the same can be said of the Donald in any sense

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Pridi was a man of principle and the founder of Siamese democracy. Thaksin was an opportunist much like Trump. It was necessary to defend the legitimacy of Thaksin’s régime, just as it is necessary to defend Trump’s presidency. Both held/hold office by virtue of rules that are vastly more important than those individuals could ever be.

I have a PDF of McCoy, without page numbers… But I think the references you helpfully suggest are to post-1950 events. That period is pretty well known. I was asking about 1945 to 1949 and was “fishing” to see if there was any recent material that had been revealed.

Monster of Thaksin!! Thaksin is the heir of Pridi and proponent of popular barami …besides the unfortunate murder of drug pushers.The Queen ordered the murder of Malay Muslims in 2004.

Ralph – pages 88-9, 91, 126-7,, 132-33, and further in Alfred McCoy’s still seminal “The Politics of Heroin In Southeast Asia”, gives some indication of an answer to your question. But, given the danger, would anyone publish more brave than that ?