The opinion of the ambassador is, as usual for any member of the Thai amart, the usual denials and spin. Go back to where you came from PunkRaison, you and your fellow junta scum are not welcome.
I think it’s inevitable, and I suspect you fear the same thing, though perhaps not exactly the same fate, every society is different and treads a slightly different path.
We live in a time of disintegration, particularly of societies. There is a time to build up an a time to pull down. This is the time of the knockers-down.
There is quite a good master degree thesis on the work and organization of nuns at the Thonburi temple that is the origin of Dhammakaya which also allows for insight into how this particular temple pursued fundraising and related to individuals seeking healing … and quite a lot else.
Nuns’ Status: A Case Study of Wat Park Nam Bhasicharoen, by Nun Naathathai Chattinaway, College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Thammasat University, 2009.
The Sarawak Land Code was amended in 2000 to exclude PM and PG. However, the amendment has never been gazetted. That means it cannot be enforced. The Federal Court, in its Dec 20 ruling, should have stressed the Land Code includes PM and PG. That means Adat has the force of law on PM and PG.
I agree with much of what you say John. I reckon I have the benefit (curse ?) of having been born as an expat in Malaya and lived there 22 years (not including research visits later in life). I have intimate attachments with Malaysia, as well as professional ones that go up relatively high. Thus, I can state things with confidence, though the risk I entail in doing so is another matter. No point to project a false Malaysia; neither Malaysians nor foreigners benefit.
Most people don’t know anything about Dhammakaya temple. They saw lots of differences eg big buildings, look of bhuddha, they believe these are wrong. They believe this is about money. In fact, this temple made for buddhists to do mediation practice and be a center of joining bhuddism ceremonies. People thought monks live very richful. In fact, monks at this temple sleep in a tent no pilow, no air conditioner, and they work hard to prepare place for coming ceremonies. They are so many mis-understanding to this temple.
Personally, I am not really worried about the corruption. Malaysians have been living with corruption at all levels for several decades. It does not really impact their daily lives.
I am totally aghast at the islamisation or Talibanism creeping at a rather fast pace into the country, promoted sometimes openly and sometimes overtly by the Govt. This has great impact on the average malaysian’s daily live.
I doubt that anyone who has either been taken in by Prayuth and his merry gang, or who has decided to pretend to be taken in by them would want to live anywhere but Thailand.
The Indonesia-biased comment above is tosh. The writer is clearly a chauvinist and makes specious comments. What did Myanmar have to offer ASEAN when it joined ? In fact, when Myanmar was Head of ASEAN it blocked Timor Leste’s admission on the grounds it hadn’t met criteria of living standards and democracy. This was rich….coming from autocratic Myanmar (at the time, the Tatmadaw was still in control). Laos hasn’t met the conditions for admission, nor Cambodia, nor even Malaysia. In effect, the author admits that Singapore is the sole nation that is a justified member based on location and history. That is patent nonsense and I suspect the author is still upset that East Timor is no longer being ravaged by Indonesia. Timor Leste is in SE Asia and it is a nation trying to develop, though admittedly with many problems. It is supremely selfish and arrogant to state that Timor Leste’s admission into ASEAN will diminish what is already arguably a less then useful communion of different interests. NO, either admit Timor Leste on the basis of friendship and Southeast Asian traditions, of which the nation is as much a part as any member of ASEAN, or finally get rid of ASEAN altogether and let Singapore continue to pursue its burgeoning trade with China unencumbered by poorer ASEAN nations and chauvinistic comments like the one above.
If I have shifted the focus, it is because those inaccuracies directly undermine the credibility of Bhatia’s argument. When you support a thesis by showing ignorance of your research subject and stretching the truth, the validity of your argument becomes suspect. Moreover, doing so on a site like this, which supports standards of academic integrity, undermines and disrespects every other contributor to the site and the institutions that support it. Partisanship is fine (in fact encouraged), but arguments should be supported by objective scholarship.
But let me address some of your own criticisms. First, since my goal was to address the inaccuracies in Bhatia’s article, I did not touch on those points where he was right – as you noted, graduate unemployment, underemployment and so on. There was no need, and indeed I agree that these are problems.
Second, you may not be aware but there is a strict word limit to submissions to New Mandala, another reason why I did not touch on those issues which he was right. Also that meant that I could not deal with most of Bhatia’s mistakes in any great detail – for example why China’s statistics are regarded with skepticism, and Malaysia’s are not. The evidence here is the discrepancy between state level GDP and national level GDP. In China, these numbers have been heading in opposite directions, and some state level governments have acknowledged that they have been faking their numbers.
Second, I am surprised that you think my point was to dispute that perceived inflation is different from official inflation. Of course its different. What I did contend was that the evidence shows that perceived inflation is wrong and that official statistics are reasonably accurate, and I quoted MIT’s Billion Prices Project (which you can look up). They even show you an instance where CPI numbers were faked, and how it was detected.
In Malaysia’s case, most of the examples typically quoted to purportedly show that inflation must be higher than the official numbers, are actually already incorporated in the CPI. To my mind, there are two reason why there is a discrepancy:
1. People only remember positive price movements (negativity bias), and don’t mentally register price falls;
2. People base their judgments of inflation on the things they buy most frequently, which is typically food and fuel. If you look at at the food component of the Malaysian CPI, guess what, it is indeed running at twice the rate of the overall index, or roughly 4%-5% per annum. Certain categories within the food index are rising even faster, such as seafood, which has been growing at double digit rates for a decade.
So you cannot prove that the Malaysian CPI numbers are wrong, when it does in fact include all those items which people use to say it’s wrong. I’ll go further – the Department of Statistics also issues state level CPI, as well as CPI at different income levels. And yes, inflation in KL is indeed higher than the national average. Again, it’s all there in the official statistics.
But don’t take my word for it, take UBS Global Chief Economist Paul Dononvan, because he literally wrote the book on this:
Third, on the charge of manipulation of the currency. BNM is indeed manipulating the currency, as can be seen by the change in reserves. This is easy to tell – increasing reserves means they are pushing it down, and decreasing reserves means they are pushing it up. For the last 4-5 years, international reserves has been trending down, with sharp drops in the last two years. In other words, BNM has been trying to make the Ringgit stronger, not weaker. This is first year undergraduate macro, and the data is publicly available and updated every two weeks:
I didn’t deal with this issue in my own article, because in Bhatia’s article it was a throwaway line, and not an allegation as such.
Lastly, I would welcome any further problems Mr Bhatia can find in the Malaysian economy – as long as these are accurate and not made up. It was not and is not my intention to “defend” or “promote” the Malaysian economy, only accurate representations of the problems we are facing. I believe strongly in evidence based policy making – you risk supplying the wrong medicine when the diagnosis is wrong.
I would beg to differ with the author’s opinion here. She has written plenty regarding why East Timor wants to join ASEAN, what East Timor can obtain from ASEAN and what it has done in order to join ASEAN, yet the author failed to put forward a convincing argument as to why ASEAN should allow East Timor to join the organization in the first place. What does East Timor have to offer to the current members of ASEAN? What benefits does the country offer that would make it a sensible move to admit it into the regional organization?
ASEAN was founded as a diplomatic forum to help maintain the peace between member states following Konfrontasi and in the backdrop of the Vietnam War, a role which was then expanded to include promotion of economic growth. I fail to see how East Timor adds to any of that, it remains a fragile and insignificant economy, it is military weak and presents no threat to anyone thus negating the necessity of its inclusion on the basis of ensuring regional peace, and it is not geographically strategic enough to be a useful piece in any geopolitical schemes by the major powers thus negating the necessity of its inclusion in order to deny those schemes. With regards to the last part, as an example, supposing if China, which at the moment seems to show great interest in East Timor, were to build military bases in the country in order to complicate strategic calculations for Indonesia and Australia (which looks set to challenge China’s claims to the South China Sea), that base will still have to be resupplied by transports that will have to pass through straits, waters or air controlled by Indonesia and/or Australia. That would just be akin to creating a larger Dien Bien Phu, a fort in the middle of nowhere surrounded on all sides by potential adversaries. This shows clearly the strategic vulnerability of East Timor as a location yet unlike Singapore which stands along the highly strategic Malacca Strait, East Timor has nothing of the sort within its immediate surroundings which would balance out its vulnerabilities and thus justify it’s benefits on strategic grounds to any current members of ASEAN.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH BURMA?
Rohingya are the indigenous to land of Arakan found by even British scholars who visited Arakan before Burma occupied Arakan.
What about the Bangladeshi Rakine citizens who migrated to Chittagong during British period, Chakma citizens of Bangladesh migrated during the 14th century?
What about Tamil Hindus given citizenship in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore?
Burma is ripped with racism. The military is playing with ethnic fire to divert their attention from them controlling the infra structure of Burma’s resources. They are using the monks. This is the real problem. Education with human rights and tolerance is the solution.
I can only repeat. Neither the ambassador’s 3rd paragraph nor the article you linked to refer to changing the Sangha Act, which is what you called him on when you said “with respect to his first point”.
But hey. As I said elsewhere, anyone wishing to understand communication strategy in the Trump Era need look no further than many of the articles and much of the commentary on this site.
I hardly think Baru Bian (PKR-Sarawak) is incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. He is perhaps the brightest politician in Malaysia, an active environmentalist and devout Christian. While some indigenous people can be bought, just like some Malays, Chinese and Indians, Baru cannot be bought. He is highly respected and has worked to improve the lives of indigenous people in Sarawak. While it is true UMNO has done its best to divide and conquer on Borneo, please do not generalize about all indigenous people to the point of stereotyping. I note that when the forests were under the control of the Dayak, and not Taib Mahmud, there were a lot more trees.
And, I should have added, if it is law that is the thing that interests you in “reform,” then the law has already been changed in recent days. You’ll recall the change that allowed the king to appoint the supreme patriarch.
Yes, indeed, Michael, it is easy to read what you want to read and forget the rest, such as the ambassador’s third paragraph. But maybe you didn’t get that far.
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Royal Thai Embassay clarifies Wat Dhammakaya case
The opinion of the ambassador is, as usual for any member of the Thai amart, the usual denials and spin. Go back to where you came from PunkRaison, you and your fellow junta scum are not welcome.
The perplexing case of Wat Dhammakaya
I think it’s inevitable, and I suspect you fear the same thing, though perhaps not exactly the same fate, every society is different and treads a slightly different path.
We live in a time of disintegration, particularly of societies. There is a time to build up an a time to pull down. This is the time of the knockers-down.
The perplexing case of Wat Dhammakaya
There is quite a good master degree thesis on the work and organization of nuns at the Thonburi temple that is the origin of Dhammakaya which also allows for insight into how this particular temple pursued fundraising and related to individuals seeking healing … and quite a lot else.
Nuns’ Status: A Case Study of Wat Park Nam Bhasicharoen, by Nun Naathathai Chattinaway, College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Thammasat University, 2009.
http://beyond.library.tu.ac.th/cdm/singleitem/collection/thesis/id/1364/rec/2
The politics of native titles in Sarawak
The Sarawak Land Code was amended in 2000 to exclude PM and PG. However, the amendment has never been gazetted. That means it cannot be enforced. The Federal Court, in its Dec 20 ruling, should have stressed the Land Code includes PM and PG. That means Adat has the force of law on PM and PG.
Malaysia’s criminal state of mind
I agree with much of what you say John. I reckon I have the benefit (curse ?) of having been born as an expat in Malaya and lived there 22 years (not including research visits later in life). I have intimate attachments with Malaysia, as well as professional ones that go up relatively high. Thus, I can state things with confidence, though the risk I entail in doing so is another matter. No point to project a false Malaysia; neither Malaysians nor foreigners benefit.
The perplexing case of Wat Dhammakaya
Most people don’t know anything about Dhammakaya temple. They saw lots of differences eg big buildings, look of bhuddha, they believe these are wrong. They believe this is about money. In fact, this temple made for buddhists to do mediation practice and be a center of joining bhuddism ceremonies. People thought monks live very richful. In fact, monks at this temple sleep in a tent no pilow, no air conditioner, and they work hard to prepare place for coming ceremonies. They are so many mis-understanding to this temple.
Playing Malaysia’s number game
Personally, I am not really worried about the corruption. Malaysians have been living with corruption at all levels for several decades. It does not really impact their daily lives.
I am totally aghast at the islamisation or Talibanism creeping at a rather fast pace into the country, promoted sometimes openly and sometimes overtly by the Govt. This has great impact on the average malaysian’s daily live.
Royal Thai Embassay clarifies Wat Dhammakaya case
I doubt that anyone who has either been taken in by Prayuth and his merry gang, or who has decided to pretend to be taken in by them would want to live anywhere but Thailand.
Playing Malaysia’s number game
Malaysia, a nation led by a thief and likely murderer, is definitely a nation you can trust the numbers, that is if it’s a numbers racket.
Unlocking Timor-Leste’s road to ASEAN
The Indonesia-biased comment above is tosh. The writer is clearly a chauvinist and makes specious comments. What did Myanmar have to offer ASEAN when it joined ? In fact, when Myanmar was Head of ASEAN it blocked Timor Leste’s admission on the grounds it hadn’t met criteria of living standards and democracy. This was rich….coming from autocratic Myanmar (at the time, the Tatmadaw was still in control). Laos hasn’t met the conditions for admission, nor Cambodia, nor even Malaysia. In effect, the author admits that Singapore is the sole nation that is a justified member based on location and history. That is patent nonsense and I suspect the author is still upset that East Timor is no longer being ravaged by Indonesia. Timor Leste is in SE Asia and it is a nation trying to develop, though admittedly with many problems. It is supremely selfish and arrogant to state that Timor Leste’s admission into ASEAN will diminish what is already arguably a less then useful communion of different interests. NO, either admit Timor Leste on the basis of friendship and Southeast Asian traditions, of which the nation is as much a part as any member of ASEAN, or finally get rid of ASEAN altogether and let Singapore continue to pursue its burgeoning trade with China unencumbered by poorer ASEAN nations and chauvinistic comments like the one above.
Playing Malaysia’s number game
@Bumiputra Graduate
If I have shifted the focus, it is because those inaccuracies directly undermine the credibility of Bhatia’s argument. When you support a thesis by showing ignorance of your research subject and stretching the truth, the validity of your argument becomes suspect. Moreover, doing so on a site like this, which supports standards of academic integrity, undermines and disrespects every other contributor to the site and the institutions that support it. Partisanship is fine (in fact encouraged), but arguments should be supported by objective scholarship.
But let me address some of your own criticisms. First, since my goal was to address the inaccuracies in Bhatia’s article, I did not touch on those points where he was right – as you noted, graduate unemployment, underemployment and so on. There was no need, and indeed I agree that these are problems.
Second, you may not be aware but there is a strict word limit to submissions to New Mandala, another reason why I did not touch on those issues which he was right. Also that meant that I could not deal with most of Bhatia’s mistakes in any great detail – for example why China’s statistics are regarded with skepticism, and Malaysia’s are not. The evidence here is the discrepancy between state level GDP and national level GDP. In China, these numbers have been heading in opposite directions, and some state level governments have acknowledged that they have been faking their numbers.
Second, I am surprised that you think my point was to dispute that perceived inflation is different from official inflation. Of course its different. What I did contend was that the evidence shows that perceived inflation is wrong and that official statistics are reasonably accurate, and I quoted MIT’s Billion Prices Project (which you can look up). They even show you an instance where CPI numbers were faked, and how it was detected.
In Malaysia’s case, most of the examples typically quoted to purportedly show that inflation must be higher than the official numbers, are actually already incorporated in the CPI. To my mind, there are two reason why there is a discrepancy:
1. People only remember positive price movements (negativity bias), and don’t mentally register price falls;
2. People base their judgments of inflation on the things they buy most frequently, which is typically food and fuel. If you look at at the food component of the Malaysian CPI, guess what, it is indeed running at twice the rate of the overall index, or roughly 4%-5% per annum. Certain categories within the food index are rising even faster, such as seafood, which has been growing at double digit rates for a decade.
So you cannot prove that the Malaysian CPI numbers are wrong, when it does in fact include all those items which people use to say it’s wrong. I’ll go further – the Department of Statistics also issues state level CPI, as well as CPI at different income levels. And yes, inflation in KL is indeed higher than the national average. Again, it’s all there in the official statistics.
But don’t take my word for it, take UBS Global Chief Economist Paul Dononvan, because he literally wrote the book on this:
https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Inflation-Paul-Donovan/dp/1138023612/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Third, on the charge of manipulation of the currency. BNM is indeed manipulating the currency, as can be seen by the change in reserves. This is easy to tell – increasing reserves means they are pushing it down, and decreasing reserves means they are pushing it up. For the last 4-5 years, international reserves has been trending down, with sharp drops in the last two years. In other words, BNM has been trying to make the Ringgit stronger, not weaker. This is first year undergraduate macro, and the data is publicly available and updated every two weeks:
http://www.bnm.gov.my/index.php?ch=statistic&pg=stats_reserves
I didn’t deal with this issue in my own article, because in Bhatia’s article it was a throwaway line, and not an allegation as such.
Lastly, I would welcome any further problems Mr Bhatia can find in the Malaysian economy – as long as these are accurate and not made up. It was not and is not my intention to “defend” or “promote” the Malaysian economy, only accurate representations of the problems we are facing. I believe strongly in evidence based policy making – you risk supplying the wrong medicine when the diagnosis is wrong.
Unlocking Timor-Leste’s road to ASEAN
I would beg to differ with the author’s opinion here. She has written plenty regarding why East Timor wants to join ASEAN, what East Timor can obtain from ASEAN and what it has done in order to join ASEAN, yet the author failed to put forward a convincing argument as to why ASEAN should allow East Timor to join the organization in the first place. What does East Timor have to offer to the current members of ASEAN? What benefits does the country offer that would make it a sensible move to admit it into the regional organization?
ASEAN was founded as a diplomatic forum to help maintain the peace between member states following Konfrontasi and in the backdrop of the Vietnam War, a role which was then expanded to include promotion of economic growth. I fail to see how East Timor adds to any of that, it remains a fragile and insignificant economy, it is military weak and presents no threat to anyone thus negating the necessity of its inclusion on the basis of ensuring regional peace, and it is not geographically strategic enough to be a useful piece in any geopolitical schemes by the major powers thus negating the necessity of its inclusion in order to deny those schemes. With regards to the last part, as an example, supposing if China, which at the moment seems to show great interest in East Timor, were to build military bases in the country in order to complicate strategic calculations for Indonesia and Australia (which looks set to challenge China’s claims to the South China Sea), that base will still have to be resupplied by transports that will have to pass through straits, waters or air controlled by Indonesia and/or Australia. That would just be akin to creating a larger Dien Bien Phu, a fort in the middle of nowhere surrounded on all sides by potential adversaries. This shows clearly the strategic vulnerability of East Timor as a location yet unlike Singapore which stands along the highly strategic Malacca Strait, East Timor has nothing of the sort within its immediate surroundings which would balance out its vulnerabilities and thus justify it’s benefits on strategic grounds to any current members of ASEAN.
Playing Malaysia’s number game
Greg,
I am usually very precise in my language. Read that sentence again. A democratic society is as much a journey as it is a destination.
Intolerance, Islam and the Internet in Burma
WHAT IS WRONG WITH BURMA?
Rohingya are the indigenous to land of Arakan found by even British scholars who visited Arakan before Burma occupied Arakan.
What about the Bangladeshi Rakine citizens who migrated to Chittagong during British period, Chakma citizens of Bangladesh migrated during the 14th century?
What about Tamil Hindus given citizenship in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore?
Burma is ripped with racism. The military is playing with ethnic fire to divert their attention from them controlling the infra structure of Burma’s resources. They are using the monks. This is the real problem. Education with human rights and tolerance is the solution.
Is hardline Islam really rising in Indonesia?
Not yet hardline, but definitely getting there, and yes at the grassroots. Sad, but if you ask the minorities, it has always been hard and unfortunately, the minorities themselves are divided, e.g church leadership are divided, thus the silence on all this.
http://www.msn.com/id-id/berita/nasional/jenazah-nenek-hindun-ditelantarkan-warga-setelah-pilih-ahok/
Royal Thai Embassay clarifies Wat Dhammakaya case
I can only repeat. Neither the ambassador’s 3rd paragraph nor the article you linked to refer to changing the Sangha Act, which is what you called him on when you said “with respect to his first point”.
But hey. As I said elsewhere, anyone wishing to understand communication strategy in the Trump Era need look no further than many of the articles and much of the commentary on this site.
Is hardline Islam really rising in Indonesia?
Second this, Pak Krisna Murti gives good points.
The politics of native titles in Sarawak
I hardly think Baru Bian (PKR-Sarawak) is incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. He is perhaps the brightest politician in Malaysia, an active environmentalist and devout Christian. While some indigenous people can be bought, just like some Malays, Chinese and Indians, Baru cannot be bought. He is highly respected and has worked to improve the lives of indigenous people in Sarawak. While it is true UMNO has done its best to divide and conquer on Borneo, please do not generalize about all indigenous people to the point of stereotyping. I note that when the forests were under the control of the Dayak, and not Taib Mahmud, there were a lot more trees.
Royal Thai Embassay clarifies Wat Dhammakaya case
And, I should have added, if it is law that is the thing that interests you in “reform,” then the law has already been changed in recent days. You’ll recall the change that allowed the king to appoint the supreme patriarch.
Royal Thai Embassay clarifies Wat Dhammakaya case
Yes, indeed, Michael, it is easy to read what you want to read and forget the rest, such as the ambassador’s third paragraph. But maybe you didn’t get that far.