Plus

At one point in early 2006 Chamlong offered Thaksin the ultimatum - donate 25% or we'll start street rallies.

Thai at heart, going mainstream became necessary when they came up with New Politics proposal.

When they were fighting Thaksin they couldn't use the same means to twist the law to suit your needs. Thaksin had to be tried and convicted regardless of who wins popularity contest. New politics is a different matter, and different PAD, and they don't have a choice - New Politics must go through parliament and they can't rely on Democrats or anyone else to fight it out for them.

My wife (she is Thai) has a degree and was a computer teacher, however, don't ask her anything about soft-/hardware coz she will not know. In fact, she knows nothing at all about computers. Two friends of her have a degree also and are English teachers. However, none of the two can speak, read, write English. In fact they know nothing about the English language.

Did they graduate from one of the international programs with international students?

If not - how is it related to the topic?

While Abhisit was meeting with 6,000 people from Assembly of the Poor and giving grandma Hai her check, reds were out in full force to get him.

It's getting to the point of ridiculous - there's absolutely no reason to hound him like they do. They also burned the effigy of Chai Chidchob. What has he done to them lately?

They've been brainwashed in their holy jihad and there's no hope of talking to them. Just ignore and persevere. They'll eventually come to their senses.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/10/11...cs_30114198.php

From 23% supporting New Politics proposal.

Of course it overlaps with Democrat support so very few of these people would actually switch, but it still matters and Democrats will have to acknowledge it.

On numbers - about half the country is anti-Thaksin, they supported PAD's overall goal though not every PAD action. Airport wasn't too popular, for example, and approval for it was probably in low digits. New Politics got a lot of trashing, too, and I don't know anyone there who'd say he approved it. Yet it still got 23%.

So, when it comes to votes - they won't get many, when it comes to anti-Thaksin agenda - they'll get a lot, when it comes to NP - they'll get substantial number worth noticing.

Even if they agree on general terms, technical application might take time for webmasters to say it's even possible, let along implement it.

Thaivisa has to tweak forum software bought from Invision and it's no small task, and BP has to outsource tweaks on their side, too.

We already have a thread on this topic, and it follows the same pattern - people with no first hand knowledge trash the idea relentlessly.

When I read this article in paper Nation this morning I thought it would pause them and start thinking. No, all in vain.

30,000 students already - no matter.

Uni students grew from 11,000 to 16,000 in a year - no matter.

Assessed every five years - no matter.

Graduates go to major western universities - no matter.

Seems he has learnt the first lesson of Thai politics perfectly. Team up with whoever you can to be in the ruling majority by dumping your principles, since being on the outside of the ruling group doesn't get you to the power or money trough.

Maybe so, but it's the only way to get anything done so it's unavoidable if they get serious about reforming Thai politics.

We can preach about our lofty ideas on an anonymous Internet forum all we want, but it doesn't amount to anything unless someone goes out and talks to people with real power and persuades them to support your agenda, and make no mistake - they won't do anything for free.

If PAD and Sondhi didn't join formal politics they would be dismissed as annoying nuisance, good at talking but unable to do anything real.

Another point - it IS the only party born out of people movement and owned by people. Like them or not, but they get support of about a quarter of the population. They won't get a quarter of votes, on their first entry against established politicians with proven track records, but they will have a major impact nevertheless, every other party will have to recognize their existence and support.

Yes, but it's not recommended.

And as it's not recommended - it could be a pain in the ass to make it work. Sometimes even recommended stuff could be a pain in the ass on Linux (that's why I'd start with nearly fool proof Ubuntu).

Some distros, like Puppy Linux, are built with the option to run from USB drives, but they also sacrifice a lot of functionality to achieve that.

Basic problem, afaik, is the slow read/write speed comparing to internal hard drives.

You can try by booting from LiveCD and check if the external hard drive appears in the list of locations for the full install.

A professionally designed, developed and societally accepted constitution arrived at during the time of a democratically elected, nationally representative Government

VS.

a coup originated, military constitution designed during the time of an unelected, unrepresentative Government

False dichotomy.

It doesn't matter who the authors are, compare final products instead.

2007 constitution is better in many ways.

As for societal acceptance - there aren't any popular moves to protest anything in particular. People are either satisfied or don't care.

There are no rules stating that a Party leader must contest an election..

If he doesn't plan on being parliament himself, then what's the point? Playing a giant squid puppet master with the army of proxies trying to retell his speeches on the House floor?

Never mind, his plan will all come out, eventually.

Yes, Thaksin's gone, they should cut back on that if they get in parliament, unless there are debates related to giving him amnesty or something.

Have no idea about black. Guys at the KPV rally also wore black, not yellow, and they had those triangular flags.

If Kasit remark a year ago gives you such headaches, how to you feel about Hun Sen ordering to shoot any Thai entering the disputed areas just a week ago? Despicable crime against humanity?

Hun Sen's skin is thick enough to take it in stride.

The amount of vitriol and BS that was bandied around claiming that the PAD would never enter politics was astounding.

Back then PAD was protesting against Thaksin.

These days they have the whole new agenda to campaign about - reform of Thai politics. That cannot be done outside of parliament, they have to deal with all the major stakeholders directly.

If you ask me if I'd approve of them forming a party to finish off Thaksin - No, that has nothing to do with legitimate politics. Pushing for the system overhaul is a different game altogether and Parliament is the legitimate place for those kind of ideas.

Go and add yourself to their head count. And maybe carry a big banner in English, otherwise media will fail to mention the reason for the rally again.

Jasreeve, what's your problem with Kasit exactly? What has he done in the past nine months that puts him on the same list as Chalerm and Newin?

He has been working as a Foreign Minister all this time - any particular problems with how he performed his duties? I haven't seen even one critical article. The only screw up Thailand had internationally was the red disruption of Asean summit.

Have you seen his CV, btw? He's a career diplomat with several very high profile postings. No one ever doubted his qualifications. As for concerns about his connection with PAD - nothing happened, diplomatic community accepted him and there were no repercussions.

Are you sure you have the right date on your calendar - while you get so incensed over last year's news, it's nearly the end of 2009 elsewhere?

And let's leave aside trollish urges to discuss my opinion of Sondhi in this thread. I won't take your bait.

The coup triggered developments that are still very much in the process - power of ISOC, increased political involvement of a certain clique of officers from certain regiments, massively increased military budgets, etc.

These things are clearly outlined in the study i recommend. But i fear it is hopeless to hope that you may read a study that could threaten your frame of reference.

Read the postscript to that study yourself - it describes the current military involvement in politics and it has nothing to do with Prem. Goes completely against his own conclusion that Prem's network is having the time of their lives controlling Abhisit.

But go ahead, protest against Prem all you want if that's the limit of red interest. As I said - no one cares.

I would recommend Ubuntu, but its color scheme doesn't look too nice.

PcLinuxOs is one cool looking distro.

Forget about windows games, they won't work in Linux, set a dual boot and when you feel like playing just reboot the machine.

Practically, free up one hard disk or partition and then install Linux in it. Depending on where it goes you might have to change boot order in your Bios to let the computer read Linux boot sectors first. Linux will have a boot menu to choose whether you want to start Windows or not.

I extensively use external HD and it's shared by both Linux and Windows, I think I can even continue torrent downloads from where I left off after booting into a different OS.

You must admit that the likes of Plus just spin non-stop.

All I'm saying that bringing up past wrongs to help Hun Sen in his fight with Thailand is treasonous by internet discussion standards, if legally not so, and arguing Kasit's old remarks is a waste of time and space.

I read a detailed article (several actually) by senior Thai academics (of law) stating that Kasit's remarks were.[treasonous - plus]

Wow, that's what academics are busy doing these days? Analyzing verbal garbage?

Or maybe you meant not "senior" but "senile".

REDconciliation? You should copyright it.

Calling it the 2007 constitution make it sound legal and formal. Its not, its a hurried bad piece of work put in place to save coupmakers asses.

The coalition want some changes, what changes seems unclear, but I doubt they will touch any parts removing junta members immunity.

PT/Red want back to the 97 constitution. Moral highground tough the intentions might not match that same moral...

What do you mean the proposed changes are unclear? There are six points there, they've been widely publicized. No, they didn't touch the part about junta immunity.

PTP was THE driving force behind those amendments, they took the most active part and created most noise. Now, after one Thaksin's call, they say they don't want them anymore.

Spoiled brats, all I can say.

Sondhi and New Politics could sparkle a debate that might go into completely unforeseen directions and shake up the whole system. Forget about "ban exececutives for five years or not" silly nonsense.

Apart from new politics itself with profession based constituencies and appointment/elections within them, we could see debate on elected governors, on balance between national and local politics, on cabinet appointments and qualifications, on democratization of political parties with mandatory caucuses and increased transparency in decision making process etc etc.

That could only be good for the country, not matter what the outcome or who initiated it.

Thanks, Slimdog.

Sondhi must have a plan, though. It took them several months to get the paperwork right, they couldn't have overlooked this little hurdle.

PAD is against the amendments because they were proposed by politicians for their own benefit.

Abhisit doesn't want amendments but he promised he'd do something about it. And if politicians really insist, he insists on asking people first.

Re-writing 1997 constitution is a major task that could take years. 2007 version doesn't have a "coup" watermark on it, btw. Why not do a comprehensive re-write of that instead?

They can start with any edition, doesn't really matter. It would still take years.

Or we can wait for PAD to start talking New Politics on big scale - that could completely change the political debate and 97 version will seem hopelessly outdated.

Change the whole constitution so you can prosecute a small group of people?

That's not going to fly.

More likely he thinks fighting off his court cases would be easier once he is mighty and popular politician.

Perhaps offloading Manager is like Shin sale - there's no more room to grow, so need to sell.

Oops, now it's dead.

PAD is against it, and PTP is against it, and Democrats are against it.

Perhaps Pheu Thai realized that nine-months timeline is not fast good enough and they plan to force elections sooner by some other means.

Perhaps they realized that people would reject the amendments anyway, so they decided to cloud the issue by making it appear simple - pre-coup/post-coup difference. The problem is that there are too many differences between the versions and people are not likely to go into those details, so asking them to make a simple, emotional choice, is easier.

On the other hand, in no time PAD will make it into "restore Thaksin to pre-coup status" proposal and vow to fight it to death, and the public would be scared of the prospects of reliving this battle again.

There's no way to bring Thaksin back, the more they try, the more apparent the futility of that struggle becomes.