Johpa

That article is journalism at its worst. PAD are pure hearted, good, protectors of the Monarchy, saviours of the country, wise and benovolent. If only more people understood. We need a thousand ASTV to propogate the message of truth to the world.

Hail to Sondhi Limthongkul, great leader, and Chamlong, great leader: their wishes are Thailands wishes, their thought's Thailand's thoughts, their heart is Thailand's heart.

I was waiting for the Punchline then, but there wasn't one

You must be a PAD support to write that.

Whole heartedly agree. There mus be a punch line somewhere.

Methinks the implied punchline is "Sieg Heil!"

I saw a large demonstration against PAD tonight behind Wat Phrasing. Lot's of red and "Pantamip Auk Bai!".

Some ordinary folks up north got involved in national politics back in the 1970s. This was nicely documented in Morell and Chai-Anan's book Political Conflict in Thailand. The reaction by the government was brutal. Perhaps there is a younger generation that is willing to become active, but my age peers up north avoid all politics with good reason.

Rather like the US then. Just keep feeding the people Fox News and lots of soaps and unreality shows, and you get to pilfer other countries in the name of 'patriotism' and the 'war on terror'.

No, just as in Thailand, the US the elites really are just pilfering their own country, they do it through the smoke and mirrors of corporations, publicists, and lawyers instead of the old school bribery and tea money favored by Thai politicians. Feigning to pilfer other counties is just part of the smoke screen.

People who vote for the likes of Samak and Thaksin are the uneducated masses and as long as Thailand does nothing to improve the educational system in this country (standards and access to a full 12 years of school), nothing will change. The elite like to keep the upcountry folks dumb to keep them down, but what the elite get in return is the likes of Samak and Thaksin running the country.

The Thai populace is fairly well educated. Both the folks in the rural villages and the folks in the urban slums tend to be literate and follow the news both in the newspapers and other media. Now I am not one to argue that the Thai education system is not in need of improvement. But just because the rural folks and the urban poor have different priorities than do those higher up the economic scale, including yourself, they are not dumb. And one must ask why those who you incorrectly infer to be superior to the "uneducated masses" (a most slippery slope indeed) would want to support Sondhi, who is no different than Thaksin, and by my perspective, being socially much closer to the rural poor than to the Bangkok middle class, far more frightening than Thaksin in the long run.

YOu are correct in your assessment, but even though the masses are literate, that does not mean they have much common sense and intelligence to avoid being bamboozled by the likes of Thaksin. The schemes that Thaksin introduced did not benefit them much and most of the poor who were given handouts are now in worse shape and in more debt because the policies did not help build up their communities. They were only built on handing out freebies to the people. That's not sustainable. But they only remember that they were given cheap money.

You mean like the sense and intelligence of those who believe that the PAD is any different than the PPP or that Sonthi is any different than Thaksin? Oh but excuse me, I don't mean to imply that the self proclaimed sensible and intelligent nouveau middle class in Bangkok, and their ex-pat neo-sahib supporters, are no different than those whom they deem to be beneath them. Or am I? What the rural poor remember is that they were given something, little and insignificant as those petty handouts may have been; for example, bicycles handed out so that their children could ride to school instead of walking in the rain through the mud. Wow, that sure was an expensive proposition to purchase the hearts and minds of a few hundred voters. And although it bothers the heck out of most members of this forum, but Thaksin's war on the meth-amphetamine scourge was successful of ridding the secondary schools of the worst of the drug dealers. The rural people whose lives were made a living hel_l were not overly concerned about the excesses of that campaign as those excesses were around before the crackdown and remained after the crackdown. Sure some of Thaksin's plans were ill conceived, and Thaksin himself is terribly ill-conceived, but his basic strategy was sound.

Thaksin showed, however flawed he was, that elections are viable in Thailand, but in order to win you can't completely ignore the vast majority of the voting populace. Sondhi and the PAD could come up with plans that will redistribute some of the common wealth back to the vast population, but they prefer, like you, to denigrate those same people instead of co-opting then by giving back some of the government money.

The main concern of the ex-pats on these boards is stability. They don't want anyone or any Thai political party to rock their relatively comfortable boat. They don't want to have to take a step downwards in their living conditions by having to return to their homelands. But mark my words, if Sondhi gets in power, directly or by proxy, the doggy doo doo will eventually hit the fan and you will all opine for the era when Thaksin ruled and life in Thailand was good.

People who vote for the likes of Samak and Thaksin are the uneducated masses and as long as Thailand does nothing to improve the educational system in this country (standards and access to a full 12 years of school), nothing will change. The elite like to keep the upcountry folks dumb to keep them down, but what the elite get in return is the likes of Samak and Thaksin running the country.

The Thai populace is fairly well educated. Both the folks in the rural villages and the folks in the urban slums tend to be literate and follow the news both in the newspapers and other media. Now I am not one to argue that the Thai education system is not in need of improvement. But just because the rural folks and the urban poor have different priorities than do those higher up the economic scale, including yourself, they are not dumb. And one must ask why those who you incorrectly infer to be superior to the "uneducated masses" (a most slippery slope indeed) would want to support Sondhi, who is no different than Thaksin, and by my perspective, being socially much closer to the rural poor than to the Bangkok middle class, far more frightening than Thaksin in the long run.

By the way, I wonder if there are other Thais besides me in this thread...

Not many, but there are plenty of Farangs who are equally delusional thinking that the PAD represents something other than cosmetic change.

Corruption is king at nearly every level of society here.

How true at many levels and be thankful they seldom teach propositional logic in the schools anymore.

How true that is. By the way has anyone seen the classic film on DVD/VDO (in English) Wizard of Oz for sale here? I just love that song..."We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz...because, because, because, because, Becuase !! BECAUSE of the wonderful things he does.." But I haven't been able to find it though - I've heard it may be available at Fortune Town - no luck so far. I'm determined to show it to my family - sure you might understand. Anyway, one can keep looking - just like Dorothy.. (also the Grinch that stole xmas would be good..)

So it was the yellow brick road that inspired the PAD fashion statement! But I daresay we must look towards our British friends for the inspiration that is currently motivating our Thai friends as events become curiouser and curiouser:

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where –" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Corruption is king at nearly every level of society here.

How true at many levels and be thankful they seldom teach propositional logic in the schools anymore.

If there is an unelected government, the demonstrations will be by university students and backed up by the poor that equate democracy with welfare.

This is nearly the same urban populist rhetoric that Sonthi espoused in his speech here in the US last winter, the denigration of the rural poor. It just pisses off him and his followers that Thaksin had thrown the rural populace some bones apart from a few baat for a vote, bones Sonthi and his followers in Bangkok wholeheartedly believe belonged to them. Democracy is equated more with corporate welfare than populist welfare.

Jonathan Head of the BBC last week reported that the PAD were sick and tired of so-called 'democratically' elected governments who were time and time again corrupt.

This is surely - from anyone's perspective - an intolerable situation and in this matter I support the PAD whole-heartedly.

May we infer that your prefer tolerable corruption as opposed to intolerable corruption? In my mind, the nominal downfall of Thaksin was that he did not share his spoils sufficiently, a situation deemed to be intolerable by many in Bangkok. And the man most jealous of Thaksin was his long time nemesis Sonthi, who considers Thaksin a, to maintain the metaphor, a spoiler from the outside (Chiang Mai). I am a bit dismayed that so many otherwise intelligent ex-pats believe the PAD propaganda and who believe that the PAD is anything other than a mirror image of their opposition. OK, Samak has taken the country down to an even lower level, a truly abysmal level, but PAD simply wants to bring it back up to the same pathetic low level as before. Whoopee and Chaiyo!

Foreign tourists have about zero interest in the aims of PAD, and that also applies to their level of interest in the Thai government. This is internal Thai politics.

To rehash my deleted comment on the original news thread (and kudos for separating the news from the commentary on an event where many seek only the news), it is not about politics in the 'western' sense as there is little such 'politics' in Thailand, it is all about power between individuals and groups and who is going to get to eat the biggest piece of the pie. Since there is little to none political ideology involved, individuals are free to move from one power clique to another. And for the many non-Thai speakers on these boards, the long time traditional Thai euphemism for politics is "kin muang", literally "to eat the country".

PS. The rule of use the mark ส์ (gaa-ran) in Thai is make the letter which appears under it silence, but due to มันส์ is the slang word, so the user break that rule by pronounce it "mans".

It also breaks a fundamental rule of the Thai language which does not allow a syllable final consonant cluster. Thus I would imagine this slang to be quite localized in speech as most Thais would have as much difficulty pronouncing such words with a final /s/ as do most Westerners when trying to pronounce in Thai a syllable initial /ng/.

My guess is that it is slang used amongst a young, urban, and educated social crowd as this middle aged curmudgeon who hangs out with his Thai age peers in more rural settings has never encountered it.

I guess I'm just destined to be only a beer drinker, although I do like a bit of Sang Som with soda, coke and lime -- sort a cheap version of a Cuba Libra. OMG, that just brought up another question: Is Sang Som safe?

I have been drinking Sang Som, and before that Mae Khong, Hong Ngen, Hong Thong, lao khao bottles with no brands, lao paa (homebrew), as well as some lao khaopoot (corn based) when fortunate enough to be in-country for Mong New Year, for nearly 30 years with no long term ill effects as yet other than a good chance the formaldehyde might preserve my corpse a little longer than average once I hit my expiration date. That being said, I am not an alcoholic drinking every day, just a social drinker, and the alcoholics I have known who drank this stuff are, for the most part, quite dead by middle age.

I don't think you ever get 'culture shock' returning to your home country. The fact that a few things have changed, including yourself still does not merit comparing with entering and living within an entirely novel culture. Two minor changes that I have had to deal with when returning to the US after a lengthy period in Thailand was having my tummy readjust to the food (Ben Franklin's revenge?) and for the first weeks, after living for a year in a rural area and interacting with few Farangs, having to deal with my brain's perception that all white people looked alike.

Yet, "Thai" isn't really a specific ethnic group, being made up as they are of many ethnicities.

There are a few of us old school, pre-post-modernists (please don't deconstruct me), former anthropology students who might beg to differ and would argue that Thais, or more broadly Tais, are indeed a distinct ethnic group sharing closely related languages, related social structures, related beliefs, related cuisines, related dress, and even related architectures. Of course there have also been some historical divergences such as the various Tai languages, and different borrowings such as the Central Thais borrowing heavily from the classic Khmer Kingdoms, and some major assimilations from some indigenous folks who showed up in the region before the Tai migrations southwards such as the Mon.

But despite the co-mingling of some genes, there is certainly a Tai ethnicity underlining the majority of the population of Thailand, as well as Lao, not to mention the Dai of Yunnan Province. As to how this ethnic identity coalesces around a national identity, I highly recommend reading Southeast Asian scholar Benedict Anderson's classic book Imagined Communities.

I think there have been several movements over the years, of varying political persuasions, that have attempted to latch onto the term 'Siam' in order to differentiate themselves from the status quo.

Amongst the rural Northern Thai (Khon Muang) with whom I have spent the bulk of my time when in-country, although all identify themselves politically as being Thai when the conversation revolves around politics and national identity, from an ethnic standpoint, when they refer to someone as being Thai in everyday conversation, it specifically refers to someone being from Central Thailand and a native speaker of Central Thai and not of Northern Thai or Lao/Isaan origin (southerners are few and far between up north). They are also aware of which family is of Chinese origin and William Skinner's thesis of assimilation simply does not hold up and begs the question as to which direction assimilation has taken place in Bangkok.

I'm not sure of the amount, but yes, many countries reward their athletes when they win medals. Been going on for years.

But few countries have matched the actions of some higher ranking Thais who have attempted to abscond, well they claimed to have borrowed, an athlete's gold medal. Fortunately higher ups quashed the man's attempts at doing a Saudi gem switcheroo.

I agree that public education in the US, at least at the compulsory levels, is mediocre. Just about every government program is, and the wealthy will always be able to afford better private alternatives whether it be education or health care. I am objecting to your contention that there is a deliberate public policy by a "ruling elite" to "keep the masses relatively uneducated", at least with respect to the US. Furthermore I can imagine no sensible reason why such a policy would be advantageous to any class or country.

There is also no sensible reason why a democratically elected government and prime minister would systematically drain a country's wealth and prosperity for the financial advantage of their families and friends and Classmates.......

I never meant to imply that the elites and their co-opted elected government officials were sensible as I do not consider greed to be a sensible long term social strategy. Historically, greed has led to a fracturing in the social structure and has also led to environmental degradation. With the 'global' economy, it is currently leading to planetary degradation. Keeping the masses minimally educated is a tactic to minimize competition, just as is limiting the availability of credit by the financial institutions.

I remember back in the early 1980s that my Thai professor, as well as the other five or so college professors teaching Thai in the United States at that time, were presented by the Thai government with a beautiful finely detailed rendition of the Ramkhamhaeng Stone that stood a good two feet (.60 meters) tall. Of course none of us first year Thai student had ever heard of this object. Yet I do remember that my professor noted that he was a bit skeptical of the historical claims, so this controversy is nothing new.

And as one of the history geeks who has read Cœdès's tome The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, it is worth the effort and not as intimidating as it initially appears.

Your point? (none, as usual... other than you are still hoping to pin the blame of some of life's dissatisfactions on others)

Heng, I can make my point with specific historical examples as I did in an earlier post or by innuendo, and you still won't get my point. Regardless of what we post we will maintain contrary points of view. Our Weltanschauungs are simply incompatible. Discourse is futile.

But you need to take care of issues like educating your children and getting them prepped for life yourself. If only everyone else did the same. That IMO is what the gov't should be promoting, instead of promoting handicapped behavior with handouts and help-me-ups.

Then perhaps we can assume that you were home schooled through secondary education?

Today Thailand is no different than many countries, including the US, where the ruling elite prefers to keep the masses relatively uneducated and unwilling to make serious efforts to invest in education. It is, and always has been, to the elite's advantage to minimize upward mobility allowing just enough opportunity to be able to point out a few exceptions that make the rule.

I also found the first paragraph of this post very informative. While I can't comment on Thailand, I went to public tax payer-funded schools in the US all the way through doctorate level, and the above quoted paragraph is utter bullshit IMO and I am not one of the few exceptions to this "rule". I invite you to point out just how the "ruling elite" accomplishes what you allege is happening in the US.

The simplest manner to elucidate my position is simply to take note of the lack of funding for public education in nations such as Thailand or the US. Here is a link to a list countries ranked by spending on education as a per cent of GDP. Note that the US is ranked #38 and Thailand is ranked #49. Also note the efforts the elites take to have their children educated outside the public education system, whether it be the Sathits or Assumptions or Montforts in Thailand or the Exeters, Andovers, Sidwells or Lakesides in the US. Even worse, in the US, funding for primary and secondary public education in the US is gathered at the local level using tax levies based upon property taxes, thus insuring that those who live in wealthier neighborhoods have better funding than those in poorer neighborhoods.

Now certainly there are exceptional students who come from poorer socio-economic backgrounds who do succeed and perhaps you are one of those exceptional students. But at our local high school here in the US that draws primarily from the lower-middle class and down, the graduation rate is a mere 30%. Certainly it is a complicated issue, and socio-economic level has the highest correlation to academic success of any variable, but the system is structured to provide a mediocre education to the masses.

Again though, in your closing it still sounds like you're one of those folks who if he found himself in 200th place in a marathon, running hours behind the pack.... would just give up, blame the competition for one's own shortcomings (and possibly the race organizers who were apparently conspiring against him), instead of finishing the race. The race is ongoing, and those who find themselves far behind can certainly do something about it. "Keeping the masses relatively uneducated." As if the Jews or the early Thai Chinese (or hua-ren anywhere else) have ever had their 'education' -or anything else- handed to them.

Heng, I have absolutely no clue where you are coming from for the ad hominem attack other than perhaps some deep rooted insecurities that cause you to trash talk others. You asked what were the advantages of the earlier Chinese immigrants to Thailand over the indigenous populations and I provided some answers from a historical perspective. Nobody is ever handed anything, but then again, the playing field is not level as you seem to imagine.

Noo.

The farangs get their stupidity fix from CNN and Bloomberg.

The kings of rubbish.

The English speaking Farangs get their absolute stupidity fix from that paragon of idiocy Ruppert Murdoch, a bloody Aussie, via his FOX network.

As for El Kangarito's claim that TV has nothing to do with Thai culture, may I humbly suggest he, and others with similar thoughts, read some of the classic works by Marshall McCluhan, a Canadian by the way.

In the Chinese diaspora, Thai chineses have a very special place : they consider themselves Thai, not Chinese.

Most foreigners don't integrate the Thai society the way Chinese do. Picking on an other ethny to compensate for one's own failures just show how low one has felled.

You are echoing William Skinner's academic argument, made nearly 50 years ago, that the Chinese have assimilated into Thai society. I have spent far more time living amongst ethnic Tai settlements within the Kingdom than did Skinner or any of his peers, and quite simply he and you are incorrect. Bangkok has assimilated towards an East Asian cultural center, not the other way around. That being said, there are many Thai-Chinese families in the provinces who have integrated. But please, because I point out such experiences does not imply a failure or a new low on my part. Only my best friends get to hear about my failures or my long past trips into the gutter. : )