Johpa

So what "advantage" did the first and subsequent generations of relatively *uneducated* Thai-Chinese have (you, know, the ones who managed to gain control of the entire economy from the ground up)?

The primary advantage that even the poorest Chinese immigrants had over the indigenous Tai folks is that they hailed from a society that had long been monetized. Even 'uneducated' Chinese migrants understood concepts like money, loans, and interest. Thailand monetized its society rather late in the game moving away from trading, corvee labor, and outright slavery, a most common social condition until later in the 19th century. The ruling high sakdina elite found it convenient to keep the indigenous people poor and ignorant and bring in outsiders to interact with the newly emerging monetized economy that was now interacting with the outside world. Specifically, the various courts and palaces intentionally hired immigrant Chinese to become the 'tax farmers', the people who would collect the modern taxes that no longer were to be paid in labor. This is similar to how the European states and principalities once brought in a Jewish minority to run their commercial affairs, but they would then expel those same people at a later date. The savviest of the Chinese in Thailand quickly dominated the financial markets and closed the financial markets off to all but fellow Sino-Thais as well as their old partners and enablers, the old ruling high sakdina families, and later also the handful of Thais who climbed, really fought, their way to the top of the military and police ladders as those two institutions tended to be reserved for ethnic Thais. When I first lived in Thailand nearly 30 years ago, an ethnic Tai had no chance of obtaining credit from a bank, heck, they could not even get a job as a teller at a bank. I have been told that things have improved over the past decade.

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. Hey, kudos to those who do make it!

For Pen (เป็น) and Kew (คือ) it's not easy to explin the difference.

Pen (เป็น) tends to act as a traditional verb, the verb 'to be' in English, used after a subject as in 'phom pen chao saharaat ( I am an American). But in Thai, as in many of the world's languages the verb 'to be' is often, but not always, deleted in ordinary simple sentence formation, technically known to cunning linguists as, you guys are going to love this one, copula deletion.

Khuu (คือ) tends to introduce a topic or comment, and might be translated in English as 'that is....'.

What changed? Well, in 1950, the people making those estimates did not foresee the impact of technology on increasing the resource base. And I would say the same is true today. In many of the forward forecasts of people who are looking at future supply, it is myopic again; and they're not properly accounting for the impact that technology will have on making new supplies available. "

Again we see a fine example of the post-modernist Cargo Cult that has anthropomorphized technology as the new savior, the new Elijah, the new Jesus. Technology will indeed allow for new sources of oil, but will not allow for the cheap oil we have become accustomed to over the past 100 years, the relatively cheap oil that our entire economy and infrastructure is predicated upon. Nor will technology reverse or change the concept of peak oil, it will only make the downward slope a little less steep as far as supply, but it will not significantly change the upward costs of production nor the increased demand.

I find this theory very interesting. Can you elaborate on how you see this happening and give examples ? What about men -- are they affected, too ? (I think they are less likely to watch soaps ?). At what age do girls/boys begin to watch soaps here ?

One might indeed argue that the Thai soaps are a sinister plot by the Bangkok elite to infantilize the Thai female population and reset the culture using the power of a modern media. You see in traditional Tai culture, women had quite a bit to say around the house. Although the men tended to represent the family in public, it was the women who controlled the politics and money inside the house. Remember that Tai culture was matrilocal, that is land was inherited by the women and a newly married man moved onto the land of the new bride's family. In the rural areas you can still see quite a few groups of sisters in any one village. Also note that throughout Southeast Asia, it is women working in the traditional marketplace, not men. Compare all of the above with East Asian culture and note that the Bangkok elite tends to be of East Asian origin. One might also note that a very small section of the traditional ruling Thai elite was also male dominated. So the current eliteis a marriage made (mandated?) in heaven at the expense of the Thais.

The soaps help break up all this traditional Thai female power. They portray women as being, well pathetic people with no ability to think with anything other than emotion. Countless women in Thailand watch this drivel and are inculcated with the thought that this is the appropriate behavior pattern for women. They also are shown that the standard for physical beauty is having light skin and Sinitic features and those with darker skin and Tai features are relegated to servant roles. Just as television has slowly dumbed down generations of Americans, the negative impact of the soaps on Thai culture has had perhaps an even greater negative consequences.

Flame on!

My angle is obvious. I am a Brit living here in LOS but still paying tax in the UK on my pension and am one of those old school guys who just happens to believe in decency and honesty.

Pray tell why you have chosen to live out your pension years in a country where decency and honesty within the government are essentially non-existent?

To winkle Thaksin and his family out of the UK the Thais would have to apply for extradition. Whether the Thai government will want to do this is another matter.

I am certain that Thaksin's lawyers are already initiating contact with the legal team of Rakesh Saxena on how to use Commonwealth law's to delay any attempts at extradition for decades. Although with his considerable wealth now in British banks and the intelligence bonanza for British intelligence having Thaksin on British soil during the upcoming transitional years, I doubt there will be any British sympathies towards extradition of any Shinawat family member.

Thaksin knows that his house of cards is about to fall

May Baby Jesus, along with Moses, Buddha, Lord Shiva, or any other such deity grant me such a house of cards.

The reason why it's these 8 is that the other low class consonants have high class equivalents with the same sound:

(high) = (low)

ข = ค ,ฆ

ฉ = ช , ฌ

ฐ, ถ = ฑ , ฒ , ท, ธ

ผ = พ , ภ

ฝ = ฟ

ศ, ษ, ส = ช

ห = ฮ

Without going into details, as I have forgotten most of them, all these additions and variations to the Thai writing system represent historical phonetic differences, phonetic sounds that once existed, either in an older form of a Tai language, or borrowed Khmer words, or in Pali, especially from Pali where the historical educated religious elites spoke the written languages of South Asia that included phonemes not present in the Tai languages such as the /sh/ sound as in the god 'Shiva'. The tones are determined by the original phonetic environment and not by the letters. The letters came later as an after thought. Then of course the language undergoes change over time, sometimes changing a borrowed phoneme to a Tai phoneme yet maintaining the original tone on the vowel and maintaining the letter that represented the original phoneme. Again I have forgotten most of the details so, yes, I too am a bit confused at this point while drinking my first cup of coffee in the early AM. The point is that the words spelled with a silent /ห/ in front originally had a slightly different historical initial consonant articulation at some point in time, perhaps maybe dealing with aspiration.

Look at English spelling, the ultimate bastard system. for what happens to spelling when you combine borrowings with natural language change.

Get the ones with pretty flowers on

Ask around as the making of these bars is pretty much a local cottage industry and you can easily have made any pattern you design or have designed for you.

I can't belive people still believe the oil is running out. The head of BP has said oil is reproducing faster than it is being used, and that the problems are above ground with politics not below the ground. And as for Dubai, the oil prince has made a similar statement saying he can supply so many million barrels a day, and the issues are purely wester politics. There are so many scientist quoting the same thing, yes most choose to believe government back scientist and the most currupt people on the planet, the government.

Please feel free to provide any citation or mention of oil being 'reproduced'. I would be happy to see a citation from a reputable scientific source that notes that oil is still being formed today. Because as I understand it, the current theory is that oil is formed from unique combinations of geologic events that do not occur on a continuous basis but that only occurred during fairly unique geologic periods. If the oil is not running out then why are these same oil companies making such efforts to obtain new sources from more distant sources (deep ocean drills) or from such lower quality sources such as tar sands?

That is not to say that governments are not corrupt, but governments have become proxies for corporations and the corporate sector is the dark side of the force. So now you are believing corporate banter and you are believing scientists sponsored by the corporations such as Exxon/Mobile. Here in the US it is the independent scientists who are being muzzled.

In my continuing saga to get you flickering minds to read more books, may I suggest reading Peter Tertzakian's A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World, an excellent read on this issue.

The majority of the 10 % rich, sorry

You mean the 10% who employ (clothe, feed, and shelter) the other 90%?

Or the same 10% who insure that certain large portions of the other 90% have few options other than to migrate into the cities to live in slums to be cheap labor and of course to provide affordable oral gratification, as explored in Stephen Frear's excellent small film 'Dirty Pretty Things'.

Ah yes, making excuses for those who chose 'sanuk in the moment' over work, saving, investing, and 'overall sanuk for all time.' You control your own destiny. What you keep spouting is 'someone else keeps controlling my destiny.'

So easy to say for someone with money and options. But yes indeed, the elites do indeed control the destiny, or at least the options to the poor. For example, they often control the access to education and the access to capital. They determine how much of the common wealth is reinvested and how much is wired overseas to be invested elsewhere. That is not to say that a few do not overcome their situation through a combination of luck, ambition, and hard work. But those are always the exception. The majority remain very poor because others make a determined effort to keep them poor. This is not an excuse, more of a 'J'accuse'.

Interesting "gang". Foreign suppliers, "foreign" snake head and not a local implicated.

Makes it very easy to throw the book at them and confiscate assets.

I'm sure these guys would have puttered right along had they not gotten over confident and greedy and exported to the USA. I wonder how much the US DEA investigation cost and whether or not there will be assets in the USA to seize to cover the costs.

No doubt this event comes at the right time for the local dealers. Now they can increase their market share and hike prices. Everyone profits..........

The MIB have long franchised out the local drug distribution in the hard core Farang ghettos, like the southern tourist islands, to foreigners. It is so much more civilized to receive your payments without having to get your own hands dirty. Besides, Thailand has a very long history of hiring foreigners to collect local taxes, once known as tax farming. That the US DEA had a grudge against this Iranian, perhaps because he was Iranian, and had his ring arrested is not going to stop a profitable business. A replacement will be quickly found and little will change.

We will be dead before that happens mate - no worries. Besides next few decades you will see mind blowing technological advances in the areas of transport.

Ah, I see TV has believers in the resurrected neo-Cargo Cult of the 21st Century where it is believed that technology will bring a miraculous deliverance from impact of peak oil and, for those who are not in denial, Global Warming. Perhaps others here are more traditionalists and believe in the coming of a Messiah. Either way, Millennialism has a long history in Southeast Asia as well as in Europe. I won't give up all hope of rationality until I see the flagellants marching en masse.

Ah, you see?

I have not watched TV for 20 years now, just fretting I could, one day, be tempted to write a post as you just made.

I haven't watched much TV myself and I can't quite parse the perceived connection between my post and television, but if you dare read some books you might, hopefully, be far more tempted to post in my footsteps. I would recommend starting with Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium in order to place millennialism into a historical context.

The majority of the 10 % rich, sorry

You mean the 10% who employ (clothe, feed, and shelter) the other 90%?

Or the same 10% who insure that certain large portions of the other 90% have few options other than to migrate into the cities to live in slums to be cheap labor and of course to provide affordable oral gratification, as explored in Stephen Frear's excellent small film 'Dirty Pretty Things'.

We will be dead before that happens mate - no worries. Besides next few decades you will see mind blowing technological advances in the areas of transport.

Ah, I see TV has believers in the resurrected neo-Cargo Cult of the 21st Century where it is believed that technology will bring a miraculous deliverance from impact of peak oil and, for those who are not in denial, Global Warming. Perhaps others here are more traditionalists and believe in the coming of a Messiah. Either way, Millennialism has a long history in Southeast Asia as well as in Europe. I won't give up all hope of rationality until I see the flagellants marching en masse.

Teach a man to fish...

Oh, they teach then how to fish, and they learn, and they do indeed fish. But the people who taught them to fish have over fished the seas and now there are no fish. And the beat goes on.

So maybe Meadish_Sweetball or another farang who's mastered Thai can correct me ..

But does this "Rak Krai Hai Kin Pla", translate to: "(I) love those/someone who give (me) fish to eat"??

If so, interesting how that group/cuddly thing is always present in Thai consumerism - another example.

We should bring the question over to the Thai language forum for further deliberation, but I parse it as a play on the attributed words of Marie-Antoinette, and that is 'if you love someone, let them eat fish'.

I'm guessing you're at an early stage in learning thai and you haven't learnt other words yet so your teacher is trying to find you ways to use เมื่อ as a past tense.

เมื่อ doesn't actually translate to "when" in the literal sense....it's more like before and its almost never used in the present tense.

if you want to say "when" the more appropriate term to use should be เวลา or "wee la" so if saying i like to drive when i go out, it sounds more like เวลาผมไปเทียว ผมชอบขับรถ.

another term you could use for "when" is ตอน or "ton" which refers to the past tense so the sentence JiJi liked to eat rice when she was young would read ตอนเด็กๆจีจีชอบกินข้าว.

I understand เวลา - Refers to the present tense, and เมื่อ for past tense, but what's the difference between เมื่อ and เมื่อกอน?

You could consider เมื่อ to be a particle or linking word. By itself it doesn't mean anything really but needs another word to make sense.

เมื่อกอน - before (long time)

เมื่อกี้ - just now

เมื่อวาน - yesterday

hope that helps.

I don't see a big difference between using เมื่อ vs เมื่อกอน, I see the main contrast as one of focus. เมื่อกอน is used more to contrast two different time periods whereas เมื่อ is used more to focus on something with less emphasis on a contrast with a more current status. As Thai tends to be more a topic focused language than a subject focused language we get:

เมื่อจีจีเป็นเด็ก When Gigi was a child

เมื่อก่อน (ตอน)จีจีเป็นเด็ก During the time when Gigi was a child (as compared to the current time)

For a beginning Thai student I would say ignore the subtle differences, you need to choose your battles here. You can quickly go bananas trying to define this as a difference in tense or aspect.

I find that my Swedish /d/ works without adjustment for ด .

Uff da, ya betcha dat ven I goes down to da Valhalla Tavern and listens to da olda Svenske and Norske yell ata each others in heavily accented English dat theirs /d/ does sound alota like a Thai ด . : )

FWIW, the unaspirated unvoiced stops (i.e. ต, ป) do exist in English when spoken after the sibilant /s/ in a consonant cluster as in the words scat, stat, or spat. Some people can improve their articulation by focusing on such words in English.

Looks like Johnpa fell out of the idiot tree and hit more than his share of branches on the way down. Violating the #1 rule here in TV>

Well the road of life has had its ups and downs and I am sure I have bumped my head plenty of times going in both directions, but at least I have read a number of historical tomes about Thailand, written by both Thais and foreigners, where the influence of the Bunnag family in both the historical times of the absolute monarchy as well as more modern times is openly noted and discussed. One can make the argument that outside the Royal Family, the Bunnag family has been the next most influential family in Thailand over the past two centuries.

Now this gentleman; Khun Tej - being appointed is actually NOT a Thaksin appointease and will work for the good of the Kingdom of Thailand?

Is that correct? Or at least the right direction?

Let's just say that the Bunnag family and the Chakri dynasty have worked co-operatively for many generations.

Some here are intertwining several distinct historical threads. One can talk about genetic history, linguistic history, or cultural history as distinct trends or talk about how they combine in complicated fashions to arrive at distinct modern cultures. 'Thai' genetics include several layers of migrations into Southeast Asia over the millennium. Clearly the Ban Chiang people pre-dated the arrival of Tai people and even Mon Khmer (Austro-Asiatic) people by at least a millennium or two, but their gene pool must clearly be represented in todays Thai population. The origins of the Thai language are still a topic of debate amongst linguists. The Tai-Kadai hypothesis leads some to suggest that Hainan Island, not Taiwan, as a source of origin. Taiwan is argued as the origin of the Austronesian languages such as Malay. Modern Thai culture clearly derives from the migrations of Tai people southwards in response to Han (Chinese) migrations south of the Yangtze. The large presence of Chinese in Southeast Asia today is a far more modern migration. Classic Thai "high" culture is borrowed, or derived, almost entirely from Khmer culture, which borrowed heavily, as did the Mon, from India, thus leading to Coedes tome The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, a must read for all fellow history geeks. On the other hand, local village culture shares traits with other neighboring peoples and probably pre-dates the Tai migrations. I would suspect that Tai culture is better preserved up amongst the "tribal" Thais living around Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam rather than anywhere in Thailand.

Bottom line is that people migrate all over the place, they take their culture, their genes, and their languages, and then due to universality of hormonal drives that care not a whit about language or genetic purity, get things all mixed up.

not an ex-saudi royal gem per chance ?

But perhaps the office was a recruitment office for work in Saudi and this was a training exercise that went wrong.

Udom, you are about to get what you deserve. Don't think this ends here. It won't end until you are in prison. The US, UK and others will not let you run away. There is nowhere for you to go. The Thai government can not save you. Thai Airways will not be sacrificed for a piece of s**t like you.

What does he deserve? He will never spend a day in prison. Maybe he won't be able to visit the US or the UK, but most HiSo Thais don't like visiting the US anyways. They will still be welcome throughout Southeast Asia and into China (note how his wife uses her Chinese name as head of the Grand Caymen based airplane leasing company) And if things get too hot they can always abscond to some luxury hotel-casino along the Cambodian border until things cool down a bit. And let's not even talk about Thai Airways, although, to their credit, despite their business incompetence does maintain some safety standards.