Chiang Mai Red Shirt Radio Inciting Followers To Grab Arms

[jdinasia]

So we can assume cnxforever is notwhere near CNX?

[cmsally]

Indeed a very interesting article by Duncan McCargo above. Also some very good pieces by Federico Ferrara.

[Cnxforever]

So we can assume cnxforever is notwhere near CNX?

He is currently traveling the world........enjoying freedom of the press (in some countries) following the events in Thailand closely .. and getting regular first hand updates from some "Red Shirts" in Chiang Mai (friends and neighbours) but I am on nobodies side open minded and like to stick to facts.....

[dave2]

invex.

re .... I hear 'Red Shirts" loud and clear near the Police 5 HQ at Mahidol Rd now.

are you sure your hearing red shirts demonstrating / complaining ?

or are you hearing the VERY loud music from the concert behind airport plaza which started at about 6 ish and is still going on now ( 10 55 pm ) ?

just interested : )

dave2

[Hugh Jarse]

great respect for the law and very democratic of them of them as ever;

"we want democracy" they say while violently trying to overthrow a democratic government

That is one of the major problems here right now, the RED's do not believe the current administration have legitimacy (the right to rule) as they were not installed via the ballot box. The major disparity/imbalances between rich and poor is so wide that some major re-distribution of land ,wealth and assets is imperative for there to be any semblence of harmony in Thailand. The state must also stamp on tax evaders and insist on new inheritance tax legislation.

With the recent judgements against Thaksin and the large financial gains to the state, it is to be hoped that the Abhisit government will find some imaginative ways to put right some of the gross inequalities here in Thailand. To start with why not set up some universal child benefit scheme (payable to mothers ideally) and some decent free-primary school education and incentivise teachers with decent salaries . Other targets must include improved benefits to the elderley and infirm. The elites no doubt will be barracking on about how such benefits will lead to dependancy on the state but radical social policies are much needed. The governing elites and their patrons must make major changes to the social structure or be prepared for the major major upheavels that usually follow unjust rulers.(ie those who want to mainain a status quo.

[jdinasia]

Hugh Jarse ---

You need to take a look at the 2007 election results and the spend some time educating the reds about parliamentary democracy, their ignorance just isn't an excuse now is it?

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Most aren't ignorant at all. I agree with many of their causes.

Edited February 26, 2010 by WinnieTheKhwai

[jdinasia]

Their ignorance isn't the issue, is it?

Actually, yes it is. They don't 'believe' the current government is legitimate. The last 2 governments (Samak and Somchai's) were coalition governments as is the current one. All three were elected by the MP's. The MP's that switched sides (which is legitimate in a parliamentary democracy) had ,prior to the 2007 elections, promised their constituents they would not form a government with the Thaksin proxy party (PPP). They jumped ship and sided with the Dems.

The raw vote count actually places the Dems ahead in votes, but no single party got a majority and the PPP got more MP's.

and yes ignorance does NOT equal stupidity

and yes selling your vote DOES equal stupidity and crruption

[jdinasia]

Most aren't ignorant at all. I agree with many of their causes.

I agree with many of their causes as well .... which has nothing to do with their ignorance.

[mcgriffith]

OK, so you are all right, correct, etc.

Thailand is a flawed democracy. An emerging, and evolving democracy.

For that matter, so is my home country, the US, a flawed democracy.

A federal system, where some senator from Fargo, North Dakota (population 50,000) can shut down the entire legislative system till he gets a new 1 billion dollar airport built in his bailiwick. And let's not even discuss the electoral college (what- you win the popular vote....sorry).

Japan is a stunted democracy, that just replaced one old style patronage bridge-to-nowhere party, with a new party with a godfather who makes the old Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago look like the Pope.

UK democracy- Gordon can't smile, and will lose. Wonderful Parliament. Half of the lot billing saunas and holidays to Spain at taxpayer expense.

I could go on and on.

My point is- no place is perfect. Or immune to criticism.

But Thailand will live through this.

The Thais will decide what is right, and fair, and appropriate.

I wish them well, and as someone who loves this country, bless them for their rule of law.

My country fought a civil war that killed millions.

I applaud Thailand for showing restraint.

Respect the Thai judiciary. I think they made their decision, based on law. Jurisprudence. Looking at past decisions, and doing the best to be fair, based on the history and law that they have here.

Let us not try to politicize the decisions of the judges. Let us just accept them as a final judgment.

When the US Supreme Court upheld the "dangling chads" Florida decision in a US presidential election....Democrats didn't form militias, and advocate violence. They just organized better, got smart, and elected their candidate in a later election.

I have a sneaking hunch that the same might happen here, perhaps.

Just my 25 satang.

[jdinasia]

Hugh Jarse ---

You need to take a look at the 2007 election results and the spend some time educating the reds about parliamentary democracy, their ignorance just isn't an excuse now is it?

you obviously havn't been following this thread. jdinasia. for a start the Red Shirts (or their political masters) WON the 2007 election. Secondly, the only reason they didn't win an overall majority was that it was fought under the 2007 constitution drawn up under military rule and it was illegal to campaign against it and it was deeply flawed. It set out to weaken civilian government by introducing a proportional representation system unsuitable for what was at the time an emerging democracy like Thailand.

The last red shirt government was overthrown by the judiciary under pressure from the Yellow Shirts (themselves an invention of the ruling elite).

Ummm sorry but No .. nobody WON the 2007 elections. All three governments elected out of the 2007 elections have been coalitions precisely because no single party WON anything.

You have been listening to too much propoganda and not looking at the real numbers. The Dems got more raw votes than did PPP. PPP got more seats in Parliament than the Dems, NOBODY got 50%.

[invex]

@ dave2

No, I am not sure. It could have been the concert you are talking about. I live about 1 km away from the police station.

[Thailand]

I can only be thankful that the country is not run by Farangs having seen comments from many of the posters on TV.

Let's keep it in house with the same old corrupt/inept/bumbling way of going on. I am pretty sure this is the Thailand most of us came here for. Nothing to do with the weather,food etc.

[gotlost]

OK, so you are all right, correct, etc.

Thailand is a flawed democracy. An emerging, and evolving democracy.

For that matter, so is my home country, the US, a flawed democracy.

A federal system, where some senator from Fargo, North Dakota (population 50,000) can shut down the entire legislative system till he gets a new 1 billion dollar airport built in his bailiwick. And let's not even discuss the electoral college (what- you win the popular vote....sorry).

Japan is a stunted democracy, that just replaced one old style patronage bridge-to-nowhere party, with a new party with a godfather who makes the old Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago look like the Pope.

UK democracy- Gordon can't smile, and will lose. Wonderful Parliament. Half of the lot billing saunas and holidays to Spain at taxpayer expense.

I could go on and on.

My point is- no place is perfect. Or immune to criticism.

But Thailand will live through this.

The Thais will decide what is right, and fair, and appropriate.

I wish them well, and as someone who loves this country, bless them for their rule of law.

My country fought a civil war that killed millions.

I applaud Thailand for showing restraint.

Respect the Thai judiciary. I think they made their decision, based on law. Jurisprudence. Looking at past decisions, and doing the best to be fair, based on the history and law that they have here.

Let us not try to politicize the decisions of the judges. Let us just accept them as a final judgment.

When the US Supreme Court upheld the "dangling chads" Florida decision in a US presidential election....Democrats didn't form militias, and advocate violence. They just organized better, got smart, and elected their candidate in a later election.

I have a sneaking hunch that the same might happen here, perhaps.

Just my 25 satang.

I agree with your post. but there were not millions killed in the American Civil war

"My country fought a civil war that killed millions"

Tops 700,000. The price we paid for democracy.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/casualties.htm

Edited February 27, 2010 by gotlost

[harrry]

OK, so you are all right, correct, etc.

My country fought a civil war that killed millions.

.

I agree with your post. but there were not millions killed in the American Civil war

"My country fought a civil war that killed millions"

Tops 700,000. The price we paid for democracy.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/casualties.htm

I notice this does not include cvilian casualalties..and possibly no black slaves eiher.

[Ricardo]

i agree with you Ricardo that demonstrating in Chiang Mai wont achieve much as most people support them anyway, but if they go to Bangkok they are met by riot police and Abhisits highly restrictive security act. What are they supposed to do?

Demonstrate peacefully, as instructed to do by some of their current leaders, no need for ping-pong bombs or bottles of petrol, inflamatory speeches or radio-broadcasts, or the 'politics of hate'. Distance themselves from people like Seh Daeng and ideas like the 'People's Army of Thailand'.

Reform the PTP, or start a new party like the PAD did, to put in place a party-membership, to develop policies & select MP-candidates & campaign locally in national/local-elections.

Put the finances of the party on a proper footing. Try to offer an alternative, to the existing feudal-patronage system of political-leadership, in which I would include Thaksin.

Expose examples of corruption amongst politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen & the military amongst others. This tactic works and serves the country, whoever is in-power in future needs to work to reduce (I doubt it can be eliminated) corruption, step by step.

Use their 'schools' to educate about what a democracy is, ideas like media-freedom & tolerance, not just rabble-rousing.

This advice might apply equally well to the NPP/PAD, and anyone else, who wants to be more than just a minor pressure-group.

Most aren't ignorant at all. I agree with many of their causes.

So do I, and I'm sure many others, they have been born through the finance/needs of just one person, who has just been thoroughly discredited & shamed, now they have to grow beyond that model, and look to the future. I hope that they can.

Edited February 27, 2010 by Ricardo

[gotlost]

OK, so you are all right, correct, etc.

My country fought a civil war that killed millions.

.

I agree with your post. but there were not millions killed in the American Civil war

"My country fought a civil war that killed millions"

Tops 700,000. The price we paid for democracy.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/casualties.htm

I notice this does not include cvilian casualalties..and possibly no black slaves eiher.

Just about all research will show between 620,000 to 700,000 deaths in the American civil war, the most deaths of all USA wars. It is sad but the are no accurate stats on civilian or slaves death in this conflict. Were there, Yes, Numbers ?

[millwall_fan]

Ricardo: It might have been easier for them to use their own finances and reduce reliance on one man's donations if the government hadn't abused the rules on state funding for political parties, by denying Peua Thai funding because they technically didnt stand at the last election (they were called PPP then). The government voted itself and its new allies a large dollop of state cash each.

And jdinasia, The PPP did win- they were the largest party under the flawed arrangemetns of the 1997 contitution. Because of the PR system the military introduced they failed to gain an overall majority and had to form a coalition - a situation that exists around Europe - no one has suggested that Angela Merkels CDU party didnt win the last election in Germany, just because she had to form a coalition with the FDP.

[jdinasia]

Ricardo: It might have been easier for them to use their own finances and reduce reliance on one man's donations if the government hadn't abused the rules on state funding for political parties, by denying Peua Thai funding because they technically didnt stand at the last election (they were called PPP then). The government voted itself and its new allies a large dollop of state cash each.

And jdinasia, The PPP did win- they were the largest party under the flawed arrangemetns of the 1997 contitution. Because of the PR system the military introduced they failed to gain an overall majority and had to form a coalition - a situation that exists around Europe - no one has suggested that Angela Merkels CDU party didnt win the last election in Germany, just because she had to form a coalition with the FDP.

Sorry, but without their then coalition partners, PPP would not have been able to form a government. Those coalition partners had told their constituents that they would not help PPP form a government. No big deal as they have to answer to their constituents and nobody else for that lie (and their constituents will vote for them again even though they were lied to). The Dems had more individual votes (and fewer MP's) and are now the government by forming a coalition. I don't think that makes the Dem's the winner of the 2007 elections either!

[orang37]

OK, so you are all right, correct, etc. Thailand is a flawed democracy. An emerging, and evolving democracy. For that matter, so is my home country, the US, a flawed democracy. ... snip ... just my 25 satang ...

Sawasdee Khrup TV CM Friends,

We got a good five baht's worth of revelation out of McGriffith's 25 satang, agreeing with the sentiments, but we'd take it one step further and assert America (our human's birthplace, but no longer his "homeland") has never been a democracy, and is not a democracy now.

We do agree with Mark Twain's immortal words : "politicians are America's only native criminal class."

That America may be more "democratic" ... or Thailand somehow "less democratic" ... (in the idealized and "mythic" sense of that term) seems like an issue that not only is a waste of time to debate, but is actually mis-leading since it diverts us away from trying to perceive how Thais perceive and act, and what "political life" is like as experienced and defined by them, in the context of their unique national history.

And we can't see any value in trotting out the American Civil War except to remind ourselves that King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) was clearly influenced by Lincoln's words in his own manumission of slavery in Thailand, which, at the time, was a very radical act, and was strongly resisted by many of the nobility.

What may be more relevant is that Thailand (particularly central Thailand: i.e., Ayudhya) has a history as a colonializing power, just as America does, and a history as a "slave nation," just as America does. And slavery in northern Thailand was just as prevalent.

But in so many ways there are no parallels between slavery in Thailand and the bifurcation of America pre-Civil War into two "zones" one (the north with almost all manufacturing centers), and one (the south) heavily depending on one crop (cotton) which required intensive slave labor from people from another continent who were not, at the time, perceived by many Americans (north and south) as either "human beings," or anything other than a form of "domestic animal." Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, America, 1857, Dred Scott decision : slaves are "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Whether you agree with the Wikipedia entry that net American Civil War casualties were more than a million, seems immaterial : what does seem material is that 3% of the American population died : the lives of millions were traumatically impacted for generations. How haunting the song "Strange Fruit," as made by famous by Billie Holiday, based on a poem by a Jewish schoolteacher in New York who was horrified by the pictures of a 1930 lynching of two black men in Indiana, still remains. The residual deaths and violence from the American Civil War continued for generations.

Two of the deaths during the American Civil War were my human's great-great-grandparents in his paternal line, leaving his great-grandfather an orphan; who made up for being a "solo act" by fathering seventeen children, twelve of whom survived beyond age eight, and of whom his paternal grandfather was the last to die at age 102, still, from time to time, reciting his father's description of Sherman's Army of the South passing by the half-wrecked ante-bellum mansion south of Atlanta the orphans and their caretakers were using : "from before the sun came up, until after the sun went down."

Which is not relevant to Thailand either, except to mention that a great part of the re-population of Chiang Mai was re-located here two hundred years ago, many by force, in the aftermath of a brutal war-related depopulation and abandonment (the Burmese pulled back leaving Chiang Mai a wasteland for twenty years).

And all over Thailand are groups of people today who are descendents of large groups of people deliberately re-located far from their homes by violent means : way down in the deep south are a group of Thais whose dialect of the Thai language scholars believe may reflect an archaic Sukhothai dialect. Twenty-thousand Laos east of the Mekong were captured and re-located near Supanbhuri as slaves : the Laos Prince who started a war to try and "rescue" them (and lost), Prince Anuwong, is a national hero in Laos, and a "villain" in Thai history books.

Are there any parallels to events of the scale of the American Civil War in Thailand ? We'd answer "yes" : the destruction of Ayuthya around the time of the founding of the Amercan polity.

That destruction combined with the absolute geo-political necessity of an enduring alliance with northern Thailand which really was a separate culture (and to some degree a separate "nation" in the sense of a loose system of shifting-alliance city-states) is what led to the alliance between King Kawila of Lampang and King Taksin, led to the final expulsion of the Burmese, led to the re-population of Chiang Mai, led to the founding of the Chakri dynasty once King Taksin had been deposed and ritually killed for his "insanity," led to the future "nation" of Thailand then framed by the colonial interventions of western powers in the region, and framed by a dimunition of the Burmese threat thanks to the British being busy raping and looting the weird and "savage" collage of empires and ethnic polities that was "Burma."

When McGriffith writes :

My point is- no place is perfect. Or immune to criticism.

But Thailand will live through this.

The Thais will decide what is right, and fair, and appropriate.

I wish them well, and as someone who loves this country, bless them for their rule of law.

We wish we could share this "optimism" very much; we hope (against hope ?) the next year be one of "rule of law."

We sincerely hope that Thais will find leadership, in the next years, who are able, in modern times, to achieve the equivalent, on social and cultural levels, of King Mongkut's and King Chulalongkorn's amazing geo-political achievements in protecting Thailand from being "crushed" by the aggrandizing western colonial powers, in the ways that Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam were "crushed."

Democracry may be an "ideal," or even a "dream," but perhaps it's the only dream worth having ?

best, ~o:37;

Thomas Jefferson : "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

Thomas Paine : "The first duty of a patriot is to defend the citizens of a country from its government."

John Quincy Adams : "Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide."

Benjamin Franklin : "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

Edited February 27, 2010 by orang37

[Ricardo]

Ricardo: It might have been easier for them to use their own finances and reduce reliance on one man's donations if the government hadn't abused the rules on state funding for political parties, by denying Peua Thai funding because they technically didnt stand at the last election (they were called PPP then). The government voted itself and its new allies a large dollop of state cash each.

We were talking about what they might do in future, but never mind.

The lesson for PTP, from the banning of TRT & PPP, is not to let your party-executives get caught rigging the system or vote-buying, as the party as-a-whole may be banned by the E.C. Better to continue to do it at an individual-MP level, where only the MP gets banned or forced to re-run, as has happened to MPs from several parties including the Democrats.

Might I ask, how do you think Thai political-parties should fund themselves, to avoid/reduce conflicts-of-interest ?