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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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 Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 7:38 am Post subject: |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| it's pretty hard to hold Bangkok middle class people in high regard; on average they're really quite condescending and arrogant when it comes to social issues. Most of them own land and have got it made (driving around in their Mercedes all day and acting cool), and everyone else is dirt. |
A Thai told me during my month there that most of those are half-Chinese, that there are cultural differences between the wealthy of Bangkok and everybody else. |
Well that's part of it. There's actually another much larger ethnic division between the central Thai (basically the old Siamese kingdom) and the people of Isan (north-east) who were originally from the same kingdom of the people of Laos (Lan Xang). Isan has the largest regional population, but is also the poorest region. Isan people are generally looked down upon by Bangkok people, and the only jobs they can really get there are as taxi drivers, prostitutes, or menial labor.
I personally think Isan people are great though; salt-of-the-earth, friendly, generous, and a lot less judgmental than your typical Bangkokian. They're also very good at surviving. They tend to get portrayed as being uneducated peasants, but despite the discrimination they face in BKK they're actually quite content with their lot for the most part and don't have much of a sense of entitlement. They just hate being looked down on. That's really what this issue is about at its core: they deeply resent being called too stupid to vote (the party they voted in got disbanded 3 times and the current PM was placed into power by the military controlled courts).
The Chinese Thais are actually a real minority, but they control most of the big business. They tend to intermarry as well. They're actually alright though imo (they're pretty essential for the economy - they work hard and actually take care of business, as opposed to simply benefiting from feudalism). There's also Khmers, Lanna, and other minorities. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 7:46 am Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
The Chinese Thais are actually a real minority, but they control most of the big business. They tend to intermarry as well. They're actually alright though imo (they're pretty essential for the economy - they work hard and actually take care of business, as opposed to simply benefiting from feudalism). There's also Khmers, Lanna, and other minorities. |
I didn't know that. The Chinese-Indonesians and Chinese-Malaysians didn't have a fun time during the Asian Financial Crisis. Especially in Indonesia. The myriad of ethnic grievances in SE Asia is extremely complicated. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 7:49 am Post subject: |
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| .38 Special wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
Honestly this has been pretty educational to see up close. It's what happens when the poor have had enough. I wonder if we'll be seeing this sort of thing back in the US and Western Europe before long? Greece is already on the verge. But I'm betting a lot of American people are going to need to get raped even harder before they finally figure out the gov't is f#@$ing them. |
Lord, I hope not. Some hot and heavy protesting wouldn't kill us, but if government crackdowns started resulting in deaths like over there, the gloves would be off.
And we do things rather differently from the Thais, no doubt about that... |
Well the big difference is that we have 300+ million firearms at our disposal  |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 8:02 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
The Chinese Thais are actually a real minority, but they control most of the big business. They tend to intermarry as well. They're actually alright though imo (they're pretty essential for the economy - they work hard and actually take care of business, as opposed to simply benefiting from feudalism). There's also Khmers, Lanna, and other minorities. |
I didn't know that. The Chinese-Indonesians and Chinese-Malaysians didn't have a fun time during the Asian Financial Crisis. Especially in Indonesia. The myriad of ethnic grievances in SE Asia is extremely complicated. |
Yeah it's pretty complicated... Thailand's a bit of a mixing pot, but for the most part everyone just assimilates. There's not really any racial sort of nationalistic self-identification like you see in East Asia countries. As superficial as it sounds, I think a lot of it simply has to do with the lightness of one's skin (Chinese happening to be at the top, with lighter skin compared to most Thais, and darker Isan people at the bottom). They can be pretty obsessed with it (esp. the girls) but it's more of a socio-economic and aesthetic thing as opposed to a racial one (Thais can be xenophobic but are not generally "racist" in the way East Asians often are) they still all see themselves as being "Thai" (even half caucasian/Thais are fully accepted). The closest thing to an exception would probably be Isan people since they have their own fairly distinct culture (even their dialect is different, basically the same as Lao).
A lot of regular Thais will have a great aunt or something who was Chinese, yet they still might consider themselves "Chinese Thai" (a bit of a status thing I guess). Of course a lot of Isan people are proud just being what they are and couldn't care less about the Chinese. There's perhaps a bit of anti-Chinese sentiment, but nothing out of the ordinary. |
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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 12:48 am Post subject: |
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| I'm really surprised that there's such silence about this crackdown in the international arena. There really should be more commentary about this. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 2:53 am Post subject: |
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^ it's not over yet. Most of the red shirt leaders (who aren't really 'leaders' per se, but more like key note speakers) have been arrested, the protest site cleared, and Bangkok is under curfew. In other words, we're seeing a lull in the conflict. But now the movement will move underground and become a lot more militant. Peaceful protests failed, so now we're probably going to start seeing political assassinations and maybe more fires or explosions (hopefully not in public places though)...
I've personally spoken to a fair number of red shirt supporters, and while it may be anecdotal, they've all seem to think the movement is just going to get more hard line and move underground (they'll simply take off their red shirts).
The more radical elements have already burned down more than 30 buildings in Bangkok, so there's really no doubt they mean business. If Abhisit ever shows his face in public he'll probably be killed. The elite are still trying to blame Thaksin for everything, incapable of facing up to their own stupidity and hubris. All in all, it's not looking very good for the future of Thailand. |
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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 5:49 am Post subject: |
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| .38 Special wrote: |
Hopefully the UDD may endure and keep fighting until they achieve democracy. Looks like the state will not stop short of slaughtering their own people to retain their dictatorship, however.  |
Rabhisit already agreed to early elections and talks. The redshirts on the other hand are trashing the country and economy and generally behaving the opposite of what they claim to represent. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 7:02 am Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
| .38 Special wrote: |
Hopefully the UDD may endure and keep fighting until they achieve democracy. Looks like the state will not stop short of slaughtering their own people to retain their dictatorship, however. |
Rabhisit already agreed to early elections and talks. The redshirts on the other hand are trashing the country and economy and generally behaving the opposite of what they claim to represent. |
It's Abhisit, not Rabhisit. I wonder how much you actually know about politics in Thailand. I'm guessing squat. But go ahead and embarrass yourself if you think you know enough to have a debate on it...
For starters the red shirts (2.5+ million registered members) are supported by over half the population and come from all walks of life. They're not terrorists. Abhisit is a slime ball politician who was placed into power by the military, and whose offer was not ever worth considering (what you call "early" elections wouldn't have been till November, and he didn't even put anything in writing - he just gave a 2 day ultimatum), and who was almost certainly insincere anyway (judging by his subsequent actions and refusing to negotiate when the red shirt leaders said they were willing to talk when the soldiers were killing people). |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 8:48 am Post subject: |
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I have a couple associates from grad school that are Thai. One hasn't commented at all about it while the other decried CNN and BBC for biased reporting. I asked her what she objected to. Her response:
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| Some facts have been omitted which distort the real situation. Examples are such as saying that the protesters are unarmed civilians, failure to report on the casualties of the military, failure to report on the nature of most of the protesters, etc. |
I was tempted to tell her to wake up to reality and ask her why she supported the suppression of democracy, but I figured she'd say I was ignorant and had no idea what was going on  . How do you tell someone s/he needs to face the fact that while the system helps that person and his/her close associates, it is screwing over the greater good? |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 10:32 am Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
I have a couple associates from grad school that are Thai. One hasn't commented at all about it while the other decried CNN and BBC for biased reporting. I asked her what she objected to. Her response:
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| Some facts have been omitted which distort the real situation. Examples are such as saying that the protesters are unarmed civilians, failure to report on the casualties of the military, failure to report on the nature of most of the protesters, etc. |
I was tempted to tell her to wake up to reality and ask her why she supported the suppression of democracy, but I figured she'd say I was ignorant and had no idea what was going on . How do you tell someone s/he needs to face the fact that while the system helps that person and his/her close associates, it is screwing over the greater good? |
It's pretty hard to get through to them. A lot of these Western educated Thais come from well-to-do families in Bangkok and basically live privileged, sheltered lives. They've got servants and their parents just pay their way through life. Not much critical thinking going on. Most of them think they're really well educated and smart, but don't really have a clue what they're talking about, even though they're Thai. Not all that different from your average American really, who just parrots the propaganda they watch on Fox news every night (or conversely the liberal media).
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A few typical pro-government Thai arguments include:
1) Democracy can't work when Thaksin just buys all the votes.
- Actually Thaksin controlled very little wealth compared to the Bangkok elite, and most of that wealth has been seized already. Moreover their assertion is intuitively ridiculous, since most people vote for what they believe in, and will not passionately engage political opponents just for some loose change (we're seriously talking about a few hundred measly baht).
2) The military had to intervene because Thaksin was too corrupt.
- Aside from the obvious point that Thaksin was no more corrupt than any other Thai leaders in history, the way to remove him from power is at the ballot box. The rebuttal is that Thaksin would just keep buying votes (obviously absurd since if this were true, the Bangkok elite could just outspend him a thousand fold), and that the rural folk go along with it because they are too dumb to understand politics (which is completely untrue and insulting; they understand the issues so well that they even organized a very impressive mass protest in the heart of Bangkok, sounding their message loud and clear while Thaksin was in exile hiding from his own shadow). Lastly, when the military did intervene and ousted Thaksin, they shredded the old constitution and replaced it with a new one that benefited them, not the people. It was absolutely blatant. So there's no defending their actions even in a sort of "the ends justify the means" sense.
3) "The red shirts were terrorists, just look at what they did!"
- Only a very small number were armed. A few even had guns, but most used slingshots and crude petrol bombs. They only engaged the army in self defense. The army on the other hand used M19s (w/ live ammo), grenade launchers, tear gas, and APVs. The soldiers (rumor has it most of the ones used in the actual crackdown were border mercenaries who couldn't even speak Thai) offensively attacked and shot down protesters, both armed and unarmed.
If the red shirts were terrorists they would have burned down the buildings on day one. It's obvious that that was just an act of crude revenge on their part- which came from desperation. They never attacked any civilians, not even yellow shirts. By far the majority of them were peaceful, idealistic people. By crushing them with force the government has now empowered the more radical voices in the crowd, the same people who burned down Central World. These are the same people who are now underground and will probably start engaging in guerrilla tactics in the near future. |
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tiger fancini
Joined: 21 Mar 2006
Location: Testicles for Eyes
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Captain Corea wrote: |
| I'm really surprised that there's such silence about this crackdown in the international arena. There really should be more commentary about this. |
I'm also kinda shocked by this. It is being reported, but all a little too matter-of-factly for my liking.
Stickman has some excellent coverage of the whole affair on his site, but I really like this well-balanced submission which does a great job of outlining the whole complex situation in fairly simple terms.
http://www.stickmanbangkok.com/ReadersSubmissions2010/reader6008.htm |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 9:23 pm Post subject: |
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| tiger fancini wrote: |
| Captain Corea wrote: |
| I'm really surprised that there's such silence about this crackdown in the international arena. There really should be more commentary about this. |
I'm also kinda shocked by this. It is being reported, but all a little too matter-of-factly for my liking.
Stickman has some excellent coverage of the whole affair on his site, but I really like this well-balanced submission which does a great job of outlining the whole complex situation in fairly simple terms.
http://www.stickmanbangkok.com/ReadersSubmissions2010/reader6008.htm |
He misses a few key points in his article:
1) The red shirts weren't occupying private property, they were camped out on the streets. Streets are fair game. Those malls and hotels actually decided to close their doors of their own volition (obviously with good reason, but the point being that the red shirts didn't camp out inside these places). The yellow shirts on the other hand had directly shut down the airports and camped out inside for the duration. In general the reds actually behaved more better than the yellows (except for the very end).
2) He totally misses the point that yellow shirts and the military are on the same side. Duh. The reason the yellows pulled theirs off with far less people was because nobody ever raised a finger against them and they had nothing to fear (nobody has ever been tried for those crimes to this day). The reds on the other hand got shot down openly in the streets. HUGE difference. |
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