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"The Rounds"
Domestic Political Tensions Continue American Citizen Services to Visit Pattaya Retired Chinese Communist Party Officials Criticize Government Crackdown on the Media Tried the New Dee Restaurant in Washington Square Odd Coincidences: Remember the Kennedy Assassination Rare Siting of Elusive Squaronian Planned * * * * * * * * * * Just a reminder you can sign-up for free to receive the BangkokAtoZ.com Updates (plain text) e-mail to always know when I add something new to the site or modify it in some important way. A great way to be sure YOU don't miss something of interest, best of all is that this service is absolutely FREE! * * * * * * * * * * This is my 12th February in the Kingdom, I don't remember it *ever* raining here in the capital in the Valentine month. Yet it did so yesterday afternoon and again late last night and early this morning. I've commented on this page in the past about the weather here weirding up the past few years, at all times of the year, and this year is proving no exception for Siam, as it isn't for a great many other places as well. Take Moscow, for instance. It got to a bone-freezing -43°C a couple of weeks ago, cold enough the Russian news media were warning people not to be outside with any part of their flesh exposed for more than a maximum of five minutes, at the risk of severe frostbit. True, Moscow isn't a balmy place in the dead of winter -- but -43°C??? Politicians assure us these weather changes have nothing to do with the ozone layer. Not being either a scientist or a politician myself, I haven't the faintest if there's any connection. But as an ignorant non-scientist and non-politician (everyone knows the politicos know it all, don't they???), I sure as heck *suspect* there may be a link. The Greenland ice cap has shrunk something like 20% in recent decades, according to U.S. government satellite surveys. A huge and previously permanent ice shelf in the Antarctic fell off into the seas a year or two ago. Some places have recorded their warmest winters since record-keeping began, while others had their hottest-ever summers last year. The upside of the weather change is that yesterday afternoon, last night, and all day and evening today here have been delightfully cool. When I walked out of my apartment this morning, there was a fair breeze blowing, and I thought if I were to take a motorcycle taxi, I likely would actually get cold, especially since today is a holiday and the traffic is extremely light. I love it, even if it scares me a bit. [Monday, February 13, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Domestic Political Tensions Continue Tensions continue to increase, with a new twist having occurred now. A former governor of Bangkok, a very plain-speaking gentleman, criticized a deeply respected Privy Councilor, General Prem, who is widely seen as one of Thailand's leading statesmen (including by me, by the way) on his regular talk show for a speech General Prem recently gave. I think the former governor meant to be supporting the ruling Thai Rak Thai Party, but boy oh boy, has his loyalty (if I'm right) ever backfired. His show is hosted on a station owned and operated by the military. Senior active-duty and retired military admirers of General Prem are howling for ex-Governor Samak's blood. One report I got last night from a local newspaper via that organ's SMS headline service said Samak announced he was quitting the talk show, but I don't think that's going to soothe the outrage he stirred. If Khun Samak did indeed mean to help the ruling party, he sure botched it. An ABAC University poll of folks in Bangkok and nearby provinces is said to show that an overwhelming number of the folks interviewed disagree with his remarks. Now the military and other factions in society are demanding Khun Samak apologize. It has been reported that the venerable General Prem was deeply distressed by the veteran politician's remarks. Meanwhile, this past weekend's anti-Prime Minister Thaksin may have shown broadening opposition to him. Originally organized by a man formerly squarely in P.M. Thaksin's camp but who has turned vociferously against him, Khun Sondhi, this latest demonstration at Royal Plaza was led to by a coalition of groups who oppose the Prime Minister, something Khun Sondhi announced in advance would be the case. If the media have it right, what really has people upset is the sale of shares by the P.M.'s family and another family to the investment arm of the Singaporean government and the decision that the enormous profits -- 73 billion baht -- resulting from that sale are tax-free. (The great majority of the shares to trade hands were said to have been in possession of the Thaksin family, not the other one.) Some have drawn dark parallels to earlier tumultuous times, most recently to 1992, when the beloved and respected His Majesty the King felt it necessary to intervene in a conflict between pro-democracy forces and the then-ruling three military dictators. (The dictators threw in the towel, once His Majesty spoke.) But then was different: people were being killed in the streets of the capital. That is not the case now, and I don't see it going that way, if for no other reason than contemporary leaders must have that lesson in the back of their minds. Besides, they are violence-oriented. Prime Minister Thaksin continues to say he's not concerned, citing the 19 million votes he received in the last general election, an election which delivered his party an absolute majority in Parliament. It does appear he and his Cabinet ministers are absolutely bulletproof against any censure motions. Yet the broad coalition that demonstrated, in the tens of thousands, this past weekend has vowed not to cease until he is forced from office. I'm not convinced that for such to happen is necessarily, and certainly not automatically, in the best interests of the Kingdom or her citizens. As my homeland, the U.S., is learning to its bitterness in its nobly-meant efforts in Iraq, throwing out one leader doesn't automatically assure a pleasant outcome. Those the Prime Minister publicly remains blasé, I suspect he's in for difficult times in the weeks to come, unless the opposition falls apart -- which could happen. Call it "demonstration fatigue." [Monday, February 13, 2005] Late news: According to two SMS headlines I received from a local paper today, there apprently have been two particularly important events to occur. First, the Constitution Court accepted a petition from 28 senators day-before-yesterday charging Prime Minister Thaksin with conflict of interest, but today the Court has decided not to pursue the matter. Second, a rather enigmatic headline I received said the P.M. is seeking a successor -- but not ruling out running for a third term. [Thursday, February 16, 2006] The outroar over the publication some months ago of several panel cartoons depicting the Islamic faith's found, the Prophet Mohammed, continues to grow right around the world. Did the Danish newspaper have a right to run the cartoons, given that it is published in a Western democracy that respects freedom of speech, including by the media? -- absolutely. Was to do so the most politically-astute decision an editor has ever taken? -- absolutely not, if for no other reason than it has put people at physical risk around the world. That said, there is a growing backlash among Westerners who do acknowledge that there are very many members of the faith of Islam who are not supportive of violence, a fact appreciated by some Westerners. Yet those Westerners are beginning to question where the protestors in the Islamic world are, for example, when a hostage gets his or her head whacked off -- on a video later run by various news organizations. That there have been protests from voices in the Islamic world against such violence is demonstrable. Yet those voices remain, tragically, quite isolated, and they largely have been the voices of educated clerics (not self-appointed, unschooled, rabble rousers), Muslim academics, other Muslims with experience of the wider world, and the like -- not from what is increasingly being called "the Islamic street." This reminds me of an incident in the latter of the the 1980's in Beijing, during the time I lived there. I happened to become acquainted with a fair number of Black African students studying in China on scholarships provided by Beijing. (They would come to the coffee shop in the Friendship Hotel for the cheap drinks, and I also was a regular there.) I became reasonably well-acquainted with the then-president of whatever the student branch of the Organization of African Unity is. It's relevant to note that there were virtually *no* female Africans, the vast majority of students being male. Young males, with the usual wishes to have girlfriends, hardly unique wishes. At one of the universities in the university district in northwest Beijing, there was a Black African student with a Chinese girlfriend -- I know, because I met and sat with them on numerous occasions. One day the couple were walking along the street near their university when they were set upon by Chinese students angered by one of their own having not merely a "foreign devil" boyfriend, but a Black African one. The young man was stabbed, resulting in a serious injury, while the young lady was thrashed about some. The outcome, according even to some of my Chinese sources? -- once released from hospital, the African had his scholarship canceled and was, in essence, deported, while his girlfriend was unceremoniously ejected from university. Their crime? -- "Inciting Chinese people to commit crimes." The kicker? -- none of the attackers was ever even taken in for questioning, let alone charged and tried, despite the widely-known presence of very many witnesses to the attack, which took place in broad daylight. Contrast this to what could happen, at least back then, if a foreigner committed the slightest legal offense against a Chinese person, even an unwitting one. It was Katy-bar-the-door time, no matter how minor and, possibly, unwitting, the offense may have been. Makes ""the Islamic street" seem like dejá vu all over again, doesn't it? [Thursday, February 16, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * American Citizen Services to Visit Pattaya I got an e-mail from the American Citizen Services Unit of the U.S. Embassy here in Bangkok announcing an upcoming visit by consular officials to Pattaya next month; here is the complete text of the e-mail I received:
[Thursday, February 26, 2006] * * * * * * * * * *
Retired Chinese Communist Party Officials In a move unprecedented in my 20+ years of China-watching, at least as far as I know, a group of retired very senior officials of the Chinese Communist Party have submitted a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao, a group including Li Rui, a former secretary to communist founder Mao Zedong; Zhu Zehou, former head of the party's Propaganda Department in the 1980s; and Li Pu, former deputy director of the government's Xinhua News Agency, according to published reports. This is astonishing. A former secretary to Mao Zedong? A former head of the party's Propaganda Department in the 1980's? A former Deputy Director of the official [lapdog] news agency Xinhua? And yet others, said to number 13 signatories in all? I couldn't be much more amazed ,say, were President Bush to say he has had a change of heart so was going to reinstate Saddam and invite Osama to the White House. Having said the above, let me put my reaction into context. I have long expected this sort of revolt -- eventually. But not this soon, and certainly no from such a group, particularly not from Li Rui, a pretty major political star in the Chinese firmament any way you look at it. But there may be one or more explanations. The most obvious is the signers genuinely feel what they wrote. Another (or maybe additional) may well have to do with the current regime's draconian actions regarding the Internet -- and this is an explanation I favor at first blush. The Old Men of Zhongnanhai want it both ways: they made the decision to allow the Internet into China -- but insist on doing so on their own narrow, self-serving, politically-based terms, meaning they want it in, but in a way that in NO way could possibly represent a threat to their authority. Recall the recent criticisms of American Internet companies doing business with China who have cooperated with authorities there, in one instance cooperating to the point an underground Internet writer got caught and sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence. The old cliché "The genie's out of the bottle" didn't become a cliché by being wrong; quite the contrary. One might think the current crop of China's leaders would have learned that over the past nearly 27 years, since the late Supreme Leader Deng Xiao Ping threw The Middle Kingdom open to the world. Not that Deng was any free-thinking democrat mind you; he was an extraordinarily astute pragmatic. However, to assume that to be a senior leader in China he or she must also be astute on the global scene is, in my view, to assume dangerously. Why? This is a society in which many genuinely, viscerally believe not only that they possess the world's oldest civilisation, but also the greatest, with the rest of us being also-rans, at best. That such a view is so widely held by The Common Man -- and it is, I can 100% guarantee you -- means this baker's dozen of retired officials are speaking, in one context, against the views held by 1.3 billion mainland Chinese, or something approaching 100,000,000-to-one. A lot of people thought when the government of the day cracked down on the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989 that the end of any political or social reform for the next several lifetimes, a view with which I disagreed at the time. Consider the years since. China has assumed a genuine leadership role, at least regionally, not one entirely based on hand-outs, propaganda, and bullying (as used to be the case). There is a form of political democracy in some instances, democracy pretty alien in much of the West, but democracy all the same, arguably more democratic than the classic [for Westerners] Greek model, in which women had no right to vote. The economy is the envy not only of the region, but the world. For the first time in the many centuries of The Celestial Kingdom's history, there is actually a middle class and an upper class. Both are small, granted, but I think about my own homeland, America, when it started off, and maybe things weren't so different there, then. But this, this open statement by respected retired and very senior Communist officials is in some aspects stunning. It may be calculating as well -- a possibility no one should forget. It even could be a collusive event, one meant to show that China is more open than it is. If that's the case, it's a real roll of the dice for Zhongnanhai. And in that roll, they are forgetting a few things. A *lot* of mainlanders are traveling, especially within the region, in most of which reasonably free access to information is available. Then there is cell phone technology. Trackable and suppressible, true, but not in the short run. And what to do about all those blathering Foreign Devils who visit or live in the Middle Kingdom? They can't have it both ways. Their very power is on the table. (To find a host of news stories about this development, go to Google's News Search and type in "censorship China Internet criticize" to find well over a hundred stories -- and that's just today -- related to it. I'm sure more will be forthcoming.) [Thursday, February 16, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Tried the New Dee Restaurant in Washington Square I tried the Thai restaurant that I mentioned some weeks ago (though I didn't know the name of it then) new to Washington Square, having taken over the former premises of a whine store opposite the Silver Dollar Bar. My Thai friends who have tried it are divided on it, some saying the food isn't all that good, others saying it just fine. My own experience was fine. I ordered a bottle of water (there's no alcohol available, by the way); a plate of rice with rice, ground pork, and Thai peppers; and a bowl of clear Thai soup with noodles, dofu [tofu], ground pork and cilantro. Both dishes were also available with chicken or shrimp. While I doubt the restaurant will ever get three stars in the Michelin guide, I found it very good value for money. The waiter and another lady -- the proprietress? -- both spoke English, the lady very good English. Both were very personable. The restaurant includes the interior dining room [non-smoking] and a couple-three tables outside [where smoking is permitted]. The dining room is what the late American novelist Ernest Hemingway would describe as a "clean, well-lighted place." The dishes weren't huge, but neither were they tiny, unless you have the appetite of a bear, or of a Thai lady! (Why Thai ladies don't eat for a month then hibernate the rest of the year remains one of science's great mysteries.) And both were tasty, with the usual condiments on the table: sugar, fish sauce, green peepers with clear sauce, and ground red chilis. The lady was alarmed when she saw me dousing my dishes with the latter three, as she didn't know I live here and like stuff a bit spicier than many a Westerner, if not as spicy as some of my Thai hosts prefer. I in future I could have only one of the two dishes I had tonight, I would opt for the soup, though that is not meant to take away from the other dish. My cost for the works? -- 95 baht, a bit under US$2.00. The lady delivered my bill to me and made a point of mentioning the tally included the works -- meaning the food and drink costs, service charge, and tax. If you like Thai food, are in a hurry and in the area, and don't want to drop a bundle, consider giving Dee Restaurant a go. [Thursday, February 16, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Odd Coincidences: Remember the Kennedy Assassination I was reminded of the remarkable coincidences that surfaced after President John F. Kennedy of the U.S. was assassinated with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln some 98 years before. While the conspiracy theorists make a lot out of it, it never has amounted to much in the grand scheme of things. That said, I did receive a forwarded e-mail today that is curious, if indecipherable in terms of its applicability, regarding coincidences regarding 9/11, a very few of which I already knew, the rest which I didn't. Before I repeat that e-mail here, three caveats are in order. The verse quoted in the e-mail from the Koran is, I'm convinced, is not only mistranslated, but badly so. While I neither understand nor read the language, this translation [and near-variants] surfaced almost immediately, and I have researched them on the Internet repeatedly, every time coming away without changing my belief. The verse quoted refers, instead, to a specific instance in which the Muslims were betrayed after signing a peace treaty -- sort of a Trojan War sort of history -- and there were calls to turn on the betrayers, who happened to be non-Muslims. In other words, this is not a call to arms for all Muslims for all time to slaughter "infidels." The second caveat is fuzzier: just as the coincidences in the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations provide no useful information, I wonder where the useful information about coincidences regarding 9/11 is. Nowhere, as far as I can tell. Third, the instructions tell you to type the indicated text and change the text size to 48. I tried it at many different font sizes, and it worked in each case. Despite these caveats, this sort of thing continues to fascinate us, doesn't it?
Interesting, huh? [Thursday, February 16, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Rare Siting of Elusive Squaronian Planned This is an after-press-time story.
This morning, I had an e-mail from an old friend who used to be a much more frequent Squaronian than he is these days saying he would be on the Square tomorrow afternoon for his nowadays too-rare visit. At the time, I e-mailed him back, jokingly threatening to make the story the flash headline. Later, I uploaded the column, sans story. But I've just returned to my computer and found an e-mail from him saying he'll be on the lookout for it, so I decided to add it. Friends of "TNT Al" will want to make note of this and try to show up if you want to say hello to him. [Friday, February 17, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Enough for one go . . . Until next time -- Mekhong Kurt
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