Avatar screener

Just downloaded new Avatar DVD screener.

First impression – where are the colors??? I know the final DVD/Blueray versions will look a lot better, but without those vivid blues and greens the movie feels really pale.

Just goes to show how much the movie loses when viewed on inferior media – no 3D, low resolution, pale colors – the “wow” factor has gone completely. I hope the story is still as engaging, but the visual feast is just not there anymore.

Earlier I generally dismissed Pandora’s civilization and its people, arguing that we, earthlings, have passed this stage thousands of years ago. It clearly is unsuitable model for us, we are not going to live on the trees anymore.

On the second thought, however, I wonder what the purpose of having civilization and a certain way of life really is. We, the earthlings, have clearly lost all sense of it. For us it’s just a natural battle for being better, stronger, having more things and so on – our “western” civilization follows Darwin’s theory of evolution, and it has no particular goal and no destination.

I can’t speak for Pandorians with any confidence – they are an imaginary race, after all, but our asian civilizations are markedly different from the western model. Hindus goal of life is some kind of liberation, moksha, Buddhist goal of life is nirvana. Consequently the society is organized in such a way that makes moving towards those goals easier. Anything is ultimately judged by how it affects people’s progress towards moksha (or nirvana). Monks are given higher status and respect because they guide the rest of the society, kings’ main duty is to preserve dharma/dhamma, all communities are centered around temples and so on. Thais invented “middle way” and “sufficiency” to accommodate earthly desires and still stay on the spiritual path.

When faced with aggressive west these asian values and societies generally crumble, though we are from giving out a final verdict on which model is more sustainable in the long run, what with rising China and bankrupted US.

The point is – Pandorian life of balance and restraint works for them, and, at least on this occasion, they managed to preserve it.

As for us, we should probably rethink our value system. It is rooted in Christian values but those have very little relevance to a modern life. Atheist/scientific approach might have offered us logic based substitutes but those haven’t got much ground yet. People still judge what is right and what is wrong based on what they feel in their hearts, not on complex benefits vs. loss calculations. In real life those calculation never really give you an absolute answer anyway.

Destroying Na’ve clearly feels wrong, for example, and I can’t see an easy way to calculate any immediate damages to us if we go out and suck that planet dry.

So here is our first task – how to reconcile what we feel is wrong with what we calculate as right. Do we need to legitimize these feelings and give them protection? They were legitimate and protected when religion was dominant but that era is gone forever. Do we need some moral substitute for religion? Lots of people would not even hear about it, but, on the other hand, show me someone who didn’t feel it for Pandorians?

Cambodia not forgotten

They did it again.

There’s no point in commenting, just a collection of quotes as posted on Song of Khmer Empire blog:

Hor Namhong, Foreign Minster:

Siamese leaders are stupid for always officially relying on only [unreliable siamese] media.

Hun Sen:

Excrement is Thailand is very expensive, because the Thai people gave it as a gift to the prime minister. Even with that, he still does not resign from his position.

…

If you don’t tell the truth about Siam troops’ invasion in Cambodia on 15 July, let the magic objects break your neck, may you be shot, be hit by a car, may you be shocked by electricity or [may you be shot] by misfired guns.

…

You are a true power thief, if you don’t believe me, hold an election and you will lose.

…

I am angry with only a few people, I am not angry with the entire Siam people, and [I am angry] with the dumb newspapers The Nation and Bangkok Post.

What a funny bunch Thailand got for a neighbor.

This picture alone speaks better than a thousand words about what Thailand is dealing with.

Will there be a coup?

Can’t say it better than Suttichai Yoon, coup rumors is a “mob mobilization tool”, they have no substance and serve no other purpose.

Sad to see Thongchai Winichakul being caught in a rumor mill, too, as quoted in Irrawaddy. Students are letting common sense down, too.

To further embarrass the red movement they just announced creation of some “people army” to fight for democracy or against aristocracy or whatever.

HRW report vs HRW News Release

Last week HRW issued its annual report on human rights around the world, Thailand was included. HRW News Release was immediately quoted on every blog that cares, notably Political Prisoners and Prachatai. The news release was even carried by Reuters.

That news release caused quite a stir, with government spokesman accusing HRW of being influenced by Thaksin, and that, in turn, was picked up by all the bloggers, too. It was on Tumblers that I finally saw the direct link to the report itself (Thailand on page 355), and that’s when my alarm bell started ringing.

The controversial news release deviates from the report on several key issues and spins it in a clear anti-government direction, cherry picking on some findings and ignoring others.

To begin with, news release is headlined “Thailand: Serious Backsliding on Human Rights”. Nowhere in the report there’s support for this headline. The summary for Thailand only says that pledges were largely unfulfilled. That doesn’t mean backsliding at all.

Then they start with a byline (or whatever it’s called in journo jargon):

“Unchecked Abuses by Security Forces, Crackdown on Internet Critics, Forced returns of Refugees”.

The summary in the report itself starts with something entirely different:

“Political instability and polarization continued in 2009 and occasionally resulted
in violence when anti-government groups, affiliated with Thaksin Shinawatra,
clashed with Thai security forces.”

HWR thought red clashes with the army deserved to be mentioned first, news release ignored them. Then follows the chapter on political violence and it begins with the same motif:

“Episodes of political violence involving supporters of former prime minister
Thaksin broke out throughout the year…”

Then the paragraph on Songkran starts with:

“Street battles erupted in Bangkok on April 13 when UDD protesters…attacked approaching soldiers with guns, petrol bombs, and other improvised weapons. UDD protesters also threatened to blow up trucks with liquefied petroleum gas near residential areas and hospitals…”

and concludes with:

“At least 123 people were injured, including four soldiers wounded by gunshots.”

The report also mentions that; “while most gunfire was into the air, some soldiers fired assault rifles directly at the protesters. “

News release avoids these nuances: “Soldiers used tear gas to clear protesters and fired on protesters with live ammunition” and it doesn’t mentioned wounded soldiers at all.

No wonder the government was incensed, not by the report itself, which they probably didn’t even see at the time, but by the news release that was played up everywhere, and now it is clear that the news release distorted the actual findings.

The news release states that “The government’s double standards in law enforcement worsened political tensions and deepened polarization.” – there’s nothing like that in the report itself. It only mentions that “there has been no independent and impartial investigation” and there’s a “growing public perception that the PAD is immune to legal accountability.” The report doesn’t state that it was a cause for worsening tensions, that interpretation is just not there. I might add that there’s no real accountability for red leaders for Songkran either and, incidentally, the report doesn’t mention double standards, too.

On the South the report starts with:

“There were fewer reports in 2009 of abuses committed by security forces in the
southern border provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkhla, as the gov-
ernment appeared to take seriously the human toll and the cycle of violence that
such abuses contribute to.”

The news release somehow turned it into:

“Abhisit’s administration has allowed the military to continue to operate with impunity”, and “the government also failed to establish effective civilian control over the military and was unable to scrutinize the enforcement of abusive special security laws by the military”.

While these arguments might be valid on their own, they are just not there!

Who wrote this stuff? There are quotes from Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, but the news release itself is unsigned.

Why did HWR allow an official news release that deviates so far from the original report? Is it because it was written by someone sucking up to clearly opinionated Brad Adams while the report was prepared by lowly staff without any political agenda?

To me, this is unacceptable.

PS. I’m not going to comment on the rest of the report or the news release which deal with mostly with LM, Rohingyas, and Hmong.

Constituency battles

So Democrats decided not to sponsor constituency size amendments but it’s not clear what is their stand on article 190 about foreign agreements yet.

Amending that article makes sense as there was a lot of discomfort at the Foreign ministry after Noppadon’s deal with Cambodia was ruled unconstitutional. On the other hand, it’s Democrats who control Foreign Ministry now and if they don’t think the article 190 makes it inconvenient, how’s that any of Banharn’s business? His party will never get the foreign ministry portfolio, what’s it to him?

Multi/singe constituency is trickier and it goes to the heart of what do they need parliamentarians for in the first place, what are their duties, who they represent and so on, then two systems need to be considered relative to each other and expected results.

Originally the country was carved into 400 constituencies, and I suspect no one remembers them all. People know 76 provinces and they address each MP as such and such from this or that province. People never relate to them as representatives of their minuscule geographical areas, so, from the national assembly point of view, those small constituencies practically don’t exist.

It was different on the local level, smaller constituencies meant the MPs knew everybody in their areas, or everybody important. One MP per constituency also meant “winner takes all”, and competition was fierce. Naturally candidates tried to be as close to the voters as possible, and while it is probably a good thing, it also means that people made their voting decisions on matters that have nothing to do with their jobs at the national assembly at all. When campaigns are localized, national agendas fade into the background. Not to mention that it’s easier to buy votes in smaller places, either by paying money or giving out rice bags or t-shirts or holding free food political rallies and so on.

2007 constitution brought in larger, multi seat constituencies. Candidates had a lot more ground to cover, they needed to appeal to broader spectrum of population and present broader issues, relevant to larger areas and larger groups. In a way it brought their electoral agendas closer to national issues, though the gap is still too big, I think. It’s also not easy to buy votes in large areas, you need more money and it’s more difficult to keep track of it all. Local poo yais and village had less persuasive power, too. You needed to show something more than just “everybody on that side of the river knows me”. Candidates had to have bigger profile, larger caliber.

Multi-seat also means that three candidates with highest number of votes are winners, and where some area was totally under one party control even if they had only 1% majority, now it has a possibility of being shared, giving better representation vis-a-vi voter proportions.

Personally I think it’s not a bad idea to have ALL candidates run on their national platform, not on local issues. Neither the government nor the parliament have any regional structures, they have committees and ministries based on industries or social issues, never on local ones. New politics proposal addresses this perfectly – if you want to be on the House Industrial Policies committee you should be elected by industrialists, not by some Ban Nok residents who have no idea what you are supposed to do there and want a new klong in their neighborhood instead, but that’s for another post.

Anyway, smaller parties have better chances under one-seat system, they don’t have resources to fight on a bigger scale, and being close to voters is their strong suit. They have build themselves on being close to their people and they have always provided for them, leaving their legislating duties to big boys in parliament.

Big boys, on their end, are busy with their big pictures, they want to leave local issues to local governments, Tamboon and Provincial Administrations, which are elected nowadays, and they should be the ones who to handle local issues, not MPs.

Apart from being a deadwood in parliament, big boys think that those small parties who win their cabinet quota don’t have qualified candidates to fill them. They appoint a nurse as a Commerce Minister and a retired teacher as a Deputy Health Minister – jobs way over their heads.

So now Democrats decided to stay with larger, multi-seat constituencies, and it must be noted that it was a decision by their executive board, not by the body of their MPs who had to fight it out on the ground and probably didn’t like large area campaigns very much. Anyway, they had a meeting and they delegated the decision to the executives, so that’s it.

Now it’s Phue Thai’s turn to make up their minds and they have exactly the same concerns as Democrats – they are being challenged by break away TRT factions that have excellent on the ground support while they have the legacy of running on attractive national policies, health care for all and so on that are not as attractive anymore as everybody offers the same national platform.

It would be interesting to see how it goes. They might support the amendment for now to get to the Democrats but regret it or even back off later.

Thai Thai Thaksin

Stephen Young showed up at FCCT event and gave Abhisit a big hug. People on New Mandala immediately remembered his “Thaksin is not real Thai” comment sometime ago.

Let’s look into Thaksin’s background and see if something comes out of it.

His rise to power was utterly unremarkable. He’s done everything an average Thai would do – police career, “western” education, marriage into a right family, multiple failed businesses, scamming partners, greasing palms – he’s done it all. Then he broke out big with satellites and mobile phones, with a gift of Rolls Royce to one of the 1991 coup generals as a start up gift.

Later his ambition and abilities turned him to politics, and he wasn’t driven by lust for power then. He genuinely believed the country need improvements, but it’s not the bribery and corruption that he wanted to change, however, it’s the utter incompetence of the ruling class. Both bureaucracy and the politics were staffed with excessive amounts of deadwood and the country needed a big clean up, and Thaksin saw it as his job.

He started off with Phalang Dharma, not because he was enamored with Chamlong’s vegetarianism and bathing habits but because that was the only party challenging the status quo and welcoming “new blood”. I just don’t see Thaksin progressing through Democrat’s ranks, for example. In a few years he had overgrown Phaland Dharma and was ready to assemble his own team and start his own project, and so Thai Rak Thai was born.

“Think New Act New” was their motto and they’ve got a lot of bright people, under-appreciated and fed up with the way things have been going on around them. Thailand’s governing culture was hopelessly outdated. If corruption was any concern, they hoped that once new operating procedures were set, corruption would have no place anymore. They thought it was the product of incompetents in high positions demanding undeserved benefits.

Regardless, it was a very exciting project, and they approached it very professionally. Those were the days of Finland Declaration, days of strategizing, brainstorming and planning, and they hit the ground running.

I remember reading McCargo on Thai political parties, he was talking about emergence of professional parties, parties that are meant to win elections, not simply represent somebody or adhere to some ideology, or have an organized structure, as was expected by the society then. Thaksin had none of it, it was “old style”. He needed the win to advance his own agenda, and in order to win he had to sell himself and his party to the public, he had to find his market, find what it wants and come up with a product that sells, and he executed it brilliantly.

Still, they couldn’t push one visionary man to become a PM in two years all on their own, they needed to make deals with devils, take on board old style politicians Thaksin was supposed to fight, but that was the only way to power at that time. Besides, he thought he could teach them a few things and reform them, and he did, in a way. They also brought votes. Everybody was happy.

Then the reality set it. First out of the window was clean politics idea and anti-corruption drive, that was simply impossible under circumstances. Then there was a family business to attend to. Then there were remains of 1997 crisis to clean up – hundreds of indebted companies in need of haircuts and debt forgiveness, then there was bureaucratic restructuring, and it all meant even more deals with devils, and everybody, I mean everybody, wanted a slice of a pie, everybody was helping themselves to whatever they could lay their hands on. No one remembered “think new act new” anymore.

And then came economic success, fame and with it adulation from poor Isanese, and that was an unexpected but a very useful windfall. They proved to be his most loyal followers, the only ones left after all his fellow visionaries have deserted him, many in disgust. Thaksin reinvented his public image as a champion of the poor, they loved him in return, and it really went into his head. He completely lost himself, intoxicated with power and success, he thought he could do no wrong, but he did, and in a very bad way.

As it turned out, incompetence wasn’t the country’s biggest problem at all, not comparing to greed and corruption, and once Thaksin put clever and capable people in charge, the corruption simply ran away and became unstoppable and intolerable, and Thaksin refused to admit it.

His own way to the top was the problem – all those connections, sweet deals, bribery, stealing, climbing up by stepping on other people’s heads – that way of progress is the problem, not “old style” or incompetence. Thaksin, however, refused to admit that he had ever done anything wrong. Where people think bribing a coup general is shameful, Thaksin doesn’t understand what their problem is.

In 2005 Sondhi started attracting crowds by talking of Thaksin’s corruption and his dirty ways of running the country. Thaksin didn’t see anything wrong with it. When accused of using a military plane to fly his family and friends to a house warming party in Chiang Mai he simply said that military belongs to the state and every taxpayer is entitled to free rides every now and then.

His critics just couldn’t find any common set of values that he could admit of breaking. They’d scream he was dead wrong, he’d say: “Not by my book”. Eventually they brought the highest common denominator this country has, the King himself. They thought they could reason with him on morals and values set by the King and force Thaksin admit his mistakes. They were wrong. Thaksin was just warming up and wasn’t going to concede anything.

That was the point when he became unThai Thai. There are lots of stubborn people here but everybody has a limit, except, apparently, Thaksin. He just doesn’t accept any authority over him, doesn’t admit the existence of any higher power and is not going to subjugate himself to anybody.

In a hundred or so years of building Thai nation and its ideology nobody ever lead a public revolt against the state, like Thaksin tried at Songkran. There are plenty of coups and power grabs but nobody dared to bring a million of peasants to purge King’s men from their shady seats of power. That’s as unThai as it comes, and in those two aspects,not accepting any poo yais and revolting against King’s own institutions, Stephen Young was totally right.

Where do we go from here?

Well, Thaksin, in his present state, has no place in a present Thai society. Even if he outlasts Prem and his people (the society changes), he’d still run into the same problem of not accepting authorities and not admitting mistakes. As Tumbler commented recently, Thaksin is 60, another ten years will take a lot of air out of him. I can safely bet we won’t see Thaksin in power unless he changes himself, maybe then he would have another shot, but it won’t be the same person, not the same Thaksin the country feels so passionately about.

My prediction – he will simply fade away, with or without his billions. Country’s everyday life and natural progress will sideline him, he has no business bothering this country, and he really has no abilities left to inflict any serious damage anyway. Hopefully home sickness will get better of him and he asks to be accepted back, politely, and begs for forgiveness, and it will be given. Then we can see him in a role of some senior economic advisor or a head of some poverty fighting institute or a foundation or something. Then he dies in peace and gets a huge state funeral.

Otherwise he’ll have to roam the increasingly shrinking world like a homeless ghost and expire in some god forsaken African shithole.

Tough decision to make, I wish him strength to make the right choice.

Boooring

The court killed all the suspense for me with scheduling Thaksin’s verdict on Feb 26 – more than a month from now.

In the meantime the public is treated to a cacophony of predictions, scenarios, strategies and other assorted bullshit – all possible ways to keep themselves “on the edge”.

Nothing will happen. It’s a huge waste of time.

Reds won’t make a dent, parliament won’t change a thing, Thaksin won’t start an invasion from Cambodia. The only way to affect the outcome is to put pressure on the individual judges but that is not going to be allowed either.

We are in for a one huge anti-climax.

Nothing big is going to happen after the verdict either. Reds will be reds, Thaksin will be Thaksin, Prem will be Prem, and Democrats will be Democrats.

Even if Thaksin gets all his money back there’s not much he can do with it in Thailand in the short to medium term. He needs to wait until people forget him before staging a comeback, with or without the money. With the money he’d be accused of buying his way in, with all the predictable opposition. I think he’d have a better chance counting on compassion.

Without the money he could be in a deep deep shit financially and Thai politics would be the last thing on his mind, if the stories of his huge borrowings are true.

Either way, it doesn’t affect the way the country would live its live in the meantime.

Banharn and his constitution amendments push during no confidence debate might break up the coalition and force the elections sooner than Democrats hope, that would be the end of him as people in general are just not ready for a new round of instability and electioneering when things have just started looking up after years of gloom and crisis. He’d would lose more seats than he hopes to gain by changing elections rules.

I hope he’s doing this only to squeeze some money from Thaksin and so his enthusiasm will be short lived.

The only cool head these days is on Abhisit’s shoulders, he just keeps going, ignoring all the brouhaha around him. Unusually quiet Sondhi could also be a sign that PAD/NPP/KMM realize it’s not the right time to rock the boat yet. They’ve just opened their new HQs and the event was reported as very low key.

To sum it up, only untimely elections and Thaksin’s premature push back in following a court victory would have a real adverse effect, everything else could be safely ignored.

Happy Hmong

Thailand’s “voluntary” deportation of 4,700 Hmong at the end of last year drew a lot of flak internationally and seriously affected Thailand’s (and possibly Abhisit’s) image. Human rights groups were outraged. Almost immediately there were reports of torture and imprisonment.

It was all bollocks.

As Nation’s Supalak reports from Vientiane all refugees have been treated well and decided to stay in Laos instead of hoping that some Western country takes them in. By now only less than two hundred remain in clearing center, the rest have been given some money, land, a year supply of rice.

Their leader, Blia Shoua Her, has changed his mind and decided to join his family. He was the one who was reportedly jailed and about to be tortured.

Lao government even let one US Congressman to come and see things for himself: “There is no indication of discrimination or harassment or mistreatment of the people in Pha Lak village.”

While it’s a good news overall there are potential implications for the future.

First, Thai military and Thai government appear to be more trustworthy then a brigade of human rightists.

Second, solutions to refugee problems lie with the governments, not with activists.

Third, international framework for dealing with refugees seems to be failing miserably, it was put there for a good reason and without it there’s a potential for abuse.

Human rights groups, in Asean governments eyes (forget myself), have lost credibility. They appear to be part of the problem rather than a solution. Last year Thailand tried to establish channels of communication within Asean between governments and human right representatives. What does Lao government think of this? After being accused of political persecution and even torture? Will Vietnam, the next Asean chair, even bother?

What are these people doing? They are severely undermining their own cause, nothing else.

Another aspect – Thailand’s attitude towards western governments. I don’t think they are going to pay any attention to “righteous condemnation” anymore. First they disagreed on Rohingya, rightly or wrongly, and now Hmong, that’s two strikes. No one will bother with the the next “wolf” cry. It’s just noise, however annoying.

Credibility goes a long way in Asia, and the West is losing it.

The future looks better

Before the New Year the public was bombarded with dire predictions of a huge political upheaval and people were told to brace for the worst.

Nothing happened.

“No confidence” debate has been postponed, not only PTP has got nothing real to show, but they also must propose an alternative Prime Minister if they want to challenge the government. Should have thought about it before.

I cynically think they are just waiting for the court verdict on Thaksin’s assets as they tie all these historic democratic developments to his court case. One million march on Bangkok to finally overthrow the “ammart” somehow must be held just in time to save Thaksin’s money.

One must be either dumb or red to believe in this little coincidence.

At least when yellows were having all their “last battles” they were actually out on the streets. Reds seem to be just hiding their impotence.

Here’s an interesting quote on red prospects:

On the talk of a possible civil war, Wattanachai discounted the fear as a fantasy. He added that the red-shirt movement had the opportunity to overthrow the Abhisit Vejjajiva government last April but had failed to do so and was not likely to succeed again. The general also ruled out fear of heavy loss of life in the upcoming red-shirt protests.

Wattanachai is Surayud’s friend so his view must be indicative of what is thought in Surayud’s circles (he is a member of Privy Council, after all).

Unless reds are secretly cooking up a completely new strategy I tend to agree – they can’t possibly overthrow the state (the govt, the courts, bureaucracy, Privy Council etc) just by street protests. They had their chance last year, didn’t work.

The Khao Yai rally that finished even before it got into the news has also been a disappointment. Surely they put an unwelcome spotlight on Surayud and Privy Council by extension but that shot fell very short from the target, Surayud’s resignation, and if he really gives up the land they will have nothing else to go on. That was their only gripe that made sense to the general population.

Politically, we have seen two by-elections, in Mahasarakham and Prachinburi, that have shown PTP that they can’t easily roll over Newin even on their home turf, and stand no chance on neutral ground. Of course they sound more upbeat oficially, but if they have to fight tooth and nail in Isan, what are their chances of gaining some twenty-thirty seats to form the government?

I’m not sure they even worry about long-term prospects, what happens to them if Thaksin loses his money. What will be their use to him then? They dare not think of such unspeakable things.

Then there’s this ominous quote from UAE paper :

UAE and Thai officials are expected to sign an extradition treaty on Wednesday, a deal that Thailand hopes will lead to the UAE handing over the former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who is reported to be living in Dubai.

Whatever the actual outcome, Thaksin’s looks like he is losing Dubai as a political base. Cambodia didn’t work out very well for him either. Africa, Montenegro or Nicaragua are just too far to run the revolution from.

And so the year rolls on, with main troublemakers looking rather powerless and non-threatening.

Another quote about Wattanachai I can’t make heads of tails of:

“He also ruled out the idea of another coup, saying the idea was “20 years behind its time.”

Could it mean that Surayud was very skeptical of the coup instead of being the mastermind? Could it mean that he agreed to take on PMship to save his comrades faces when they had no idea what to do after taking over?

I don’t rule that out, sounds more plausible than a massive conspiracy involving all of the Privy Council, the humongous “elites”, and even the monarchy itself.

Hun Sen’s icompetency

Spotted this on 2Bangkok, originally from Khmerization. I think it’s worth reposting, even if only for the future reference.

Thaksin appalled by Hun Sen’s economic knowledge (3)

Thailand’s former premier Thaksin Shinawatra who has recently been appointed as economic advisor to Cambodia’s prime minister Hun Sen is reportedly appalled the latter’s poor economic knowledge and stubbornness. When Thaksin asked Hun Sen what measures he has taken to counter the ongoing world economic and financial crisis, Hun Sen was unable to speak clearly. Hun Sen tried to say there was nothing he could do and he had to only wait for the United States and Europe to “resolve their problems.” When Thaksin asked him about the size of the economic stimulus package the Cambodian government has adopted, Hun Sen just scratched his head. And when Thaksin asked him about the social safety net the Cambodian government has put in place to protect the population, Hun Sen just asked back, “What is this?”

Is he really that ignorant?

The source is not cited, however.

Not long ago Sam Rainsy’s spokesman complained about quality of Thaksin’s advice, apparently even that goes over Saddam Hun Sen’s head.