I am equally sure that all of the commentators above will find the collection interesting and will have many questions and criticisms of the various papers and their arguments.

“Let me also quickly say what the collection doesn’t do. It doesn’t provide a detailed critique of the Thaksin period of government …”

This may be a huge missed opportunity… How can an even-handed account of the “royalist coup” be carried out without consideration of political events of the 10 years since the passage of the 1997 Constitution?

And are we really back in square one assumed here? Successful court cases (including the recent rulings on PTT) initiated by consumer advocates such as KhunRosana Tositrakul against the Thai state are clearly some aspect of the 1997 Constitution that bore positive fruits.

Srithanonchai also has an interesting point about the “poor and dispossessed”… Things are often not as simple as many are trying to make it.

I never thought of that. Good point. I guess these are all included in some moral balance sheet in the sky, perhaps. But Thailand cut a deal with the US and look where they are now. Look where Burma is, with its too proud to cut a deal: Burmese Way to Socialism. Non-aligned from even the non-aligned movement. Acting strategically has always been part of ensuring the long-term survival of states, and the Thais certainly have that down.

That’s a nicely pragmatic way of looking at things.

Me, I might factor in all the Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodians who died or were maimed by US bombing missions originating from Thailand.

But I’m just an old bleeding-heart liberal, I guess.

Neither do I think that the lack of evidence of public disoredr means much. I am sure that if you walked the streets of Kuala Lumpur today, you would see little signs of strife. But only because a repressive security operation is disallowing it.

Yes, getting up the next step on the economic ladder seems to be a big challenge – but I don’t see how going backwards is helping.

Any of us may be right or wrong, but the country will only benefit by being able to discuss it all. Do you think it is a good idea for the military to own almost of the television networks? To me it seems perverse and backwards.

They’ll still have to do the hard math.:

a. Cold war body count less than almost anywhere else, especially neighbors like Cambodia, bless my soul.

b. A country that despite being in the middle of political “turmoil,” you’d never recognise it when walking down the street. No violent street protests or conflicts, no deaths except some taxi driver who hung himself in protest (does that really count?)

Compare to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma,…the hard thing will be getting to the next step on the economic ladder, like where South Korea is now, but once Thailand gets there, they’ll be glad they have a King, an institution that seems to fill a gap in the human psyche, look at Burma (lost their king, now they have nasty generals) or South Korea (lost their king, seem to worship their ethnicity or race as a substitute), maybe they should think about loosening up the rules one day and having queens too.

The problem with western academia is that it’s like a broken democracy record, despite the fact that everytime they try to impose it (e.g. Iraq, Vietnam, Russia, that guy before Pol Pot, Lon Nol?) it doesn’t seem to work, and the countries that have found their way to growth led by exports to the west (South Korea, China) have hardly been democratic initially.

The cost of everyone arguing with each other all the time, probably slower growth, albeit greater equity, like in this week’s PTT case.

I was hard to interpret how Hewison’s presentation was received as they did not go to direct questions afterwards. I don’t recall any questions directed to the most controversial points, either in agreement or not. He did apologize in advance for extreme jet lag and, in my view, several of his unwritten responses seemed to refect this set back.

By the way, The FCCT event launched two books; the journal and Phasuk’s compilation Thai Capital. I have found the second far more readable and interesting. The journal has some fairly provacative titles, but I had a lot of trouble penetrating the articles themselves or finding a unique or compelling storyline. Thai Capital will, I believe, become another of Phasuk and Baker’s must reads.

If I had to identify a single theme running through the event, it might be a warning that the gloves are coming off. I think academia may be starting to feel embarrassed that Thai studies had become a “faith-based” practice.

How short-sighted some can be! If “all that crap” that you’re referring to is actually the question of what was and is the correct attitude and course of action towards issue of democracy, elected government, the monarchy, etc. , then it’s not crap. In fact, I’d say, anyone’s not patient enough to think through such ‘crap’ can only jump to ‘action’ ‘blindly’. I’d argue that over the past years (last year especially) they DID jump and caused – and HAVE CONTINUED to cause – many harms to the course of Thai democracy.

How would you know that what Hewison , et al. is doing is correct? Actually, I DO have ceertain grave reservations with Hewison’s speech as reported above.

Why, for instance in the above speech, would Hewison refer to “Thaksin period of government, its authoritarianism, its failed policies in the south, its cronyism and its human rights violations” but only to the monarchy simply : “[t]he problem is that this also means that the monarchy – always said to be “above politics” except in times of crisis – is now situated at the heart of ongoing political struggles. ” Why wouldn’t he also mention “its cronyism and its human rights violations” in the latter case too? Because there was not any?

Those who don’t think the issue of “song mai ao” is seriuos will continue to speak and frame their discourse THIS WAY, and in effect help create the idelogical world in which only politicians can be mentioned FREELY, about “human right violations, etc.”