Pen/Insular_Notes

A good BBC background piece on the situation in Thailand that gets to the heart of the issue, at least within the limits of ‘BBC style’ anyway:

Go to a red-shirt rally and you will hear the same mantra; “We are grass-roots people, fighting for democracy, against the ruling class”.

Go to a yellow-shirt rally and you will almost inevitably hear a different mantra; “We are educated people, fighting against corrupt politicians who abuse democracy”.

Whether or not there are actually ‘no winners’ as this piece suggests remains an open question as far as I’m concerned. Although I’m seeing it from afar this conflict seems to be a having a slow but profound radicalising effect on large swathes of poorer Thais. Whether that radicalisation can simply be absorbed back into the traditional clientilist, royalist and nationalist politics of Thailand (represented by Thaksin as much as by Abbhisit) remains to be seen.

A good realist view of North Korea’s recent satellite/missile launch from Selig Harrison, although it is a little out of date after today’s announcement from the DPRK that it will leave the six-party talks for good. Perhaps most disturbing about all this is his belief that Japan is edging toward being an open nuclear power rather just than a de facto nuclear state. If US hegemony continues to decline what are the chances that South Korea will also re-activate its nuclear weapons program? By 2020 it is not hard to imagine a situation where all four of the Northeast Asian states have nuclear weapons and North Korea will be far behind the other three.

Thai protesters show us the way to deal with international summits. Apparently the prime minister Abhisit has declared an “extreme state of emergency” (I’m sure Zizek could have a field day with that one).

Also, here’s Giles Ungpakorn speaking recently in the UK (where he is in exile) on Lese Majeste and democracy in Thailand: