Pak­istani dic­ta­tor Per­vez Mushar­raf revealed, in an inter­view with the CBC (Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Corp.) exact­ly how the lead­er­ship of the Grand Alliance Against Ter­ror­ism sees Canada’s role. With some insult­ing­ly snide put-downs, he dis­missed any con­cern in Cana­da about casu­al­ties in Afghanistan as cry-baby weak­ness. Read more »

Soraj Honglaradom, at the Phi­los­o­phy depart­ment of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chu­la­longko­rn Uni­ver­si­ty, Bangkok, has gra­cious­ly allowed me to quote his e‑mail con­cern­ing the coup in Thailand:

The coup d’e­tat was per­pe­trat­ed by a group of offi­cers who are dis­at­is­fied with the Prime Min­is­ter Thaksin Shi­nawa­tra, who has gen­er­at­ed such an intense amount of con­tro­ver­sies in Thai­land as has nev­er been expe­ri­enced before. The tran­si­tion process is going on smooth­ly and there is no vio­lence. At the time of writ­ing this mail, every­thing appears calm. The “Reform Group for Democ­ra­cy under Monar­chy”, as the group calls itself, has declared today (Sept.20) to be a hol­i­day and so I am writ­ing this from home. Many peo­ple that I know actu­al­ly wel­come the event, as they are fed up with the regime of the Prime Min­is­ter. From my past expe­ri­ences with pre­vi­ous Thai coups, what will hap­pen next is prob­a­bly that the Reform Group will name an inter­im Prime Min­is­ter. A new char­ter will be draft­ed (the much vaunt­ed Con­sti­tu­tion of 1997 last­ed only nine years), and final­ly a gen­er­al elec­tion will be called. No one knows exact­ly when this will hap­pen, but my guess is that we will expect a gen­er­al elec­tion with­in a year. This is only my guess: things have a way of unrav­el­ling them­selves in unex­pect­ed ways.

Mr. Saro­j’s com­ment rings true to me. It seems to fit the oth­er reports I’ve got­ten. Read more »

A delight­ful Dan­ish say­ing, told me by my friend Joan Jacob­sen: “Du kan vænne dig til alt, und­ta­gen sult…når først du har væn­net dig til det, dør du af det.” [You can get used to any­thing except hunger …Once you’re used to it, it kills you.]

Jason Hunter, who vis­it­ed for almost a week, left this morn­ing. He head­ed back up north, where he will under­take a vision quest. He will fast for four days in prepa­ra­tion. It will be inter­est­ing to see how it affects him. He was good com­pa­ny while he was here. For­tu­nate­ly, it was pos­si­ble for him to take the train part of the way. Even the ten-hour jour­ney on Ontario North­land Railway’s North­lander will take him only half of the way home, but it will be much more pleas­ant than tak­ing bus­es or hitch­ing rides. The final half, of course, must be done by airplane.

The media, at least here in Cana­da, have been tak­en com­plete­ly by sur­prise by recent events in Thai­land. A fac­tion of the Thai mil­i­tary says it has over­thrown Prime Min­is­ter Thaksin Shi­nawa­tra. Pre­sum­ably, a long sequence of impor­tant events led up to this, but none of them attract­ed the atten­tion of jour­nal­ists in North Amer­i­ca. It might be wise for peo­ple here to pay a bit more atten­tion. At place of con­cen­trat­ing on dubi­ous and implau­si­ble attempts to bring democ­ra­cy to places like Afghanistan, we should be more con­cerned about its pre­car­i­ous posi­tion in rel­a­tive­ly impor­tant places like Thai­land. For Thai­land is an impor­tant coun­try, with tremen­dous eco­nom­ic poten­tial. It is unique in the region in that it nev­er suf­fered the expe­ri­ence of colo­nial­ism, though it has had to dance nim­bly between the pres­sures brought to bear on it by Britain and France (which had colonies on either side of it), by Japan, Amer­i­ca, and China.

Under Thaksin, Thai­land seems to have had a thin veneer of demo­c­ra­t­ic process, under which steamed a caul­dron of cor­rup­tion, manoeu­ver­ing by the mil­i­tary, and fac­tion­al dis­putes. It is not clear to me exact­ly who wants this sud­den mil­i­tary coup, and who oppos­es it. I sim­ply don’t know enough to have an opin­ion about Thaksin and his poli­cies. To tell the truth, I’m embar­rassed that I know next to noth­ing about this impor­tant country’s pol­i­tics. Thai­land is the kind of coun­try that should be able to find its inner strengths, and estab­lish a work­ing democ­ra­cy. There is no scar­ring lega­cy of colo­nial­ism, it is full of enter­pris­ing and well-edu­cat­ed peo­ple, it has a vig­or­ous cul­tur­al life, it has not been torn up by war. But it doesn’t seem to be able to make things work. I’m hop­ing that some Thai cor­re­spon­dents will give me some insights into this per­plex­ing situation.