In which I offer a short news flash...

The military government here in Thailand is about to rule this afternoon on whether the top political parties, including the one dethroned in last year's coup, will be permitted to run in the elections promised for December 2007. Anticipating a disbarment (which rather defeats the label democracy, doesn't it?) and ensuing civil unrest from those party's supporters, the whole country is rather on edge today.

The police forces are boasting loudly about how "effectively" they'll clamp down on any disorder, and the military has mobilized 13,000 soldiers and MPs to prevent the mass migration of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin's rural supporters into the cities for the next few days. Many schools have closed in case of street violence, we volunteers been warned away from politically sensitive areas of Bangkok (not a difficulty for me, being 800 km away in Chiang Mai), and we've been given explicit instructions to stay the hell away from any protests.

I don't really know what to make of it. There are signs that the potential for violence has been blown out of proportion by a jittery military, but only time will tell. I'll follow with more news as it happens.

In which I offer another post of interest to few...

There's a surprisingly gripping blogalogue you'll find here, in which Catholic pundit Andrew Sullivan and committed atheist Sam Harris have been arguing civilly and passionately for months about the existence of g(G?)od. Fascinating if it's your thing.

You may have presumed that this post is an excuse for me to put off the last of my Laosblogging for the day, and you'd be right. But now I've wrapped up my non-violence class and will be getting back to such joyful frivolities as soon as I've repaid my massive accumulated sleep debt. See you in a day or three.

In which I'm beginning to get annoyed...

As Corinne noted in her comment on the last post, other bits of gross nationalism are popping up all over Thailand at the moment. An exceedingly stupid 57-year-old Swiss man has been sentenced to ten years in prison for insulting the king. Outraged over restricted alcohol sales on the King's birthday last December, the drunken fool spray-painted over four posters of the monarch in full view of security cameras, and was promptly arrested. Thailand's draconian lese-majeste laws, enshrined in the bleeping Constitution, forbid any criticism, however benign, of the King. The King himself doesn't seem to want such insulation, but they're part and parcel of Thai nationalism - which, by the way, is really starting to get on my nerves.

Bottom line: if you're not Thai, you'll just never get it - or so we're told. Hence, foreigners are socially proscribed from criticizing the government for handing down a 10-year sentence for petty vandalism, or when all of Youtube is blocked because someone showed a video of feet touching a picture of the King. I grasp that these acts are monumentally disrespectful and show a disgraceful contempt for the standards of a society that has kindly welcomed we foreigners. But there's something far more vile about a decade's incarceration for a crime that robbed and injured no one. The government should have deported that asinine fool and been done with it.

As usual, I reserved my real frustration for the foreigners who defend the government's actions on the grounds of cultural sensitivity and the like. I've talked to more than a few of these folks, and they're driving me batty. There's cultural tolerance, which I'm all for, but defending such a foul move goes far beyond that. These people have let cultural relativity erode their core personal principles, and that's pretty reprehensible.

Myself, I'm disgusted. I really enjoy life in Thailand - it's not a difficult place to carve out a pleasant existence. But it's not a free country here, in some very important ways. I'll surely be glad to see the last of ugly Thai nationalism when my term here is up.

In which dark clouds continue to gather...

Today I encountered a day-old Bangkok Post which informed me that the leader of last year's military coup, General Sonthi, is considering becoming Deputy Prime Minister in order to help keep the government on track. This, despite his insistence that the government would be run by civilians. Last week he fired all military officials who were considered to be loyal to the ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and replaced them with Sonthi devotees. Last month the main pro-Thaksin TV station was shut down, ostensibly for non-payment of licence fees, and replaced with a more coup-friendly broadcaster. And I've read, increasingly, that "unnamed figures" high within the military bureaucracy are pressing the "civilian" government to use its expanding powers to crack down on the feeble pro-democracy protests that spring up from time to time in Bangkok.

Nearly seven months ago, when the coup happened, we were told that by now Thailand would be putting the finishing touches on its renovated democracy and preparing for shiny new elections. But there's not a whole lot in the above paragraph that sounds like the actions of a military government in the process of giving up its power - despite all promises to the contrary. I'm going to park myself in front of a stack of newspapers and see if I can make sense of all this. In the meantime, I promise that when I leave in August and the military government is still firmly clenched to the reins, I'm going to have a romping great round of I Told You So. I will start, with no small amount of dripping contempt, with the half-dozen Western aid workers who've schmuckishly told me that they actually cheered the coup. Idiots.

In which I realize, once again, the importance of writing posts quickly...

I was supposed to write last month about North Korea's nuclear disarmament deal, namely the fact that the DPRK is absolutely guaranteed to renege on it at some point. Then I got distracted by Laos and the like. And then, today, I read this. Surprise, surprise.

The point of this is not to gloat - though I believe I've made the same point in the past. The moral of this tiny fable is, rather, that if I have a thought I should blog it now and await the results, rather than trying to convince people of my prescience after the fact.

And by the way, North Korea will never relinquish its nukes willingly. The North's leadership is in fact composed entirely of deranged old men, but even if they weren't they still wouldn't disarm. The rational reasons for having nuclear weapons are entirely too compelling, no matter how much the rest of the world offers them to disarm. Period. The US and everybody else needs to understand that these summits and the like have precisely zero chance of ever leading to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. Thanks again, Dubya.

In which I dabble in Thai politics...

Largely because my trip to Burma consisted of: 1. Step across the border. 2. Buy Chinese DVDs. 3. Step back into Thailand. Total time in Burma < 30 minutes. Not exactly the stuff of travel legend, so instead I'll launch into a rambling dissertation on Thailand's political travails.

You're all aware that Thailand's somewhat dodgy civilian government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was overthrown in an abrupt but bloodless coup last September, two disorienting days after I arrived here. The coup was greeted by a startling (to me) level of public acclaim from people who were remarkably eager to ditch their hard-won democratic gains. The military government swiftly appointed an ex-general as interim prime minister, and promised a overwhelming flood of evidence into Thaksin's alleged corruption - the presumed preponderance of which was the stated justification for the coup.

Fast-forward to year's end, 2006. The government has been glacially slow to lift martial law, partly reneging on its own promises to do so within 3 months after the coup. Though there have been no harsh crackdowns, normal political assembly and protest remains banned. The military government has provided not one whit of evidence of Thaksin's corruption - supposedly so endemic and irrefutable that it compelled a reluctant military to burn Thailand's democracy in order to save it. And then, as you've surely heard, a series of ten small bombs in garbage cans detonated in Bangkok during New Year's Eve celebrations, killing three. A couple more were set off a few days ago at Bangkok media outlets, apparently without injury.

Awash with the luxury of geographical and cultural distance from the bombings (Chiang Mai is 800km north of Bangkok), I rapidly assumed that southern Thailand's long-simmering Muslim insurgency had finally made the expected migration to the capital. All public speculation has dismissed this option, however, and everyone quickly focused on the idea that members of the police or military were responsible - for reasons unknown to me, but the locals know their politics better than I do, so I'll give them the nod. The coup leadership instantly began insinuating (though not explicitly, nor with any evidence) that some of ousted PM Thaksin's uniformed supporters planted the bombs in order to undermine the military's promise of law and order. Other rumours rapidly began to fly of an imminent coup within the coup - the junta's secondary commanders potentially ousting the higher-ups, not to restore Thaksin but to refocus the coup on its ostensible democratic ideals.

All the while, a ludicrous clampdown on free speech continues. The military government apparently considers Thaksin Shinawatra so infectiously corrupt that they won't allow his words on the Thai airwaves, lest his evil taint the populace. CNN International interviewed him last week, in a session I fortunately caught on satellite TV. No saint he, but he merely insisted that no evidence of his corruption has been produced (true), that the coup has not followed through on its promise to restore political liberties (true), and that the government is unfairly censoring him (ditto). The remarkably innocuous interview was banned on Thai cable TV, and all Thaksin segments were mysteriously replaced by muzak-accompanied still photos of Will Smith, Tom Cruise, and Britney Spears (Huh?!). Much of the press, including the noxious English-language Bangkok Post, has shown astonishing fealty to this denial of free speech. The Post, in particular, seems to contentedly defend every move by the coup leaders and daily denounces Thaksin as evil incarnate. I have no idea if the Thai-language media are so spineless.

The next month will be critical. The dictatorship has offered to allow Thaksin back into the country (he's in exile in London at the moment) provided he remains out of politics. Content not to dispute the obvious illegality of the junta's barring him from office absent any criminal charges, Thaksin seems instead to be biding his time to make sure they're not likely to throw him in jail the moment he steps off his jet in Bangkok. He'll be out the country for a while yet, but rumours of his return could set off a wave of Thaksin nostalgia if the coup leadership doesn't soon liberalize things around here. The attendant confrontations could turn ugly - I stand by my September prediction that men with guns don't willingly give up power.

More critical, the army has promised that in one month's time it will release the results of its inquests into corruption under the old government. The suprising legitimacy of the coup will rest heavily on the results - no corruption, no reason for the coup to be tolerated (except for their guns, naturally). I have no doubt that if it comes to that, they'll fabricate evidence, but I'm pretty sure many Thais are expecting the same sleight-of-hand and will be poring closely over the evidence. I have my doubts they'll come up with anything substantive.

So what then? I expect public discontent with the military to grow, and the military (ever convinced of their own selflessness) to begin feeling slightly pressured and isolated. Without more evidence, I can't put much stock in rumours of a coup within the coup, or of a counter-coup by Thaksin supporters. So I re-ask the same question I raised in September: will there be violence? Well, for starters, there already has - a little sooner than I had predicted, but I'm still claiming points for that one.

Will there be more? Seems likely. If the coup was behind the bombings, then their motive to carry out more attacks may increase - they'll want to appear the bulwark against chaos. If Thaksin's supporters were behind it, then it seems certain that they'll grow more agitated as the military's case against their golden boy falls through. There also remains the possibility of future crackdowns against the protests that are sure to spring up eventually.

So am I safe here in Chiang Mai? Certainly looks that way. Chiang Mai's in a very sleepy part of a very sleepy country (recent turmoil notwithstanding). It's quiet and peaceful up here, without a hint of political unrest. Thais are difficult to rattle - losing your cool means losing face here, so nobody does it... ever. They continue about their daily business, and so do I. There's no reason to expect a rapid disintegration in Bangkok, let alone here in the far North. Don't worry, I've got no martyr complex. If things start to go downhill, I'll leave (pending DFAIT's sage advice). For now, that isn't happening... but I'll keep reading the tea leaves.