Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia (1 viewing) (1) Guest
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TOPIC: Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia
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Jacques (Moderator)
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Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 7 Months, 3 Weeks ago
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19 MAY 2008
To see the last letter, go down at the bottom of this page
On China and Myanmar
These last weeks, these two countries have been severely hit by natural disasters. If I am not a supporter of the Chinese dictatorship, I have to honestly recognize that, this time, the Chinese authorities have played transparency and accepted international aid.
In the contrary, in Myanmar, the paranoiac military junta continue to refuse international aid, as around two million of people are possible victims of famine or disease. They prefer their people to die than accept foreign aid. So, a French ship, with 10,000 tons of urgent aid is waiting from three days the authorization to enter in a Myanmar’s harbor
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Jacques (Moderator)
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Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 7 Months, 3 Weeks ago
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22 MAY 2008
ASIA OBSERVER AND ME
I think I have to make clear some points
1) I don't belong to Asia Oberver. I am an ordinary member, just very active
2) Sandvand, the founder and owner of A.O. proposed me to help him, accepting to be moderator on some topics and I accepted
3) After that an violent insurgency movement in the Philippines used A.O. for its propaganda, I was shocked and attracted Sandvand attraction on that. He answered me that A.O. was a free forum and I accepted it. It is why I OKed that for instance anti and pro Myanmar military junta members could exchange their differences on A.O. and finely, I founded it interesting
4) As you can guess, I am not a supporter of the Mynmar military junta, but I respect them and in some circonstances I used private messages for not agressing its supporters publicly. But realy, when I see that a French ship is waiting since a week to deliver 10,000 tonnes of help which could food 100,000 people during 15 days, I am very upset
5) But what I want to said tonight is that what I write on A.O. is just my personnal point of views, engaging nobody else and in the respect of anybody who is not sharing my opinions
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Jacques (Moderator)
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Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 7 Months, 3 Weeks ago
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To see my last paper, click on End on the page line
23 MAY 2008
Two days ago, it was the tenth anniversary of the fall on Indonesia dictator General Suharto, whose regime was nicknamed KKN for Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism.
Since this May 21, 1998, what have been the great changes in Indonesia ? This country had four presidents : Habibie, Guz Dur, Megawatri and the current one Yudoyono. Habibie was an honest man, but because he agreed a referendum in East Timor on independence, he was ousted from the country political life. Guz Dur (Abdurraman Wahid) was bizarre, Sukarnoputri did nothing against corruption. Only the current president tried to fight corruption but very timidly.
How to fight corruption in a country where the juges are the most corrupted in the world ?
Here is an article where the Jakarta Post warns on another May tragedy possible http://www.asianewsnet.net/columnist.php?aid=16964
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Jacques (Moderator)
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Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 4 Months, 4 Weeks ago
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13 AUGUST 2008
What act of cruelty ! On August 8, during the Olympic Games opening ceremony, a wondeful small girl (right)sings a nice song, but in fact she is miming. The voice is from another small girl with a golden voice(left). But it was decided that she was not cute enough to sing directly
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Jacques (Moderator)
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Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 4 Months, 3 Weeks ago
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19 August 2008
Tribute to General Musharraf
So, Finely, General Pervez Musharraf has resigned as Pakistan’s president. While news agencies show people celebrating this event, I should like to remind some points
I was moved that he quited in dignity saying :
“I did nothing wrong and the charges against me cannot be proven but I am resigning in the larger interest of the nation. I want to save Pakistan from destabilization…“For me it is always Pakistan first”, but it not the main reason
I am not in favor of military coups, but when he throwned out PM Sharif, I was happy. Pakistan was in a period where Sharif and Benazir Bhutto had been twice dismissed for corruption. He was a moderate Muslim in a country with so many extremists
For him, the big problem was how to deal the Afghan problem after September 11. He had no choice. If he had continued to support the Taliban, the USA would has shift their regional ally to India. In this case, there are clear indications that elements within the Pakistani Intelligence Services (the ISI) support the resurgent Taliban. We have not to forget that the Taliban have been raised and trained by General Babar, under Benazir Buttho rule, and that Sharif tried to get the support of Islamist at the end of his tenure
Musharraf also succeded in slowing down tensions with India on Kashmir without giving up the sacred cause for Pakistanis
He is accused of two bad things : to have removed the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and 60 others judges and to order the storming of the Red Mosque
I agree on the first point. For the Red Mosque, in what country a government can accept that people, with weapons challenge its authority?
Sure Musharraf has failed, but now we are coming back nine years ago. Corrupted people leading the country and, for the ones who think that Musharraf was a puppet of USA, where Pakistan will look for aid if it wants to survive?
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Jacques (Moderator)
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Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 4 Months ago
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6 September 2008
A corrupted president for Pakistan
So, an assembly of national and provincial legislators has chosen Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose murder put him on the front line, as Pakistan's new president.
This man, labelled "Mr 10%", spent several years in jail on charges of corruption
In 1990, two years after his wife became Prime Minisister, he was arrested on charges of blackmail, based on allegations that he attached a bomb to a Pakistani businessman, Murtaza Bukhari, and forced him to withdraw money from his bank account. However, the charges were dropped when he was released from prison in 1993 when his wife's Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) took power and forced the charges out
In 1996, he was again arrested under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance. He found himself charged with the murder of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, his wife's brother.
Among the mainly cases against him (In Great Britain, Switzerland..), the most lucrative deal involved the effort by Dassault Aviation, a French military contractor. French authorities indicated in 1998 that Zardari offered exclusive rights to Dassault to replace the air force's fighter jets in exchange for a five percent commission to be paid to a corporation in Switzerland controlled by him.
My today purpose is not to enumerate all the corruption cases against Zardari, but to express my deep concern for Pakistan. During the last twenty years, the Pakistan’s presidents were the ones who dismissed the corrupted PM, Bhutto or Sharif. Who could now dismiss the president ? In any case, not the weak PM Yusuf Raza Gilani. So Zardari is in position to improve his position with no threat from “Mister 10 %” to “Mister 20 %”… Poor Pakistan!!! and good luck to the USA with their new ally
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Jacques (Moderator)
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Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 3 Months, 4 Weeks ago
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12 September 2008
To see my last paper, click on End on the page line
Lucian Pye died on September 5. He has been, after Jacques Guillermaz, one of my masters when I was a young sinologist
“As a Sinologist, Pye advised the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council and was considered a peer of the great China experts of his generation. Pye was a leader of the National Committee on United States-China Relations when it laid the groundwork for the U.S. table tennis team to visit China in 1971, and he later served as acting chairman.
He advised Democratic presidential candidates, including John F. Kennedy, urging a muscular foreign policy.
But Pye was first and foremost an intellectual who wrote or edited 25 books and led his profession as president of the American Political Science Association in 1988-89. He was among the pioneers in the 1950s and '60s in developing theories about how poor nations develop politically. In contrast to political scientists who seek universal, overarching explanations, he delved into the vagaries of cultures, countries and peoples in search of more individualized interpretations”
See the full obituary published in the International Herald Tribunehttp://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/12/america/obits.php
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Jacques (Moderator)
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Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 3 Months, 3 Weeks ago
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18 September 2008
Who is Thailand’s new helmsman ? Thaksin or Somchai ?
Today, Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej officially endorsed the premiership of Somchai Wongsawat. Somchai is the fourth prime minister in two years, and, given the country's continuing instability, some analysts expect his tenure to be short.
The ruling People's Power Party and its governing coalition hold 306 of the lower house's 480 seats and Somchai won 298 votes, while opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva took 163 votes.
The new prime minister, 61, has long experience as a judge and senior bureaucrat, but he has a big handicap : his marriage to Thaksin's younger sister, Yaowapa Wongsawasdi, which is likely to ensure that protests by anti-government activists who have occupied the prime minister's compound for more than three weeks will continue.
The anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) – a pressure group of royalists, businessmen and union activists – had opposed Samak's leadership, accusing him of being a Thaksin puppet. So to see his brother-in-law succeeding Samak is like a provocation. "He might have a gentlemanly nature, a soft-spoken style, and he might have a better reputation than anyone else," said a spokesman for the protesters, Somsak Kosaisuk, referring to other members of the governing party. "But blood is thicker than water."
Worse, Somchai's wife is politically close to her brother; she was one of 111 Thaksin-linked politicians banned from politics for five years in 2007 on grounds of electoral fraud by Thaksin's party, which was shut down.
But what is now the power of Thaksin from his London exile ? "I think that his impact and influence within the PPP are still considerable," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a leading political analyst with Chulalongkorn University, "but nowhere near what they used to be." Others say that passing time and shifting alliances may weaken Thaksin's political influence. His funds are shrinking, with $2 billion in assets frozen by the courts, and the corruption cases he faces could put him in jail if he returns. In anyway, a lot of the PPP members of parliament have made their choice after telephone call with Thaksin.
Despite his close connections to Thaksin, Somchai is deemed a compromiser who is best suited among the PPP candidates to smooth over Thailand's political crisis. So… wait and see
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Jacques (Moderator)
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Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 2 Months, 3 Weeks ago
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15 October 2008
To whom belongs the disputed temple Preah Vihear between Thailand and Cambodia ?
Today, Thai and Cambodian soldiers exchanged fires and two Cambodian soldiers have been killed while ten thai soldiers have been captured by the Cambodian forces.
It is clear that this temple belongs to Cambodia. It has been constructed during the reigns of the Khmer kings Suryavarm I and II and is dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva.
In the 1904 Franco-Siamese boundary treaty, it was put on the Cambodian side, but occupied by the Siamese after the 1954 French defeat. But, on June 15, 1962, the International Court of Justice, decided that it was on the Cambodian side of the border. http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?sum=284&code=ct&p1=3&p2=3&
case=45&k=46&p3=5
Even the Thai daily web newspaper Prachatai admit that the temple belongs to Cambodia http://www.prachatai.com/english/news.php?id=690 http://www.prachatai.com/english/news.php?id=686
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Jacques (Moderator)
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Re:Jacques de Goldfiem eye on Asia 2 Months, 2 Weeks ago
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21 October 2008
THAILAND IS GOING BAD
After the September 2006 military coup, with the royal approval, who ousted the corrupted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the democracy was restored by the 23 December 2007 General Election in which the PPP won 228 seats, sufficient to win the election ahead of the Democrat Party but short of the 241 seats needed for a majority of the 480-seat house, but it was able to form a six-party coalition. The problem is that the PPP had become the party of Thaksin supporters, and on 28 January 2008, Samak Sundaravej, chairman of the PPP was elected Prime Minister.
The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) who by street demonstrations got the ousting of Thaksin and the intervention of the army, restarted its demonstration, this time again Samak, considered as the Thaksin puppet, in May
On June PAD and supporters made through police blockades and successfully gathered in front of Government House, an effort to pressure the government to resign and reached critical level in late August when Government House and several ministries were seized. A state of emergency was declared in Bangkok on 2 September.
On September 9, 2008, ruling on complaints by Senators and the Election Commission received in the summer of 2008, the Constitutional Court removed Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej from office because he had inappropriately been involved in commercial enterprises, taking part in a TV cooking show.
After the PPP unsuccessful bid to rename Samak as prime minister, on September 17, Somchai Wongsawat was ratified by the National Assembly as new prime minister. But that was not to calm down the situation because Somchai is the Thaksin's brother-in-law.
Thousands of PAD forces soon surrounded Parliament to prevent the Somchai government from announcing its policies to the legislature within 15 days of swearing in, as mandated by the Constitution. The PAD closed off the building with razor wire and steel barricades.
On October 7, police loudspeaker lorries issued a warning that the PAD should disperse as they would be attacked, and teargas would be fired. PAD forces did not disperse and soon after, police shot a barrage of teargas grenades and clashed with protestors, some of whom were armed with guns, machetes, steel pikes, petrol bombs, and improvised explosive devices. Clashes continued into the night. Some 500 people were injured, some ones badly and two persons were reported to be killed.
The question was : what is the attitude of the royal court and the army on that situation ? The answer from the monarch came on October 13, when, in a rare appearance, the Queen Sirikit presided over the cremation of Angkana, 28, who died when police dispersed anti-government protesters near Parliament. she praised her as a "good girl" and "protector of the monarchy and the country" and was accompanied by Princess Chulabhorn Valayalaksana and Army chief General Anupong Paochinda. In addition, the latter, on October 17, has indicated that Somchai Wongsawat should step down to take responsibility for the violent clashes between police and anti-government protesters in Bangkok.
The following day, Thailand's Police General Salang Bunnag revived his threat to "retake" Government House from the anti-government protesters, saying that his planned operation would begin after a religious ceremony to be held nearby on October 22
The Thai press is divided. As The Nation is balancing on the PAD side, the Bangkok Post looks to be on the government side, calling the protests "unjustified, unnecessary, provocative and illegal," adding in an editorial, "If the PAD really wants to bring down the government, it should do so through the Parliament."
That rises my personal problem. In one way I don’t like to see relatives and friends of Thaksin Shinawatra acting as his puppets, but on the other side, the PPP and his government are legitimate, elected in free elections, even there was some rigging votes. So, what a solution for Thailand problem ?
In addition see the comment of excellent and Asia Observer friend journalist John Le Fevre (Photo-journ)http://photojourn.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/thailand-political-crisis-
worsens-further-bloodshed-forecast/
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