Like gold in the air of december

It is Vientiane. And it is in December.

First time serving as host for the sport games of the Southeast Asian countries, an evident sign of the new confidence the Laos behold about their country's development.

At a glance, changing Vientiane can be felt.

The wind was cool and I hardly retrieved my old image of the city...

The verdict read by Court and the Junta orders to commute her sentences !, ?

The Irrawaddy reports on tuesday that the verdict was delivered at 11:50 a.m. Suu Kyi was initially sentenced to three years imprisonment, but later the court changed her sentence to 18 months to be served under house arrest. According to journalists, Burmese Home Minister Maung Oo entered the courtroom after the three-year sentence was announced and read aloud a special order from junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe stating that as Suu Kyi is the daughter of national hero Gen Aung San, her sentence should be reduced to 18 months and that the sentence should be suspended.

Along with the world leaders' outrage and condemnaion on the Burmese junta, Harn Lay's cartoon undeniably reflects the very true circumstances currently going on in Burma's political saga, nevertheless intended to be viewed in sarcastic manner; they are, at the moment to me, utterly not laughable !

Has the Restoration of the Arts and Sciences Had a Purifying Effect Upon Morals?

Did Rousseau respond to the question (the blog title) proposed by the Academy of Dijon in 1750 as both 'yes' and 'no' ?

[So long as government and law provide for the security and well-being of men in their common life the arts, literature and sciences, less despotic though perhaps more powerful, fling garlands of flowers over the chains which weigh them down. They stiffle in men's breasts that sense of original liberty, for which they seem to have been born; cause them to love their own slavery, and so make of them what is called a cilvilised people]

[But so long as power alone is on one side, and knowledge and understanding alone on the other, the learned will seldom make great objects their study, princes will still more rarely do great action, and the people will continue to be, as they are, mean, corrupted, and miserable]

Of course this is an over-simplifictaion, but can this be concluded that upon the rise of man's civilisation as emerging form his state of nature, Rousseau's argument laid at the end in opposing against snobbery of the artist and the philosopher, whom more often than not claim themselves superiority of beholders of the good, the true and the beautbiful.

Joy of reading randomly without obligation to write something out of it!

No admission fees to visit CMU library eventhough you are not the university staffs or students, unlike ones at CU. Without obligation to write something out of what I read; I currently feel this joy.

Same as traveling without a map, I let go expectations for a certain destination, but browse the shelfs here and there aimlessly, allowing books to lead me drifting on unfamiliar ocean of ideas.

The Philosophy book shelf brought me travel back in time, for me to breed the air of Republic of Geneva when Rousseau presenting his essays on 'A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Science' to the Academy of Dijon as to answer whether the restoration of the arts and science had purifying effect upon morals? and another one on 'The origin and foundation of the inequality of mankind' which gave me another picture of human being in 'state of nature', in contrast to conception in Hobbes's Leviathan.

Another stride passing the illustrated references book section, I am introduced to the movement of 'Universal Rights to a Beautiful and Functional Home' that set precedent for the integration of local craft design with industrial production, which promote the growth of swedish interior design that benefited both local consumers and the production complex. I surprisingly learnt how the global reputation of IKEA had roots in the 200-year-old of social-astetic propaganda that its catalysts such as Ellen Key strongly believed that art and beauty would produce happier human beings and better citizen.

Sometime when entering the library, I stop by at stop-over desk of the returned books, I accidentally saw so many diverse topics of books I can pick for new exploration, I realised this precious opportunity and freedom. Yet there remains limitation of time and my own capability to extend this mind-travelling through books to be never ending. Key is I need to accelerate my reading speed! Or should I find a goal to really get to somewhere ?

As of iddleness in travelling, I am in praise of this joy of reading randomly, at least for the moment I take a break from working on the ground. One painful consequence of such joy I should not be omited to aware however is Superficiality !

The age of one's own

On the last day of my recent trip to Bangkok, a discussion at one ice-cream shop about motive in liturature writing with my two friends surprisingly led to many notions about human mind, including fear of death, when one admited that his source of inspiration to write a novel lies also on the cause of resisting to live beyond human's life span of his own, to leave someting to to the world worth remembering his name, and not be forgotten as soon as when he departed.

This recalled the notion that how human emotions and thought were successively transcended through creativities and talents of the individuls into work of art; as reflecting in the popular quote of ancient greek aphorism 'ars longa vita brevis' - art is long, life is short.

As I was reading a book of Eric Hobsbawm, his collection 'Unommon People Resistance, Rebellion, and Jazz', that gave substantive accounts about jazz music, particularly in terms of relations between jazz as the state of art and the cultural context of working class development. Before it becomes music of elite minority, jazz was created by diasporas of the America, those who were oppressed for centuries.

Its popularity in America in the early of the twentieth century went along with the rise of the struggle against racism and trends of socialism democracy, though short lived. Children of the revolution has turned their ears to rock and roll and its later fusions-the music of their own age. Hobsbawm pointed that a generation feels music as innovation of their times, and popular music is the product of current miliu of both the artist and audiences alike.

Jazz scene become rare everywhere around the globe and its image as the music of the rebel lost somewhere in time. Some put even that jazz is now only listened and played among old rich people or young intellectuals with pretensions.

This is a case that, art is long, but regretably, perhaps like other forms of creative works in many circumstances, its true and original meaning has short lived, so did the lives of its creator.

Remains of the Orwell's Days

One rainy morning of a July day, I had a chance to walk up a hill at the centre of Ranong town, for the first time. Overlooking the plain the town sat on, the dark blue sea and green mountains on Burmese shores was visible.

From afar, in such peaceful moment, the picturesque landscape could even make me forget all the accounts of tragic reality the people there living with, under the totalitarian regime.

I then recalled to Emma Larkin's travelogues from Burma, in her book 'Finding George Orwell in Burma'. As she was given an analogy by a Burmese friend about invisible oppression...

"...Burma is like a woman with cancer...She knows she is sick, but she carries on with her life as if nothing is wrong. She refuses to go to a doctor for treatment. Instead, she swirls thanaka on her cheeks, puts fresh flowers in her hair, and goes to the bazaar as if everything is normal. She talks to people, they talk to her. They know she has cancer and she knows she has cancer, but nobody says anything." (p. 46)

Season of Fleeing

Monsoon rain has turned the mountain area lush green again. Seoson of rain can be very romantic time when you are under shelter and have nothing to worry about.

Watching pouring rains over the city, I recall those rainy times in border jungle. Also shower rains, over bamboo town of the refuge. Under that cloud, yet gave hipnotic atmostphere, the maladies were in the air.

Early this moth, while the people of Tha Song Yang District, Tak Province were starting their farming season, over three thousands Karen villagers from the other side of the border could not, but displaced by armed operation of the Burmese army against the Karen National Union.

Forests are the same green, the rains don't discriminate, but the humans do. Not by nature, the season of fear started.

While Thai army maintains to wait for figthing to stop and that refugees can return home, the rain keeps hitting the area, so does the shootings on the opposite sites.

I at odds feel the cold of a child's skin, whose eyes are same innocent with all those victims of changing season.

The curse of plastic nationhood

Literature review provides picture of the current state of particular field/topic of studies a researcher is working on. This process may give different loads of work in different subject but however indispensible for preventing another redundant or naive discovery. It somehow looks to be a never ending task, which could be used as justification to prolong this preliminary step. Procrastination! Myself.

It is often interesting to start a book with the Acknowledgment pages where authors elaborate their motives, inspiration and dedication of the work. Some pieces are as simple as to dedicate to their parents, family of their own, friends and beloved ones, or just a list of people of assistances, while somes boast its academic or ideological significances. Notwithstanding its argument or contribution, a book always has a purpose ! Agenda?

Pavin's book (A Plastic Nation: The Curse of Thainess in Thai-Burmese Relations) employed both historical studies and analysis of recent accounts on Thailand's contemporary foreign policy toward Burma.It highlights critical roles of Thailand's nationalism and cultural otherness toward its western neighbors policy. Invention of Burmese Image and and Artfacts of Thainess is argued to be political apparatus for Thai elites in achieving their interest. The celebration of selecting Thai norms and the contestation to international norms by Thai leaders of different periods are scrutinised through three controvercy issues in contemporary relations between Thailand and Burma; Ethnic Insugencies, Drug Trade, and Burma's Admission into ASEAN. Realities the media continues to cover every day.

They say you are what you read. It is hard to deny, perhaps. Pavin's acknowledgement to Thongchai for his influencing deconstruction of Thai nationhood reminds me one personal purpose of taking cause of study, to liberate oneself. Liberty ! Upon finishing A Plastic Nation, I started to assume meaning of the traffic board on his book's cover photo. It suggests readers for a direction, Stop !

"I am grateful to have learned from him [Thongchai Winichakul] that the sense of Thainess imbued in me is in fact mouldable and, in my own terms, rather plastic. And that, a long-established negative attitude toward the Burmese as historical adversary should be elimintaed, and Thai leaders must from now on discontinue to draw the face of a foreign enemy, such as Burma had served for centuries, in order to guarantee their legitimacy. If there were enemies of the Thai state, they were our own Thai leaders with their insatiable greed for private interest."

In search of 'cosmopolitanism' in Thai civil soceity

Burmese refugees have lived in camps, often for decades, being forced to depend on external aid, with restricted freedom of movement and limited livelihood that cause psychosocial effects, chronic family and community conflicts, while resettlement to the third country as the durable solution had not been permitted until very recently.

In spite of its debatable capacity to be more generous country of asylum, endured protection gaps and protracted refugees situation in Thailand concerned by humanitarian aid agencies worldwide demonstrates dilemma in the country’s ambition to play active role in international community.

Despite that the state has maintained strict policy of ‘temporary assistance’ to Burmese refugees and denial of rights to local integration, there prevails refugee support sentiment from the Thai civil society in their course of promoting social justice and good governance.

From this point I plan to examine existing discourse within the Thai civil society regarding Burmese refugees, political conflicts in Burma and concerning public policy. My preliminary question is that ‘whether there are adequate shared ideas, what kind of the shared ideas and how the shared ideas were constructed within the civil society, as in articulating support for their agenda of refugee hospitality?’

Considering that academic discourse can play an important role in norm making or introducing new ideas to the society for positive social change, my research is aimed to understand the evolution of the existing ideas and trends of social discourse to be adopted by the Thai civil society in engagement with the state regarding refugee issue, and how it will shape the country’s response to refugee problems.