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Meerkat

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Posts posted by Meerkat

  1. In a shock poll just released, ABAC claims:

    98% of Catholics believe the next pope should be catholic,

    95% of bears showed a "strong tendancy" towards relieving themselves in the woods, and

    80% of cats said they preferred Whiskas.

    Hang on:

    Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva topped the list of who they thought should be the next PM.

    The list is followed by former PM Anand Panyarachun at 33.5 per cent and followed closely by former premier Chuan Leekpai at 32.4 per cent. Mingkwan Sangsuwan gets 27.9 per cent support from respondents and 27.3 per cent for General Chetta Thanajaro, leader of Ruam Jai Thai Chart Pattana.

    So that's 121.1% already, plus whatever percentage Abhisit got. Did I miss something, or is there some truth behind the general ridicule given to ABAC polls? Ah, or perhaps ABAC now subscribes to "New Polling" , whereby the offspring of wealthier Bangkok residents are allowed to vote twice... :o

    [yes, yes I know it probably wasn't polled that way, but I can have a giggle can't I?]

  2. Why not present "new politics" to the masses themselves? Why don't you trust their judgement? Are you afraid that they might like it?

    Sure it's easy, and there's absolutely nothing stopping the PAD or any other group from doing so. All you need to do is set up a political party (the PAD may still have some of their "Mass Party" stationery left - that'd be handy!), get elected on such a policy platform and then you'll have the necessary mandate to change the constitution if you can get enough people onside. Otherwise, why should only your chosen political ideal be put to the public outside a general election? Why not communism? Why not absolute monarchism? Why not republicanism? What is so overwhelmingly special about “New Politics” that it alone deserves to be put to the vote in isolation?

    Why not engage in a meaningful debate about it.

    Some of us here have been debating it (and I include yourself). The press has debated it, and many in the population at large have been too – it's certainly talked about publicly both in my comfortable middle-class mooban in Bangkok and in the rural village where we weekend. Whilst the people in each place are as diverse as bankers and farmers, even the PAD supporters I've talked with are at best uneasy about what the implications of “New Politics” are. Of course you might not believe that poorer people either in the cities or the country are capable of rational political debate (at least that's the impression I got when you likened them to baboons or whatever it was on another thread – I can't find the link now), but it really isn't the case at all.

    So far the opponents have been screaming their lungs out without giving it any real thought.

    Actually it is the proponents of the scheme that have been screaming their lungs out over it the loudest. You might have seen them up on stage at some point over the last 200-odd days. Without any real thought? Yes I reckon that's true as well; their only thought is that anything must be better than what we've got now. It is an incorrect notion though, and you have a wide choice of borders to cross from Thailand to see other systems of government that were designed “for the good of the people”, and which in practice are anything but. That's generally the problem with reactionary knee-jerk policy.

    Facts have been grossly distorted in the process and conspiracy theories presented instead.

    - no one will lose a right to vote

    - the great chunk of power will rest with functional representatives, not the military or bureaucrats as alleged

    Seeing as New Politics seeks to enshrine in the constitution the military as the ultimate arbiters of government (ultimate after HMTK of course), then power will of course lie there, regardless of whether representatives are elected, selected, or pulled out of a magic hat. I'm struggling to think of a government anywhere which successfully combines unelected military overlords with such niceties as better representation. What use is a vote – whether it be under a geographical constituency or a functional one – if the representatives are themselves shackled under an unelected military? Reckon such a government could for instance reduce the military budget? Yeah right. It's just paying lip-service to democracy (something one might justifiably accuse Thaksin as having done as well.)

    As to “no one will lose their vote” you are partially correct. However one person's voting privileges will be worth more than another's, according to which functional constituencies they are members of. That assumes of course that 100% of representatives are voted in; if some are selected (and the PAD still have not categorically denied that "New Politics" will not incorporate a certain number of selectees, just that 70% was too high), then everyone's votes are diluted and one could say power would indeed be transferred to those who do the selecting (bureaucrats?). One might argue that the present system is already skewed with the party list, but switching one bad system for another is no solution.

    if "functional constituencies" idea gets any traction, there are many other ways to utilise it, like having the Senate selected that way, for example. Non-partisan Senate has been proven impossible to maintain - senators always gravitate to money and power. Why? Well, because they went to politics to pursue their own goals, they were not nominated and promoted by the people to pursue people's goals. This dichotomy is never going to work until people are brought into politics themselves rather than forced to spend their votes on any of the junk that is pushed on them by politicians.

    The appointed half of the Senate is already designed to represent diverse sectors of the population. There is already an agriculture Senator; there is already a medical sector Senator; there is already a military representative. Actually there are quite a few of those, but that's no great shock now, is it? So how's that going in furthering the interests of their “constituents”? Would it be more so if they were elected rather than selected? Why should it? It's not as if geographical representatives could be accused of always acting selflessly on behalf of their constituents, so why must it be different for functional ones?

    As far as spreading functional representation to the Lower House, we've already talked about this. In order to truly represent each and every sector of the population you'd need an impossibly high number of representatives. As I stated in an earlier discourse with you:

    It is as crucial that a system of government be workable as it is to be representative.

    Otherwise you could go down the Hong Kong route and have a ridiculously small number of sectors, which does nobody much good at all, and is of course one of the reasons why you have as many as half a million Hongkongers marching through the streets each year (peacefully though in stark contrast to either the PAD or the DAAD) in an effort to get rid of this awful system and replace it with simple, direct elections. Either way you end up with a crappy system of government, not some utopian ideal of true representation.

    “Democracy” as we define it in its various forms around the world is not – by a long way – a perfect system of government. It is, however, the best compromise that political scientists have managed to come up with over the last couple of millennia. Do you really think that a bunch of tampon-wielding political agitators protesting on a stage here have managed to suddenly dream up a system of government so important, so crucial to the people that it must be put to them by itself forthwith? Pah.

  3. Hello, I don't very understand how do you do that, but the result is pretty good. What is your camera model ? And what settings ?

    I used :

    Exposure : 2s

    Opening : f/3.7

    ISO : 125

    in order to get my jupiter moons shot. But of course I only get a white big point for Jupiter itself :o

    I use a NexImage cam (it's the same as a Philips ToUcam webcam, but slightly modified for astro use). So instead of taking individual pictures, you record an avi movie for a minute or so. Then some clever software splits the movie into individual frames, aligns them up to compensate for tripod wobble and atmospheric distortion and stacks them on top of each other to produce the finished image. Works well for the moon and planets as they are bright enough (1/30s exposure times for that last image - focal length of the scope is f/10), but not much good for deep space objects. For those I'll need to buy an adaptor for my DSLR and do longer-term exposures (could be anything up to a few hours, taken as a series of 10 minute or so shots and stacked together). If your camera has a record movie mode, you might be able to use that to get some clearer pictures - but without a tripod that tracks the planet it will be difficult. There's a good intro to webcam astronomy here.

    Here's a pic of the kit in action; the scope's pointing to the moon, and the cam (small black thing at the back of the scope) is streaming live video to the laptop. Jupiter and Venus are peeking through the power lines! As you can see, the light pollution's pretty bad here so most of my viewing is done at our place in the country...

    post-23545-1228401569_thumb.jpg

  4. I use a simple Sony DSC H5 with a very little tripod, not the most recommended way to shoot at the stars :o.

    Tonight there is too much light because of the moon and public lights, I don't know if I will be able to see M31. At least I know where to watch, thank to Meerkat !

    You're welcome! If you're interested in things like Messier and other "Deep Space" objects, you might like to try Cartes du Ciel. It's similar to Stellarium, but not as pretty. On the up-side though, it more clearly shows you where those objects are. It's free as well (and there's a French version - I think it was designed by a Canadien).

    Here's my pic for the evening - Jupiter again. I'm much happier with it than the one I posted the other day - at least I managed to get some of the cloud bands this time. It was composed of 1,120 1/30s shots aligned and stacked on top of each other (using what is basically a web-cam modified to fit a scope). I need to take some dark shots (just shots with the lens cap on) to subtract those horizontal lines you can see from the cam (the ambient light around here in the suburbs of BKK doesn't help). Still, I'm only learning and progress is progress!

    post-23545-1228314609_thumb.jpg

  5. I think you'll have a hard time snapping M101. It's magnitude is around +9 which means that Jupiter (magnitude -2) is about 24,000 times brighter (each degree of magnitude is about 2.5 times brighter than the next degree higher, so 11degrees difference is 2.5^11=23,800ish). From very dark sites away from street lights it's generally considered that you can't see things with your naked eye of magnitudes higher than around +6. A good site explaining about magnitude of things in the sky is here.

    I'd recommend trying to find M31, the Andromeda galaxy. It's our closest spiral galaxy and is about magnitude +4.4, a bit brighter than Jupiter's moons (mag +5) . It's also huge (around 7 times as wide and twice as tall as the full moon – much too big to fit in my scope even under lowest power.) It will be highest in the sky (and thus clearest) between around 8-9pm - find Polaris in the north sky and follow it up around two-thirds of the way to the zenith.

    I can't really help with the sky moving too fast! You'd need to get yourself a tracking mount that moves at the same speed, but then cost goes up of course.

    Good luck and let us know how you get on! I'll have a think about setting up an English language astronomy website for expats (everything I've seen so far has been in Thai) – we're thinking about building a small observatory in Khao Yai so it might be a good project to do in conjunction with it.

  6. I shot Jupiter tonight with the maximum zoom of my Cybershot and we can clearly see the moons !

    I cropped the picture to be able to post it there.

    Of course it does not worth a picture made with professional equipment but I still like it :o

    [EDIT] : uploaded the moon names :D

    That's a great shot considering you don't have specialized equipment - well done!

    Now that you've installed Stellarium, check out some of the Messier objects (some of them can be seen with the naked eye). I think M45 would probably come out well with your camera - it always looks great through binoculars.

    Maybe TV should start an astronomy forum...

  7. Here is a photo I took this evening, for those who can't see it.

    I'm not sure but I think I can see the Jupiter rings on that photo !

    [edit] : I wasn't knowing many people posted their photo before me because I didn't refreshed the thread ^^

    But my photo is in 3072x2304 and quite clear. Try it !

    Nice photo! Actually all the photos posted have been great.

    The rings you're seeing around Jupiter are three of its moons. I took a close-up at around the same time. I over-exposed it and have tried to correct it, but I'm still not happy with the result - all the cloud-bands are washed out.

    post-23545-1228149695_thumb.jpg

  8. For any early risers (or late sleepers) out there, Saturn is visible on the opposite side of the sky. It rises above the eastern horizon around 1am and moves up towards the zenith (the sky directly above your head) just before sunrise. It's not as bright as Jupiter (and no where near as bright as Venus), but will be about the brightest thing in that part of the sky when it rises.

    If you can find anyone with a telescope (something between x100-x200 is good for this), Jupiter looks stunning at the moment, and you can clearly see four of its moons circling it along with the cloud bands. Saturn's not quite as good as the rings are almost edge on to the earth at the moment so not as well defined.

    Anybody interested in the night sky should check out a free program called Stellarium (Win, Mac and Linux). After you enter your latitude and longitude (you can find them on google maps), it'll give you an exact picture of what's in the sky from your location, and you can move around the sky and zoom in or out of bits that interest you.

  9. name 1 country in the world that has a system in which 30% of the parliament is elected and the rest of the seats are appointed ..

    Hong Kong

    Wrong and you know it, seeing as you and I have discussed their system of government at length here before.
    What exactly is wrong there? 30% number? You are just nitpicking.

    Hardly nitpicking, considering that 100% of HK's parliament is elected, half by geographical constituencies and half by functional ones.

    Of course, using HK's system of government to try and lend credibility to your ideals of New Politics in Thailand falls flat on its face anyway considering that HK people want more direct (ie geographic) elections, not less.

  10. People seem to forget that the 2007 elections were held with the Junta actively trying to suppress support for the PPP. They were even found guilty of doing so by the EC investigating committee, but wriggled out of a formal charge by the EC by claiming that as their dirty-tricks campaign had been drawn up under the interim constitution which gave them immunity, they couldn't be investigated. Convenient, those immunity clauses are...

    Bear in mind too that many (mostly historically pro-TRT) provinces were still kept under martial law during the campaigning process, and campaigning itself had new – severely limiting – restrictions put upon the process; restrictions that garnered scorn from international observers.

    A couple of links – there are plenty more out there, including extracts from the campaign document itself detailing how the anti-PPP smear campaign should operate.

    Were it possible for totally clean elections to be held tomorrow (or back in '07 - or even '06 for that matter), free of vote-buying or government interference, it would be a brave person who put money against the TRT or a reincarnation of it getting in.

    I should say (not for the first time) that IMO politicians found guilty of vote-buying should be banned for a long time (if not for life). A healthy jail term would be an added bonus too. The banning of an entire political party on the back of one executive however is collective punishment (against not only the other MPs but also against those that freely voted for them) and wrong.

  11. <snip>

    Whatever, the amount of misunderstanding and confusion about Thai politics by the average Joe Farang posting on TV (many for the first time) in the last few days is perhaps understandable, given the poor foreign news coverage to date. However, the ones calling for a violent response to the peaceful civil disobedience by the core PAD supporters is deplorable, as much as it will not solve anything under the present situation in Thailand.

    I agree that talk of 'cracking their heads' is deplorable, but I disagree with your notion that the PAD has only exercised 'peaceful civil disobedience'. IMO they've gone well past that. The Asian Human Rights Commission would seem to agree. Link.

    Extract:

    Alliance members have since August gone from merely occupying spaces like roads and parks to occupying public buildings, in particular, the Government House. Organised armed "guards" have defended their positions both from opponents and from state security personnel. They have also illegally obtained and openly carried an array of manufactured and homemade weapons, including guns from caches that had reportedly been kept in the government premises. They have illegally detained other citizens. They have vandalised, destroyed and stolen public and private property. In the last day or two it has been reported that in addition to occupying the Suvarnabumi airport they have seized busses, and have refused to allow police into the airport to investigate explosions there during the night. They are now reportedly preparing for the latest phase in the "final battle", which is supposedly being instigated under codenames like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities on which the United States military dropped nuclear bombs at the close of World War Two.

    The alliance has exhibited a number of features that from past lessons of Thailand and other countries around the world pose grave dangers to the future of the country's imperilled democracy. Of these, the following can be said.

    1. They spring from a far-right ideology that has for decades driven successive military-bureaucratic administrations in Thailand, which dramatic changes to political and social life of the last two decades have increasingly threatened.

    2. Their coordinated attacks and actions on the pretext of self-defence and national interest are designed to cause a widespread feeling of insecurity and uncertainty and allow reactionary elite forces to push Thailand back to a 1980s model of "half-sail" semi-elected government.

    3. The alliance leaders have occupied the public space and forced people throughout Thailand to either take sides for or against them, or to opt out completely, thus alienating millions of people and denying them the opportunity to have a say on the key political and social questions of their time.

  12. From Pundit:

    Matichon reports the head of the Metropolitan Police as stating that after his meeting with Interior Minister Kowit and representatives from the armed forced that the police will start with soft measures, negotiation as they don't want to use force and cause bloodshed. They will first start negotiation over the phone.

    They will then inform the protesters that they will be in breach of the state of emergency legislation if they remain so they are aware of the law. They have 10 methods [basically psychological warfare]

    The PM advised that we should try to avoid any clashes and the loss of life. I have been in contact with the Police Chief in regards to how to carry it out. They will produce a document on what they are going to do and then ask NHRC, law society, NCCC, and the media for opinions. They will then televise the entire operation.

    Seems like a sensible idea to try and prevent last month's screw-up, even if it does mean prolonging the situation.

  13. <Snip>

    With Somchai flatly refusing to cancel Thaksin's passport, the govt lost all pretence of working for the country. If he doesn't dissolve the House after Dec 5 and Thaksin continues broadcasting to incite his supporters to overthrow the judicial system - it would actually be a duty of all responsible citizens to remove this govt from power by any means necessary.

    Overthrow the judicial system? You mean like the coup-makers (ably supported by the PAD), who ripped up an entire constitution, adding laws to absolve themselves of their crimes ex post facto (whilst simultaneously skimming off a sizable chunk of the country's wealth for itself. Ironic for an organization that in part tried to justify the coup by saying that Thaksin had been skimming off a sizeable chunk of the nation's wealth for himself).

    If Thaksin's bleatings the other night were truly a plea for a Royal pardon, then such a pardon can be gifted from within the present legal system. Similarly, if the government manages to change the constitution to favour their old chums, as unpalatable as it might be, it would still be done under the bounds of the constitution itself. The Senate and opposition have been going through everything the government does with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that it operates under the law, throwing up a mountain of court cases when prima facie evidence warrants it. I don't think it unreasonable to posit that this government has been operating with far greater oversight to keep them straight than any other Thai government in recent history. Not a bad thing, obviously.

    Considering that the PAD are trying to overthrow the complete system of government to their own ends, including trying to incite the military to make yet another extra-judicial cameo in Thai politics (a cameo that under New Politics would become a starring role remember), then surely by your own standards it should be the duty of the citizens to remove the PAD themselves, especially considering that the court has already determined the PAD's protests as not being protected under the constitution.

    Your incitement for the people to overthrow this government by any means necessary if they don't dissolve the House would not only be illegal, it would be tantamount to asking for civil unrest of unparalleled violence. I only hope that the main players in this debacle exercise cooler judgement than you.

  14. Any lawyers willing to state which of the above opinions is true? Is there precedent in Thai law and does the Supreme Court's decision set a precedent in this case?

    (Not that I believe the stated views of our esteemed posters is in any way biased.)

    No lawyer, but it's something I've certainly heard fairly often.

    It's a funny old world when a lack of precedent means that something that might seem to be legal at the time is only actually legal or not based on the whim of a future court. So in effect if I wanted to do something now, I should go to the court before I did it to make sure it's actually legal. Oh, but that judgement anyway would have absolutely no bearing at all in the future if someone decided to raise a case against me. So perhaps I shouldn't go to court in advance after all. Quite bizarre.

    Add to that the fact that it is illegal to criticise the court's decision (no "The Law is an Ass" over here) and the situation becomes even more troubling.

    One might go so far as to say that it opens up the gaping possibility (or even probability if one subscribes to the adage of "power corrupts") for selective justice, but there again one might be considered in contempt and locked away for saying so. So on that basis, I won't. :o

    Personally (as a legal layman) it seems to me that there should be enough evidence to convict Thaksin of a variety of crimes; this case though raises more questions than it answers. It's a shame one must flirt with breaking the law to raise them.

  15. Here we go!

    Act of violence.... well I stick to "Civil disobedience" as throwing foam clappers, foam flippers and (empty) water bottles as a sign of disapprovement, is by light years not as violent as what this protest was against!

    Remember, this happened BECAUSE of the Act of VIOLENCE conducted by government forces against peacefully protesting supporters of "New Politics" and the PAD Movement on the 7th. October, ordered by THIS man!

    Now this was VIOLENCE, Sir!

    Get real!

    The Central Administrative Court disagreed with your claim that the protest on the 7th was peaceful. Matichon had a full report of the judgement; Bangkok Pundit translates. I've linked both in case there is a translation error.

    Unsurprisingly, the pitiful English Language media here decided not to report the full account of the injunction, which in a nutshell stated that:

    1) The PAD protest was not peaceful and thus not protected by the Constitution.

    2) The protest was designed to prevent the government from carrying out its obligations according to the Constitution (and you can bet your bottom satang that had the government failed to do so, they would have been up before the Constitutional Court quicker than you could say, "Senator Ruangkrai Leekijwattana".)

    3) The police had the authority to break up the protest, but using only appropriate force.

    4) The police overstepped the mark, and thus the injunction was passed to limit said force in future.

    So all in all a pretty balanced judgement; both sides get apportioned some blame. Please note that I in no way condone the excessive force used by the police, but IMO it is important to put happenings in their proper context, something the Nation, Post and (shock) TOC regularly fail to do. In the same vein there is a new article on Prachatai (an online newspaper set up to counter Thaksin's attempts at muzzling the media, so hardly pro-TRT/PPP) which expands upon the state of the media here, in particular how editorial bent all too easily gets mixed up with supposed "news" reporting.

  16. :o)-->

    QUOTE (:D @ 2008-10-21 23:29:23) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
    If I hear correctly, Suriyasai (PAD Spokesman) just announced (23:15) on the stage at the PAD Rally at the Government House that they have successfully taken over the old Don Muang Airport at around 21:00 - 22:00 earlier tonight.

    Possible I suppose, but DMK is owned and still operated by the Armed Forces. I thought it was the DAAD thugs that were gearing up for conflict with the military, not the PAD ones.

  17. Thanks for the link George.

    From the notes accompanying the file:

    This CD was created by the Media Group in conjunction with Manager Online and TOC to show the real fact to the people and the world.
    (emphasis my own)

    So the CD was created by 3 of the PAD leader's own media organizations. No danger of any editorial bias then I suppose...

    What parts did you think were biased Meercat? Any particular scenes or the way it was sequenced / storyboarded.

    I am interested in your view as I have just watched it.

    The only point I was trying to make with my earlier post was that one has to treat anything put out by the PAD, or the government for that matter, with more than a grain of salt. It is simplicity itself to selectively edit footage to make either side come out comparatively smelling of roses or of shit depending on your point of view. Remember that there's hours and hours of footage from each camera to choose from, all condensed into a package lasting less than an hour.

    I am disappointed that TV.com deems this piece worthy of its own "sticky", especially as the accompanying notes by a Moderator advertise it as the "real fact" and make no explicit disclaimer that the news sources mentioned are in fact owned by the founder and leader of the PAD, and are thus liable to tell a very one-sided story. I appreciate that George did refer to it as the PAD's work (or at least that they were the ones distributing it), but only on this thread.

    Sondhi himself has said that you can't believe everything you hear from the PAD stage, and yet we're supposed to believe from a Moderator (ie someone we are supposed to look up to as being above partisanship on this board, and from whom we risk being suspended/banned for criticising them) that this is the truth.

  18. Here is the video PAD are distributing:

    http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Bloody-Octob...ON-file596.html

    Thanks for the link George.

    From the notes accompanying the file:

    This CD was created by the Media Group in conjunction with Manager Online and TOC to show the real fact to the people and the world.
    (emphasis my own)

    So the CD was created by 3 of the PAD leader's own media organizations. No danger of any editorial bias then I suppose...

  19. I've been using Powermatic tap-change voltage regulators for a while (after reading some of Crossy's advice on these forums), which then power the APC UPSes. Some of my gear (notably my linux satellite decoders) is very sensitive to voltage fluctuations, and the voltage here fluctuates! Since installing them I've had absolutely no problems at all.

    Link here. The 2kVA ones were THB 1800 from DataIT when I got them 6 months ago.

  20. This is terrible folks. I'm not even sure how this mess will get sorted out. Btw, there are still ARM and other financial instruments that have NOT been sorted out yet. We are not even half-way through this crisis.

    Indeed. USD LIBOR rates doubled today in London. Pity the poor sod who's LIBOR-based loan was refixed today. I'm just glad I'm not in interest rate derivatives anymore...

  21. If a reporter has to go up on stage to ask questions, in front of jeering and booing protesters of whom at least some killed one of their political foes, he or she will obviously feel intimidated. Such intimidation automatically represses said journalist's ability to do his or her job properly.

    Given Sondhi's background in the media; given his legitimate frustration and anger at Thaksin's attempts to control the media, this makes such actions even more hypocritical. The reporters in this instance should be applauded for refusing to bow to their demands (and it's not often I feel moved to praise the Thai press.)

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