It takes a nation to protect the nation
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/9877429/Mus...
By David Eimer, Saigon
1:31PM GMT 18 Feb 2013
The three local defence volunteers died after a bomb hidden in a pile of clothes exploded outside a restaurant in Pattani Town on Sunday lunchtime.
Another nine people were injured in the blast.
A coordinated campaign of terror started at 6pm local time on Saturday, when seven bombs were planted outside shops, supermarkets and a karaoke bar in Pattani Town, the capital of Pattani Province, one of the three southernmost provinces of Thailand with a Muslim majority population.
Bomb disposal experts defused five of the bombs. But further devices were detonated later that night and on Sunday, while a wave of arson attacks gutted shops in Pattani Town and targeted mobile phone towers, security cameras and local defence bases elsewhere in Pattani Province.
"Intelligence estimates suggest there were 50 coordinated attacks. We managed to prevent attacks in eight spots," Police Major General Ekkaphob Prasitwattanachai told local media.
Shops in Pattani City were closed on Monday and streets deserted, as residents stayed indoors fearing more violence. The bombing and arson campaign is being regarded as revenge for the killing of 16 militants who attacked a marine base in Narathiwat Province last Wednesday. It was the deadliest day the insurgents have suffered in almost a decade.
Almost 5,400 people have died, and more than 9,500 have been injured, since the insurgency started in earnest in 2004.
Around 80 per cent of the 1.8 million people in the three southernmost provinces of Thailand – Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala -, that border Malaysia are ethnic Malay Muslims. Many regard the overwhelmingly Buddhist Thai state as a colonial power and want their own independent nation.
On Monday, deputy prime minister and deep south security chief Chalerm Yubamrung said he had been "forced" by Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to agree to travel to the deep south next month. Mr Chalerm has been repeatedly criticised for his failure to visit the region during his 19 months in office.
Tags: zThailand
Yes and its all over the news over here isn't it! Or maybe not.
But wait, we've got to discuss Gay Marriage urgently. And apparently a Muslim women somewhere feels that someone in the street - allegedly - gave her a dirty look, and now our whole society is guilty of Islamophobia and has to spend a couple of weeks in soul searching.
That's obviously far more morally and politically important - or at least it makes us feel that we are. We can let the Thai Buddhists burn to death. After all, they aren't in our set of approved race cards.
The part I don't get is all the hippy dip westerners, they go to Thailand for a cheap holiday(from australia eg) and post on their facebook how wonderful it all is and when can we move(retire) there etc. When I post on facebook the latest casualties from the south, it's either ignored or they start posting about horsemeat in europe, or the latest trend in raw food vegie burgers. The other one recently is about haow the dairy Industry is unethical etc etc. Our Buddhist brothers and sisters in Southern thailand? Most of the people i'm talking about are declared Buddhist afficionados, theyve been to this or that Wat for meditation retreats and they love Ajaan this or that. Mention Southern Thailand and it threatens to ruin their Bambi "all religions are the same" view of the world. Most Westerners that I know are well off and Influential and could wield a certain amount of concern and support for Thailand, but I guess they think its best not to disturb their own meditation cause they might get in touch with their real feelings and find that they are probably quite troubled and more than a little bit angry and nothing spells failure in a western Buddhists mind than anger. The truth is that even in Australia two of the three lectures arranged for Geert Wilders have been cancelled at the 11th hour. Aussie Muslims are about 400,000 out of a population of 23 mill and everyone here is too scared to allow him to speak in their hall or theatre for fear of reprisal by the islamics or that their own reputations or buisnesses will suffer as a result of letting geert Wilders speak at their place.
Yes. Ironically, its a sad fact of most religions except Islam, that they are treacherous to their own kind and fail to show allegiance and support to their brothers and sisters in trouble. Its the same story whether you talk to Tibetan style Buddhists, Nigerian Christians, Theravada (Thai) style Buddhists, Philippino / Catholic Christians ... they just want to sort out their own enlightenment or personal "walk with God".
And Australia is a surprise. We thought it was full of no nonsense tough guys. But the PC mythology virus has spread worldwide.
People live inside narratives. Some of the narratives are huge ("I'm going to be a neurosurgeon when I finish my degree at Cambridge"), others are small ("I think that woman over there finds me attractive"). The "holiday in Thailand" is a narrative - one maintained by the Thai government, the western media, and even most people who go to Thailand. Most tourists don't talk about their fear of spending time in Bangkok; when the media talk about Thailand they will use the stereotypical images (beaches, subservient Thai women, beautiful temples, statues of the buddha). They don't say that the country where most Brits are murdered is Thailand. 5 years ago I was talking to two journalists who'd just come back from a long holiday travelling round Thailand, and they knew none of the hard facts I told them about Thailand. How could you be a journalist and travel round a small "famously peaceful" country where there is a civil war going on in one part of it, and not know about it??
I suspect that most of the hippy dippy westerners who become buddhists have not lost all interest in the world through becoming buddhists; they've become buddhists so they have an excuse for inaction. It's not difficult to make moral decisions, when your religion's morality is "don't get involved". Stoicism is very similar to buddhism, but it has far more emphasis on a sense of honour and doing the right thing, and that might mean killing people.
"Being a buddhist" is for them a narrative. It is impervious to reality. One of my friends who has been fighting against islam for 10 years went to Thailand. He has no illusions about the place. (I'm not saying all Thai people are bad; when I was hospitalised there, there were Thais who were total strangers who stayed up all night to help me).
Carl Waller said:
The part I don't get is all the hippy dip westerners, they go to Thailand for a cheap holiday(from australia eg) and post on their facebook how wonderful it all is and when can we move(retire) there etc. When I post on facebook the latest casualties from the south, it's either ignored or they start posting about horsemeat in europe, or the latest trend in raw food vegie burgers. The other one recently is about haow the dairy Industry is unethical etc etc. Our Buddhist brothers and sisters in Southern thailand? Most of the people i'm talking about are declared Buddhist afficionados, theyve been to this or that Wat for meditation retreats and they love Ajaan this or that. Mention Southern Thailand and it threatens to ruin their Bambi "all religions are the same" view of the world. Most Westerners that I know are well off and Influential and could wield a certain amount of concern and support for Thailand, but I guess they think its best not to disturb their own meditation cause they might get in touch with their real feelings and find that they are probably quite troubled and more than a little bit angry and nothing spells failure in a western Buddhists mind than anger.
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Islam, operating at the micro and macro levels, is unstoppable by individuals, hence: "It takes a nation to protect the nation". There is not enough time to fight all its attacks, nor to read them nor even to record them. So the members of 4F try to curate a representative subset of these events.
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