Tom Pepinsky

Category: Asia

  • Proud to be a Republican

    This is a post about Thailand, not the U.S.

    In the Thai context, republican means literally in favor of a republic, as opposed to the current constitutional monarchy, in which the head of state is the Thai King, currently Bhumibol Adulyadej. In principle I don’t mind if a country is a monarchy, so long as the monarchy has no real political power. That, sadly, is not the case in Thailand, where the institution of the monarchy has been utterly politicized, and over the past twenty years increasingly so.

    Article 112 of Thailand’s criminal code makes lèse-majesté a crime. In recent years, this code has increasingly been used by Thailand’s political leaders as a tool for silencing the country’s opposition.

    It is for this reason that I am proud to have signed a solidarity letter in support of the Campaign Committee for the Amendment of Article 112 and the amendment proposal made by the Khana Nitirat (here’s an English link). I’ve posted the entire press release below:

    Over 200 international scholars, writers, and activists support the call to reform Article 112

    For immediate release

    1 February 2012

    Noted international scholars, writers, and activists support the call of the Campaign Committee to Amend Article 112 (CCAA112) to reform Article 112 in line with the amendment proposed by the Khana Nitirat.

    In an open letter to Thai prime minister Her Excellency Ms. Yingluck Shinawatra, these 224 international scholars, writers, and activists express grave concern over the use of Article 112 and the erosion of the basic rights of those who face charges under it. The signatories affirm that “Article 112 has become a powerful tool to silence political dissent, and in particular, any dissent interpreted as disloyalty to the monarchy.”

    Dr. Kevin Hewison, Professor of Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Thai studies expert observed that, “The political abuse of the lèse majesté law is associated with a precipitous deterioration of human rights in Thailand. Censorship, self- censorship and charges of disloyalty seriously restrict the freedom of expression.”

    The signatories support the CCAA112 and the amendment law because “reform is necessary to protect the basic rights of Thai citizens and support the consolidation of democracy and the rule of law.”

    The proposed amendment would make the punishment for alleged lèse majesté proportionate to the crime, limit who can file a complaint to the Office of His Majesty’s Principal Private Secretary rather than any citizen, differentiate sincere and truthful criticism from threats to the monarchy, and categorize violations of Article 112 as about the honor of the monarchy, rather than national security.

    “We were thrilled that so many distinguished thinkers and activists from around the world have joined with us in this letter in support of the reform of Article 112. They show our courageous Thai colleagues who are seeking reform that they are not alone. This issue is, and will be, closely monitored internationally,” said Dr. Rachel Harrison, noted scholar of Thai cultural studies commented.

    The signatories of the letter include (full list appended) distinguished scholars, writers, and activists from 16 countries and territories: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, UK, US.

    For more information (English/Thai), please contact:

    * Tyrell Haberkorn, +61-4-1137-4735 (Australia) tyrell.haberkorn@anu.edu.au

    * Kevin Hewison,+ 65-8212-0655 (Singapore), khewison@unc.edu

    I know that the Thai government doesn’t give a flip what sorts of documents I sign. But I also know that things like this matter. You can be sure that 60+ Cornell undergrads will learn whatever I want to teach them about Thai politics, without regard to whether or not the Thai government finds it offensive, and that’s how it should be.

  • Voting for Philippine Independence

    The Philippines used to be an American colony. Its main exports to the mainland–which were not subject to tariffs because, well, the Philippine islands weren’t a different country–were sugar and copra. Sugar (from sugarcane) was cheaper and of higher quality than domestically-produced sugar, which comes primarily from sugar beets. Copra is refined into coconut oil, which competed with other vegetable oils, animal oils and fats, and fish oils. In the 1930s, this especially meant cottonseed oil, which was turned into soaps. It also meant butter, because of recent innovations that meant that coconut oil could be partially hydrogenated and turned into margarine.

    Does the desire for protection from tariff-free sugar and copra imports explain the decision to grant the Philippines independence? The point is this: get the Philippines outside of our borders, and we can impose tariffs. Let’s look at cotton, sugar beet, and milk production across the states. Let’s also throw in sugar cane and the percentage of a state’s population that is of Filipino ancestry, and then compare that to Senate votes for independence in the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 (which granted the Philippines self-government, later to become independence). You could do this with House votes on that bill too, but absent data on milk, sugar cane, etc. by congressional district, the results will not be particularly helpful.

    I’ve transformed sugar beet/cane production, cotton production, and milk production to an approximately logarithmic scale. The maps show that sugar beet and cotton production, taken together, unite most of the West with the South, and this is where most of the votes in favor of independence come from.

    Let’s look at this more formally. The dependent variable is the number of Senate votes in a state (0, 1, or 2). The independent variables are the (transformed) variables above, along with a measure of partisanship in each state’s senate delegation. I estimate an ordered logistic regression, with the results below.

    DV: Senate Votes for Philippine Independence in 1934, by State

    Variable Estimate S.E. t value
    cotton 0.3725 0.2049 1.818
    sugar beets 0.3652 0.2071 1.763
    sugar cane 6.4251 2.410e-07 2.666e+07
    milk -0.1963 0.3147 -0.6237
    filipinos 1908.9278 6.972e-04 2.738e+06
    democrat 3.0975 1.231 2.516

    These results support the idea that cotton and sugar beet lobbies mattered; not so much support for the dairy lobby. The huge, highly statistically significant coefficients on “sugar cane” and “filipinos” represent the fact that Louisiana (which produced the overwhelming majority of sugar cane) and California (which had the overwhelming majority of Filipinos) voted for independence.

    The question that this does not answer is why the U.S. did not grant independence to Puerto Rico or Hawaii at the same time. Both of these territories exported tremendous amounts of sugar to the U.S., so my argument would expect that there would be a demand to get them out of the U.S. too. There was an attempt to do so with Puerto Rico in the late 1930s (led by many of the same people), but it seems to have failed, and there was no vote on it. I’m unaware of any similar move for Hawaii.

    Any thoughts on this would be welcome. My hunch is that it has to do with the interaction of the structure of the Filipino sugar industry and the addition of copra as a main export from the Philippines. Puerto Rican and Hawaiian sugar plantations were owned mainly by Americans (contrast that to the majority indigenous Filipino sugar industry) and the other export products produced in PR and Hawaii (coffee and pineapples, respectively) did not compete with anything produced in the U.S. mainland. Input from the world’s leading authority of the expansion of the states westward in the 1800s would be most appreciated.