วันอาทิตย์ที่ 30 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2559

Sad, melancholic rhythms
The tradition of prakhom yumyam is a beautiful way to pay respect to late royals
Since Oct 14, one day after the passing of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the sounds of conch shells, bugles, pipes and drum beats, followed by the melancholic tones of classical music, have been heard from the Grand Palace six times a day. Each session lasts about 15 minutes and often makes many mourners nationwide burst into tears. This royal tradition is called prakhom yumyam.
"Prakhom is a way to honour and pay respect to royals and is also a tradition," said Anek Artmangkorn, acting director of the Fine Arts Department's Office of Performing Art.
Prakhom music is played together with the Royal Household Bureau's yumyam band. The yumyam tradition has been continually performed since the Ayutthaya Period and was added to the piphart band in the reign of King Rama V, he added.
The office deploys each of its five bands of musicians to perform at the royal funeral of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej every day on rotation. All the musicians will continue to work from 6am-9pm every day until the royal funeral reaches its 100th day. Each session starts at 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm and 9pm. Prakhom yumyam was played at previous royal funerals, starting with Her Majesty Queen Rambhai Barni of King Rama VII in 1985 to that of the Princess Mother, HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana and HRH Princess Bejraratana.
By definition, Prakhom means playing music as a signal in a ceremony to honour or pay respect to someone. Yum means repeated drum or gong beats to tell the time for changing guards. Yam means each of the eight quarters of the day. Each yam lasts for three hours.
According to an article by the Office of Performing Art, Prakhom yumyam is the playing of music to pay respect and tell the time for officials to work every three hours starting from 6am-3am. The centuries-old tradition has been adjusted to fit the current situation.
Music in royal ceremonies is considered one of the royal insignia for monarchs and members of the royal family. Thai classical music is an important component of each royal ceremony and must be played at the right time, together with a band of the royal paraphernalia section under the Royal Household Bureau's Royal Ceremonial Affairs Division.
The Prakhom process begins with the music played by the Conch Shell and Siamese Bugle Band and the Chanai Pipe and Chana Drum Band and ends with the music played by the Piphart Nang Hong Khruang Yai Band.
The Royal Household Bureau's prakhom band can be divided into two small types. The first one is called Conch Shell and Siamese Bugle Band with conch shells, Siamese bugles and megaphone-shaped trumpets. The second one is the Chanai Pipe and Chana Drum Band with one chanai pipe (two pipers at work on rotation), one poeng mang drum and a number of gold-laden red chana drums.
What is special about this royal funeral is that two bronze drums are added to the prakhom band.
"The royal tradition requires the use of bronze drums in playing the music for a king only. This time, the band consists of two bronze drums, four conch shells, 10 Siamese bugles, 10 megaphone-shaped trumpets, 40 gold-laden red chana drums, two chanai pipes and one poeng mang drum," Wethin Wichaikhatkha, head of the band and also chief of the division's royal paraphernalia section, said.
According to him, the number of musical instruments differs according to the ranks of royals as required by the centuries-old tradition.
Members of the band are mostly the section's 38 musicians who work daily on rotation and army musicians from the 11th Military Circle who beat the chana drums. The Royal Household Bureau's musicians are dressed in red traditional costumes which are similar for both auspicious occasions and funerals.
"We are deeply sad. We did not want to see His Majesty the King leave this world. We thought we would be able to celebrate his birthday on Dec 5. We were shocked and not prepared for this sad news. However, we must perform our duty. We must play the music until the 100th day of the royal funeral, then stop and wait until the completion of the royal crematorium," the band leader, with over 40 years of working experience, noted.
Anan Sri-ra-udom, a poeng mang drummer who has been working for the band for seven years, said he performs his duty to his fullest capacity to serve the royals.
Meanwhile, the Fine Arts Department's Piphart Nang Hong Khruang Yai Band for the royal funeral for His Majesty King Bhumibol consists of a Javanese pipe, a ranad ek xylophone, a ranad ek lek xylophone, a ranad thoom xylophone, aranad thum lek xylophone, a set of gongs called gong wong yai, a pair of drums called klong that and a cymbal. The musicians don official uniforms with mourning signs according to different schedules.
In the past, the Piphart Nang Hong bands performed at commoners' funerals only. Since the reign of King Rama V, such bands have been added to royal funerals.
In 1995, HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn demanded the reintroduction of prakhom to the yumyam tradition for royal funerals. She instructed Sirichaichan Fakchamroon, rector of Bunditpatanasilpa Institute, to add the Fine Arts Department's Piphart Nang Hong Khruang Khoo band to the Royal Household Bureau's yumyam band. Both bands performed together for the first time on Aug 7, 1995, for the royal funeral of the Princess Mother. Initially, the Fine Arts Department's band performed five times a day -- at 6am, noon, 6pm, 9pm and midnight. From the 101st day of the funeral to the royal cremation day, the band performed at noon and 6pm only. Later in 2008, during the royal funeral of HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana, the Fine Arts Department's Piphart Nang Hong Khruang Khoo band and the Royal Household Bureau's yumyam band performed together for 100 days seven times a day -- at 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm and midnight.
In addition, HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn had a royal initiative for the piphart band to play a series of 14 Thai classical songs named ching phra chan while Buddhist monks were having breakfast, starting from Jan 7, 2008, for 100 days.
In 2011, both bands performed six times a day -- at 6am, noon, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm and midnight -- for 100 days. Also while monks were having breakfast, the piphart band played a series of Thai classical songs named ching phra chan chao.
Moreover, the Fine Arts Department's Thai classical ensemble played a series of 15 classical songs called ching phra chan pane while monks were having lunch on Wednesdays when royal descendants took part in each ceremony.
Anucha Boriphan, senior artist and assistant chief of the office's Thai classical bands, said: "I performed for most of the previous royal funerals and have been doing the task for the royal funeral of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej. I feel it is a great honour for myself, my agency and family to serve the royal family."
The art is passed on from one generation to another and the same songs have been used according to the practices of the Entertainment Department, which was in operation in the Sixth Reign and has become the Fine Arts Department.
According to Suriya Chidthoum, chief of the Fine Arts Department's Piphart Nang Hong Band, the performance is special due to the use of mother-of-pearl and ivory musical instruments bearing His Majesty King Bhumibol's royal emblem. This set of instruments is used for the first time now after the Fine Arts Department's production to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the King's accession to the throne 10 years ago.
This band for the King is called Piphart Khruang Yai with the additional two xylophones -- ranad ek lek and ranad thoom lek. In the previous royal funerals for the late princesses, a smaller band called piphart khruang khoo was used.
He recalled that he felt numb and did not know what to do when he first heard of the sad news. According to him, all the band members were very sad and unable to concentrate at first.
"All of us feel it is a great honour to serve His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej for the last time. We love and are loyal to all the royal family members. We are grateful to His Majesty the King who had musical talent. All of us would like to express our sad feelings and send his soul to heaven. We did not want him to leave, but must perform our duty. We are deeply sorry and want to serve him the best we can," Suriya noted sadly.
The prakhom yumyam tradition at the royal funeral of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej at the Grand Palace. Pichaya Svasti




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The hubris of the 2016 candidates
Washington (CNN) Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are better at beating themselves than each other.
They're not just the most unpopular presidential nominees in recent memory: In the epic drama of the 2016 election, they're also tarnished heroes who are perpetually humbled by their own self-defeating flaws.
The rivals, playing out their tragicomic duel on the grandest electoral stage, are like two Shakespearean protagonists falling prey to hubris, the excessive pride that can make a politician believe the rules that govern normal mortals do not apply to them.
Clinton's penchant for secrecy and distaste for disclosure have been the common theme in the deepest morasses of her long political career. Trump's overwhelming ego and self-obsession are at the root of the most damaging controversies that have raged around his wild presidential campaign.
And only one can survive. Within 10 days, the loser will see their hopes destroyed and partly have themselves to blame. The winner will go on to a presidency that at least in part will entail a battle against their fatal flaws.
Right now, it's Clinton who's on defense.
Her hopes of calmly cruising to an easy election win were shattered by FBI Director James Comey's sudden announcement Friday that the bureau is reviewing emails potentially related to Clinton's personal email server.
The new controversy centers on emails found on a device shared by Clinton's close aide Huma Abedin and her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner.
The Democratic nominee is responding by going on offense, accusing the FBI chief of interfering in the climax of a crucial political battle.
"It's pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election," Clinton told supporters in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Saturday.
Whether Clinton's complaint is valid or not, the case would never have been thrust into the frenzied final days of the presidential election were it not for her decision to use a private email server in the first place -- something she has admitted is a mistake.
The move was consistent with a character trait that has haunted Clinton throughout a quarter century in national politics. Critics argue that from the Whitewater real estate drama through the various pseudo scandals of the Clinton administration to her own campaign's missteps, she has made controversies worse by keeping things too close to the vest.
Neera Tanden, president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, asked the obvious question to Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta.
"Why didn't they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy," Tanden wrote to Podesta in March 2015, according to hacked emails released by WikiLeaks.
Tanden then answered her own question: "They wanted to get away with it."
Clinton also attempted to escape scrutiny by the reporters for much of her campaign, going months without a press conference at one point.
Things changed in September, when the campaign finally brought reporters on Clinton's plane. Since then, she's regularly held informal gaggles and press conferences -- but even this shift, it seemed, happened grudgingly.
Clinton joked that her aide, Jennifer Palmieri, had forced her to the back of her plane to meet journalists.
"Good morning, everybody. I will come back later. Jen has convinced me I need to," Clinton said.
Clinton's allies defend her obsession with privacy by saying there's never been a political figure so unfairly victimized by her enemies -- by the "vast right-wing conspiracy" Clinton lambasted while she was first lady.
But justified or not, the tendency for opaqueness stings her again and again.
It was on display with her refusal to release speeches she gave to big Wall Street banks that became an issue with her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders. When the speeches were revealed in a WikiLeaks hack, their anodyne nature made everyone wonder what the fuss was about.
Clinton didn't disclose her diagnosis of pneumonia, but her fainting spell at a September 11 memorial event forced the campaign to come clean, renewing complaints that she simply doesn't want the public to know what is going on.
Trump can't resist a fight
Trump is also a master of self-immolation.
His gargantuan ego perpetually has him in hot water and leaves him volcanic at the smallest personal slight. It's a character glitch that's embroiled him in politically damaging spats with the parents of a fallen US Muslim solider, a Venezuelan beauty queen and an Indiana-born federal judge of Mexican heritage.
Trump's hubris was on display in the most damaging moment of his campaign, the release of a decade-old video showing him boasting about how his power and wealth meant he could make unwanted advances on women.
"When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything ... You can do anything," Trump told "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush.
Most presidential candidates at least give lip service to the idea that their campaigns are an expression of the will of the American people. Not Trump.
Since he descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower last year to jump into the race, it's been all about Trump: his wealth, how smart he is, which famous people he knows, and -- until his fortunes took a dive -- his poll numbers. It's an approach that has allowed him to leverage his outsize personality and anti-establishment fervor to his advantage among adoring crowds. But the flip side has hurt him.
Last week, for instance, he trampled all his own closing argument in a speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by lashing out at women who accused him of sexual assault.
He's also ignored the advice of political aides like Paul Manafort and Kellyanne Conway, who helped revive his campaign but then saw the nominee veer off on his own direction, causing his political fortunes to plummet.
And he's also now gone months without a formal press conference.
While each candidate seems unable to prevent their own deficiencies from defining their campaigns, they've been uncannily good at exploiting their rival's flaws.
Clinton's obsessive secrecy, which has drawn her into repeated scandals and pseudo-scandals over quarter of a century on the national political stage, is the building block on which Trump has built his "Crooked Hillary" caricature.
"This is the biggest political scandal since Watergate," Trump said on Saturday in Colorado, expanding his denunciation of her honesty and character.
Clinton, meanwhile, based her entire debate strategy around his fundamental flaw. She knew he'd be unable resist her provocations as she jabbed him over his bank balance, personality and treatment of women.
And she exploited his short fuse when his ego takes a hit, to bolster her case that he's unfit to be commander in chief.
"A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons," Clinton said during her Democratic convention address.
CNN's MJ Lee contributed to this report.


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วันพุธที่ 26 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2559

Hillary set to win

October 26, 2016 12:51 
By Shamsher M. Chowdhury, BB The Daily Star Asia News Network
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วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 20 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2559

The mystery of why you can't remmember being a baby

  • By Zaria Gorvett
26 July 2016

You’re out to lunch with someone you’ve known for a few years. Together you’ve held parties, celebrated birthdays, visited parks and bonded over your mutual love of ice cream. You’ve even been on holiday together. In all, they’ve spent quite a lot of money on you – roughly £63,224. The thing is: you can’t remember any of it.
From the most dramatic moment in life – the day of your birth – to first steps, first words, first food, right up to nursery school, most of us can’t remember anything of our first few years. Even after our precious first memory, the recollections tend to be few and far between until well into our childhood. How come?
This gaping hole in the record of our lives has been frustrating parents and baffling psychologists, neuroscientists and linguists for decades. It was a minor obsession of the father of psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud, who coined the phrase ‘infant amnesia’ over 100 years ago.
Probing that mental blank throws up some intriguing questions. Did your earliest memories actually happen, or are they simply made up? Can we remember events without the words to describe them? And might it one day be possible to claim your missing memories back?
(Credit: simpleInsomnia/Flickr/CC-BY-2.0)
Babies are sponges, absorbing information at an astonishing rate - yet they fail to form clear memories of events (Credit: simpleInsomnia/Flickr/CC-BY-2.0)
Part of the puzzle comes from the fact that babies are, in other ways, sponges for new information, forming 700 new neural connections every second and wielding language-learning skills to make the most accomplished polyglot green with envy. The latest research suggests they begin training their minds before they’ve even left the womb.  
But even as adults, information is lost over time if there’s no attempt to retain it. So one explanation is that infant amnesia is simply a result of the natural process of forgetting the things we experience throughout our lives.
An answer comes from the work of the 19th Century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, who conducted a series of pioneering experiments on himself to test the limits of human memory. To ensure his mind was a completely blank slate to begin with, he invented the “nonsense syllable” – a made-up word of random letters, such as “kag” or “slans” – and set to work memorising thousands of them.
His forgetting curve charts the disconcertingly rapid decline of our ability to recall the things we’ve learnt: left alone, our brains throw away half of all new material within an hour. By Day 30, we’ve retained about 2-3%.
Crucially, Ebbinghaus discovered that the way we forget is entirely predictable. To find out if babies’ memories are any different, all we have to do is compare the charts. When they did the maths in the 1980s, scientists discovered we recall far fewer memories between birth and the age of six or seven than you would expect. Clearly something very different was going on.
(Credit: simpleInsomnia/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)
Our culture can detemine how our memories form and develop (Credit: simpleInsomnia/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)
Some people can remember events from when they were just two years old, while others may have no recollection of anything until they were seven or eight.
Intriguingly, the veil lifts earlier for some than for others. Some people can remember events from when they were just two years old, while others may have no recollection of anything that has happened to them for seven or eight years. On average, patchy footage appears from about three-and-a-half. More intriguingly still, discrepancies in forgetting have also been observed from country to country, where the average onset of our earliest memories can vary by up to two years.
Could this offer some clues to explain the blank beforehand? To find out, psychologist Qi Wang at Cornell Universitycollected hundreds of memories from Chinese and American college students. As the national stereotypes would predict, American stories were longer, more elaborate and conspicuously egocentric. Chinese stories, on the other hand, were briefer and more factual; on average, they also began six months later.
It’s a pattern backed up by numerous other studies. Those with more detailed, self-focused memories seem to find them easier to recall. It’s thought that a dash of self-interest can be helpful, since developing your own perspective infuses events with meaning. “It is the difference between thinking ‘There were tigers at the zoo’ and ‘I saw tigers at the zoo and even though they were scary, I had a lot of fun’,” says Robyn Fivush, a psychologist at Emory University.
When Wang performed the same experiment again, this time asking the children’s mothers, she found the same pattern. In other words, those with hazy memories: blame your parents.
Wang’s first memory is of hiking in the mountains around her family home in Chongqing, China, with her mother and her sister. She was about six. The thing is, until she moved to the US, she’d never been asked. “In Eastern cultures childhood memories aren’t important. People are like ‘why do you care?’” she says.
(Credit: Kimberly Hopkins/Flickr/CC By 2.0)
Some psychologists argue that the ability to form vivid autobiographical memories only comes with the power of speech (Credit: Kimberly Hopkins/Flickr/CC By 2.0)
 “If society is telling you those memories are important to you, you’ll hold on to them,” says Wang. The record for the earliest memories goes to Maori New Zealanders, whose culture includes a strong emphasis on the past. Many can recallevents which happened when they were just two-and-a-half.
Our culture may also determine the way we talk about our memories, with some psychologists arguing that they only come once we have mastered the power of speech. “Language helps provide a structure, or organisation, for our memories, that is a narrative.  By creating a story, the experience becomes more organised, and therefore easier to remember over time,” says Fivush. Some psychologists are sceptical that this plays much of a role, however. There’s no difference between the age at which children who are born deaf and grow up without sign language report their earliest memories, for instance.
After a botched operation to cure his epilepsy damaged his hippocampus, HM was unable to recall any new events
This leads us to the theory that we can’t remember our first years simply because our brains hadn’t developed the necessary equipment. The explanation emerges from the most famous man in the history of neuroscience, known simply as patient HM. After a botched operation to cure his epilepsy damaged his hippocampus, HM was unable to recall any new events. “It’s the centre of our ability to learn and remember. If it weren’t for the hippocampus I wouldn’t be able to remember this conversation now,” says Jeffrey Fagen, who studies memory and learning at St John's University.
Intriguingly, however, he was still able to learn other kinds of information – just like babies. When scientists asked him to copy a drawing of a five-pointed star by looking at it in a mirror (harder than it sounds), he improved with each round of practise – despite the fact the experience itself felt completely new to him.
(Credit: simpleInsomnia/Flickr/CC By 2.0)
We can't always trust our early memories to be accurate - sometimes they will have been moulded by later conversations about the event (Credit: simpleInsomnia/Flickr/CC By 2.0)
Perhaps, when we’re very young, the hippocampus simply isn’t developed enough to build a rich memory of an event. Baby rats, monkeys and humans all continue to add new neurons to the hippocampus for the first few years of life and we all are all unable to form lasting memories as infants – and it seems that the moment we stop creating new neurons, we‘re suddenly able to form long-term memories. “For young babies and infants the hippocampus is very undeveloped,” says Fagen.
But is the under-formed hippocampus losing our long-term memories, or are they never formed in the first place? Since childhood events can continue to affect our behaviour long after we’ve forgotten them, some psychologists think they must be lingering somewhere. “The memories are probably stored someplace that’s inaccessible now, but it’s very difficult to demonstrate that empirically,” says Fagen.
We should be very wary about what we do recall from that time, though – our childhood is probably full of false memories for events that never occurred.
Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, has devoted her career to the phenomenon. “People can pick up suggestions and begin to visualise them – they become like memories,” she says.
Imaginary events
Loftus knows first-hand how easily this happens. Her mother drowned in a swimming pool when she was just 16. Years later, a relative convinced her that she had discovered her floating body. It all came flooding back, until a week later the same relative called and explained she’d got it wrong – it was someone else.
Of course, no one likes to be told their memories aren’t real. To convince the sceptics, Loftus knew she’d need unequivocal proof. Back in the 1980s, she recruited volunteers for a study and planted the memories herself.
Loftus spun an elaborate lie about a traumatic trip to a shopping mall when they got lost, before being rescued by a kindly elderly woman and reunited. To make the event more plausible, she even roped in their families. “We basically said to our research participants ‘we’ve talked to your mother, your mother has told us some things that happened to you.’” Nearly a third of her victims fell for it, with some apparently recalling the event in vivid detail. In fact, we’re often more confident in our imaginary memories than we are in those which actually happened.
Even if your memories are based on real events, they have probably been moulded and refashioned in hindsight – memories planted by conversations rather than first-person memories of the actual events. That time you thought it would be funny to turn your sister into a zebra with permanent marker? You saw it in a family video. The incredible third birthday cake your mother made you? Your older brother told you about it.
Perhaps the biggest mystery is not why we can’t remember our childhood – but whether we can believe any of our memories at all.
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วันอังคารที่ 18 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2559

Thailand: 96-year-old Prem Tinsulanonda is king regent



As head of king's advisory council, Prem automatically becomes regent while nation in mourning awaits new monarch.
Thailand's government has named a former prime minister as regent, who will act as caretaker of the monarchy while the country mourns the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
There was no official statement on Saturday about the appointment of Prem Tinsulanonda, but as head of the advisory council to the king, he automatically becomes the caretaker until a new monarch is crowned, according to the country's constitution. 
The 96-year-old Prem, head of the Privy Council, was one of Bhumibol's principal confidants and has ties to Bhumibol's popular daughter, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn.
In an appearance on Friday evening, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam made the announcement explaining the temporary succession, without mentioning Prem's name.
"There must be a regent for the time being in order not to create a gap," Wissanu was quoted by Thai media as saying.
Prem, who has been the head of the Privy Council since 1998, has a reputation for clean governance and for favouring compromise over confrontation.
He came up through the ranks of the powerful military and became prime minister in 1980, staying at the helm for eight years, while guiding the country through economic problems and a series of military challenges, including two coup attempts.
But Prem had been accused by supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of instigating the coup that removed the populist leader in 2006.
On Thursday, the government unexpectedly announced that Bhumibol's heir apparent, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, did not want to be immediately named king to give the nation time to mourn his father's death.
Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett, reporting from Bangkok, said there is no deadline set for the succession to take place. 
Thai Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn lights candles next to portrait of late Thai King Bhumibol on Saturday [EPA]
Days of mourning
For ordinary Thais, however, the overwhelming focus was on grieving for Bhumibol, not the succession.
"I haven't even started to think about that; I'm still in mourning over the king," said Rakchadaporn Unnankad, a 24-year-old Bangkok office worker.
"My tears started flowing out of me without my realising," she said, recalling the news of Bhumibol's death. "I didn't even want to hear the announcement."
Buddhist funeral ceremonies began on Friday night after a royal motorcade brought Bhumibol's body from nearby Siriraj Hospital to the Grand Palace complex.
Al Jazeera's Fawcett said more Thai mourners will be allowed into the royal palace in the coming days. 
In the Thai resort island of Phuket, police and soldiers dispersed a mob of several hundred people seeking a confrontation with a man they believed insulted the country's king.
Video shot Friday evening shows the crowd blocking the road outside a soy milk shop and waving placards with slurs such as "buffalo," a local slang word for stupidity. Some shouted for the man to come out.
Thai media reported that the crowd's anger stemmed from online comments that were made by the man long before the king's death.
Thailand has draconian lese majeste laws that impose stiff prison sentences for actions or writings regarded as derogatory towards the monarch or his family.
Bhumibol's death after 70 years on the throne was a momentous event in Thailand, where the monarch has been glorified as an anchor for a fractious society that for decades has been turned on its head by frequent coups.
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Remembering Thailand's beloved King Bhumibol
World's longest-serving monarch worked for unity in a country mired by political turmoil, coups, and military rule.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej was highly revered among Thai people during his seven decades on the throne [Getty Images]
Bangkok, Thailand - Long revered by Thais as god-like, the world's longest reigning monarch - His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej - has died at 88.
King Bhumibol, also known as Rama IX of the Chakri Dynasty, served 70 years as the constitutional monarch of the Southeast Asian nation.
He has been praised as a constant force of unification in often tumultuous Thailand, addressing the needs of both urban and rural populations, as well as moderating infighting among the nation's divided political parties.
Tirelessly striving to maintain the monarchy's influence amid a dozen coups, periods of military rule, and the killing of protesters, King Bhumibol's influence on the nation was undeniable.
He's often referred to as the "People's King" and will long be revered by those who bestowed this nickname upon him. His widespread social projects and development programmes secured him near-deity status, ensuring his legacy will persevere in a country with long-standing traditions of patriotism and loyalty to the royal family.
"The king is my life," artist Kitithat Ekanansiri, 49, told Al Jazeera. "He brought the electricity and developed our village, and I know he treated all of us [Thai people] the same. He is the centre of Thais."  
Few monarchs in history have earned the absolute adoration of their subjects to the same extent. His portraits, simultaneously stoic and benevolent, are displayed proudly in living rooms, shops, and public spaces throughout the country.
Sansoen Phra Barami, the royal anthem, is equally prominent, playing in cinemas, on television, and at the opening of every cultural event of note.
While such ceremony would likely be seen as an inconvenience in many Western nations, the vast majority of Thais rise to their feet or pause in respect for the king's history of public service.
Every year on December 5, tens of thousands of Thais dressed uniformly in yellow - the colour of the monarchy - flooded the streets and parks surrounding Bangkok's royal palace for Bhumibol's birthday. The night sky filled with floating fire-lanterns lit by crowds in honour of their "Father the King".
As is the case with many monarchs, Thais initially respected King Bhumibol out of an obligation to tradition. But as his contributions to society grew in number and scale, that respect morphed into something more akin to love.
"The king is more than the father of Thai people. When the country was on fire, he was the only person who could put it out," said Pan Buapradit, 59, a retired soldier. 
Achievements as 'Father' 
King Bhumibol was also portrayed as the "Development King". He had a diverse skill set and dedicated much of his reign to royal projects that developed infrastructure at the forefront of providing food and basic necessities for his people, by his people.
These projects were started as self-conducted experiments in the gardens of Chitralada Villa, at his majesty's personal residence, the Dusit Palace. Experiments were conducted in agriculture, forestry, and small-scale industry. Once deemed successful, projects were made available to his people and implemented all over Thailand.
Since his ascension to the throne, the king made regular visits to many rural and impoverished communities and sites, resulting in the implementation of some 3,000-plus projects since 1952.
"He created plenty of royal projects to give jobs for the poor to improve the quality of Thai people's lives, and even to create artificial rain to solve the drought issue," Pan said. "He took care of us in every aspect. Nobody will ever be able to do for us as much as he did."
King Bhumibol received several awards during his lifetime, most notably the first UNDP Human Development Lifetime Achievement Award presented by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The accolade hailed the monarch's tireless efforts to help the kingdom's most poor and vulnerable people.
The monarch's activities varied as different political regimes came to power over the course of his rule.
He famously became the first monarch since the Siamese Revolution of 1932 to boat down the Chao Praya River to offer robes to Buddhist temples during the 700-year-old Thai ceremony Krabuan Phayuhayattra Chonlamak. This Royal Barge Procession ceremony took place 16 times during his reign.
King Bhumibol also played a key role in Thailand's transition into democracy.
During deadly unrest in 1992, he urged opposition leaders General Suchinda Kraprayoon and retired Major-General Chamlong Srimuang to find a peaceful solution, and during a televised event, the two knelt before him in respect of royal protocol.
His royal intervention led to a general election that resulted in the formation of a civilian government - earning him great respect from his nation.
In 1997, the Asia financial crisis struck Thailand, devastating its economy.
"He turned the crisis into the opportunity to teach us to live in a [self-] sufficient way," Anucha Thirakanont, 47, an academic, told Al Jazeera. "We will not see anybody work for the country as hard as him and we will never see Thai people love and respect anybody as much as him."
Personal life
Bhumibol was the son of HRH Prince Mahidol Adulyadej and HRH Princess Srinagarindra.
He was born on December 5, 1927, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States, the only king of Thailand born outside of the country.

His uncle Rama VII named him Bhumibol Adulyadej, an auspicious and prophetic name that translates to "Strength of the land" or "Incomparable power".

King Bhumibol and his two siblings spent most of their formative years in Switzerland under the watchful eye of their mother after their father's death in 1929. His older brother, Ananda Mahidol, became the eighth king of Thailand at the age of nine.

After World War II and Japanese occupation, the family returned to Thailand. In June 1946, King Ananda died in his bedroom from a single gunshot wound to the head. His death has never fully been explained.
After his brother's death, Bhumibol ascended the throne and returned to Switzerland, where he redirected his studies at the University of Lausanne from science and technology to law and political science to better prepare himself for rule.
It was during this period of the new king's life that he met his future wife, Rajawongse Sirikit, on a trip to Paris. The couple were engaged in July 1949 and married on April 28, 1950.
Bhumibol was crowned King of Thailand on May 5, 1950.

With the stabilising force of the beloved monarch now gone, many questions about Thailand's future remain.
"I think that the new generation knows about the king through their lessons in schools or their family, but they do not have direct experience like their parents," said Chollada Hutayon, a 27-year-old engineer.
"Therefore, some may not feel as much, and this can cause a big change for Thailand."
Source: Al Jazeera News


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วันจันทร์ที่ 17 ตุลาคม พ.ศ. 2559

Bog bodies

  • By Adam H Graham
18 October 2016
As my train from Hamburg to Denmark chugged past soggy green fields and sun-dappled birch forests, we passed yet another willow-shrouded bog topped with blue green algae or tidy duckweed. Even from the moving train, I could sense they were dark and gentle places, peaceful waterholes like the one I imagine Hamlet’s ill-fated lover Ophelia drowned in near Elsinore. My train had entered bog body country. 
Bog bodies are 2,000-year old humans discovered in the bogs, mires and moors across Northern Europe, from Ireland to Poland. 
Many modern archeologists believe that these Iron Age people were sacrificial victims, killed and then delicately deposited in the bog as a ritualistic offering to the gods. Other scholars speculate that they were criminals, immigrants or wayfarers.
Denmark has one of the world’s highest concentrations of bogs and bog bodies – many perfectly preserved over the centuries, pickle-like, by acids generated by sphagnum moss, the living foundations of these wetlands. Most were accidentally discovered by turf harvesters between 1800 and 1960 when Denmark still burned peat as fuel.
Most bog bodies were discovered between 1800 and 1960 by harvesters burning peat (Credit: Credit: imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo)
Most bog bodies were discovered between 1800 and 1960 by harvesters burning peat (Credit: imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo)
Forensics and modern autopsies have revealed that almost all of them – both men and women – met a violent end, some with finely wrought nooses around their necks and others with horrifically slashed necks.
Because very little is known about Iron Age Denmark – there was no written language in Denmark then, and few written texts of Romans and Greeks survive – we can only speculate as to who they were and why they were murdered. However, since the majority of Iron Age people were cremated, we do know that these souls met a distinctly different end from their contemporaries. I wanted to visit these bog bodies to get a better insight into the mysterious world they came from.
My first stop was Vejle, a small city of about 100,000 in southeast Jutland, 240km west of Copenhagen. The gorgeous, hilly region is atypical of flat Denmark. The roads corkscrewed around gently rolling farm hills and undulating glacially sculpted valleys, pocked with kettle ponds and woodsy bogs lined with pink orchids and stiff umber cattails.
Acids generated in the wetlands preserve bodies for centuries (Credit: Credit: Asist RF Arkiv / Alamy Stock Photo)
Acids generated in the wetlands preserve bodies for centuries (Credit: Asist RF Arkiv / Alamy Stock Photo)
I was there to meet with Mads Ravn, head archeologist at the Vejle Museum, who oversees a fascinating collection of artefacts, including Roman coins, inscribed swords and swastika brooches (an ancient symbol that existed before its association with the Nazi Party) that were all found in the bogs and are thought to be votive offerings, possibly for Iron Age gods or deities.
From a dark room in the back of the museum, I heard the gloomy call of the elk antler horn, piped in here by modern speakers, but often used as a distress call in Iron Age Denmark. I heeded its call and entered. In the darkness lay the thin leathery body of Haraldskær Woman in an open glass sarcophagus, the expression on her ashy face fixed in a state of shock. She was not as peaceful as bog bodies I’d seen in books; it was eerie and I felt like I was intruding on her privacy.
“When she was discovered by peat diggers in 1835, she was thought to be the 10th-century Viking Queen Gunhildd, who according to the Jomsvikinga Saga was drowned by her husband Harald Bluetooth” said Ravn, scratching his beard and looking at her puzzlingly.
“But that’s untrue and we now know from radiocarbon dating that she’s about 2,200 years old.”
The Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus boasts one of the best museums on Iron Age Europe (Credit: Credit: Tim Graham / Alamy Stock Photo)
The Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus boasts one of the best museums on Iron Age Europe (Credit: Tim Graham / Alamy Stock Photo)
Haraldskær Woman was found naked aside her cloak and was pinned down in the bog by tree branches, probably after she died. Grooves on her neck suggest strangulation. Additional forensic analysis revealed her stomach contents at the time of her death, which included unhusked millet and blackberries, a strange last meal for a meat-centric society.
“We’re now doing isotope analysis on her hair and working with a new DNA technique that’s extracting DNA from the inner ear. We’re hoping to get results soon so we can find out more about her.”
Ravn and I drove 10km west to the unmarked Haraldskær (Harald’s Bog), where Haraldskær Woman was discovered. Like the bogs I’d seen from the train, it was covered in bright green duckweed and surrounded by a dense thicket of trees, under which crooked purple mushrooms and bright red berries burst with color in pockets of sunlight. There’s something magical and otherworldly about these bogs, and it’s easy to see why they were once chosen as sacrificial sites – and why they maintain an inexplicable magnetic pull today.
Grauballe Man, the main attraction of the Moesgaard Museum, died when his throat was slit (Credit: Credit: robertharding / Alamy Stock Photo)
Grauballe Man, the main attraction of the Moesgaard Museum, died when his throat was slit (Credit: robertharding / Alamy Stock Photo)
My next stop was Aarhus, Denmark’s second biggest city, to visit the breathtaking new Moesgaard Museum that’s home to one of the best exhibits on Iron Age Europe. The star attraction here is Grauballe Man. Discovered in 1952, the perfectly preserved bog body sits in a natural, almost yoga-like, lounging position, his feet and skin almost entirely intact, his face elegant with sharp features and a button nose.
“Like most bog bodies, his hair and skin was turned red by a chemical process called the Maillard reaction,” Pauline Asingh, archeologist and head of exhibitions, explained. “He’s really a beautiful man,” she said 
But the serene look on Grauballe Man’s face belies his violent ending. “He was forced on his knees and his throat was slashed from ear to ear by someone standing behind him. But he was deposited with care into the bog,” Asingh continued. “It might sound violent and careless to us, but sacrifices were an important part of cultural life in this period.”
Tollund Man was found just 40m from Elling Woman with a noose still around his neck (Credit: Credit: robertharding / Alamy Stock Photo)
Tollund Man was found just 40m from Elling Woman with a noose still around his neck (Credit: robertharding / Alamy Stock Photo)
Asingh led me to another exhibit, this time on bog dogs. In 2015, 13 sacrificed dogs from around 250AD were found in the Skødstrup bog near Aarhus, suggesting that ritualistic sacrifice wasn’t limited to humans. In fact, the exhibit included a series of emotional animated shorts that captured the spirit of devotion behind these often violent sacrifices. In one, a young girl puts a wreath of flowers around her dog’s neck before it’s killed. My visit to Moesgaard reminded me that although it can be tempting to simplify the past, these are people, not artefacts, each with their own complicated life story.
My final stop was to the small town of Silkeborg, 44km west of Aarhus. Here, the butter-yellow Museum Silkeborg has a small but powerful display on bog bodies and is home to one of the best preserved specimens in the world. Tollund Man, about 2,400 years old, is so remarkably undamaged that when his body was discovered in the 1950s, authorities thought it might be a boy who’d been reported missing.
Like some of his fellow bog bodies, he was hanged; the intricately woven noose that killed him was still around his neck, but his long nose and smooth brow were perfectly intact, his full lips curled in a mysterious semi-smile.
Approximately 2,400 years old, Tollund Man is part of an exhibit in Silkeborg (Credit: Credit: Tim Graham / Getty)
Approximately 2,400 years old, Tollund Man is part of an exhibit in Silkeborg (Credit: Tim Graham / Getty)
In the next room was Elling Woman, who was found just 40m from Tollund Man and is thought to have died around the same time. She’s also believed to have been hanged, and is beloved for her fabulous hair, a 90cm red braid tied in an elaborate knot.
Ole Neilson, the museum archaeologist, drove me to the Bjældskovdal, a sprawling raised bog about 15km away where the two bodies were found. It’s since been preserved as a nature park and is lined with wooden boardwalks and signed trails. During our brisk walk, a light mist hovered over the lake-like bog, and we spied great blue herons, mallard ducks, violet flowers and of course spongy sphagnum moss.
As we stopped to regard the bog, I wondered what other secrets its murky depths were hiding. The bog flowed slowly and hungrily, preserving everything that fell into it for millennia, a reminder of its everlasting and awesome power.
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