For some reason Ustream only recorded the first 70 minutes of that program, so the remaining 2+ hours is lost forever. Apart from this inaugural Christmas Message, which must be preserved for future generations! If the video player does not appear immediately below, try watching it directly at Viddler.

Warning: There is “strong language”. Well, not by my standards, but maybe by yours.

The full text is over the jump, should you wish to read along. However my main aim in putting it there was to attract Teh Googles.

Also, the Message is riddled with continuity and other errors. Perhaps, if you’re bored, you can amuse yourself by listing them in the comments. I won’t mind.

My especial thanks to ’Pong for the massive amount of work on this silly project.

His Benevolence Stilgherrian’s Christmas Message 2008

Good evening, sheep. Sorry, “subjects”. We trust that you’ve had time today to partake in the traditions of Christmas.

The gluttony. The binge drinking. Bongs and backyard cricket. False affection for the relatives you hardly know. False enthusiasm for presents that you’d never have bought with your own money. A fight with your parents about something that’s so deeply repressed in your childhood memories that you can’t remember what it was about — neither of you can — but you know that you hate them you hate them you hate them!

Another drink. Another bong — though perhaps later. Furtive sex with a person you later discover is your actually a close niece or nephew. Another three drinks. Then the depressing realisation that you’ve paid for this. Your credit card is exhausted. And so are you.

By now your guests have departed. You’ve stumbled back inside, ignoring the cyclonic disaster hell that is your back yard and the rest of your house — the rest of your life. You slump on the couch, pour an even larger drink to wash down another year of complete misery. You turn on the TV. You realise that, like every other year before, all 40 channels are full of shit.

As I say, you pay for this.

And so here we are. Cheers!

As your Tsar, I’ve had a challenging year in 2008. And I suppose you have too, but in a simpler, proletarian kind of way.

The global economy has collapsed. Apparently you shouldn’t lend money to people who can’t afford to pay it back! Apparently credit default swaps are really just a kind of expensive game of musical chairs. But the music’s stopped.

The signs of global warming have become obvious, and all of those predictions — the Arctic ice packs melting, the most rapid variation of climate, of floods, hurricanes, of fire, drought — they’ve all happened just as was predicted three decades ago.

The pointless wars over oil continue. We respond not by decreasing oil production [sic], but by sinking billions of dollars into last century’s transport system.

But let’s not forget the true meaning of Christmas.

Let’s remember a young man — maybe around 30 years old — a man of Middle Eastern appearance, we’d call him today. He dedicated his life to helping people, to healing the sick. Though a humble man, he was mercilessly attacked. He was accused of the most heinous of crimes — accused of horrific crimes — a pawn in the vicious game played out by a militaristic empire.

I refer of course to Dr Mohamed Haneef.

Dr Haneef was the chosen scapegoat of a government led by that miserable toad John Winston Howard — the Man of Steel — supported by his evil Minister for Immigration Kevin Andrews.

A year ago we celebrated the end of Howard’s depressing anti-human regime. We hoped that Chairman Kevin Rudd’s Iced Vo-Vo Revolution would change everything. But only last week the enquiry into the whole Haneef debacle said that there’d been mistakes at the highest levels of government, at the Australian Federal Police. Nevertheless, the Rudd government said it still has full confidence in its police commissioner, Mick Keelty — a man who two years ago actually suggested forcibly “re-programming” people’s political beliefs. Need I point out that that is the most fundamental breach of people’s human rights?

Meanwhile Chairman Rudd has failed to address the fact that Australia is the largest per capita consumer of carbon fuels — more than any other nation on the entire planet — and his Minister for Being a Complete Prick, Stephen Conroy, is trying to implement the most comprehensive censorship of the Internet of any Western democracy.

Fuck this! Fuck this!

Fuck this!

Some famous historian once said that it always takes a few years for the world to notice how things will change.. Or was it that tanned young apprentice plumber that I had the other year. What was his name? Anyway, whoever it was, with hindsight we can see that the United States became the world’s global leader at the end of World War One, but it wasn’t until the end of the Second World War that everyone became aware of that.

Similarly, the Industrial Age is over, and with it the great industrial age empire of the United States of America and the corrupt, secretive military-industrial complex of the Neocons. Dick Cheney has been indicted. They’ve even voted in a blackfella for President!

But look, before we get carried away with the audacity and hope of President Obama‘s new regime, consider the words of Crikey‘s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane:

Politics is more or less based around people of high principles and good will discovering that the obtaining and exercising of power involves doing bad things, distasteful things, amoral things, [it] involves unpleasant trade-offs and not just the famous half-loaves of compromise but [the] stale, mouldy crusts. And it’s all the more that way because its symbiotic partner, its Siamese twin the media, dislikes complexity and nuance, in favour of the same simple narratives, repeated with an ever-changing cast of characters but the same plots and [the same] moral lessons over and over again.

Yet all this is changing. And the players are afraid.

The newly-hyperconnected world means that politics and the media is changing. Radically. Witness the reporting on the Mubmai terrorist attacks. Witness the reporting on Thailand’s People’s Alliance for a Not-Quite-Democracy. Witness the speed at which resistance to Senator Conroy’s Rabbit-Proof Firewall is organising itself. Haha!

The 21st Century has finally begun, and in the year 2009 we will see it unfold. Cheers!

Looking more locally, let us consider the achievements of the New South Wales state government.

[long pause]

Even more locally, I’m pleased to see that in my village of Enmore in Sydney, next to Newtown, it’s full of children. While it’s easy to complain about the pushers — what Americans would call “strollers” — which are bigger than Belgium, there is a joy in seeing the next generation coming into being. And not in that disturbed “we must protect the children” kind of way which imagines children are threatened by pretty much everything on the planet. But in that wondrous, joyous, happy way which I know every parent watching this tonight understands.

Children are our future. They’re growing up in a world where they’re always connected to the global grid, where they know themselves whether some person they’re talking to is one of their peers or some creep — and it’s only ignorant politicians with their own outdated agendas, with their own pervasive ignorance of information technology, who don’t understand.

Well fuck them! Fuck the lot of them!

Cheers!

Finally, let us remember the words of that great poet:

In touch with the ground
I’m on the hunt I’m after you
Scent and a sound, I’m lost and I’m found
And I’m hungry like the wolf
Strut on a line, it’s discord and rhyme
I howl and I whine I’m after you
Mouth is alive all running inside
And I’m hungry like the wolf.

Goodnight. Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

You may now kiss my ring.

The result was clear even as nominations came in. Our Dear Chairman, Kevin “5%” Rudd, was voted “Cnut of the Week” by 51% of Stilgherrian Live viewers last night for approving what was seen as a lame target for reducing carbon emissions.

The program is now online for your viewing pleasure.

I’d thought Bernadette McMenamin would win, based on what I wrote in Crikey on Wednesday, but no. She scored 34%. Presumed-corrupt Illinois governor Rod Blagojevitch was third with 9% for his efforts to sell a senatorial seat in Washington, and Thailand’s People’s Alliance for Democracy came in last with just 6% for their efforts to make Thailand’s political system anything but democratic.

Next Thursday is Christmas Day. There will be a special program, His Excellency Stilgherrian’s Christmas Message, at a time to be announced. Stay tuned.

Thailand’s long-simmering political crisis finally made it onto Western TVs this week when protesters closed Bangkok’s international airport, disrupting [shock horror] Western tourists.

The essence is that the People’s Alliance for Democracy, the guys in the yellow shirts who’ve shut down the airport, want prime minister Somchai Wongsawat (สมชาย วงศ์สวัสดิ์) to resign. They reckon he’s the puppet of a former corrupt prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.

You could argue that Somchai’s election, while controversial, was constitutionally valid. But PAD has run out of patience with the string of corrupt and presumed-corrupt politicians. Even the army chief reckons it might be time to call fresh elections to clear the air. But Somchai won’t budge.

This isn’t a simple story of The People versus the Evil Politician though. The roots of conflict go deep into Thai history and culture.

Forget Western ideas of Left versus Right, monetary policy, industrial relations, or involvement in foreign oil wars. Thai voters don’t have that sophisticated a political education. Thai politics is about myriad factions, popular leaders who’ll solve your problems and “Who’s side are you on?”

We can trace one key theme from the 1960s when Bangkok, like so many Third World capitals, sucked in all the people and resources from the rural hinterland to create a modern metropolis. The 1980s and early 1990s saw massive growth too. But rural Thais, particularly in the heavily-populated farmlands of the north and north-west, felt left out.

In 2001 Thaksin Shinawatra (กษิณ ชินวัตร), a billionaire telco magnate, became that popular leader. He barraged poorly-educated rural voters with the best political marketing and pork-barrelling they’d ever seen.

In a landslide victory, Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party (ไทยรักไทย, literally “Thais Love Thais”) became the first ever to achieve a clear majority in Thailand’s multi-party parliament. His policies helped alleviate rural poverty and claimed to provide universal health care. His re-election in 2005 had the highest voter turnout in Thai history.

However Thaksin’s government was plagued by allegations of corruption, conflicts of interest, tax evasion, lèse-majesté — even treason. This culminated with the January 2006 sale of his family’s remaining interest in Shin Corporation, the largest mobile phone operator in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, to Singaporean interests. His family made US$1.88 billion — on which they paid precisely zero tax. Rural folk might perhaps see that as a canny business deal. Urban middle-class Thais were appalled.

In September 2006, amid continuing anti-corruption investigations and protests which had been running more than a year, Thaksin left the country for a meeting in New York. As soon as he was out of the country, tanks rolled onto Bangkok streets, the soldiers wearing yellow ribbons to denote their loyalty to the King, the much-loved Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Thailand knows how to do military coups. Well organised. Not a single shot was fired.

My Thai partner ’Pong once overheard a TV report about some other country which had experienced three military coups since the 1960s or whatever. He shouted back, “Is that all? You fucking amateurs!”

Thaksin’s TRT was declared an illegal political organisation. A new constitution was drawn up and fresh elections were held in December 2007.

The leading party was People Power Party (PPP) headed by former deputy prime minister, Governor of Bangkok and Thaksin loyalist Samak Sundaravej (สมัคร สุนทรเวช).

On Australia’s SBS TV, Samak was asked about claims the PPP was just TRT re-formed, and he merely a front for Thaksin’s interests. “So what if I am?” he retorted.

PPP didn’t achieve a clear electoral majority. But a coalition with tiny minority parties pushed them over the line and Samak became Prime Minister. Resentment simmered.

Samak Sundaravej is a deeply controversial politician.

In 1976 there was a massacre at Thammasat University when police, army and other forces opened fire on students protesting the return of an ousted military dictator. Officially the death toll is 46, but it was probably much higher

Samak has been identified as the chief operator of the ultra-right Armoured Car radio program, which incited hatred against the students, calling them communists and claiming they were “committing suicide”. Only one Thai media outlet reported that the massacre had even happened, the leftish English-language newspaper The Nation.

To this day, though, Samak claims there was only ever one death.

Samak was even sentenced to two years in jail for defamation, having accused another politician of accepting accepting bribes. The case was still going through the Appeal Court at the time of the 2007 elections.

Samak was hounded by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (พันธมิตรประชาชนเพื่อประชาธิปไตย). Originally a coalition of protesters against Thaksin’s government, PAD consists of middle and upper-class people from Bangkok and the South, supported by the conservative elite and factions of the Thai Army, some leaders of Democrat Party, and leaders of state-enterprise labour unions. They disbanded when Thaksin was ousted, declaring their aims achieved, but re-formed when Samak was elected.

On 26 August 2008, PAD occupied the grounds of government buildings in Bangkok’s Old City in their tens of thousands, calling for Samak’s resignation.

Well-organised and well-funded, they barricaded themselves in with barbed wire, bamboo spikes and an impromptu electric fence, and were joined by their paramilitary force, the Srivichai Warriors. They resisted numerous police attempts to clear them away.

On 2 September, Samak declared a state of emergency. Army chief General Anupong Paochinda (อนุพงษ์ เผ่าจินดา), one of the leaders of the 2006 coup against Thaksin, declined to intervene, saying it was a civil matter.

The stalemate was resolved not on the streets of Bangkok but in the Constitutional Court.

Samak is also a celebrity chef, presenter of the popular TV program Tasting, Ranting.

On 9 September 2008, the Constitutional Court ruled that Samak’s paid TV gig was illegal moonlighting and ordered him to step down. He did. A short time later his appeal against his defamation sentence failed. 73-year-old Samak skipped bail and headed for the US, supposedly seeking treatment for his liver cancer.

Parliament, after some confusion, chose a new prime minister: Somchai Wongsawat (สมชาย วงศ์สวัสดิ์). Thaksin’s brother-in-law.

Unsurprisingly, PAD sees him as a corrupt puppet.

Meanwhile, earlier in 2008, Thaksin and his wife Potjaman Shinawatra had returned to Bangkok to face their corruption charges. They were immediately arrested and charged, but released on bail. Potjaman was found guilty of illegal property dealings and sentenced to three years imprisonment, but released on bail pending appeal. Her adopted brother Bhanapot Damapong and her secretary were also found guilty. Thaksin himself awaited trial. However Thaksin and Potjaman were allowed to visit Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games and did a runner, first to the UK, then east Asia.

Thaksin was tried in absentia, found guilty and sentenced to two years jail. He was last seen in Dubai, where he said he will not appeal the sentence and will make a statement on 14 December.

Which brings us to 7 October 2008… with both previous prime ministers Thaksin and Samak guilty of criminal offences, sentenced to jail and on the run.

PAD, who’d now been occupying government house grounds for weeks, gave new prime minister Somchai until 6pm to resign. A car bomb killed a middle-aged man — possibly the bomber himself. The ultimatum expired. The demonstration exploded into riot. The prime minister was evacuated through the back fence and helicoptered to safety.

In the subsequent teargas attacks and gunfire, there was another death and at least 381 injured. It was Bangkok’s worst violence in 16 years. Finally, tanks rolled onto the streets of the Old City to restore order.

In the weeks since then, it’s been further stalemate.

PAD has continued its occupation and their demands for Somchai’s resignation. They’ve threatened that their union members will cut electricity and water services, and their wealthier backers will lead a bank run to destabilise the economy — though neither has happened yet. Meanwhile, red-shirted pro-Thaksin forces have been mobilising in opposition.

Monday this week, PAD announced it was time for the final showdown.

Violence has escalated, including PAD’s protest moving to Bangkok’s old airport at Don Mueang (DMK) in the northern suburbs, where prime minister Somchai had moved his cabinet, and then the new Suvarnabhumi international airport (BKK), which has been closed since Wednesday.

Prime minister Somchai, returning to Thailand after the APEC meeting in Peru, has chosen to stay out of harm’s way in the northern regional city of Chiang Mai.

And today…

As I write this, it’s Saturday morning Bangkok time. PAD has said it’ll keep the airport closed until Somchai resigns. Police say PAD has 4000 permanently encamped at Suvarnabhumi, which PAD has barricaded with razor wire, and a further 2500 at Don Mueang — though their hyperconnected mob could quickly summon many, many more.

PAD is openly calling for a military coup, but General Anupong continues to say a coup won’t solve the country’s problems. “If the people are one, we are with the people. But, if the people are divided, there is no place for us,” he’s been quoted as saying. “The way out through taking control over the country by the military is a closed door and no more… No one should try to take this way.”

However Somchai has sacked his police chief, declared emergency rule, and authorised police to storm the airports and other occupied sites. Former prime minister Thaksin is believed to be pulling the strings from Dubai.

PAD has vowed a fight to the death.

Thank you. Any questions?