[Tlc] T-poilitics

[justinm at ucr.edu]

Three articles forwarded by a member.
Thanks,
justin

Why Mr. Samak Must Go
by Daniel C. Lynch
Posted September 5, 2008
Thailand’s media-bashing, brash, stubborn, and quirky Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej passed up an opportunity to resign Thursday morning in a speech to the nation that some had predicted would become his swan song. Instead, the embattled premier, despite reeling from the previous day’s resignation of highly respected Foreign Minister Tej Bunnag, and from Army chief Anupong Paochinda’s open refusal to use force against street demonstrators, vowed to remain in power indefinitely to “protect democracy.” But in fact, only Mr. Samak’s departure can pave the way for resumption of the remarkable progress in democratic deepening Thailand achieved in the 1990s—progress brought decisively to a halt under the premiership of populist Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra after his ascendancy to power in February 2001.
Thailand’s current crisis is not, as some analysts have suggested, structurally insoluble. Premier Samak’s irascible personality is itself the key factor now standing in the way of a solution. Even a Thaksin/Samak associate from the ruling People’s Power Party (PPP) would be an acceptable replacement in the minds of many members (and certainly supporters) of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Just so long as the new premier would have a less combative style than either Mr. Samak or Mr. Thaksin, and just so long as he or she possessed more of the subtle skills necessary to govern in a semi-modernized, pluralistic society, almost any of the conceivable candidates would be acceptable at this point. But the new premier would also have to show signs of embracing a worldview that conceives of democracy not cynically as a tool for amassing power but as a valued end in itself, and as a process that requires patient cultivation and perfection over a long period of time.
Mr. Samak, long a leading figure of the violent right in Thai politics, is entirely incapable of playing such a role. His claim that he must stay in office to safeguard democracy is based solely on the fact that his party and its coalition partners were elected to their majority position in the House of Representatives last December. Resigning now to appease protesting mobs, he contends, would violate the principle of majority rule. Mr. Samak and his defenders do rightly note that some of the leading figures in the PAD have consistently called in recent months for replacing the current democratic system in which the House is constituted by popular elections with a new system of guided democracy that would include a mix of popular elections, elections through functional constituencies, and appointments by authoritarian elites. These PAD proposals would undoubtedly damage Thai democracy, and Mr. Samak and his supporters can cleverly point to them as good reasons for him to stay in office even though he himself is certainly no democrat in spirit, or even often in practice.
Why does the PAD view electoral democracy with suspicion? The answer is the widely-remarked cleavage between largely liberal and cosmopolitan Bangkok (plus points farther south) and the poorer and less-educated communities of the North and Northeast. Outside Bangkok and the South, corrupt politicians running entrenched machines are more likely to buy votes from people with not much else to sell. Poor people selling votes also seem culturally to prefer authoritarian, tough-guy prime ministers who assert commitments to leveling the socioeconomic playing field through populist policies such as subsidized health care and cheap (but fiscally-irresponsible) loans. The poor far prefer such tough-guy populists to the lawyerly policy-wonk types of the Democrat Party, who, in the eyes of many northerners and northeasterners, blow a lot of hot air about human rights and clean elections and rooting out corruption and the like, but fail to demonstrate how these intangibles would bring material benefits to their communities.
For all of these reasons, key PAD leaders contend, Thailand’s upcountry poor will always routinely vote into office the corrupt machine politicians allied with Mr. Thaksin and now Mr. Samak. These voters will also pose little or no objection when the Thaksins and the Samaks proceed to gut the power of the independent commissions first established in the 1997 “People’s Constitution” and in other ways undermine the checks-and-balances mechanisms central to the successful functioning of any democracy. In short, the PAD leaders argue, given Thailand’s distinctive socioeconomic and cultural structure, electoral democracy can paradoxically lead only to democracy’s self-destruction in Thailand, divided as it is by such severe inequalities.
Mr. Samak understands these points perfectly well. He is being disingenuous when he asserts that merely the fact of his being elected makes him the protector of democracy. He is also being disingenuous in a much more direct way: In July, he embarked upon a campaign to revise the 2007 Constitution for the purpose of weakening or entirely gutting the independent commissions and removing the clauses that prescribe extremely tough penalties for election-tampering and corruption. Just earlier this week, the Election Commission recommended to the Constitutional Court that Mr. Samak’s PPP be disbanded for election-tampering, as Mr. Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party had been disbanded in 2007. The courts have been much more willing to take an aggressive approach toward dirty politics ever since being instructed to do so by King Bhumipol during a crucial royal conclave with senior jurists in April 2006. Mr. Samak claims he is trying to protect democracy by staying in office, but his efforts to revise the constitution indicate clearly that he is instead trying to undermine it. Moreover, he is pursuing this course of action in the face of widespread and profoundly deep public opposition.
The new activism of the courts and independent commissions is one reason to be optimistic about prospects for Thailand resuming the process of democratic deepening pursued so successfully in the 1990s. Once Mr. Samak is gone, even assuming the PPP (or, if disbanded, its successor) is returned to office following new elections, the next prime minister will almost certainly be someone with a significantly more diplomatic and politically-gifted personality than the crude Mr. Samak or the egotistical Mr. Thaksin. Mr. Thaksin chose Mr. Samak as his proxy; but neither man is likely to be able to choose Thailand’s next prime minister. Once a more sensible and public-spirited prime minister assumes office, no matter from which party, the PAD’s more radical leaders will have little choice but to work with the new leader since there is actually very little support in Thailand for abandoning electoral democracy. Moreover, it appears that key PAD leaders understand this point perfectly well. Even if a small number of radical holdouts were to insist on continuing protests, so long as the new prime minister is a wiser and more modest figure than Messr. Samak and Thaksin—and she or he could hardly fail to be—the protestors would rapidly dissolve into an insignificant political force.
Public-opinion polls consistently show that the vast majority of Thai people want democracy for their country and that they identify with the larger community of democratic states in international society. Thailand-wide, but most notably in Bangkok, people recognize the serious flaws in Thai democracy. In response, since the 1990s, groups and individuals in an activated civil society have devoted enormous energies nationwide to debating, mobilizing, protesting, and in other ways demonstrating their care and concern to improve their political system. Things went badly astray under Mr. Thaksin, but arguably he was an aberration, as was the military coup of September 2006 that proved unavoidably necessary to stop the billionaire tycoon’s efforts to consolidate a new populist authoritarianism. Recovering from those years and resuming the positive course of the 1990s will take time, patience, and compromise. With Mr. Thaksin now forced to seek asylum in England, the next important step in putting Thailand back on track will be Mr. Samak’s resignation. And then there will be many important steps to follow.
Mr. Lynch, associate professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, is the author of “Rising China and Asian Democratization: Socialization to Global Culture in the Political Transformations of Thailand, China, and Taiwan” (Stanford University Press, 2008).

B T Tan @ 2008-09-08 12:24:26

While it could certainly be true that Mr Samak may not be the best or most capable person to be the premier of Thailand, it is rather preposterous to argue that his stepping down would pave the way for a democratic progress. Can it be plausible that his replacement by another PPP leader will lead to an amiable solution of the current chaos? For that matter, will the opposition PAD members accept the new arrangement when they are persistently yet fearlessly eyeing for power? PPP won the election and obtained the mandate of the people. If this is not democracy, what else is? Do not tell the world that democracy is still healthy and alive if the minority rules -- unless of course, someone decides to give it a brand new definition. (Tan Boon Tee)
 

Su Hut @ 2008-09-07 04:02:19

1) Generally, foreign media do not seem to understand the intricacy of Thai politics, so they tend to report the current mass protest in Thailand on the face value by wrongly criticizing the protest, led by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), against Samak and his government as anti-democracy (simply because the government won the elections through a democratic process), while in fact the protest is pro-“real” democracy. 2) Although Samak and other Thaksin’s allies won the elections, there is no secret that they won them through massive votes buying in rural areas. Massive votes buying cannot be considered as a “real” democracy (but a “pseudo” democracy) because it resulted in massive corruptions and misconducts (like what Thaksin and his wife have done in many cases, two of which have already been found guilty by the court, and the rest will follow suit). 3) This massive votes-buying kind of democracy also led to the formation of a “pseudo democratic government” or an “authoritarian government” who has absolute power to do anything they want. Once Samak’s government had come to power, they tried to overthrow or meddle with Thailand’s Constitution in order to nullify all of Thaksin’s corruption cases. That is why PAD rose against them. 4) Three other government’s misconducts that angered PAD and the Thai people at large are as follows: (a) Samak’s government has secretly signed a treaty with Cambodia (without discussing with the cabinet/parliament) to allow Cambodia to take over Thailand’s sovereign territory in the unresolved joint area of the Khao Pra Viharn heritage site (in exchange for Cambodia’s agreement to allow Thaksin to develop his personal mega project in Cambodia). (b) Samak’s government has secretly agreed to let Cambodia take over Thailand’s sovereign offshore overlapping area which is full of precious natural gas resources (again, for Thaksin’s sake). (c) Samak’s government has attempted to overthrow the monarchy as evidenced in some VDOs featur
ing one of the ministers’ (Chakrapob) speeches against the monarchy. 5) We heard that many groups of Thai people are urging PAD to formally inform the King about the serious misconducts committed by Samak and his government (mentioned above), and to sue them in the court on these misconducts. 6) Due to the government’s series of misconducts, the current mass protest, led by PAD, does not occur only in Bangkok, but spreading into many provinces in the Northeast and South of Thailand. Actually, foreign media should have been happy with what is happening now in Thailand because it is a “pro-real democracy” phenomenon. Like Rome, a “real” democracy cannot be built/achieved in one day. Rather, it takes a long evolution process, dominated first by “pseudo” democracy with massive votes buying and corruptions. But with the current mass protest led by PAD, Thailand is now moving toward achieving a “real” democracy which involves civil society participation to create a transparency system of good governance for check and balance. 7) Having said all these, we hope that foreigners, especially foreign media, will now be more aware of what lies behind the mass protest and be balanced in their points of view, rather than siding with the “authoritarian government” or the “pseudo democratic government.” 8) We are sending this message to many foreign media to increase their awareness of the intricacy of Thai politics, so that they will stop blaming the mass protest led by PAD. From Pro-Monarchy and Pro-“Real” Democracy Thai People (both in Thailand and Abroad)
 

Marc @ 2008-09-06 11:47:41

Interesting article, Marc. It seems that such populist manipulators can win elections pretty easily. But life in Thailand goes on anyway...
 

BangkokAl @ 2008-09-05 05:44:31

Hard to get past the first paragraph of this, which dashes the credibility of the rest of it - because the speech wasn't televised. Even the caption on the photo refers to the radio station.

 

A Thailand Riven By Politics

by Bertil Lintner

Posted September 5, 2008
 

Thailand’s political future could not look more uncertain as the crisis that’s gripping the country has reached a point of no return. Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej has made it clear that he is not going to resign, nor dissolve the elected parliament. On Sept. 2, he even declared a state of emergency after pro-and antigovernment groups clashed in the streets of Bangkok, resulting in at least one death and dozens injured.
At the same time, his opponents in the People’s Alliance for Democracy continue to besiege and occupy government buildings in Bangkok and have vowed more action, including labor strikes and the airport blockades, to force Mr. Samak to quit. The noble Thai art of compromise seems to have given way to a state of unprecedented confrontation and divisions in society.
The anti-Samak demonstrations began in May and were carried out on an almost daily basis until the PAD in late August launched a massive and some would argue even militant "do-or-die" campaign to bring down the government. But despite criticism from his opponents and accusations of being aggressive and belligerent, Mr. Samak, according to most neutral observers in Bangkok, has—at least so far—shown remarkable restraint. An initial order to clear Government House—his office—of demonstrators was never implemented. Force was not used to disperse PAD sympathizers, who for three days blockaded three airports in the south, including those at Phuket and Krabi, two popular tourist destinations.
Arrest warrants have been issued for nine PAD leaders on charges of insurrection, unlawful assembly and refusing orders to disperse, but all of them remain at large. And, so far, the army has not been called in to restore order. As the review went to press, there were even few signs that the state and emergency regulations were being enforced. Antigovernment demonstrators continued to occupy the ground around Government House, although more than 20 police trucks were parked not far from the area.
Mr. Samak may be well aware of the grim reality that excessive use of force could further polarize the Thai nation and make it even make it even more difficult to find a solution to the crisis. But something has to be done before the economy begins to suffer; the protesters have threatened to shut down more rail services and even the electricity supply. So far, the Thai baht, has remained stable, although it has been slipping on an almost daily basis against the dollar, the yen and some other currencies. Investor confidence, which already is low, is bound to deteriorate even further the longer the turmoil continues.
It is also becoming clear that the confrontation is not only about opposition to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a bloodless coup in September 2006 and subsequently banned by the authorities from politics and his Thai Rak Thai party dissolved. Mr. Thaksin’s TRT won landslide victories in the 2001 and 2005 elections, challenged old elites and urban middle classes, which led to sharp divisions in Thai society. He was also accused of corruption and abuse of power, while he remained popular especially in the countryside because of almost free health care, generous support to village-development schemes and other populist policies. Only 10 days before the Sept. 19, 2006 coup, Gen. Prem Tinsulanonda, president of the Privy Council, had told the Bangkok Post that the nation is sacred and Mr. Thaksin had split the nation.
In February of that year, the PAD was formally established, and then brought together various interest groups whose lowest common denominator was opposition to the then Mr. Thaksin government. Its then five-person central committee consisted of media tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul; Chamlong Srimuang, a former Bangkok governor and retired major-general with strong links to factions in the military; social activist and long-time pro-democracy campaigner Piphob Dhongchai; state enterprise labor leader Somsak Kosaisuk; and Somkiat Pongpaiboon, an academic.
Their rallies in 2006 led to military intervention in politics and the ouster of Mr. Thaksin. But the government the coup makers installed, led by former army chief and privy councilor Surayud Chulanont, failed to live up to the expectations of many in the anti-Thaksin movement. Thailand was not "purged" of Mr. Thaksin’s influence, although he was in exile in London and China for 17 months. TRT was disbanded, only to be resurrected in the shape of Mr. Samak’s People’s Power Party (PPP), which won the elections in December 2007. In February, Mr. Thaksin returned to Thailand, and the PAD, which ceased its activities after the coup, was re-established in March. Demonstrations began on May 25 at the Democracy Monument in Bangkok to protest a proposal to amend the constitution in a way the PAD thought would benefit Mr. Thaksin, and perhaps pave the way for his return to power.
But even if that had been the thought behind the proposed amendment, Mr. Thaksin’s chances of once again being at the helm of the nation were thwarted when, in July, he went on trial for corruption. On July 31, his wife Pojaman was found guilty of tax evasion and sentenced to three years in jail. The couple was allowed to leave the country to attend the Beijing Olympics, but did not return. They continued to London, where they still remain, and the Supreme Court issued arrest warrants against both Mr. Thaksin and his wife for failing to appear in court; Mr. Thaksin has not been convicted.
The former prime minister is now a fugitive from justice, and nothing short of a miracle could bring him back into politics. Meanwhile, all his assets in Thai banks—totaling around $2.2 billion—have been frozen by the courts. Evidently in financial trouble, on Sept. 1 he sold the pride of his portfolio, the Manchester City football club, to the Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment.
A Bangkok-based analyst argues that the departure of Mr. Thaksin has left a power vacuum, and brought the confrontation beyond the question of the former prime minister’s role in Thai society and politics. As various interest groups scramble for power and influence, the military has apparently become divided into pro- and anti-PAD camps, which has made the situation potentially even more explosive.
Given what happened after the last one, another coup is not a very likely scenario. In late August, Gen. Anupong stated, "The army will not stage a coup. The political crisis should be resolved by political means." But, given the volatile situation in Thailand today, a military intervention cannot be totally ruled out.
One possibility is a royal intervention, similar to that during the 1992 crisis, when King Bhumibol Adulyadej summoned Mr. Chamlong—then also a leader of the protests—and General Suchinda Kraprayoon, the nonelected prime minister they were protesting against, and told them to halt the confrontation. Mr. Suchinda subsequently resigned and Mr. Chamlong, at least for a while, later retreated to an organic farm and a "leadership school."
Another scenario is that the demonstrations fizzle out. It may be hard for the PAD to maintain the momentum much longer, especially as support for the movement among the middle class in Bangkok appears to be dwindling. The storming of a television station, and other militant acts including an attempt to take over police headquarters in the capital, have been condemned even by groups which, in the past, were critical of Mr. Thaksin. In August, a poll conducted by Bangkok University showed that 68% of respondents in the capital disapproved of PAD’s siege of government buildings.
But if the demonstrations do not peter out, it is quite likely that the pro-government camp may mobilize its supporters against the PAD. Smaller, pro-government rallies have been held in Bangkok recently and they did clash with the PAD in the morning of Sept. 2. It is also well-remembered that a 1,000-strong group of people armed with knives and wooden clubs in July attacked a PAD rally in Udon Thani, in the northeast of the country. More clashes in the capital are possible if the pro-government rallies grow bigger and the participants bolder.
Finally, it is still possible that Mr. Samak may have to resign and call fresh elections even without a royal intervention. A caretaker government, led by a neutral, senior statesman, could then take over until those are held. But that would only bring the situation back to square one. PPP in one shape or another is very likely to win. This is perhaps the reason why the PAD, despite its name, has publicly declared that it is not in favor of a one-man-one-vote system. The PAD argues that "Western-style democracy" gives too much weight to the rural majority, which it considers unsophisticated and susceptible to vote-buying. Instead, the PAD wants the country to be ruled by an assembly of whom only 30% would be elected and 70% appointed from various professions. Thai politics have entered a dangerous phase where anything could happen. But whatever happens, Thailand is likely to be marred by political instability for the foreseeable future.
Bertil Lintner is a free-lance writer based in Thailand.
 
 
Little to Do With Democracy
by Federico Ferrara
Posted September 17, 2008
Every so often Thailand steps close to the brink, pundits dust off an old explanation for the peculiar instability of its democratic institutions. In essence, poor, uncouth provincial masses are said to want out of democracy something entirely different from what the more educated, value-driven Bangkok middle-class has come to expect. On occasion, each group is prepared to resort to decidedly undemocratic means to impose its own idea of what “democracy” is all about.
The conventional wisdom tells us that voters in the provinces—about seven out of every 10 of the king’s subjects—could hardly care less about policy or ideology. Most are moved by their deference to patrons and local authority figures. Most vote on narrow parochial concerns. And most are blithely willing to sell their votes to the highest bidder. As a result, elected legislatures are typically stacked with representatives whom the urban middle-classes despise for their boorishness and gross incompetence. Inept, predatory administrations, in turn, generate profound disillusionment in Bangkok—triggering a crescendo of support for military intervention. The cycle begins anew when the urban middle-class finds military rule unpalatable, takes to the streets, suffers the requisite number of casualties, and somehow forces the military back to the barracks.
The same narrative recurs with some variation in the Bangkok press as well as in writings that are openly sympathetic to the plight of provincial voters. But while the deep fault line between town and country is no doubt an important reason why Thailand never quite ceased to drift in and out of military dictatorship, it is by caricaturing the interests and aspirations of urban and provincial voters alike that this story most spectacularly fails.
Provincial Thais, for their part, are not nearly as foolish as those who alternatively belittle their loutishness or romanticize their innocence would have us believe. Weak as they were because of intermittent repression and internal divisions, until very recently political parties never offered much in the way of clear programmatic distinctions. The widely shared notion that the unsophistication of provincial voters would likely prevent them from making reasoned judgments about rival campaign platforms, therefore, has gone largely untested. Ironically, while former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is loathed in Bangkok for buying or otherwise rigging elections, his enduring popularity is much less a function of his ability to outbid the competition in the market for votes than it is the consequence of his policies. As Thailand’s richest man, Mr. Thaksin could play the money game as well as anyone. But the real game-changer was that Mr. Thaksin, in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, crafted a simple platform that resonated with upcountry voters well beyond the popularity, wealth and stature of any local candidate. Famously, the cornerstones of his rural program were an agrarian debt moratorium, a one million baht loan fund for every village, and a 30-baht-per-visit health-care scheme.
Provincial voters rewarded Mr. Thaksin in spades. His party, Thai Rak Thai (TRT), won an unprecedented near-majority in the 2001 elections and a still more commanding mandate in 2005. As expected, when Thailand re-emerged from military rule in late 2007, the same voters handed the People Power Party—TRT’s latest incarnation—another decisive victory.
Much like the boors sweating it out in the rice fields, the Bangkok middle classes are neither as high-minded nor quite as elitist as the opposing versions of the conventional wisdom suggest. Their democratic ideals and good government values never prevented them from meekly acquiescing to corrupt, repressive governments—notwithstanding the occasional bursts of mass indignation that punctuated Thailand’s long spells under the thumb of ghastly military regimes. And the reality is that the Bangkok middle classes do not spontaneously take to the streets every so often a government is in power that draws most of its votes from the provinces. It is simply that the issue of corruption only becomes politically activated when such governments are in office.
Once again, while the support of urban white-collar voters is needed to bring down an elected government through extra-constitutional means, any outrage against the government’s intolerable degeneracy can only be stoked and mobilized with the resources of urban elites. And, for the Bangkok elites, the very idea of elected government is fine only insofar as they are calling the shots. It’s when they don’t that they turn to the military for deliverance. If they can do so with a straight face, the high-minded elites will invoke the need to re-establish “true” democracy. When that argument is no longer serviceable, they will argue that Thailand cannot afford democracy so long as most of its citizens remain bumbling imbeciles eager to sell their votes to all manners of murderers and thieves.
Case in point is the People’s Alliance for Democracy, the movement currently engaged in a tense standoff with the Thai government. Formed in 2006, at first the PAD grounded its opposition to Mr. Thaksin in the least controversial of these two claims. In five years at the helm, after all, Mr. Thaksin had thoroughly eviscerated democratic institutions. But it was not the extra-judicial killings, the vote buying, or the muzzling of the press that set this group off. The real issue was “Thaksinomics.”
Once again, on this count the PAD has a decent case to make. There is no question, in particular, that Mr. Thaksin’s policies are first and foremost an instrument of political patronage, not one of genuine rural development. But that’s not the point. The so-called blue-blood jet set of the nation’s capital—the heart and soul of the PAD—have made extensive recourse to their own political connections to get contracts, moneys, favors, and concessions from the government on the taxpayer’s dime. This group, in fact, enthusiastically supported Mr. Thaksin’s meteoric rise to power, at a time when he promised Bangkok’s battered business community greater protection and access to the policymaking process. Shrewd electoral calculations based on a simple head count, however, in time shifted the focus of “Thaksinomics” from big business in the city to mom-and-pop rural operations. Among the blue-blooded elites, any love for Mr. Thaksin was bound to be short-lived.
The PAD got the military coup it wanted in September 2006. But when the military went back to the barracks, a year thereafter, it became clear that the coup had accomplished little. Faced with yet another electoral defeat, and the certainty of many more still to come, the PAD that stormed back onto the scene in 2008 now proposed to get rid of democracy altogether. And it now sought to pass off a musty old rummage of reactionary proposals as the “New Politics.”
In May of 2008, the freshly reconstituted PAD launched a slumbering sit-in near the site of historic clashes between protesters and the authorities. Confronted with decidedly less than massive participation—and painfully aware that political change in Thailand only happens when blood flows copiously through the streets of Bangkok—PAD leaders repeatedly baited the police into using force to disperse the crowds. Time and time again, the nation held its collective breath as the movement announced to the press that a violent crackdown was imminent. Former Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej—a bit of a blowhard, but thankfully no fool—stepped back every time, refusing to hand the PAD the bloody shirt its leaders were anxious to wave around Bangkok.
All this is to say that the rift between the Thai rural masses and the Bangkok middle class has very little at all to do with democracy. At stake here are not competing versions of democracy, but rather the control of government resources that the vanguards in both camps value far more than the worthless, disposable constitution du jour. In this old-fashioned power struggle for the right to plunder state coffers, “democracy” is but a rhetorical bludgeon. And in this fight—vast differences in education, wealth and status notwithstanding—the urban middle-class is every bit the pawn of the Bangkok elites as provincial voters are the hapless prey to unsavory local bosses. Both constituencies have little to gain from either side prevailing in this longstanding confrontation. But every so often when Thailand steps close to the brink, it is invariably they who are asked to put their lives on the line.
Federico Ferrara is assistant professor of political science at National University of Singapore. 

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
3046 INTN
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu