Yellow Shirts Research Articles

The negations of conjunctions, conditionals, and disjunctions

How do reasoners understand and formulate denials of compound assertions, such as conjunctions and disjunctions? A theory based on mental models postulates that individuals enumerate models of the various possibilities consistent with the assertions. It therefore predicts a novel interaction: in affirmations, conjunctions, A and B, which refer to one possibility, should be easier to understand than disjunctions, A or B, which refer to more than one possibility; in denials, conjunctions, not(A and B), which refer to more than one possibility, should be harder to understand than disjunctions, not(A or B), which do not. Conditionals are ambiguous and they should be of intermediate difficulty. Experiment 1 corroborated this trend with a task in which the participants selected which possibilities were consistent with assertions, such as: Bob denied that he wore a yellow shirt and he wore blue pants on Tuesday. Experiment 2 likewise showed that participants' own formulations of verbal denials yielded the same trend in which denials of conjunctions were harder than denials of conditionals, which in turn were harder than denials of disjunctions.

The Thai Political Paradox

To the outside observer the protests and the overall political struggle in Thailand looks like the traditional liberation struggles common in the developing world. Due to the concurrent nature of the recent stages of the struggle some may even make the mistake of connecting the Thai struggle with democratic movements in the Middle East, also known as the Arab Spring. Nevertheless, this initial conflation of the struggle against the Thai government led by the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) with the popular movements fighting for democracy in the Middle East is inherently incorrect. Form can be confused with essence by the casual observer of Thai politics. Yes, the PDRC mobilizes supporters to march and to protests against the incumbent government. This is very similar to what most movements have done in the Middle East and closely resembles the now famous occupation of Tahirir Square in Egypt. Another similarity is the apparent emphasis on non- violence, at least at this stage of the political struggle. The PDRC’s name includes the words “people” and “democracy”, also very similar to other liberation movements. Therefore, on the surface the so-called yellow shirts of the PDRC look very similar to other liberation movements. Nevertheless, form is not essence and the similarity ends here.

Habla Con Ellos—Talk to Them: Latinas/Os, Achievement, and the Middle Grades

Moving bilingual children beyond subordinated categories toward full engagement in relevant and authentic learning that embraces their communities.Our faculty in the Education Department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte often spends time discussing issues we see within our middle grades program, including with our undergraduate teacher candidates in clinical and student teaching settings, with practicing teachers in initial licensure programs, and those learning their way into an M.Ed. in Middle Grades Education. It was at one such meeting that we found ourselves returning to the concern of our content area teachers not feeling knowledgeable about working with Latino newcomers. We were talking our way around the edges of the topic, hoping for solid language that would give clear voice to this issue, when Jeanneine shared this story:I'd never encountered a child who truly couldn't speak a single word of my own language. Yet there they were, two gorgeous Latina girls sitting quietly in the very back of the room, hands folded, staring at the tree outside the window, surely bored half to death, understanding absolutely nothing. The teacher wasn't helping much either because, just like me, she didn't know what to do or even where to begin. She didn't speak their language, and they didn't speak hers. Much to my dismay she made a beeline straight for me after class, and I was pretty sure it wasn't to discuss the student teacher I'd come to observe next block. Instead, just as I feared, it was to eagerly ask for my advice on how to work with those two girls. My conversation on the topic was short, with that five minutes pretty much covering everything I knew. That day lefta real mark on me. That image, though 20 years old, is still so vivid in my head that I can recall the yellow shirt one of the girls was wearing. Like I said, it lefta mark on me because it forced me to confront something that was a dangerous void in my teacher life, and I realized I'd better figure it out fast. I'm worried that our program still isn't where it should be in this area, and especially given our growing Charlotte Latina population.Jeanneine later shared that things got better for the two Latina girls with the arrival that semester of an English as a second language educator. This teacher helped them on their way to learning a new culture, navigating a new school, and, even more important, becoming a part of the school community through both curricular and extracurricular activities. In time, the language became easier for them, too, opening not only academic doors but social windows, which are critically important to young adolescents (Strahan, L'Esperance, & Van Hoose, 2009; Stevenson, 1998).Twenty years later, thousands of young adolescents now come into our middle grades classrooms from a rich array of countries, some with a strong working knowledge of English, some with emerging proficiency in their new language, and some with nothing at all in terms of mainstream communication skills-many, like those two young girls, are of Latino heritage.Culture plays a critical role in the most effective middle schools (NMSA, 2010), and we consider transnational children of immigration to be a great wealth, a rich blessing. We work tirelessly to equip today's middle grades teachers to serve this group of children better than we did 20 years ago. As teacher educators within The University of North Carolina Charlotte's large, urban college of education, we now regularly receive requests for assistance from middle and high school teachers and administrators who are interested in establishing a better school environment for their increasingly diverse adolescent populations. In central Piedmont, a large and growing number of Latino families accounts for much of that diversity.As of 2007, Latinos comprised 15% of the total U.S. population, with approximately one-third selfidentifying as Mexican in origin. …

From the Street to the Ballot Box: The July 2011 Elections and the Rise of Social Movements in Thailand

The July 2011 parliamentary elections in Thailand were significant because they ushered politics away from street demonstrations and into the polling booth. Just about a year after the worst political violence in Bangkok since the 1992 Black May incident, these elections confirmed the dominance of Thaksin Shinawatra-aligned parties and the prominence of social movements in engaging the electoral process. Notable were the Red Shirts who moved from street battle to electoral contestation in supporting Phua Thai and the Yellow Shirts who campaigned against politicians and political parties. No election in Thai history has had such a high degree of social mobilization as that of the 2011 polls.

Thai Politics in the Post-Thaksin Period

Thailand has been witnessing political uncertainties ever since the ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Although the 1997 Constitution of Thailand was one of the best in terms of evolving democratic institutions and Thaksin was one of the most popular leaders, yet the system could not work. Thaksin was disliked by the traditionally entrenched elite who joined together to remove him arbitrarily from power in which the military and the Royal Privy Council took a prominent part. The system that was adopted under military rule did not like to retain the 1997 constitution but decided to replace them with a new constitution (2007), in which the interests of the military were protected and promoted. In the evolving permutations and combinations, two groups—Yellow Shirts and Red Shirts—have emerged to oppose each other, often violently, to offer thesis and anti-thesis for and against Thaksin and his brand of politics. This article has tried to understand the dynamics of power politics in Thailand, the rise of the Yellow Shirts and Red Shirts and the emerging problems that Thailand will have to address in the future.

Red and Yellow Songs: A Historical Analysis of the Use of Music by the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) and the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) in Thailand

The increase in social protests in Thailand since 2005 has been marked by a dramatic rise in the use of music for protest. This article examines the use of music by the yellow and red shirts, and contextualizes the PAD and UDD within the history of two similarly named but very different genres of Thai song: phleng chiwit [life songs] and phleng phuea chiwit [songs for life]. Phleng chiwit was part of a flowering of satirical art forms during Field Marshall Plaek Phibunsongkhram's second term as Prime Minister (1948–57) before censorship forced many songwriters to change to the new commercial genre of lukthung [Thai country song]. Phleng phuea chiwit was the preferred music of leftist students in the pro-democracy movement of the 1970s. However, the rehabilitation of phleng phuea chiwit as the official Thai protest genre has disguised the role that lukthung played during the armed struggle of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT). The article examines the use of satirical songs and lukthung during Thailand's most recent political struggle, from 2005 to the present. It appears that red-shirt protestors (the UDD) have accessed a wide range of memories, including the most powerful counter-hegemonic traditions, whereas their yellow-shirt opponents (the PAD) have drawn on a much narrower selection of hegemonic cultural memories.

Constructing the ‘Red’ Otherness: The Role and Implications of Thainess on Polarised Politics

The above statement was made by a dress-shop owner whose shop was located near the site of the destruction caused by the riot in May 2010. His statement is interesting in that he identified the Red Shirts, members of a political alliance opposing the current government, as not being Thai. While the Red Shirts and their supporters were accused of not being Thai due to violent behaviour, what about the Yellow Shirts, a group likewise formed in opposition to the former governments, who seized the international airport in 2008? Are they Thai? The question is: What constitutes being Thai or a Thai nationhood? Has Thainess really existed for a long time? If not, who constructed it for what purpose, and for whom was it constructed? In this article, I will give some background information on current politics in Thailand and review theoretical concepts of nation and nationhood as well as conceptualising Thai nationhood or Thainess. In addition, the role of Thainess that has been used by Prime Minister Abhisit and his patrons – the current power holders – will be explained, and I will demonstrate the implications of the application of

The Human Security Theory of Integrative Negotiation for Sociopolitical Conflicts: The Thai Color Divide as a Case Study

Complex negotiations between large socio-political groups tend to rely on distributive negotiation. This article explores how the human security approach could be used as the basis for selecting ‘standard objective criteria’ to foster more constructive integrative negotiations between the People’s Alliance for Democracy, also known as ‘Yellow Shirts,’ and the National United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship, or the ‘Red Shirts,’ in Thailand. The complexity of the conflict between the two groups in Thailand and the importance of the outcome make it a good representative case study on how to transcend realist/distributional methods of negotiation and conflict resolution. In conclusion, human security provides an ethical yet flexible framework to guide negotiations between large social movements. Finally, the study develops a tentative Human Security Theory of Integrative Negotiation for sociopolitical conflicts.

Thailand's Political Crisis: Which Color Is Conservative?

Thailand’s political crisis has raged since February 2006, when a new protest movement, the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) or “Yellow Shirts,” took to the streets. Their goal was to depose Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party, elected in 2001 and reelected in 2005 with substantial parliamentary majorities. Continuous protests culminated in the December 2006 military coup after which the TRT was dissolved and Thaksin went into exile. Following a year of military rule and the promulgation of a new, more conservative constitution, fresh elections were held and the Thaksin backed party, reformulated as the People’s Power Party (PPP), won for a third time. The PAD reactivated the protests and took over the international airport for eight days until a court ruling dissolved the PPP. The Democrats, the PAD backed main opposition party in parliament, were able to cobble together a fragile coalition government made up of defecting former Thaksin allies. Since Democrat Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva took power in December 2008, Thaksin’s supporters, the “Red Shirts,” have taken to the streets to oppose what they claim is an undemocratic, illegitimate, and military backed government.

Prairie dog alarm calls encode labels about predator colors

Some animals have the cognitive capacity to differentiate between different species of predators and generate different alarm calls in response. However, the presence of any addition information that might be encoded into alarm calls has been largely unexplored. In the present study, three similar-sized human females walked through a Gunnison's prairie dog (Cynomys gunnisoni) colony wearing each of three different-colored shirts: blue, green, and yellow. We recorded the alarm calls and used discriminant function analysis to assess whether the calls for the different-colored shirts were significantly different. The results showed that the alarm calls for the blue and the yellow shirts were significantly different, but the green shirt calls were not significantly different from the calls for the yellow shirt. The colors that were detected, with corresponding encoding into alarm calls, reflect the visual perceptual abilities of the prairie dogs. This study suggests that prairie dogs are able to incorporate labels about the individual characteristics of predators into their alarm calls, and that the complexity of information contained in animal alarm calls may be greater than has been previously believed.

The Role of Color Cues in Facilitating Accurate and Rapid Location of Aided Symbols by Children With and Without Down Syndrome

This research examined how the color distribution of symbols within a visual aided augmentative and alternative communication array influenced the speed and accuracy with which participants with and without Down syndrome located a target picture symbol. Eight typically developing children below the age of 4 years, 8 typically developing children over the age of 4 years, and 10 children with Down syndrome participated. Participants were asked to find a target line drawing among an array of 12. Line drawings represented either foods (e.g., grapes, cherries), clothing (e.g., a red shirt, a yellow shirt), or activities (e.g., soccer, swimming). In one condition, symbols that shared a color were clustered together, creating a subgroup within which to search. In another condition, symbols that shared a color were distributed across the display, allowing each to appear individually. Dependent measures were accuracy and speed of finding the target symbol. Clustering same-color symbols facilitated the speed of locating the target for all participants, and facilitated search accuracy in the younger preschool children and participants with Down syndrome. These effects held when targets were foods, clothing, or activities. Clinicians should consider the internal color of visual symbols when constructing aided symbol displays, at least for children with Down syndrome. Further research is needed on a number of dimensions, however, including visual processing in other etiological categories, the role of background color, and the relation of color to other stimulus dimensions.

Sometimes

Sometimes Kathy-Ann Hernandez (bio) Sometimes, it is this way . . . You get up, the rain is falling and you stagger out of bed. The weather, the mood, grabs you by the throat—chokes the color out of your eyes, cheeks, and skin. You snatch clothes, maybe a yellow shirt, and beige slacks, to mask the darkness inside. But you can’t bring yourself to put them on. “Oh, forget it!” you think. “Just give in.” So you toss the clothes aside. Instead, reach for a grey sweater, black pants, and scarf, and gloves, and coat, and hat. You suck your teeth and let out a loud frustrated noise. “Steeeeeeeeeeups! Too much clothes . . . takes too much time . . . hateful, bland winter colors. Makes no sense!” It should be the other way around, you think. A person needs bright yellows, oranges, greens to forget the death inspired winter chill. Makes you want to think of home, hold the memory close and snuggle up in its warmth. But home is a vague remembrance—a distant place. Makes you question why you came to this place. “In search of what?” Island-bred, sun-ripened girl, in North American rain, and smog, and snow. Thinking more and more of sun and sea in October, November, and December, when each day passes into a still colder one. Trees become lifeless frames, and fallen leaves clutter the rooftops, gutters, sidewalks, and drains, stick under your shoes and walk into your dingy apartment. Leaves that lie everywhere, too tired to do battle with the harsh air, instead decide to paint the landscape briefly the window of your basement apartment, where tree skeletons glisten with leftover rain and extend upward out of view. You reenact the script: put the kettle on; slice the cheese thinly; place it on day-old bread. Can’t remember what you had yesterday. Monday eggs, Tuesday PB & J, Wednesday cereal, Thursday cheese, and Friday eggs. Eggs, PB & J, cereal, eggs, eggs, cheese . . . Or was it P B & J, eggs, cereal, cheese. . . . Does it really matter? Pack the lunch, close the door and walk into another day in this inhospitable place. You hate the city; it’s dirty, grimy, and noisy. You try to escape the too many extended hands, asking for spare change, money to get a token, something to eat. . . . Sometimes you give. Other times, your raised hand says no before they ask. You’ve become callous; conned too many times. Once by the young man who asked for change to buy a hotdog, but you [End Page 840] saw him a few minutes later with that packet of Marlboros. Or the woman who hit you up three times in one day with three different lines. And still angry with the man who called you ‘stupid bitch,’ because he asked the time and you didn’t have a watch. Sometimes it is this way in this lonely city of “brotherly love.” Walking down the street you sink underground into the subway—the belly and intestines of this metropolitan body—that moves us all along. It is the place where thoughts soak in. You see school children who don’t look like children at all, who shout, and laugh, and talk about things that would make your mother wash your mouth out with a block of blue soap. You see the man with empty eyes seated right in front of you. Something about him imprisons your gaze. But what? Then you recognize the look. Realize that you are both on the same journey—he’s just a little further along. That scares you. So you pretend not to see when his face turns into a grimace, or the water collects at the corners of his eyes. Force yourself to look away. See the family taking a trip—grandmother, her daughter, her daughters’ daughters, their collective children, and the father. Their words shoot around the inside of the train and hit you in the face. There is no escape. You don’t want to listen to the young mother scream at the little boy: “Shuuuud UP!”. . . .“I’ll slap you.” But you carefully filter the voice of the little girl with the rotted teeth and spotty...

Comfort and Community

JUST A month before America's most tragic day, I stood on a corner of the main street in Gallup, New Mexico, watching an Inter-Tribal Ceremonial parade with my 7-year-old granddaughter and some friends from the East Coast. Before the colorful dancers came by, American Legion posts of Native Americans from throughout the Southwest marched solemnly behind their flags. Most of the revered Navajo code talkers, who became heroes in World War II, rode on open-bed trucks, wearing their signatory yellow shirts and red caps with flag insignias. Few were still able to walk in the parade, but they all saluted an adoring crowd. Native Americans sent a larger percentage of foot soldiers to the wars of the last century than any other ethnic group, and they are rightly proud. Still, such displays of patriotism seemed quixotic on that August morning, perhaps even somewhat out of place for peoples who might have more reason to question America's brand of nationalism than most of us. Many weeks later, suburban high school students in my area exhibited the same pride. Accustomed to sitting out the Pledge of Allegiance, they were standing up and reciting the words with an unfamiliar fervor. Theirs is the first generation in a long time to connect so visibly with the patriotism of America's past - if one discounts the hundred hours' war in the Persian Gulf. The connection has always been there to nurture and make stronger because young people tend to be idealists. Granted, for a long time it was cool to show an appreciation of country and flag. Once the big wars of the last century were over and the civil rights movement had lost its glow as a clear action against wrongs, the idealism of youth had nowhere to go. Many young people internalized too much of the cynicism and disengagement of adults, who were struggling with unpopular wars and chicanery and scandals at the highest levels. The young decided that their votes didn't count for much. Still, underneath it all and despite the fact that it is the young who are sent to fight when the old can find no other solutions, our young people have remained believers. They are not interested in political parties, but two-thirds to three-fourths of them trust such political institutions as local government, the courts, and the national government. Their belief in a reasoned role for government was revealed in an international study of civic education, released last spring. …

The PT and the New Republic

In January of 1984, opposition political parties in Brazil organized a public campaign to demand direct popular elections for the President ofthe Republic. During the next three months an estimated eight million people took to the streets throughout the country. Public rallies were organized in every major city, from Rio Grande do Sul to the Amazon basin states, gathering increasingly numerous crowds. The 'Campaign for Direct Elections' reached a peak in early April, 1984, when one million people gathered in Rio de Janeiro and close to two million people occupied the downtown streets of Sao Paulo. Virtually all demonstrations were peaceful and characterized by exhuberant crowds of thousands of people dressed in yellow shirts with the inscription: 'I want to vote for President'. In every rally the leaders of the opposition denounced the 'indirect Electoral College' as an illegitimate mechanicsm for the transference of power. Opposition leadership was united in emphasizing that the only legiti? mate way to select the President of the Republic was through a system of elections by direct and secret ballot of all citizens. Public opinion polls indicated that 97% of the population was against the system of indirect elections and supported direct elections for President. Yet in January 1985, virtually all the parties ofthe opposition participated in the very indirect Electoral College which they had, just a few months earlier, denounced as illegitimate. By negotiating an alliance and a common program with dissident members of the government's party, opposition representatives in the Electoral College were able to secure the victory of Tancredo Neves (a member of the opposition PMDB) by a huge margin. Millions of people who had taken to the streets to denounce the Electoral College in early 1984 took to the streets once again a year later to celebrate its action as 'the end of military rule and the dawn of democracy.' Opposition leaders proclaimed the legitimacy of Tancredo Neves's presidential mandate and announced the advent of a New Republic. In the dawn of the New Republic, only one political party, the PT,1 refused to participate in the indirect Electoral College.2 In the period of less than nine months between the end of the 'Direct Election Campaign' and the victory of the PMDB in the indirect Electoral College, the main parties ofthe opposition had made a 180 degree turnabout. An electoral procedure previously denounced as illegitimate was now endorsed, the most important former leaders of the government's party suddenly became pohtical partners,3 and, perhaps most significantly, those who continued to insist upon the need for direct presidential elections were now denounced as 'illegitimate' and even as 'traitors'. How can such a turnabout be explained? And what does it reveal about Brazilian politics? One is tempted to turn to Gabriel Garcia Marquez who, during a visit to Brazil, remarked that it could be called the nation of 100 Years ofSolitude: 'It