Thailand's War of the T-Shirts
I'm currently in Phoenix, Arizona, not Bangkok, although I will be passing through Bangkok on Thursday 15th before taking the train south to Hua Hin on the 16th, and then driving a further three hours south to see the family in Bang Saphan, well away from the trouble. Bangkok is actually 95% perfectly safe, if you avoid the Khao San Road, the big malls like Siam Paragon and areas with government offices.
Everyone's getting pretty distressed about what happened in Bangkok yesterday, on what's already become known as Black Saturday. After the events of the last week, Thaksin's rent-a-crowd barmy army - the 'Red Shirts' who want the government dissolved - can no longer claim any pretence towards peaceful protest: their more aggressive factions were seen covering CCTV cameras before storming government buildings, a TV station and military posts, while answering rubber bullets with petrol bombs and AK-47s which of course must have suddenly materialised out of thin air. The result: 20 dead and 800 injured.
A good source of on-the-spot info and opinion has actually been Somtow Sucharitkul's frequent Facebook updates and blog; the best newspaper coverage has probably been from the independent paper The Nation, which has now published a timeline of yesterday's events.
I would like my son to be able to grow up in a more stable country than this, and I fully expect he will. The Red Shirts, who, if they disconnected from their blind loyalty to Thaksin, are fully capable of becoming an effective opposition party if they would only do some actual politics; meanwhile Abhisit's Democrat-led coalition government have been continuing Thaksin's better policies in assisting the poor. Since being deposed and exposed as a crook, Thaksin was succeeded by a military government then two vote-buying, stunt-Thaksin PMs who both lost their jobs in disgrace before the current coalition government had to be formed. Abhisit is anything but a "tyrant", as a Red Shirt leader is now describing him. There is a long way to go before this country straightens itself out, and at the moment the Red Shirts are discrediting themselves all the way down the line, which I find very sad indeed as the non-violent majority are just the country's poor trying to speak up for themselves.
Everyone's getting pretty distressed about what happened in Bangkok yesterday, on what's already become known as Black Saturday. After the events of the last week, Thaksin's rent-a-crowd barmy army - the 'Red Shirts' who want the government dissolved - can no longer claim any pretence towards peaceful protest: their more aggressive factions were seen covering CCTV cameras before storming government buildings, a TV station and military posts, while answering rubber bullets with petrol bombs and AK-47s which of course must have suddenly materialised out of thin air. The result: 20 dead and 800 injured.
A good source of on-the-spot info and opinion has actually been Somtow Sucharitkul's frequent Facebook updates and blog; the best newspaper coverage has probably been from the independent paper The Nation, which has now published a timeline of yesterday's events.
I would like my son to be able to grow up in a more stable country than this, and I fully expect he will. The Red Shirts, who, if they disconnected from their blind loyalty to Thaksin, are fully capable of becoming an effective opposition party if they would only do some actual politics; meanwhile Abhisit's Democrat-led coalition government have been continuing Thaksin's better policies in assisting the poor. Since being deposed and exposed as a crook, Thaksin was succeeded by a military government then two vote-buying, stunt-Thaksin PMs who both lost their jobs in disgrace before the current coalition government had to be formed. Abhisit is anything but a "tyrant", as a Red Shirt leader is now describing him. There is a long way to go before this country straightens itself out, and at the moment the Red Shirts are discrediting themselves all the way down the line, which I find very sad indeed as the non-violent majority are just the country's poor trying to speak up for themselves.