A Coup in Thailand?: Bangkok Rising (video)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; VICENews.com, 4-7-14)

 

Look, mom, I'm in a coup! (nytimes.com)

(VICE) For almost a decade, Buddhist Thailand has been trapped in a bloody conflict between Red Shirt supporters and Yellow Shirt opponents of the billionaire-tycoon-turned-politician Thaksin Shinawatra (and the subsequent Thai PM, his sister Yingluck Shinawatra).

Ousted Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra

During his time as prime minister, Thaksin improved life for the poor and the working class.

But his autocratic tendencies and crony capitalism led his opponents, mainly made up of conservative royalists and the upper middle class, to rise up and overthrow him.

Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in 2006 for alleged abuse of power and corruption. Since then Thaksin's opponents -- widely known as the Yellow Shirts -- and his avid supporters, the Red Shirts, have taken turns instigating mass street protests to topple their opponents.

CNN/CIA coverage has been superficial

While attempting to clear her brother's name of corruption charges in November 2013, Thaksin's sister and Thailand's latest PM [ousted by the court two weeks ago] Yingluck Shinawatra triggered a new Yellow Shirt uprising that has so far killed a reported 23 people and injured hundreds.

Yingluck Shinawatra tried to diffuse the protests by dissolving Thailand's parliament and calling for new elections. But the Yellow Shirts, determined to overthrow her, began a shutdown of Bangkok on January 13th, bringing the Thai capital to a standstill.

Huh, what coup? This has happened before.

Since the election was annulled on March 31st, Red Shirts are mobilizing and intensifying their threats of starting a civil war.

VICE News was on the ground to capture Thailand's state of emergency as the long-running battle for the country is coming to a head.

There are other people, ethnic minorities like these beautiful mountain village girls from the north, often seen selling trinkets in Chiang Mai, Thailand's second-city (Max_Drukpa/flickr).

 

Commentary

Wisdom Quarterly
 

We're Red Shirts, but we're tourists.

Who's right, who's wrong? It is easy to support the revolutionary Red Shirts. But the person they entrusted their future to may have been, could likely have been, a corrupt billionaire. He made all the right promises...as did Obama. These "populist" leaders say the right things. They don't follow through. They sell out their followers. Then the Red Shirts succeeded again by electing the fabulous Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of ousted and exiled PM Thaksin Shinawatra.

A People's Coup 2013 (nation.com)

But Yellow Shirts accused her of continuing her brother's populist/corrupt policies. Was she great, or was she a hypocrite? Should Thaksin been allowed back into the country, or had he offended the establishment too much? How could he, a billionaire tycoon, be the "people's hope"? He was the one making all the right promises, offering help to the poor. This is what so many would-be dictators begin by saying. Even if they are sincere, clandestine forces come in to convert or assassinate them. (Why is explained in John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hitman).

 

Surely the Shinawatras were a better alternative to the status quo -- but an even better option is what Red Shirts are actually fighting for: a citizens' committee to rule the country. The military will not stand for it. The military-industrial complex (government police+private corporations = military+industry) have a plan for that kind of talk: Game over, time out, military coup, police state, "I'm taking my ball and going home," as Cartman would put it.

People's Coup vs. Military Coup 

Thitinan Pongsudhirak (The Nation, Dec. 13, 2013)

Bangkok, Thailand protest rally for the people, Red Shirts vs. Yellow Shirts (AP).

.

Woman sells statues, talismans (Ska09/flickr)

Never has Thai politics degenerated so quickly from uneasy accommodation to outright insurrection.

It started a month ago [Nov. 2013] with broad-based opposition to an expansive amnesty legislation that would have absolved former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from convictions for corruption and abuse of power.

It ended up as a civilian putsch by anti-Thaksin forces, led by the Democrat Party and its erstwhile heavyweight MP Suthep Thaugsuban. On an anti-corruption crusade and intent on uprooting what they call the “Thaksin Regime,” these forces incorporate the royalist “Yellow Shirts” and other anti-Thaksin groups from recent years who constitute one side of Thailand’s polarization.

Whether they succeed in removing the government of PM Yingluck Shinawatra, Mr. Thaksin’s younger sister, from power and installing their own government will determine the direction of Thai democracy. More

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Thailand Tourists: "What Coup? This Coup!"

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Seven, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS)

What do bankers and Big Business want us to believe about the coup? (ibtimes.co.uk)

Bloomberg mainstream media photo promoting view that there's nothing so bad about a military coup dictatorship to "restore law and order" as propagated by "liberal" Daily Beast.

 

When the tanks rolled into Bangkok, [tourists and supporters] gave soldiers flowers and candy, and many of the troops posed for photographs with foreigners. 

Thai Coup 2016

(2006) It was another Tuesday night at the Londoner, a popular Bangkok pub where expatriates, tourists, and Thai regulars were, as usual, bellying up to the bar, downing pints, and chatting amid a dense haze of smoke. Outside, the rain was falling; inside the topic of conversation was the military coup that had overthrown Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra the week before.

 

“I’m not cutting my trip short,” said Barry Porter, from Melbourne, Australia, who had just suggested to friends that they join him in Bangkok.  At tourist spots throughout the city, travelers were similarly nonchalant. Bangkok’s legendary [Shoestring Travelers' Paradise] Khaosan Road was crowded with backpackers.

 

Thai Coup 2006: When tanks rolled into Bangkok, some soldiers were welcomed, others feared. Some posed for photos with foreigners (Apichart Weerawong/AP).

 

“Knowing Thai people, I wasn’t expecting an uprising,” said Jozef Sint Jago, from Amsterdam. “I’m not concerned at all.”  In MBK Center, a huge shopping mall in Siam Square, John O’Hara, of County Mayo, Ireland, said he had just arrived in Bangkok with friends. He said the coup on Sept. 19 hadn’t forced them to change their travel plans. “It didn’t affect us at all. On the news, it looked bad, but it’s not.”

Coup? What coup? That seems to be the attitude among travelers and travel professionals as the recent political turmoil in Thailand appears to have had little or no effect on tourism there. After all, the embattled prime minister, who had led a grudgingly accepted social order campaign in 2001 that mandated a 1:00 am closing time for most of Bangkok’s bars and nightclubs, was not very popular among the city’s residents. More

Fast forward to 2014

Jack Moore (International Business Times, ibtimes.co.uk)

Occupy Thailand? Red Shirts v. Yellow Shirts

(May 22, 2014) Thailand's army chief general Prayuth Chan-ocha has declared that the military is taking control of the country's government in a coup d'etat.

 

The military leader said in a televised statement that the army would "restore order and push through political reform" with a 10:00 pm country-wide curfew installed.

 

2014: Will they shoot civilians or tourists? Yes.

The leaders of both the [radical, pro-change, pro-PM Shinawatra] pro-government Red Shirt and People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) factions were detained inside an army club where negotiations between the two were taking place.

• Radical and pro-government? Yes, the street revolution partially succeeded or seemed to with the election of billionaire Bruce Wayne-style PM Thaksin Shinawatra, who was charged with corruption and ousted from the prime ministership before going into exile, and then again with his sister PM Yingluck Shinawatra, whom the courts recently deposed for behaving like her brother. The Shinawatras are pro-people, at least in their rhetoric, and the conservative, royalist Yellow Shirts will not stand for that. They are pro-rich, pro-business, and pro-status quo. Supporters of the sacked government have started anti-military actions resisting the coup, even as the military has taken former-PM Yingluck into custody at an unknown location. While most radicals are not pro-government, when they succeed they become pro-government. The conservatives become the "radicals," and that is why it is called a "revolution." One side moves up as another goes down. And if the new rulers behave the same way, the bottom again pushes its way to the top. This happened in the U.S., as it has around the world, with Barry Obama. The difference is this -- now the Powers That Be (s)elect fake "peoples' candidates," who say all the right things and then disappoint their supporters. This can be done, as it was with Obama, by grooming someone for the job, or an actual grassroots person can rise up as often happens in South America. If they are fake from the start, things will seem to go better for a lot longer; they will actually be worse as that impostor gets many right wing measures through in the name of popular consensus and liberalization (which to business people means pro-business and in the U.S. means progressive to those who are left-leaning). If the new leaders are authentic, it will go worse as all the conservative and reactionary elements (like the CIA) will step in to obstruct, slow, and depose them. They will be discredited, undermined, and eventually brought down or assassinated. From our point of view in the U.S., the Shinawatras were corrupt multi-millionaires -- that's what the right wing mainstream media told us. (NOTE: the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets are NEVER on the side of the left, the progressives, or liberation; they are always somehow or other aligned with the Powers That Be, the reactionaries, the rich, the status quo, and the undermining of liberation. Even when they seem to be on the side of privacy, freedom, Occupy, gay rights, peace with justice in the Middle East talks, they are -- if one reads very carefully -- in support of things as they are, business as usual, more and more oppression and loss of freedom. This may not be the fault  of individual journalists. More often it is the editors, owners, and investors. We apologize for being fooled by the "paper of record" (and AP/Associated Press, Bloomberg, McClatchey, Los Angeles Times, Haretz, Int'l Business Times, BBC, and similar mainstream outfits controlled by a handful of megacorporations with their tentacles in everything). 

General Prayuth is to head a ruling military body -- the National Peace and Order Maintaining Council -- but the parliament's upper house and courts will continue to function, said a military statement.

 

Earlier this week, the military declared martial law to restore the security situation and shut down the country's main television stations, divesting the government of its power to maintain peace.

 

Chan-ocha said the army had been forced to take action after six months of violent protests between opponents and supporters of deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

 

"We are concerned that this violence could harm the country's security in general," he said after declaring martial law.

 

"In order to restore law and order to the country, we have declared martial law. I'm asking all those activist groups to stop all activities and cooperate with us in seeking a way out of this crisis."

Thailand’s Non-Coup Coup 2014?

Lennox Samuels (The Daily Beast, 5-21-14)

After months of political crisis, the generals declare martial law. They claim they’re just making peace, not running the country. 

[WQ EDITORIAL: The mainstream media is misleading us again. The military has taken over the country, while most big media outlets play it off as a non-story. The people and the peoples' candidates have been deposed by legal maneuvers after being elected by revolution in the street. This is the power of the status quo to perpetuate itself. And when "cool" indie outlets like The Daily Beast (or Huff Post, etc.) become part of conglomerate media empires, their editors hire and elicit complicit articles from their writers like this one. It becomes almost impossible to get the straight story from any easily accessible outlet. We go to Democracy Now! and Pacifica Radio News Network and other mostly good sources, but it's not enough.]

 

BANGKOK, Thailand - The generals say they haven’t staged a coup, but critics say they’re splitting hairs. Troops are on the streets, the media is muzzled, and the already weak caretaker government has been further marginalized.

 

A senior army official said that the military is to deploy troops and vehicles to remove protesters from large anti-government rally sites in Bangkok. More + Video

Victory in Thailand for anti-gov't Red Shirts!

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS); BBC.co.uk

Thailand court ousts PM Yingluck: Thailand's Constitutional Court orders Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and several of her ministers to step down on abuse of power charges.

War on the streets of the Thai capital as Red Shirts agitate against political corruption in Buddhist Thailand alongside monks. Yellow Shirts are pro-corrupt gov't (Sakchai Lalit/AP).

Waving the red, white, and blue Thai flag during rally -- protests roar on as radical Red Shirts oppose conservative Yellow Shirts to change the system and clean up government (AP)

 

Monks protest as in the Saffron Revolution (R)

There has been a war on the streets of Bangkok for years as radical revolutionary Red Shirts agitate against political corruption in Theravada Buddhist Thailand. 

Even the monks frequently join in to oppose the Yingluck Shinawatra administration and the previous corrupt administration of her billionaire business mogul brother Thaksin Shinawatra.

Police State successfully resisted by Thais (W)

He was deposed by protesters fighting police and paramilitary forces in the street and went into self-imposed exile to avoid legal reprisals.

He then installed his sister, buying her election to the prime ministership but, allegedly, still pulling the strings and wielding political and business influence from afar.

The battle to oust Thailand's PM: Why has the prime minister been ordered to step down today? Find out the background to the crisis in this 60-second video (BBC.co.uk, May 7, 2014).

  

"Patriotic," conservative Yellow Shirts have been pro-corrupt government. The beloved king has allowed the matter to be resolved by the courts that today handed a victory to the Red Shirts by throwing her out of office. 

Red Shirts disrupt Thailand (BBC)

What does the court's decision mean?

It would be like the Occupy Movement waking up one day and realizing the third Bush/Cheney Administration (called the Obama Administration with a much more attractive leader carrying out all the worst policies of the previous ugly rulers) had been thrown out of office by the Supreme Court and hope for actual change had been restored.

The finance minister has been installed as the interim prime minister by the court. Deposed PM Yingluck Shinawatra is shocked and sad.

Bangkok is a booming Asian economy wracked by corruption in a city (Gift-of-Light/flickr)

 .

Live from the scene

Wisdom Quarterly reader Dr. Will writes in to say, "Whoever wrote this error-ridden story should be taken out and shot." Thank you, professor. We await your corrections and field report live from the scene. The story contains  links to the BBC version of events. So even though "[we and readers] can find out the facts about the current crisis in Thailand in a couple of minutes of googling," we hope you can do the Buddhist world one better than that and enlighten us all on what has truly happened in Bangkok. Send in your report because we don't want to waltz over to Thammasat U. to pick it up from you. "Jeez, guys!" He who admonishes, ack. But he who enlightens, ahh! Sawadee ka.

Averting police state chaos in Ukraine

Wisdom Quarterly; Will Englund and William Booth (washingtonpost.com, Feb. 21, 2014)

Anti-government protesters guard the perimeter of Independence Square, known as the Maidan, in central Kiev, Ukraine (Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images/WashingtonPost.com)

Interior Ministry members on fire, caused by molotov cocktails hurled by protesters, as they guard corrupt government offices, Feb. 18, 2014 (Reuters.com/Andrew Kravchenko/Pool)

US actress, Klitschko's partner (DM)

KIEV (Battle in Kiev) - Ukraine pulled back from the brink of chaos today when Pres. Viktor Yanukovych signed a deal with opposition leaders [led by Klitschko] to dilute his powers, form a caretaker government, and hold early elections. 

 

But the accord appeared likely to be a hard sell to the [tens of] thousands of demonstrators who vowed that nothing short of his ouster would get them off the streets.

Protesters guard bus holding captured police before letting them go home, as some object to the release, during demonstrations (Sergey Dolzhenko/European Press Photo Agency).

 

Yanukovych sign at pro-gov't rally (KP)

The agreement represents a remarkable, humiliating fall for Yanukovych, whose decision to turn away from [new] closer ties with the European Union and [back] toward Russia sparked protests [from Ukrainian citizens] that began here peacefully in November but turned increasingly violent [in response to police abuses].

Anastasia Vlasova (Kyiv Post)

The atmosphere remained tense late Friday in Independence Square [the Maidan], the epicenter of the protests.

Police bloodlust, Kiev (KP)

When one of the opposition leaders, former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko [who is married to American actress Hayden Panettiere], told the crowds this was the best deal they could get, one of the protesters grabbed the microphone and demanded that Yanukovych resign Saturday morning or face the wrath of the people.

 

“We will go with weapons,” said the protester, who leads one of the more militant groups in the square. “I swear it.”

 

Opposition leader

The pact, reached after Ukraine’s bloodiest week of street fighting, following all-night negotiations sponsored by European and Russian officials, calls for an immediate return to the 2004 constitution, which gives parliament, not the president, the right to choose a prime minister and most of the cabinet. More + PHOTOS

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Trouble in Thailand (video)

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Temple gargoyle guardians, Wat Phra Kaew Thai Buddhist temple (Naxerdam/flickr.com)

(Bravo, June 2013) Follow the work of police in Southeast Asia as they deal with British travellers who are experiencing trouble with Thai authorities.

  

Thai Buddha (Earlsy1/flickr)

Theravada Buddhist Thailand is one of the world's greatest spiritual tourist destinations. It is also  famous for other kinds of tourism. Unfortunately, it is not safe for either at the moment.

Bangkok, after enduring many troubles in the restive and tsunami-damaged south, is being rocked by political uprisings to oust the prime minister and create more socioeconomic equality.

In addition, the "Free land" is cracking down on mostly European foreign (farang) tourists.

Thailand is surprisingly devotional and pious.

There is also a long standing rivalry erupting again with neighboring Buddhist nation Cambodia and a long simmering border dispute. These rivalries extend back to the time of feudal kings and previous kingdoms.

Now with tourist dollars on the line for the lucrative spiritual-tourist trade, due to the ancient jungle temple on that border, nothing is being taken for granted or resolved amicably.

Our monks protest, too (stuff.co.nz)

Western investment and influence are steering Thailand to follow the tried and true belligerent model of western expansion as it rivals Japan and China for top Asian economy, a title which slips further away due to external currency manipulations, accusations of corruption versus fresh promises of reform and an increasing political rivalry between the Red Shirts (UDD, presumably the good guys opposing dictators and coups) versus the Yellow Shirts (PAD, the economic elites, "patriotic" conservatives in league with the military).

In 2010 there was blood on the streets as police state tactics (with paramilitary forces trained by the West) were deployed to squelch social unrest as a result of corrupt elections and growing inequality. 

• Thailand protests may spread to tourist areas

• Four dead as Bangkok sees worst political violence since 2010 (TIME) PM Yingluck Shinawatra, who won a landslide election in 2011 to become Thailand's first female PM, is the sister of the former ousted PM...the trouble maker Chamlong is yet again... 
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• Thailand on course for trouble as PM Yingluck backs amnesty...‎ (Phuket Wan) In a nationally televised speech, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has urged senators to pass an Amnesty Bill that she says will...
• Hong Kong travel agencies change Thai plans after violent
• Thailand braces for trouble as UN court backs Cambodia in border dispute (Reuters) HAGUE/BANGKOK - U.N. court rules in favor of Cambodia on Monday in a long-running dispute with Thailand over its border...
• Cambodia closely watches Thai political turmoil: gov't
• Thai PM to visit Moscow in spite of trouble at home
  
• Thai protests EASE as police relax and lift barricades
• Thailand's secret trafficking camps for human trade

Cambodia: violent clashes injure hundreds

Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Lindsay Murdoch (TheAge.com.au)

Cambodian protesters throw stones at police in Phnom Penh, Sept. 15, 2013 (AFP).

 

Discoveries in the jungle (WQ)

Police fired smoke grenades and water cannons in clashes with hundreds of demonstrators on Phnom Penh's waterfront on Sunday evening, leaving one protester dead and hundreds injured, amid heightened tensions in the Cambodian capital over the country's disputed national elections.

 

Opposition supporters are threatening to continue mass rallies ahead of the first scheduled session of parliament on September 23 which opposition leaders have declared they will boycott.

"Our vote is our life...they stole our votes; it's like stealing our lives."

Sam Rainsy, leader of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), told about 20,000 protestors at a Sunday rally that opposition MPs will refuse to attend parliament unless the government of strongman prime minister Hun Sen allows an independent investigation into allegations of widespread vote rigging at the July 28 poll. More   

 

 

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