Showing posts with label thaksin shinawatra tycoon turned prime minister. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thaksin shinawatra tycoon turned prime minister. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 May 2014

Thai martial law: military shuts down media

Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; BBC.co.uk, May 21, 2014
Thai Theravada monastics continue to practice during country's crisis (Butch Osborne/flickr)
Thailand is divided radicals and royalists who want to change the gov't (LillianPierson)

Thailand's martial law crisis: Local media shut down by military
I don't know what he's talking about! I'm PM!
(BBC) An emergency meeting of political leaders, called by the Thai army a day after it [unilaterally] declared martial law, has ended inconclusively.
 
She did it! Her and her brother, ousted!
Representatives from the government [which was not advised by the army that martial law would be declared], the main opposition party and protest groups all attended the meeting.
 
Local radio stations run by activists have been shut down by the military. Jonathan Head reports from Bangkok. More + VIDEO

Wednesday, 7 May 2014

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.

Sunday, 23 February 2014

Thailand (Asia's Ukraine): Crisis in Bangkok

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; BBC.co.uk; FEMEN.org/en
Ukrainian protesters resist brutal attacks and killing by pro-government police and military turning the tables on aggressors and oppressors (facebook/theunleashedmind.com).

Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of ousted billionaire ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra (now in self-imposed exile to avoid prosecution). Revolutionary Red Shirts, in spite of conservative Yellow Shirts, demand her ouster and want people's rule after years of political turmoil.



Thai police go on the offensive against protracted anti-gov't protests in Bangkok (BBC)
   
Thai protesters resist police (news.yahoo)
A [grenade] explosion has killed two people and wounded more than 20 others near an anti-government protest rally in the Thai capital of Bangkok. A boy aged 12 and a 40-year-old woman died in the attack near the Central World shopping mall, officials said. The BBC's Jonathan Head reports from Bangkok.

Police attack protesters, Feb. 17, 2014
[One remarkable thing is that, just as in neighboring Burma's "Saffron Revolution" and other uprisings, Theravada Buddhist monks and novices participate in protests and demonstrations against the corrupt governments and military rule. Sadly, young soldiers indoctrinated into the military-industrial complex of their nations do not shrink back from attacking and even killing monastics when ordered to do so by military and police commanders. But so important is the struggle for freedom and justice that monastics continue to participate.] More + VIDEO
Ex-Ukrainian PM and opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko liberated from jail.
  
Ukraine: Interim leader Turchynov stresses "European choice" 
Interim Pres. Turchynov (until Putin reacts)
Ukraine's new interim President Oleksandr Turchynov has said the country will focus on closer integration with the EU [rather than Putin's Russia]. Mr. Turchynov was appointed following the dismissal of [traitorous] President Viktor Yanukovych by MPs yesterday. [Pressured by Putin] Mr. Yanukovych's rejection of an EU-Ukraine trade pact triggered the protests that toppled him. 

Mourning protesters killed by police
Russia, which had backed Mr. Yanukovych, has recalled its ambassador to Ukraine for consultations. Earlier Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the opposition "had in effect seized power in [the capital of] Kiev, refused to disarm, and continued to place its bets on violence." The US [and a meddling Senator McCain] has said parliament's actions were legitimate and has warned Russia against military intervention. 
 
Ukrainians in camouflage and jeans beat brutal policeman who was trying to kill protesters.

Monday, 13 January 2014

STOP Bangkok (Los Angeles protest)

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; KPFK.org
Thai anti-government protesters gather in Bangkok (Wason Wanichakorn/AP)
   
Bangkok (Sakchai Lalit/AP/news.yahoo.com)
Thailand is demanding the ouster of its corrupt first female prime minister (Yingluck Shinawatra, 45), sister of corrupt billionaire and former P.M. Thaksin Shinawatra (who is in self-imposed exile, trying to make a comeback without having to face political corruption charges in majority Buddhist Thailand). As part of the campaign pitting radical Red Shirts and reactionary Yellow Shirts in the Thai capital, Los Angelenos are joining the fray just outside UCLA at the Westwood Federal Building at 2:00 today, Jan. 13, 2014, in solidarity with Thai protesters.
Bangkok braces for protest shutdown
Keeping a Free-Land free (thai)
(AP) Thailand braced for a new wave of mass unrest Monday as anti-government demonstrators blocked major roads to "shut down" Bangkok in a bid to thwart February elections and overthrow the nation's democratically elected prime minister. The intensified protests, which could last weeks or more, raise the stakes in a long-running crisis... More