i just copied this from a Bangkok post breaking news article abot veera accepting some guy karit to head the investigation
Senator Siriwat Kraisin, who is a member of the senate committee, urged the government to swiftly reduce inequalities to facilitate national reconciliation.
He said inequality in Thailand was obvious as upper-class people formed less than 1% of the population but they controlled 3 trillion baht in cash. The remaining 99% of the population had less than half this amount of money.
Good analysis here on some of the elite family struggles, Thaksin's enemies, and why certain buildings were targeted for arson attacks by the red shirts:
The rifts splits and rivalries amongst the elite the military the people and the polititions are frightening.
They are all positioning themselves and it is all to complicated
much as i hope they can sort it out i just cant see how.
as i have said before locking up the red leaders doesnt leave them with anyone to negotiate with and the red shirt leaders dont seem very good at negotiating anyway having snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
a peacefull coup would be good to calm things down for a bit but with the military split it has the potential for a counter coup and that would be disaster
they will do it their way and if it gets sticky i will stay home through it and sod 90 day reporting
The reds are a violent unruly mob of armed terrorists
The departing Philippino Ambassador didn't seem to think that's what they all were:
After seven years in Thailand, the longest serving foreign ambassador left the country last week after sharing his thoughts on the current political crisis http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/politic ... -diplomacy
When asked about the red shirt guards being branded terrorists, he said: "I saw them, usually wearing dark clothes, and I have to tell you that I tried to avoid them whenever I went to the demonstration site. They looked like they meant business. I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that these guys are tough guys, because they really look like they are. They were so different from the other people at the demonstrations. Those guys were there for different things"
"I especially didn't trust whatever I read as I knew that the reality was much more than what was written there.
"I was intrigued by the mixture of people that I saw," he said. "I expected to see mostly tough-looking men at Phan Fa and at Ratchaprasong, but instead I saw a lot of old women, many children and ordinary people, like farmers and people who aren't usually politically active. I saw there were a lot of people that you wouldn't expect to see in a place like that. They were sitting or lying there, just listening to the speeches and so on. I was also surprised by people's reactions.
''Political activists are easy to identify. I come from a country where activism is rampant. There's almost a profile of a political activist, but the people I saw were mostly ordinary people who you wouldn't expect to be in the area at a time like that.''
Yes, the ex-Philippine Ambassador seems to be confirming what is already common knowledge, that there was normal peaceful protestors there, and that there was also more militant people amongst them.
The latter badly let down the peaceful decent folk though, by hiding amongst them and taking their pop shots from there.
Yes, it was a response to Sandmans generalization that the red shirts were a mob of unruly terrorists which would be a bit of a worry to the government if it was true as there were about 100,000 red shirts at one point and they've only got a couple of hundred in jail at the moment.
What is this shirt Veera is wearing, the HH chapter of the Red Shirts or a souvenir of the army camp? I've have no Thai readers present at the moment. Pete
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