History Challenge & Journal

[dtaai-maai]

Far from certain, but let me suggest 2 possibilities:
Third Hand
The Young Turks

[Jimbob]

How long to tease?
Ok. Thai police were involved,. (Shock horror)

[migrant]

OK got it now with google, interesting!!

[dtaai-maai]

Share it with the rest of us then!

[Jimbob]

Please!

[dtaai-maai]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phao_Sriyanond

Ah, The Knights of the Diamond Ring, led by Phao Sriyanond

[dtaai-maai]

Just a quickie.

What's the connection between thugs and assassins?

[Jimbob]

Phao was promoted to the position of director of the police in 1951, by which time he had become one of the country's all-powerful triumvirate. A client of the CIA, Phao received funds and hardware to build his personal fortune, as well as the expertise of American paramilitaries such as James William Lair to turn the police into an alternative force to oppose his military rival, Sarit Thanarat.

Phao established an intimate circle of police officers, known generally as the "Knights of the Diamond Ring", which was notorious for its treatment of opponents of the government and the police generals - even resorting to assassination and murder. Their crimes were many:

In March 1949, four MPs from Isaan and an associate, all one-time disciples of the exiled Pridi, were arrested on charges of treason. They were shot dead by their police escort while supposedly being transferred from one jail to another.
On December 12, 1952, Tiang Sirikhanth - MP for Sakon Nakhon, a leading Seri Thai member and an opponent of the government - was arrested with four of his associates. They were murdered (allegedly by strangulation in a police station) and their bodies burned in a forest in Kanchanaburi Province.
A successful newspaper publisher, Ari Liwara, refused to sell out to Phao and was killed in March 1953.
In 1954 Phon Malithong, MP for Samut Sakhon who provided evidence of corruption against Phao in Parliament, was in found tied to a concrete pier in the Chao Phraya River, having first been strangled.
Phao was extremely wealthy. He demanded protection money from businessmen, rigged the gold exchange, and blackmailed corporations into giving him huge shareholdings. He also profited greatly from the opium trade.

Police units transferred opium from the poppy fields of the Golden Triangle to Bangkok, ready to be exported. Trucks, planes, and boats which had been supplied to the police by the CIA, were instead used to move opium, which the police carefully guarded.

[Jimbob]

Dam you mean the assassins? Werent they a society. Has saints something like that.

[dtaai-maai]

Something like that, but what I really mean is the words themselves.

[Jimbob]

Hmm. DM, very confusing. One site points to the eygptian Arabic word 'hashasheen' meaning troublemaker rather than the myth of hash hash. The craft is alive and sadly we'll with secret services now.

[dtaai-maai]

Okay, so assassin comes from the Arabic hashashin - and thug?

[Frank Hovis]

Isn't 'thug' an Indian word from 'The Thugee' - a band of nomadic Indian criminals?

[MajorBloodnok]

Almost right!

'Thugee' defined as the practice of ritualized robbery and murder as practiced by the thugs, followers of the goddess Kali.

[MajorBloodnok]

COD:
Assassins (hashesh-eaters), members of the fanatical Nizari branch of Ismaili Muslims at the time of the Crusades.
Their head was the mysterious 'Old Man of the Mountain'.
They carried out political assassinations, usually high with hashesh.

The Ismaili sect has survived to this day. Their head is called 'Aga Khan'.