[quote]BANGKOK, Thailand - Thailand’s prime minister said Monday that supporters of the country’s toppled regime rather than Muslim insurgents were likely behind the bombings that killed three people and canceled New Year’s Eve festivities for thousands of revelers.
The nine bombs that exploded across Bangkok on New Year’s Eve and early Monday also wounded 38 people, including nine foreigners.
The bombings capped a year of unrest in Thailand, including a military coup three months ago and an increasingly violent Muslim insurgency in the south. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks.[/quote]
Anyone know wthell is going on in Thailand?[quote]
ousted regime of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra…Thaksin, now in exile abroad, was toppled in a bloodless coup headed by a group of generals who later appointed Surayud as interim prime minister until elections set for October 2007. But he still enjoys widespread support.
"The people who carried out the bombings were ill-intentioned people who want (the attacks) to have political impact. They want to create a scenario of a politically unstable Thailand," he said[/quote]
So, they’re working for you, Sir?
[quote]
Ajirawit, the deputy national police chief, said the bombs were made of ammonia nitrate placed in a metal box. “I believe the bombs were meant to injure and not kill people,” he said.[/quote]
Doesn’t sound like the southern fuckheads. My guess would be fairly high level Thaksin supporters making a show of strength. Undermining confidence in public security is a good way to get people to question the validity of the new regime. The public won’t support a government that is perceived to be weak; remember how popular Shinawat’s ‘war on drugs’ was?
On the other hand, some of the locations are interesting; Khlong Toey? Shithole shanty town. Seacon Square? Low-end suburban mall full of kids. If this is Shinawatr’s strikeback, what message does it send to poorer Thais? I guess they don’t really matter, now that he doesn’t need their votes anymore.
Thailand: the bombs were meant to injure not kill people.
How reassuring!
Maybe Thaksin had to go, but the new guys seem to have fucked up both the stock market (through currency regulation) and the tourist industry (by saying they would shut down the sex industry). Now they’re setting off bombs. They are really on a roll, what will they come up with next? Screw up the water supply? Start a plague?
What’s so respectable about him? He backed the coup.
Thaksin had his faults, but at least he was elected. Bhumipol has lost whatever value he might have had for Thailand, never mind what palace PR says. I say hang him high.
A sleazy girlie bar in Bangkok was one of the few places Geraldine and I could go to spend quality time together without being stared at by puritanical prudes with little understanding of the joy that a relationship such as ours can bring. Some of my regular haunts even let me use their bike pump when I had left mine in our hotel room.
It is an OUTRAGE that they would even consider it.
Democracy=good, everything else= bad? Few Thais see it this way. The king renounced his power and became a constitutional monarch. He also supported the Leekpai government and all subsequent governments; his commitment to building a democratic government is not in doubt HOWEVER, it is not a goal to be pursued above all else. There are very good reasons not to support Thaksin. If it is Thaksin supporters are behind the bombings, which seems fairly likely, there’s no reason to support the government, democratically elected or not.
Any ideas how a constitutional monarchy with little control over the army would prevent a coup? By asking the people to rise up against the army? And how damaging to the Thai people it would be if he opposed it? The first thing to happen would be that all media would go dead. Then electricity would go dead in key neighbourhoods. Then, a certain amount of deaths would be inflicted to send a message. End or resistance until a new consortium with enough army credentials gets something going.
Did you follow the election campaign? There’s democracy and there are Thai elections. The one million baht per village pledge? The health system fuckup? The corruption surrounding his companies? The king repeatedly made it clear that that behaviour was not acceptable. No apologies were made, no attempts to clean up. He just carried on skimming whatever he could.
The king and the Thai people as a whole prize prosperity and stability and, yes, their physical safety over the right to choose which shower of self-promoting amateurs they want to fuck up their lives some more. If Thais wanted things the way they were, there would have been some protest. There’s been virtually nothing.
It can be argued that eggs must be cracked to get democracy on the road again, but nobody wants to be the man who cracks the eggs, least of all the king. The king is a good force in Thailand but my main problem with the monarchy is that it perpetuates a belief in the god-like power of leaders which tends to feed into to the ‘personality politics’ which boosts cockroaches like Thaksin.
Either you support democracy, or you don’t. If you only support it insofar as its leaders pursue policies that you agree with, and otherwise favor military intervention, then that doesn’t qualify as anything worthy of the name.
No doubt. Whose decision should it be?
If the king is going to have the right to decide what is or is not “acceptable” in Thai politics, then you might as well give up the pretense of him being above it. He’s either just an ordinary politician, or as it seems now, a supporter of a military junta.
Only if Thaksin himself was involved. (The problem in that case wouldn’t the use of violence per se, but violations of the law of war, since the bombers didn’t avoid civilian populations. The Thai government–and king–would be very legitimate targets.)
I don’t expect him to prevent it, but he could have spoken against it instead of subtly signalling his approval. That might well have been enough to discourage it from happening. It might still be enough to overturn it.
It’s funny how Screaming Jesus enters serious political discussions, makes intelligent arguments and contributes a lot to the debates…all the while with the most obscene, outrageous quotes in his signature line. Ditto for Buttercup.
