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A BIG BOMB JUST WENT OFF. I HEARD IT. I'm at SUKHUMVIT.. someone tell me what the heck is happening?

Tell him to notice the thunder and lightning in the cloudy sky. There's some yelling I can hear all the way in Ari, but the big booms are the post-Songkran rains rolling in. It rained a little even yesterday morning around the same time.

Maybe there was a bomb too, but the only explosions I hear are the ones in the sky. Given the reliability of all the amateur reporters who show up every time there's so much as a boom, I'm guessing it's the weather.

Yep, I hope the Genie cannot be put back in the bottle. I find the Red Shirt Manifesto eminently sensible and, quite frankly, somewhat arousing - in the political sense of course (edit: turned emoticon off)

All politics being local, the test will be whether the current protesters go home and clean up their own backyards. I'm less interested in the academic rhetoric than I am in the participatory end of things. If people scream at a national government for its illegitimacy and then go home and kowtow to whoever the local bigwig is then it's just going to be a game of meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Right now this is a larger long-term concern because it seems likely on that side of the popular equation. The genie may not go back in the bottle, and I hope he doesn't, but if all he does is sit around and grant master's wishes then he's just playing for scraps. The other side of the popular equation is a different can of worms with its own problems, of course, and I only don't bring it up because it's not as germane (I think it will be again, soon, though).

As usual though, it's an excellent piece.

Even if you find Crispin half way plausible in what he says , it will give pause to a reading of this current shitfest as fight between the 'haves' and the 'havenots'. Such a reading is, more than anything else, a justificatory vocabulary for the plays in hand and a wonderful opportunity for western folk to see themselves as romantic revolutionaries (most of these folks would go apoplectic at the mere mention of increased taxes.)

Yeah, I don't think you'll catch me simplifying things like that. There's a lot of complexity here and I don't discuss the issue in much detail because 1) my knowledge is necessarily limited and 2) what I am able to discuss requires an analysis of historical and future arcs and there's a large part of the discussion of motivational aspects that governs who might do what, when, that's simply off-limits. I do feel for the individual people who are caught in the middle of this power play and I can't deny a notion that whatever the political theater that's going on is at the moment we've seen some pretty interesting political development within Thailand during this time that's probably a genie who won't be going back in the bottle.

EDIT: Can they turn off the stupid smilies so that we can type a B and a parentheses without an idiotic emoticon? Good lord.

Google?

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LD17Ae01.html

It's actually not that easy to find via Google. Took me 5 minutes of pecking through a bunch of more prominent results before I figured out where his column was. ATimes needs an SEO consultant. Interesting column nonetheless, I'd been wondering what may or may not be occurring inside the military now that it's dealing with an external threat against its monopoly on force. The idea that the external threat may be internal (which I know is not new, but hasn't been heavily analyzed in the English media) is pretty troublesome to consider. It wouldn't be a new thing for the country that gave us The Manhattan Coup, but it would nonetheless be a troublesome development at this point.

Wait and see.

Not like there are other options, heh. I'm just curious about the guy's character. It's bizarre to see people painting him in such wildly different lights.

Wasn't everyone complaining recently that Anupong was sympathetic to the red shirts after meeting with them and making comments about dissolution? I keep reading and hearing that he's alternately 1) a dithering politician who wants to play both sides against the middle and 2) that he's a harsh authoritarian who wants to use the military to crush dissent. These can't both be true and I am therefore left confused.

I'm sure a lot of the crop talk is being trumped up to increase the drama of each individual story, given that's how these things work for everyone. I really take no particular side in this struggle, but in my experience everyone on any side of any issue loves to tell his or her story as dramatically as possible. Still, assuming for a moment that a good chunk of the country's farmers did end up staying in Bangkok for a month, or two, or four, or six, couldn't this lead to some food shortages and increased prices concurrent with these people not making any money from their crops and, in the case of sharecroppers, losing their fields? That could be kind of an interesting blowback in both directions.

Which was far worse under Thaksin's regime!

While not condoning Thaksin's censorship of the media, this government is far worse, and media censorship has been on the increase since the coup in 2006, beginning with the junta.

This from today...

MICT warning people not to post divisive comments or pictures from last weekend. Was in the BP so I can't post it here.

MICT forbids posting of pictures and divisive comments about 10 April clashes

Wed, 14/04/2010 - 11:24

The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology has instructed its staff to monitor the posting of pictures which show violence in the clashes on Saturday. People are warned not to post comments divisive to society.

According to www.dailyworldtoday.com on 12 April, Thaneerat Siripachana, Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, said that on grounds of national security, the ministry would seek cooperation from webmasters of domestic websites to prevent the dissemination of such pictures. In the case of websites located abroad such as YouTube, the Ministry will work with the Foreign Ministry to seek cooperation from host countries.

He warned that the people should not post divisive comments, as they would violate the Emergency Decree and the 2007 Computer Crimes Act.

http://www.prachatai.org/english/node/1737

Oh boy, that's an interesting (if not entirely unpredictable) response. "In the case of websites located abroad such as YouTube, the Ministry will work with the Foreign Ministry to seek cooperation from host countries." I can save them the trouble of that phone call, heh. I hope they don't end up just blocking a bunch of popular sites as per usual.

I'm really amazed that all of this hasn't broken down into the kind of racial strife that's been seen in neighboring countries who have all had pretty similar versions of this class war. It never breaks cleanly along any racial lines anywhere, but that's usually not enough to stop people from getting tribal and sorting things out that way. All it generally takes is one charismatic leader who gets the ball rolling by deciding that scapegoating by race is an easy path to political power. Still, whatever the reason, I'm glad it hasn't.

Hey, let's have a fifteenth thread with the same running yellow-screaming-at-red/red-screaming-at-yellow debate among a bunch of farangs where everyone just says that the other side is wrong and we end up with lots of idiotic predictions about how everything's over for sure now so and so will lose, clearly (which of course turns out to be wrong). Certainly new ground will be covered!

And a tad of sensitivity wouldn't hurt....

This board gets read by worried/grieving families and friends

On Thai Visa? This board is chock full of know it alls who think anything that happens to anyone is their fault. It's absolutely bizarre. Ha Ha, what were those tourists thinking being tourists? TOO RIGHT. SOM NAM NA! Look back a week or a month and I bet you can find the same people in other threads complaining about tourists being scared off by the harmless protests.

Not a sausage of a problem in my beautiful Phuket.

Unless you want to jet ski, park your car or take a tuk tuk somewhere, heh.

I guess it wasn't all over and the government hadn't crumbled like the thread spent half the afternoon posting about. I don't expect that will temper the desire to play pundit.

^difference being at a protest and actually protesting. Just look at the lad who was speaking on stage at the red demo the other night? I mean if that isnt crossing the line I don't know what is. However like I said - if you are willing to accept the consequences then so be it.

In a normal democracy and with a proper justice system, the guy speaking on stage hasn't crossed any line at all. Now if the same applies in Thailand is another question alltogether..

I don't think you can generalize like that. Last I checked my country had basically tossed habeus corpus out when it's not convenient and kicked over due process along with it, England's deporting troublesome clerics and God knows what all else we could come up with from the West concerning the topic of how our countries treat minorities that they consider problematic. Here it's just way more magnified because there's Thai, there's Asian and then there's not-Asian - as with most Asian countries. In the West we have issues still of course, but legally (if not entirely socially) speaking we've moved beyond the whole skin color thing (currently we're pissy about religious affiliation, heh). So, things are demonstrably better in the West when it comes to ethnic pluralism/integration, though they're hardly perfect, and it's not that hard to find cases where immigrants are hounded and deported by the government for public protest.

^TIT and like most 3rd world countries

Why do people keep insisting Thailand is a 3rd world country? It's not at all. The poorest areas of Thailand are in the villages of Issan, correct? I currently live in Issan, and am out in the village at least one day a week selling food at mama's restaurant to give her the day off. It's definitely poor and everything, but hardly 3rd world conditions. Zimbabwe, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria are 3rd world countries. Not Thailand. Electricity (and even cell phone coverage), education, and government services are available everywhere in the country.

Third world is an outdated term, it doesn't apply anymore. The current terminology is developing country, developed country and a couple of others. They're all specific classifications based on HDI and what not. It's not a feeling, it's empirical insofar as things of this nature can be empirical.

And again with loads of folks being hypocritical. More than likely, if this was your home country, and you knew an immigrant who lived there for 15+ years, good guy, setup a successful business, and all that jazz... I doubt you'd be saying he should keep his mouth shut, as he doesn't deserve a voice. He's lived in the country for 15+ years, so he knows about the way of life just as much as you.

Same goes for farangs in Thailand. If someone has been here for 15+ years, why such a huge uproar because he decided to pick a political affiliation? That's just simply stupid, and a prime example of why many farangs who live in Thailand for too long end up fuc_ked in the head.

I agree with the principle and I hope Thailand - hel_l, most of Asia - gets there someday, but most of this continent has a century of multicultural education headed its way like a freight train. Until ethnicity isn't tied to nationality it's probably better for all farangs if no farangs rock the boat too much. That being said, I'm a Westerner and I can't really take pot shots at a guy who has lived here and has citizenship and is participating in the political process of his country. If these protesters are just teachers on work visas or sex pensioners, though, that's another matter. In most of the West we wouldn't take too kindly to a bunch of non-citizen work visa recipients showing up at political rallies and making speeches about internal political affairs. If they're citizens, or have PR and are on the way to being citizens then it seems to me they've got as much right as anyone else to be up there (annoying as it may be to have farang faces associated with Thai politics). Simply marrying someone and buying property and running a business and spending ten years somewhere doesn't count as citizenship anywhere I've ever heard of, though. It's a substantial commitment, but citizenship is not the same as "living somewhere." It involves acculturation, education, accepting some form of social contract and the rest.

Why is it in these threads that one place has to be the best and everything else has to be crap? There are some seriously crap Mexican places in Bangkok, but none of them are La Monita, Tacos & Salsa or Los Cabos. These places may have varying quality levels and some are better than others in my opinion, but they're head and shoulders above what was on offer just 3-4 years ago when people talked about Charley Brown's and Patty's Fiesta and what not, heh. God, those were desperate days when you had to fly to Chiang Mai for anything approaching decent Mexican food.

Haagen Daaz is made by Pillsbury/General Mills, it's another formerly real American brand bought up by a multinational conglomerate and hollowed out to serve as a wrapper for mass produced crap. It's bizarre that it maintains its status as some kind of luxury or boutique brand from Europe when it's pretty much the equivalent of Frosted Flakes or McDonald's. I agree with the guy about Bud's! Decent stuff. Haagen Daaz tastes fine too for mass produced stuff, the only complaint I have is that it costs twice what the other mass produced crap does and the flavor isn't particularly better in most cases.

the state of emergency here will be bumped for the much more photogenic state of emergency in kyzygstan.

"Bangkok to become hub of states of emergency."

Yup, but not hearing any of these "fireworks". What's the story?

Dunno, sounded like fireworks or the typical old navy gun clearing down at The Port, but I'm too far from The Port anymore to hear that. I'm guessing it was nothing or people would be posting about seeing something on the television. Just a bunch of firework-sounding blasts coming from the middle of town direction. Went on for about 3-4 minutes and then stopped.

lols! Right now - 10:10pm.... the redshirts are shooting off MASSIVE fireworks!!! Can you hear them????

Is that what that is? I'm at Ari and I can hear the blasts, but there are no fireworks in the sky. Usually I can see fireworks across the entire city from here. I was curious.

This is probably just coincidence, but has anyone noticed that Abhisit's father has a board seat, with Prem, at CP Group? And CP Group and Bangkok Bank (where he's on the board as well) provided financing for the PAD protests and airport takeovers?

And maybe its just a further coincidence that in Thanong's blog today he says Red Shirts are getting funding from a major food supplier and a bank.

Do you guys mean to tell me that this is a fight between a splintered ruling class of elites, each of whom hope to continue running the country the way they see fit in the future, and in which the common people - whether from Bangkok, The North, The South or Central Thailand - are merely pawns? Go on then. Pull the other one!

Stopped by La Monita the other day for lunch, and had another great meal... highlighted by a carnitas burrito with tortilla chips....

The food continues to be consistently good. And for the first time, a request to sample their salsas produced a set of four small dipping-type bowls each filled with a different variety of salsa... not just the familiar squeeze bottles, which are still present there...

La Monita continues to refine their salsas, by the way, based on the chili peppers that are available to them, and I must say, the latest incarnations are quite good....far far from the usual tomato sauce varieties found elsewhere.

That's the good stuff... The bad stuff..... For I think the third visit in a row now, the new menu offerings had been promised but not yet delivered.... Still no new menu as of a few days ago.... And, still nothing arranged yet in terms of delivery options or accepting bank/credit cards for payment....

But the food is hard to beat... I keep wanting to try some other things on their menu like the torta sandwiches.... But the burritos, tacos and carne asada fries keep pulling me back.... I'm in anguish!!!!

I'd been avoiding these threads because I hated being part of the "Yeah will this is a REAL salsa, not like your idea!" problem, which I was. Still, I do have strong opinions. Anyhow, I just got back from Texas where I ate a ton of Tex-Mex and for some reason I was near Phloen Chit and finally found La Monita (which needs much better signage roadside). I went in, had a steak burrito and was absolutely blown away with both the burrito and the salsas. You've been banging on about this place for a while and you're absolutely right. I spoke with the woman at length and the first thing I asked her was, "You grill the beef, don't you?" That makes all the difference in the world for flavor and it's one of the main reasons why other burritos don't taste right here.

So, yeah, I wanted to come in and contribute something positive. Everyone on staff there was really nice, the food I had was excellent and I'll definitely be recommending it. Thanks for the heads up

I'm not from Canada, but I've been hearing about poutine for years from my friends and I've always wanted to try it. It sounds hilariously awesome as a kind of local comfort food and it's also just about the only food I've heard of that's purely Canadian (I'm sure there are others, just don't hear about them). I've been wondering if it's even possible to get it here in Bangkok? I don't know of any Canadian-specific pubs or restaurants, but there have to be some as there are plenty of Canadians.

Does anyone know of anywhere in Thailand to get poutine? I'm guessing no, but I'm surprised often enough that it's worth asking!

Hopefully Thailand will be using Weastern technology and Western engineering, together with Western supervision.

I have been dealing lately with the Chinese funded proposal to renew the building of a nuclear plant in Bangladesh - and this scares me shitless. I have experienced both good (Sinopec) and bad (everyone else) Chinese construction on several projects and their engineering is very poor, if done at all. One power plant in Indonesia (coal-fired) they virtually designed as they built.

Western technology is very safe - witness the French power scene, where Areva and others are masters of the art of producing non-failure nuclear plants.

ut I still hope the Thais keep these plants down in the Muslim provinces and forget about Trat.

The Japanese have a fantastic, safe and much more modern nuclear industry than any other country in the world - it's among the very largest now that they've opened all their new plants. Given cultural affinities I'd almost feel better if the Japanese helped run it - also it'd be neat to see where you hide the mistress quarters in a nuclear plant. I'm guessing we're not counting the old Eastern Bloc countries in Western technologies we'd like to see used, heh. I've got a friend that does control systems in nuclear plants for Siemens and he's been sent on some revamping projects in old Soviet Satellite countries and says that's the scariest job he ever has to do.