Ricardo

Had this been 8 months ago you may have wanted to come but found a bunch of sheep blocking the airport and killing the holiday season dead.

Perhaps you are referring to the PAD protests 5 months ago at the end of November, at Swampy & Don Meaung, or were there airport-closures last August too ?

Would you agree that the Red-Shirt terrorist actions, over the past week at the ASEAN-meeting in Pattaya & on the streets of Bangkok, might also have damaged the holiday-season for tourists this year ?

Anyway, nice to see a few new members of the PAD tag team acting in unison. Great blogging lads and you have changed my opinion of your Master Sondhi and thats for sure.

Keep it up

Grandpops, you seem to imply above that there is some sort of co-ordinated effort, to distort the content on TV ? Do you have any actual evidence for this, or your claim that Sondhi is their Master ?

I personally would condemn any attempt by paid posters, to disrupt our forum, in this way.

It certainly was interesting, to see the views of new members who started posting over the past week, unfortunately some of the more rabid ones got themselves banned, just when they were getting going. The lesson as always is, feel free to post, but don't flame or abuse others.

As post 268 reminds us, Thaksin's diplomatic-passport was revoked last December, the one he has now just lost is his ordinary Thai passport. Not an unreasonable punishment for inciting & financing terrorism on the streets of Pattaya & Bangkok. Treason charges would seem to be justified in this case.

Not that this will prevent Thaksin from travelling, we've seen him being presented with his Nicaraguan passport, and heard rumours of several other countries being willing to sell him one. And he is clearly 'well-connected' in the UAE.

Yeah, I was talking about his diplomatic Nicaraguan passport. I'd wager that Nicaragua isn't the bottom of the barrel and there are probably dozens of other countries willing to accept his passport fees as well.

People just apparently feel the need to rationalize that justice is somehow being served (*see, now he needs to make visa runs like I do*)... but the images of him and his family in their private GIV doesn't seem to make sense somehow. In reality, they will just spend the rest of their lives like washed up (but formerly successful) actors/actresses and rock stars.

Sorry Heng, my mistake, I had assumed he got an ordinary Nicaraguan passport, wonder how much extra he paid to get a diplomatic one ?

The problem is not 99.9% of the people in the south, its 0.1% of fantatics who do want a muslim state and want to impose their own religious mania on everyone in it.

my point is you dont ponce about with these <deleted>

your <deleted> them b4 they <deleted> you

do or die

So you would propose to "<deleted> them b4 they <deleted> you", especially the 99.9% who aren't fanatics, to get the 0.1% who are ?

Did you ever wonder if this might support the fanatics' absurd claims, that the rest of the world is out to get all muslims, and help them gain more influence over the rest ? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot !

Thaksin's own simplistic view was that there were no freedom-fighters, or people who wanted their non-Bhuddist non-Thai-speaking provinces to have more independence, as they did a century earlier, only a bunch of crooks down there. Well they do say it takes one to know one.

Hey...it's not just sleeping and eating...

You forgot to add... Thai television... Thai music/musicians... what's up with the Thai family/relatives... and occasionally... sex....

Does the relative-health of the family water-buffalo, and its urgent need for expensive medication, not also get the occasional mention ? Or did it die ??

Dubai King asked not to welcome Thaksin

BANGKOK: -- A Muslim community in Bangkok said Tuesday that its residents will petition to King of Dubai not to welcome fugitive ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra because he is leader of red shirted protesters who stage violence in Thailand.

Manit Saengthong, leader of Darrulaman Mosque community, said that the community opposed the violence instigated by the red shirts during the past days.

Some of the protesters invaded and destroyed properties of a mosque, Manit said.

"We will submit a petition to King of Dubai through United Arab Emirates ambassador of Thailand, requesting the King not to allow Thaksin to enter the country and use it as a springboard to attack Thailand," Manit said.

The request will also be for other Muslim countries, he added.

Thaksin is known for his close relationship with Dubai businessmen. He usually talked to the media while he stayed in Dubai.

-- The Nation 2009-04-14

I wish the Nation wasn't so sloppy in its reporting. There is no "King" of Dubai. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is the "Ruler of Dubai", and he is an Emir, as Dubai is an emirate.

Not sloppy reporting by the Nation in fairness, it is Manit Saengthong who is quoted above as referring to the 'King of Dubai', and who is therefore mistaken.

A diplomatic passport is a diplomatic passport whether you're from Russia or Tuvalo, and surely provides visa hassle free travel.

Arrivals by private jet don't even pass through any visa lines or customs in most countries. They process you at the hangar of whatever air support services you're using. Funny how a lot of posters seem to be expecting to see Thaksin in the visa application lines at overseas consulates or something.

As post 268 reminds us, Thaksin's diplomatic-passport was revoked last December, the one he has now just lost is his ordinary Thai passport. Not an unreasonable punishment for inciting & financing terrorism on the streets of Pattaya & Bangkok. Treason charges would seem to be justified in this case.

Not that this will prevent Thaksin from travelling, we've seen him being presented with his Nicaraguan passport, and heard rumours of several other countries being willing to sell him one. And he is clearly 'well-connected' in the UAE.

The wife wasn’t so lucky, warned her not to go shopping wearing a yellow tee shirt.

Nevermind, things are not so bad, I’ll go out in the town tonight and find another one.

The som-tam lady told me, Tesco Lotus have a sale on twin-packs, I always fancied being married to twins.

Seriously I'd say it's perfectly OK here, except for all the Songkran freedom-fighters, making a bit of a splash.

some thai people spotted him shopping in dubai with his wife (at GUCCI shop) while the reds are burning down bangkok.

Surely not even Thaksin would take his family shopping in Dubai, when having promised to return to lead his supporters & their children/grandchildren on the streets of Bangkok, against tanks & water-cannon & soldiers armed with blanks or whatever ? That really would be too sick for words.

Hey this is a bit late for April Fool Day

Mr & Mrs Shinawatra out shopping in Dubai

Since Mrs S. reportedly has the hump with him, that is presumably her at the back, or is Thaksin the camel's ass ?

Samark got kicked out because of conflict of interest charges and somchai went the way of the PPP, all executive members of which were banned for 5 years.

Never forget that, after being found guilty in court, Samak then stood for re-nomination as PM, and was stabbed in the back by his own party, who voted for Thaksin's brother-in-law instead. On whose orders, or why, are good questions. One might speculate that once he had been made PM, he then felt less inclined to do his master's bidding, and this was the price he paid. Nothing to do with the military of the elite or unseen influences.

Funny though, through out this crisis, i hardly saw any cops on the streets nor i did not see any cops pulling or controlling any roads at all.

This is their normal strategy for dealing with Songran, no doubt they were out joining in the festival-fun, in their private capacities ?

No PAD is charged and in jail so far. Let me guess reds will be charged real quick.

And you ask the reds to stay quiet so country will be peaceful.

PAD reported on 30 March to the police station.

Now there case is at the courts

The yellows never tried to burn Bangkok down.....

Nor indeed did they threaten to blow it up, using gas-tankers. Now if only Thaksin had arrived, to join the party as he had promised his supporters, he might have brought the matches with him. !

Koo, any comment on Thaksin's failure to lead his supporters, on the streets in the insurrection he had incited, do any of the Red-Shirts feel betrayed now ? How about his asking you to bring your children along, while he got his own family out of the country to safety, by contrast ?

Glad you're OK yourself, and thanks for the photos during the riots, by the way.

Where is the opposition party in all this?

Just silence, no calls for resignations, no claims against the government.

That is strange because Chalerm is very outspoken.

Have Puea Thai given up on him?

Abhisit also stayed fairly low-profile, during the PAD-protests, making the odd condemnatory comment on excesses, but keeping his hands clean, waiting until he was able to overturn the government's coalition to form one of his own.

Face it, the PTP are still fairly leaderless at present, perhaps this is a cunning plot of the military & elite, or more likely they're simply not very good at parliamentary politics. I suspect the latter.

I'm not so sure that he has the total backing of the Yellow Shirts, as you suggest, they're not particularly happy because he ignores many of their demands.

I would blame him for the failure to instruct the BoT to carry out a competitive-devaluation of the Baht against the US $, which I believe time will show, to be a seriously-damaging economic mistake. But I may be wrong.

Keep emotion out of it

because, YOUTUBE, CANNABISACTION and AMNESTYORG are reliable sources of information. Are there any visions of the airport being shut down a while back or the rural vote being repressed? What about all the other villains out there who have created acts far more outrageous than what you accuse Thaskin of doing? Are you going to go after them? Again, do all heads of state know what their organizations, police, military are doing? If he did know than he should be held accountable for hauling them into the courts. I am not full of poop, I just went to see a man about a hourse an hour ago...cannabis action, are you seriou?

Dear gbt71fa, I thought you were proposing to keep emotion out of it, seems like you forgot that.

Yes, but I also understand images of hijacked buses burning and rowdy mobs attacking government officials' vehicles with bricks and pipes and how these images tend to discredit certain former PMs who then claim in interviews that the military provoked violence against "unarmed peaceful protesters".

Indeed, but then they also see pictures of soldiers firing live ammo from assault weapons and the Thai Government trying to call it "crowd control".

Then a former-PM who was ousted in a military coup calling for a return to democracy.

Why didn't all those rounds of "live ammo" produce any visible casualties, could it possibly be, that the soldiers were using paper bullets as claimed ? The only two deaths reported thus far were as a result of Red-Shirt terrorists' actions.

And the former-PM, now calling "for a return to democracy", any relation to the PM who said that democracy was not his aim, when he was actually in power ? Thought so.

What he wants returning is 'his' money, not democracy or freedom.

The Army started this, prolonged it, meddled with constitutions and elections, lost the election despite the meddling, put the PAD upto overthrowing that government, turfed a PM out for cooking on TV and stood on the sidelines only to ensure the police did not disperse the PAD when Somchai proved more resiliant than he looked.

Then, they set up a militia

Sorry, when did the Army set up a militia ? If you're talking about the blue-shirts, I've read elsewhere that they may well be under Newin's private control, in which case they were surely part of the PPP/Red-Shirts until Newin changed sides in December ?

The last coup September 2006 was against a democratic elected government.

Please get your facts right, Thaksin when overthrown was an appointed caretaker-PM, the 2nd TRT government had been democratically re-elected in 2005, but Thaksin then called new elections for April 2006, which were flawed and annulled.

This has all been widely discussed many times on ThaiVisa.

Would any of the posters who previously portrayed the Red-Shirts as peaceful or unarmed, care to comment on their position following this latest event, an armed attack on Army HQ using molotov cocktails ? Time to call a 'protester' a terrorist, at this point, in my own view.

I too saw a UFO in Chiang Mai, about 2 weeks ago, and it was shaped like a giant hamburger, perhaps it was a collective hallucination by all the food-thread posters on TV's Chiang Mai forum ?

Why at this time ?

Because he has seen the new Democrat-led coalition-government continue with his populist policies, and knows that they will gain credit for this, as the realisation sinks in that Thaksin/TRT are not the only people who can help the poor ?

Because he sees his influence declining. as time passes, and especially when he has now been found guilty in a court, and his lawyers have failed in an attempt to buy justice. His reputation is becoming increasingly tarnished ?

Because he knows that the share of the vote he or his nominees would get has been falling, which is why he didn't order his brother-in-law to call a new election, while he still could ?

Because he is becoming increasingly isolated, Newin & his own wife have both abandoned him, this is having an effect on him mentally, and he feels it is 'now or never'. His power is drifting away from him ?

Because the recent black-magic ceremonies ensure that this time he cannot lose ?

Tick any/all of the above.

Where Samak and Somchai failed with dignity

Samak was found guilty of taking money, from a company which depended upon his government's goodwill for its profits, then lied about it in court, and when his coalition-governments MPs were asked to reconfirm him as the PM afterwards, was abandoned by them without a second thought. Sleaze and back-stabbing by his own side.

Somchai played golf & went to karaoke in Chiang Mai, while his government & the country fell apart, before the courts dissolved his party for electoral-fraud. He also failed to call a fresh election, when advised to, and never really got to grips with the job.

I hardly think you can accuse either one of failing with dignity.

Abhisit by comparison is still sober & serious, appealing for calm and trying to avoid the conflict escalating out-of-control, despite having been attacked in person in Pattaya & in Bangkok. He might not succeed, if the powers-that-be fail to support him, as the police clearly do not, but he certainly deserves to, and Thai democracy needs him to IMHO.

The demonstrators that took to the streets last year, and when the army took control in 2006, called themselves the People's Alliance for Democracy but their goal was not to secure more democracy, but less. The group believed the rural poor – who tend to support Mr Thaksin – were too uneducated to be involved in politics and that some MPs should be appointed. They were backed by business interests and ex-army officers.

Sorry, but I believe you are mistaken, the PAD were formed in 2005 (much earlier than you say) with many differing groups, all having the same over-riding objective of exposing Thaksin and TRT as not being quite all they claimed to be.

Following the coup some of their leaders began to speculate about reforms to the system, to improve the electoral-system, or make Thai democracy more resistant to Thaksin's efforts to water it down. Remember "Democracy is not my objective", from the man who now claims to be its defender, from the safety of Dubai or wherever ?

The interesting proposal to which you refer, which was never the unifying theme which some people claim, was an approach which yet might actually get some direct-representatives of the poor farmers/taxi-drivers/whatever into Parliament, something which has not been achieved by any side. Not that the theory was workable in the form outlined. But an interesting idea for discussion.

There is little doubt that the constitution needs further reform, this is agreed by Abhisit/Democrats/PAD/Red-Shirts/PTP, the problem seems to be getting the process underway, and bloody insurrection is most certainly not going to lead to a workable solution.

And the rural poor in many areas do not support Thaksin, as he was well aware, when he promised them that any provinces which voted against TRT need not hold their breaths, waiting for any government-support following his anticipated re-election. No wonder they don't like him !

Lastly, is there any political group in Thailand, which is not backed by business-interests or ex-military officers ? I doubt it. I don't necessarily agree with it, but that seems to be the way things work here, thus far.

Why worry?

I am a fatalist, when my clock stops as it is scheduled, I will die.

Beit in a Boeing 777, or me bed, the curtain will fall.

But I personally would rather not be on the plane, when the pilot's clock stops, thank-you !

Reminds me of the old joke, "I want to die peacefully in my sleep, as my father did, not screaming in fear like the passengers on the bus he was driving".

Sorry, original post overtaken by events.

See the thread in the Travel forum, no trains this morning, out of Hualampong.

No need of coup because those who become PM after coups don't know how to develop Thailand. They are just big people in society after pleasing the ruling class. Most of them are not capable for PM job.

Koo, do you mean to criticise PM-Samak and PM-Somchai like this, I would have thought you would have supported the PPP-led coalition-government ?

Whatever I would agree that they were not capable of doing the job, pity it took a year to find this out, as that delayed the country's response to the developing global economic-crisis.

About time Thaksin jumped on a plane to lead the fighting, 'eh? Just like he promised.

Will believe it when I fuc_king see it.

That was 24 hours ago, when the first shots were fired, perhaps flights from Nicaragua are full or delayed ?

why stupid?, are these guys stupid too?

A group of 20 former army officers, senators and businessmen of Thailand on Monday offered a one-million-baht (some 28,600 U.S. dollars) bounty for the arrest of exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who faced arrest warrant on corruption charges in Thailand.

They will be the first ones to go then.

But Thaksin, as a fighter for justice, will surely come home voluntarily to face his accusers, since he is undoubtedly totally innocent of all charges, or can afford enough 'lunch-boxes' to go round ?

I still find it creditable, that the reward was offered for his arrest, and not his assasination, Amazing Thailand !