deejay01

If Many Provinces, which ones please?

The Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES) has announced curfew in Bangkok and nearby cities and provinces in the North and Northeast earlier placed under emergency law.

if you live in one of the 15 provinces on this list, you might could be under curfew tonight.

A list would be more useful!

Here is the curfew document. Unfortunately it is in Thai. So if someone could offer a translation it should spread more light?

Curfew Announcement

The point #1 clearly state that the curfew apply to the Bangkok area.

"Got a report that internet signal may be cut @8pm til morning. My colleague is checking...pls wait "

From The Nation tweet

TRueonline official denied internet signal will be out of service.It's still on service except some effected area they'lll try to fix ASAP

From The Nation tweet

What are the surrounding cities and provinces?

How about Chonburi / Pattaya?

I can't find any details. Not that I want to go out today, but maybe still do some shopping.

Cheers

I also would like to know details of the exact area covered by the Curfew.

The curfew cover only Bangkok.

No it doesn't.

The Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES) has announced curfew in Bangkok and nearby cities and provinces in the North and Northeast earlier placed under emergency law.

That is not what I heard...

I'm quite sure that the curfew is only for the Bangkok area.

Worth to double check though.

Well that was certainly true when the Yellow shirts went berserk last year but I not so sure about these red shirts, they seem to be more intelligent and show a greater degree of restraint that what I saw from the yellows.

Hahaha, funny.

What are the surrounding cities and provinces?

How about Chonburi / Pattaya?

I can't find any details. Not that I want to go out today, but maybe still do some shopping.

Cheers

I also would like to know details of the exact area covered by the Curfew.

The curfew cover only Bangkok.

That mean if you are living out of Bangkok, even if it's as close as Pathum Thani, the curfew don't apply to you.

You still cannot travel to or through Bangkok.

Technically, the only active people allowed in the street in Bangkok is the army.

I live in A-Space Condo on Din Daeng road and the Bangkok Bank Branch right next to the condo was burnt down. The firefighters were there at 15:00. I don't see inside but there is definitely quite some damages inside. The telephone booths have been destroyed all along the road, the shattered glass spread everywhere. There is a tire barricade at the interstection Din Daeng - Pracha Songkhro with a red shirt mob of less than one hundred persons. There is pratically no traffic in the street, even if it would be an heavy rush hour at this time of the day. The local market is still full of people but the small shops are already preparing to close.

People shouldn't underestimate the power of disinformation.

The disinformation which hurt the most the Red Shirt is about the allegations of corruption of Thaksin.

He is labelled as "Corrupted" so instantly relegated as the bad guy.

But as everything else, corruption is quantifiable.

People usually watch the superficial, official story and make up their mind with that. Corrupted=Bad.

The truth is much more subtle and complex than that.

The above is a total load of rubbish with no structure or credibility whatever. Nice attempt to make some people confused but it doesn't work. Corruption is coruup[tion is corruption! Please explain how it's more subtle. I say again, corruption is corruption, no matter how you try to spin it, corruption is corruption.

Just like the Temasek-Shin Corp deal. People think Thaksin evaded taxes illegally. It is false. The deal was legal. Where he did wrong was that he used his power and political influence to bend the law to allow a foreign company to own a telecommunication company of Thailand, which was impossible before.

So you admit that he abused his power and railroaded deliberste and deep changes in legislation (the investment laws of Thailand) to massively benefit himself and his family for one transaction. How can you on one hand say he abused his power and immediately say it is false that he evaded taxes. You can fool some people with clever word construcytion some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

The other corruption accusations.. his wife buying from the IFDF, the appointment of relatives to key positions, etc. Those are relatively bad, but also relatively harmless.

So your saying that breaking the law / displaying disgraceful ethics is OK if it's just small. But the reality is that it wasn't small, the transcation was something like 700Million Baht. Is that small? Absolutely NO.

And overriding any of this specific discussion is that the citizens of any country have a right to expect theat their PM is the doyen of ethics, the ultimate example of good ethics.

Will you say it's OK if a drunk driver hits your car, injures one of your children, traunatizes the child but never mind because the child only had to stay in hospital for one week? I certainly hope not. /i]

Someone overly by the book could argue that no corruption at all should be tolerated in any circumstances, but it wouldn't fit in the real world as corruption is practically everywhere, including in the West. We could argue that the US Republicans were infinitely more corrupted than Thaksin and that caused wars but thats another story.

So because there is corruption in politics in the US (by the way, there are other countries in the world other than the US), then corruption is OK. This is precicely the attituide that needs to be killed in Thailand, othewrwise corruption will never go down at all.

This story of corruption was tightly knit by his opponents. This is simply politic warfare, nothing less.

What do you mean by 'tight knit'? ?There are in fact many threads on many webboards and in many other journals listing thaksins corruption - you seem to be suggesting that listing his corrupt activities is somehow nasty. Perhaps you'd like to share your rational for this.

The fact is, Thaksin clearly improved the living conditions of the often forgotten people living up-country. That is impossible to refute.

Yes it is possible to refute, and to refute strongly. Many families ended up in much deeper debt for just one one example. There is one positive in the 30Baht health scheme but let's be honest - the quality of care is less than at benachmark levels. The quality of education is still the same (poor) quality it was 20 yers ago.

His opponents were mainly middle-class from Bangkok, who felt left-out with "region-oriented" policies of Thaksin.

This comment has no basis whatever either in fact or in an anecdotal basis, and is nothing more than tour attempt at clever spin. Perhaps you'd like to share some rational for your comment.

Let's be frank here, Thaksin was a successful and ambitious man. Like many men in his position, he misused and abused his power.

Well let's analyze that:

- Successful - Yes, but let's also please remember that he had what you could call a telephone monopoly given to him on a platter (and by a senior leader of the 1992 coup which had no hesitation to shoot civilians on sight), plus whilst he had a monopoly he charged exorbetant rates for the telephone services, including the Essan poor.

- You simply cannot say that because other people have abused their power or been involved in corruption it is therefore OK. Thaksin and all other Thai politicians (over many decades) knew that getting into corruption has risk, part of that risk is that you just might be the person who get's caught by some unknown factor or gets acught because of a sudden change in public attitudes etc. If the axe happens to land on you, then that's the way the cookie crumbles, nothing more and nothing less.

But perhaps your suggesting that because others have never been caught then it's not fair for thaksin to be caught/punished. Well let's analyze that, this would be saying that because some murderers have never been caught then it's unfair for any murders to be caught and/or punished. A quick way to a totally lawless society

But he's not worst than the others. He's not worst than the current prime minister, Abhisit Vejajiva who cunningly found his way to the top. Abhisit was also charged for a lot of corruption cases (bribes, inflated prices, conflit of interests and shuch) ,

So you make some strong accusations againt PM Abhsit, perhaps you'd like to share some actual and specific details of: his corruption and specific details of charges laid against him, conflict of interest etc etc.

You say 'cunningly found hisway to the top'. It has been explained again and again (but is guess you don't accept the established laws of Thailand(laws which are commoin to many coutries) since they simply don't suit your attitudes.

You say "He is still under investigations for other cases of corruption." Perhaps, again, you'd like to share some specif case details to support your claim.

Let's not forget that Thaksin got ousted by the military, which is highly undemocratic.

The Commander-in-Chief at the time of the coup d'état was openly opposed to Thaksin (because Thaksin appointed relatives in the Army) and it explain why the coup happened.

No it doesn't explain why the coup happened - the coup leaders have explained many times they saw it as their duty to stop a highly corupt man who was out of control and was stronly abusing his power (and I wonder whether your suggestiong that massive and open nepotism is Ok, even when one relative was jumped 5 ranks, and even when numerous relatives are placed in important and powerful positions and they have no capability or previous experience to fulfill the roles? And this is a man who had no hesitation to supervise the murder of 2.500 fellow Thais without recourse to justice. Thaksin says (and you say) a coup is undemocratic - well thaksin is on record as saying that 'democracy is not important for Thailand' / 'democracy is not my aim', etc. etc. Plus he intimidated the judiary, the elctoral commission, the revenue department and more - but he now claims he's the champion of democracy. Sorry, but you can't it both ways.

Thaksin now says he totally opposes coups and he wants the clock turned back to before the 2006 coup. Well if thaksin has strong beliefs on this point then he should also be saying that Thailand (and the people occupying the government seats) should be turned back to before the first ever coup.

Let's also not forget that Abhisit party got less seats than the UDD supported Pheu Thai Party and only got power because of a coalition of 5 parties.

Thats' the way the process works and it's like that (and in reality the system works) in many countires in the world. It's within the deliberately written electoral laws of Thailand constructed decades ago.

How would you feel if the party who helped you get out of poverty, helped you to get better access to health care won the elections but didn't govern ?

'Get out of poverty'? I ask you to provide some facts / data about how many families in Essan are now out of poverty.

'Better access to health care' - a positive, but don't forget, it was massively under resourced and the quality less than wonderful.

'won the elections but didn't govern'. 'won' is a totally wrong word and unruthful word, 'bought' elections is an appropriate terminology and there's plenty of evidence of this.

If thaksin was seriously and sincerely wanting to improve life for the rural poor then he had many years to make strong and deep changes to policies, infratrucure, education, opportunity, policies to ensure a better sharing of the common wealth of Thailand. He did none of this, nothing. He gave the rural poor hands out - he bought and manipulated them with another bag of rice just at the right time, a few telephone cards just at the right time, nothing more.

I can certainly agree that the rural poor would be disillusioned by all of this, but who deliberately created their false hopes. who tricked them? The answer - thaksin and his ilk in the TRT / PPP parties.

The bottom line of all of that is very simple - they have a right to feel disillusioned and angry but they should aim their anger at the right people - thaksin, TRT, PPP, and their local poo yai in cahoots with the TRT and PPP, and the UDD.

I been typing for over 1 hour to refute all your own refutation but accidentally lost it by opening a new page on that same page.

It's too bad because you could have re-refute all my own re-refutation and so on for a long time I guess and it would have been enjoyable.

But I'm pretty much dishearten about this, I give up, you are right, you are the smartest of all humans and most likely you are more handsome than me.

*sighs* ...

If he is such a fine and decent guy, why then does he finance and orchestrate a bloodshed like that?

OK, that was just me putting two and two together. For everyone who is not that fast, why did he not tell the poor people, being all wound up by the dynamics of a large number of people, to stop and not get drawn into an inevitable bloodshed, being quite a bit away from it all and able to keep a cool head?

How come he only offered his condolences to the families of the killed red shirt supporters and not the military, although they are all Thai and might have even been quiet supporters of his? Well, I guess because he is just a hel_l of a great guy, he is!

You know, the reason why I'm posting here today is mostly to know more about all what is going on. (the first reason I registered was to get info about my wife's visa but that's another story)

You know... ignorance is the main reason why everything is so wrong in Thai politic in the last.. decades I should say.

I'm not a fan of Thaksin but I don't condemn him either.

Like him or not, Thaksin was extremely popular in 2005.

Something Thaksin gave to the people up-country, is HOPE. Hope for a better life.

He made bad things, nobody deny that. I'm not here to discuss the morality of the guy.

In my opinion, the root of the problem come from the 2006 coup. When a party have a crushing political victory (375 seats out of 480) and then he is ousted by a coup, just to be replaced by a coalition... it leaves millions of people who feel cheated.. unsatisfied.

The Red Shirts are not a homogeneous entity.

There is one group who are hardcore supporters of Thaksin and most likely just want him to come back to rule again

Another group who just feel frustrated by the outcome of the last years and wish the PPP could be the government. Those are the one who claim they dont fight for Thaksin but for "democracy"

The average red shirt is not the educated high-conscious type. Some are just there as followers with not much of a political conscience.

The IQ of a large mass of human quickly goes down...

I'm not even sure the Red Shirt got a tangible plan in case Abhisit step down in the next few days.. which is kinda sad.

With this kind of massing, there is also a bunch of unrelated people who just use the red shirt mass as a vehicle to create their own chaos.

Who knows if there is not insurgents from the south in the mass ?

The situation is so complex that I'm pretty sure nobody can claim to know exactly what is going on. The "Big Picture" is quite blurry.. at least for me.

I just hope one thing. No more of what happened yesterday... Damnit. It's fine to defend a cause but does it really need to be at the expense of people life ?

Listen, it's very simple: Abhisit offered to had election in six months instead than next year or so. Why the hel_l the reds didn't accept this and been back their home, waiting peacefully for the new elections?

The reds don't want to wait six months!?! Well, okay, here is the price to pay SIMPLY because they don't want to wait: 19 dead, 807 injured.

If their leaders had accept Abhisit proposal all these people will not be dead or wounded. Abhisit tried everything he could to resolve the crisis peacefully, he could not leave a minority of people destroying the country's economy. He had to defend the law and not let the country going into chaos simply because 50000 people can't wait six months for a new election!!! Is this difficult to understand!?!

You want no more dead people? Accept Abhisit proposal and get the fuc_k out of Bangkok! It's just as simple as that.

With all due respect bagheera65, you would make a very poor political leader. It is not "simple" like you imply. The last legislative were in 2007. All Abhisit is doing is trying to buy time. Don't just think he does that from kindness of heart.

And by the way, the UDD is more than 50,000 persons. Those 50,000 persons are simply the vanguard of over 10,000,000 supporters of the PTP everywhere up-country.

Assuming your pie-in-the-sky figures were accurate, which I don't, that would make them 15% of thailand's population. That would give them the right to peacefully protest without disrupting the lives of others, and to wait for the next election. It's called democracy.

Well, actually, its true I threw this number pretty quickly as it is very hard to evaluate the real support the UDD has.

The official numbers I have :

http://www.electionguide.org/election.php?ID=1253

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_general_election,_2007

The PPP won 233 seats out of 480 and got 36.63% of the votes.

I don't say that 100% of them support the UDD... but the vast majority does, even if they are only passive supporters.

To compare, the Democrats of Abhisit won 165 seats and got 30,30 % of support. But by combining the 5 running-up parties.. you get the 242 seats out of 480 to form a majority government.

Oh yeah, that is democracy... not at its best.

Another silly thing is how did the reds get those bodies back? Shouldn't their be autopsies? Maybe they were afraid that the rounds recovered wouldn't be military issue?

Spot on, I didn't think about that! UDD drags the bodies around BKK for a few days, then gets rid of them on their own terms. No evidence left!

The reason for this is during the last red protest in 2009, the red claimed dead in their ranks but the police claims there was no dead. Then they found 2 red protesters dead in the river, tied up and beaten.

So, it is widely believed by the red that army want to dissimulate the death toll, explaining why they were fighting for the bodies.

Interesting... but we'll never know what the Reds actually died from? Can't say they were shot by the troops if you can't produce the rounds can you?

Honestly, I don't even think the Reds actually think about autopsy.

Yesterday night I was watching channel 3 and noticed that the news were more emphasizing on soldiers casualties. I thought that it was fair, considering the government would be stupid to make people have sympathy for the Reds.

Then this morning I read in the Nations that the red leaders asked to chase away the reporters because they were giving biased news.

The People Channel is up again since this afternoon. You will most definitely see the dead bodies exposed on this channel.

Another silly thing is how did the reds get those bodies back? Shouldn't their be autopsies? Maybe they were afraid that the rounds recovered wouldn't be military issue?

Spot on, I didn't think about that! UDD drags the bodies around BKK for a few days, then gets rid of them on their own terms. No evidence left!

The reason for this is during the last red protest in 2009, the red claimed dead in their ranks but the police claims there was no dead. Then they found 2 red protesters dead in the river, tied up and beaten.

So, it is widely believed by the red that army want to dissimulate the death toll, explaining why they were fighting for the bodies.

The fact is, Thaksin clearly improved the living conditions of the often forgotten people living up-country. That is impossible to refute....

Let's be frank here, Thaksin was a successful and ambitious man. Like many men in his position, he misused and abused his power.

But he's not worst than the others....

Two things about the quote above: 1) Thaksin not worst than the others? You forgot the 2500 people killed without trial in the drug war and the others who died by suffocate during the war in the south. So, so far Abhisit has killed much much less people than thaksin.

Now, 2) Did "Thaksin clearly improved the living conditions of the often forgotten people living up-country"? Yes, and it is indeed impossible to refute. And i think the BIG mistake of the current government has been to don't do for these people the same help than Thaksin did. If they were using the 43 billion baths they take from Thaksin wealth to help the poor people, that would be smart.

Good point about the war on drug, but not the whole 2,500 where executed. I mean, if they were shot in actions, we cannot blame the army not to bring them into trial.. they are already KIA. But yes, a certain number were executed, which is bad. The good part is, the drug did decline in Thailand.

I'm political about Thailand simply because the family of my wife is political. And you see, those living in Bangkok are pretty much Yellow supporters and those living in Tak (where most of them live) are heavy red partisans.

I can't say I fully approve the Red cause.. but at the same time I'm sympathetic to their cause, considering the huge gap between Bangkok and other regions wealth. In my home country (Quebec, Canada) I notice a huge political apathy where people say "well.. there is nothing we can do about it.. fuc_king government". At least in that situation, we see people standing up to defend their cause.. for the better and unfortunately, the worst.

Why did the military advance?

were the "reds" going about their daily business, working, trying to better themselves and provide for their familes?

Oh............. no it seems they were holding the capital city to ransom. Closing major business, shopping and tourist centres. for the past 4 weeks we have seen this crap go on and on and get more boring every day. Where did you think it was going to end?

but go ahead, blame the military..... maybe it was my fault as well !!!

Let's not try to point fingers at one or another, we both know that this is a manifestation, not something we see everyday.

In the first weeks it was a very simple peaceful manifestation. Of course like in every large crowd, there is extremists people who do bad things, but we cannot blame the whole group for this. It's a democratic right to manifest. It's not so different than worker unions going on strike and perturbating the traffic. The situation clearly deteriorated in the last few days when the state of emergency was declared.

Those red shirts, fundamentally, are fighting for an improvement in their lifestyle. But individually, some are there just to be a part of it and are totally ignorant of what they really fighting for. They say "WE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY". Many of them are uneducated morons.

The leaders have political motivations and try to pressure the government to lean on their way. They won't back down so easily, until they see no hope.

The soldiers, individually, are simply doing their job and trying to bring back peace in the city. It's 100% honorable. What I question is the competence of the government in trying to solve that thing. What the use to advance on them to disperse them ? They definitely had very bad intel and underestimated the capacity of resistance of the Red to order such a thing. They wanted to recover the commercial zone for economics reasons. They failed to do that. So that clash was absolutly useless and just make things heat up even more.

What does each side do now ? They just build-up more firepower I guess (its pretty irrelevant for the army as they are already well geared but they definitely consider using a new scale of retaliation)

When a government is a coalition against the biggest party out there, don't they expect uprising ? Especially in Thailand ?

The government is a weak one who can break any moment. The red gonna keep on pressuring until they got what they want or that they lose their morale.

Putting a plastic bag on a street light should definitely give the army the authority to massacre their own civilians, you're absolutely right. Spot on, buddy.

are you really going to use that as your arguement? My God this is beyond ridiculous. For over a month the governemnt showed restraint and let these criminals run through Bkk doing whatever they wanted almost. You can CLEARLY see from the videos as the violence erupts that it was instigated by the reds. The facts are the facts and just because you want to ignore them does not make your propaganda any more legitimate. Stop attacking the military, stop laying seige to Bkk, and there will be no violence. Hard could you not get this ????

Your opinion is clearly biased against the red.

Calling them criminals disqualify your whole argumentation.

And the facts are that the military advanced toward the UDD to disperse them. In that way we could say that its the military who started it.

Another point of view is "disolve the government, and there will be no violence"

Try to check both side of the medals. You cannot pretend to be objective when you clearly take side, even if you find it astonishing that people don't share the same point of view as you.

Listen, it's very simple: Abhisit offered to had election in six months instead than next year or so. Why the hel_l the reds didn't accept this and been back their home, waiting peacefully for the new elections?

The reds don't want to wait six months!?! Well, okay, here is the price to pay SIMPLY because they don't want to wait: 19 dead, 807 injured.

If their leaders had accept Abhisit proposal all these people will not be dead or wounded. Abhisit tried everything he could to resolve the crisis peacefully, he could not leave a minority of people destroying the country's economy. He had to defend the law and not let the country going into chaos simply because 50000 people can't wait six months for a new election!!! Is this difficult to understand!?!

You want no more dead people? Accept Abhisit proposal and get the fuc_k out of Bangkok! It's just as simple as that.

With all due respect bagheera65, you would make a very poor political leader. It is not "simple" like you imply. The last legislative were in 2007. All Abhisit is doing is trying to buy time. Don't just think he does that from kindness of heart.

And by the way, the UDD is more than 50,000 persons. Those 50,000 persons are simply the vanguard of over 10,000,000 supporters of the PTP everywhere up-country.

People shouldn't underestimate the power of disinformation.

The disinformation which hurt the most the Red Shirt is about the allegations of corruption of Thaksin.

He is labelled as "Corrupted" so instantly relegated as the bad guy.

But as everything else, corruption is quantifiable.

People usually watch the superficial, official story and make up their mind with that. Corrupted=Bad.

The truth is much more subtle and complex than that.

Just like the Temasek-Shin Corp deal. People think Thaksin evaded taxes illegally. It is false. The deal was legal. Where he did wrong was that he used his power and political influence to bend the law to allow a foreign company to own a telecommunication company of Thailand, which was impossible before.

The other corruption accusations.. his wife buying from the IFDF, the appointment of relatives to key positions, etc. Those are relatively bad, but also relatively harmless. Someone overly by the book could argue that no corruption at all should be tolerated in any circumstances, but it wouldn't fit in the real world as corruption is practically everywhere, including in the West. We could argue that the US Republicans were infinitely more corrupted than Thaksin and that caused wars but thats another story.

This story of corruption was tightly knit by his opponents. This is simply politic warfare, nothing less.

The fact is, Thaksin clearly improved the living conditions of the often forgotten people living up-country. That is impossible to refute.

His opponents were mainly middle-class from Bangkok, who felt left-out with "region-oriented" policies of Thaksin.

Let's be frank here, Thaksin was a successful and ambitious man. Like many men in his position, he misused and abused his power.

But he's not worst than the others. He's not worst than the current prime minister, Abhisit Vejajiva who cunningly found his way to the top. Abhisit was also charged for a lot of corruption cases (bribes, inflated prices, conflit of interests and shuch) , with the difference that tribunal ruled against Thaksin and cleared Abhisit. He is still under investigations for other cases of corruption.

Let's not forget that Thaksin got ousted by the military, which is highly undemocratic.

The Commander-in-Chief at the time of the coup d'état was openly opposed to Thaksin (because Thaksin appointed relatives in the Army) and it explain why the coup happened.

Let's also not forget that Abhisit party got less seats than the UDD supported Pheu Thai Party and only got power because of a coalition of 5 parties.

How would you feel if the party who helped you get out of poverty, helped you to get better access to health care won the elections but didn't govern ?

Most likely, if you are politically active, you would be protesting in the street, like the UDD is doing.

Now are they right, are they wrong, that's not for us to judge, but its definitely justified.