Thai Red Shirts Declare 'Class War'

Bagwan · March 18, 2010

For the people who above mentioned that Abhisit's family isn't wealthy, read this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7780309.stm

Especially this part:

Distinctly upper-class, Mr Abhisit hails from a wealthy family of Thai-Chinese origin.

I'm sorry, but someone who has a house like he has on Sukhumvit Soi 31, attended Oxford university, etc. I seriously doubt he only has 36 Million Baht. That's barely a million dollars.

Not a lot of Thais can afford a house in Sukhumvit, with the insane land prices, and afford to send their children to Oxford.

So how much do you think it costs to gain entrance to one of the colleges that make up Oxford University? So many want to study that they can be pretty choosy who they admit and that is based on academic excellence. One thing is for sure - you can't buy your way in.

I am not sure of my facts here but for sure it is only in the last 10-15 years that the costs of admission have risen, and they are still affordable for most. I suggest that when Abhisit was at Oxford charges would be very affordable. Further more I would like to see some figures that prove that Oxford or Cambridge produce a better end product than many of the red brick universities.

Bagwan · March 18, 2010

they must be taking a leaf out gordon brown/labours book in the uk,who have declared a class more against the conservation public school boys party who are out for the upper classes first and foremost..
pretty similar to here

and the conservative and dem leaders both went to eton

I hope David Cameron wins the next UK election. It will mean good ties between the UK and Thailand. Eton has produced some really great leaders and I think Khun Abhisit, given the chance will do a lot for this country.

Abhisit went to Oxford.... he went to school in Thailand...

The PM, Abhisit earned a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics & Economics from Oxford Univ. He received his master's degree in Economics from Oxford Univ., He received his Law degree from Eton, all in England. Both his father & mother are M.D.'s PM Abhisit was born in Newcastle, England, in 1964. He graduated with honors while receiving all of his degrees. Thailand is lucky to have such a well-educated man as its PM. Unlike Thaksin, he had no ties with the police or the military. IMHO that is a good thing.

Eton is not a university and does not award degrees. I believe he gained his law degree from Ramkhamhaeng. I would suggest that anybody who sends his children to a UK public school (which is private and fees levied) doesn't like his kids very much. Prince Charles went to Eton - which speaks volumes.

homebody · March 18, 2010

I wonder how much money Thaksin is throwing Montenegro's way...it is after all a potless former communist country.

What is not mine, no one will get it!

Can't people see Thailand is destroying from now on? BIllions of billions he has now still not enough for his egos. Some millions buying The Red shirt leader. The protesters baths 2000 x 100,000 persons = 2 millions baths. Those millions is the price of the immage '' Siam Land of smile ''. Tourism stop, draw the whole Thai economic down. Let' Apisit do his jobb !!.

hardy1943 · March 18, 2010

they must be taking a leaf out gordon brown/labours book in the uk,who have declared a class more against the conservation public school boys party who are out for the upper classes first and foremost..
pretty similar to here

and the conservative and dem leaders both went to eton

I hope David Cameron wins the next UK election. It will mean good ties between the UK and Thailand. Eton has produced some really great leaders and I think Khun Abhisit, given the chance will do a lot for this country.

Two most important countries in this world.Both drive on the left side.The rest of world on the right.Oh forgot that makes them so special.

lannarebirth · March 18, 2010

I wonder how much money Thaksin is throwing Montenegro's way...it is after all a potless former communist country.

What is not mine, no one will get it!

Can't people see Thailand is destroying from now on? BIllions of billions he has now still not enough for his egos. Some millions buying The Red shirt leader. The protesters baths 2000 x 100,000 persons = 2 200 millions baths. Those millions is the price of the immage '' Siam Land of smile ''. Tourism stop, draw the whole Thai economic down. Let' Apisit do his jobb !!.

yoshiwara · March 18, 2010

is Abhisit a real doer, a rainmaker, someone who spreads verve, a captain, a authority? no, he has as much energy as a sleeping pill.

He has broken your hero Thaksin's forces, asleep or not.

MyFriend You · March 18, 2010

Quote from above:
Though the Red Shirts have succeeded in calling attention to their agenda, the major societal forces of Thailand appear stacked against them," said Paul Chambers, a Thailand specialist at Heidelberg University in Germany.

"This includes the monarchy, soldiers in top positions, courts, the ruling coalition, and most business groups."

A good read is Siam Mapped by Thongchai Winichakul

Explores the ways in which..never mind the myth that Thailand has never been colonised..Thailand/Siam has colonised large areas of what is now its territory. One result is that in many areas Thai is a minority language. The North Eastern/Issan people speak Lao, in the South East they speak Khmer and in the North Kammuang..there are a myriad of tribal dialects..about 80!! ..see Studies in Tai Linguistics in Honor of William Gedney..and then there is the issue of Teochew, the Chinese, spoken by great numbers of people in the Central/Southern area and Bangkok. Thailand is a highly fragmented country. At its peripheries: on the borders with Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia, where refugees, insurgents, disenfranchised and denationalised hill tribe ethnic groups survive, Thailand barely maintains its sovereignty. A country massively centred on one city Bangkok and a tacky tourist industry is held together, just, by money, plentiful food, strong families, the hegemony and 'benevolent' autarchy of the monarchy and the unpleasant nationalism/racism that has been diligently constructed to create the notion of 'being Thai'. It is a great shame that the clearly constructive aspiration to representation by the so called 'rural poor'...not that poor!!..is hijacked by the demagogue and mobile phone and silk tycoon Thaksin..the Chinese Slim of Thailand.

After 33 years in Thailand, the Thai have a very simple answer for the above when it comes to the 'southerners' ....... 'Oh, they are not Thai - they are Muslim' - when you try to point out that they are their neighbors for their whole life, they still say "Yes, I go to school with them my whole life, but they are not Thai - they are Muslims"..................boggles the mind of a foreigner, but not a Thai.........Peace

Publicus · March 18, 2010

to win a class war first requires a working class hero.
Therefore, for a real class war to commence, to truly begin with an agenda of equality for the future; it requires that the red shirts start letting go, somewhat, of the obsession with Thaksin alone and offering a new leader that has a rural agenda. I look around and I am blank who this could possibly be. A person who can bring together the financing side of the business families, with the street smarts of a gangster to lock in the rural godfathers using that business money which will be absolutely mandatory if they don't have a leader with such personality as to be able to actually acheive what no Thai politician has ever done, to get around the rural godfathers, and then the business support to win Bangkok and the cities.

In total agreement, well said, but who is going to take or be offered the baton?

dunno. really don't which is why I am so sad when I was talking to some of the red shirters yesterday.

I wish they had a leader, a real leader, to look up to. And I see no one.

Anyhow, if nothing else, maybe if they give all protesters and Thaksin a copy of what I write, then they will all be so bored after reading it, that they all agree to let me run things for a bit ' give the lad a run at old trafford' so to speak. I bet some people thought they were getting news in this thread, instead I've given them poorly written war and peace. Sorry 'bout that. I like me keyboard. Anyhow, I got rid of some space, so it is slightly shorter ok!

Indeed, the more we realize and recognize that Thai culture, society, civilization is incapable of producing the leader of the caliber the present and the immediate future require and demand, the more we come into contact with the reality that inequality and injustice, like termites, will continue to eat ever so slowly and surely into the structures/institutions that are and always have been Thailand.

There never will be a Mandella or Suu Kyi or anyone remotely resembling either. The terms culture, society, civilization are both abstract and real. Which ever way we regard the terms and that which they are, the three components of a place are precisely and exactly the creation of the people of the place. Thailand has weak institutions and reckless individuals who form and organize, ever so loosely, into narrowly focused groups which comprise a whole (society) that is dissembled, disorganized, made moribund by its worship of decrepit traditions and family lineage etc which cannot conceivably produce any solutions which either would be adequate or better..

Thailand's responses to the unavoidable encroachments of the modern world have been chaotic, emotional, self-serving individually and as subgroups of the population. The country's responses have been led by a class of political clowns which is a product of the society and its educative system (the Thai people), the historical culture (previous Thai people) and the civilization (a system of values encoded 2,500 years ago which offers nothing to guide or mentor contemporary Thais).

It's basically the old saying that a leopard can't change its spots, a zebra can't change its stripes and that a Thai couldn't organize a two tuk tuk funeral. We musn't look for anything radically better in respect to leadership. The best hope is the benign elite leadership of the Abhisits and the Korns, but the prerequisite to their having any hope of success is a Thaksin sent to the moon. It will be a long and painful struggle to get the country out from under the control and influence of the young Chavalits waiting in the wings along with the young Newins, Chalerms, Barnhards et al that the culture, society and civilization endlessly continue to reproduce.

SpoliaOpima · March 18, 2010

If there serious why dont the Thais follow suit bring Bangkok to its knees .

Since when do the reds speak for all Thais? Only 10 percent of the promised million showed up. They represent the majority no more than the yellows. And like the PAD they are losing support every day with their increasingly absurd shenanigans.

Publicus · March 18, 2010

On an earlier thread when mentioning PM Abhisit Vejjajiva's degrees earned in England, I mentioned that he received a doctorate law degree or maybe I just said a law degree from Eton College, UK. I don't know who posted the following reply as I was unable to reply to it. I quote:
"He received his law degree from Eton!!!!!!!!!!!! It's a boys school they finish when they are 18, they don't do degrees because they are not a University. Christ on a bike! You must be an American.

Yes, I am an American living in Thailand. The poster's words seem to be telling me that I am ignorant because I am an American. This seems to be a majority belief among the vast majority of TV posters from the UK. It may surprise the poster that only a handful of people in the world - outside of the so-called "UK" - cannot name more than one university in England much less a prep school.

But, I am smart enough to type in Abhisit Vejjajiva in google or yahoo and read his biography. All that I have read mention that he received a law degree or an honorary law degree from Ramkhamhaeng Univ. schools, Eton College, UK. So I assumed that Eton was a college or university. It seemed to read that way to me. I often wonder why so many people on TV engage in personal attacks on others who are simply voicing their opinions. Calling other posters ignorant & worse for posting their comments is rude to say the least. And, I guess attacking the U.S.A. (or what many call America) and all of its citizens really gets old. It is a country of more than 300 million people and certainly they do not ALL think alike. I left because of several political reasons but I still think that the average American is and always will be first in line to help the people of any country in the world if it and its people experience a castastrophe. Always the U.S. will be the country that gives the most money. So hating all the people b/c of the sorry lot that are elected Pres. is just plain wrong.

By the time I'd been in Thailand three years, I was aghast because of the cultural and civilizational deficits and deficiencies some 75% to 80% or so Western Europeans I met or worked with suffered relative to the society, culture and civilization of the United States. It's even worse among those 'Westerns' I met from the down under regions of the South West Pacific, this time to the tune of 85% to 90% of them. The ignorance, prejudices, biases towards the United States and its people was outdone only by their complete disconnect from life in the US. I simply was speechless and mortified by the willful and systematic contempt these people have towards the US.

It's really a frightening and pathetic deficit disorder of a serious cultural and civilizational magnitude over in those places. I of course got used to it and since simply dismiss their blissful world of the surreal and bizarre when it comes to the United States. We have more Nobel Prize winners in every category, usually by a huge difference, except for literature in which the US is 2 winners behind the leader France. We have the world's best and leading universities etc etc.

Yet the cultural deficits of the Western Europeans and of the Down Unders I've met are appalling. Worse, they are beyond repair or recovery. One Belgian idiotically said to me that Pres Kennedy's statement in German during his visit to Berlin, "I am a Berliner" was spoken in erroneous German.....this wild and malicious claim was made by the guy despite the German language statement having come from the West German Embassy in the US and from German language experts at the State Department and leading universities of the US. That's willful malevolence towards the United States, which must be dismissed immediately and out of hand as not credible or reasonable - as simply irrational and mean spirited.

Tsk tsk.

freddy · March 18, 2010

Prince Charles went to Eton - which speaks volumes.

Prince Charles went to Gordounston, Princes William and Harry went to Eton as did Abhisit, Korn was head boy at Winchester College which, incidentally, has its own entrance examination considered to be very tough and definitely on par with Etons entrance exam.

mazeltov · March 18, 2010

is Abhisit a real doer, a rainmaker, someone who spreads verve, a captain, a authority? no, he has as much energy as a sleeping pill.

He has broken your hero Thaksin's forces, asleep or not.

dude, Thaksin isn't my hero. and if you would have read my posts my opinion or suggestion was that Abhist should sit and wait the whole situation out

to quote myself from the "Thailand to impose security law for Thaksin protests" topic.

if the masses are in town Abhisits only chance is to sot it out. give the red shirts their way, let them do their camping and the music show, keep an eye on any third party and bring that third party under control if they are up to some conflict. be happy about the fact that there are some many monks around who will be helpful partner in the deescalation management by the security forces. have patience until the reds go home and do as much as possible to avoid ISA implementation.

written Tuesday, last week. i wrote similar more than once. i also recommended to refrain from to much scaremongering. was that wrong? all the prediction and fears, turned they out to be true, is Bangkok destroyed now or not?

but for such soft approach and not willing to sing the same songs like the internet hate mob i got insulted here as 'Thaksin Apologist'

seems that for people like you everybody who isn't repetitively typing a imbecile hate rant after another must be for sure for the other side.

or maybe it boils their blood that i don't write Abhisit love song and that i dare to criticize that government in my comments. some of the extreme hate yobs turn out to be also extreme fanbois. internet heros! can only see black or white.

anyway how did Abhisit broke (as you say) the Thaksin forces? what was his strategy?

backsoon · March 18, 2010

Now we begin to see the real agenda of the Red Shirt Brigade,Thaksins money is useful to them along with Hun Sens socialist principles.
''Whats' mine is mine, what's yours is also mine''

Please do not distort history, truth and socialist principles!

"What is mine, is mine; what is yours, is ours"

diehard60 · March 18, 2010

I Guess Mr. T would not be a part of the Elite Class they are struggling against.
From my 17 years of watching Thai Politics , it has always been about anything BUT helping the Poor, hence , they are still Poor.

It all has to do with who you know or what you have.

GREED ??

I wonder , do these people know what HYPOCRITES are ?

Can somebody pay everyone to go home please ?

Whar are you, one of the elite?

chillibilly · March 18, 2010

what cracks me up is the leaders of the Red shirts are all HI SO's! Wealthy. Just like in the USA, where the Democrats say they are for the working man...as they drive a Benz and take vacations around the world. Same same.
We were watching the red shirt channel the other day. My wife saw a lady get up on stage and goes "Oh! Look at her...she is big time HI SO in Bangkok." And there she is trying to get the poor people to sleep on the street and walk in the sun for them...crazy....amazing what you can get people to believe...

*************************

Craig, thanks for an excellent example of "generalization". It would be more fair to replace the word "democrats" with the words, American politicians- Republicans or Democrats. (I bet you watch Fox News as your main source of "world" news.)

Edited March 18, 2010 by chillibilly

Richard W · March 18, 2010

So how much do you think it costs to gain entrance to one of the colleges that make up Oxford University? So many want to study that they can be pretty choosy who they admit and that is based on academic excellence. One thing is for sure - you can't buy your way in.

I thought you could - with a hefty endowment.

I'm not so sure about postgraduate studies though - I got the feeling that if you could pay the fees and stood a reasonable chance of getting the degree you were in.

I am not sure of my facts here but for sure it is only in the last 10-15 years that the costs of admission have risen, and they are still affordable for most. I suggest that when Abhisit was at Oxford charges would be very affordable.

Would he have had to pay any as an undergraduate? I've a feeling he wasn't an overseas student, and that in his day his LEA would have paid the fees. I could be wrong about an LEA paying - the parental contribution for fees was abolished after I matriculated.

Further more I would like to see some figures that prove that Oxford or Cambridge produce a better end product than many of the red brick universities.

Whatever the added value, you should end up better connected if that is your aim.

craigt3365 · March 18, 2010

what cracks me up is the leaders of the Red shirts are all HI SO's! Wealthy. Just like in the USA, where the Democrats say they are for the working man...as they drive a Benz and take vacations around the world. Same same.
We were watching the red shirt channel the other day. My wife saw a lady get up on stage and goes "Oh! Look at her...she is big time HI SO in Bangkok." And there she is trying to get the poor people to sleep on the street and walk in the sun for them...crazy....amazing what you can get people to believe...

*************************

Craig, thanks for an excellent example of "generalization". It would be more fair to replace the word "democrats" with the words, American politicians- Republicans or Democrats. (I bet you watch Fox News as your main source of "world" news.)

It's early, don't really understand your point...but I HATE Fox news...should be banned the world over...but agree with your comment about replacing democrats with politicians in general....

craigt3365 · March 19, 2010

what cracks me up is the leaders of the Red shirts are all HI SO's! Wealthy. Just like in the USA, where the Democrats say they are for the working man...as they drive a Benz and take vacations around the world. Same same.
We were watching the red shirt channel the other day. My wife saw a lady get up on stage and goes "Oh! Look at her...she is big time HI SO in Bangkok." And there she is trying to get the poor people to sleep on the street and walk in the sun for them...crazy....amazing what you can get people to believe...

Your wife totally missed the point of the protests. It isn't so much about HI-SO and LO-SO, but about equal opportunities for all Thais, whether they are rich or poor.

Apparently Rainman missed the point of the protest, which was Thaksin paying people, in a last ditch effort to secure his own money and power...

thats really what it boild down to. you can say in one sentence what these other guys say in 5 essays.

I hear ya, rainman. But can't agree that the HI-SO's don't have plenty of opportunities. The rural poor have pretty much none.

But until the HI-SO's (who pretty much run this country) start treating workers like people and not crap, nothing will change. I was in the high tech biz for years. Associated with many, many very wealthy people all over the world (even my ex was from a VERY wealthy family...Rolls Royce, etc.). Most had a respect for their fellow man. I don't see that here. Workers are treated like garbage. Paid next to nothing. And taken advantage of so the rich can make more money....isn't that pretty much what Thaksin did? Enhanced his own wealth at the expense of the general public? Most politicians here in LOS are corrupt. Put money in their own pockets rather than do a good job at building the school, or road, or....

So, what is the point of these protests then? I have seen a few good posts from others that I think sums it up. We all know it was initially to get Mr. T's money back. Then they tried to morph it into a protest about the Amataya, now it is a class struggle? I would be very sympathetic to their cause if they ditched Mr. T. 100% agree that something needs to be done. But before even this can happen, they need to eliminate the corruption. Hard for this country to really get ahead until corruption is dealt with...IMHO.

animatic · March 19, 2010

Abhisit is not one of the 'elite' in education, family background, wealth or any other construct you wish to put out there - the elite bit is in acheivement, drive and building his network.
Any PM requires that. That's how they become PM.

Abhisit is a Daddy's Boy and a smug. and doesn't have much drive either. he stays on top and smiles but don't do much of the decision. the teachers pet does what he have been told to do.

admit he would win a mother-in-law's delight competition, but fail in a 'your cool uncle' contest.

and look at Abhisits "uncles", the characters where where he creeps around. that is his network.

Korn, who is a Daddy's boy too did had at least some kind of real job in the private business sector, meanwhile Abhisit never did anything else then hang around at floors and offices in the democrats headquarters. and it is no coincidence that have been students in oxford together and are now fellows again. delegate by their families. daddies and uncles who building up their dynasties.

is Abhisit a real doer, a rainmaker, someone who spreads verve, a captain, a authority? no, he has as much energy as a sleeping pill.

0.policies?

1.education - 2.employment - 3. confidence - 4. social welfare - 5. strengthen democracy -6. unity 7. hahaha 8. sport

0. expand the state apparatus.

1. give people a career opportunity and hold training courses in clerical activity. (rubber stamp, ink-pad, paper, 'yes boss', form G-D/274.72, paper shuffle). the Government has set a target for the vocational training program to cover 500,000 people,

2. make them to employees of the state. create more positions in whatever civil service offices. for example create new jobs in the schools administration (educations ministry budget have to be spend wise) "a project targets recent graduates for employment in administrative positions at schools and other education institutions. The MOE is to hire 14,532 administration staff between 2009 and 2012 at a cost of around 1.56 billion in salaries per year."

3. gives them some uniform for office work, so that they feel important.

4. give them some social insurance and a small pension.

5. at work there is nothing to do than pencil pushing, they might start getting ideas, better prevent that. so entertain them with bi-weekly meeting and montly assemblies where you invite some Generals from ISOC who provide instructions how important the state and the government for democracy is and what it means to be a loyal and brave citizen.

6. let them take part in fun events like 'white shirt rally of adjusted commoners' or sing a song at 6 o' clock.

7. one time cash hand out to low income tax payers (your civil servants), a signed letter for Grandma Nui, Mark M16 paper bullets, intelligence reports about Dr. Mabuses whereabouts, Kasit, computer crime act, recent polls show that..., PM is confident ... , DPM denies ..., Don't panic.

8. Korn proposes bid for 2018 FIFA World Cup

Daddys boys?? And you are such a manly man eh?

Twaddle.

Wolfie · March 19, 2010

I have removed some inappropriate posts from this thread.

Please keep it civil and on topic - thanks!

SanSaiExPat · March 19, 2010

what cracks me up is the leaders of the Red shirts are all HI SO's! Wealthy. Just like in the USA, where the Democrats say they are for the working man...as they drive a Benz and take vacations around the world. Same same.
We were watching the red shirt channel the other day. My wife saw a lady get up on stage and goes "Oh! Look at her...she is big time HI SO in Bangkok." And there she is trying to get the poor people to sleep on the street and walk in the sun for them...crazy....amazing what you can get people to believe...

You should be careful using absolutes like, "the leaders of the Red Shirts are all Hi So" in your arguments. Using absolutes makes your arguments much less persuasive. While some maybe "Hi So" as your Issan wife refers to them, not all are, as not all of the Yellow Shirt leadership are aristocrats, some are simply power hungry idiots. What remains and is true and so, is that the Red Shirts have a legitimate complaint and right to seek redress from the current prime minister and party in power. The current government and prime minister owe their power to the military who usurped power from a democratically elected government in a coup. Unlike the current government the deposed government owed their power to the people. You may not like or approve of it but a majority of "those poor people" voted TRT.

animatic · March 19, 2010

I wonder how much money Thaksin is throwing Montenegro's way...it is after all a potless former communist country.

What is not mine, no one will get it!

Can't people see Thailand is destroying from now on? BIllions of billions he has now still not enough for his egos. Some millions buying The Red shirt leader. The protesters baths 2000 x 100,000 persons = 2 millions baths. Those millions is the price of the immage '' Siam Land of smile ''. Tourism stop, draw the whole Thai economic down. Let' Apisit do his jobb !!.

Hi Somebody.

Clearly English is not your first language, but you have made your point.

Let' Apisit do his job !!. Exactly what the country needs to happen.

animatic · March 19, 2010

is Abhisit a real doer, a rainmaker, someone who spreads verve, a captain, a authority? no, he has as much energy as a sleeping pill.

He has broken your hero Thaksin's forces, asleep or not.

LOL, if he can do that when asleep,

He must be doing a lot more when he's awake!

Which no doubt scares some,

because success is so much harder to belittle.

Edited March 19, 2010 by animatic

animatic · March 19, 2010

to win a class war first requires a working class hero.

John Lennon - Working Class Hero

As soon as your born they make you feel small,

By giving you no time instead of it all,

Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,

A working class hero is something to be,