Contentious Case Against Abhisit Marks A New Era

[Stradavarius37]

I can't believe you guys are still talking in circles about this, going on 5 years now. Don't you have anything better to do, than to argue with "anonymous internet forum guy"? I do, that's for sure. Peace.

[valerian]

I can't believe you guys are still talking in circles about this, going on 5 years now. Don't you have anything better to do, than to argue with "anonymous internet forum guy"? I do, that's for sure. Peace.

Stradavarious37 is your real name then? Congratulations.

[valerian]

Yes - military coups are bad and don't belong in a democracy.

Yes - the military shouldn't be used against a country's own people. (in fact - it shouldn't be used at all)

Yes - Thailand desperately needs accountability for excessive force.

But - none of the killings would have happened if it weren't for Thaksin speeches, PTV propaganda, the UDD violence and red havoc.

Why exactly do you think that the police where nowhere in sight?

Thailand is full of under-educated trigger-happy male boors quickly willing to take the law into their own hands.

One crowd goes by the name of "Police", "Tam ruat", "BiB" or plain and simply "Maffia".

Another trigger-happy crowd is dressed in green, full of self-righteousness and goes under the name of "Tahaan".

These are the tools any government will have to use to uphold the "law".

Unleash any of these tigers to "clean up" areas that have been occupied by armed hooligans and you're bound to have casualties.

Especially when the occupants are a third such crowd that has no problems at all storming and occupying buildings, shooting grenades at various opponents for months at end, chasing and killing political opponents holding peaceful assembly etc etc etc.

Do you really think the head of state should be accountable for the state of mind of the general violence-craving, non-thinking, obey-your-poo-yai majority of thai "men"joining these fracas?

If the head of state condones extra-judicial killings - then yes - he/she should be held accountable.

Thaksin definitely did that during the WOD. Anyone who heard his speech the day the "operations" commenced can't refute it.

But did Abhisit? Really? You do know that a state of emergency was declared a week before any deaths occured, but that the reds ignored it, don't you?

And you do remember how Abhisit pleaded with the reds to negotiate or leave the occupied areas before people got hurt, don't you?

All the while red-shirt leaders were saying "We have to prepare for another war. If the military comes you should not panic - just stay put.".

the only one of those that existed pre-coup, was thaksin.

the 2006 coup is what gave birth to PTV, UDD and red 'havoc'... they were stupid enough to think that they could remove a PM who was voted in by the highest ever voter turnout without extreme repercussions..

the saddest thing is that it was all business.

So? Are you saying that the red violence was justified?

Are you saying that it is ok to choose a violent way? Instead of peaceful means.

So long as you have understandable or even sympathetic reasons for doing so?

Because if you do, then you do realise that you can justify the coup but those very same arguments, don't you?

If you're not saying these things, then what ARE you saying?

i AM saying exactly what i just said, if you interpret that as justifying violence then that's your issue to deal with, not mine.

Ok. Sorry for misreading your comment. I don't think the coup justifies anything either.

And as you quoted me I falsely assumed that there was a point, related to the violence, to your comment.

[whybother]

I can't believe you guys are still talking in circles about this, going on 5 years now. Don't you have anything better to do, than to argue with "anonymous internet forum guy"? I do, that's for sure. Peace.

[BigC]

The Thai army were under attack. The rioters had the choice to move. Anyone in the live fire zone has to accept responabliutly for their own actions and understand that it is dangerous to even do nothing in a live fire zone.

Offices and people were getting blown up by RPG's and M79 grenade launchers. Sometimes civilians do get killed but it is hardly a war crime accidently shooting a civilian in a live fire zone.

If the taxi driver did not know then he must not have been thai as it would have been on all the radios on all street signs

also the armmy were the people that staged the coup not Abbist so it does not matter what he says the army are incharge of the country

Edited December 13, 2012 by BigC

[gl555]

No, only after the protestors have armed men who start shooting & lobbing grenades at civilians, police & military with no bullets in their guns.

Also, the statement about the airport protestors is fiction.

No signs of 'armed men' before AV turned on his word & sent the army in with live ammo. Reports of grenade attacks on various sites, but 0 evidence.

Also the statement about the airport protesters http://www.ipsnews.n...-of-thai-unity/

You continue to post the lie that the army were armed before the red & black-shirts killed the army colonel and others. Why - what is your agenda? Grenades were the main weapon of choice by the protestors there.

As for the link - one-sided rubbish. All quotes anti-PAD. Police reported confiscating the UZIs etc - yet no real proof (& we know which side they were on). Even this article doesn't pretend that the group who occupied the airport were armed in any way. More propaganda.

I just wish to add that once 'protestors' start packing grenades and assault rifles to use against the army and the government, it's no longer a protest, it's an armed rebellion. It's sickening up until now the Reds with all their firearms are still trying to pretend they were there protesting peacefully.

[Publicus]

I'd never been pleased by a coup d'etat until the September 19th one that deposed Thaksin while he was in New York City to address the UN's 2006 annual General Assembly. The irony of a coup occurring simultaneously to a UNGA meeting seems to have been lost on me back then, and by so many other falhang in Thailand, no doubt due to the flowers sticking out of tank cannons on the streets of Bangkok. However, I've had considerable buyer's remorse as everything since the coup has been bad and way off center for Thailand (which is way off center to begin with).

Nothing good would have come from Thaksin reclaiming power in the autumn of 2006. It's not certain Thaksin could have survived politically much longer at that point in time, but neither is it improbable Thaksin could have held on for another blatantly rigged election. He was only interim acting prime minister when he was deposed by the coup, so Thaksin was pretty much slipping on banana peels no matter where in his arrogant recklessness he tred. It's definitely true Thaksin was an idiot to have left the country while it was undergoing such a state of high uncertainty as it was during September, 2006. The Nation soon after the coup printed a story, likely true, that Thaksin had hired some thugs to bust up a PAD demonstration to have occurred on the 20th, and was going to use the chaos to declare a national state of emergency so he could assume near absolute power. Given all of that, it was a cakewalk that the coup should look like the work of those good guy guardians of all that's good and right in Thailand, i.e., the army in particular.

So the coup makers seemed to have saved Thailand from Thaksin. However, the coup makers definitely have given Thailand as much trouble as Thaksin would have made had Thaksin been able to pull off his planned seizure of power. Neither Thaksin nor the army are democrats. So I must say that the coup did irreversable damage to Thailand. Then again, Thaksin left uncheked at that point in time would have done, well, irreversable damage to Thailand. Whatever the venture, nothing is gained. It seems to make no difference which side in Thailand grabs government power. The country is always the loser.

Rather than go after Abhisit and Suthep - or even Thaksin - everyone should go after the army. Drag the army before a rainbow colored representative tribunal of all Thais. Over the long term of the decades, the army has made Thailand into the mess the country is in. Every time the army has decided, at its own whim, to exercise its solemn duty to save, preserve and protect Thailand, the army has made things visibly worse. The Constitution adopted in a national vote at the end of 2007 resolved nothing. This is true because Its major provision is to exempt the entire military from any and all legal liabilities in executing the coup and in running the country into the ground since 19 September 2006 to the present - and into the future as far as one can envisage.

Put the army and the military in general on trail for murder, the serial murders of constitution after constitution and of democracy itself in Thailand.

Thaksin, Abhisit et al are only small fry. It's the army that needs to be stuck through and put on the skewer over the open fire of both light and heat.

[nurofiend]

begin removed ...

... i think most people would allow themselves a bit of freedom of thought to understand what i meant... that is, most people would.

Most people here know by now that trying to understand what you write and giving themselves a bit of freedom in doing so will only get a question back like 'why do you think I said that' or 'I didn't say that'.

anyway, let's not get into the 'trying to understand what you write' discussion, eh rubl.