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FAQ in Thailand

Are you a stooge for The Nation?

Your rants on Thai politics are exactly the same – almost word for word…

“It’s all Thaksin’s fault”

Yawn.

StanG

But army now know that putting this down won’t be just a case of shooting unarmed demonstrators like in 92 or torturing unarmed captive students to death as in 76.

The taking out of their officers is absolutely classic guerilla warfare, done in a really expert way.

If you want a good assessment of the Thai Army’s genuine fighting ability go and speak to the ex-KMT fighters in the north of Thailand.

“12 year old Cambodians armed with AK47s could beat the Thai Army.”

Now, the Thai army could go out and begin a huge massacre (is that what you’re calling for? please say so if you are) but they know that there will now be comeback.

Remember for most of the senior Army officers it’s a business – they want to play golf, drive around in their SUVs and visit Poseidon a couple times of month.

They certainly didn’t sign up to actually get in a proper fight.

The government’s problem is not that “they brought knives to a gunfight.” In fact, the government brought so many guns to this fight that when a bunch of those guns were seized it occurred to the red shirts that they could use a few for self-defense.

The problem is rather that Abhisit and his handlers thought they could massacre these people like they did with the students in the 1970s, without any resistance. They committed every dictator’s worst mistake, which was to buy into their own propaganda. They certainly didn’t expect that tens of thousands of people (paid to protest for sure) would be willing to lay down their lives for their brothers and sisters.

http://www.youtube.com/user/thaifaq#p/a/u/2/AATZQeLIUCY

..this event / action was purposeful to send a message to those in army who still considers continue and increase the level of crackdown – that they’ll be met adequately. therefore Suthep / Prayuth / whoever (Abhisit not to take into consideration, he is a puppet-puppy boy !) should think twice before escalating confrontation.

They brought knives to a gunfight, one of the high ranking officers was killed by a shot in the head, another died when a grenade exploded in the tent, that’s how reds took out a major general and a colonel.

While soldiers were unprepared for this kind of response from “peaceful” reds, it’s hard to imagine reds would prevail militarily when the army reassesses their rules of engagement and comes on fully prepared.

William thanks for your comments I am booked into the BAnyan tree ….. Is that in your opinion (or anyone elses) not a safe district to be in . We arrive Saturday flying out Monday morning , guess it should be ok no ? Even if we stay in the hotel ? I will observe what local comment is. Thank you

My friends talk about how the “puppet-master” is behind all of this. But I was surprised (even though I shouldn’t have been) to learn that they think the puppet-master is Thaksin.

On a completely different note: what are the royal family up to? I saw in the news that Princess Sirindhorn is somewhere in the highlands of China.

@Andrew Walker

Re “3rd element” (LoL, Tulsie’s phrasing is funny – I guess he watched Bruce Willis’ “5th Element” ! :D)

there are photos on Pantip Forum thread (particularly comment #5) showing holes from bullets, definitely LIVE ammo.

now, in comment #6 (р╕Др╕зр╕▓р╕бр╕Др╕┤р╕Фр╣Ар╕лр╣Зр╕Щр╕Чр╕╡р╣И 6) a photo of soldier or uniformed guy (“Guard”) captured by red-shirts there at Khao Sarn (and slightly roughed up), later one I saw him among those “hostages” held on the main stage at Pratchasonkro.

In many thread on this forums and many other forums it was discussed that there were some shooters on the roofs – and apparently this guy was one of them. next photo shows red-shirt guard holding seized weapons – and can clearly see that closer one to foreground is a sniper rifle !
that has been also discussed a lot, as well as from witnesses reports, that some snipers (as this guy, I surmise) were shooting from the roofs. (BTW other links given on that thread lead to some more photos of aftermath on Khao Sarn, with more bullet holes)

so, this called “3rd element” is rumored to be connected to some (comments #137, 152) particular person.

earlier that day there were some discussions on internet that it is expected to be some “action” after 6pm …

than after the clash there was some witnesses account(s) that when army started to move on red-shirts, there was some sort of a confusion, because seemingly there was another “group of army” which has fired at that advancing group. and people say they saw what they thought “army fight with each other“.

one thing is obvious: army didn’t expect such a strong (and perhaps fair to say – “professional”) retaliation, like especially when bomb (or rocket grenade?) has hit a group of officers (Thai MSM report that 4 of them are in coma now). that was like a strong message to them, which apparently influenced their decision to withdraw, and in fact till now (5pm Sun Apr 11) as we can see, there are no any attempts of a crackdown – apparently army had to rethink and regroup. although some info says that Gen. Prayuth has ordered more troops reinforcements (particularly Lopburi base 31) which are supposed to come to Bangkok for renewed crackdown efforts once again tonight.

although related story is that today there are a lot of discussions on net that “army is divided”, and many of them are upset and angry. which also provides some explanation of what, how and why actually has happened last night.

the point is : red-shirts can’t possibly be as good as regular soldiers, and especially be “cool” while bluntly shooting alive person. it requires certain psychological training, which not even most of regular soldiers / conscripts have. that’s why those riot military police (or army) where instantly outmatched – they have faced some opponents with at very least the same, but more likely better training!

and I think worth repeating again – this event / action was purposeful to send a message to those in army who still considers continue and increase the level of crackdown – that they’ll be met adequately. therefore Suthep / Prayuth / whoever (Abhisit not to take into consideration, he is a puppet-puppy boy !) should think twice before escalating confrontation.

so, let’s see what next move they’ll take.

On Wednesday, the Abishit government declared the state of emergency and many of us stayed glued to the computer expecting the crackdown on protesters to start any time. Instead, what they did was to methodically block the People’s Channel station and any website they could find that was sympathetic to the redshirts.

At first I thought that it was another futile attempt at censorship, because there were dozens of websites rebroadcasting that channel and publishing news and comments; often, the website owners only had to register a new domain, changing “com” for “net” or something similar and they were back on air. People were informed of theses changes on social websites, but every time a new url was announced, it ended up being blocked in a matter of minutes. I believe the government had a task force monitoring social websites to look for urls to censor.

The redshirts won the battle at ThaiCom on Friday, but Panitan declared “It doesn’t matter, they have reopened it but we will close it again”, and they did that same evening.

I have never cared much for People’s Channel, because, frankly, it’s boring to watch the same speakers regurgitating the same slogans constantly and one should take any information coming from them with a bit of salt anyway, but the government was not satisfied with taking the Redshirt TV station off the air, they wanted a total blackout on any media not controlled by them, so they blocked Prachatai, Same Sky Books, VoiceTV and many blogs. Yesterday I had to rely on SpringTVnews, the last standing Thai TV station that was informing about the government crackdown, but today their website is inoperative. They have successfully blindfolded the people, except for the few who can look for alternative sources of information on social networks and those who can read English.