The Bangkok Protests
by Andre Vltchek - CounterPunch
They really should have a dedicated flight connecting some of the cities consumed by the ‘protests’ orchestrated in Washington, London and Paris. A flight schedule that would connect Bangkok – Beijing – Moscow – Kiev – Caracas and Havana, maybe with a southern detour to Harare, Pretoria, and Asmara. It would be a really good idea, a money saving one – for the taxpayers in Europe and North America.
Let us please not pretend, anymore, that there are spontaneous outbursts against governments that have been elected democratically and supported by the majority of people, in Eastern, Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Child and hired protester
Let us be pragmatic and think of how to economize on the great spending, of those billions of euros and dollars, pushed down the throats of pro-Western NGO’s, in places like Thailand and Ukraine, South Africa and Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.
The list is actually endless, while the goal is crystal clear: It is to wipe out all substantial opposition to the present Western global regime – to wipe it off from the face of the earth! And to do it, to wipe it out, as quickly and efficiently as possible, preferably by avoiding direct invasions. If hundreds, thousands, even millions of people in poor, non-white, or socialist/Communist countries die, defending their motherland or fatherland in the process, so be it. The West has never been stingy when it comes to sacrificing millions of innocent lives of ‘the others’.
The lives of those ‘niggers’ (to borrow the polite linguistics of people like Lloyd George), or those filthy Commies, were never worth anything, at least to the rulers in London, Berlin, Paris or Washington. They were not worth anything then, and they are worth nothing now. The British Prime Minister [Sir] Winston Churchill was, for instance, in favor of gassing the ‘lower grade’ of races…
Twenty million lives of Soviet citizens, hundreds of millions of people murdered in what is now Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and that is without even counting Africa.
So let us have it all out in the open: Let us push for the introduction of this round-the-world long-distance flight, in order to shuffle those agents of imperialism and neo-colonialism, those Western apparatchiks and their lackeys, their media whores and their local butlers, sometimes called ‘elites’, around.
Such a ‘service’ would save plenty of fuel, by connecting all the hotspots in a very efficient way.
Make it all business or first class, as these people are not doing what they are doing for some lofty ideals – they do it for status and for cold cash.
***
In one year I worked in, among other places, on the Turkish/Syrian border, in Egypt, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba, Ukraine and Thailand.
The similarities are stunning: The tents, electric generators, people imported from poor provinces, and even the slogans!
I speak about what I witness. I speak about it and I describe it in words, and in my films. But periodically, like now, I just want to show the images, to share with my readers and viewers what is… well… so obvious!
Two weeks ago it was Ukraine, I shared images from there. Today: Let it be Thailand!
***
In Bangkok, very recently, the ‘protesters’ moved from the upper-class shopping boulevard, Sukumvit, to the enormous public park – Lumpini.
They were obviously told to get the hell away from Paragon, Emporium and the other malls! There, they were spoiling the displays of the Lotus, Rolls Royce and Ferrari cars, as well as all those of the Prada, Versace and Vuitton boutiques.
Their presence is good enough for irritating, even threatening government officials. It is good for disrupting elections (the elections are free and ‘democratic’ only when people vote for those candidates and system that the West approves of, otherwise voters get intimidated, or even massacred by ‘truly democratic forces’).
But those Thai southerners actually do stink, and they are too vulgar for the refined tastes of the Bangkok elites! So to hell with the bastards! They are paid anyway, so they can be told where to move to. They were ruining the commercial center of the city, with their pots and pans and ‘fisherman pants’.
They have to go… or else! They go, of course; they go obediently, like cattle, wherever they are ordered to go. They are paid to go…
So now there is this huge celebration of the Thai New Year – of Songkran – of the Water Festival. People are desperate, the Thai economy is screaming, all the economists are predicting a huge depression, crisis, even collapse. But what can they, ordinary people, do – they have to do something! So they celebrate. Beer, loud music, water jets, fire hoses, sirens…
People are not smiling; people are concerned. But at Lumpini Park, everything is festive there: huge high-tech screens, men in military fatigues and jackets (damn, exactly like in Kiev!), pornographic anti-government slogans (the Prime Minister is a woman, and whilst porn is banned on the net, it is quite ok to depict the head of the Thai government as a naked whore) and faces painted in bright white.
There are primitive gyms where rough elements are doing bodybuilding in the open. There are barbershops, and there are massage parlours.
There are thugs, everywhere. Just as in Kiev and elsewhere, they are ‘controlling traffic’, deciding who can pass through the occupied areas.
There are video cameras everywhere, but the police would never dare to interfere (just as in Kiev, where for many weeks they did not really dare to intervene), the army is also fully supportive of the monarchy and the elites, and would never ever dream of breaking up those that are paid for by the true rulers of the land, and their foreign handlers.
And suddenly I see it! There is this huge poster proclaiming: “THAKSIN-ISM IS COMMUNISM TYRANNY”.
Thaksin Shinawatra a Communist? That very business tycoon, a turbo-capitalist, whose only ‘fault’ was that he introduced free medical care (much better than that in the United States), improved education, housed the poor, and aimed at a much more egalitarian society than anything ever seen to date in Southeast Asia?
That was, damn, of course, unacceptable to the Thai elites, military and their foreign handlers, simply because in Thailand it is not just about money, but mainly about the gap that the rulers feel they need to maintain between them and the rest of the people. The rulers of Thailand need people to prostrate in front of them, at their feet, like elsewhere in those horrid Western colonies in Southeast Asia; and in those feudal lands, like the Philippines and Indonesia. There, people are conditioned to be slaves of the elites, while children are raised and immediately broken, ‘educated’, as slaves of their parents!
I went to talk to the people near the posters. Yudhana Chauburi and Somkiat Korbkij, were the nearest to the sign.
“What is Communism?” I asked.
Nobody seemed to know.
I asked again and again. I asked several people. Nothing!
Then a guard approached me: “We think that Communism is… one person who is controlling everything…”
“You mean… the monarch?”
He backed up, in horror.
They all looked the same – the desperados backed and financed by the so called ‘elites’. In Bangkok or Kiev, in Harare and Caracas.
Even the price for betraying one’s country – the going rate – appears to be the same, approximately US$10 per day.
Madness of Thai New Year celebration.
Great respect for the elected government.
Celebrating during Thai New Year.
Race track in Bangkok – for those who have.
Medical camp just in case.
New symbol of Thainess.
Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His discussion with Noam Chomsky On Western Terrorism is now going to print. His critically acclaimed political novel Point of No Return is now re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and the market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. He has just completed the feature documentary, “Rwanda Gambit” about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.
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