LINK TO THAI VOICES of THE STREET
Comfort the Disturbed, Disturb the Comforted
DOG is something spelt backwards, like LIVE for example. DOG can organize, he ran a highly profitable team of international fraudsters in South-East Asia, until he was chased into hiding by hit-men. With hardly any human contact and only a white crow for company, Dog survived only on paranoia and old memories.Now he's back, he's still alive and desperate for life, real life. He's had time to re-evaluate his own life and realizes that he doesn't relate to most people's normality but is addicted to the lure of the buzz, the money, the power but the bullshit is too much: He wants to get his old team together again for one last throw of the dice. He's back on the case, putting together another massive scam. We're there to witness it on camera, in details so accurate, it's almost a beginners guide to fraud! Will this latest night in Bangkok provide him with enough illusions he needs to believe it himself?
"If the government accepts and is open to the talks, we are ready to disperse to restore peace in the country. But the government has to stop threatening people and show responsibility for what has happened," he says a Redshirt leader.
The offer to the government iincludes an implicit demand that the Redshirts are not attacked during peace negotiations, and a full independent inquiry is held into the violence that left 26 dead. "If the government accepts and is open to the talks, we are ready to disperse to restore peace in the country. But the government has to stop threatening people and show responsibility for what has happened," he said.
Redshirt leaders offered to call off a street rebellion that has crippled Thailand's capital Bangkok for six weeks offering a peaceful solution to the country's crisis instead of revolution. One of the leaders of the Redshirts, Veera Musikapong offered the olive branch if the government agrees to dissolve parliament in 30 days, with elections to be held within three months.
Previously, the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva offered to hold elections by the end of the year but the offer was rejected. Now a government spokesperson, Panitan Wattanayagorn said the prime minister had received the offer, saying; "The prime minister attended a meeting on the matter and the government has always been open to talks."
Before the offer to resume talks, Thailand appeared to be heading for civil war. The Redshirts, behind their street barricades built of bamboo and tyres, said they would not leave until the government stepped down.The Reshirts are principally people of no property who say the Abhisit government is just a puppet of the Bangkok elite and the Thai military.
The army appears to be reluctant to move against the Redshirts again, after an earlier failed attempt to clear them from the streets with tanks and guns in the bloodshed of April10. The army chief, Anupong Paochinda says an election is the only solution to Thailand's political crisis. Many soldiers in the lower ranks secretly support the Redshirt's cause being from the people of no property themselves. Royalists and the middle-class elite call them "watermelon soldiers", with green uniforms on the outside and red empathy within. The principal vitriol comes from the nouveau riche, insecure about clinging onto their new wealth and limited privileges.
There are more than 10,000 thousand troops currently on the street with machine guns, and riot police still in battle mode. Royalist and the right wearing yellow shirts have held counter-protests against the Redshirts with bottles and rocks just been fired so far. Now as the wheeling and dealing of politicos begins its a question of replacing bullets with ballots, holding the power of the street and challenging institutional power with gains for the masses as opposed to gains for just a few.
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