tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43505001729803659252024-02-20T18:45:56.449-08:00The Dropsopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-13520411195296350002017-04-11T22:22:00.000-07:002017-04-11T22:22:11.615-07:00Alessandra Radicati from Cultural Anthropology recently interviewed me on my latest article.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">The February 2017 issue of <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cultural Anthropology</em><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit;"> included the research article “</span><a href="https://doi.org/10.14506/ca32.1.07" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(112, 202, 230); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Framed by Freedom: Emancipation and Oppression in Post-Fordist Thailand</a><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit;">,” by Claudio Sopranzetti, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of an interview that London School of Economics graduate student Alessandra Radicati conducted with Sopranzetti about his article’s arguments and their relationship to his broader research agenda.</span></span></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Alessandra Radicati: How did your ethnographic engagement with motorcycle taxi drivers begin? Are they the main occupational group you follow in your research? How do drivers and the theorization of freedom you offer here fit into your larger body of work?</strong></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Claudio Sopranzetti:</strong> Motorcycle taxi drivers were a landing spot, rather than a starting point. When I began this project my idea was to conduct an ethnography of urban mobility. During my time in graduate school, I saw a gap between urban theories—which stressed the role of infrastructures, transportation, and circulation in the birth, growth, and ongoing life of cities—and ethnographic engagements that often focused on specific locales, enclaves, spaces, or social groups and ignored the work needed to keep the city connected. It was as if all that urban thinkers had taught us was suddenly sacrificed on the altar of traditional ethnographic methods, which were developed to investigate bounded physical and social spaces. I saw that many urban ethnographies kept using the oldest trick in the anthropological book: study a community and assume a metonymic relation between its scale and that of the city. This, it seemed to me, missed an essential aspect of how the urban comes to be, how it is lived, and how commodities, people, rumors, aspirations, and power circulate through its veins.</div>
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With that in mind, I began my fieldwork by tracing the circulation of objects, documents, and commodities around Bangkok. First, I followed the circulation of newspapers but soon expanded to explore how different local companies move retail products around the city and ensure their timely delivery. Almost every conversation I had would bring me to a motorcycle taxi driver as the last leg of this complex system of circulation. If large-scale water infrastructure always ends with a tap, the circulation of people, commodities, and ideas in Bangkok often ended with a driver. They were Bangkok’s urban taps, so to speak: the final connectors that allowed the city to function.</div>
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During my first extensive fieldwork in Bangkok, however, I realized that taps can be both open and closed. In March 2010, the people who normally allowed the city to remain connected shut it down, as part of the Red Shirts protest that took over the city. With that, what had started as an investigation of urban circulation turned into something larger. As my article shows, I was working with people who experienced, made sense, and made do with an epochal transformation in the structures of Thai capitalism. Through the protest, I witnessed collective action emerging among precarious workers who had come to think about themselves as individual entrepreneurs but were now adopting circulation, and the ability to take control of it, as a technique of political mobilization. In this sense, the theorization of freedom among the drivers is just a small piece of a project that, over the last five years, has explored the entanglements between emerging logics of capital, transformations of everyday life in terms of mobility, labor, and desire, as well as emerging forms of political mobilization (Sopranzetti, forthcoming).</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AR: You begin the article by talking about the importance of local, contextual understandings of freedom and anthropology’s unique capability for getting at these—even though anthropologists, as you point out, have not always made use of this capability, relying instead on understandings of what you call “freedom with a capital F.” Reading this, I could not help but think of Anna Tsing’s (2005) <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Friction</em>, and wondered if her approach to the idea of universal concepts and how they travel had any bearing on your own thinking? If so, how?</strong></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CS:</strong> This is a very perceptive question and one that allows me to discuss something that appears in the background of this article, but that I only touch on in passing: the relationship between what you call universal concepts, a global hierarchy of values, and local configurations.</div>
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Anna Tsing’s exploration of the modalities of contact between concepts affiliated with global projects and the specific locales in which they lodge themselves has been very central to my thinking. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Friction</em> is an example of this analysis, but even more important to me is a less widely known book that she edited called <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Words in Motion</em>. This text starts from the assumption that words can produce worlds, and it analyzes how specific concepts travel across the globe and get adopted and transformed in specific contexts. This process often follows unexpected routes and ends up transforming how local actors envision what Tsing calls <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">global modernity</em>. I find this analysis convincing, but I believe that something else can also happen: local actors can use the aura of concepts associated with global modernity to legitimize local political and economic transformations—what in the article I call <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">making sense</em> and <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">making do</em>. Sometimes, as with the concept of <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘itsaraphāp</em>, these transformations align with global trends like entrepreneurialism and precarity. At other times, they diverge radically. Let me give you an example of this second process, which is taken from another article that I recently published (Sopranzetti 2016).</div>
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The concept of good governance was introduced to Thailand by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank after the 1997 economic crisis. Those institutions kept repeating that economic growth in Thailand had stalled because of the lack of good governance. With this expression, they referred to an alleged failure to live up to a set of technocratic standards, a failure that they saw as the original sin of developing countries. When the Thai economy crashed in 1997 those institutions, after years of praising Thailand for its management of economic success, imputed what was happening to a failure of good governance. Once the concept entered Thai political discourse, a political scientist named Chaiwat Satha-anand translated it as <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">thammarāt</em>—literally meaning governance of <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">dhamma</em>. With one simple neologism, a technocratic concept was transformed into a moral one, which gestured toward a connection between good governance and governance that aligned with the King of Thailand, who is also known as the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">thammarāchā</em>. Since then good governance has become a central tool of Thai conservatives who advocate against democratic politics, on the understanding that electoral politics does not necessarily lead to the governance of moral people (<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">thammarāt</em>).</div>
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Now, what are we to learn from these two examples? Are the ideas of freedom and of goodness in governing universal concepts? Or are <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘itsaraphāp</em> and <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">thammarāt</em> examples of radical alterity and incommensurable worldviews? The answer to these questions intersects with debates around universality and difference that have been at the very core of anthropological theory for decades, debates that have recently been driven by proponents of the ontological turn. I find the dichotomy that these debates presuppose misleading, and I think Anna Tsing’s early work helps us to get out of it.</div>
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Concepts, practices, and forms of life are neither universal nor particular. They are always local, but at different scales. We live in a world in which specific people, organizations, and institutions—whether religious leaders, financial institutions, media conglomerates, or political movements—are capable of creating and diffusing concepts on a global scale as well as positioning them along what Michael Herzfeld calls the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">global hierarchy of value</em>. Yet this hierarchy is neither stable nor singular. The hierarchies proposed by ISIS and by the American empire may be different, but they are equally global. As a consequence, they always intersect with other actors operating at different scales, whether national, regional, urban, or whatever. Those global hierarchies of value, because of the military, economic, or political powers with which they are associated, operate as fetishes—inviting actors at smaller scales to orient and submit themselves to them and providing powerful tools for legitimizing their practices. What interests me are the processes through which those hierarchies are produced, reproduced, and challenged, and how in specific contexts words and discourses align or come into conflict with political-economic transformations. Anna Tsing’s work is absolutely central to this analysis.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AR: It strikes me that a concept closely related to freedom is dignity; you mention this word a couple of times in the article, and it is implied negatively through your descriptions of how rural workers are treated in humiliating ways (scolded, compared to animals, and so on) when working in factories. Could you say more about how dignity and freedom relate to one another, based on your ethnographic engagement with drivers in Bangkok? You explain the origins and connotations of the Thai word for freedom in the text, but is there a similarly charged or significant term for dignity?</strong></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CS:</strong> One thing that struck me when I started to talk with the drivers about changes in labor practices was that they never referred to the Thai word for dignity (<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">kīattiyot</em>). I had previously been involved in the anti-precarity movements in Italy and there, as in other southern European contexts (see Narotzky 2016), the word dignity (<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">dignita’</em>) was central, as something that had been lost with the flexibilization of labor and needed to be taken back. Now, I have not thought at length about how these two contexts might be compared, but it seems to me that there are two main differences at stake: one to do with political-economic configurations, and another to do with the word’s connotations.</div>
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When motorcycle taxi drivers looked back at the Fordist moment, they did not associate it with a sense of dignity. This may have to do with the absence of social-welfare programs during that period in Thailand or with an industrial configuration in which enterprises were rarely family-based and lacked the kind of paternalism that defined the southern European context. Whatever the reason, the factory floor was not remembered as the site of a moral economy—as was often the case in Italy or Spain—and therefore flexibilization was not seen as having taken workers’ dignity away. Quite the contrary.</div>
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Secondly, the Thai word <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">kīattiyot</em> is used to refer both to dignity—in the sense of as a universal characteristic of human beings—and to prestige or honor—a characteristic defined by status or rank (<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">yot</em>). As a consequence, the word does not have the same egalitarian meaning that it does it English and it would sound odd coming out of the drivers’ mouths, given their relatively low social status in Thai society.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AR: You mention the work of Mary Beth Mills on female migrant workers in Thailand, but your own informants are men. Is it correct to assume that this motorcycle taxi driving is coded as masculine? What else can you tell us about how gender and notions of masculinity shape the understandings of freedom you describe in the article? Might freedom be different for women?</strong></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CS:</strong> You are quite right, both in assuming that driving is coded as masculine and that notions of masculinity are central to the drivers’ understanding of freedom. In my larger work I explore in more detail the role of masculinity in the drivers’ choices around migration and labor trajectories. The capsulized version is this: as the late Pattana Kitiarsa (2012) extensively explored, during the 1990s a heroic manhood became dominant among Thai rural migrants. This form of masculinity was characterized by an often unresolved tension between the drinking, smoking, and gambling womanizer on one side, and the moral breadwinner, committed to his family, his village, and his woman back home, on the other. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘Itsaraphāp</em> as described and lived by the drivers offers a way to reconcile the two images, presenting them as both risk-taking entrepreneurs, gambling their lives with each trip, and bread-winners, working to provide something for their children.</div>
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That said, however, the language of <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">‘itsaraphāp</em> is by no mean exclusive to men. Many women who experienced a parallel shift toward more insecure labor arrangements after the crisis of 1997—by becoming street vendors, for instance, or freelance prostitutes—also used the language of freedom to make sense and make do amid this transformation. I have not, however, conducted sufficient in-depth research with these women to know whether behind the use of the same word is a different, gendered understanding of it.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AR: Thailand has been in the news as of late with the coup of 2014, which continues today in the form of rule through military junta. Coupled with aggressive persecution of those deemed to have disobeyed lèse-majesté laws, questions of freedom in Thailand are anything but abstract. Have you been able to return to the country since the military took charge? Can you explain how the current political situation has impacted the lives of your informants?</strong></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CS:</strong> I am actually writing to you from Bangkok. You are correct: questions of freedom, and especially freedom of expression, are anything but abstract at the moment and, unfortunately, this is not going to change in the short run. I invite anyone who is interested to read <a href="http://www.un.or.th/2016-thailand-draft-constitution-english-translation/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(112, 202, 230); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: #0091bd; font-family: "Droid Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">the new Thai constitution</a> drafted by the junta, as an example of how you can design an authoritarian regime that lives inside the empty shell of democratic institutions.</div>
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This configuration does not only apply to the new administrative structures designed by the military dictatorship. It also organizes my informants’ lives, as much as the lives of anyone in Thailand. Life under the new regime, as under any dictatorship, is divided and contradictory. On the one hand, it goes on normally. Shopping malls and restaurants are crowded and streets filled by the usual frenzy of vendors and office workers. On the other, people involved in direct actions and critical activities are watched, controlled, and silenced. Among them, the dominant feeling is one of being inside a perimeter that is slowly closing in around you, while the rest of society quietly pretends not to see it. Hundreds of people, especially local political organizers, radio hosts, journalists, academics, and activists, have left the country for fear of repression. Since the coup, the regime has banned political activities, censored unfriendly media, and heavily policed Internet discussions. The army has summoned more than one thousand people, arrested more than seven hundred, and tried more than two hundred in military court, with no right to appeal. Even more viciously, as you mention, the lèse-majesté law, which punishes anybody who criticizes members of the royal family with detention for between three and fifteen years, has been used with unprecedented frequency to attack political opponents. In the last three years, at least eighty-six people have been charged while, at the time the coup, only five people were in jail after being convicted of these charges and five more were awaiting trial. The actions that count as criticism of the royal institution have also been expanded to include criticizing the law itself, liking pictures on Facebook, and even mocking the king’s dog.</div>
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Some of my informants are, unfortunately, among those affected by this new wave of repression. During my fieldwork between 2009 and 2011, many of the motorcycle taxi drivers played a prominent role as political mobilizers, guards, and fighters in the Red Shirts protest that opposed military and monarchic intervention in politics. I do not discuss this in my <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cultural Anthropology</em> article, but my book (Sopranzetti, forthcoming) focuses largely on this aspect of their presence in the city. Since the coup, the army has been working to bring the drivers under control by registering them, so to make them visible and legible, and by terrorizing and harassing the families of their leaders. Let me give you a couple of examples of what this has meant for two drivers: Yai, one of the drivers’ political leaders; and Adun, who appears in the article.</div>
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One month after the army takeover in 2014 I met with Yai. He was uncharacteristically beaten down. “Claudio,” he said, “the military is here to stay. They understand our weaknesses and they are using them. We are fighters, you have seen that too. They attacked us with tanks and we remained in the streets. We were ready to fight, but we have families. If they attack us, we fight back. But now it is our wives who ask us to stop protesting, it is our kids who are scared for their fathers. Things are changing; now your own loved ones are the army’s best allies. It is easy to tell the army to fuck off, but to tell your wife that, to tell your kids that, it is really hard.” Since the coup, Yai’s family, like those of thousands of other activists, has become the target of unprecedented pressure from the army. Their house has been raided multiple times, always when only his wife was inside. A small group of soldiers has repeatedly visited his son’s kindergarten, asked his teachers about Yai and his family, and lingered outside the school as the students are let out. Through these tactics of intimidation, more often directed toward families than the activists themselves, the junta is marrying affect and domination, as totalitarian regimes always do. They are, in Yai’s words, transforming the activists’ families into allies, agents who beg mobilizers to stop protesting and organizing out of love.</div>
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While these personal attacks have been directed at organizers in particular, all motorcycle taxi drivers have been subject to a new level of control in recent years. Less than a month after the coup, the new dictator General Prayuth, having experienced firsthand the subversive potential of motorcycle taxis when he directed the army’s dispersal of the Red Shirts in 2010, launched a campaign to register the drivers. In June 2014, military officers started to approach motorcycle taxis around Bangkok, lecturing them about passenger security and an alleged plan to remove local mafia from their operations. Soon thereafter, the military demanded that drivers register with their local municipality and get a special vest with visible photo identification. Those who refused were heavily fined and their driver’s licenses revoked. Adun was one of them. Aware that the junta’s actions were aimed at taking control of the drivers, he quietly refused to register. For the first seven months after the vests were distributed, he managed to continue carrying customers. By the summer of 2016, though, he had accumulated so many fines that working as a driver was losing him money. Frustrated, he put down his name and entered the state’s archives.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AR: I am always interested in the writing process and in how anthropologists working with complex, enormously varied bodies of data produce articles like yours, which manage to give a rich sense of place and context as well as developing a sophisticated theoretical argument. Could you give us a sense of how this article was conceived and how it developed over time? What process led you to your theorization of freedom with respect to the experiences of these taxi drivers?</strong></div>
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CS: I am not sure how to answer this question. First of all, after years of working in the precarious labor market of contemporary academia, applying for funds and positions only to get rejections and then suddenly getting a job when least expected, I have learned that managing to do something is often a matter of luck more than anything else. More broadly, though, your question seems to imply that context and place—let’s call it <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">everyday life</em>—exists in opposition to <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">sophisticated theory</em> and that some sort of reconciliation is needed. I do not see them as separate at all. The motorcycle taxi drivers I worked with are intellectuals in the Gramscian sense: they constantly make sense of the reality around them and they do so through concepts that they adopt, dismiss, transform, and create. When you ask what process led me to the theorization of freedom with respect to the drivers, the only honest answer I can give is by listening and trying to learn as much as possible from and about them so to attempt to make sense of how and why they think the way they do.</div>
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I do not see this process as significantly different from engaging with Foucault, Marx, or Gramsci, except that drivers are still alive and I can ask them for clarifications. When you read any of those theorists, though, you start from their <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">sophisticated theor</em>y. You struggle with it and make up an idea of what they are saying. Then you start expanding, reading what they wrote beyond the specific subject you are addressing. In time, if you sit with them long enough, you develop a sense of the style of their writing and thinking, and you are able to predict where they are going with their next sentence. Sometimes, however, you realize that you are off-target. So you start reading about their <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">everyday life</em>: their upbringing, the books they read, the magazines they liked, their idiosyncrasies, tastes, and obsessions. You read their letters to friends and loved ones. You start feeling like you are growing close to them; you become a sort of posthumous stalker. To me, ethnography is a very similar enterprise, but with an opposite progression: you start off as a kind of stalker and you end up enchanted by someone’s thought.</div>
<h2 style="border: 0px; font-family: "Droid Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 1em; margin: 0.5em 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
References</h2>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Kitiarsa, Pattana. 2012. “Masculine Intent and Migrant Manhood: Thai Workmen Talking Sex.” In <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Men and Masculinities in Southeast Asia</em>, edited by Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons, 38–55. New York: Routledge.</div>
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Narotzky, Susana. 2016. “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2015.1111209" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(112, 202, 230); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: #0091bd; font-family: "Droid Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Between Inequality and Injustice: Dignity as a Motive for Mobilization during the Crisis</a>.” <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">History and Anthropology</em> 27, no. 1: 74–92.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Sopranzetti, Claudio. 2016. “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911816000462" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(112, 202, 230); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: #0091bd; font-family: "Droid Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Thailand's Relapse: The Implications of the May 2014 Coup</a>.” <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Journal of Asian Studies</em> 75, no. 2: 299–316.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">
_____. Forthcoming. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Owners of the Map: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility, and Politics in Bangkok</em>. Oakland: University of California Press.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2005. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection</em>. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.</div>
</section></div>
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sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-43145972581388791992017-03-21T04:02:00.000-07:002017-03-21T04:02:50.519-07:00I am back! New projects on the way...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After a long absence from this blog, I come back to it!<br />
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I spent the last two years teaching at Oxford, doing some more research, writing new stuff, and working on a graphic novel on Thailand.<br />
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My next academic book is schedule to come out in November of 2017 and now I am dedicating myself full time to the graphic novel, in collaboration with the amazing artist Sara Fabbri.<br />
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Stay tuned as I post more about that!<br />
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For now just some initial images<br />
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sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-86943048349851156222014-06-30T07:32:00.002-07:002014-06-30T11:20:03.807-07:00Some thoughts on Thai political crisis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On
May 22th 2014, the Army Commander
General Prayut seized power, completing the 12<sup>th</sup> successful military
coup in Thailand since 1932 and the second one in the last eight years. The
junta presented the coup as a solution to the wheel of crisis that has
encompassed the country since 2005. What the coup, however, has achieved is nothing more than the dusting off a political strategy—that of direct military intervention—that not
only has already failed to bring an end to the crisis in 2006, but has
entrenched it as it will, unquestionably, do once again. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Beside
the junta’s boastful and grotesque attempt to bring peace and happiness through
silence and repression, almost everybody, among both opposite sides of the political
spectrum and academics, agrees that the never-ending crisis is an epiphenomenon
of a deep drift in Thai society, one that may shift the role of the monarchy,
the future of democratic politics, and the reciprocal position of Thai elites
and popular masses. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My
argument is that this drift is the product of an oscillation between two social
structures. By this I mean, following Edmund Leach, “a set of ideas about the
distribution of power between persons and groups of persons” (Leach 1954: 4)
and, I add, of concrete techniques for mobilizing people and governing the
nation. On one side, a social structure that conceptualizes power as springing
from<i> barami</i>, a charisma that comes
from moral conduct and reside with “good people” (<i>khon di</i></span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">̄</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">). </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 200%;">On the other, a structure that conceives power residing in the ability to mobilize masses, whether through loyalty and patronage or through democratic elections, as in the case of Thaksin Shinawatra.</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The former way of legitimizing power lies
behind the Yellow Shirts’ and traditional elites’ rhetoric and practices, their
call for moral leaders, their distrust for electoral democracy, and hate for
the “Thaksin system” (</span><i style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">rabop Thaksin</i><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">). The latter, instead, animates the Red Shirts’
demands to respect electoral results and to question established economic,
political, and legal inequalities.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As
in Leach’s analysis of the Kachin Hills Area, however, these two social
structures do not exist as actual totalizing realities but as “ideal models”
or, as Leach would have said, “as <i>if</i>
descriptions—they relate to ideal models rather than real societies” (Leach
1954: 285). In other words, <i>barami</i>
and popular support, have coexisted, and will coexist in Thai society but their
balance is always in a flux, and the present crisis is a struggle over what
this balance may look like in the present and the foreseeable future. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Up
until the early 2000s, the equilibrium between these two ways of organizing
power revolved around the figure of King Bhumibol as the center and ultimate source of <i>barami</i>
while also the holder of unmatched popular support and “a ‘super-mandate’ from the
people, one that trumps the electoral mandates of political leaders” (Mc Cargo
2005: 505). This position has been clear in the political turmoil that
unsettled the Thai polity in the 1970s and the 1990s. In both cases, Bhumibol
was able to cast himself as the arbiter and ultimate power broker, overseeing which way the social structure would oscillate, either toward democratic
politics after the 1992 crisis, or toward the dictatorship of “good people”
after the 1970s. However, due to the King weakening health, the rise of political
consciousness among Thai population, and the palace uncharacteristic choice of
clearly taking side since 2005, this role has entered into question. The surge
of </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 200%;">lese majesty </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">charges since 2006 to silence critiques and questioning of
the palace’s role in politics is just one sign of the palace’s growing weakness
and the breaking down of previous social structures. The Yellow shirts’
repulsion for the Thaksin’s system, which they see as replacing “moral
authority” with corrupt electoral populism, is another.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Similarly,
the idea that power should spring from popular support, rather than moral
stamina, has been gaining momentum around the figure of Thaksin Shinawatra. A
media tycoon, son of a fairly wealthy political family from northern Thailand,
Thaksin was able to become the first elected Prime Minister in Thai history to
complete a full mandate. After this he confirmed his position through highly
popular policies, obtain an unprecedented one-party victory in the 2005
elections, and, through proxy leaders, in every single democratic election
since. Even though many of his supporters would acknowledge the Yellow
Shirts’ claim that Thaksin had been involved in corruption while in office, they maintain that electoral victory should be respected and that these
accusations should be persecuted through a fair legal process and not through
military and judiciary coups with the purpose of replacing him with supposedly
“moral” leaders. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While
existing analyses acknowledge this shift in ways of organizing power in contemporary
Thailand they often focus on the specific actors, social groups, and strata—whether
elites, bureaucrats, or social masses—rather than on the shift in social
structures which is activating all of their reactions. In so doing, these
readings take trees for the forest and obscure the larger struggle. Once again
Edmund Leach comes to our help and reminds us that “when we refer to structural
change we have to consider not merely changes in the position of individuals
with regard to an ideal system of status relationships, but changes in the
ideal system itself: changes, that is, in the power structure” (Leach 1954: 10).
Such changes, I argue, are the engine behind the Thai wheel of crisis, an
engine that runs through oscillations and not in a linear progression.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A
linear view of structural change, in fact, has been the other shortcoming of
present analyses. Even scholars as Michael Nelson and </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Björn</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Dressel, who take a more holistic approach and recognize the emerging struggle
between </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: TimesNRMT;">“the traditional
conception of a stratified paternal-authoritarian state where power emanates
from the king” (Dressel 2010: 446) and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> “claims [of] popular
sovereignty as the basis of legitimacy” (Dressel 2010: 447), assume a
teleological progression from one to the other. Children of democratization
theory, such views, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: TimesNRMT;">are part of
the political arsenal used in this conflict more than actual analytical
construct. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">However, as James Stent has argued, “since the
revolution of 1932 […] the political history of Thailand has been a history of
gradual swings of the pendulum, with dictatorial conservatism, generally backed
by the Army, alternating with more democratic rule” (Stent 2012: 22). What we are witnessing now is one of such oscillation, as violent as what happened with
the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 and with the bloody struggle of the 1970,
but equally uncertain and impermanent. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: TimesNRMT;">As the endless circle of elections, protest,
military coup, counter-protest, judiciary coups, and once again military coup that
have taken over Thailand demonstrates, the outcome is up-for-grabs and the
conflict risks to tear apart the unstable equilibrium that has dominated
Thailand since its transformation in a constitutional monarchy. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">REFERENCES<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Dressel, Björn,
“When Notions of Legitimacy Conflict: The Case of Thailand,”<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Politics and Policy, </i>Vol.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>38, 2010: 445-469, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Leach, Edmund, <i>Political Systems of Highland Burma</i>,
G.Bell & Sons, 1954<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">McCargo, Duncan, “Network
monarchy and legitimacy crises in Thailand,”</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Pacific Review,
Vol. 18 No. 4, December 2005: 499–519<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Nelson, Michael H.,
“Some Observations on Democracy in Thailand,” Hong Kong: Southeast Asia
Research Centre, City University of Hong Kong, 2012 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Stent, James,
“Thoughts on Thailand’s Turmoil, 11 June 2010,” in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Bangkok May 2010: Perspectives on a
Divided Thailand</i>, ed. by Michael J. Montesano, Pavin Chachavalpongpun and
Aekapol Chongvilaivan, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012:
15-41.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-29623575850885273402014-06-03T12:53:00.002-07:002014-06-03T12:53:27.865-07:00Living under dictatorship<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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After a very very long time of not posting anything, I feel the need to talk, in a time where everything would push us to stay silent.</div>
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I am in Bangkok right now and I can tell you that I have never seen anything like this before. I was here in 2010 doing research on the Red Shirts when 80 protesters were killed by army snipers and urban guerrilla raged for 6 days and it was nothing like that we are experiencing now. Today the streets are calm, people go about their life totally normal and often say that at least with the coup the violence that has colored the street of Bangkok for the last few years stopped. But if you are involved in direct actions and critical speech the circle is slowly closing around you: censorship, arbitrary detention, accusation of lese majeste, and the treat to be processed by military court instead of civil court (meaning having no appeal and no trained lawyers who are not military able to defend you). People are called in everyday, detained in <span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">undisclosed in military camps for up to 7 days and then released upon signing a document in which you declare that you were not mistreated (which so far people have not been, or at least the people who are being detained in Bangkok - no one knows about upcountry) and that you will not take part in any political activity. If you do you agree in the document to be persecuted (probably by military court) and to have your assets frozen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">At this point about 400 people have been summoned, about 60 did not show up and are in hiding or already out of the country. They started with high profile politicians and political leaders, they then moved to occasional protesters and activists, progressed to academics and journalists and in the last couple of days the military started to summon people who have been vocal against the previous coup in 2006, student organizers, local activists. And this are datas from cities, what is happening in villages remains very unclear and based on information that brave people are collecting locally. And this will not stop. </span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">This progression represents an eerie escalation of the junta’s attempt to take hold of power by silencing potential dissenting voices and undoing the organizational structure of the popular movements that have dominated recent Thai politics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Phone and internet communications (probably including this) are being listened, read, controlled, and stored. Not aligned traditional media have been shut down, social media accounts are constantly blocked as well as many sites. As I write to you, at night, only channel 5 (military owned) broadcasts images of the military <span style="color: black;">helping people in the countryside while every other channel is frozen on a static image of army logos with underneath it, in a white font, "National Council for Peace and Order". Today,<span style="line-height: 21px;"> a taxi driver was arrested on charges of lese majeste after a passenger registered their conversation on</span><span style="line-height: 21px;"> inequality in Thai society and reported him to the police.</span> I have not read 1984 in a while and I am scared to pick it up again and find out we are living in it. I <span style="line-height: 20px;">feel immensely sad and powerless. I never thought we would live under a regime like this, my Thai colleagues never </span><span style="line-height: 20px;">thought</span><span style="line-height: 20px;"> they would be back in time to the repression of the 1970s. Everything is filled by a twisted silent dark feeling of fear while all around us everything seems normal and usual. It crawls around us, ready to bite whoever takes a wrong step. We don't know where it hides or which step could actually be the wrong one. </span></span></span></div>
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sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-58627007274135184422012-03-28T13:39:00.005-07:002012-03-31T07:14:32.604-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglTfO5SrC0opuZ37tHl5DOLFmUiJtwBGwvlDkIsWHAph5ok8vxlM2-SAcs4MW0lAKqexA7U_rXWC-_qs7DMcpheXskDav6eX9U9XNPrrYB21ek68IWWPH8wViy0mu6gdQPVZjX4Rfyff9W/s1600/red+Journeys-250.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 168px; height: 251px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglTfO5SrC0opuZ37tHl5DOLFmUiJtwBGwvlDkIsWHAph5ok8vxlM2-SAcs4MW0lAKqexA7U_rXWC-_qs7DMcpheXskDav6eX9U9XNPrrYB21ek68IWWPH8wViy0mu6gdQPVZjX4Rfyff9W/s320/red+Journeys-250.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5725051468292550370" /></a><br />I have not posted anything for a long while. Left Thailand and got to work on my dissertation and teaching.<br /><br />I just published a book with Silkworm which analyzes and describes the red shirt protest, as i encountered it and saw it during my research.<br /><br />If you enjoyed the blog you will also like the book.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Red-Journeys-Inside-Red-Shirt-Movement/dp/6162150356/ref=zg_bs_tab_pd_bsnr_2?pf_rd_p=1348016562&pf_rd_s=right-5&pf_rd_t=2101&pf_rd_i=list&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0Z5WM8XN98YENKJBPKRD">check this out</a>sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-42214835121965932712011-02-06T21:57:00.001-08:002011-02-06T21:57:49.611-08:00Aphisit's giftOn 9 January 2011 the Abhisit government announced its “gift” to the Thai population. In a white box with a light blue ribbon was deposited the new policy, presented under the name of Prachawiwat, or progress of the people. The neologism carried nine presents to the people, allegedly addressed to expand social and labor security to the declared 24 million workers in the “informal economy”, to moderate the growing cost of living in Thailand, to guarantee access to credit to operators of taxis and motorcycle taxis, and to address crime. The Thai PM stressed that the gift would not cost much for the Thai population.<br /><br />After a few days of confusion, trying to understand what the policy actually looked like, a large debate has been sparked in the Thai media and universities. Most of this debate revolves around three questions: How is the Prachawiwat different from Thaksin’s Pratchanyom? Is this a genuine policy or just an attempt by the government to win votes before the next election? Who will pay for this and how much? Unfortunately much of this debate has not yet reached the English-speaking media but in the next days a number of articles will be published on these discussions by major international newspapers. Leaving this task to people better equipped than me, I just want to present these nine gifts (I now sound like my Sunday school teacher talking about the Magi) and to offer my personal take on them without going into the details but rather focusing on their conceptual framework.<br /><br />Presentation of the gifts<br /><br />Gift 1: Expansion of the social security system to 24 million Thais operating in the informal economy (nok rabob), according to the government. This scheme provides two levels of social security based on a co-payment system between the workers and the state. The first level amounts to 100 baht per month, divided between 70 baht paid by the workers and 30 baht by the state. The second one amounts to 150 baht, in a 100+50 formula. Different from the actual welfare state scheme offered to regular workers and government officials these policies cover the cost for health care, death insurance (which could be collected after a minimum of 15 years of payment), and a retirement scheme.<br /><br />Gift 2: Access to credit for taxi drivers, motorcycle taxi drivers, and street vendors for a minimum loan of 5000 baht at an unspecified low interest rate. The government will also provide a 5 percent discount on down payment on the taxi to drivers who have been operating for more than 3 years and a special loan for those with more than 9 years of experience.<br /><br />Gift 3: New registration procedure for motorcycle taxi drivers with the purpose of eliminating local mafia influence over the drivers. The government will at first re-register the drivers who were registered in 2003 by the Thaksin government and then expand the process to the new drivers who have entered the system since. This policy will be first implemented in Bangkok starting on 15 February.<br /><br />Gift 4: Allocating 20,000 new areas for street vendors in Bangkok with the purpose of making these places into tourist attractions.<br /><br />Gift 5: Controlling the cost of oil by lifting the price control on LPG for the industrial sector but leaving it in place for private vehicles and transportation providers.<br /><br />Gift 6: Providing free electricity to an estimated 9 million households who consume less than 90 units a month by raising the cost of electricity for heavy consumers by 1 percent.<br /><br />Gift 7: Cut the cost of animal feed to make the final price lower and also make the change in prices public at all times to avoid speculation. Moreover the government will introduce an experiment of conducting the egg trade in kilograms and not in pieces with the purpose of cutting the price by 5 to 10 satang per kilo.<br /><br />Gift 8: Increase the diversity and transparency in the trade of agricultural product with the purpose of giving better choices and prices to consumers<br /><br />Gift 9: Increasing security and crime control, especially in 200 unspecified locations, in conjunction with an upcoming police reform.<br /><br />Opinion<br /><br />The package proposed by the Thai government does take some steps toward addressing growing problems of inequality and access in Thai society and it pushes the on-going path toward labor security in Thailand a step forward. However, in my opinion, the conceptual framework in which these steps are taken reaffirms conservative ideas about the relationship between citizens and the state, the relationship between the capital and the rest of the country, participation, and welfare schemes. These are conservative ideas that the majority of Thai society, including both the red and yellow shirts, seems to be questioning and trying to leave behind.<br /><br />Let us first look at this idea of Prachawiwat, the progress of the people, as a “gift”. Anthropology, my discipline, has been long fascinated by the dynamics and implications of gifts and gift-giving. Out of the rivers of ink written on the subject two main streams of thoughts have emerged.<br /><br />Firstly, the idea that gift-giving establishes or re-affirms an un-equal relationship between the givers and the receivers in which, by virtue of their giving, the former pose themselves as superiors. An example of this dynamic in international politics that left many observers puzzled, was the refusal of India, after the 2004 tsunami, to receive “economic help” from Western powers, particularly the United States. Proudly, the Indian government, worried by the position that aid will put them in, not only declined the “gift” but also offered economic aid to other affected areas, especially Sri Lanka. Despite the destroyed homes of many citizens the Indian government refused to be put in the position of a receiver and showed its strength and autonomy, framing itself as a regional power, a giver.<br /><br />Secondly, the framing of a “gift” as an invitation to reciprocity, an act that puts the received in debt and therefore calls for another gift, to re-balance the exchange and further the social relationship. Examples of this are constantly visible in contemporary Thailand where small gift-giving is an essential part of daily life, office work, and new acquaintances. More than once I came across the story of a foreigner failing to fulfill this call to reciprocity be seen as “rude” or not “generous”.<br /><br />In the context of the Prachawiwat scheme both aspects give government’s “gift” an eerie tone. Framing this policy as a present takes the functioning of a government out of the political arena. Withdrawing from an expanding discussion in the Thai political landscape over rights and duties, access and taxation, the actions of the state are pushed back into the realm of paternalistic politics. As a motorcycle taxi driver put it to me “I receive a gift paid by my taxes and I should also thank them.” In this realm an established benevolent and superior entity, the state, offers a present to a structurally lower receiver, the population. This relation, framed in the language of the patronage system, brings us into the second aspect of this gift-giving: what reciprocity is the government seeking? Often, forms of reciprocity between governments and population, or between clients and patrons, are based on “gifts” in exchange for “support”, meaning in this case electoral support or, at least, silent acceptance. This “gift-giving”, smilingly presented by an excited Abhisit as a cheap present, in many ways condense the conceptual problems with Prachawiwat and represent a major step back in terms of the conceptual framing of the relationship between the Thai state and its citizens. In this sense Thaksin’s Prachaniyom, if not framed in the language of rights, was indeed predicated on questions of access, access to a state-controlled capitalist system of capital, loans, and investments under the mantra of “transforming assets into capital”, but access nonetheless. With this new policy we are back to square one. This in general seems to me the biggest mistake for a policy that was presented as having its strength in participation and equality.<br /><br />The second point of concern in relation to this new package is its disproportionate attention to urban areas, especially Bangkok. The government has pointed out that the reform will start from Bangkok and then be expanded to the rest of the country, without specifying when this is supposed to happen. Moreover, if we stop to analyze the nine gifts it becomes clear that few of them are oriented to a rural constituency. Some of them (2, 3, and 4) are obviously directed to urban workers and even the schemes connected to agricultural products focuses mostly on transparency and price control for consumers, without really addressing the problem from the perspective of the producers, who are increasingly squeezed between the raising production prices and the low selling prices. For these rural producers these policies will hardly do anything. In term of the social security scheme, the pearl of these gifts, from the direct admission of Ajarn Sungsidh, the head advisor to Abhisit on Prachawiwat, the proposed welfare scheme is will not affect agricultural workers, who represent the large majority of the 24 million informal workers presented as the beneficiaries of the new policies. At most, it will benefit 5.2 million urban informal workers. This disproportionate focus on the city – even though it is not surprising for government opponents such as a motorcycle taxi driver friend who promptly told me “Claudio, this is nothing new. These people have been convinced that the whole of Thailand is Bangkok for a long time” – seems at least short-sighted and at most suicidal, especially given the new movements and discourses that populate the broad Thai political landscape.<br /><br />The third point is that the offers of Prachawiwat which are great when seen from afar are greatly scaled down when analyzed in detail. The social security scheme, presented by the Thai government as a visionary and unprecedented expansion of the welfare state to the informal economy, is, in fact, NOT a welfare scheme. The conceptual foundations of a welfare scheme are normally a holistic approach to labor security, education, health, retirement as well as its extension to the family of the assisted. Both elements are lacking in the case of Prachawiwat. What the Abhisit government is offering – undoubtedly a step forward in terms of labor security for informal workers – is a so-called “social insurance” scheme, meaning a system of co-payment between the private payer, and only the private payer, and the state with the purpose of guaranteeing health insurance, life insurance, and retirement money, based on a 3 percent interest rate accumulated over the years. No service is offered to the family of the assisted. This scheme offers nothing more than other private insurance would offer, apart from the co-payment help.<br /><br />In conclusion, the package developed with the help of think tank that was offered a meager five weeks to come up with a policy theoretically effecting more than a third of Thai population, seems to me to offer, in practice, some interesting steps toward a re-conceptualization of the role of the informal economy in Thai society but without framing them in a solid and substantial plan toward guarantying access, rights, and responsibilities to the actors involved.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-83353433427173476722010-12-07T05:43:00.000-08:002010-12-07T05:47:19.885-08:00Filling the gapsI have been quite absent from the blog, mostly focusing on my research and redacting two months of posts into a manuscript which is up for review now.<br />I take advantage of this for putting up all my posts from April 10th to May 15th, which i did not had time before to check and upload. If you have time take a look at them.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-14123290516856581232010-10-10T04:15:00.000-07:002010-10-10T04:17:25.072-07:00October 10th- Democracy Monument(sorry again no time to put up pictures, will do as soon as i get a moment)<br /><br />We woke up in the morning and decide to get out and check around as some twitters reported movement of riot police around Ratchaprasong. We drove through the empty Rachadamri, few people in red shirts walking around and police officers lounging around in the heat. The reported barricades going up around intercontinental hotel were not there. We arrive at an empty Ratchaprasong around 11 as a roar comes from Rama I, echoed by the cement ceiling of the skytrain rails. <br /><br />From that direction a caravan of red shirts in motorcycles gets closer to the intersection, giving full voice to their horns. In front a man I met many times carries the head-bones of a buffalo painted in red with written in thai “stop double standard”, besides him an older woman sits on the back of a motorbike wearing a big plastic hat with the shape of Democracy monument . Around him a river of red flags and few Thai flags. We decide to follow them and drive back into Ratchadamri. It must be around 300 hundred bikes, many of them motorcycle taxis, either wearing the orange vests or recognizable by the yellow plates on their bikes. “It is a matter of ideology” a driver tells me later “some people put on red shirts and take out their vests, some other, like me, come to protest as motorcycle taxis, with the vest.” <br /><br />As we drive around some people timidly applaud or waive to the caravan, to show their support, mostly vendors, tuk-tuk drivers, or motorcycle taxis sitting at their station. The procession drives down Ratchadamri road and turn left into Sarasin. There another smaller caravan drives in the other direction, dialoguing with us through the horns. Right again into Wittayu road, left into Rama IV, Sala Daeng then back in the direction of Ratchaprasong. On Rama IV small groups of police officers waive to the caravan and take pictures, smiling. As we drive around more people join in, enlarging the ranks of the caravan retracing the geography of deaths during the May protests. Along the way the procession stops often, to remain compact. Some people shout “Here people die”, the new slogan of the Red Sundays, or voice their disappointment. “Fuck the people who order the killing” they repeat over and over again.<br /><br /> In front of the entrance of Lumpini Park the caravan stops to join with another group of people waiting there, parking bikes on the concrete pavement in front of the statue of Rama VI. Some people wai to the statue as other organize the group and distribute small hand-drawn maps of the route to take. The new plan is to drive in the direction of Victory Monument before going back to Democracy Monument, where the caravan started. A couple of people offer me I ride as the group that was waiting at the park gets on the bikes. A young woman covers her face with a banner “May 19th. 91 people died.” The procession starts again, back into Ratchadamri road in the direction of Ratchaprarop. The bikes are now more crowded, kids sitting on the front and red gadgets everywhere. Down the road a small groups of people stand on the side carrying a big picture of Seh Daeng, which the people greet as they pass by. As the group arrives to Ratchaprasong, directed by a larger number of police officers it stops again underneath the flyover, hoping to get some relief from the intense heat.<br /> <br />A man on a big bike tells me proudly “I brought my son” pointing at a small kid clung to his waist. “He needs to see this.” People around distribute red roses before getting moving again. As we get out of the area in the direction of Ding Daeng more people appear on the street, cheering the moving protest. The caravan keeps growing in size. There must be about 800 bikes by the time we get to Victory monument. Two laps of the round-about. Red shirts and flags with the backdrop of two big pictures of the Queen and the metallic statues of military jumping out of the monument. Again and again the group stops to remain compact as a young woman, carrying a big red flag and a plastic uzi gun, shouts directions to the first lines that then pass it back to the rest of the caravan. Soon enough the procession reach Ratchadamnoen, stretching on the large boulevard. Few hundred meters before Democracy Monument, where again red robes have been tied to form a spider web, the caravan stops. Performance is always a part of politics, especially in this country. The large group of red shirts filling Democracy Monument starts cheering. On this other side the horns answer, as the bikes stand still. A long moment of staticity, two groups staring at each other in the heat.<br /><br /> Few minutes after the flows break open and the red shirts at the monument shout and cheer as the caravan parades on the roundabout before parking. The monument has been once again reappropriated and transformed by the red shirts. Two large plastic banners, held up by people circle the monument. On the lower level images from the April and May events, the dead, the injured, the military firing. On the upper level old pictures of 14th October 1973, black on white. From these banners to the core of the monument red robes create a web, tied by a group of older women sitting in the shadow cast by the monument’s wings. Around the monument people are starting to write messages on the ground with pieces of chalk. Behind them two women hold up two boards with written in English “Take your happiness back. Give red shirts life & Democracy” and “We need Justice”. Around them people are dancing in the street, with music pouring out of the speakers of pickups and cars parked around. <br /><br />Soon the crowd starts growing and the ubiquitous red shirts merchandise start popping up on both directions in Ratchadamnoen. In few hours the foot paths are overflowing with t-shirts, flip-flops, Cds, books, food, music, wrist bands, mugs. I meet one of the book sellers I know who always puts up shop at protest and he tells me of the September 19th protest in Chiang Mai and being stopped on the way at a police road block where the officers checked his books and told him to keep fighting also for them. Behind us a police trucks pass by, with a big red flag attached on a side. I greet him and walk into Dinso road where the pictures of the people that died on April 10th are laid out on the ground with sparse red candles burning in front. A donation box sits among them, where people stuff bills to support their families, often left without a breadwinner. We walk around for a bit and decide to get back home, consumed by the heat, as the protest keeps swelling. It is going to be a long evening at Democracy Monument.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-30471015937444227462010-09-19T23:30:00.000-07:002010-09-19T23:34:50.993-07:00September 19th- Back in Ratchaprasong(Sorry no time to put pictures on now, i have to choose carefully)<br /><br />We exit home around 5 into a very quiet traffic around Sathorn, took the skytrain and get off at Siam. As the train bent over Ratchaprasong intersection people gathered on the right side of the car to look down to a red river of people taking over the Ratchaprasong area from Erawan Shrine to Pratunam and from Wat Pratum to Chidlom.<br /><br />Most of the sky-train commuters got off the train and walked into Siam Paragon, normally overflowing with people and Sunday events. We walked back in the direction of Ratchaprasong, meeting flock of people dressed in red leaving the area. As we walked over the skywalk a feeling of déjà vu fills the air. People dress in red everywhere, street-vendors calmly occupying big chunks of the pathways with tables and chairs and a thick smell of fermented fish. Some people free red balloons with white question marks on them inside Wat Pratum as other curious walk around the temple, revisiting the place of the tragedy. <br /><br />We walk down into the crowd and we overhear all around us people recounting the story of the dead, of the snipers on the skytrain tracks, and the fear of the last days of the May protest. Along the way arriving to the intersection chalks outlines of dead bodies have been traced on the pathways, syncopating the walk to Ratchaprasong and laying silent on the concrete in front of the growing wall of design-inspired state propaganda. Messages of hope, tranquility, harmony, and security in English who seems to over-simplify the political conflict more than ease it. Among these messages an unsettling blue board repeats 6 times, in black capital letters: <br /><br /> EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. EVERYTHING WILL BE OK.<br /> EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. EVERYTHING WILL BE OK.<br /> EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. EVERYTHING WILL BE OK.<br /><br />In front of the poster two black chalk outlines seem to contradict the reassuring propaganda. Around the air is filled with Red shirt music, especially the hit รักคนเสื้อแดง. People gather around the few pick-ups with loudspeakers, specifically prohibited by Suthep, and dance as the sun goes down over the massive crowd. Over them the skytrain runs unimpressed, with its regular and mathematic frequency. Underneath the rail two red piece of cloth cover the sides of the skywalk. In white, again in English, written “Who is killer? Where is justice?” These questions, and tentative answers, fill the intersection and people’s conversations. <br /><br />We start talking to people here in there, most of them are from Bangkok and came out to show their support for the red and the fact that the red shirts are not gone and could easily take over this space anytime they want. Many people wear shirts with written “Red never die”. Even if at first gaze the atmosphere seem the same of the early days of red shirts in Ratchaprasong, the conversation run differently. Many people tell me proudly, staring at me “we have no leader; these are people that came autonomously, following their heart.” What is seen by many of the protesters as a new more participative phase is also peppered by new forms of search for responsibility and justice. Few people talk about Aphisit or government dissolution anymore, but questions about the real instigator and responsible for the May 19th massacre bypass the government to rest on higher authorities and more long-standing presences. People talk about entire institutional structures that keep people’s head down and get involved into politics to the point of celebrating “war victory rituals” after May 19th massacre. <br /><br />Stories of the international relations to Saudi Arabia and the ‘blue diamond” fill people’s mouth, as an unspoken and unspeakable taboo finally being uttered. An upper-class young Thai man walks around with his eyes wide opened. “ I have waited for this many years” he tells me as he walks through the crowd, openly talking about subjects he normally only dares with his closest friends. It is surprising to hear some of these conversations in a public arena, filled with resentment and personalized attacks. Even more surprising is to see them written, condensed even just for a night on pieces of paper or larger state propaganda boards that surround Central World and will be promptly trashed or be taken away as soon as the crowd leaves the area around 8 pm. <br /><br />Around the ratchaprasong sign a thick web of red threads is condensed and small pieces of paper are attached by the protesters to the threads, expressing opinions about the government and other state institutions. On the pavement, where the stage used to be in May, two big red candles light up two small cartoon boxes messages. “Take your happiness back, We need Justice”. Behind this on a wall is written. “Not Harmonize”. Not far away a small kid sits alone in front of myriads of small red candles, playing with the fire. <br /><br />In the mean while the crowd is slowly decreasing as people start leaving and the traffic slowly by slowly moves back into the intersection. Buses are the first to arrive, tearing away, as they pass, the spider net of red yarns that the protesters have build from the skywalk to the whole intersection, resembling a mixture between the plastic cover present there during the last days of May protest and the Buddhist sai sin (สายสิญจน์ ). After them the motorcycle taxis arrive, moving from the outskirt of the protest to the core, trying to pick up the last passengers as other protesters help clean up the area, picking up trash, and cutting the red ropes from the intersection signs and the light poles. Finally is the turn of cars and in less than twenty minute Ratchaprasong is back to the usual space of traffic flow. Only reminder the huge wall around Central World filled with people opinions, written over the state “together we can” campaign, which is often played on by the messages that ridicule it of re-signify the content of the propaganda. Few hours later the boards will be removed to leave to the first morning sun just a wall of grey corrugated iron.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-38266005334365464272010-08-04T09:41:00.000-07:002010-08-22T04:18:52.507-07:00interview with Al Jazeera & other mediasAnother interview on my work, lately is a bit crazy this way. If you are interested take a look <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwy6jGt5Aps">here</a>. Also Thai PBS (<a href="http://www.thaipbs.or.th/s1000_obj/front_page/page/1058.html?content_id=267765&content_detail_id=729566&content_category_id=700">here</a>), Bangkok Post (<a href="http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/politics/192297/the-art-of-motorsai-politics">here</a>), and Matichon (<a href="http://www.matichon.co.th/news_detail.php?newsid=1282047209&grpid=01&catid">here</a>)sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-6590799485149518722010-07-21T05:43:00.000-07:002010-07-21T05:52:00.129-07:00Interview on New MandalaLater i have been back to my research, having less time to write on the blog and less feeling of responsibility toward recording what i see and hear on the street. Today New Mandala has an interview on my research, if somebody is interested take a look <a href="http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2010/07/21/interview-with-claudio-sopranzetti-the-politics-of-motorcycle-taxis/#comments">here</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg17V3zO_dZ6GuOI1lZKnNNTqhBLyCyPky2n1AHBO5I8UpoX05WMBuhMMpB0XnpmJjLqWzp1yf9uE7d0hjNvrbAMto-rVBtb-UbXnfdBrvFPZZzIcLscSVxFD-5Ks6CChTVl2P49ZD8EIoF/s1600/DSC_0285.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg17V3zO_dZ6GuOI1lZKnNNTqhBLyCyPky2n1AHBO5I8UpoX05WMBuhMMpB0XnpmJjLqWzp1yf9uE7d0hjNvrbAMto-rVBtb-UbXnfdBrvFPZZzIcLscSVxFD-5Ks6CChTVl2P49ZD8EIoF/s400/DSC_0285.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496340644322892754" /></a>sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-14849306506655059132010-06-22T11:05:00.000-07:002010-06-22T11:30:39.528-07:00Ashes to AshesToday I decided to go at the funeral of Seh Daeng, a royally sponsored event, due to his status as an army general, which feels in many ways like a closure of round 2 of the struggle between red shirts and the Thai state.<br /><br /> A body was burned, leaving an ash heap taken by the same wind that blew the fumes of more than 30 buildings around Bangkok, and more than 90 bodies around the country. Commodities and people, reduced to the same ashes back into the circle of life. Commodities that were supposed to protect the people from an attack by the state, at least in the idea of red shirt leaders, who decided to move the protest to Ratchaprasong, and then now rest with them, scattered. <br /><br />I arrived through a congested Nakhon Sawan Road and park my bike besides a portable toilet truck. Around me large crowds of people completely dressed in black enters the gates of Wat Sommanat Wihan. Here and there a red hair slide, a red rosette, or just a small red ring completes the outfit together with a small beautifully white paper flower. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE1jE4aRe69WIlXOCVpi5oY4GsMbBp7vhJBcPeFkJacmTBN3IpdGthuZ92M0Jpw541LcDnDkXkUkzmTfYMUBW5iQ1knZqYNk89cMt3AkkBB-KXhWiY8-nZcrszg-PJXJilbYgvO8U8iiCK/s1600/DSC_0417.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE1jE4aRe69WIlXOCVpi5oY4GsMbBp7vhJBcPeFkJacmTBN3IpdGthuZ92M0Jpw541LcDnDkXkUkzmTfYMUBW5iQ1knZqYNk89cMt3AkkBB-KXhWiY8-nZcrszg-PJXJilbYgvO8U8iiCK/s400/DSC_0417.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485666722253682178" /></a><br /><br />Outside the ubiquitous batteries of street vendors fill the street with smell of Isaan sausages and fermented fish. Around them few vendors sell pictures a Seh Daeng in a military salute and black T-shirts with his picture printed. A policeman stops to bargain with the older vendor for a T-shirt.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08EGLKqyVLsKJHibraW75nIvGlkZP0u1F_moSJlOENQK_RNzuAx2WI-aihjTSKl23IMOmJP3m_4GDeA0zSbo_yu9HCGZnt4yXRFoqZ_hkBQfrdO6rSIYr5WlB1vZpXpX9mUZTwMMdTXkR/s1600/DSC_0391.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08EGLKqyVLsKJHibraW75nIvGlkZP0u1F_moSJlOENQK_RNzuAx2WI-aihjTSKl23IMOmJP3m_4GDeA0zSbo_yu9HCGZnt4yXRFoqZ_hkBQfrdO6rSIYr5WlB1vZpXpX9mUZTwMMdTXkR/s400/DSC_0391.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485664786166676338" /></a><br /><br /><br /> Other vendors, set on the sidewalk, sell red shirts’ gadgets, probably leftovers from the protest, given the discounted prices. At the sides of the gate two men, dressed with a Thailand Post Service’s T-shirt, sell for 2 baht each empty postcard to send to the pre-printed address of the newspaper Thai Rath. I am not sure why.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxUXSEcFRaUVCYBmTEHWUiFoKAuXqYp7YPT8Q-_QImQ3Uv_MC5gh7tp43Pu6jaZnbv9loVbAocDFTZIRDh5AGzIhdJxct00RvU-jiU8aUGhmb3vs4XFi_QIpQOix3PBaq_eNdb-d9UEeG4/s1600/DSC_0395.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxUXSEcFRaUVCYBmTEHWUiFoKAuXqYp7YPT8Q-_QImQ3Uv_MC5gh7tp43Pu6jaZnbv9loVbAocDFTZIRDh5AGzIhdJxct00RvU-jiU8aUGhmb3vs4XFi_QIpQOix3PBaq_eNdb-d9UEeG4/s400/DSC_0395.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485664780850357922" /></a><br /><br />I walk in, passing through small groups of people speaking quietly. As I walk by I hear only snippets of conversation “Snipers…. Shoot… Aphisit… bodies… jail… invisible hand…” People around, with dark faces that match perfectly their outfits, speak softly, looking around and interrupting frequently their conversations to tell one another “You know right? But we can’t talk…” and smiling in sign of reciprocal understanding. I figured this is going to be a hard place to interview people so I just wonder around. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnSmGecvvaIGx09MC2uOoEN4ei92GlWgrTLrK0DSOrJu8TTBaaBIUp_vJ9_djfmEjDVZYdqCl1b51xEq6rEpuIaXpgqTtXSxsbrVpYBAKvQsjvJ-yXKceY4YE-QTlW7LqYrHBxrXL7mTdS/s1600/DSC_0411.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnSmGecvvaIGx09MC2uOoEN4ei92GlWgrTLrK0DSOrJu8TTBaaBIUp_vJ9_djfmEjDVZYdqCl1b51xEq6rEpuIaXpgqTtXSxsbrVpYBAKvQsjvJ-yXKceY4YE-QTlW7LqYrHBxrXL7mTdS/s400/DSC_0411.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485666729408079730" /></a><br /><br />The atmosphere is quiet, with this small clustered groups getting denser as you get closer to the stage and the inner temple, until ending in an endless see of black. For one day red and black shirt really are the same. <br /><br />In the compound people look for a place from which to see the few LCD monitors around that broadcast the ceremony by climbing the white walls of the temple as others just sit on the usual tinfoil mats, waiting to give their final greeting to Seh Daeng, or walk around in silence.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnOlkU7f69uJHmnxmdMF4v1wy4TiyONNm1zrT3y8wdKgMLxi5Ej_EOFPh1ivsmCcMxnUH21Dfz8f2DGwvvcqY3yrBJ3U_fJc2pufYhxCx685DU5dev5dKidf4NyfFtxTB5e55yMXvdmS5k/s1600/DSC_0405.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnOlkU7f69uJHmnxmdMF4v1wy4TiyONNm1zrT3y8wdKgMLxi5Ej_EOFPh1ivsmCcMxnUH21Dfz8f2DGwvvcqY3yrBJ3U_fJc2pufYhxCx685DU5dev5dKidf4NyfFtxTB5e55yMXvdmS5k/s400/DSC_0405.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485666713415232594" /></a><br /><br /> I decide to sit there, accepting the impossibility to get closer to the ceremony, and start chatting with an old couple, sitting on a rare patch of green. The old man offers me to sit and start talking about the violence of the army. “ I was a soldier” he says staring at me under his sunglasses “and I have never seen this behavior. This is Thailand now. This is what this government is doing.” He looks around as he speaks as if somebody could be listening to him from inside the temple. “Now we cannot talk, it is dangerous. Even now they may be recording us and then come to arrest us. We all want to talk, we all have many things to say but now we cannot.” He keeps repeating this but he can barely curb his passion. Fear and wanted to voice his truth mix in the conversation, syncopated by a repeated “Fuck.”<br /><br /> It is harder to talk to red shirts now because of the specter of repression yet the fading of a unified rhetoric, previously broadcasted 24/7 by loudspeakers, makes conversation more personal, less standardized. We talk for a while with him and his wife which after few minutes pulls out of her bag two pieces of paper and asks me to write down my website and phone number for the two of them. “Aphisit in all of this has no real power, there is another hand, a hand we cannot see and we cannot talk about that needs to be cut off.” In front of us a man is talking loudly to some journalists and for a second it feels like back in Ratchaprasong, where such performances of anger where promptly offered to everyone willing to stop and let people express their feelings. I greet the couple and move toward the temple.<br /><br /> A young woman stops me and invites me to interview a group of four well dressed and well spoken women, standing in the shade. I start talking to them and in few minutes the roles reverse. I find myself interviewed on media circulation internationally and what I have seen during the protest. A man walks through and tells me in English “We just asked for democracy and for the government to step down and have election but he only gives us bullets. Who is the terrorist? Who is the criminal?” He wais and walks away. <br /><br />A small crowd gathers. The most vocal woman of the original group, who works at Bangkok Bank (“I am very sad there” she says “but is my job”), asks me “If you were Thai, what would you do now?” Moment of silence around. A bigger group forms around waiting for some answer and rapidly disperse as I babble something about needing to find out the truth first. The bells that signal the end of the ceremony ring around us. Saved by the bell.<br /><br />I suddenly find myself into a moving river of people dressed in black, pushing softly each other toward Seh Daeng’s coffin, directed by a voice that repeats with irony to follow the directions of the officers, at least for today. I feel lost in this advancing endless see of people, silently moving with small white paper flowers in their hands glittering in the sun.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLqUngY6UPE16l9tw9aVkuVwPn82mdqNQyQC20urryBgXUUr3alQDMA1BI-8y4DDdq3y3pTDSQlq4N1O7XfDaePFGdltqtesm72TQTxeeat7k4gDVWwrzQHfuU8VJVzxyvuFjm1WwU5HmP/s1600/DSC_0458.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLqUngY6UPE16l9tw9aVkuVwPn82mdqNQyQC20urryBgXUUr3alQDMA1BI-8y4DDdq3y3pTDSQlq4N1O7XfDaePFGdltqtesm72TQTxeeat7k4gDVWwrzQHfuU8VJVzxyvuFjm1WwU5HmP/s400/DSC_0458.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485664754734823858" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidw8KcjUQqo2V-1esdwS0Sd2pD4Ae7s4ciRTH-27_2UhbaWH-mu9ai1fH21Iism4LIF5wYClAeXuATSPWixD3xzd2N9hJBklNLPJFO5rD7uReScMEeKOrjHfsqJDgmWREYatjMpVlnYLH-/s1600/DSC_0533.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidw8KcjUQqo2V-1esdwS0Sd2pD4Ae7s4ciRTH-27_2UhbaWH-mu9ai1fH21Iism4LIF5wYClAeXuATSPWixD3xzd2N9hJBklNLPJFO5rD7uReScMEeKOrjHfsqJDgmWREYatjMpVlnYLH-/s400/DSC_0533.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485664769896140226" /></a><br /><br /> It takes about an hour to reach the body, hidden behind a curtain. I stop watching the hypnotic movement of people around a golden urn, on which they rapidly depose the flowers. Few seconds and they are out in the sun, scattered and ready to go home. Some people stop in small group to discuss. Temples are becoming again a “safe area” for red shirt, one of the few spaces where they can gather without having to worry about the Emergency Decree. <br /><br />As I walk out a woman I met in the train going back to Udon after the dispersal calls me. She was without shoes then, she is very elegant now in her black dress and black shoes. “I came all the way from Udon to be here today” she tells me and she walks away into the crowd leaving.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-85954097034245336292010-06-22T05:30:00.000-07:002010-06-22T05:39:31.690-07:00Back to BangkokI got back to Bangkok a couple of days ago, in this odd state of apparent calm and return to normalcy. It doesn't take long, however, to realize that things are not back to normal. Whispered here and there words of strong criticism or open satisfaction fill the streets. New tides of state propaganda and media repression is growing, it was much easier to read websites about Thailand when i was in Italy. On the other sides rumors of disappeared bodies, of unspoken brutality, and creative retelling of events proliferates, feeding an unhealthy feeling of suspicion. In a day I have heard people on both sides of the spectrum, red and yellow, say referring to the others "they are not people, they are animals." Dehumanizing your neighbor, your colleague, your servant, your friend it has never been a good sign, anywhere.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-10046593878017050342010-05-25T22:49:00.000-07:002010-05-25T22:52:09.131-07:00DespairA terrible bereavement just struck my family. I am leaving Thailand, not knowing for how long. I apologize but the blog stops here for now, i need some time for my own grievances.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-64846903010550903992010-05-25T11:38:00.001-07:002010-05-25T11:49:17.552-07:00HopeAnd then you get this and believe that everything is going to be fine. Thank you!<br />From an anonymous reader:<br /><br />"I'm planning on taking my little girl on a walk from CTW to Wat Patum on Visaka Bucha day. First, to tam boon. Second, I want her to see the place. I took her on a walk around Rajaprasong, in the early day and I want her to see it now. I hope it will not frightened her. I want her to remember the result of hatred and violence. She won't understand it all, eventhough by now all children in Thailand have been exposed to verbal warfare for years and having to stop school many times as a result. <br /><br />My hope is with all the digital evidence (lacking during the Black May and October 1976), her generation will not repeat our mistakes."sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-72365332765396230122010-05-25T08:49:00.000-07:002010-05-25T22:54:15.332-07:00repression, silence, and paranoiaAs the protest, at least temporarily, died out the city goes back to its normality many things are left behind to be reorganized, collected, or just thrown in the trash. A battery of Bangkokians, driven by their love for the city and huge banners around the city with the script "Together We Can" went out this Sunday to clean up the streets and scrub away the graffiti left behind in the center of the city.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvTddsH-xHbFWjiYYvoYdzYyRTmak3iayeHjqgBk161IjNKW4OcdHgO_qPEesd0Cm98bGcRLejB8bprIHxCMtjnIgYibRZXYywT6vt_lnr64Xt9owlpSo2B1d0YJjyPaBfgUW2C6IxkZ7B/s1600/DSC_0336.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvTddsH-xHbFWjiYYvoYdzYyRTmak3iayeHjqgBk161IjNKW4OcdHgO_qPEesd0Cm98bGcRLejB8bprIHxCMtjnIgYibRZXYywT6vt_lnr64Xt9owlpSo2B1d0YJjyPaBfgUW2C6IxkZ7B/s400/DSC_0336.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5475274204405689154" /></a><br /><br /> At its core sit the remains of Central World, which still spread its smell of burning ruins, around it. The regained traffic of the city, once again covering the twitter of birds, slows down in front of this spectacle of destruction, in front of a sleepy police post on the side of Gaysorn shopping mall. <br /><br />Motorbikes stop everywhere in front of the long corrugated iron sheet that surrounds what used to be a jewel of the city. People pull out small cameras and cell phones and take pictures, before leaving again, absorbed in the flow of traffic. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn27LWRPY-s51gUMbYy4jlSt5vvXISWhbdGZzJhz3GIWtr1qbOTkLiWiFvZtkxDQEmAHEiFVIU9iyjDH_q4od3V0FauFoxbZlADVfOx5y4TTa305I5LiTVIBmjDy7h4FgpntyGZzhl1Krq/s1600/DSC_0376.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn27LWRPY-s51gUMbYy4jlSt5vvXISWhbdGZzJhz3GIWtr1qbOTkLiWiFvZtkxDQEmAHEiFVIU9iyjDH_q4od3V0FauFoxbZlADVfOx5y4TTa305I5LiTVIBmjDy7h4FgpntyGZzhl1Krq/s400/DSC_0376.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5475286823252101042" /></a><br /><br />Down Rama I a crew of cleaners collect the last debris from inside Wat Pathumwan, throwing in a large truck the stones prepared by the protesters for a final as desperate battle. Near them the calm pond where allegedly the government officials have found a small arsenal of weapons rest immobile, without a wrinkle. On the overpass toward Herny Dunant signs of a gun battle are left on the bars, pierced by small bullets, apparently coming from the street.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_7kJt5P8bbiX4_BfuwRYJyAEVow1QYut9ARvlXn16EqCoMi0SE7GHsuWUt3sNgdRu9Indw-jv3hWKt5UL0tgzzlq5khvybjS-68bT6vvHpRYKCx0-HpkzOw4Tq_C7YH0PnhKQ-RtOhpo5/s1600/DSC_0352.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_7kJt5P8bbiX4_BfuwRYJyAEVow1QYut9ARvlXn16EqCoMi0SE7GHsuWUt3sNgdRu9Indw-jv3hWKt5UL0tgzzlq5khvybjS-68bT6vvHpRYKCx0-HpkzOw4Tq_C7YH0PnhKQ-RtOhpo5/s400/DSC_0352.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5475286815896031442" /></a><br /><br /> Who shoot them? What happened here? How did the wat became the theater of violence? All these questions and many others fill the streets and the private houses, in need to be reorganized, collected, or just thrown in the trash, as much as other more physical yet less heavy leftovers. <br /><br />People around the city are trying to do this, to clean up and scrub the pieces of truth lying around in the dust, covered in a sea of lies and partial realities, on both sides. Today I went to a meeting in Thammasat University, where a group of scholars is trying to create an information center, a place to collect news from the dead, the injured, and the people who disappeared. In a large conference room about 20 people sat, talking about how to go about it. On a big white board they were scribbling the challenges and risks of this kind of job in an environment where the truth can be a dangerous waste. <br /><br />“Be careful on your blog” Somebody told me today “You know a lot of people are getting interested. Just be careful, don’t speak publicly.” He silenced for a second. “You know self-censorship, just a little bit. To be safe.” I don’t feel angry or scared, I just feel sad for this country and thought about laudable efforts of this group in Thammasat, trying to balance a quest for truth with the fear of repression. So many people among the protesters lately have told me sentences like “I have seen too much, but I don’t want to talk about it now, it can be dangerous. Better wait to see what the government will do. Then I will talk.” <br /><br />All around this the state is sharpening its instruments of fear, shutting down websites, calling up people to the CRES, and confiscating personal computers (<a href="http://politicalprisonersofthailand.wordpress.com/">here</a>). Covering people’s mouth with hands is always a tricky effort, you tend to be very close to their teeth.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-18480929082774782582010-05-24T10:20:00.000-07:002010-05-24T10:35:07.055-07:00Coming home- May 21stWe got off the train in a small station. About 20 people sit in the little chairs in front of the station as the train leave. We greet the others and walk out. A small red dirt road goes into the country side. <br /><br />It is raining outside, an omen of luck and an indispensable factor for the economy of Isaan. We will discover later that it has not rain for a while, making this event even more mythical. Outside the station 4 tuk-tuk are parked, nobody driving them. We sit there waiting for the husband of the old woman to come pick us up.<br /><br /> The man who speaks Japanese almost cannot stand, worn out by a whole night of drinking. He is nervous and he keeps speaking rudely to everyone in the group. People try to ignore it, squatting on the ground and smelling the scent of rain. The young man walks to me and bring me on a side. “I don’t like people who drink. They always treat people badly”. We stand there in the light rain, smoking a cigarette. I feel very fortunate of having met this man. In his face, signed by the stress and difficulties of his life, from losing his parents when he was young to being now alone in the world in his small farm, I see the signs of a new Thailand to be: thoughtful, compassionate, yet firm in its ideals. <br /><br />The drunken man pushes one man, as the other try to calm him down. “We are among us” they say. One of the women sit on the ground, singing a sad song in her beautiful voice. Around occasional cars drive pass us. <br /><br />A grey pick up pulls into the dirt road and stops in front of us. The husband gets off. An old man with grey hairs and a black sleeveless shirt. He stares at his wife from underneath the car door. She stares back, with a smile. We get on the pickup, four people in the front and eight on the back and we drive away. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigE-W2cVPbR4EYGtP6Juei6TSvK8AUkuH0Tq76mbqLmsBVauEA878ra_dtQyFUBQbDyN5DAKP47oYAnkgDRUKdimOiLj6RWBce13cznr6LsfaxNuefaKHbvrGAj3EGZb74bu0CsT2Ltwz8/s1600/DSC_0167.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigE-W2cVPbR4EYGtP6Juei6TSvK8AUkuH0Tq76mbqLmsBVauEA878ra_dtQyFUBQbDyN5DAKP47oYAnkgDRUKdimOiLj6RWBce13cznr6LsfaxNuefaKHbvrGAj3EGZb74bu0CsT2Ltwz8/s400/DSC_0167.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474890806668987074" /></a><br /><br />The youth with a fascination with Bangkok, sits close to me, in a black shirt with the face of Nattawut pasted onto the body of a muay thai fighter, hitting with a kick a man with the face of Aphisit. He says he is worried that he may have troubles if we run into a military road block wearing that shirt. The man who told me he would protect me in this strip takes off his white shirt and proposes to exchange. He puts on the black shirt and stand up, shouting in the small village “Red shirts are back”, with his fists in the air. Some people from the street applaud. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCwjHM6km78WgC_NfXrLU7_LIstkf6mbU6-wjb2LPP2DeWD7xQcE57JtbNbbXqj9o-iWl9GtkBOVEgHSwNVMjwgJIbATN5_M78NL_AWC2HzKFF5qEBqRph4qOJDScANFE_wqGk95ckGrUC/s1600/DSC_0172.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCwjHM6km78WgC_NfXrLU7_LIstkf6mbU6-wjb2LPP2DeWD7xQcE57JtbNbbXqj9o-iWl9GtkBOVEgHSwNVMjwgJIbATN5_M78NL_AWC2HzKFF5qEBqRph4qOJDScANFE_wqGk95ckGrUC/s400/DSC_0172.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474890816160201874" /></a><br /><br /><br />We drive carefully as the people fight with the wind to light their cigarettes. The guy picks up one of the bottles of water in front of us and dials a number on the imaginary key pad. “Hello Aphisit” he says “how are you my friend?” people around laugh “I haven’t see you in a while. How are you?” he turns to me “We studied together in England” he whispers covering the bottle with his hand. Another laughter. “Hmm…Hmmm…where are you now?” “Really? Why aren’t you home? Ohhh… you can’t go back there… the population doesn’t accept that you kill them… hmmm… what buffalos” Everybody cracks up as the people inside open the small window to hear what is going on. “Yeah…Yeah…that is very bad. I see…” He stops for a second listening to what Aphisit is saying. “I just wanted to ask you a favor. Could you please send a helicopter to pick me up? Hmmm…Hmmm….Why can’t you? Ohh…they are all busy flying over Ratchaprasong.” Again people crack up as he also burst into laughter. People around clap. “You should do this on TV, maybe for People Channel.” I tell him. People around are clearing their tears with their thumbs and index fingers.<br /><br /> The guy is an endless well of comic relief. As we drive he carries two bottles on his hands, calling Aphisit, Suthep, Anupong, and Prem. It is hilarious and my self-appointed personal guard delights the small crowd that starts laughing as soon as he picks up another bottle, before he even says a word. He stands up and shouts “People don’t be afraid, the red shirt are back”, imitating the rhetoric of the red shirts leaders on stage. We stop in a sleepy petrol station and he gets down of the truck, dancing to the tunes of a small radio. Again everybody laugh.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP_ecuqbXg11YmKW0bdNJyxc1mmMiFF4ZRI96vWD1WMYChLRwRlnZ5zsdrKQZKa960GjSo4F23fDE64nTaPZfGuNavg-YMyWpdlBZmX0UgtXguMYRjU6jerCpjjQPuu4ve6kpkfjMWVlbo/s1600/DSC_0183.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP_ecuqbXg11YmKW0bdNJyxc1mmMiFF4ZRI96vWD1WMYChLRwRlnZ5zsdrKQZKa960GjSo4F23fDE64nTaPZfGuNavg-YMyWpdlBZmX0UgtXguMYRjU6jerCpjjQPuu4ve6kpkfjMWVlbo/s400/DSC_0183.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474890819842897250" /></a><br /><br /> We drive off again and stop in a small market. As we park the car a policeman comes around and asks them some news from the red camp in Bangkok. Two of the people in the truck stand in front of a small temple in the parking lot, praying. We enter the market and buy grilled chicken, papaya salad, and two leaves envelops full of bugs and fat ants. “They are delicious” the woman says “Try some”. Their taste is quite blunt but I nod smiling. We get back on the pickup and drive home. The woman without shoes carries a small plastic bag. “What did you buy?” I ask. “A phone charger” she answers “but it cost 120 Bath so I cannot buy shoes now”. Strange priorities, I think. “She hasn’t been able to call her mom” the young man says as if he is reading my mind. “She must be very worried.”<br /><br />We finally get home, tired by the long trip. It is a big brick house with a nice fence surrounding it, not very far from the main street. Again, these are definitely not the poor Isaan farmers that the media describes. We get off the car and carry our stuff inside the house. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu8G4tPSWzLf05n6UNmLygnnsZz1jEGolYeA4Hp-SJ5H2F6xb693KARGQg2BW8XlHNjTLy5Vg76BzhShKXq1n9cUvuLfx6g5Sy_2DMJB7RaIj0MjU8s0PtGjWLIreFUqDjsCkWVRQzHkXC/s1600/DSC_0191.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu8G4tPSWzLf05n6UNmLygnnsZz1jEGolYeA4Hp-SJ5H2F6xb693KARGQg2BW8XlHNjTLy5Vg76BzhShKXq1n9cUvuLfx6g5Sy_2DMJB7RaIj0MjU8s0PtGjWLIreFUqDjsCkWVRQzHkXC/s400/DSC_0191.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474890828454621458" /></a><br /><br />The woman’s daughter comes out, with a big smile, to greet her mom as her dogs jump on her, unable to constrain happiness in the presence of strangers. We walk inside the fence and sit on a wooden sala in front of the house. As the women go inside the house we freshen up with some water collected in a big jar outside the house. “It’s rain water” the young man keeps repeating to me.<br /><br />We go back to the sala and sit there waiting for food as a dense silence descends upon the group. A silence that only the country-side can offer. Everybody looks down. An older man starts talking, without raising his eyes in a hoarse monotonous voice. “They killed so many of us. We will never know how many. They just shoot at everybody they could.” His eyes are glued to the mat, his voice very low. “But we will not stop, we will keep fighting. We cannot lose.” I have no idea if the others are listening. “I am not from here, I am from Surin but there is nothing going on there so I came here, to see what is going on and what will happen next. I am not sure how or when but we will keep fighting. We cannot lose.” <br /><br />The silence is broken by a voice from inside the house. “Chicken. Who can help cutting it?” I stand up to help as the man does not seem to notice I left. Soon everything is on the small mat and we start eating as the guy who speaks Japanese, back into a decent state, puts on a VCD of April 10th. Not the best choice for this lunch. Right after lunch the young guy tells me we should go. <br /><br />I pick up some stuff and greet everyone, thanking them for their help in the last day. We exchange phone number and they ask me to let them know if something happens in Bangkok. We hoop on a motorcycle that the woman offered us, driven by the youth now in the other guy t-shirt. He drives us to the big street nearby and leaves the two of us there, waiting for the bus. We stand on the side of the street talking about our lives, our passions, our fears. I know this guy only since yesterday but I feel very comfortable with him, and he seems to share the sensation. Once in a while he pulls out a binocular from his pocket and looks at the street, hoping to see the bus coming. “It is arriving” he says “pick your bag”. <br /><br />A slow old blue bus trot in our direction stopping few meters away. As we get up from the back door the woman who makes the ticket runs out of the front door and jumps on him, hugging him tightly. “I thought you were dead” she says with a broken voice. “I thought I will never see you again”. She squeezes his shoulders, passing her fingers in his long hairs. “I went to the station three times asking for you. They told me to wait for the names of the dead to come in”. He turns around to me, as her face sinks into his chest. “She is my sister” he tell me trying to avoid tears. “He is a journalist friend.” “Hey” she says. “I thought I will never see you again.” They stand there, embraced, looking away from each other to hide the tears that fill their eyes. I walk a bit and sit down, leaving them this moment, as indifferent people sit in the crowded bus. “I am here” he tells me pointing at a small two-storey concrete house at the side of the road. “Thank you so much for everything” I respond as he gets off the bus. I wave to him from the car window as he puts foot on his land, finally.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-37128491166843248912010-05-23T08:03:00.000-07:002010-05-23T08:18:31.407-07:00Free Zone- May 21stI woke up with the most stunning of sunrise reflecting on the wet rice fields outside Korat. Everybody around me seems to be awake already, eating their breakfast or still sipping from a bottle. The man who can speak Japanese stands in front of the window and shouts in English “We are in the Free Zone”. I grab my camera and start shooting out of the windows, in the silent car covered by the noise of the train.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp4zh1-VxWzP-QFe1VQrrIQJOFbHwcS6OlIUHZ5fghqe1Duxov6SCiEmOVjplF6X7DJJ2tMmGTlsrHgou3RmQry1XwQZaP2-gdkGdOIyXJBqsx973wwlPcghl34Ni4ovS4YuqWavavqwkV/s1600/DSC_0110.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp4zh1-VxWzP-QFe1VQrrIQJOFbHwcS6OlIUHZ5fghqe1Duxov6SCiEmOVjplF6X7DJJ2tMmGTlsrHgou3RmQry1XwQZaP2-gdkGdOIyXJBqsx973wwlPcghl34Ni4ovS4YuqWavavqwkV/s400/DSC_0110.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474483795634901026" /></a><br /><br /> “This is not very beautiful” a man tells me “You can’t even see the sun coming up.” It looks gorgeous to me. The moment is magic and the lights enter the car absorbed by the dark orange robes of the two monks sitting down the alley from us. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxdUVj1StcMNR_tkYW0yKN-fFUlfgC_QDt3PoxGfu5tEutyrHA1mugsObSFha4mZjf48oWxpxmM6fxc7Usnb8g5T7WAFfF3FSEmaADnJaH5plbxx_3OQa4Q5alywFdW6PIo_H04cUetP7V/s1600/DSC_0111.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxdUVj1StcMNR_tkYW0yKN-fFUlfgC_QDt3PoxGfu5tEutyrHA1mugsObSFha4mZjf48oWxpxmM6fxc7Usnb8g5T7WAFfF3FSEmaADnJaH5plbxx_3OQa4Q5alywFdW6PIo_H04cUetP7V/s400/DSC_0111.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474483799745422242" /></a><br /><br /><br />“We are in the red zone” Seth says staring at the red sky out of the window. The people in the train do the same. <br /><br />Finally the faces relax as their fill their noses with the fresh smell of country side. Another round of food is served. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrT52New2cjVdVe3yuAr1NGk6K0_3viyWFBFIToTmmWpJ9Rqdeo8VHM3gFfZeFSK2dyBpWCHjAPn2j3SKjNbCTTbN8tzVy3P4NjMBJXa3Hn7YzrwFgcpmBh97XFabjyNGtyquN0FrAPaCp/s1600/DSC_0117.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrT52New2cjVdVe3yuAr1NGk6K0_3viyWFBFIToTmmWpJ9Rqdeo8VHM3gFfZeFSK2dyBpWCHjAPn2j3SKjNbCTTbN8tzVy3P4NjMBJXa3Hn7YzrwFgcpmBh97XFabjyNGtyquN0FrAPaCp/s400/DSC_0117.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474483806651021602" /></a><br /><br /><br />Seth and Mariko propose to have another round of interviews around. A man sits close to us as Seth starts asking him questions. We have a very long talk in which he lay out the foundations of the red shirts movement, from the 2006 coup to the present, criticizing the double standards in this country and the lack of fairness in the system. He speaks softly no anger in his voice just a very sober analysis of the history of the relationship between poor and rich in this country and the demands of the people that feel excluded from the system. Education recur as the main source of inequality.<br /><br /> Seth asks back “But life in Isaan is better than it used to be 20 or 30 years ago, right? You have television, electricity…” “Yes we have a better life, we are richer, and we have things we didn’t have in the past.” “So life is easier now?” I ask. “It is not, life is more difficult now. When I was a kid life was easy, you just make rice, fish and you could live there. Now is different. The whole world has developed and also Isaan but we are slower than Bangkok, so we remain back.” “So what changed now?” “In the past he says, 5 or 6 years ago, things were better, we could get money and the government had got policies for us. Now this government is not interested in us.” He keeps comparing the present with the time when Thaksin was in power somehow managing to never name him.<br /><br /> “Did you go around while you were in Bangkok?” “No” he answers “I stayed in Ratchaprasong only, walking up and down the protest area” “Did you like the Ratchaprasong area?” “No” he answers decided “the buildings there are too tall. You could not do anything. Snipers were there and there was nothing we can do.” He answers, mixing urban design taste and protest strategies. We keep talking for a while (I will try to post the whole interview when I have time to transcribe it) until he says he needs to go to the bathroom and walks away.<br /><br /> I start chatting with a younger guy, probably around 16 years old who sat through the interview listening. “I like Bangkok” he says with bright eyes “You can go have fun wherever you want. There are so many people.” “Would you want to go back if you have a chance?” I ask. “Yes” he says feeling the attraction of the metropolis that millions of people around the world share with him, including me. I turn around and fall asleep again. <br /><br />When I wake up the train is stopped, in the middle of nowhere and some people have gotten off, waiting underneath small trees at the side of the train tracks. Some other people are walking through the field to reach the road to try to catch a ride to their villages, others just lean out of the windows.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguufzYpak3LSwhQJ0OXo6pl3mkUJrOZm7JSEjMfUklzh9lA_M6BKMNJJQWPl8YWf4hQdfB72CKLxZaaKmjHscyZz2cFaWh_ju-J8PQOd5zI20TwLDc3OePtmykcCKkoeGjQInBon3C9N03/s1600/DSC_0137.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguufzYpak3LSwhQJ0OXo6pl3mkUJrOZm7JSEjMfUklzh9lA_M6BKMNJJQWPl8YWf4hQdfB72CKLxZaaKmjHscyZz2cFaWh_ju-J8PQOd5zI20TwLDc3OePtmykcCKkoeGjQInBon3C9N03/s400/DSC_0137.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474483820927673346" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU3Cy2zLjy-futLZZXUtkmD2RSE0CBxUKkEpTf8i2FvpwBBirxoctndvY6xAVblC8yAJvij70jk3rMliwGLfk1Lt-rHP3gG7ryvqSRUftSAzt_s0ivdyK4NUl0hGsWnuL8LCKhoJomqIbm/s1600/DSC_0135.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU3Cy2zLjy-futLZZXUtkmD2RSE0CBxUKkEpTf8i2FvpwBBirxoctndvY6xAVblC8yAJvij70jk3rMliwGLfk1Lt-rHP3gG7ryvqSRUftSAzt_s0ivdyK4NUl0hGsWnuL8LCKhoJomqIbm/s400/DSC_0135.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474483816086313490" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUnCuyLK8RRJhPbywfh3CU0d1A_baiIsUCJuMsxbY1amYQn0ponlVAURTTL_1zRTufDks-8ffHyYFZEBVkvn42R4hciO0pemz69-np70fOzNef0OnTwBTZK8DCdziPRDULdbC0mvi843ov/s1600/DSC_0144.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUnCuyLK8RRJhPbywfh3CU0d1A_baiIsUCJuMsxbY1amYQn0ponlVAURTTL_1zRTufDks-8ffHyYFZEBVkvn42R4hciO0pemz69-np70fOzNef0OnTwBTZK8DCdziPRDULdbC0mvi843ov/s400/DSC_0144.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474484623998325074" /></a><br /><br /> I guess we have been there for a while. I get off with the young man with beautiful eyes whom I met first at the train station. He pulls out a binocular and look pass the train to check if there is some sort of military block. We stay there for a while, burning in the hot sun. <br /><br />Suddenly the crowd revives. Two young men start fighting in front of the train. Apparently one of them has been bothering and insulting the other on the train all night long, inebriated by alcohol and now in the hot the nerviness has exploded. People start to calm them as the drunken one picks up a big rock and run toward one of the window. Other people get out of the train. The small scuffle goes on for a while including some kicks and a hilarious chase in the nearby field, with many people falling on the ground, that ends with the drunken guy and three of his friends arriving to the street and hitching a ride. They have been some very hard couple of months for everybody and the tension of the last days is slowly releasing.<br /><br />The train starts moving backward, gets a new locomotive and restarts again in the right direction. We are close to home. The atmosphere gets again tense as news come in that military are waiting at the train station in Udon. After talking to each other they decide to get off in different small stations before Udon so to leave the soldier puzzled over the disappearance of the red shirts. <br />The young man and the other people I sat with in the train station the day before invite me to go to the house of one older woman, rest a bit, and eat together before heading with him to the house of my motortaxi friend who lives in the country side outside Udon, where I will sleep that night. I accept. <br /><br />Besides all their sorrow and sadness for what happen in the last days and for having to leave the city without having achieved what they went there for the happiness and relief of arriving home after months of being away spread on their faces as many people put their heads out of the windows and simmer the wind of home. Smiles are back on people faces. “I haven’t seen my husband for two months” the old woman who will host us says as her beautiful wrinkles curve around her mouth. We stop in a small train station and get off, about 20 of us. For the first moment in the last days the tourist adds of “Land of Smiles” does not sound like a bad joke. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKjqWwlaueyGnJ342qixwL_704xYCUsRbCFt5XNF9I2qik6wz0tnVZj5ssYk27Wvg-JMqX0gV5RIKcVkwFh0vnT0Z_caoFZMrD3-Fm_GtDu8ttFLZ61GjGMa0LzG2noP38tjRkPeVExNM/s1600/DSC_0159.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKjqWwlaueyGnJ342qixwL_704xYCUsRbCFt5XNF9I2qik6wz0tnVZj5ssYk27Wvg-JMqX0gV5RIKcVkwFh0vnT0Z_caoFZMrD3-Fm_GtDu8ttFLZ61GjGMa0LzG2noP38tjRkPeVExNM/s400/DSC_0159.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474485030398611154" /></a>sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-54628246358008758892010-05-23T00:03:00.000-07:002010-05-23T06:56:06.547-07:00Long night- May 20thEverybody takes a place on board, leaving bags and bottles of water on the benches to save their place. Outside on the train platform, a small group of younger protesters sit on the ground, as one of them walk around, bear torso covered in tattoos. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxnqQhwLaMIzjxsIm7i6wBDXemjthTNmIq-3nTEyntWqYT5RulR3yTmVmOZFDIwabMJb4KQai0Bjk8UvFdhXluD7VtLlznGq_DplY2J4WDnfow8L4_4wSnA6-iq_0a2N1JwWkRko8KEDkZ/s1600/DSC_0058.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxnqQhwLaMIzjxsIm7i6wBDXemjthTNmIq-3nTEyntWqYT5RulR3yTmVmOZFDIwabMJb4KQai0Bjk8UvFdhXluD7VtLlznGq_DplY2J4WDnfow8L4_4wSnA6-iq_0a2N1JwWkRko8KEDkZ/s400/DSC_0058.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474361938056735314" /></a><br /><br />The night falls on the city and given the curfew the streets around the station sound empty. It is like this small group is isolated for the world today, connected by an extreme sense of solidarity and feeling threatened from the outside. The few bills that people still have in their pockets are shared to buy cigarettes and whishy, indispensable for what it look like a long night. Food and drinks are provided and stored in the first car. All the way at almost every station a refill will be delivered by someone and then distributed among the protesters.<br /><br /> As I wait outside, talking to some of them who try some words in English and then, relieved, jump in long political tirades against the government as soon as I tell them I can speak Thai. The young group sitting on the ground is loud, seemingly the only ones enjoying the moment. Above me many heads and hands hang out of the squared windows, waiting to leave. “Enough already with Bangkok” a middle aged woman says. In the meanwhile two friends,a reporter and a videographer from the New York Times, arrive at the station after I call them, hoping this moment will be covered by international media, and not just a random blog. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiADeOydBBUdEfpVK6bVSH7-vcJ7UBpkleEXbUxVdtVfSmPf2iQfjVEWa7rcYkKhqVHZFz3OUd2c29yli8KOnK5zR2836e-aDN8qrTWV2JlWdOfZKQaKAW-S61O4sSevjFOwMZ18lA5CDi5/s1600/DSC_0057.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiADeOydBBUdEfpVK6bVSH7-vcJ7UBpkleEXbUxVdtVfSmPf2iQfjVEWa7rcYkKhqVHZFz3OUd2c29yli8KOnK5zR2836e-aDN8qrTWV2JlWdOfZKQaKAW-S61O4sSevjFOwMZ18lA5CDi5/s400/DSC_0057.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474361928278577522" /></a><br /><br /><br />As they arrive Mariko sets up her camera and a middle aged guy throw himself in front of it, inebriated by the alcohol that is running and will run all night long in his veins. “We are not terrorists, we are not terrorists, we are not terrorists” he shouts. “We just want democracy, why Abisith kills us?” He speaks English quite well but the words come out as in a machine gun, short mechanic single shoots. He is overexcited, jumping around like a kangaroo, mixing moment of euphoria with fall into thoughtful silence. He is wearing a worn white shirt and a black hat, with a big blue towel tuck under it. Big amulets come out of the shirt. He switches to Japanese and has a long conversation with Mariko. Surprises are always dressed in unexpected clothes. <br /><br />From the train more people are tucking their heads out of the window, watching amused the guy drawing big circles with his hands as he speaks. Mariko noticed them and ask me to translate as she asks some questions. She walks to two women and tuck her camera underneath the window. “When did you arrive in Bangkok?” “How do you feel now?” “What do you think you will do next?” “How are you feeling about going home?” Who is waiting for you there?” “What will be the first thing you do when at home?” With some variations these kinds of questions will be asked to the people around. This two middle aged woman are around since about a month and a half, stably at the protest site instead of going back and forth from home. They voice their dissatisfaction with the leadership who has abandoned them in the most difficult moment and the sorrow of leaving Bangkok, with many dead bodies left in the streets and an unchanged situation. <br /><br />It is interesting that the more peaceful (santi) sections of the protest in this day have voices their disappointment with the leaders while the more “harco” –the thai version of hardcore- instead seem to be less prone to critique the leaders and understand the necessity of their move at this time, often part of a “lose a battle, win the war” logic. “What did you like the most about staying at the protest?” Mariko asks. “Sleeping in front of Erawan” the answer together and smile. “Fighting for Democracy” the drunken man puts in their mouths. “The weather also” they say, “it wasn’t too hot in Bangkok” maybe thinking about the dry landscape of the Korat plateau this time of the year. “Who was the best person you met?” “We love Thaksin” they answer coyly. “But he wasn’t there” I add. They laugh. “Yes, it was good to meet people from all around the country who are fighting for democracy”. “What will you do now?” “We will go back rest a little and then keep going with our fight, we still don’t know where or how, maybe we will need new leaders but there are already younger leaders.” We thank them and get on the train, where the people have reserved two benches for us. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimDVJ_ZuSNujqGcTIkjmhDnreabiWD-YSEXplDjGFRLOW46zVTZCCsYpftQMKWqBjQRYYDF_D1Jfcnb8Nryy2L20-KPziYt654JCCsNjwEo71z281V36-tf6IQ41oKfpzjxdz0My4MTdSa/s1600/DSC_0084.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimDVJ_ZuSNujqGcTIkjmhDnreabiWD-YSEXplDjGFRLOW46zVTZCCsYpftQMKWqBjQRYYDF_D1Jfcnb8Nryy2L20-KPziYt654JCCsNjwEo71z281V36-tf6IQ41oKfpzjxdz0My4MTdSa/s400/DSC_0084.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474361945750479794" /></a><br /><br />The long rows of hard chairs are half filled with people, mostly sitting eating something and preparing for the night. It is already 10pm, accumulating delay. Right before the departure the MP from Khon Khaen gets on board and walks through the cars, followed by three guards saluting everyone and wishing good luck. “It is not finished” he reassures them as he rapidly passes through. Seth, the other journalist, asks me to get his card so I get off the train and reach him on the next car. “What do you think will happen next?” “It is really hard to say. People are angry. It is hard to know what they will do.” He says in spotless English. “But I can reassure you that this people are not defeated.” He walks away. <br /><br />We get back at our seats as the people around are stocking us with water bottles and food. A man, who was sitting close to the young man I talked to at the train station, tells me to be careful with water. “Always turn the bottle around and see if it drips. If so do not drink it, it may be poisoned.” He tells me mindful of the incident with coffee at Sarasin a week ago.<br /><br /> Sadness and dissatisfaction mixes with fear and paranoia on this train, fuelled by inability to trust a government that in the last two days first offered them a safe area inside a temple and then attacked it, leaving people dead. In some occasions extreme paranoia is what keeps you alive. This feeling will accompany us for the whole trip, with rumors of possible attacks and army blocks, spreading inside the four cars.<br /><br /> Besides us the old woman I met before sits with the two women we interviewed. Mariko almost cries when she sees her, touched by the coincidence of finding her again after the craziness of last days.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcMLUd-4H57crB58Sx1883xQJFv-mJKVn-KEnxkoW4EYm_Lk95DuGnlJxFKvCMc_wDHQc30vTYAQa-nb3B23r8HtX7fMF8TXWsdaIfgmr8fIPAhHS3pvnd293DFi0JeB_n3UuAwXxLZ2Kw/s1600/DSC_0062.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcMLUd-4H57crB58Sx1883xQJFv-mJKVn-KEnxkoW4EYm_Lk95DuGnlJxFKvCMc_wDHQc30vTYAQa-nb3B23r8HtX7fMF8TXWsdaIfgmr8fIPAhHS3pvnd293DFi0JeB_n3UuAwXxLZ2Kw/s400/DSC_0062.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474364900926539042" /></a><br /><br /> We have a short interview with her as she imperceptibly moves her toothless mouth and the words are amplified to us by the other two women and another man who sits close to me. “I am a fighter” she says “and we will fight again for democracy.” The train is now starting to move into the darkness of the empty city.<br /><br />As we move the young man comes to me and tells me to close the windows until we get out of Bangkok and be careful on what we see outside. Somebody could throw stones or worst, to the train. “When we live Bangkok you can pull the window down.” Many times in these few days in Isaan Bangkok has been described to me as the dangerous area, the head of the nation who pretend to think as the others do, the city of privileges, an ungrateful product of the work of Isaan people, or just a place where life is hard, everything is business, and people do not care about each other. The body of this macrocefalic nation is now kicking, asking for some form of autonomy. <br /><br />Seen from Isaan this conflict, often described as a class struggle, seems to be more organize about regional identity and forms of social inequalities that are economic, legal, and cultural but that divide along territorial access to resources more than class lines. Many of the protesters I met in Ratchaprasong in the previous days, whom I visited while in Udon are small shop owners, tourist guides, small business people, farmers with a relatively productive land and concrete houses. This regional growing lower middle class mixes with the poorest portion of the population, sharing its demands and requests for social equality.<br /><br /> The demands, even if voice under the word democracy, when broken down and unpacked revolve around what we would call a “social equality” agenda, much larger than a quest for new political structure. As one man in the train put it in along and fascinating interview with me and Seth “what we mean by democracy is fairness (kwaam yút-dtì tam). We want fairness in three ways: legal, political, and educational.” <br />We pass Bangkok and nothing happens so we take a walk around the train, safely leaving out stuff with our friends from Udon. <br /><br />Mariko meets another woman whom she has met before. She wears a oversized blue shirt and long worn out jeans. They greet each other. She looks a bit slow with her head but her heart is overflowing with emotions. She immediately starts talking about the night before at the temple, of the fear, the darkness, the shoots and explosions all around, the dead bodies. “I have cried so much that I have no tears left” she says with profound eyes. They stare at mine, completely dry. <br /><br />Seth tells me to ask her what she has ever taken the skytrain. Why a question about the skytrain now? I think but I do my role as a translator and I go ahead. The answer is fascinating and condenses all the perception of Bangkok as a dangerous foreign space. This is why he is a world famous journalist and I am not. “I have never taken the skytrain and I have never gone up to take a look at it. It means nothing to me, it is just something build to make the life of rich people easier, as if it was not already easy.” Place of inequality, transformed into a source of death. This theme will run among many of the conversation on the train.<br /><br />As we walk back to our seats an old man stops us. He is bear torso, with a grey t-shirt on his shoulder “See you again next year” he tells us in English. Back to Thai. “This is not finished yet, is not even half of it. We will come back over and over again. We are not satisfied and we cannot lose.” He looks up with a confrontational face. “Red shirts cannot lose.” “How are you feeling now?”. “Normal. He answers with an angry face. “It is like the last year, I was here as well on a train going back but we will come again. The fight doesn’t stop here.” <br /><br /> We walk back to our seats. A drunken police man walks passed us shouting “We just get killed, this is what we get. Let’s go home now.” He stops. Tears in his eyes. “Look I am crying” he shouts before covering with his hand Mariko’s camera. Soon after he is back asking our tickets and asking to see our IDs. A man of the Udon group comes around. “Don’t worry” he says “I will look after you along the trip. I have already accepted to die, I can very well die protecting you.” He walks away with the officer. The train ride proceed smoothly but slowly.<br /><br /> The young man comes to me and asks me to walk with him. “There are news that there maybe some attack to the train. Newin’s people will be waiting for us, maybe shooting at the train.” Again the red shirts worst nightmare, Newim. He tells me to stay calm because people around will be vigilant. The tension is palpable, at least among the young guys who sits in between cars looking out for strange movements. Guards are perceived as needed at every step. ‘Where do the news come from?” I ask. “There are military on this train, red shirts, who are dresses as civilians and they have told us. We have to be careful until we reach Korat, after that we are home.” Korat, also called the gate of Isaan, for them is also the gate of the safe zone.<br /><br />Nothing happens and slowly people fall asleep around in the car we are in and everywhere they find a place.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzwylJXUcGd8-i-XhKsB7A1eK3GQbmx38_QvEYFGCJyzlmOWxHHHSoctNfYfZU8B57Oc3RfvD6lzFxG7OSD4DyojOEXag-c3R8wE9v66yL855ezPXsBRqgNvjlWay48FEs3gg-ESxlvvjQ/s1600/DSC_0064.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzwylJXUcGd8-i-XhKsB7A1eK3GQbmx38_QvEYFGCJyzlmOWxHHHSoctNfYfZU8B57Oc3RfvD6lzFxG7OSD4DyojOEXag-c3R8wE9v66yL855ezPXsBRqgNvjlWay48FEs3gg-ESxlvvjQ/s400/DSC_0064.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474364917920901330" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlf2EgnmiEJ_3pSk3M1jiW8g92kR1ShHigjEw2O99d7ECnH8zihFe4XWinPwKg_tIMdHK8luywqaIld9wN2NXq3OuHLPpmrQxO9n1JI-BDsbi7jl8U9xUwqoKDuIyPf9qd517AJ5ZIDNJk/s1600/DSC_0063.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlf2EgnmiEJ_3pSk3M1jiW8g92kR1ShHigjEw2O99d7ECnH8zihFe4XWinPwKg_tIMdHK8luywqaIld9wN2NXq3OuHLPpmrQxO9n1JI-BDsbi7jl8U9xUwqoKDuIyPf9qd517AJ5ZIDNJk/s400/DSC_0063.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474364910123619218" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /> The next car, mostly with younger people and more hardcore reds is sleepless. “I can’t sleep” an older man tells me “just to many images in my head”. The sleepless night is helped by whisky that flows around changing the smell of people’s breaths. <br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfUhL1A-N7gHJqBGH18slE9RqVSheXLn3ZJBq9UZQo0sxvfpvsJxRtUI-7z7jRWLyfhg9FsFs8bhK48oyD1xm9mKGP-jqlo5crv-JP0gpjJesmpBuWjMsqXZB6EYKu7M-HoAmDXquQdKCL/s1600/DSC_0070.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfUhL1A-N7gHJqBGH18slE9RqVSheXLn3ZJBq9UZQo0sxvfpvsJxRtUI-7z7jRWLyfhg9FsFs8bhK48oyD1xm9mKGP-jqlo5crv-JP0gpjJesmpBuWjMsqXZB6EYKu7M-HoAmDXquQdKCL/s400/DSC_0070.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474361967446927666" /></a><br /><br />I remained there for a while and walk up and down the train chatting to people awake. An man in his forties pulls out of his pockets picture from the time he was a soldier. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjywPSmy8vt-8ip8B9K6r4nc3pexvS73tr1Dq8MIPl2CzP8KI6s1_2lubyRf7-c9jV0AKbCQEXqJyDc5cninqGzSebe62p7NuM52kh3BEbvfddKHJLvQOO5aKDn-_56ihCu7PxGq0z_bxKW/s1600/DSC_0091.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjywPSmy8vt-8ip8B9K6r4nc3pexvS73tr1Dq8MIPl2CzP8KI6s1_2lubyRf7-c9jV0AKbCQEXqJyDc5cninqGzSebe62p7NuM52kh3BEbvfddKHJLvQOO5aKDn-_56ihCu7PxGq0z_bxKW/s400/DSC_0091.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474361956376699746" /></a><br /><br /><br />“I am a black shirt, I was a mercenary before.” He says staring at me. I go back to my seat and fall asleep, cradled by the train.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-45588669791247697552010-05-22T20:43:00.000-07:002010-05-23T08:48:19.913-07:00events at Wat Pathumwan- reportsIf you are trying to make sense of what happened on Wednesday at the Wat Pathumwan there are around some first hand accounts in english, <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/in-a-bangkok-buddhist-temple-the-groans-of-the-wounded-shot-seeking-sanctuary/article1575108/">here</a>, <a href="http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/investigation/37614/unholy-night-in-the-temple-compound">here </a>, and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/eyewitness-under-fire-in-thailand-1977647.html">here</a><br /><br />UPDATE: also a video available <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv0bpnXEmW8">here</a> and a video interview to witnesses in Thai <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jivejSEXnf0">here</a>sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-49979352538857970572010-05-22T10:41:00.000-07:002010-05-22T11:07:56.990-07:00Before Departure- May 20thI arrived at Hualongpong train station around 4pm. The huge hall was full of people, with a compact crowd sitting in the middle of the station on the ground, underneath the huge painting of Rama V. I ask around if the train with the protestors already went away. Most of them already left but the train for Udon is leaving at about 8.25.<br /><br /> I walk back to the people sitting on the ground and ask around who is going to Udon. Pretty soon I am seated with a group of about 20 people, directed to Udon. They come and go, taking off their shoes before sitting on the ground as if they are still in the We Love Udon tend near Lumpini Park. They all look demoralized, worn out, and unsure on what next.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ajsfaBBNDAp7rrrLSa-50I0uGAMgEQ0SvJInQgV3RT5JFMViBmq-mtNQEW5hKZqL8jjxdRc7Ujgw5XAviGP4iIEEnIDZrbCCdFo3rno6zqSwTxoloOsC7AxmZ_eCEWBiLjGDhwYtNgBl/s1600/DSC_0030.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ajsfaBBNDAp7rrrLSa-50I0uGAMgEQ0SvJInQgV3RT5JFMViBmq-mtNQEW5hKZqL8jjxdRc7Ujgw5XAviGP4iIEEnIDZrbCCdFo3rno6zqSwTxoloOsC7AxmZ_eCEWBiLjGDhwYtNgBl/s400/DSC_0030.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474155146366955378" /></a><br /><br /> I start talking to a young man. Long hair and beautifully shaped dark eyes. He speaks quietly in a polite but firm voice. As the people around him listen, occasionally throwing some sentences into the conversation. He is from a small village closed to Udon. He has been at the protest for than two months leaving behind 10 rai of land from which he gets enough rice for him and for selling, making some extra money and food by raising chickens and fishes. “I wasn’t here last year” he says staring at me “but this time it was too much so I came to Bangkok to protest.” “Had you been in Bangkok before?” I ask. “I used to live here, I worked as a security guard. Life here was too chaotic for me so I decided to go back home and live in the country side.” He does not have a family or kids.<br /><br /> “ I haven’t thought about a girlfriend since a long time” he continues. “It is difficult with women, you never understand each other and I want to have a calm life”. “What about your parents?” I asked. His eyes become opaque for a second. “They died 25 years ago” This makes him 9 or 10 when his parents departed. “We have been alone since then. Me and my two sisters. One is married to a Farang and lives in Finland now, looking after her husband’s strawberry farm. He has a problem with alcohol but she has a good life. I even learned some Finnish, so I can talk to my niece, when she comes to visit. The other ones is still in Udon. She is married so I live alone now.” “Are you happy about going home?” He stops for a second. “We came here to bring democracy and we go back without having obtain that. Many people died. Soldiers killed us. We are all very sad.” <br /><br />I turn around and the small crowd is listening, looking down for a moment. An older woman takes up the conversation. “What is this? Killed indifferently by soldiers. We are Thais and we get killed by snipers whose weapons are paid with our taxes. Is bad, very bad. The government has double standards.” One after the other everybody says something about what just happened asking my opinions on the present events and how the “people of the world” feel about Thailand. <br /><br />Two men in black shirts come around. “We will fight again” they say, trying to raise the morale of the group. “It is not finished” the young man echoes “We are going home now but no one has won or lost yet.” “What next then?” “We will keep fighting against this government and the ammat. Maybe not in Bangkok but we will divide in small groups all around the country and keep burning things if we need to. There is nothing else we can do. The government doesn’t accept our requests and kill the population. We are unarmed there is nothing else we can do and now we know that peaceful protests don’t work. Peacefully we just die.” The conversation dies out and a dense silence falls over the small group as an old woman repeats with a soft voice “We won’t accept this, we cannot accept this. Red shirts cannot lose.” This return has the bitter taste of a defeat. Days and days spent in a hostile city, in the middle of buildings overlooking them, symbols of a life they cannot partake in and from which death, by hands of snipers, descended upon them. <br /><br />A younger woman comes around, distributing food to the group and asking if everybody is ok. Behind me a woman sits in her dirty clothes without shoes. “They remained in Ratchaprasong” she said. “I run to the temple without shoes and I was too scared to go back to get them.” The young woman keeps walking around delivering small packages of rice and pork. “The people in Bangkok have helped us” the young man breaks the silence “Many came to bring food, water, and to offer money. This time the government have seen that is not only about Isaan or Thaksin and that the population will not accept everything they do. We did not obtain democracy but we have not accepted what the government did. This will go on.” <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA4ST2rwhet2-qdkWsdXiwZjYWpb8jG0eZmOQ_29OQo4fPnrGyeWGMywBR10LfcoXcXlTCFHq3DEnO3V06VMFES67paFZKLSq6m9N8YIE5v3UNzglmXnKplouYfNnXMW6-o_VfiuCeTBdz/s1600/DSC_0031.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA4ST2rwhet2-qdkWsdXiwZjYWpb8jG0eZmOQ_29OQo4fPnrGyeWGMywBR10LfcoXcXlTCFHq3DEnO3V06VMFES67paFZKLSq6m9N8YIE5v3UNzglmXnKplouYfNnXMW6-o_VfiuCeTBdz/s400/DSC_0031.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474155156484895682" /></a><br /><br />The young woman comes back distributing medicine to anyone who wants them. “You see” another woman says “if we didn’t know her we wouldn’t take the food or medicine. They already have tried to poison our drinks in Sarasin some days ago. We need to be very careful. The young woman walks back to other three friends, all dressed in white and wearing a hat. I stand up and go out to buy cigarettes.<br /><br /> As I enter again into the station the clock hits 6 o’clock and the speakers broadcast the national anthem. Everybody stands up for the anthem, straight to the ceiling in this enormous hall. As the anthem ends one guy of the red shirt group shouts “Ohh, Ohh, Ohh” as they did in Ratchaprasong every day after the anthem. “Ohh, Ohh, Ohh” the red shirt answer timidly.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLigViWteHzHZPAzFRWR-7LZttgNTfoliZwyMnUENp0D0P8DmN9o_zz0O3bG_aNHKDX2swj1c8ilgg-GfZz76ZPJ0Js-DtJiOOCXUaxD2Q9FBcGthe0ykCznlBQoBpyDA3sgpGcXG1ieG6/s1600/DSC_0045.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLigViWteHzHZPAzFRWR-7LZttgNTfoliZwyMnUENp0D0P8DmN9o_zz0O3bG_aNHKDX2swj1c8ilgg-GfZz76ZPJ0Js-DtJiOOCXUaxD2Q9FBcGthe0ykCznlBQoBpyDA3sgpGcXG1ieG6/s400/DSC_0045.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474155176410510386" /></a><br /><br /><br /> Around the atmosphere is grieving, many tense faces and wet eyes in the middle of the few bags and objects that they have been able to retrieve in their escape from the advancing tanks of the military. “What do you think about the leaders?” I ask. Here a big conversation erupts. Somebody says “You need to know when to stop. The military would have killed us all, so they need to surrender.” Others, instead, say they are dissatisfied with the leaders who run away when the military attacked. “We are not satisfied” the young man says “we don’t know what we will do next or who will be the leaders but there is no problem, we have many leaders, in each village. I promise this is not finished.” Again the situation calms down and I get out of the station with him to pick up big plastic bags full of food, delivered by a taxi outside the station. We distribute the last ratio of food and water, as people store both for the long trip ahead. <br /><br />An older woman stands up in the middle of the crowd, as people around her applaud. She is 82 and she has been at the protest since the 16 of March, sleeping on a mat on the street. “She is the oldest person in Ratchaprasong” an older woman says to me as she listens carefully to what the woman says in her barely perceptible voice. “We will continue to fight for democracy” she repeats out loud as smiles come back for a minute on people’s faces. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4eqs4SC62A5dDqEzaiVcvqeQmWowMD6kaSBySlBFItB83_Ukv9bT1MEbaEvSQuqwExyNCSLKRDooDdL83-JUCmBtTS73ztQe9S6zEf7NjtchD1XhutfXFl1jcV2hH16Jo6YtNGhHnullk/s1600/DSC_0044.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4eqs4SC62A5dDqEzaiVcvqeQmWowMD6kaSBySlBFItB83_Ukv9bT1MEbaEvSQuqwExyNCSLKRDooDdL83-JUCmBtTS73ztQe9S6zEf7NjtchD1XhutfXFl1jcV2hH16Jo6YtNGhHnullk/s400/DSC_0044.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474155165210517730" /></a><br /><br />Soon after a well dressed man in his forty comes around to greet people and tell them that they are not alone and that there will be other way to fight to obtain democracy. “He is the Phua Thai MP in Khon Khaen” a man says in my ear. The man walks around the small crowd stopping to talk to some people for a second and hugs the old woman, after waing profusely to her. <br /><br />It is time to board and everybody moves to take their place in the four special cars at the beginning of the train reserved for the people of the protest. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXDeUafD2l79_IO6lcu6f1Fh7PlFVwJMidwyGhNlETObkAOMTa8ZcQtZDowiWrPoa6GmAK_VOVD1mt_NJZlLRsEKOt3LN3ZCchvCMCdEC6UCpmcOjMECynR_Gpkozw7DSyBfdSpEd2x0P5/s1600/DSC_0052.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXDeUafD2l79_IO6lcu6f1Fh7PlFVwJMidwyGhNlETObkAOMTa8ZcQtZDowiWrPoa6GmAK_VOVD1mt_NJZlLRsEKOt3LN3ZCchvCMCdEC6UCpmcOjMECynR_Gpkozw7DSyBfdSpEd2x0P5/s400/DSC_0052.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474155184927923794" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeqObnZ0obKgzZ9G-uIPbRjcRjHIn5Y4yosotMJptb5FzTOvnNsA9rq7NKM-SlkPQnEaV5N5fdUWIi2uNT6X8KfWan7lGjUIMlCaHRHP5fNaR-YFuJzEc60McEE013Wfr1yLiFnnpfgfu8/s1600/DSC_0055.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeqObnZ0obKgzZ9G-uIPbRjcRjHIn5Y4yosotMJptb5FzTOvnNsA9rq7NKM-SlkPQnEaV5N5fdUWIi2uNT6X8KfWan7lGjUIMlCaHRHP5fNaR-YFuJzEc60McEE013Wfr1yLiFnnpfgfu8/s400/DSC_0055.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474157481332250674" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7f59imSGasg4UGUgiUecDUAxPmYmVZtHMoKsNoqxHRv7Z5HXqXojvXEG8kl4-KilAiH0duH5lN-y7GMpYQndwDusBTG6hUzQxsOA8OJhfFqiG6SbM7amj5mP3RRpLx4OpbFUokWYllNmT/s1600/DSC_0054.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7f59imSGasg4UGUgiUecDUAxPmYmVZtHMoKsNoqxHRv7Z5HXqXojvXEG8kl4-KilAiH0duH5lN-y7GMpYQndwDusBTG6hUzQxsOA8OJhfFqiG6SbM7amj5mP3RRpLx4OpbFUokWYllNmT/s400/DSC_0054.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474157477433532274" /></a><br /><br /><br />“Aphisit is so generous” says a man as we step onto the empty car “He kills us first and then reward us with special cars.”sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-73333814094270115302010-05-22T06:37:00.000-07:002010-05-22T08:18:40.381-07:00Ratchaprasong: the day after- May 20thI wake up and decide to go to Ratchaprasong to see what is going on there and the extension of the damages left by a day that is going to raise a lot of questions over the role of the military, the police, the black shirts as well as the real amount of deaths. All questions that seem to revolve around Wat Patumwan, a large temple between Central World and Siam Paragon, in a place when you wouldn’t expect to have a temple with a small village behind. In the late morning of the 19th this Wat became a theater of operations that transformed it from an alleged safe buffer zone for kids and older people into the stage for underground operation, meeting place for a small group of armed black shirts, and death place for at least 6 people, allegedly shot dead by soldiers hidden on the skytrain tracks.<br /><br /> I arrived from Henry Dunant and walk to Rama I. I am with two friends, a Thai guy and a French woman. Along the huge empty street many sewage holes are overflowing with water, creating bobbles on the sidewalks and spreading on the street.<br />Right before the last red shirt barricade, that still blocks the entrance to Rama I, a line of metropolitan busses is waiting the people who took refuge in the two safe zones and now are grouped in the Police Headquarters waiting to make their way back home. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-5KIg7JCBnKXQ5rb1yG_SqiqW74Yi_fSi5UKjkUJAx8pF8aCNMd11nwTMfXhnPpoWG5G6IcjDD3MORGDi6V2Vc6r_mXCXi0OzAoXYM7F_qiac1qv5Xo8nbu0eKi4LYwNhpIkPKeGm33jz/s1600/DSC_0834.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-5KIg7JCBnKXQ5rb1yG_SqiqW74Yi_fSi5UKjkUJAx8pF8aCNMd11nwTMfXhnPpoWG5G6IcjDD3MORGDi6V2Vc6r_mXCXi0OzAoXYM7F_qiac1qv5Xo8nbu0eKi4LYwNhpIkPKeGm33jz/s400/DSC_0834.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474093731257114178" /></a><br /><br /> At the side entrance of the Headquarters a big group of people waiting sit on the ground with lost faces, directed around by women officers of the Border Police. A tall monk is standing close to them, staring passed the officers talking in a loud speaker in front of him, into the emptiness.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmkYMDy1Y02e95-i9Esnh9bkhggYKou0mb-ie-vTdKBi2UNl4lxqJ9MQYEKJOU-0guMBpazY-nnOs5FCCvU7jwvwlcC8vTppwG2EMSieEJiB0GGr2x6EUbDbtG3fOEXR_B_A3V7d5zXPyP/s1600/DSC_0841.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmkYMDy1Y02e95-i9Esnh9bkhggYKou0mb-ie-vTdKBi2UNl4lxqJ9MQYEKJOU-0guMBpazY-nnOs5FCCvU7jwvwlcC8vTppwG2EMSieEJiB0GGr2x6EUbDbtG3fOEXR_B_A3V7d5zXPyP/s400/DSC_0841.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474093742293902210" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXBJ-sWTCrGThe_cnqCM9kuLlgylAktlhCd5bAmu78-dQ4gzKZfPTjp3ceMqONcdbJiIcbT9gsU1KpFQavmVp-Mm6fDh7SW05vTiYGi3IpCT25g0jAqwUPP39Ri0UnTFXevzdeBMAkHrwD/s1600/DSC_0837.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXBJ-sWTCrGThe_cnqCM9kuLlgylAktlhCd5bAmu78-dQ4gzKZfPTjp3ceMqONcdbJiIcbT9gsU1KpFQavmVp-Mm6fDh7SW05vTiYGi3IpCT25g0jAqwUPP39Ri0UnTFXevzdeBMAkHrwD/s400/DSC_0837.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474093738079068466" /></a><br /><br /><br /> Scared eyes look at me, many of them filled with tears as the police tell them that everything is ok and soon they will be sent to the train station or to Mochit to board on busses. We decide to keep walking.<br /><br /> We pass through a small military check point and walk to the side of Siam Paragon. The atmosphere is completely surreal. Contrary to what I had heard Siam Paragon is intact but the building in front is completely burned down, water dripping everywhere as a small group of soldier sat on the handrail, their weapon on their shoulders. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWIWl78L_aXioQXkRsHpYz71ckMU-B4pj2QIv1aUcduAajr13vO8icVIeS3B1KX1EhSiPU1J0xXnT1ztjm9cGO8FaQ2PleWpLVW3mmrKjKmmcVYA72tbWRPbMzwXPCfmnJwoeUcq6ahY5b/s1600/DSC_0850.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWIWl78L_aXioQXkRsHpYz71ckMU-B4pj2QIv1aUcduAajr13vO8icVIeS3B1KX1EhSiPU1J0xXnT1ztjm9cGO8FaQ2PleWpLVW3mmrKjKmmcVYA72tbWRPbMzwXPCfmnJwoeUcq6ahY5b/s400/DSC_0850.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474093750817769426" /></a><br /><br />Around the normally shadowed area underneath the skytrain seemed completely dark. The lower part of the skytrain’s truck is pitched black, dirty water overflowing everywhere, embracing all the objects left by the protesters, who sought refuge in the Wat and in the police Headquarters, right in front of the temple. In this silence of death, a loud rhythmic sound fills the air: the continuous and enervating buzz of the alarm of Siam Paragon, accentuating the already post-atomic feeling. Military and police and a few journalists walk around with wide opened eyes. I proceed in the direction of the temple. On the side of the street a small box full of slingshots and Molotov cocktails in small red bull bottles lays in the middle of the street, too visible to not be purposefully left for journalists.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwGlSgFx-5TQmjBLsfXIeSHDRoDCxMb35Eew7pBx6J4Vsp2_GQciZX1oshL2VD0MjpvXG02Qezr6W1yXa0ceRTL7rxJeVtKeO0t6o1mWdeqHYFzK76PA2Lth8RGxSV4fyCF1Qlr4NdadKY/s1600/DSC_0855.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwGlSgFx-5TQmjBLsfXIeSHDRoDCxMb35Eew7pBx6J4Vsp2_GQciZX1oshL2VD0MjpvXG02Qezr6W1yXa0ceRTL7rxJeVtKeO0t6o1mWdeqHYFzK76PA2Lth8RGxSV4fyCF1Qlr4NdadKY/s400/DSC_0855.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474093759939264898" /></a><br /><br /> The smell of fire fills the air as the sound of the alarm slowly fades. I enter the small temple, as one of the people I am with needs a bathroom. We walk into the front area, where some objects are left, mostly helmets and clothes. Police is everywhere sharing the space with monks and a few curious walking around. The back of the temple is covered with mats left there. A group of policemen sit in the shadow, in full riot gear. It is the first times since the beginning of street fighting that I am seeing a tear gas launcher, and always in the hands of police.<br /><br /> Two man sit separated from the group. “It must be hot in that uniform” I start to chat. “Yes, is very hot and very heavy”. They both want to talk, maybe even need to get things out of their system. They say they are on the side of the people and themselves have been under the fire from the military. “We have to hide as well” he says. “We are sent here with no weapon and risk to be shot at by the army. Yesterday” he says “I saw a sniper pointer on my body. We couldn’t do anything else then hide.” He speaks nervously, showing all his frustration of having to be her to clean up the mess that somebody else did. I greet them and walk away, ready to see Central World, of which a section apparently has collapsed. <br /><br />I arrived to the ZEN section and the scene is stunning. The building has been burned completely, broken glass everywhere in the front. The orange SCRITTA ZEN WORLD was darkened by the flames and now says “Zen Word”. <br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhms_e6LaDDDRNvcEXn3NHND4RX1g2XIZGerhOnr2L7B7Nux1Gf1aag9NRGdCt5HCYNacNVScAFTWY1zJ1bJXb7lE5xBR5YQzP4tmyz5gV24DK5s2by5qD-3U-EJyRxRWnc3754efuM96vr/s1600/DSC_0864.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhms_e6LaDDDRNvcEXn3NHND4RX1g2XIZGerhOnr2L7B7Nux1Gf1aag9NRGdCt5HCYNacNVScAFTWY1zJ1bJXb7lE5xBR5YQzP4tmyz5gV24DK5s2by5qD-3U-EJyRxRWnc3754efuM96vr/s400/DSC_0864.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474096059126154018" /></a><br /><br />The interior is completely devastated and the huge windows that cover the building are destroyed, popped one after the other. On the ground pieces of glass everywhere. On the side of the building only a part of the huge banners that were there is left. “WOW” it says, before turning into a melted grey mass of plastic. Above it an untouched banner says “Peace”. Chance plays strange tricks. This side looks like a huge black eraser has been passed over ZEN. In front of the building a huge pool reflect the destruction. I am sure around me there are noises, but someone in my memory the silence was absolute. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikVXHZXoNxHfs6IKVIdUbXl8HPrtidc_cZJuCkKhuuNkXvSFnWeWXJ3zVB-NAAEF4O06JGGKm_nfSfnQkm0aYldBvJPGr8l0dGHu6Ta84-gCldjBTG7bSMjTQVVqRJsRBzXxNn6JizH7A3/s1600/DSC_0867.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikVXHZXoNxHfs6IKVIdUbXl8HPrtidc_cZJuCkKhuuNkXvSFnWeWXJ3zVB-NAAEF4O06JGGKm_nfSfnQkm0aYldBvJPGr8l0dGHu6Ta84-gCldjBTG7bSMjTQVVqRJsRBzXxNn6JizH7A3/s400/DSC_0867.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474096066499794370" /></a><br /><br />We keep walking around the building and arrive in front of the stage, left there completely empty, mats still on the street pavement. We turn around. The scene is apocalyptic. The central section of Central World is just gone. As if a giant spoon when through this delight of Bangkok’s landscape. It is breathtaking. It defeats language. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-uJTuqosa7ZFd1dqyv0meG-Rg0GaC9Wu1Ae_6Ni3lci4QARl9MchS1Kp2Hk_8XOMvQEudKsd-Sw1vCtgBkj_O_cZYEjRWECNZvaMYgLHUpgWsC2dJVbWVed7Cow5BIICiuetWkNYEcUE7/s1600/DSC_0908.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-uJTuqosa7ZFd1dqyv0meG-Rg0GaC9Wu1Ae_6Ni3lci4QARl9MchS1Kp2Hk_8XOMvQEudKsd-Sw1vCtgBkj_O_cZYEjRWECNZvaMYgLHUpgWsC2dJVbWVed7Cow5BIICiuetWkNYEcUE7/s400/DSC_0908.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474097328718148082" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiknB08hyphenhyphenpe9uhaaQPpq74_n_RJ-iM3m2sx8QaAugrnjhKoeaigws6z_jTzte9w9pHyZxqOpnkt1iHTvaxjPLiv8Oryq7xROIwsPS3wj-AKKztUdoQQ5jnuNQigmDQkoaELiTMjTbQnRI0D/s1600/DSC_0899.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiknB08hyphenhyphenpe9uhaaQPpq74_n_RJ-iM3m2sx8QaAugrnjhKoeaigws6z_jTzte9w9pHyZxqOpnkt1iHTvaxjPLiv8Oryq7xROIwsPS3wj-AKKztUdoQQ5jnuNQigmDQkoaELiTMjTbQnRI0D/s400/DSC_0899.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474097319602948626" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkAhNHOp4TilIxWPnKo-U0xJTM1cm2hxl8uuTeacLozCykqHC00DqUeg1ACjyLYNQTMeVkxtGLo9BO0jIm5laonk_Bn5DERaUPbj7IadDxbWgyAAFmaUd1MJ3VS7ZF5JicVGy0N-BDbSgn/s1600/DSC_0897.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkAhNHOp4TilIxWPnKo-U0xJTM1cm2hxl8uuTeacLozCykqHC00DqUeg1ACjyLYNQTMeVkxtGLo9BO0jIm5laonk_Bn5DERaUPbj7IadDxbWgyAAFmaUd1MJ3VS7ZF5JicVGy0N-BDbSgn/s400/DSC_0897.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474097314824933858" /></a><br /><br /><br />I keep taking pictures, completely out of what is going on around me. My Thai friend snaps me out of it. “They say is dangerous to be here. The army is coming back. We need to go.” I turn around. A police officer is delivering this message from a truck that drives around. We move fast through the destruction, in a deep silence. My Thai friend looks shaken. He just repeats “Fuck” over and over again. We get back to the Police Headquarters. He wants to talk to police, deeply surprised by what the police officers at the temple have told us. <br /><br />We walk back and get into the big open space in front of the police building. It is half full of people, most of them from Bangkok who wait to go back home. We sit with a small group, close to the entrance. Two older women give us some water. Their faces do not smile. Just stare around with wet eyes. A man sits on out left side on a portable chair. He lives in Din Daeng he says and hasn’t had a chance to go home since a week, too dangerous to go in that direction.<br /><br /> “Why are you still here?” we ask. “Police tell us to stay here. Things around are not yet safe. Before we did not believe the police but now we believe them. This morning the police told us to not go out and grab our stuff, to remain in the area and not trust anyone. Two men did not trust the police and believed they could go home. They got out and were shot dead in Ratchaprasong. So now we stay here until they tell us to go.” <br /><br />He has grey hair, a grey shirt and his eyes, squared into thin metallic glasses, move restlessly. “Yesterday we stayed at the temple.” He speaks softly. “We stayed close to the monk, thinking it was the safest place but they have no problem. The soldiers shoot also the monks. In Din Daeng they were shooting also at monks.” He stops. “Where is the fairness? We are the pacific group, we have no weapons. Look around you. Yet the army shoots at us.” We sit down close to him. His wife passes around biscuits that are given to us. “Only dictators kill like this. Snipers against people with bear hands. There is no fairness. Look at the dead. When a yellow shirt died they gave national funeral and money to the families. If we die nobody cares.” “How do you feel now?” I ask. “Look around you, look at people’s faces” He says. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8wC_R7YgWdguiiTqwWJ5U3zD-PxD8TTx3VEo5fqkj3VrgqD4LFIwzk8KbKtHCGKgPmuTpBUS7VxjV27QkRuYGYC8MDNr9PqW9uWZOFz2SzDkmfgvZLxlT8TmDCErsmrnjFuM_iQcUv_e7/s1600/claudio1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 398px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8wC_R7YgWdguiiTqwWJ5U3zD-PxD8TTx3VEo5fqkj3VrgqD4LFIwzk8KbKtHCGKgPmuTpBUS7VxjV27QkRuYGYC8MDNr9PqW9uWZOFz2SzDkmfgvZLxlT8TmDCErsmrnjFuM_iQcUv_e7/s400/claudio1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474113928117736738" /></a><br /><br />I look around. Lost faces all around that turn into a short smile when they notice I am staring at them and then go back to their tense expression. “We will not accept this” he adds “We will fight again”. We stand up and greet them, wishing good luck. My Thai friend, surprised by the role of police and the complete trust given to them to the protesters walks to a police officer standing in a white shirt at the entrance of a small building. “The people really believe the police” he says to the officer. He laughs as a woman with a small baby in her hands asks for the bathroom and is directed inside the building. <br /><br />The big space outside the police headquarter is full of people sitting everywhere ready to be sent off. The people from other regions have been already moved elsewhere, here is almost only people from Bangkok.<br /><br /> We chat up with some border police officers from Tak. They are the one who are checking everybody’s documents before directing them to the right busses to go home. “We came here about a week ago. The other night we had to hide like everybody else behind the wall of the Headquarter. There is nothing we can do, we have no weapons”. It is strange, it feels like hearing red shirt protesters talk. We greet them too and move to the side of the building that opens to Henry Dunant and the loudspeaker says that the people from Bangkok can go home too. <br /><br />The small space we passed before coming from Henry Dunant is full of people sitting everywhere waiting to go home. As we pass there a woman voice says. “People from Udon, your bus is ready”. A small crowd steps up and moves toward the gate. A disorganized line of border police officers, mostly women checks everybody’s ID and write down on white papers their name and provenience, before letting them out of the gate. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs9rFXnHdSFL-iqNuYQq87-13mSBF-1SNmXnT2nP34Ew-9B0XmYCaVD65eLpeQ04HKj_igkOYmgdNalnz9Lx6IzbmTQnjgRYEB8kP3A5QrJ2mPDDFp5reI4LvIUWFsNmfQsllJ9ddGYbZM/s1600/DSC_0958.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs9rFXnHdSFL-iqNuYQq87-13mSBF-1SNmXnT2nP34Ew-9B0XmYCaVD65eLpeQ04HKj_igkOYmgdNalnz9Lx6IzbmTQnjgRYEB8kP3A5QrJ2mPDDFp5reI4LvIUWFsNmfQsllJ9ddGYbZM/s400/DSC_0958.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474102395875280274" /></a><br /><br /><br />It is very interesting how women are used by the government when the situation needs to be handled with calm and there is a potential for conflict. Right outside a big pick-up distributes water to the protesters. Few of them take it. It feels like an exodus.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMOfn-Jf3JqlV0uDgn-9SfDXofjGBAJqgCy9EgWq5Z4lsN6aXAjgG01lQ1TvBVgufkPpsqUHZ0CnO3Kc4qUz9KQGtPClPNpKVNPgvWC7_D98XwrcNjs0pqLih_4ER0iiK1h6YZew2Z8PVR/s1600/DSC_0963.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMOfn-Jf3JqlV0uDgn-9SfDXofjGBAJqgCy9EgWq5Z4lsN6aXAjgG01lQ1TvBVgufkPpsqUHZ0CnO3Kc4qUz9KQGtPClPNpKVNPgvWC7_D98XwrcNjs0pqLih_4ER0iiK1h6YZew2Z8PVR/s400/DSC_0963.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474102387181948882" /></a><br /><br /> Composed and silent lines of people carrying whatever they could grab before then got dispersed walk down the big empty streets, big plastic bags on their backs and lost faces. The Udon group stands on the sidewalk waiting for their bus. An older man leads the group with a pack of water bottles under his arm and a big grey bag. “We want accept this.” He says “We will continue to fight. Maybe not here in Bangkok. We will break down in small groups all around the country. It is far from the end of this.” He wears a light blue shirt with a cat in a graduating gear with written “Congratulation. You have proven that you can make it with nothing more than…”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY4cv4AFhPxBbrzWJ309W3D5r5a1-lbj_qR2G_JHOKc4hKb-qaidEUdb9fHvh3DCkC6uFCfjSXkxhpYjZvZgjjUjVET3B8l8Cyx2ABpRe5uiHaOtmDNEO6xWGxbJ2dAJop94pje-7W6RAW/s1600/DSC_0984.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY4cv4AFhPxBbrzWJ309W3D5r5a1-lbj_qR2G_JHOKc4hKb-qaidEUdb9fHvh3DCkC6uFCfjSXkxhpYjZvZgjjUjVET3B8l8Cyx2ABpRe5uiHaOtmDNEO6xWGxbJ2dAJop94pje-7W6RAW/s400/DSC_0984.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474102383873472802" /></a><br /><br /> They get on a old public bus and drive to the train station, on their way back home after about two months in the city. This twelve hour trips will be a time to reflect, to process what happened in the last days, or just to sit in silence. I go back home, grab a small bag, and drive to the train station.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-91354306554972142982010-05-22T06:13:00.000-07:002010-05-22T06:37:00.946-07:00After the dispersal- Part 2- May 19thI went out again in the late afternoon, trying to get to the Ratchaprasong area before the sun goes down and the curfew kicks in. I drove toward Silom and pass walking the first military road block in Soi Convent. The Thais passing through were register by a soldier sitting on a small table on a side of the street.<br /><br /> I ask the two soldiers who stand at the road block if it is true that they burned Central World and Siam Paragon. The young officer with deep dark eyes looks at me confused. I ask again. “I don’t know where these places are” he answers “I don’t know Bangkok”. Great way to keep your soldiers safe in a conflict occurring in an urban setting. I pass them and walk to Silom. The street is completely empty and very dark. Three armored vehicles are park in the middle of the street on the other side from where I came from. Some soldiers sit around them, with their uniforms half taken down laughing. A line of military walks down from Ratchadamri with very tired faces. I smile at them, they don’t smile back. <br /><br />The Sala Daeng intersection is completely different from last time I was here. The tires and bamboos sticks that used to be a barricade sit in huge piles on the side, close to the statue of Rama VI. <br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBqaUcBZ1u_z8pi_mCc4ylga0CfnplSqK9dv22gxsqqLBQMH7DihAKulLhghjmVnmKdVLB80TUJ9rnsTOKKv9u8S-ef3YzX6GvAyqpmlzFE_7moeu8Icxc9aeJIlJoAjVqxVTymNkjVX9h/s1600/DSC_0749.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBqaUcBZ1u_z8pi_mCc4ylga0CfnplSqK9dv22gxsqqLBQMH7DihAKulLhghjmVnmKdVLB80TUJ9rnsTOKKv9u8S-ef3YzX6GvAyqpmlzFE_7moeu8Icxc9aeJIlJoAjVqxVTymNkjVX9h/s400/DSC_0749.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474086105617484370" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLyyeK0otImuBrbI7Wo9dVzfQLRbds9o3aZKQhC9paYmwQBL8pV_kwrxtV4nrtxMe-chc0W-S8INdDvQpmFLS5tK2mDsZmKf67kzSyUDDGwJ578UhC5fehzYXmWz-KF2TxdMYiz3523rw/s1600/DSC_0758.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLyyeK0otImuBrbI7Wo9dVzfQLRbds9o3aZKQhC9paYmwQBL8pV_kwrxtV4nrtxMe-chc0W-S8INdDvQpmFLS5tK2mDsZmKf67kzSyUDDGwJ578UhC5fehzYXmWz-KF2TxdMYiz3523rw/s400/DSC_0758.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474086115854566130" /></a><br /><br /><br /> Three bulldozers are pulling them up and let them fall into dark green trucks. The asphalt is carved by the signs of caterpillars, plastered into the thin layer of burned rubber. I sit there for a while looking at the mechanical force removing the weak defense structures. A bunch of men in BMA workers vest direct the movement with their hands, covered by the noise of engines. How many of them are red shirts supporters not only defeated but also busy clearing the area, I wonder unable to go talk to them. <br /><br />I walk down Ratchadamri road. The place is surreal and feels haunted. For the first time since I came to Thailand I can hear the twitter of birds in this area, normally covered by the noises of traffic and for the last month by the broadcasted speeches. The place feel like the people living in it just disappeared suddenly. Everything is left there. Clothes, fans, Tvs, motorbikes, unfinished food, half cooked rice, piles of vegetables, half opened tends, monks clothes, wallets, documents, bags, red paraphernalia, medicine, sealed water glasses still cold . Everything as in a crowded scene, just with people erased. That deafening sound of birds, echoing in the emptiness. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEZiQEiizEElpHDO_MIa5tpIraz-cCP9t-PagC7ayVLz9UogPsKbEbV5T_wyuK2T4J6S5QQ6gHhqHgR9MLKBUlV-k1Xof6JbF4ZZYdiAu-UbDGTtvbRV1vwDArc5DfnYxwNOWZHhyStJgk/s1600/DSC_0781.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEZiQEiizEElpHDO_MIa5tpIraz-cCP9t-PagC7ayVLz9UogPsKbEbV5T_wyuK2T4J6S5QQ6gHhqHgR9MLKBUlV-k1Xof6JbF4ZZYdiAu-UbDGTtvbRV1vwDArc5DfnYxwNOWZHhyStJgk/s400/DSC_0781.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474086129577604130" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKFVBvz1vROaEQXjUCtr1J-SWwzDU0cIfkEZ8t7Rcuf9Q4AS8KPbEbRD_J4OBGJcDjV96pLqGU4vPJHFMjnVoLdhzY-czQiyjCqxfvoagqcXRNGqykBZv5KTO9sySxHv_nT_h5w3t4FGRW/s1600/DSC_0782.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKFVBvz1vROaEQXjUCtr1J-SWwzDU0cIfkEZ8t7Rcuf9Q4AS8KPbEbRD_J4OBGJcDjV96pLqGU4vPJHFMjnVoLdhzY-czQiyjCqxfvoagqcXRNGqykBZv5KTO9sySxHv_nT_h5w3t4FGRW/s400/DSC_0782.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474086134792174114" /></a><br /><br />I walk through Ratchadamri, leaving behind me a burned toilet bus across the street after Chulalongkorn Hospital. On the other side of the street a giant pile of black bags of garbage stands attracting flies and an incredible number of grey pigeons, picking some leftover food coming out of the pile.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl2xhgGotB1MF49VqQiJB-APqgbuQMW9qMNcLQiJCpYmMsWdwwU8OxRneoZ5TSqkx8_o6BALHORjcEU5M1cuQkyrPuOrGX-81CF9J6Qope1Hi1-lf40jVO9KLD0qKyMMdR_t4SrJlQ14RU/s1600/DSC_0766.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl2xhgGotB1MF49VqQiJB-APqgbuQMW9qMNcLQiJCpYmMsWdwwU8OxRneoZ5TSqkx8_o6BALHORjcEU5M1cuQkyrPuOrGX-81CF9J6Qope1Hi1-lf40jVO9KLD0qKyMMdR_t4SrJlQ14RU/s400/DSC_0766.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474086120605723330" /></a><br /><br /> Along the street few human pigeons do the same, going timidly through the stuff left over picking up the best pieces and putting it in their bags. A man, also wearing the BMA vest, notice I am staring him as he puts a electric plug into his black and white bag. “Recycle” he tells me breaking the silence and making his way through some bags. Further down three man pile on the back of a pick up all the electric appliances they can find. Most common item the fan.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ62CJ7w0_qTZ5-pagbBkJZJ-EQEclgNauzMynHa4UvhyCXv9fMaX3zIDV-LAPertcRt0te1IOGRpgQCR3jCxzraXL3ujbJ8zjQr4lq3MEteOEYZK18vJNgo74jBDYW1h_lTHEBv1gAQOt/s1600/DSC_0797.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ62CJ7w0_qTZ5-pagbBkJZJ-EQEclgNauzMynHa4UvhyCXv9fMaX3zIDV-LAPertcRt0te1IOGRpgQCR3jCxzraXL3ujbJ8zjQr4lq3MEteOEYZK18vJNgo74jBDYW1h_lTHEBv1gAQOt/s400/DSC_0797.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474087435131384562" /></a><br /><br /> As I walk down the road, passing Surasin a group of military sits on the left side of the street. I greet them and they tell I cannot go further as the area is not secured yet and there are still snipers around. Four of them sit around. Behind them, in a small space between two buildings about twenty protesters sit on the ground, their hands tied by a black plastic cord. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0OSGRD2GpwNYxnKCMM9kZmDJAOJxp2h7BacivGjYAsxv1b_ZhtlG8528DkXFBTmnaH2H7slcSAvIcCHDnon6fVbBeenmKmLNBc3KiY4VNh-IfcrvliBxScKK2zaw0Ssa6aXkwCDSZxopE/s1600/DSC_0791.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0OSGRD2GpwNYxnKCMM9kZmDJAOJxp2h7BacivGjYAsxv1b_ZhtlG8528DkXFBTmnaH2H7slcSAvIcCHDnon6fVbBeenmKmLNBc3KiY4VNh-IfcrvliBxScKK2zaw0Ssa6aXkwCDSZxopE/s400/DSC_0791.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474087421337844306" /></a><br /><br />One guy pulls his hands up and get them close to the mouth of another prisoner who smokes a cigarette from his hands. As I move to take a picture a soldier gets close to me and picks up bullet near my feet, hiding it in his pocket. I look around and find another one, take a picture and then pick it up. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdysePWUIoPvVeqSUGCuhEgAHn9MGkkPHNrLMk9UlvW-U-MymkJolVuHPUPo_bX4eBqsnoHvSxkwkHAizmxKwpA3CqGFWW8acoNVOWOk_9qI-M5hZiRzsa8GmrNalLzmySux6pgt6PiaQy/s1600/DSC_0792.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdysePWUIoPvVeqSUGCuhEgAHn9MGkkPHNrLMk9UlvW-U-MymkJolVuHPUPo_bX4eBqsnoHvSxkwkHAizmxKwpA3CqGFWW8acoNVOWOk_9qI-M5hZiRzsa8GmrNalLzmySux6pgt6PiaQy/s400/DSC_0792.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474087423487474226" /></a><br /><br />I go back to the soldier and ask “Is this a M-16?” he looks at me without saying a word, takes the bullet , turn around, and hides it in his pocket. “Can I have that as a souvenir?” I ask. “How about one of this” showing me the plastic cord with which they arrest “as a souvenir?” I get the message and walk back. A young guy walks down Surasin and a military officers in plain clothes shouts at him “Come here or I shoot” holding his phone attached to his paint. “I shoot”. The guy keeps walking. A soldier in uniform pops out. The guy now starts running into a soi. <br /><br />I walk back to the entrance of Lumpini Park. Their police officers are going around taking pictures of red shirts posters and graffiti left on the wall with their cell phones. A young police man picks up a red shirt with a picture of Thaksin doing the Karabao sign. He smiles at me and walks away with the shirt. Other two policemen are collecting red paraphernalia. They see my camera and ask me to take a picture with the two of them holding a red shirt bandana with written Truth Today. “We are completely red shirts. The police officers are red shirts” they tell me. “Please report the real news, please help us.” They walk away with the bandana rescuing “insignificant” pieces of history left behind by the reds.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-67011002794276830172010-05-22T06:07:00.001-07:002010-05-22T06:08:41.327-07:00Back in BangkokI just got back in Bangkok, very very interesting trip in Isaan. Too much to write about. It will probably take a while. For now i will post the notes from the 19th and 20th here in Bangkok. Tonight i will try to at least get the first part of the trip.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4350500172980365925.post-81199375907919323142010-05-20T01:38:00.000-07:002010-05-20T01:42:13.420-07:00second apologies of my blogToday i won't be able to post today. i just got back from the Ratchaprasong area where i have been yesterday and today. The destruction is unbelievable, it makes your stomach close and makes you breathless. The central part of Central World is just gone, collapsed. I am now going to Hualonpong train station, probably grabbing a train back to Udon Thani with the protesters who have been moved by bus from the Police Headquarters to the train station. I think is the most interesting place for me to be now, on the train talking to them. So today no time for posting here. I have a lot of notes and i will catch up as soon as possible.sopranzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15016144935496843814noreply@blogger.com2