[p2p-research] Fwd: online coverage of thai political crisis

[Andy Robinson]

I'd add that we need to keep in mind the marginal peoples as well.  Thaksin
was a populist of the "unmarked" Thais, and very much an enemy of the
marginal peoples - the peoples of the Northwest and the Muslims of the
South.  Particularly notorious are the genocidal "war on drugs" in the
northwest and the massacre of Muslim protesters in the south; the situation
of the Akha also needs to be borne in mind.  This is the reason certain
broadly "progressive" or excluded forces (human rights groups, southern
Muslims) have sided with PAD, even while socialists and the rural poor seem
to have sided with DAAD.

see here:

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/09/01/thailand-protesters-misunderstood-by-western-media/


I have to say the protest mobilisations by both sides have been rather
impressive, and shown the power of networks in relation to state forces.
The airport shutdown and the summit shutdown have shown the vulnerability of
key nodes as capitalism relies on "just in time" flows through a limited
range of nodes which are vulnerable to disruption.  As in much of the global
South, social networks also seem to run within and through what are
officially state organs, including the police and army.  The reaction to the
DAAD mobilisations seems to have been a lot more violent than the reaction
to the PAD mobilisations because of political sympathies.  But in both
cases, the existing government seemed worried about being as violent or
repressive as it might be.  There have been summit protests in the North for
ten years now but there has never been a summit actually shut down
completely.


The persistence, and ability to revive, of these movements is also
impressive.  We have seen instances of months-long protest mobilisations.
The longest mobilisations I've seen in the North have lasted about two weeks
(the France banlieue revolt om 2005 and the Greek unrest last December).
I'd be very interested to know how, technically, this is possible.  How PAD
was able to recover from the events of October and the apparent downturn,
and how DAAD was able to re-mobilise after a break from December.  I've
heard that protests at specific sites have rotating personnel, and the
numbers seem to be greater.  But what else allows this kind of persistence?



bw

Andy
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