Chuck Bao
4/16/2009, 05:32 PM
I’m going ballistic here and I need to know if I’m just slightly crazy or totally off-the-wall crazy.
Let’s say that there is some third world country with some major political problems.
That third world country has the chairmanship of a regional country grouping this year and is responsible for a summit meeting. Let’s assume its ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), which also invites representatives from China, Japan, Australia, etc.
The meeting turns into a disaster and a thousand or so protesters invade the venue of this summit meeting – the Royal Cliff Resort – which was several times voted as the best resort hotel in the world.
The leaders of the foreign countries had to be taken out by helicopter and then flown back to their respective countries as the summit meeting was cancelled at the last second because of invasion from protesters.
Later, the main stream media in Thailand gets all into the national shame of having to cancel such an important summit meeting and all the blame being placed on the bad Red shirt guys and then that is used as a pretext for cracking down on dissent in Bangkok.
My question simply runs along these lines:
• There have been more than a few summit meetings in the world. How many have been cancelled because they were over-run by protesters?
• Nobody wants to kill the protesters. This is just not a Thailand issue, but it is pretty universal and democratic. Typically, western government recognize that people have the right to protest, but law and order has to be maintained and can be maintained with pretty standard control measures WITHOUT killing people.
• If your were a citizen of one of these countries, are you going to like think it’s all okay that a newly announced summit will turn out fine?
• If a country is hosting a summit meeting, wouldn’t you think that their top priority would be to protect foreign leaders?
• The Thai prime minister Abhisit hosting the summit is either Machiavellian and there is pretty good case that the Democrat party is just playing political games again at the expense of the country and Thailand’s international reputation.
• Or, it can be easily concluded that the Abhisit government is just a puppet of the 2006 coup leaders and they were itching in use Thailand’s international humiliation to retaliate against pro-democracy protesters.
• If Thailand calls a new ASEAN summit, why would any foreign leader attend? Anyone want to be the bait again?
• I If you doubt my opinion, ask foreign diplomats.
• Okay, if you were a citizen of one of the ASEAN countries and your leader was used as bait for protesters and had to waste his/her time flying in and flying out and then find out that it was pretext for a crackdown on pro-democracy forces, would you be happy?
• I think that Thai prime minister Abhisit has done more to destroy Thailand’s reputation in just four months than the very hated former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra did in seven years.
• Of course, it depends on your viewpoint.
I’m planning on joining a Red shirt rally as soon as the Emergency decree is lifting from Bangkok.
Let’s say that there is some third world country with some major political problems.
That third world country has the chairmanship of a regional country grouping this year and is responsible for a summit meeting. Let’s assume its ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), which also invites representatives from China, Japan, Australia, etc.
The meeting turns into a disaster and a thousand or so protesters invade the venue of this summit meeting – the Royal Cliff Resort – which was several times voted as the best resort hotel in the world.
The leaders of the foreign countries had to be taken out by helicopter and then flown back to their respective countries as the summit meeting was cancelled at the last second because of invasion from protesters.
Later, the main stream media in Thailand gets all into the national shame of having to cancel such an important summit meeting and all the blame being placed on the bad Red shirt guys and then that is used as a pretext for cracking down on dissent in Bangkok.
My question simply runs along these lines:
• There have been more than a few summit meetings in the world. How many have been cancelled because they were over-run by protesters?
• Nobody wants to kill the protesters. This is just not a Thailand issue, but it is pretty universal and democratic. Typically, western government recognize that people have the right to protest, but law and order has to be maintained and can be maintained with pretty standard control measures WITHOUT killing people.
• If your were a citizen of one of these countries, are you going to like think it’s all okay that a newly announced summit will turn out fine?
• If a country is hosting a summit meeting, wouldn’t you think that their top priority would be to protect foreign leaders?
• The Thai prime minister Abhisit hosting the summit is either Machiavellian and there is pretty good case that the Democrat party is just playing political games again at the expense of the country and Thailand’s international reputation.
• Or, it can be easily concluded that the Abhisit government is just a puppet of the 2006 coup leaders and they were itching in use Thailand’s international humiliation to retaliate against pro-democracy protesters.
• If Thailand calls a new ASEAN summit, why would any foreign leader attend? Anyone want to be the bait again?
• I If you doubt my opinion, ask foreign diplomats.
• Okay, if you were a citizen of one of the ASEAN countries and your leader was used as bait for protesters and had to waste his/her time flying in and flying out and then find out that it was pretext for a crackdown on pro-democracy forces, would you be happy?
• I think that Thai prime minister Abhisit has done more to destroy Thailand’s reputation in just four months than the very hated former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra did in seven years.
• Of course, it depends on your viewpoint.
I’m planning on joining a Red shirt rally as soon as the Emergency decree is lifting from Bangkok.