Egyptian people police themselves.
One of the interesting developments in Egypt over night has been the way that the local population has got together and began to police their own neighbourhoods after the total break down in the policing of major areas of the cities around the country. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011129175926266521.html
Many News agencies started reporting late yesterday afternoon that serious looting began taking place and that gangs were wandering around the city robbing supermarkets, targeting more affluent residential areas of the city and also attacking and setting fire to the National Democratic Party headquarters.. What is unclear though is who exactly these people carrying out the looting actually are? It is pretty obvious to anyone that during a situation this serious when law and order totally breaks down then you are going to get bad elements of society that are going to take advantage of the situation and carry out serious crime. Others are just opportunists who will take what they can, when they can given the circumstances. What is unclear though is just how many government sponsored thugs are on the street trying to incite chaos and destruction of private property to discredit the uprising of people in Egypt who are pretty adamant that they will have change in their country. As the incidents started growing in number then various blogs coming from Egypt began reporting that some of the perpetrators had been caught with government ID, weapons and such like. Some reports can be seen at this blog here: http://twitter.com/Jan25voices
Whilst this is not a new tactic for an authoritarian government, it seems that people are not falling for these underhand tactics anymore. In the past people have all too quickly believed in whatever information that gets spewed out by the media and governments in question, no matter how corrupt that regime may be but recently all over the world people are waking up to the fact that these institutions cannot be trusted and are usually working in conjunction with each other.
During Al Jazeera’s excellent live coverage http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/ last night, one official was screaming blue murder about the gangs of thugs and convicted criminals (maybe he has stopped and asked them who they were) that were, according to his rhetoric, rampaging through the streets like vikings raping and pillaging anything in their way. The person in question was pleading for all law abiding protestors to clear the streets and observe the curfew so that they could clear the streets of all the unruly criminal elements. What he really meant was that their government security apparatus would go into action and arrest anyone they wanted who might support the protests and might be a danger to their regime.
What happened though was that in many communities people were arming themselves and even working together with the military to set up a makeshift form of policing system to try to keep some form of law and order in place and protect the property and businesses of local people. While the army had a strong presence on the main thoroughfares and major roads and streets around the center of Cairo, in the outer districts and smaller neighbourhoods locals began setting up road blocks to control the access of people coming into their districts to protect their families and property.
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/middleeast/2011/01/201113065521128905.html
It is going to be interesting over the next few days to see what Mubarak will do next to try to cling on to power when it appears that his whole regime is collapsing around him.
Some excellent pictures of the protests can be seen here: http://totallycoolpix.com/2011/01/the-egypt-protests/
Not the Bangkok Post?
It looks like at last, there is a new site out today that is a parody of the Bangkok Posthttp://www.bangkokpost.com/ in the same way as our favourite Thai news web site, Not The Nationhttp://notthenation.com/2011/01/rajprasong-vendors-demand-reds-buy-more-handbags/ is to The Nationhttp://www.nationmultimedia.com/ mainstream English language daily newspaper.
The article in today’s Bangkok Post surely has to be a spoof right?http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/218386/tablet-talks-a-smashing-success
Maybe we should all be thankful though that the great sage of the ‘tablet’, which has been threatening to end Asian civilisation as we currently know it, has now finished. ”It has now ended” it quotes Abhisit as saying. Has this situation of a tablet which declares ”Here! Is Cambodia” really been enough of an issue to put these two neighbours on the verge of war?
Did Lt Gen Tawatchai Samutsakhon, the 2nd Army commander, really receive an order to do “‘anything” to get Cambodia to remove the tablet? If so, who would be the one to give such an absurd order? What would have happened if the tablet had not been destroyed? An air strike?http://news.voicetv.co.th/in-english/2863.html
Ok, maybe an air strike would have been going little too far just to get rid of a slightly offensive sign, Lt Gen Tawatchai seems to have a better grasp at what level of diplomacy this minor skirmish needs to be addressed with ”If you don’t remove such a negative tablet, I will erect a “Here! is Thailand” tablet nearby as well,” Lt Gen Tawatchai told his Cambodian counterparts. I think that Lt Gen Tawatchai is just the type of General that this country needs.
Another false flag?
Are we really supposed to believe that the Red shirts (UDD or the official title in the English Language Bangkok press, supporters of the fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra) really tried to plant bombs at the Government House to disrupt the PAD rally? http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2011/01/25/national/Bombs-discovered-ahead-of-PAD-rally-30147114.html
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/politics/217971/police-thwart-protest-bomb-bid
Even the Bangkok Post and the Nation seem a little bit hesitant to put the blame directly onto the broad shoulders of the Red shirts this time.
Maybe they did, nothing is impossible but it would be a very strange tactic to take after the previous day’s successful rally at Rachaprasong and Democracy Monument.(Which was just the latest in a series of demonstrations/ events after the April/ May crackdowns that have been slowly gathering in number from a handful of people trying a ribbon at the Rachaprasong intersection, people meeting in shopping centers and temples to just talk about the events of May with someone who could relate to, keep fit sessions in Lumpini Park etc. to culminate in over 40 000 at yesterday’s peaceful, colourful and sometimes humerous rally).
In contrast, the demonstration at Government House is expected to draw a handful of thousand protestors which would be some sort of indication to the amount of support that is there to go ahead with the demands being set out by the PAD leaders.
See here: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/218091/pad-bow-down-or-rally-continues
It would be a very strange tactic indeed to suddenly attack your opponents, and maybe risk the ‘sympathy support’ that they might gain from an attack against a group that seems to be splitting up into various different factions, when the weight of public opinion both nationally and internationally seems to weighing heavier towards the movement that you are supporting.
A similar thing happened though during the protest at Silom/Sala Deng. Up until the 22nd of April the Red shirts protest had a lot of support and was becoming maybe too popular. More and more people were joining the protest every day, the passing traffic seemed to be more in favour of the Red shirts than not and the whole thing had more of a carnival atmosphere than a deadly protest. Maybe that needed to be stopped in its tracks as the protest took on a whole new, more sinister dimension after the attacks at Lumpini. The party was most definately over. Many people have their doubts about who carried out the M79 attacks.
Every time there is a demonstration, whether it is yellow or red, there always seems to be the threat of, and the actual carrying out of, bomb attacks in the vacinity of the protestors. Reds, Yellows, Government, Military, the notorious Third Hand, It seems that with each event the details keep getting more and more complicated and murkier to obfuscate the truth.
One thing that is certain though is that the credibility of the official story from the official Government/Military/Police sources is becoming more difficult to believe. The fact that the authorities have to announce that the official line really is the truth and is not a hoax shows just how ridiculous this situation is becoming and if the possible consequences were not so deadly, it would be hilarious.
