Orlando Letelier’s essay on the Chicago Boys and their role in the brutal neoliberal transformation of Chile has withstood the test of time. A few weeks before his assassination, Letelier was able to capture in detail the misery to which the Chilean disciples of...
I played for Green when I was growing up. That was my soccer team. We were divided up by color: Green vs. Red, Gold vs. Blue. The teams were chosen at random, but we became fiercely attached to our color. Friendships across color lines became strained. We talked of...
The countries of Southeast Asia are planning to integrate their region in 2015. Meanwhile, in the dynamic city of Bangkok, the government of Thailand seems to be heading in the opposite direction, as recent protests have entered a ”shut down” phase. This was the...
Cross-posted from the Eurasia Review. Democratic election has been downgraded to a simple arithmetic head count game in Thailand, Ukraine, Belgium and Egypt (the TUBE states) and is no longer a peaceful and meaningful political system for selection of leaders there....
With popular singers belting out Queen’s “We are the Champions” and John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the enormous protests taking place against Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinwatra’s government have all the cultural luster of a progressive cause. Professional and highly...
Burma’s three ethnic insurgencies are on full boil, but at a time when support from former benefactors Thailand and China has grown tepid.
Kim Jong Il must work for the American Enterprise Institute. Or maybe it’s the Heritage Foundation. The North Korean dictator doesn’t talk much about his non-resident fellowship at a right-wing U.S. think tank. It might not go over well with the Politburo in Pyongyang.
Captured Redshirt leaders and militants are treated like POWs and the lower class Redshirt mass-base like an occupied country. No doubt about it, a state of civil war exists in this country, and civil wars are never pretty.
On May 19, the Thai military used bullets, water cannons, and tear gas when it stormed the makeshift barricades manned by the “Red Shirts.” Since protests began in mid-March, over 70 people have been killed, the great majority of them civilians. The Red Shirts are demanding social justice, an end to the rule of notorious Thai elite, and new elections. They are saying that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva lacks a proper mandate after coming to power with military support in a controversial parliamentary vote in 2006. The UK-born and Oxford-educated prime minister is often accused of being an unapologetic supporter of the Thai throne and the elites. Just a few days before the deadly crackdown, Abhisit withdrew an offer of fresh elections.
Thailand’s Red Shirt leaders surrendered to authorities, leaving their followers to fend for themselves.