Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Thax loss

My thoughts on the Thai coup, free signup required. Which will explain the title.

Interesting to see the classic model coup in action again. Turkey in 1997 had the so-called "virtual coup", when the army didn't actually leave barracks but did cause the government to fall by indicating its displeasure. But this was your Bolivian original, complete with tanks parked at key road junctions.

Still, there's a lot of virtuality to such a coup. What function do the tanks serve? Nobody apparently expected any resistance from the army, and the townspeople spent most of the spring and summer demonstrating against Thaksin. This blogger was taken "to the tanks" by a cabbie. Clearly, they mostly serve to demonstrate that this here is your genuine putsch, no random mob violence.

Speaking of which, autumn's here and the time is right for fighting in the streets, boys. I'd give this a mark of about 4 out of 10 for revolutionary violence - after all, they successfully identified the TV station and stormed it, having comprehensively terrorised the police. But, being Hungarian irredentist fascists in 2006, they didn't have enough clue to broadcast their own message rather than just take the TV off the air.

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