Word: primed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...From Prime Ministers to pop stars, terror suspects to teenage tearaways, Scotland Yard has questioned them all. But the request by the British Attorney General that the London police launch an investigation into MI5, the U.K.'s domestic security service, is unprecedented. At issue are claims by Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantánamo detainee, who alleges that British intelligence agents knew he was being held and tortured in prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, and even supplied questions to his interrogators...
...recent months, the Thai political landscape has seemingly shifted. While opposition Red Shirt politicians still publicly pledge loyalty to the monarch, their figurehead, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has openly alleged that one of the King's closest advisers was behind the 2006 army coup that unseated him. That adviser, General Prem Tinsulanonda, has dismissed the charge. Thaksin and his Red Shirt cohorts have been at pains to underline that they don't think the King himself had anything to do with the putsch that overthrew one of Thailand's most popular - but also most divisive - Prime Ministers...
...King clutched by Yellow Shirt protesters last year, when they besieged Bangkok's airports for a week in an effort to unseat the government, which was then essentially a Thaksin proxy party. (Late last year, a Thai court dissolved that ruling party. The opposition Democrats - led by current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva - took over, prompting the Red Shirts to initiate their protest movement.) Indeed, the Yellow Shirts' very choice of sartorial color was a not-so-subtle reminder of their loyalty to the monarch. The King has never publicly weighed in on the Yellow Shirt/Red Shirt divide...
...antigovernment protesters drawn heavily from the middle classes occupied Thailand's seat of power for months and besieged Bangkok's international airport for a week. The Yellow Shirts' aim? To force the then government to step down because they considered the ruling party to be a proxy for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 army coup. In December, the courts dissolved that ruling party for electoral fraud, and the opposition, led by current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, formed a coalition government...
...downturn. The continuing political crisis will only exacerbate Thailand's economic woes, as foreign countries issue travel warnings that could dissuade badly needed tourists in an industry that employs more than 3 million people. On April 12, Abhisit declared a state of emergency in Bangkok, the same day the Prime Minister's motorcade was attacked by a red-hued mob wielding sticks and bars. Earlier in the day, one Red Shirt leader, Jatuporn Prompan, had called on his fellow protesters to attack Abhisit in order to hasten the government's ouster. That evening, Thaksin - who is in self-imposed exile...