Word: reds
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...were a popsicle, what flavor would you be? Popsicle Supersicle Firecracker Red, White & Blue...
Striding into the hastily abandoned headquarters of Thailand's Red Shirt movement in central Bangkok, Colonel Apirat Kongsompong glanced at the detritus of demonstration: stacks of Styrofoam cups, half-empty bottles of fish sauce and whisky, remote controls for televisions once tuned to news channels documenting the street battles between antigovernment forces and the army. On Tuesday, Red Shirt leaders ended the protesters' three-week occupation of central Bangkok, which left at least two dead and more than 100 injured. On a mission to secure the area less than an hour after the Red Shirts had decamped, the commander...
...rest of the discarded pictures were also of the world's longest-serving monarch, some capturing him in ceremonial regalia, one showing him playing a jazz saxophone. Apirat shook his head as water dripped on the images, which were left behind when the Red Shirts abandoned their post and started the trip back to their homes across the nation. An unspoken question hovered in the air: What were pictures of Thailand's King, beloved by millions, doing forsaken in the middle of what hours before had been a potential battle zone? (See pictures of the week's protests...
...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...
...Notably, when the Red Shirts thronged central Bangkok by the thousands, few held aloft pictures of the Thai monarch. The absence was marked, especially compared with the omnipresent images of the 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...