Thai Protests (from a local foreigner)

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Where’s the restaurant? I want to look at the food online with my GF and be a jerk and judge it for being inauthentic, lol.

I dunno. I just don’t believe anyone is really doing accurate laab outside TH. I don’t even like laab! But it’s such a specific flavor, and it’s actually a northern dish; and the north is more rural–less likely to have people move to other countries to start restaurants, especially ones that sell a very challenging dish that tastes “wrong” to pretty much everyone on earth.

I think other dishes can be done though. Just need the right rice and herbs, which…I dunno, i think it can be done but would just be too expensive for a mid-level place. I bet if I took my GF to a really good Thai place in the US, the rice would be what kills it for her, just like the bread often kills stuff for me here.

All of that said, I have to keep reiterating that i am NOT a master of Thai food. My favorite restaurant in Bangkok is a Mexican place, lol. I’ve been on a mango and sticky rice kick lately, and my GF will be like, “How is it?” and I literally can’t tell the different between one and another.

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Jerk target here: http://larbthaitapas.com/

FWIW I’ve only had Larb there once, it’s ah, an intense and complex flavor.

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I got Larb from a Laotian food truck once and then proceeded to make some at home from a probably inaccurate online recipe. However accurate it is or isn’t, i enjoy it.

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Hm. They say they’re from the North… My GF just fell asleep, so I dunno. To me a lot of the would-be authentic dishes look similar but different in a way I can’t put my finger on. So maybe it’s native people adapting their recipes to available ingredients. There are definitely a bunch of dishes on there to throw a bone to Westerners, like the western-style salad and the fried spring roll things. It’s cool that they have a whole salad section. That’s something that I think people don’t get about Thai food? “Salads” are a big staple, but they’re nothing like a western salad in flavor profile or texture really. More wet, more evenly mixed–sort of like a cold stir-fry? Papaya salad is the classic–do most Thai restaurants in the US serve that?

I’d probably get the chicken and the beef noodle soup–do they give you chili flakes on the side or do they try to be fancy with, like, sliced chilis only? The authentic way is to give you both! Oh, the really authentic thing is to give you sugar packets or (if fancy) a bowl of sugar with noodles and soups. But that might be a sin in California!

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Guys, I might go to bed before we have a resolution here.

I should say, I switched to the Voice TV stream on YT hours ago, but…yeah not too much to see right now, if you don’t speak Thai. They’re doing speeches from up-and-comers in the movement.

I’m a little concerned that the police will do something crazy while we sleep, but…the police didn’t plan for this, and they’re lazy and corrupt. The people who would tell them to do evil shit are definitely sleeping. So i dunno. I guess the negotiations are intense.

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Papaya salad is a pretty common menu in Thai places over here, yeah.

IIRC there’s chili flakes/sugar/salt in little containers on each table, I’m not really sure as I’m not somebody who usually seasons my food when I order in a restaurant (the exception here being pho, where it’s really more that you wind up doing the seasoning/garnish yourself).

I get everything at that place as “mild” (noticeably spicy) or “medium” (my nose runs like a faucet and my eyes start watering) spicy. A friend of mine who’s Filipino once got into a five-minute argument with the waitress about whether he could get his curry “Thai spicy”. Eventually he wore them down, and then it came out, he took two bites and was like nope, I can’t handle this.

Best of luck to the protestors, hope no fuckery goes down.

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Okay, so not too much has happened since Friday night.

Apparently at about 3AM, negotiations with the Ayutthaya precinct broke down, and they ended up just taking Penguin to the hospital. He apparently still had bits of glass all over his skin from when protesters had broken the glass of the car (a nurse had been removing them all night).

They also took Run there for dehydration.

I saw news today that her charges for a certain protest were dismissed, then saw another news source say she will likely be “re-arrested” for another charge. It’s probably clear by now, but there’s basically a loophole in the Thai law which makes it ambiguous how many times you can be arrested for a single crime. So even though they’re out on bail and a court has told them to stop, police plan to just keep arresting them over and over for different protests until they have trials (which can be years).

Penguin posted yesterday that he has heard that an order (implication: from the king) has gone out for him and his friends to be killed. He doesn’t say where he heard this, but he says to remember him and everything that happened. It doesn’t seem like he will attempt to flee the country.

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This could be a clip from a Black Mirror episode. And I would say the fake comedy writing was too hacky to feel accurate.

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It’s amazing how there are setups for jokes there that could go to attacking those in power and so on, and at each opportunity, he goes for the most subservient and docile punchline possible. Wow.

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What can you say? Nothing whackier than a 27-year-old factory worker being imprisoned for three months for making a sarcastic Facebook post and possibly getting 37 years in prison. I can’t find any information in English about the guy’s fate, other than that they sent his case to a military court. I asked my GF to look in Thai.

Btw, his lawyer was Anon Numpa, a Civil Rights lawyer at a non-profit called iLaw. He was actually released from prison yesterday after also being shuffled around for three weeks as well. He is basically the legal leader behind the democracy movement and has been arrested numerous times for disrespecting the king.

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Status update:

Getting a little behind on documenting every major protest. I wanted to post in order by making my next post the one with video and pics of last Saturday’s impromptu demonstration. But it’s annoying to pick the right pictures/vids from my phone, and I’ve basically been exhausted or depressive every day in the past week.

Last Monday there was another GIGANTIC march to the German embassy, where the protesters presented a letter to the German ambassador to Thailand, asking that the king no longer be allowed to spend Thai tax money to rent out an entire hotel to use as his pleasure dome. The German people aren’t too happy about this situation either, so it was a bit more than gestural. I’d have to estimate something like 300,000 people, though it’s really hard to tell with these numbers.

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Yellow (royalist conservative) protesters responded with an honestly quite small protest outside the US embassy in Tuesday. It looks like 15-30 people?

They’re protesting outside the US embassy because The Nation Channel (Thai Fox News that used to be Thai CNN) has been pushing a conspiracy theory that the US is behind the Hong Kong and Thai protests. This came from a story in a Chinese tabloid. The accusation is that the protests are fully funded and organized by the US. No evidence or motivation is provided, and I’m really not sure how many people believe it. Apparently about 30.

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On Wednesday or Thursday the scheduled parliamentary hearings on the protests took place. It was boring and pointless, as expected, though the highlight was when a guy from the red shirt party Pheu Thai (old school rural populists before the current movement) said something like, I want you to know how serious I am about this cause, rolled up his sleeve and then started cutting his arm.

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Apparently the military party chairman running the hearing said, quite nonplussed, “Please sir, stop cutting your arm.”

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The latest today:

The Thai government has blocked Pornhub.

Like China, the Thai government (poorly) blocks news that is negative about the regime and then also some random porn URL’s. This can be circumvented with a VPN or sometimes just with Google.

This ban is speculated to be over someone uploading an old video of the king and queen in skimpy outfits at the birthday of the current King’s dog, a poodle named something like Grand Marshall Foo Foo (not to be confused with the last King’s dog).

This video has been floating around for like a decade and was a big hit when P2P sharing first appeared. Not understanding the internet, when it first got out, the current king (then prince) sent some thugs to the office of some P2P server or… something (I forget exactly what it was) and destroyed the place. I think the staff was also arrested.

A protest is now gathering in front of the Information Ministry, and the feeling is that this has mobilized people who were not interested in the movement before.

You can follow this with the English-facing hashtag #savepornhub

https://mobile.twitter.com/hashtag/savepornhub?src=hashtag_click

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All the protest leaders are released now. Protesters are gathering at the Democracy Monument to march to an unannounced location. The start time was a half hour ago (4PM). Some counter protester royalists arrived as well. Police are keeping them separated. This is what they look at. You can watch live or watch later at the live links in my earliest posts.

The royalists are on the right in yellow.

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At about 7PM, the Thai police fired water cannons on protesters marching to deliver letters to the residence of the king. Police announced it was “a mistake”. Whoops!

Hard to make out how many are in attendance today. Crowds go farther than cameras can make out. Again not personally attending due to medical issues with my GF.

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This meme uses a quote from the king, when replying to a Western journalists shouting to him to ask what he thinks of the protesters and compares how crowds of democracy protesters are treated in contrast to royalist protesters.

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No major protests over the last few days.

The biggest news is that Yellow Shirt (pro-royalist conservative) counter-protesters are now officially asking the military for ANOTHER coup. It’s…unclear why the military would execute a coup…against itself. Like, I’m not joking here. I guess what they’re saying is that they want to clear the Lower House of parliament of all the democratically elected MP’s and just have the military appoint the whole government (instead of appointing 50% of it and then also running candidates to ensure a majority control).

So…that’s what we’re dealing with. Again, this appears to be a relatively small movement, ginned up by the government, conservative news, and the king himself. While there have been rumors of paid Yellow Shirt protesters, I haven’t seen too many clearly paid protesters (paid protesters usually look confused and disappear immediately after events are over). However, initially the Yellow Shirt movement was all on-duty police and government workers. Once they got the ball rolling, I do think some actual counter-protesters have come out. But…it looks to be groups of hundreds, maybe sometimes thousands. It…just doesn’t compare.

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Speaking of conservative news, that’s the other big story!

So you guys remember me talking about The Nation Channel–Thai CNN which was bought by royalists in 2017 and turned into Thai Fox News?

Well. Even before the protests really started popping off, young people on Twitter started a pretty major campaign to boycott any company that advertises on that channel. Since Thailand is an oligarchy, that can be pretty dramatic. Like, if Dairy Queen advertises on there, you’re going to be boycotting half the fast food restaurants in the country, because they’re owned by Minor Group (who also own a lot of hotels and property). And–well–that’s what people did! I suppose because Thailand is such an oligarchy, Thai people are fairly aware of who owns everything, and businesses are so local to the country that if–uh–everyone on Twitter boycotts you, that matters!

So, for instance, when Food Panda (a Grub Hub/Seamless equivalent with offices throughout the middle and far east) was boycotted, they put out a letter about not taking sides and got a VERY vocal response of, “Fuck you. You’re still boycotted.” The thing about Thai Twitter is that it’s pretty much ALL pro-democracy. It’s a safe space for young people, so when brands try to exploit it, they end up at the mercy of the youth.

As a result, the boycott…actually worked?

Earnings for the channel went WAY down as they lost sponsors, and after only a few months, the channel has cleaned house of their right wing pundits and is courting their old CEO (who was a well-regarded newsman). Like, those pundits are gone. It’s official.

Now, the majority shareholder of the channel is still the company run by a guy who used to work for the royal family, so I’m still skeptical. But…it’s very promising!

So yeah: I get that from a Western perspective boycotting and Twitter activism seem like the height of liberal consumer politics. But…y’know: do what works. When was the last time you toppled Fox News?

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I also have to wonder if part of why the The Nation Channel has caved is simply that…shareholders have shame. Like, Nation simply didn’t cover the majority of these massive 300k person protests. Some nights they would be a top story everywhere else and all over the internet, and they would be literally ignoring them. I think that level of cognitive dissonance might have started to become hard to keep up. Comparing the Thai right wing to the US right wing is very strange.

For example, the Thai military has a long history of just outright massacring students, including women and children, for protesting. And it’s accepted that that should just be forgotten. However, now that people can see them shooting water cannons at protesters on live TV, the average Thai person is horrified. Meanwhile, in the US, centrists make excuses for why it’s okay to shoot someone’s mom in the face with a teargas canister.

I wonder if it’s similar with propaganda. Like, you’re literally arguing that it’s the law of nature that some dude rule over you as a god–but you can’t stomach constructing an alternate reality in order to make it make sense? I’m thinking that maybe the Thai right has a history of ruling with might and so they haven’t developed the genius spin doctors that America and the UK have. And because their argument has always been, “The king is good because the king is good. Just accept it,” they’ve never had to learn to bend the truth into a cage.

So, in some sense, the right wing propaganda machine is much more brazen, in that you can actually go to jail for opposing it. But it’s also weaker, because they therefore haven’t learned how to actually poison people’s brains, beyond childhood indoctrination (which falls apart in the internet age).

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