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Yesterday I said about Kyrgyzstan fate could be "a picture or microcosm of nations falling like domino's as the citizens get a belly full of the corrupt state of their respective governments and that their Tulip Revolution as it is being called could have started out as "The Tea Party Movement". " The domino effect is here.
By Daniel Ten Kate and Suttinee Yuvejwattana
April 7 (Bloomberg) -- Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva declared martial law in the capital after protesters stormed parliament, testing the army’s willingness to break up four weeks of mostly peaceful demonstrations.
About 3,000 people entered the gates of Parliament for about two hours and thousands more occupied Bangkok’s commercial district for a fifth day. The emergency decree bans gatherings of more than five people, allows detention without charge and gives soldiers immunity from prosecution.
“The law doesn’t mean we aim to crack down or hurt people, especially innocent people,” Abhisit said in a televised address. “The nation has been severely affected by the protests and the government needs to rectify the situation.”
The protesters, many loyal to exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, grew in confidence after police and soldiers abandoned attempts to disperse them yesterday. Army Chief Anupong Paojinda enforced orders from Abhisit a year ago to break up rallies by the same group that turned violent, something he may be reluctant to do this time.
“Declaring martial law may backfire on Abhisit,” said Michael Nelson, a lecturer at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “If Anupong sees this as a political problem, an emergency decree may not prompt the military into action.”
Abhisit, who has been living in an army barracks, said protesters have breached the constitution and he declared the demonstration illegal. The law would also prevent misinformation and help stop sporadic grenade attacks that have hit the capital over the past month, he said.
Election Call
The protesters, who say they represent Thailand’s lower classes, want an immediate election. They rejected the premier’s offer to hold a ballot within nine months during televised talks last week, demanding he step down by April 13, the start of the Thai New Year holiday. Many from rural areas may head back to their homes during the three-day break.
“We insist that we will continue fighting peacefully,” Jatuporn Prompan, one of the protest leaders, said after Abhisit announced the state of emergency.
Weng Tojirakarn, another protest leader, said any attempt to disperse the demonstrators may trigger a “nasty fight” in Bangkok. “It will be difficult for the government to break us up,” he said. “We are not afraid because we are doing the right thing.”
‘Selective Curfews’
Anupong, who helped orchestrate the 2006 coup and is due to retire in September, refused to clear anti-Thaksin protesters who seized Bangkok’s international airport in November 2008. Anupong urged then Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat to call early elections to end five months of protests. A week later, Somchai was forced out when Thailand’s Constitutional Court dissolved his party.
Abhisit “gave few details on what restrictions would be levied or what actions would likely be taken,” PSA Asia, a Bangkok-based security and risk assessment consulting firm, said in a note to clients. “Selective imposition of curfews for specified areas, banning assemblies in specified areas and prompt deployment of security forces to clear demonstrators to prevent further disruptions are possible.”
Before the premier’s announcement, Deputy House Speaker Apiwan Wiriyachai told crowds outside Parliament the military may withdraw support for the government, the Nation reported. The army denied the claim.
“That’s not true,” Army spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said by phone. “We are still working together in unity.”
Ranks Wane
About 8,000 protesters occupied one of Bangkok’s main intersections today, down from 40,000 yesterday, police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said. Their ranks wane in the afternoon heat and swell at night, he said.
The political unrest is “a drag and if it was to become prolonged, it would begin to have a significant impact on the economy,” Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij said in an interview today in Nha Trang, Vietnam, where he was attending a meeting of Southeast Asian finance ministers. “We are still not fully realizing our potential as a result of the political impasse that appears to exist.”
Thai stocks trade at 12 times 2010 earnings, the third- cheapest multiple in Asia after Pakistan and South Korea, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The SET Index advanced 1.3 percent today, building on gains that have made it Asia’s best-performing benchmark since the round-the-clock rallies began on March 12. The baht traded close to a 22-month high.
Four Seasons
The demonstrations have disrupted about seven downtown hotels, including brands such as the Four Seasons, Grand Hyatt and Intercontinental. Room occupancy has dropped to about 40 percent and events have been canceled, Prakit Chinamourphong, president of the Thai Hotels Association, said by phone.
“We already talked to the government to control the situation and we also talked to protesters, but it’s useless,” he said. “If the protests go on, our situation will be worse.”
Thaksin and his allies have won the past four elections on strong support in rural areas for his platform of cheap health care and village loans. The billionaire former prime minister has orchestrated protests from overseas since fleeing a Thai jail sentence in 2008.
Abhisit, who must call elections by the end of 2011, has asserted his right to complete his term in office. His Democrat party may win as many as 240 seats, or half the total, in the next contest, he said in a March 22 interview.
--With assistance from Anuchit Nguyen, Supunnabul Suwannakij and Yumi Teso in Bangkok and Shamim Adam and Beth Thomas in Nha Trang, Vietnam. Editors: Tony Jordan, Mark Williams
To contact the reporters on this story: Anuchit Nguyen in Bangkok at anguyen@bloomberg.net; Suttinee Yuvejwattana in Bangkok at suttinee1@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tony Jordan at tjordan3@bloomberg.net
New revelations in attack on American spy ship
Veterans, documents suggest U.S., Israel didn't tell full story of deadly '67 incident
Bryce Lockwood, Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister, is shouting into the phone.
"I'm angry! I'm seething with anger! Forty years, and I'm seething with anger!"
Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.
For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy's most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they're also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.
"They tried to lie their way out of it!" Lockwood shouts. "I don't believe that for a minute! You just don't shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!"
Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.
Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots -- communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.
The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.
In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country's chief U.S. electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had "become the center of considerable controversy and debate." It was not the agency's intention, it said, "to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material," available at http://www.nsa.gov/liberty .
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, called the attack on the Liberty "a tragic and terrible accident, a case of mistaken identity, for which Israel has officially apologized." Israel also paid reparations of $6.7 million to the injured survivors and the families of those killed in the attack, and another $6 million for the loss of the Liberty itself.
But for those who lost their sons and husbands, neither the Israelis' apology nor the passing of time has lessened their grief.
One is Pat Blue, who still remembers having her lunch in Washington's Farragut Square park on "a beautiful June afternoon" when she was a 22-year-old secretary for a law firm.
Blue heard somebody's portable radio saying a U.S. Navy ship had been torpedoed in the eastern Mediterranean. A few weeks before, Blue's husband of two years, an Arab-language expert with the NSA, had been hurriedly dispatched overseas.
As she listened to the news report, "it just all came together." Soon afterward, the NSA confirmed that Allen Blue was among the missing.
"I never felt young again," she said.
Aircraft on the horizon
Beginning before dawn on June 8, Israeli aircraft regularly appeared on the horizon and circled the Liberty.
"I'm angry! I'm seething with anger! Forty years, and I'm seething with anger!"
Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.
For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy's most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they're also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.
"They tried to lie their way out of it!" Lockwood shouts. "I don't believe that for a minute! You just don't shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!"
Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.
Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots -- communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.
The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.
In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country's chief U.S. electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had "become the center of considerable controversy and debate." It was not the agency's intention, it said, "to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material," available at http://www.nsa.gov/liberty .
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, called the attack on the Liberty "a tragic and terrible accident, a case of mistaken identity, for which Israel has officially apologized." Israel also paid reparations of $6.7 million to the injured survivors and the families of those killed in the attack, and another $6 million for the loss of the Liberty itself.
But for those who lost their sons and husbands, neither the Israelis' apology nor the passing of time has lessened their grief.
One is Pat Blue, who still remembers having her lunch in Washington's Farragut Square park on "a beautiful June afternoon" when she was a 22-year-old secretary for a law firm.
Blue heard somebody's portable radio saying a U.S. Navy ship had been torpedoed in the eastern Mediterranean. A few weeks before, Blue's husband of two years, an Arab-language expert with the NSA, had been hurriedly dispatched overseas.
As she listened to the news report, "it just all came together." Soon afterward, the NSA confirmed that Allen Blue was among the missing.
"I never felt young again," she said.
Aircraft on the horizon
Beginning before dawn on June 8, Israeli aircraft regularly appeared on the horizon and circled the Liberty.
The Israeli Air Force had gained control of the skies on the first day of the war by destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground. America was Israel's ally, and the Israelis knew the Americans were there. The ship's mission was to monitor the communications of Israel's Arab enemies and their Soviet advisers, but not Israeli communications. The Liberty felt safe.
Then the jets started shooting at the officers and enlisted men stretched out on the deck for a lunch-hour sun bath. Theodore Arfsten, a quartermaster, remembered watching a Jewish officer cry when he saw the blue Star of David on the planes' fuselages. At first, crew members below decks had no idea whose planes were shooting at their ship.
Thirty-four died that day, including Blue, the only civilian casualty. An additional 171 were wounded in the air and sea assault by Israel, which was about to celebrate an overwhelming victory over the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and several other Arab states.
