Thai Parliament stormed; chopper rescues lawmakers

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: AP

Emboldened anti-government protesters briefly stormed Thailand's Parliament building Wednesday as lawmakers scaled walls to flee and a Black Hawk helicopter evacuated VIPs trapped by the encircling crowd, officials said.

"Red Shirt" protesters led by one of their hardcore leaders smashed through the Parliament compound gate with a truck and rushed to the second floor while Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban and other lawmakers were still inside. But the protesters later withdrew from the building at the request of opposition lawmakers.

The government security agency, known as CAPO, sent a Black Hawk helicopter carrying five soldiers armed with M-16 rifles onto the Parliament helipad to pick up ministers and lawmakers trapped inside, the agency said in a statement. INN television said Suthep was among those evacuated.
...
The Red Shirt movement — known formally as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship — contends Abhisit came to power illegitimately in the years after ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was removed in a 2006 coup on corruption allegations. The group is made up largely of Thaksin supporters and pro-democracy activists who opposed the putsch.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g3j-vAVG1fg3kEfnogTiH8_4EXvwD9EU46H81

[dipsydoodle]

1. They all seem to be at it today.

.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Yeah...to whose benefit, I wonder.

Hmmmmm.

[Odin2005]

2. This isn't going to end well for Thailand.

I fear a civil war is brewing there. :(

[CLANG]

4. How long before this scene is repeated in Washington DC?

[Ganja Ninja]

5. Or maybe FOX News. n/t

[Xenotime]

6. Wouldn't that be funny to see?!?! Glenn Beck is sitting there and armed soldiers take him away!

I can see Hannity trying to run out the back door and he is stopped.

[Jkid]

7. When I saw the initals CAPO, I also thought of this:

The Capitol Police Organization in Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. FWIW, your picture is showing as "use your OWN server to host images"

I'd hope a "Black Nerd and 4channer" recognises the dangers of hotlinking to images on other sites - some people can decide to put up some very nasty images for hotlinks if they choose to. There are image hosting services such as tinypic if you need them.

[Jkid]

10. Sorry about that

I did not realize that until now

[Jkid]

11. Here's the actual image

[grantcart]

9. The UDD is a paid group of "tea baggers" that Thaksin has hired to try

and overthrow the elected government in order to overturn a B 76,000,000,000 (US 2 billion) judgement and seizure of his assets for corruption.

They have no support outside thier paid group of supporters and everyone watching knows that Thaksin's strategy is to try and provoke violence and use an appeal of force to remove the government.

In the meantime more and more countries have found Thaksin persona no grata and he is now residing in Montenegro where the government admits that it has sold him Montenegro citizenship.

[OregonBlue]

12. 100% correct. Thaksin is a Bush cronie crook who's funding this "populist uprising".

Sorta like David Koch leading a "populist uprising" here. That's what's so sad about the teabaggers. Koch is trying to do here what Thaksin has done to Thailand. The teabaggers are falling for it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. 'elected government' is pushing it a bit

The PPP won the last election in 2007, and Thaksin's TRT had won the one before that (before being hucked out by the military). But the PPP was disbanded by the courts, handing power to the current government - and the yellow-shirted PAD movement used the same kind of tactics as the UDD to destabilise the PPP. To say the UDD "have no support outside thier paid group of supporters" is pushing a bit too - they are basically the same people who have won the last 2 elections. The only question is whether the elections were fair.