In Thailand, A New Kind of Protest
April 1, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci – ATN) – Since late October, 2013, protesters across Thailand have taken to the streets, occupied rally sites, seized government buildings and made their grievances known to the world. They stand in opposition of the regime of Thaksin Shinawatra – a Wall Street-backed billionaire autocrat, convicted criminal, accused mass murderer, and fugitive who is openly running the country from abroad via his nepotist appointed proxy, his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.
Not entirely unlike other protests seen unfolding around the world, large mobilizations have periodically flooded the streets of Thailand’s capital city of Bangkok, at times attracting over a million protesters.
Image: One protest leader, Buddha Issara, traded in placards for pragmatism, purchasing a rice mill and operating it at his rally site in northern Bangkok. The mill is processing rice from destitute, desperate farmers and creating an ad hoc farm-to-city market to put cash from consumers directly into the hands of farmers as opposed to the corrupt middlemen and regime warehouses overflowing with unsold, rancid rice. If Thailand’s political future is decided by actions rather than words, anti-regime protesters like Buddha Issara and his followers are well on their way to victory. Others would be wise to follow his sage example not just in Thailand, but around the world. Find more images via ASTV’s Manager.co.th. |
However, unlike many protests, particularly those promoted heavily by the Western media, including the so-called “Arab Spring” and the recent “Euromaidan” protests in Ukraine later found out to have been led by Neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalist parties with Hitleresque names like the “Fatherland Party,” hollow slogans such as “democracy” and “freedom” in Thailand are overshadowed by more specific, better articulated, and enumerated demands.
Also unlike many protests promoted by the West where regime change in favor of a pro-Western client is the one and only true objective, protesters in Thailand have begun turning their placards in for pragmatism to solve the problems that have brought them out into the streets to begin with. Rather than empower others to speak and act on their behalf, they have elected instead to circumvent the dysfunctional electoral process and empower themselves through a series of direct action campaigns.
As long as the regime clings to power, the effects of its corruption, incompetence, and criminality will continue to reverberate across Thai society. Most acutely felt is the damage it has exacted across Thailand’s agricultural industry upon which much of Thailand’s work force depends. Mobilizing the resources of the state to solve this problem is not only untenable because the regime continues to hover above the levers of power, but also because more handouts – which created the problem in the first place – will ultimately not solve the plight of Thailand’s farmers, only compound them.
Image: Buddha Issara prepares rice milled at his rally site for sale. |
Money raised by the various fundraising activities has gone into the purchase of a modest rice mill. The mill processes about 1 ton of rice per day, brought in by desperate farmers unable to receive compensation from the regime. The milled rice is then sealed in bags and sold to Bangkok’s city goers. The proceeds are given back to the farmers. Buddha Issara has also asked farmers to bring other forms of produce – fruits and vegetables – to the protest site to likewise be sold. It is the first steps toward a farm-to-city market, short-circuiting the corrupt middlemen and rancid warehouses that constitute the failed rice scheme the regime has created.
Image: Bangkok Farmers’ Market. (Facebook page) |
Additionally, apolitical social enterprises like the Bangkok Farmers’ Market (Facebook page here) could also augment its progressive pro-farmer/consumer paradigm by integrating milling and distribution into both a business model and as part of their educational activities – showing and perhaps even teaching city-goers the process of milling and packing as well as expanding the network of “middleman-less” distribution.
Source: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2014/04/in-thailand-new-kind-of-protest.html
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Do the same in our country folks!
We Germans got an abundance of fresh and good domestic fruit and veggies every summer but only a minor part of it gets sold to town people. For, lots of it are harvested by non-professional growers, ie gardeners who are not allowed to sell it because of the rigid EU rules for the trading and the hygiene and external look of victuals of any kind.
I think this Buddha (he really seems to be a living buddha, a bodhisattva) points at a world-wide issue and shows us a practicable solution for it. The only thing needed to bring good veggies without GMO and pesticides back on everybody´s table are – people who don´t think of how long they work or whether they get maximum money, but only about doing the right thing with their backyard and small-acre-of-land crops.
Put “doing right” back into the first place. This is Buddha´s Path, and that of Jesus too.
If you do it by selling your surplus veggies to city people without having officials, supermarkets, and other middlemen (better call them hindrances) between, all the better!