Or perhaps, more accurately, the beginning of the end of the beginning. Army troops have taken control of the perimeter of the Red Shirt protesters.
The inability, or refusal, to come to an acommodation with the Red Shirts will bear bitter fruit for the future. The bottom line is that the Red Shirts represent a prosperous rising rural class. They elected their man, Thaksin Shinawatra, to lead the country, only to have him removed by a military and they feel they have been shut out unfairly from power.
The army and monarchy are overplaying their hand. They can crush the red shirts in Bangkok, but we’ll see how they do against a rural insurgency. A rural insurgency they are begging for.
Beautiful country (I spent some time there as a teenager). Pity it’s led by a bunch of schmucks.