Free Fire Zone

Greetings,

A modified version of this entry was originally posted 28 April. Future tense in the present tense Bangkok tick tock. The alarm bells are ringing. Ding-dong, the witch is dead.

Central Bangkok is now a free fire zone. You know it's come down to the basics when citizens trapped like rats fight with sharp bamboo poles, slingshots and stones against tanks, armored personnel carriers and frightened conscripts.

They shoot arrows at helicopters. Amazon Indians tried this tactic. The arrow of time points to entropy and chaos.

David and Goliath. The city is a glass and brick jungle. Welcome to the urban jungle. In real time.

Arrows, slingshots and rocks. Primitive vs. Machine. Avatar.

A sniper takes out a man in fatigues. Fatigue sets in. Poor people say, fight to the death. A man with a wheelbarrow rolls through the city village, "Bring out your dead, bring out your dead."

A spokesperson says. Starve them out. Turn off the electricity. Give them a taste of high tech military power. Liberate the masses. 1984. ONE STATE rules.

Citizens wait for an 82-year old king to say something like, Go home. Go back to your poor rural villages. Support glass and brass high rise city development. Support the monarchy. Why is it anarchy? Mon-anarchy. It's the rule of law says the government. Our law. We print money. We hire armies. We make laws. Obey or die. Guns and intimidation and inequality and laws. 

The poor need affordable food, clean water, opportunity, health care, fair wages, education, and so forth.

It has been reported, via movement sensors people dance a little faster as explosions scatter metal, debris and death outside the neon splashed venues. The DJ simply turns the music up a decibel level drowning out the yelling and screaming of red shirts, yellow shirts, polo shirts, ambulances, innocent victims and bass driven hip-hop tick tock.

Red shirts represent the poor people. Yellow shirts represent the middle class.

"Poverty and corruption has absolutely nothing whatsoever to say or do about this issue," said B.S. Sympathy, a well respected scion of foreign banking firms, investment and real estate development companies.

She spoke from her heavily fortified villa in an undisclosed Bangkok location while eating caviar, drinking champagne and petting twin poodles named Lucky and Fortunate. "Let them eat cake."

The Department of Tourism said this will have no effect on:

a) tourists desperate to get out
b) tourists desperate to get in
Ships from England are now standing by in Bangkok sewage canals to evacuate nationals.

"....But taken together, they suggest a campaign by shadowy elements in Thailand to stir fear and create a sense of instability."

It's highly plausible to insert the country of your choice in the aforementioned sentence other than Thailand. You have roughly 170 choices. Start with the letter A and work toward Z, say, Algeria, Afghanistan, Bulimia, any central Asian country, China, and so on.

They stare at you from the vacuum of their eyes and say, "Would you like to make a deal?"

Metta.