According to an opinion poll from the Bangkok Post, more than 80% of the population supports the coup in Thailand. Meanwhile, the military junta is sending orders to the troops on the ground: Smile.
In his speech, Chavez expressed regret that he was never able to meet Chomsky before his death. Chomsky, of course, is alive and well, and his book that Chavez brandished at the UN shot up in the best-sellers list.
in theory 
Do you mean 80% of the population in Bangkok supports the coup? I’m certain it can’t be 80% of the entire Thai population…
If that’s the poll from the newspaper, then the samples are those that read English newspaper.
However, the result looks the same in another poll, i.e., more than 80% in the samples… (more than 50% of the samples are not from Bangkok, but the poll didn’t say where these samples are from.)
You’re probably laughing, but I can understand why a lot of people here feel relieved… The political situation seemed to be at the dead-end. A lot of people were worried that in the next election, the ex-PM might win and things would go back to the deadlock situation again, and it might be that the ex-PM would remain in position for another long, long period.
Maybe implicitly we have been (and are) living in a country where things are always in contradictions… so it might not be so strange to believe that we will get a good democracy out of this undemocratic cycle of election, corruption, and coup.
I really wanted the ex-PM out, but definitely not by ways of guns like this. The more I think about this, the more I feel upset.
You can now find the whole Chavez speech on the web. The Chomsky-Bush episode is brief; the rest is pretty serious stuff. You can agree or disagree with it, but it is an interesting read.
But it seems that no media outlet really cares about what he had do say apart from calling Bush a devil and waving the book on the podium. In contrast, the full text of the canned speech by Bush from the previous day is all over the place.
jittat, why would I be laughing? I disliked the ex-Prime Minster as much as anybody. I just assumed that he had a large base of supporters outside of the urban areas. I mean, those were the people that voted for him for 3 straight elections, right?
I certainly hope that things will return to normal in Thailand soon. I do think that a good democracy can be born from this coup.
jittat, why would I be laughing?
I’m sorry, anonymous user. When I said “you” in the second paragraph I was thinking about the general audience on this blog.
Where is http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/nyregion/22chomsky.html getting its information? http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2083 has the entire transcript of Chavez’s speech, and he never even mentions Superman or Batman, or even Chomsky’s death from what I could see.
Sorry for the double post. The last
one got cut off:
Where is this site getting its information? A site posted above has the entire transcript of Chavez’s speech, and he never even mentions Superman or Batman, or even Chomsky’s death from what I could see.
Has there ever been a dictatorship supported by *less* than 80% of the population? 80% seems pretty low, since I think Saddam Hussein was getting upwards of 99.9% approval ratings.
(In other words, is there any reason to trust this poll?)
Another Anonymous wrote: Where is this site getting its information? A site posted above has the entire transcript of Chavez’s speech, and he never even mentions Superman or Batman, or even Chomsky’s death from what I could see.
The Times article says that the Chomsky’s death comment was made at a news conference afterward, not at the UN speech itself. The Times article doesn’t mention any specific location for the Batman comment, but a little googling suggests that it was also made at the news conference.