oh, thailand

It would appear the red shirts are still a cohesive group and still active, although it looks like they're trying to be peaceful this time around. They lost a lot of public support last time due to the violence at their rallies. Their latest public action has been an attempt to gain celemency for Thaksin and the way they're doing it is quite impressive. They have a six million signature long petition and instead of just submitting it to the government, they made a big deal about it and marched to the King's house not only with a bunch of monks, but also carrying a copy of the petition traditionally, on long sticks. I say impressive because it's huge. I'm not particularly down witht the red shirts but it's quite a display.
Pictures here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081701043.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Also, Thailand just approved the domestic production of generic copies of important AIDS medicine. There's a big fuck you to the Intellectuals Properties Agreement.

Also there's a good documentary on democracy activists in Burma called "Burma VJ"
check it out here:
http://burmavjmovie.com/