So on March 5, as my friend Dora lay recuperatin in the hospital, Nancy and I thought we would take her husband Jon out for a good time. So where better to take in the sights and sounds of Bangkok than at a mass political rally calling for the overthrow of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra?!! They have been having these rallies (or "mobs" as they all them in Thai, i.e. using the English word "mob") since January when my former boss tired of his illegal talk shows in the park and decided to up the ante with anti-Thaksin rallies calling for him to step down. They have been partly successful, at least on paper -- Thaksin has called for an April 2 election. Of course, he also pointed out that he was democratically elected by 19 million people and had no reason to suppose that they wouldn't re-elect him, a fact that his detractors are painfully aware of and so have called for a general boycott of the election by all opposing political parties. They have plenty of reason to be enraged with their PM -- much of this public outrage was sparked by the recent sale of Thaksin's family's company Shin Corp to a Singaporean company. Shin Corp is a massive telecommunications company that owns all of Thailand's satellites and was built on state concessions made to Thaksin in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He has become a billionaire since then. And, thanks to loopholes in Thai tax law, his family made the 1.8 billion dollar sale (that's in USD) without having to pay a dollar in taxes. Oops. The protests were for naught, however -- the sale has gone through without a hitch and interested parties can now buy a share of the Singapore company in question on the Thai stock exchange. Anyway, what makes this rally interesting is the immense gulf between Thaksin's supporters and detractors -- most of the country, meaning the poor and the rural who have greatly benefitted from Thaksin's socialized healthcare scheme and village loan program, love the guy. The middle and upper educated classes loathe him. Guess who there is more of in this country. Oh yeah the muslims in the south hate him too but that's just because he has them arrested and tortured on a regular basis. Anyway, fun was had by all, including Jon!