This is fairly random but I have to get it off my chest so I can stop ranting about it to Nancy every time I pick up a newspaper. Every article I read these days about the ongoing student protests in France starts off with some stupidly glib lead about how the French really know how to protest, how it's a respected part of their culture yadda yadda and then at some point the article goes on to list the major protests in French history starting with, of course, 1789, then 1968, then other protests throughout the 70s and 80s and then ... nope, they never mention last autumn. One article I read the other day did mention the "riots of disaffected immigrant youth" last year, but they, apparently, were riots, not protests. Meanwhile the current wave of (white) French youth romping through the streets are, indeed, wreaking havoc ... not on beleagured cars this time but on storefront windows. So WTF??!!! I mean these are NEWS WIRE stories from the AP and articles by newspapers like the South China Morning Post and other mainstream Western and Asian news outlets. I mean, the French Revolution doesn't count as a RIOT??!! BAH!!

I keep thinking that there MUST be something that I'm missing, some key difference besides race that would make one youth's protest another youth's riot. What-evah ... oh and one last thing. Those disaffected "immigrant youth" are the CHILDREN of immigrants by and large if I remember correctly ... at what point are you no longer an immigrant youth? I guess not until you wash all the race taint out seven generations later. Okay I am in a foul mood about this. Frogs and the journalists who cover them. They are not cool enough to get the extra "e" at the end. (see my profile description)

Oh yeah, so the rally last Wednesday night was fun, Bangkok is much nicer with all the shopping malls closed down. Anyway it was the last one before the election on Sunday, which Thaksin and his party won of course, since everyone cast blank votes. Bring on the Constitutional Crisis baby! A bunch of district have to revote because the winner didn't even get 20 percent of the vote.