Even as the World Watched II: Tasting the Kool-Aid

This journalist came around during some fighting.  He looked distressed and I asked if he was okay and he talked about someone who was hit.

This man also came from the direction of someone who was hit and I thought he might have seen it but I didn’t ask.

Just waiting.

Some of the body armor didn’t look so serious.  This body armor might create more work for the surgeon: after the journalist gets wheeled in, she might look at the X-Ray, pull the mask over her face, and realize she was going to have to dig out the bullet and pieces of the body armor.

Some of the helmets were made for a different job.

Tourist maybe?  I didn’t know but there was fighting just here.  Journalists are not screened from Thailand and require no special visas or permissions, and tourists definitely were coming and going from the fighting area.  Sounds like the U.S. government is today censoring the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico more than the Thais were doing here.  (The Thai government was censoring some websites, illegal radio stations and so forth, but I saw zero battlefield censorship.)

There were rumors of death threats from some protestors to journalists, but most protestors were not threatening.  There was serious fighting over the weeks with about 90 people killed and around 1,900 wounded.