billgerat
The Harvester of Eyes
Registered: Aug 2000
Location: In a Blue, Blue State
Posts: 12544 |
Operation Papercut
Thai military drops "peace bombs"
Fri Dec 3, 7:30 AM ET
By Ed Cropley
The MOAO (Mother Of All Origami) Bomb
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Hundreds of Thai school children and air force recruits have loaded an estimated 100 million origami birds onto military transport planes in preparation for a "peace bombing" of the violent Muslim south of the country.
The little pieces of folded paper, to be dropped from the air on Sunday to mark the birthday of Thailand's revered king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, are meant to sow peace, harmony and goodwill in the three southernmost provinces, where an 11-month insurgency has claimed nearly 500 lives.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose government has struggled to get to the root of the violence, has defended his paper-bird scheme against opponents who say the government is just dumping 48 plane-loads of rubbish.
"Don't criticise against the wishes of the majority of Thais," Thaksin told Reuters on Friday at a sending off ceremony for the paper birds at Bangkok's military airport.
The birds, folded out of everything from bank notes to plastic sheets, covered the floor of an aircraft hangar to a depth of more than two metres (7 feet).
Ceremony organiser Group Captain Chakrapong Homkrailas put the number of birds at 100 million.
"I think this is some sort of world record," Chakrapong said, as ant-like columns of recruits and children carried thousands of plastic sacks across the airport tarmac and into the bellies of five Hercules C-130 military transport planes.
Some people in the mainly Muslim deep south, which has a century-long history of ethnic and religious hostility towards the largely Buddhist administration in Bangkok, question the symbolism behind the gesture.
In 1948, the Thai air force was called in to bomb parts of the south along the border with Malaysia to quell a rumbling Muslim separatist insurgency.
"The paper birds are not a traditional symbol for us," said leader of Abdullaham Abdulsamad of the Narathiwat Islamic Council. "It's a different culture. Our people do not understand what the birds stand for.
Thaksin's initial intention was to drop 62 million paper cranes, one for every person in the country. A media blitz, which included a cabinet meeting to teach ministers how to fold the birds, sparked origami fever the length and breadth of the land.
The birds will be flown to the provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani in Thailand's south, where they will be loaded onto 48 smaller planes for dispersal.
Whatever the differences between Thai Buddhists and southern Thai Muslims, who are ethnic Malay and speak a Malay dialect, someone will have to clean up tonnes of paper afterwards.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm..._thailand_birds
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That'll teach 'em! The Muslims will be forced to give up now.
__________________
"No matter what form you take, Aku, you will never defeat the side of righteousness." - Samurai Jack
Report this post to a moderator |
IP: Logged
|
![[new thread]](/images/vb/button_newthread_off.png "Post New Thread")
![[post reply]](/images/vb/button_newreply_off.png "Post A Reply")
12-04-2004 03:41 AM
