Greg Jorgensen’s television screen tells one story of the Red Shirt protest in Bangkok, but the Calgarian’s view is very different from his apartment window.
Jorgensen has lived in Thailand’s capital for nine years and has recently begun bangkokpodcast.com.
He and fellow Canadian Tony Joh recently posted the first of their weekly podcasts, discussing first-hand their account of the escalating protest.
“When you’ve got a multimillion-dollar organization selling news, the tone is always going to be a lot different from a dude sitting behind his computer just telling you what he sees with his own eyes,” Jorgensen told Metro via Skype yesterday.
“Western media likes to play that up. I mean, let’s be honest — CNN is not going to waste valuable air time of a dude sitting on a chair eating a bowl of noodles.”
What Jorgensen sees is a city that is “95 per cent” business as usual — aside from select areas of Bangkok that are extremely dangerous.
“This afternoon when there was bullets and all this bulls— going on downtown — you know, army tanks rolling over barricades, people dying — I went for a walk in my neighbourhood and I bought some vegetables and I bought tea from my local tea guy. And there was dogs sleeping and kids playing.”
The situation could worsen, Jorgensen said, after the Red Shirts suffered defeat yesterday.
“The Red Shirt movement lost face big time today and most of them are regular people that want a shot at democracy,” he said.
“I think that some of them will be looking for a bit of payback.”
Jorgensen said he and Joh would post their next podcast Sunday.
“The scars of this event will be around for a long time. It’s probably the worst political violence Thailand has ever seen.”
