<p>On-line political writer Wattana Sukwat, one of the many writers having their content blocked or deleted by the ICT Ministry under emegency rule said the removal of his 200 or so articles is not just undemocratic but akin to deleting his on-line identity.</p> <p>&quot;I am a like matrix removed [in the Hollywood movie 'The Matrix'] and no longer exists [in cycber space] ,&quot; he said yesterday (Thursday).</p>

<p>On Monday evening, this writer ran into a fellow journalist from a major newspaper at the red-shirt rally site and we shared our views about the protest. Here are some excerpts of the conversation:</p> <p>She: Most protesters are from the provinces and likely paid if not &quot;organised&quot; into coming to Bangkok.</p> <p>Me: Yes, there are many rural poor people, but there is no proof as to whether they've been paid. They mostly forged an alliance by relying on politicians to advance their political cause. It's not that different from the yellow-shirt middle class, who depended on the discourses of the old elite, the army and royalist ideology to advance their political agenda. Both groups forged alliances, period.</p>

<p>Leader warns any lethal crackdown on protesters will lead to full-scale civil war.</p> <p>Army tanks would roll down the streets of Bangkok to defend the protesters rallying at Rajprasong intersection if the government decided to use lethal means to dislodge them, a red-shirt leader warned on Friday evening.</p> <p>&quot;Soldiers would deal with one another. Tanks would fire at one another. And even if [the government] won, it would be on the rubble of ruins for everyone, &quot; Jaran Dittha-apichai told The Nation in an exclusive interview.</p>

<p>Some red-shirt radio stations have continued broadcasting despite orders nearly a week ago to censor and shut them down, thanks to loyal listeners, sympathisers and supportive communities coming to their defence. </p>

<p>Anger, anxiety and fearless defiance filled the air as tens of thousands of red-shirted protesters at the Rajprasong intersection geared up for an all-out battle with the government's security forces.</p> <p>They learned in the early afternoon that their fellow protesters had clashed with soldiers at the other main protest site along Rajdamnoen Avenue and Phan Fa Bridge. By early evening, at least 83 had been injured.</p>

<p>Red-shirt media and those identified as sympathetic to red-shirt protesters suffered heavy censorship yesterday as the government exercised its power under the emergency decree to cut communication lines among the red shirts, leaving society with only what the state views as correct and appropriate.</p> <p>It was a bid to reduce the crowd - but it invited more red shirts to the main protest venue at Rajprasong intersection and elsewhere.</p>

<p>No crackdown plan, says PM; police wanted to warn about Security Act</p> <p>The deployment of riot police and soldiers to close in on the dwindling red shirts at Rajprasong Intersection yesterday morning led to a rapid and massive reinforcement of crowds.</p> <p class="rtecenter"> </p>

<p>With the red-shirt rally into its third week now, a lot of Thai mainstream media outlets had ample opportunity to display their patronising attitude towards the lesser educated and poorer Thais who constitute the majority of the protesters. These media outlets have been sneering at the red shirts for their perceived naivete, political immaturity and violence-prone nature. In fact, the contempt displayed has been so blatant and numerous that a tome could be compiled from it.</p>

<p><em>Protesters try to distance lower ranks from commanders</em></p> <p>Tens of thousands of red-shirt protesters tried to score a symbolic victory yesterday by trying to cajole troops deployed at eight spots around old Bangkok, mostly inside temples, to return to their barracks.</p>

<p>As the political standoff continues, Pravit Rojanaphruk talks to &quot;Luke Chao Na Thai&quot; or &quot;Thai Peasant's Son&quot;, an influential red-shirt intellectual whose articles under the pen name is widely followed by many middle-class red shirts. &quot;Luke Chao Na Thai&quot; was educated in Thailand and England. He is a bureaucrat in his mid forties who kept his real identity secret due to his bureaucratic status. His father is a humble peasant from a province in the lower Northern region of Thailand.</p>

<p><em>Many in capital's working and lower-middle classes clearly sympathetic</em></p> <p>The massive 20-kilometre-long red-shirt motorcade around Bangkok yesterday proved beyond doubt that many working-class and lower-middle-class people in the capital support the red shirts, as they came out in force to wildly cheer the caravan as if their liberators had arrived.&nbsp;<em>(See photos and video clips inside)</em></p>

<p>The mainstream mass media has been so busy blasting Thaksin Shinawatra for being the cause of all political evil that it has failed to see the seeds of the class struggle that have been germinating since the 2006 coup. Nevertheless, the attacks on the old elite have been unprecedented.</p>