Meanwhile in Thailand, journalists report that Bangkok's protest-occupation camps have been quietly consolidating, freeing up some traffic intersections that had been blocked for months, but the political crisis continues. According to Reuters, some demonstrators are moving to a central park to camp out while others are turning to the courts for help in bringing down the Yingluck Shinawatra government.

Our Man in Thailand says the protests have largely fallen off the US and European media's radar, in part because it's been going on so long. "The West likes a story with an Aristotelian arc, like the demonstrations in Ukraine," he said. "Rising action, climax, falling action." (To clarify, he said this a few days ago about the Maidan occupation, before Russian troops arrived.)

The Thai protests, he said, are more like watching the tides. They ebb, they flow, they might be shifting some sand or rocks around below, but it's hard to tell from the surface. The New York Times, OMIT said, has called the Thai protests over three or four times already. But the fundamental conflicts—between the Bangkok middle/upper-middle classes and the Shinawatra government—remain.

If this were peasant rebellion taking place in a remote province, he suggested, the government would be handling it very differently. But this is the middle of Bangkok and both sides have political and economic power, which makes the deadlock more difficult to break.