BANGKOK, Thailand -- Tens of thousands of protesters are attempting to "shutdown Bangkok," blockading streets and crippling banks, businesses, and government ministries while authorities do little to stop the campaign to topple the elected government and replace it with appointed technocrats.

The American Embassy e-mailed a security alert to U.S. citizens in Bangkok, advising them to stockpile a "week’s supply of cash … [and] two-week supply of essential items such as food, water and medicine."

The embassy's alert, published in local media, fueled some panic buying.

At least eight people died in clashes during the past few weeks leading up to Monday's (Jan. 13) start of the blockade, and one protester was shot in the neck before dawn.

Throughout the day, festive protesters at seven key intersections and on dozens of main streets blew loud whistles, danced to live bands, photographed themselves in selfies, and listened to speeches by leaders atop huge makeshift stages.

Tens of thousands of protesters laid blankets and woven mats on the streets to sleep in the open during the warm dry weather or in small tents.

In the star studded nightfall memoirs of me look intently
Your heart was out there blowing in the breeze of
The Spring, how have you become forlorn to picture
The Summer heated the earth frenzied and droughty?
Together with viewing shady trees on gray mountains
Open your insight and see the dejection of my mind
The rock-strewn yard covered with the tiptoeing rosemary

That stands before your eyes, with aroma returns our sanities
Must I feel the gravity, illustrious arroyo of love that you nurture
At heart for years, as I took it to mean your moments of denial
You lived at; still you urge to soar high in the blue like a seagull

In the star studded twilight memoirs of me say obviously
Sweetly sad sounds the flute Sonata played a wonderful
Way to falling in love stroked you deeply from far and away
Over the moon else lit up in me no ebb but the flow of lust
On highways of my core a red carpet reception for you solely
Ignoring all social medians and preferences we know risks
Us becoming the outcasts, still we’ll float on romanticism

The young guys were half a block ahead of us. Nothing was happening except that they were walking. A police car pulled up behind them, slowed to their pace, aimed a spotlight at them.

They were African-American (did you guess?), numbering maybe half a dozen. They weren’t intimidated. Some of them stopped, stood staring at the police car, talking to it; this had obviously happened before. The spotlight continued to shine in their faces. Other young men crossed the street in front of the car and joined the crowd. The game went on for a while: the slow saunter, the cops driving along next to them, the light in their faces.

Chicago, Chicago! My kind of town, but not this. How weird to see the moment unfold as I was walking along Pratt Avenue, through my own ’hood. The energy I felt was immensely unpleasant — racial profiling, pointless discord. Young black men in Chicago have to know their legal rights; that’s simply the way it works. These guys obviously did.

Suddenly the light snapped off. The police car accelerated, drove away. That was it. No further confrontation. The young men kept walking. I was an observer in an occupied zone.

Citing a wide range of ailments from leukemia to blindness to birth defects, 79 American veterans of 2011’s earthquake/tsunami relief Operation Tomadachi (“Friendship”) have filed a new $1 billion class action lawsuit against Tokyo Electric Power.

The suit includes an infant born with a genetic condition to a sailor who served on the USS Ronald Reagan as radiation poured over it during the Fukushima melt-downs, and an American teenager living near the stricken site. It has also been left open for “up to 70,000 U.S. citizens [who were] potentially affected by the radiation and will be able to join the class action suit.”

Now docked in San Diego, the USS Reagan’s on-going safety has become a political hot potato. The $6 billion carrier is at the core of the U.S. Naval presence in the Pacific. Critics say it’s too radioactive to operate or to scrap, and that it should be sunk, as were a number of U.S. ships contaminated by atmospheric Bomb tests in the South Pacific.