Ten thousand angry middle class Thais rallied to demand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s resignation. They are accusing him of corruption and abuse of power. They’ve had it up to here with Thaksin, a billionaire businessman and once-enormously popular prime minister who has amassed power in the wake of the 1997 Asia Crisis, which began in Thailand, and has since eroded civic freedoms.

The Thais are rallying around around Songla Limthongkul, a former business partner and former political ally of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Songla is a media mogul who’s appalled at the his former partner’s business deals (a rumored $2 billion one with Temasek Holdings, a key Singapore fund run by the government, with Thaksin’s Shin Corporation, a satellite firm, is particularly infuriating, though there are mixed accounts as to whether this is really happening or not. Doesn’t matter, the point is, the crowd thinks Shinawatra is capable of big corruption.) Songla’s also appalled at his former business partner’s curbs on civic freedoms. The media mogul is enraged in particular at curbs on freedom of the press, which have never been worse than under Thaksin. A very good backgrounder from The Nation of Bangkok is here.

Freedom is so important to Thais, and billionaire Shinawatra is acting like an autocrat. The Thai king can’t stand him and now, apparently, the middle class can’t, either. That’s a very bad sign in a place like Thailand – these protestors aren’t the Seattle WTO rentamob, they are the real democratic revolution in the streets and the last time the middle class came to the streets over abuse of power – in 1992 – there was a military coup and then a series of weak and inept governments, something that was supposed to have ended with the strongly mandated election of Thaksin Shinawatra.

Sadly, it hasn’t. Now, the discontent is growing – big.

The Nation has the best minute-by-minute coverage as to what this is all about and here is one of the first wire stories. Updates to follow.