the(new)mediaslut

Smartbrain thinks that the BBC’s reporter in Bangkok is either woefully ignorant or is hopeless biased for Thaksin Shinawatra.

This latest story has enough factual errors to make swiss cheese look solid.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7662548.stm

The nine protest leaders had initially been charged with treason and insurrection, but negotiations led to the dropping of these charges on Thursday.

Negotiations had nothing to do with it. The Alliance’s lawyers appealed against the arrest warrants. That appeal was not taken into consideration and the charges persisted. They appealed the rejection and the court of appeals said that the lower court must consider the appeal. When the lower court finally did consider the appeal, it ruled that the arrest warrant for treason was not valid and dropped it.

In other words, negotiation had failed long ago and it was through a lengthy process of appeals that the Alliance got the charges of treason overturned. That is a big difference. No leeway was made by the government on these charges, but it was the courts that finally overruled the government and the police.

However, police, journalists and other witnesses say the protesters carried guns, iron bars, machetes, slingshots, firecrackers and bottles in their attacks on the police, 20 of whom were seriously wounded.

Perhaps Mr Head should have gone to the frontlines and see the carnage for himself. Yes, there were lots of bars, but Smartbrain did not see a single machete. Some slingshots yes and bottles? Yes thousands maybe tens of thousands of plastic bottles were thrown at the teargas. Thrown not as a weapon (plastic bottles would only at most give the police a bump on the head) but to disperse the tear gas.

A more activist judiciary has in recent months laid several corruption charges against Mr Thaksin and his wife Pojaman. It has also deposed Mr Thaksin’s ally, former prime minister Samak Sundaravej.

Head does not understand the judicial system in Thailand. The judiciary here does not, as it put it, lay charges against anyone. They could not even prosecute a case against Thaksin’s lawyer for trying to bribe court officials. It is the public prosecutor or counter corruption commission (or, the military appointed one-off Assets Examination Committee) who can bring forward these cases and only them.

On a side note this is one of the reforms demanded by the alliance, that people can sue politicians directly without having to go through the police who often drop cases or let them lapse.

PAD argues that the largely rural base of support for Mr Thaksin is uneducated and says the voting system should be changed from one-man one-vote, to a more controllable system of professional constituencies.

The Alliance believes the rural population are ignorant rather than too uneducated to vote. There’s a difference here. Most believe that nobody would vote for Thaksin if they knew what he did, not that they are too dumb to vote.

Sigh. To think I used to like the BBC.