Lastly, I felt like the red is better off without people like The Three Amigo, Weng, or Arisaman (and I hope Thida can go soon).
And of course you could say Thaksin, but that would be a dream. The left’s fantasy of taking over the red shirt movement and turning it into a genuine popular pro-democracy movement was always just that, a fantasy. The unfortunate thing is this fantasy gives the cover people like Amsterdam need to effect good PR. (And yes the bodies were good PR.)
To be more exact, when Abhisit promised the early elections as a compromise and the telephone conversation between the UDD leaders in Bangkok and their leader abroad discussed this, why was it only Veera of the first generation leaders who said ‘enough is enough’? Was he the only one who was willing to stand up to Thaksin and say ‘you’ve got your bodies already so let it go now’?
You have to understand that the UDD specifically demand election “before” September, you know why that’s the case? because the promotion process start in September and finish by October, the reason to have the house dissolve before September was to prevent hard-core royalist align like Prayuth to take the Chief of Army position. Abhisit offered November death-line, well behind the promotion session, that defeat the whole purpose of demanding house dissolution in the first place. As long as Prayuth is there, Abhisit always got more chance to come back.
Furthermore, if Veera really wants no bodies then hell he should not stage the protest with such a weak demand in the first place. But thank god he did, now at least a large part of the Red knows what they are up against.
Lastly, I felt like the red is better off without people like The Three Amigo, Weng, or Arisaman (and I hope Thida can go soon).
It seems to be a regional phenomenon now. The author is writing about Burma but will also talk about Laos. The BBC has made a couple of programs recently about similar problems in Cambodia although not only Chinese companies are involved there. One can find Thai and even Australian owned companies operating there.
When we consider that it is a Chinese economic mechanism that is helping to drive this conversion of land, we might wonder exactly what is happening to the flow of amphetamines produced in these areas. Since the fields are no longer used for poppy cultivation to the same extent as they were in the 80’s and 90’s we must see that the current developments are keenly tied to the northern Wa and Kachin states adapting to new market forces. Ever since they stopped producing poppy and began to substitute their crops the issue of utilization of the land itself became much more of an issue. Amphetamine production does not require any agriculture investment so the autonomous regions of northern Burma have been able to shift their emphasis from protecting the land (as their source of income through opiate trafficking) to other matters. We can see however that their shift away from the land has led to others encroaching up on it. Chinese developers would never have been able to turn these lands into rubber plantations or otherwise if they were still used for poppy production. There would have been armed resistance.
Seeing that the 2009 red shirt protest has been brought into the thread, let’s look at it again and its relationship to what was to happen in 2010.
Many would look at the failure of the 2009 protest to be the ease with which the army dispersed it. To be sure the protesters had put up a good show against the albeit friendly police force, but once the army moved in the protesters moved out extremely quickly.
Now there is I suspect little argument that the make up of the 2009 red shirts was far different to that of the 2010 red shirts. The intervening year had seen their massive recruiting campaign in the northeast. There was far less reliance on those working for, or under obligation whether paid or personal, to some of the provincial political bosses, as we had seen in 2009.
In fact to put it crudely the failure in 2009 for the leader of the red shirts was a lack of bodies. The two possible bodies they could produce were matched by two Muslim locals shot by red shirt supporters. Even Robert Amsterdam couldn’t make a mock case for the ICC out of that.
Of course it would take someone truly evil, in whatever religious or moral code you follow, to say that what we need in 2010 are more bodies. Even I have difficulty in putting that blame on any of the Thai politicians. But let’s just suppose for a minute that the exiled leader did say that from his cozy life abroad. In that case why weren’t the April 2010 deaths enough?
To be more exact, when Abhisit promised the early elections as a compromise and the telephone conversation between the UDD leaders in Bangkok and their leader abroad discussed this, why was it only Veera of the first generation leaders who said ‘enough is enough’? Was he the only one who was willing to stand up to Thaksin and say ‘you’ve got your bodies already so let it go now’?
The sad outcome was watching the red shirts being left leaderless as their leaders handed themselves over to the police escorted by friendly MPs. The rampage and looting that followed certainly set up the situation for the military killings that followed. It’s worth remembering that Robert Amsterdam was already giving advice to Thaksin at this time. I wonder how much input he had into the timing of the end of the protest.
A taste of peace in Kachin land? “…Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To larceny, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace.”
I do take the Amsterdam report with the necessary grain of salt, especially the claims that the militants and M79тА▓s were, according to this report, only agent provocateurs by the military. There is a hardcore militant element in the Red Shirts (and also in the Yellow Shirts, and also the state has on several occasions used outside militants for hire). This is only natural in such a conflict.
Thank you Nick. Although we obviously take opposite sides regarding the UDD, it is always good to have you bring a little reality into the thread. At least we know you are talking from personal experience of what you saw at the time, unlike many of the more extreme posters from either side.
I would just like to remind everyone how I started my comment #5 which seems to be reaching a new record in condemnation on New Mandala. (Andrew and Nich the thumbs up/down is still a silly option in my mind and could stop some from commenting, but I may be biased;-) So back to how I started comment #5.
There is so much that can be criticized in both the military and civilian forces response to the UDD protest of April/May 2010, and yet Amsterdam has to turn it into a propaganda piece.
And there is much that can be criticized. Maybe the tactics that worked in 2009 weren’t going to work again in 2010. May be there were forces at play that didn’t want a repeat of 2009. It seems one side had adjusted while the other hadn’t.
Yet after having praised you Nick, why do you still trundle out the same old line from 2009.
I have no proof of any dead (yet enough witness statements that there may have been a few)…
If there were it would have been known by now, and there were enough mobile telephones with cameras to have caught some of it. Tarrin the video doesn’t really prove anything and the death of the two security men from Bangkapi is still a mystery. There always seemed to be something else at play in their deaths and the UDD never really claimed them as their own.
If “well-meaning but uninformed humanitarian aid workers” were well defined perhaps some of them would self-identify and respond. If they were named then they would have to respond. As the article stands, we are all left wondering who the heck he is talking about.
Does Geoff Osborn #26 knows Channel 5 belongs to the Military??? I guess not….Some people just don’t understand the theory ” get the info than make your stand”…. 🙂
“You all, also fail to realize, along with “Sgt. Witty’s” flawed report, and Robert Amsterdam’s disingenuous conclusions, that the 2009 riots were put down by Colonel Romklao without a single protester death (despite ridiculous and to this day still unsubstantiated claims by Thaksin that say otherwise) .”
Please watch this clip http://video.mediathai.net/detail_clip.php?tv=3910
and tell everyone that the taxi at the end of the clip survive the ordeal. The news was totally black out and so many people disappear during the crash of 2009, not to mention 2 bodies of 2 red shirt found on the bank of Chao Praya river with their hand tired behind their back and drown, its not even unsubstantiated claimed, there are several news reporting but only briefly (for obvious reason).
It can be used just as a mortar, and in fact, using it in this manner is the only way to have achieved the shots that befell Silom that day. The grenades, following an arched trajectory, anywhere from 45 to 60 degree inclinations would appear to have “fallen from the sky.”
That is exactly why the location of the trajectory is impossible to determine since it could be coming from anywhere, hell it can even came from right above the BTS station for all we know, there’s not a single obstruction from CP tower to the Silom BTS station, you can literally see the roof of the Silom BTS station from almost every building there so direct fire is certainly achievable from within those building. While if you are on the red shirt site which situated around Rama IV monument, its very hard to get the grenade to travel that far in, considered you have to shoot above the cross over bridge so you going to have to stand back further make an accurate shot even harder.
And note that the red has becoming less and less Thaksin fanatic like they do in 2009, I hope you see a picture taken last month showing a group of red shirt waving french bread around, I hope you know what that mean.
“James/James P.” (one and the same, I assume), as has been pointed out so many times, Amsterdam is counsel to UDD – it is not his job to present a balanced report as if he were a judge. It is his job to present the case for his client and to produce evidence to support that case. Others, yourself included, are fully entitled to dispute his case and try to rebut the evidence he presents but – while you pointlessly bemoan what he doesn’t mention – you still produce nothing that rebuts his body of evidence. Neither do you manage to show what makes any of his case “disingenuous” – an accusation you level twice.
As to “Defying lessons of history clearly establishing that using excessive violence not only undermined the military’s power, but would force their ‘proxy government’ to step down…..”, you notably miss or choose to ignore that a key part of Amsterdam’s case is that the military were deliberately setting out to provoke such a level of reaction from the protesters that the Army’s response to it would not be regarded as excessive. That’s the “clear explanation as to why” you ask for – and it comes not from me but from Amsterdam’s submission. Astonishing if you missed it – rather less so if you simply chose to ignore it.
As I’ve noted before (including to you under your more common web name, I suspect), what you describe as Seh Daeng’s M79 “admission” is otherwise and equally well characterised as more of the wild and self-aggrandizing talk of a (to put it mildly) self-evidently erratic and exotic individual who frequently contradicted himself not just between separate occasions but also on the same occasion. Granted that his colourful spoutings provide a useful harvest for you to cherry-pick – but they just don’t amount to the “smoking gun” you clearly want to portray it as.
Your theory about where M79 grenades may have come from is simply that – your theory. To state the obvious, feasibility is not proof – however much you may want and promote it to be. Given the conflicting eye-witness and forensic accounts behind what various people think was the source of the Silom grenades, your proposition just has to take its place with others. None of your admirable first-hand knowledge of M79 use changes that – any more than it identifies whose finger was on the trigger.
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James/James P (are you the same person?): I don’t think Mr Amsterdam has a duty, as a lawyer, to be “objective”. If Witty’s analysis is “flawed”, & it gets into court, the Thai government will have ample opportunity to produce evidence to show that. So far, they haven’t produced any convincing evidence of anything. In fact, they have withheld so many post-mortem reports, DSI reports, etc., that it is little wonder that most moderately intelligent people are getting very skeptical about the statements of people like Sanserm, Abhisit, & the Commander-in-Chief. The recent Reuters leaks of parts of the DSI report and the statement of ‘Witness 22’ (a group of Thai Generals), published this week, are horribly shocking and go far beyond the worst suspicions of most people – in the case of ‘Witness 22’. What do you have to say about that? Please don’t respond if all you can say is that they may have been manufactured. I doubt that either Reuters or Amsterdam would have done that, & I would expect that both would have, as a matter of course, done fairly extensive checking before they released them. So, I’m almost convinced. I’m not a Thaksin fan, BTW. But I must admit he was a better administrator than anyone since, & he’s looking better & better by the day.
If the Thai elite( what a misnomer ) only had half a neuron and a quarter of a synapse connection available for intelligence processing , they would realize that what is coming at them is precisely what is happening in Tunisia , Egypt and soon Algeria or Lybia .
Sadly, it’s obvious that (again) no one will be held accountable for the killing of pro democracy protesters – that’s how things work in the Thai system (in recent days we have seen that HM in Egypt also thinks those old tricks can keep working).
However, lets not lose sight of why the ptotesters were there in the first place – they were asking for a timely election.
(timely = before the new military chief was appointed)
The other thing we shouldn’t lose sight of is how Abhisit came to power, the deals & other interventions that took place to maneuver him to the position, and most importantly who or what has held it all in place? (when other governments facing much less pressure would have long ago crumbled)
James: Lets hear what you think has held it all together?
“The 2010, April 10 dispersal of the crowd followed the exact same strategy Romklao employed in 2009, firing into the air and advancing onto the crowd.”
I do take the Amsterdam report with the necessary grain of salt, especially the claims that the militants and M79’s were, according to this report, only agent provocateurs by the military. There is a hardcore militant element in the Red Shirts (and also in the Yellow Shirts, and also the state has on several occasions used outside militants for hire). This is only natural in such a conflict.
The Government does their PR/Lobby work, and so do the Red Shirts and Thaksin. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Nevertheless – this above statement is simply wrong. In the 2009 dispersal in the early morning, starting from about 4 am, the attack by Col. Romklao did not just consist of firing into the air, but also directly at people. I have no proof of any dead (yet enough witness statements that there may have been a few), but i have clear proof of injured people. I was there, at least one bullet from the military lines flew close enough over my head to have heard it (see my report: http://www.newmandala.org/2009/04/20/the-crushing-of-the-red-shirts/).
As to April 10 – there is clear evidence that the military has fired directly and indiscriminately into the crowd as there is evidence that snipers have been shooting and killing Red Shirts.
Porntip and her comments and opinions on explosives have been completely exposed as fabricati0ns as she uses the discredited GT 200 wand in her studies.
As proviouly discussed in Bangkok Pundit Comments, she does not actually disclose what the ‘evidence’ she has is. Nor does the report take into account the likely presence in a hospital setting of urea creams which contain nitrate, the possibility of cross contamination by common fertilizers it was a bathroom after all, so the posiblity of a gardener washing his hands is not an impossibility, nor the probable presence of various nitroglycerine compounds found in heart medications.
If you were a true lawyer in a western court, the ‘evidence’ would be availiable for review and cross-examination and thrown out promply.
You all, also fail to realize, along with “Sgt. Witty’s” flawed report, and Robert Amsterdam’s disingenuous conclusions, that the 2009 riots were put down by Colonel Romklao without a single protester death (despite ridiculous and to this day still unsubstantiated claims by Thaksin that say otherwise) .
The premise is that not only did the Thai military plan a violent, merciless crackdown on the UDD in 2010, but they did so years in advance, presumably before UDD’s 2009 gambit. Defying lessons of history clearly establishing that using excessive violence not only undermined the military’s power, but would force their “proxy government” to step down, it is suggested they specifically pursued this option anyway, without clear explanation as to why.
The 2010, April 10 dispersal of the crowd followed the exact same strategy Romklao employed in 2009, firing into the air and advancing onto the crowd. Their “backup armament” was probably brought to deal with Seh Daeng’s 300 men armed with M79’s he had repeatedly bragged about, and had brought with him, unarmed, as “guards” to several post Songkran 2009 UDD rallies.
Again, I know this isn’t what people want to hear, but it is a reality you need to explain if we are to believe this report or that Robert Amsterdam’s claims are anything more than a paid lobbyist’s desperate attempt to buy credibility to an otherwise discredited client.
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Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
Tarrin – 58
Lastly, I felt like the red is better off without people like The Three Amigo, Weng, or Arisaman (and I hope Thida can go soon).
And of course you could say Thaksin, but that would be a dream. The left’s fantasy of taking over the red shirt movement and turning it into a genuine popular pro-democracy movement was always just that, a fantasy. The unfortunate thing is this fantasy gives the cover people like Amsterdam need to effect good PR. (And yes the bodies were good PR.)
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
LesAbbey – 57
To be more exact, when Abhisit promised the early elections as a compromise and the telephone conversation between the UDD leaders in Bangkok and their leader abroad discussed this, why was it only Veera of the first generation leaders who said ‘enough is enough’? Was he the only one who was willing to stand up to Thaksin and say ‘you’ve got your bodies already so let it go now’?
You have to understand that the UDD specifically demand election “before” September, you know why that’s the case? because the promotion process start in September and finish by October, the reason to have the house dissolve before September was to prevent hard-core royalist align like Prayuth to take the Chief of Army position. Abhisit offered November death-line, well behind the promotion session, that defeat the whole purpose of demanding house dissolution in the first place. As long as Prayuth is there, Abhisit always got more chance to come back.
Furthermore, if Veera really wants no bodies then hell he should not stage the protest with such a weak demand in the first place. But thank god he did, now at least a large part of the Red knows what they are up against.
Lastly, I felt like the red is better off without people like The Three Amigo, Weng, or Arisaman (and I hope Thida can go soon).
Rubber planting and military-state making: military-private partnerships in northern Burma
It seems to be a regional phenomenon now. The author is writing about Burma but will also talk about Laos. The BBC has made a couple of programs recently about similar problems in Cambodia although not only Chinese companies are involved there. One can find Thai and even Australian owned companies operating there.
Rubber planting and military-state making: military-private partnerships in northern Burma
When we consider that it is a Chinese economic mechanism that is helping to drive this conversion of land, we might wonder exactly what is happening to the flow of amphetamines produced in these areas. Since the fields are no longer used for poppy cultivation to the same extent as they were in the 80’s and 90’s we must see that the current developments are keenly tied to the northern Wa and Kachin states adapting to new market forces. Ever since they stopped producing poppy and began to substitute their crops the issue of utilization of the land itself became much more of an issue. Amphetamine production does not require any agriculture investment so the autonomous regions of northern Burma have been able to shift their emphasis from protecting the land (as their source of income through opiate trafficking) to other matters. We can see however that their shift away from the land has led to others encroaching up on it. Chinese developers would never have been able to turn these lands into rubber plantations or otherwise if they were still used for poppy production. There would have been armed resistance.
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
Seeing that the 2009 red shirt protest has been brought into the thread, let’s look at it again and its relationship to what was to happen in 2010.
Many would look at the failure of the 2009 protest to be the ease with which the army dispersed it. To be sure the protesters had put up a good show against the albeit friendly police force, but once the army moved in the protesters moved out extremely quickly.
Now there is I suspect little argument that the make up of the 2009 red shirts was far different to that of the 2010 red shirts. The intervening year had seen their massive recruiting campaign in the northeast. There was far less reliance on those working for, or under obligation whether paid or personal, to some of the provincial political bosses, as we had seen in 2009.
In fact to put it crudely the failure in 2009 for the leader of the red shirts was a lack of bodies. The two possible bodies they could produce were matched by two Muslim locals shot by red shirt supporters. Even Robert Amsterdam couldn’t make a mock case for the ICC out of that.
Of course it would take someone truly evil, in whatever religious or moral code you follow, to say that what we need in 2010 are more bodies. Even I have difficulty in putting that blame on any of the Thai politicians. But let’s just suppose for a minute that the exiled leader did say that from his cozy life abroad. In that case why weren’t the April 2010 deaths enough?
To be more exact, when Abhisit promised the early elections as a compromise and the telephone conversation between the UDD leaders in Bangkok and their leader abroad discussed this, why was it only Veera of the first generation leaders who said ‘enough is enough’? Was he the only one who was willing to stand up to Thaksin and say ‘you’ve got your bodies already so let it go now’?
The sad outcome was watching the red shirts being left leaderless as their leaders handed themselves over to the police escorted by friendly MPs. The rampage and looting that followed certainly set up the situation for the military killings that followed. It’s worth remembering that Robert Amsterdam was already giving advice to Thaksin at this time. I wonder how much input he had into the timing of the end of the protest.
If only Veera would tell us what was really said!
Tasty morsels from Burma
A taste of peace in Kachin land? “…Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To larceny, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace.”
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
Nick Nostitz – 48
I do take the Amsterdam report with the necessary grain of salt, especially the claims that the militants and M79тА▓s were, according to this report, only agent provocateurs by the military. There is a hardcore militant element in the Red Shirts (and also in the Yellow Shirts, and also the state has on several occasions used outside militants for hire). This is only natural in such a conflict.
Thank you Nick. Although we obviously take opposite sides regarding the UDD, it is always good to have you bring a little reality into the thread. At least we know you are talking from personal experience of what you saw at the time, unlike many of the more extreme posters from either side.
I would just like to remind everyone how I started my comment #5 which seems to be reaching a new record in condemnation on New Mandala. (Andrew and Nich the thumbs up/down is still a silly option in my mind and could stop some from commenting, but I may be biased;-) So back to how I started comment #5.
There is so much that can be criticized in both the military and civilian forces response to the UDD protest of April/May 2010, and yet Amsterdam has to turn it into a propaganda piece.
And there is much that can be criticized. Maybe the tactics that worked in 2009 weren’t going to work again in 2010. May be there were forces at play that didn’t want a repeat of 2009. It seems one side had adjusted while the other hadn’t.
Yet after having praised you Nick, why do you still trundle out the same old line from 2009.
I have no proof of any dead (yet enough witness statements that there may have been a few)…
If there were it would have been known by now, and there were enough mobile telephones with cameras to have caught some of it. Tarrin the video doesn’t really prove anything and the death of the two security men from Bangkapi is still a mystery. There always seemed to be something else at play in their deaths and the UDD never really claimed them as their own.
Aung Zaw takes aim on Burma
If “well-meaning but uninformed humanitarian aid workers” were well defined perhaps some of them would self-identify and respond. If they were named then they would have to respond. As the article stands, we are all left wondering who the heck he is talking about.
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
Does Geoff Osborn #26 knows Channel 5 belongs to the Military??? I guess not….Some people just don’t understand the theory ” get the info than make your stand”…. 🙂
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
James – P
“You all, also fail to realize, along with “Sgt. Witty’s” flawed report, and Robert Amsterdam’s disingenuous conclusions, that the 2009 riots were put down by Colonel Romklao without a single protester death (despite ridiculous and to this day still unsubstantiated claims by Thaksin that say otherwise) .”
Please watch this clip
http://video.mediathai.net/detail_clip.php?tv=3910
and tell everyone that the taxi at the end of the clip survive the ordeal. The news was totally black out and so many people disappear during the crash of 2009, not to mention 2 bodies of 2 red shirt found on the bank of Chao Praya river with their hand tired behind their back and drown, its not even unsubstantiated claimed, there are several news reporting but only briefly (for obvious reason).
It can be used just as a mortar, and in fact, using it in this manner is the only way to have achieved the shots that befell Silom that day. The grenades, following an arched trajectory, anywhere from 45 to 60 degree inclinations would appear to have “fallen from the sky.”
That is exactly why the location of the trajectory is impossible to determine since it could be coming from anywhere, hell it can even came from right above the BTS station for all we know, there’s not a single obstruction from CP tower to the Silom BTS station, you can literally see the roof of the Silom BTS station from almost every building there so direct fire is certainly achievable from within those building. While if you are on the red shirt site which situated around Rama IV monument, its very hard to get the grenade to travel that far in, considered you have to shoot above the cross over bridge so you going to have to stand back further make an accurate shot even harder.
And note that the red has becoming less and less Thaksin fanatic like they do in 2009, I hope you see a picture taken last month showing a group of red shirt waving french bread around, I hope you know what that mean.
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
“James/James P.” (one and the same, I assume), as has been pointed out so many times, Amsterdam is counsel to UDD – it is not his job to present a balanced report as if he were a judge. It is his job to present the case for his client and to produce evidence to support that case. Others, yourself included, are fully entitled to dispute his case and try to rebut the evidence he presents but – while you pointlessly bemoan what he doesn’t mention – you still produce nothing that rebuts his body of evidence. Neither do you manage to show what makes any of his case “disingenuous” – an accusation you level twice.
As to “Defying lessons of history clearly establishing that using excessive violence not only undermined the military’s power, but would force their ‘proxy government’ to step down…..”, you notably miss or choose to ignore that a key part of Amsterdam’s case is that the military were deliberately setting out to provoke such a level of reaction from the protesters that the Army’s response to it would not be regarded as excessive. That’s the “clear explanation as to why” you ask for – and it comes not from me but from Amsterdam’s submission. Astonishing if you missed it – rather less so if you simply chose to ignore it.
As I’ve noted before (including to you under your more common web name, I suspect), what you describe as Seh Daeng’s M79 “admission” is otherwise and equally well characterised as more of the wild and self-aggrandizing talk of a (to put it mildly) self-evidently erratic and exotic individual who frequently contradicted himself not just between separate occasions but also on the same occasion. Granted that his colourful spoutings provide a useful harvest for you to cherry-pick – but they just don’t amount to the “smoking gun” you clearly want to portray it as.
Your theory about where M79 grenades may have come from is simply that – your theory. To state the obvious, feasibility is not proof – however much you may want and promote it to be. Given the conflicting eye-witness and forensic accounts behind what various people think was the source of the Silom grenades, your proposition just has to take its place with others. None of your admirable first-hand knowledge of M79 use changes that – any more than it identifies whose finger was on the trigger.
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
James #46:
Not true. As least 2 deaths were widely documented and reported by press.
So do some research and stop spreading lies. We get enough of that from the Prime Minister.
Look here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/13/thailand-bangkok-protests
No Computer Crime this time
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Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
James/James P (are you the same person?): I don’t think Mr Amsterdam has a duty, as a lawyer, to be “objective”. If Witty’s analysis is “flawed”, & it gets into court, the Thai government will have ample opportunity to produce evidence to show that. So far, they haven’t produced any convincing evidence of anything. In fact, they have withheld so many post-mortem reports, DSI reports, etc., that it is little wonder that most moderately intelligent people are getting very skeptical about the statements of people like Sanserm, Abhisit, & the Commander-in-Chief. The recent Reuters leaks of parts of the DSI report and the statement of ‘Witness 22’ (a group of Thai Generals), published this week, are horribly shocking and go far beyond the worst suspicions of most people – in the case of ‘Witness 22’. What do you have to say about that? Please don’t respond if all you can say is that they may have been manufactured. I doubt that either Reuters or Amsterdam would have done that, & I would expect that both would have, as a matter of course, done fairly extensive checking before they released them. So, I’m almost convinced. I’m not a Thaksin fan, BTW. But I must admit he was a better administrator than anyone since, & he’s looking better & better by the day.
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
If the Thai elite( what a misnomer ) only had half a neuron and a quarter of a synapse connection available for intelligence processing , they would realize that what is coming at them is precisely what is happening in Tunisia , Egypt and soon Algeria or Lybia .
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
Sadly, it’s obvious that (again) no one will be held accountable for the killing of pro democracy protesters – that’s how things work in the Thai system (in recent days we have seen that HM in Egypt also thinks those old tricks can keep working).
However, lets not lose sight of why the ptotesters were there in the first place – they were asking for a timely election.
(timely = before the new military chief was appointed)
The other thing we shouldn’t lose sight of is how Abhisit came to power, the deals & other interventions that took place to maneuver him to the position, and most importantly who or what has held it all in place? (when other governments facing much less pressure would have long ago crumbled)
James: Lets hear what you think has held it all together?
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
“James P”:
“The 2010, April 10 dispersal of the crowd followed the exact same strategy Romklao employed in 2009, firing into the air and advancing onto the crowd.”
I do take the Amsterdam report with the necessary grain of salt, especially the claims that the militants and M79’s were, according to this report, only agent provocateurs by the military. There is a hardcore militant element in the Red Shirts (and also in the Yellow Shirts, and also the state has on several occasions used outside militants for hire). This is only natural in such a conflict.
The Government does their PR/Lobby work, and so do the Red Shirts and Thaksin. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Nevertheless – this above statement is simply wrong. In the 2009 dispersal in the early morning, starting from about 4 am, the attack by Col. Romklao did not just consist of firing into the air, but also directly at people. I have no proof of any dead (yet enough witness statements that there may have been a few), but i have clear proof of injured people. I was there, at least one bullet from the military lines flew close enough over my head to have heard it (see my report: http://www.newmandala.org/2009/04/20/the-crushing-of-the-red-shirts/).
As to April 10 – there is clear evidence that the military has fired directly and indiscriminately into the crowd as there is evidence that snipers have been shooting and killing Red Shirts.
A Red Shirt perspective on Thai politics
I guess as a permanent exile, a certain square-faced man now counts as a know-it-all farang. And as for Chumlong, he’s an alien anyway.
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
BKK lawyer,
Porntip and her comments and opinions on explosives have been completely exposed as fabricati0ns as she uses the discredited GT 200 wand in her studies.
As proviouly discussed in Bangkok Pundit Comments, she does not actually disclose what the ‘evidence’ she has is. Nor does the report take into account the likely presence in a hospital setting of urea creams which contain nitrate, the possibility of cross contamination by common fertilizers it was a bathroom after all, so the posiblity of a gardener washing his hands is not an impossibility, nor the probable presence of various nitroglycerine compounds found in heart medications.
If you were a true lawyer in a western court, the ‘evidence’ would be availiable for review and cross-examination and thrown out promply.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/31322/forensic-scientist-pornthip-to-the-rescue/#disqus_thread
http://asiancorrespondent.com/28878/thai-pm-gt200-device-failed-test/
Expert testimony alleges criminal acts by Thai army in April-May 2010
You all, also fail to realize, along with “Sgt. Witty’s” flawed report, and Robert Amsterdam’s disingenuous conclusions, that the 2009 riots were put down by Colonel Romklao without a single protester death (despite ridiculous and to this day still unsubstantiated claims by Thaksin that say otherwise) .
The premise is that not only did the Thai military plan a violent, merciless crackdown on the UDD in 2010, but they did so years in advance, presumably before UDD’s 2009 gambit. Defying lessons of history clearly establishing that using excessive violence not only undermined the military’s power, but would force their “proxy government” to step down, it is suggested they specifically pursued this option anyway, without clear explanation as to why.
The 2010, April 10 dispersal of the crowd followed the exact same strategy Romklao employed in 2009, firing into the air and advancing onto the crowd. Their “backup armament” was probably brought to deal with Seh Daeng’s 300 men armed with M79’s he had repeatedly bragged about, and had brought with him, unarmed, as “guards” to several post Songkran 2009 UDD rallies.
Again, I know this isn’t what people want to hear, but it is a reality you need to explain if we are to believe this report or that Robert Amsterdam’s claims are anything more than a paid lobbyist’s desperate attempt to buy credibility to an otherwise discredited client.