How MSM is still ignoring the Thailand Protest

[thekingsmen]

For over a few weeks now....there has been 2 big protest going on around the world, Ulkraine and Thailand. Only one of these protest have been getting coverage by the Mainstream media and the other is shunned in darkness. In this situation it tell you two things: Either it was set-up or it's real. One is real and the other one is fake.

Ukraine fake protest.
http://www.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-meets-oleh-tyahnybok-in-ukraine-2013-12

Thailand struggle....

December 23, 2013 (Tony Cartalucci) - For the third time in the past two months, hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters took to the streets from early morning until late night, paralyzing Thailand's capital of Bangkok throughout the day. Major roads were turned into walking streets as tens of thousands of protesters assembled at each of over 10 stages throughout the city's major intersections.


\




Images: (Top to bottom) Ratchaprasong, Taksin Bridge, Silom, Asoke, & Victory Monument. These are images of just some of the separate protest sites and marches organized across the city of Bangkok yesterday, December 22, 2013. Between the sites, a stream of thousands flowed as many participants sought to visit as many stages as possible throughout the day. Police dubiously claim only "135,000" turned up, when in reality the number was clearly well over a million.

 

[thekingsmen]

....
Thousands of protesters streamed between the stages, walking, riding, or driving miles from one stage to the other. Across the city, in every place of business, the signature Thai flag, ribbons, wrist bands, and banners could be seen carried by protesters as they took breaks to eat and rest. Each protest site was filled to capacity, with a steady stream of people flowing to and from the sites throughout the day. Mass transit systems ran out of tickets and eventually opened gates to let passengers ride for free.



Protest-numbers overwhelm Bangkok's mass transit.
The regime's police have claimed the number of protesters at 4pm was approximately 135,000 - which would still dwarf by nearly 3 times the largest pro-regime rallies at the height of its popularity years ago. However, pictures, accounts, security officials and the fact that people were constantly arriving throughout the day as others left to sustain the crowds indicate a million or more turned out. The city's elevated train alone moved over 700,000 people, most of whom were protesters.
Meanwhile, the regime's proxy prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, placeholder for her convicted criminal brother, fugitive, Thaksin Shinawatra who openly runs the country from abroad as he evades a 2 year jail sentence, multiple arrest warrants and a long list of pending court cases, has fled to Thailand's northern provinces where the remaining stronghold of the regime's "red shirt" mobs desperately attempt to cling to power through a campaign of fear and intimidation.
Despite overwhelming opposition, increasing awareness around the world of the cartoonish nepotism and illegitimacy of the current regime, Yingluck Shinawatra was once again placed at the top of the candidate's list for Thaksin Shianwatra's "Peua Thai Party" (For Thais Party) for upcoming February 2014 elections being boycotted by opposition parties.
Who are the Protesters & What Do They Want?
The protesters demand the end of the Thaksin Shinawatra regime. To understand why, we must first understand who Thaksin Shinawatra is and what he has done over the past decade:

• In the late 1990's, Thaksin was an adviser to notorious private equity firm, the Carlyle Group. He pledged to his foreign contacts that upon taking office, he would still serve as a "matchmaker" between the US equity fund and Thai businesses.

• Thaksin was Thailand's prime minister from 2001-2006. Has since dominated the various reincarnations of his political party - and still to this day runs the country by proxy, via his nepotist appointed sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

• In 2001 he privatized Thailand's resources and infrastructure including the nation's oil conglomerate PTT - much to Wall Street's delight.

• In 2003, he would commit Thai troops to the US invasion of Iraq, despite widespread protests from both the Thai military and the public. Thaksin would also allow the CIA to use Thailand for its abhorrent rendition program.

• Also in 2003, he initiated what he called a "war on drugs." 3,000 were extrajudicially murdered in the streets over the course of just 90 days. It would later turn out that more than half of those killed had nothing to even do with the drug trade. In this act alone, Thaksin earned himself the title as worst human rights offender in Thai history, and still he was far from finished.

 

[thekingsmen]

• In 2004, he oversaw the killing of 85 protesters in a single day during his mishandled, heavy-handed policy in the country's troubled deep south. The atrocity is now referred to as the "Tak Bai incident."

• Also in 2004, Thaksin attempted to ramrod through a US-Thailand Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) without parliamentary approval, backed by the US-ASEAN Business Council who just before the 2011 elections that saw Thaksin's sister Yingluck Shinawatra brought into power, hosted the leaders of Thaksin’s "red shirt" "United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship" (UDD) in Washington DC.

• Throughout his administration he was notorious for intimidating the press, and crushing dissent. According to Amnesty International, 18 human rights defenders were either assassinated or disappeared during his first term in office. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) claimed in its report, "Attacks on the Press 2004: Thailand" that the regime was guilty of financial interference, legal intimidation, and coercion of the press.

• Since the 2006 coup that toppled his regime, Thaksin has been represented by US corporate-financier elites via their lobbying firms including, Kenneth Adelman of the Edelman PR firm (Freedom House, International Crisis Group,PNAC), James Baker of Baker Botts (CFR, Carlyle Group), Robert Blackwill (CFR) of Barbour Griffith & Rogers (BGR), Kobre & Kim, Bell Pottinger (and here) and currently Robert Amsterdam of Amsterdam & Partners (Chatham House).

The protesters then, see the privatization and selling off of Thailand's natural resources and infrastructure, the pending FTA's the regime has been attempting to pass, the chaos in the nation's south, the atrocious "war on drugs," and the use of Thailand to serve the strategic interests of the West, in particular the United States, as intolerable. They believe that "elections" and an electorate that continue to return such a regime to power, time and time again, is illegitimate and in dire need of reform.
They have a list of very specific demands that set them apart from "color revolutions" backed by the US for the purpose of mere regime change centered solely on empty rhetoric like "democracy" and "freedom." The demands are as follows:

1. No Amnesty - This refers to an amnesty bill designed by and for Thaksin Shinawatra to absolve himself of a decade of plundering, lying, and mass murder. While the government eventually backed off, it was only because massive street protests were mobilized. When the Constitution Court declared the bill unconstitutional, the ruling regime announced that it no longer recognized the authority of the court - even while using constitutionality to condemn the protests. Even though it is considered "dead," Thaksin's entire future depends on it eventually passing. Protesters feel the only way to truly kill this bill, is to remove entirely the regime attempting such an absurd abuse of power.

2. Reform Before Elections - The anti-regime protesters are not, nor have they ever suggested that elections be permanently suspended. Instead, it is recognized that elections now, with no fundamental change to a system that has allowed a mass murdering convicted criminal to run the country by proxy from Dubai will only bring the entire nation back to square one.

3. Restore Article 190 - Article 190 of the Thai constitution requires that all treaties be approved by the parliament before they can be signed. In 2004, this mechanism had prevented Thaksin Shinawatra from unilaterally passing a US-Thai free trade agreement, and was one of many attempted circumventions of the law that led to his ouster in 2006. His nepotist-appointed sister Yingluck Shinawatra, has now managed to amend it making it possible for her to unilateral approve treaties (specifically unpopular FTA's). Protesters would like to see this reversed.

4. The Re-Nationalization of Thailand's Oil - Thailand's oil giant, PTT, was privatized and sold off to foreign multinationals under Thaksin Shinawatra in late 2001. Tremendous wealth has been siphoned out of Thailand and sent overseas, particularly to Chevron, one of the many sponsors on the US-ASEAN Business Council that directly supports the Shinawatra regime.

Image: Another issue protesters have is with the changing of article 190 which allows the regime to now unilaterally sign treaties without the parliament's approval. This will be used specifically to pass through a series of extremely unpopular free trade agreements with the regime's Western sponsors.
....
5. Keep Thailand Anti-GMO, Anti-IP - The current Thai establishment resisting the Thaksin regime has been stalwartly defending against GMO and "intellectual property" (IP) laws pushed on them by the United States, the UK, and the EU. In fact, one of the main points of attack by Thaksin Shinawatra's Washington lobbyists, was attacking the military council that ousted Thaksin for ignoring US pharmaceutical patents while producing cheaper drugs for poor patients. Regarding GMO, Monsanto has been desperately trying to overrun Thailand's food security but to no avail. Would it surprise readers to know that the US-ASEAN Business Council directly supporting Thaksin Shinawatra and his political machine also includes Monsanto?


6. Keep Thailand Sovereign -It was recently revealed that the current regime hired the US lobbying firm of Davenport McKesson to, among other things, help arrange the building of a US Navy base in Thailand. Of course, considering the other demands of the protesters, this is unacceptable. Not only must this deal be investigated it must be rolled back and the mechanisms that have allowed it to proceed as far as it did in the first place, be taken apart permanently.



Students from Chulalongkorn University had brought up this issue at the Siam site yesterday and signs denouncing the US Navy base had already begun to circulate. The regime has since denied this, and the original PDF found on the US lobbying disclosure site FARA has been promptly taken down (it can be found here on Scribd).

 

[thekingsmen]

BBC's Andrew Marshall helping cause havoc for Thai protesters with lies....

Just 2 days before deadly clashes broke out the night of November 30th, pro-regime propagandist Andrew McGregor Marshall inexplicably revealed the regime's plans to mass murder police and bystanders in a Facebook post titled, "News Update From the Bangkok Protests" which read (emphasis added):
News update from the Bangkok protests. Abhisit Vejjajiva plans to join Suthep Thaugsuban's illegal anti-democracy rally tomorrow to try to revive flagging numbers. Meanwhile, Thaksin Shinawatra's secret "black shirt" force of provocateurs, mostly made up of navy SEALS and marines, is back on the streets again for the first time since May 2010 and has infiltrated Suthep's rabble. If protests escalate they will seek to incite deadly violence ahead of King Bhumibol's birthday to discredit Suthep and his movement for good. The military remains divided and weak, and top commanders have no intention of intervening for now. Unless sanity prevails in the next few days, there will be more bloodshed on the streets of Bangkok in early December. Marshall claims that a "very reliable source" has passed this information onto him, and assured fellow regime supporters that "if protesters kill civilians or police, that does not discredit the government."


Image: Screen grab taken of Marshall's Facebook link containing the leaked regime conspiracy to kill in the name of the protesters, as well as assurances that his sources are "very reliable," and that the plan would not discredit the government.
....


Two days later, both regime supporters and students were killed in night clashes near Ramkamhaeng University, but the only gunmen caught on camera were black-clad militants associated with the regime. While the police claim they've caught two students involved in the death of one regime supporter, the police have made it abundantly clear they are not impartial servants of the law, but rather loyal servants of the regime. Nothing they say, even if it were true, could be considered credible without independent third party verification.

More recently, "red shirt" regime supporters have been making disturbing threats to carry out a campaign of armed violence if upcoming sham elections are disrupted by protesters. They claim "weapons" are being brought in by protesters to accomplish this, and it is this that they cite as their justification for their preplanned assault.

Today, Bangkok saw overwhelming numbers of protesters (and growing daily) attempting for the third day to disrupt election preparations, but were confronted with a concerted and brutal crackdown. The death of a police officer is being used, just as the flagman was used in 2010, as justification by the regime for further and more extreme measures - measures it is desperate to implement as it clings tenuously to power. Just as Andrew Marshall braged, it appears "police and civilians" have been intentionally targeted with the confidence it would not "discredit the government."

For Thaksin Shinawatra's followers, Asia Update's "case closed' explanation may be enough, but unidentified gunmen atop buildings operating apart from the protesters and giving the regime exactly what it needs to retrench itself against protesters, cast doubt on this narrative and at the very least begs for closer examination and a thorough investigation. The regime has the means, the motive, and a history of repeat offenses using extreme violence against others and against their own for political leverage. There is no reason to rule out this latest episode as the work of a desperate regime.

 

[thekingsmen]

Andrew Marshall lies continue...

Veteran journalist Michael Yon has now on multiple occasions pointed out the crass vitriol emanating from pro-regime propagandists who spend literally all day and all night engaged in name-calling, smearing, and other detestable, anti-social behavior. However, Yon refuses to wade into the gutter with his opponents and not only intelligently identifies and condemns their behavior, but does so with civility and class.

In his Facebook entry "For lack of Serious Journalists," he says this regarding vitriol spewed by ex-Reuters journalist Andrew MacGregor Marshall:



The person who writes these things, Andrew MacGregor Marshall, previously worked for Reuters in Thailand. After a tantrum, he quit Reuters.

Many people ask why it is so difficult to get honest, thoughtful reporting. That outlets continue to hire the wrong folks is killing the media industry.

Here the journalist insults a woman for no cause -- her English is perfect. She obviously is well educated, and smart. So sad to see journalism dying. After weeks of verbal abuse by Marshall, regime thugs would firebomb protest leader Chitpas Bhirombhakdi's home. Yon would add to the comment section of his original post by stating:

Her car got firebombed the other day and she responded by going to work. That is a vote of confidence. Indeed, this "stupid rich girl," in the face of violent intimidation, pressed on with her cause, proving with actions that the baseless, mere words of Marshall were just that - baseless.

Both Yon and Chitpas leave Marshall looking silly, childish, sorely lacking the legitimacy his former position at Reuters had granted him, and most importantly - alone in the gutter. Not only does Yon respond with facts to counter the crass, baseless insults leveled by Marshall, he demonstrates to his audience both his respect toward their intelligence and maturity, as well as a dedication to civilized discourse. This doubly validates his position and serves as an example for all in the anti-regime movement to follow.

Building Bridges & Hope, Not Barriers & Desperation


The worst possible thing one can do when engaged in any conflict is to make regular folks on the other side of the divide feel threatened. No matter how righteous your cause is, any fear you create will only cause your opponents to circle their defenses tighter and to resist with greater desperation. It was the great Chinese strategist Sun Tzu who said:

Place your army in deadly peril, and it will survive; plunge it into desperate straits, and it will come off in safety. For it is precisely when a force has fallen into harm's way that is capable of striking a blow for victory. By pressuring the rank and file of your opponents, you are giving the leaders of your opposition a golden opportunity to galvanize a movement that might otherwise unravel.

Instead, build bridges designed specifically for different segments of the opposition's rank and file (police, farmers, politicians, laborers) to cross over, safely and without fear. As the regime continues to crumble, those who had supported it will see a clear and tempting avenue of escape. When they see others crossing over and being welcomed and treated well, the barriers of fear keeping them under the noxious clouds of the regime will lower and they will follow.

One example of this could be for the thousands of rice farmers that have been cheated by the regime's vote-buying rice scheme. In addition to pointing out the flaws of policy, a new policy and a place among the protest should be created for the forsaken farmers. As the regime continues to crumble, rice farmers will increasingly see that spot prepared for them as a tempting refuge from the regime's incompetence and corruption.

One of the strongest selling points of the current anti-regime protests has been the peaceful nature of 2, soon to be 3 mass mobilizations. People see the thuggery of the regime's "red shirts" evaporating before this organized force and feel safer. It is important for them to continue feeling safe. Ways to reassure them is to examine the crass demagoguery, vitriol, insults, intimidation, violence, and other ugly behavior that have become the hallmarks of the "red shirt" movement, and ensure that the anti-regime protests adopt the very opposite of postures - decisively condemning and disowning those who fail to do so.

Michael Yon, Chitpas Bhirombhakdi, and many others, prove that intelligent civility and courage is all one needs to make a difference and move the hearts of the people. Even those that do not agree with the ends of the protests, will at least agree with the means.

There is no point of entering the gutter and rolling around with the regime. The regime's place in the gutter is precisely what has made it so repulsive to begin with - by entering the gutter with it, we've simply become just as tarnished. Keep it clean, stay above the gutter, and don't just say your movement is better, prove it daily, hourly, and in every minute through actions that it is better.​

 

[Domingo Halliburton]

what signs do you see that makes one fake and one real?

 

[thekingsmen]

what signs do you see that makes one fake and one real?

I guess you didn't take time to read the articles. One of the reasons is Ukraine has been show on MSM papers, tv, etc and Thailand is barely spoken about when it's clearly a bigger protest and event. John McCain flew to Ukraine for the support of the opposition leader who is a neo-nazi( support the opposition to democracy by supporting nut-jobs). Journalists attacking the people of Thailand and supporting the Regime. Journalists supporting Ukraine's opposition. There is really no real motive why there is even protest in Ukraine other than the supposed wanting to be a E.U. member. That is clearly not Ukraine or it's people. Thailand's people have a legitimate reason. That reason is to get rid of a regime who has brutalized and killed students, activist and regular citizens for speaking up against Thai Regime's Policy.