BLACK MAGIC IN BANGKOK

On March 21st a much revered Braham statue was destroyed by a mentally deranged man. The man was beaten to death by a crowd.

On the 22nd Sondhi Limthongkul, the head of the opposition trying to depose PM Thaksin, charged that the destruction of the statue was a plot by Thaksin who sought to maintain power through black magic. He offered no evidence of this. He may have just been running it up the flagpole to see if anyone saluted.

Of course he would have been laughed at in almost every country in the world. He would be especially ridiculed by journalists whom, as we all know, have the highest ethical standards of all the professions. Right?

Not so fast foreigner. This is Thailand. The two English language newspapers nearly broke their arms saluting. Both The Bangkok Post and The Nation immediately ran editorials supporting the black magic wackiness. Ethical standards mean nothing to them.

A few days ago there was a letter to the editor in The Nation which praised their unbiased reporting and editorials. There is little doubt in my mind that this “letter” was written by themselves. Nothing is beneath them.

Then this is the beginning of a Nation editorial on March 23rd:

He means “yes” when he says no. When he says: “Trust me, I am telling you the truth,” that’s when you should reach for a lie detector.

And like the late Richard Nixon declaring: “I am not a crook” during the height of the Watergate scandal, he was in fact switching on the red light, warning of the opposite.

Thaksin Shinawatra has put forth so much falsehood to the public and produced such and incredible amount of deception that he has begun to believe his own lies.

I would link you to all this stuff but the link disappears quickly. Here is *The Bangkok Post* for today.