คำแก้ต่างของทนายรับจ้าง อัมสเตอร์ดัมให้แก่คุณทักกี้ The unfair attacks against Thailand's former prime minister. BY ROBERT AMSTERDAM | OCTOBER 27, 2010The former Prime Minister of Thailand Thaksin Shinawatra was recently featured in a negative light in Foreign Policy ("
Bad Exes," Oct. 1, 2010). As legal counsel to the prime minister, I would urge your readers to take a closer look at why he remains so popular among Thai voters.
I am privileged to represent the only leader in the history of Thailand since the establishment of the constitutional structure in Thailand in 1932 to complete a full four-year term of office (2001-2005). Prime Minister Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai party were then re-elected with the first single-party parliamentary majority supported by unsurpassed numbers of the citizens he served. Having won seventy-five percent of the seats in the 2005 elections, his administration only ended after an illegal coup, led by generals and shadowy members of Thailand's elite, in September 2006. Today, four years after the coup, we are required to defend him from a well-oiled propaganda machine that defames him on a daily basis, with the full weight of a strangled media, rubber-stamp courts and absurd parliamentary resolutions at its disposal.
After all the years of defamation, Thaksin's popularity persists because of the unsurpassed results his administration achieved in economic and social policy, rescuing the country from a devastating financial crisis. His leadership brought the impoverished population of the Northeast out of feudal darkness and into the light of basic rights and citizenship, a measure that has been bitterly opposed by an entrenched elite out of the belief that some Thais are meant to enjoy more entitlements than others.
Writing in
Newsweek in May 2010, Joel Schectman
argued that despite his flaws, Thaksin actually represented the "high-water mark" for Thai democracy and accountable governance. Noting the major successes in rural development and universal healthcare, the author argued that "from 2001 until 2006 he incorporated full participation of the masses and offered the country its best shot ever at a functioning democracy."
Like any political leader, Thaksin has his opponents and critics. But unlike the typical partisan bickering of a normal country, Thaksin's opponents have launched a slew of unsubstantiated cases in an attempt to criminalize him. The only charge that ever stuck concerned his wife's participation in an auction of public land. Although the land sale involved the payment of fair price, Thaksin was convicted of "conflict of interest" based on the finding that his wife should not have been allowed to bid in the auction while her husband was serving as Prime Minister. This conviction, by the way, was not carried out by an independent tribunal, but rather by a panel specially chosen by the very people who removed him from office.
False legal cases are a common tactic of the current government, and Thaksin is far from the only target. Hundreds of Red Shirt protesters have been imprisoned on specious allegations, more than 100,000 websites deemed inconvenient to the government have been shut down, while various laws from the computer crimes act to the internal security act to the ongoing state of emergency decree have created an Orwellian nightmare. Opponents of Thaksin recently carried out a massacre of more than 80 peaceful protesters, bystanders, and even some journalists, firing upon them in an indiscriminate and disproportionate fashion from rooftop snipers. Ever since the coup, the country has been backsliding on nearly every measurement of freedom of speech, civic, and human rights. For instance, Thailand slipped from the rank of 59 to 84 on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index between 2005 and 2009. Just yesterday, Reporters Without Borders
ranked Thailand 153rd in its annual "World Press Freedom" index; before the coup, Thailand was ranked 66th. And yet, faced with the reality of Thailand's deplorable descent into authoritarianism, certain sections of the foreign media can still be convinced that things were so much worse back when Thaksin was prime minister and the country was still a democracy.
When looking at the current Thai political crisis and the role of Thaksin, readers of Foreign Policy would do well to look beyond the travel-poster depiction of the country, and start asking why the Thai regime is still so afraid of free speech and so reluctant to hold a real election
คำย้อนคำแก้ต่าง ของคุณ YALL DUMBAZZ IMOAt Last, Amsterdam Exposed Without His Censor ButtonIt might surprise some (considering his advocacy for "free speech" and his hatred of "lese majeste") that our friend Robert Amsterdam actually LOVES censorship. He censors more than any spin shill I'm come across (on his blog and on HuffingtonPost). This will be fun, Amsterdam exposed without a Red Delete Button handy. Could be tough to control the 'message' without it, but he's a crafty fellow.
http://bannedfromhuf...-amsterdam.htmlThis is just an example of the kind of posts Amsterdam will censor. If he could explain what it was about that deleted post which offended him, I would appreciate being told what I already know. What 'offended' him, when other posts below it were more 'rude' and allowed visibility...was the links to Human Rights Watch and BBC which vilify his employer. He will let you abuse him, but not post polite truths about his employer. It's sweet!
(I dedicate the length to the 50 censored comments where I have attempted to counter Amsterdam's spin, but been conveniently censored, no matter how brief the comment, no matter how eloquent, no matter how polite.)
Rebuttal of Amsterdam's ridiculous Rebuttal.
1. You are privileged to represent the only person who can afford to pay you....how much, Robert? Or is that 'sensitive' information?
It's a valid question - because Thaksin is attacking the government with your expensive (impressive, in some respects - I'll never figure out how you get HuffPost to give you full censorship rights) services, and he's paying you with illegitimate wealth he didn't declare and has not paid taxes on. But it's not the fact that you're getting paid with dirty money that concerns me; it's more that Abhisit (Thailand's first PM with a reputation for probity) can't afford to match Thaksin's corrupt budget for smear / spin / PR campaigns. Your employer can afford you, because he's the most legendary corrupt politician in Thai history.
Abhisit cannot assign taxpayer funds to spend on full-time PR teams - he's too ethical, for starters. But it would also be inappropriate to spend taxpayer funds to hire shills to defend Thailand from Thaksin's (and your) attacks. They should should bring him to trial, his corruption and the evidence will convict him, and then sentence him to penance for his crimes.
Oh wait...no, there would be no point. Thaksin doesn't believe in the legitimacy of laws - not ones that tell him he can't do what he wants to do. He just abuses courts like the ICC for self-aggrandising and despicable purposes. ....
2. Ignoring the fact that your employer was buying up Parliament at reportedly B100,000,000 per MP in mid-night auctions (which ended up biting TRT in the behind, down the line no?), and that he never had a democratic mandate aside from that delivered by simply winning auctions for MPs to jump over to TRT; you skipped over a pretty important string of events in Paragraph 2. They are so important, your Rebuttal is effectively a string of lies.
Why do you think Thaksin would call a snap-election one year after winning 75% of the seats in the 2005 election? Don't answer. The answer is obvious. Why did he have a crisis of confidence when he held 75% of the seats, Robert? Could it be that Thailand knew those 75% of MPs was merely a purchased mandate?And that Thaksin knew they knew, and that it was all an expensive, corrupt sham.....
Rather than sit back on Robert's fabricated history and his 75% mandate, Thaksin snap-called another general election in February 2006 as a result of overwhelming pressure for him to resign and face corruption charges.
If the charges are "trumped-up" or "politically-motivated" Robert...why do you not seek the chance to clear Thaksin's very dubious name...in an International Court of some kind? Unless Abhisit, Thaksin has no country to run. None that would let him near power again, that's for sure.
Anyway, in 2006 the opposition parties boycotted the ridiculous snap-called elections, fully aware it was nothing but a diversion attempt by an under-pressure Thaksin. Also, they didn't have his illegitimately-acquired billions to just afford to run election campaigns every year like Thaksin / TRT wanted.
The Administrative, Supreme and Constitutional Courts were all in consensus, later nullifying the results as unconstitutional. But something happened which was very strange, Robert. Why did you omit these facts?
Two days after winning the uncontested 2006 'election', PM Thaksin resigned on national television, citing "respect for the King" and "unity for the country" as the reasons he was resigning. Why would your boss resign only one year after winning 75% of the seats in 2005, and then winning an uncontested election in 2006? The millions of protest votes cast by those intelligent enough to understand they had a lemon for a PM, sent Thaksin a message "WE DON'T WANT YOU - GO!"
So he did, in May 2006. He resigned, stepped down. No longer PM.
How Robert, how can he be removed by an illegal coup in September 2006? That's four months after he resigned, Robert! Did he win some election in the meantime?
Your employer was an illegal PM removed (arguably) 'illegally' - by the guys on the last line of defence, protecting the country and handing democracy back to the people. After your employer had stolen it...quite literally.
3. Your complaints about the "well-oiled propaganda machine that defames him" are simply nonsense. And I'll bother to extrapolate when you bother to explain your nerve in criticising censorship when you silence Truth on your blog and on HuffingtonPost.
For those unaware of the realities on the ground, Thailand's media are ridiculously free. WAY too free. Don't listen to a word of Amsterdam's rhetoric about censorship and lese majeste. The lese majeste issue is a distraction - Amsterdam and Thaksin are trying to start a revolution, a republican movement to overthrow the monarchy. This wouldn't concern me all that much, except they are NOT publicly-supported. Most Thais ADORE their King, and most are fully committed to the institution of the monarchy. Sorry Mr Thaksin. Sorry Mr Amsterdam. You can hark about having popular support for Thaksin all you want, but that does leave the question of "Why isn't Thaksin PM right now?"
Abhisit, trying to avoid loss of life in the riots, offered to dissolve the House and call elections for November 2010. Oh my! It's November 2010 right now! If what you claim is true, why did you both decide Thaksin should order his employees to renege on their acceptance of Abhisit's Roadmap? Your boss would be in power again, back to his own shenanigans. Unless the majority of Thais don't actually support him. Pity the reality so rarely matches with our fantasies. What can you do? Kill less innocents extra-judiciously, is one idea worth floating his way. Be less corrupt, is another. But you're the fancy lawyer, you probably have far better ideas.
4. Thaksin's oft-vaunted economic genius was little more than accidental Keynesian booming as a result of Thaksin's buying of popularity with taxpayer revenues. And proof of that fact is that Thailand's economy (meddling from convicted criminals causing billions of $ in losses aside) is still going strong. How about your employer? How did his economic genius pan out in the real world, once his hands were removed from the Thailand Till? I heard he got a taste of the GFC. Had to downgrade his private jet. Move down to a 7-star suite instead of the penthouse. Som nom na.
The 'impoverished' peasants you refer to, are very much in feudal darkness still. They do not understand democracy, they fight against a guy trying to give them a Welfare State "cradle-to-grave" cover (more than your boss has ever even promised them), they sell their votes to PTP and BJT candidates and then complain about "government corruption" (of their own elected representatives). They happily dabble in violence and arson fighting for a democracy that has been gifted to them by the elites they want to kill - in 1997 when they didn't even want it, in 2006 when they didn't even appreciate it, and in 2010 when they rejected it. They are clueless. And your boss uses them for his own purposes, and he loves to keep them stupid. The smart ones might think "Oh, Abhisit is offering me more! So long Thaksin!"
5. It is ridiculous that you have the nerve to attempt to argue that his corruption is "trumped-up charges". He was acquitted 8-7 by a corrupted court in 2001 when he should have been convicted and banned for 5 years for concealing assets - innocent 'mistake', those billions of shares in his maid's and driver's accounts? What a joke.
His lawyers are in prison for attempting to bribe judges with B2 million baht boxes of cash. Rather than claim he had nothing to do with it, perhaps you or Thaksin would like to explain just how exactly the B2 million boxes found themselves in the hands of Thaksin's legal team, who found themselves offering the bribes to the judges ruling on Thaksin's corruption?
6. False legal cases are a common tactic of Robert Amsterdam. Your colleague owes me $1,000,000 for my delivering and earning the 'award' in the other rebuttal article. I will bet that 1mil and another 1mil vs your 2mil that the ICC will not be impressed once they realise your abuse of their flawed protocol was unsubstantiated - do we have a deal? 2 mil v 2 mil wager for whether or not the ICC accepts your ridiculous smear case? I'll bet another 2mil after that, on their accepting a case to assess Thaksin's crimes against humanity. But we can discuss double or nothing wagers later.
7. You love using the word 'Orwellian'. But you do not live in Thailand. You are lying about the realities here in Thailand. The media is WAY too free, oh yes, you'd have to see the liberties they take for granted to understand how terrible they are (well, they're a bit like you - for the most part). They invent their own sources, they write opinion as if it was news, they claim to speak for X Y and Z parties and the public (whilst they're selling their opinions to the public). The editorial slants are just unfathomable - sheer vile slander on occasion, like at prachatai.com where the editors refuse to respond to questions why they've reversed their 2008 Editorial STAND and now support violence in a 180 degree reversal on all their positions (ah,but the other side is on top - they'll go back to their 2008 STAND if reversed I wager - and they'll cry out against violent protest once again). .
The only Orwellian censorship that I see routinely is on robertamsterdam.com and your portal network of trigger-happy censoring propaganda portals. The Thai dailies are full of attacks on the monarchy, lese majeste, slanderous attacks on political opponents, gratuitous publishing of violent threats under the guise of news, etc. No one is sanctioned. No one lives in oppression. Prachatai loves censorship. They just don't like being censored. And they're breaking the law in ways that are shameful - not honourable like Jyllands-Posten heroism.
8. You love to quote your figures and your %'s (very selectively, of course). I've embarrassed you a few times with quoting your favourite sources back at you (by 'embarrassed', I mean you delete the HRW or Amnesty link / quote).
Here are some figures your client should probably address:
* 2500 extra-judicial executions of innocents when your boss tries to wipe out the human genome which triggers cravings / addiction. Was he going for 65,000,000 and simply got lazy, stopping at 2500? Because you'd have to recode DNA or kill everyone to win that stupid War against Genetic Desire. How did he go in that war, is Thailand drug-free now? *facepalm*
* B15 billion declared by Thaksin family when became PM in 2001. B110 billion frozen in Thai accounts, over half of which was remitted back to him. Why? Was a deal made? Has he broken it? B10 billion to buy Manchester City FC (incoming wires from Cayman / Swiss accounts, undeclared income laundered by Thaksin whilst PM. If we believe Dubai's largest daily, another B100 billion frozen by the UK after he was charged with the Obvious. God knows how much $ he's got stashed across all his rogue nation home bank accounts. But all this laundered money, Robert. What does your client - innocent of corruption, squeaky-clean Thaksin, have to say about it? Namely, why he didn't pay tax on it. Namely, where did it come from? Namely, why did he ferret it out overseas for rainy days?
* 150 children still being used as human shields on the FINAL day of the 2 month riots in Bangkok. I was down there on Day 2 or 3 and there were thousands of kids. Clueless to the fact that your employer had 'organised' some firework in the form of MiB. Did you at least think of the children?
Abhisit did. Abhisit gave them 100 ultimatums, Bent over backwards to care for Thaksin's supporters. Unless Louis Vuitton store in Paris had a limbo stick, I think it's fair to say your employer didn't do squat.
MY FINAL POINT: These Red Shirt supporters of your boss, languishing in prisons for breaking crimes they were tricked into committing....oh, I'm not talking about the violent terrorist leaders, I'm talking about the poor, lowly, 'expendable' protesters....why does your boss ignore their plight? Why does the PTP ignore them? Why has their own movement stabbed them in the back, spending all their time trying to get Nattawut out of prison - good luck with that! The guy ordered a crowd of 20,000 to burn the nation to the ground and said to blame it all on him. I don't think we should, I think we should blame it on all of them....and mostly, I think we should blame the guy who's PAYING them. I'm sure you agree.
"When looking at the current Thai political crisis and the role of Thaksin, readers of Foreign Policy would do well to look beyond the lies of a convicted criminal's PR team (I know it's hard to believe!), and start asking why the former Thai PM ferreted hundreds of undeclared billions overseas prior attempting to occupy power illegally and then running overseas to rogue nations where he is protected from justice by their rogue umbrella - no doubt very expensive umbrellas. Readers should start asking why Amsterdam calls himself a lawyer but has no desire to defend his criminal client or even attempt to let him 100 miles of a kangaroo court, let alone an international investigation of the kind he dismissed with the quip "THE UN IS NOT MY FATHER" (Thais call His Majesty the King their "father").
As it's safe to assume the King would have disowned Thaksin around about the time as Thaksin proved the most ungrateful punk son in history...Thaksin is now an orphan? I suggest he finds a home at the UN. Say, the Human Rights Council? Ask for the department who deals with "Human Rights Abusers of the Worst Kind". Announce himself. Make sure he includes the 'h' in Thaksin. We wouldn't want any paperwork mixup.
Surrender himself. Both you and Ms Foley there to look after his rights. Those UN guys and their water-boarding....don't fall for their peaceful façade.
You're his lawyers, guys. It's the least you can do.
November 15, 2010
I'm Stunned, Robert. Stunned.No response? But many have pointed all these facts out to you before. I have, myself - only to see you quickly delete my questioning why Thaksin would suddenly care so much about the poor of Thailand. When he was PM for many years and gave them nothing but trinkets. And bullets in heads, I suppose - but then all those executed without trial were merely "druggies", right? No innocents? No pesky political opponents or bribe-refusers?
You'll assure us of that fact. Well, you wouldn't - you'd prefer to ignore the fact there was any killings of innocents whilst Thaksin attempted to 'cleanse' Thailand of drugs. But if you were reckless enough to engage the Facts and Evidence, you'd claim that the deaths were all drug-related. That there were no sneaky executions of political opponents or bribe-refusing types. And you know what our next question would be, don't you?
Prove it.
Once you start killing people without trial, Robert....you can't really be sure if they were 'innocent' or not, can you? That's why there is a clichéd line "innocent until proven guilty". Lawyers who defend criminals use this line a lot, usually because they are attempting to plead their clients' innocence in a judicial setting.
You don't use this line, I've noticed. But that is not surprising. Because your employer was PROVEN guilty. And is currently a fugitive from justice. Avoiding any nation where an Interpol warrant for his arrest to face charges of sponsoring terrorism might result in some discomfort.
So instead, he hides out in Nicaragua, Cambodia, Montenegro, African nations et al. Places where his wealth gives him a bit of leeway in avoiding any 'misunderstandings'. Whilst his 'lawyers' - who have NO intention of arguing his innocence in any judicial setting, or even in open debate - frantically attempt to compare him to Aung San Suu Kyi.
No Robert. That's crossing the line (the one after the 50 lines already crossed). Aung San Suu Kyi was incarcerated by a ruthless junta whom Thaksin was in bed with, making corrupt B4 billion deals with to buy Thaksin's products with Thailand's money. Whilst Thaksin explained in 2003 that he understood why Aung San Suu Kyi had to be incarcerated. That he supported her detention.
I bet you didn't support his other lawyer's idea to release a statement congratulating her on her release, did you? You're too bright for that colossal PR error. You're probably dealing with the massive fallout now, I suspect. I understand and sympathise.
I'll let you get back to it. But please don't tarry. There are valid questions raised, which require prompt answers.
คำแก้ต่างคำย้อน ของทนายรับจ้างอัมเตอร์ดัม ใบ้แดรก ไม่ตอบ linked: http://www.foreignpo...ksin_shinawatra
