Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Thailand: BBC Tampers with Bangkok Crime Scene

BBC journalist knowingly handles evidence at bomb blast scene, using it as a prop in news segment designed to undermine Thai government before carrying it off. 

August 25, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - ATN) - It has been over a week since a bomb tore through downtown Bangkok, killing 20 and injuring over 100 more. The police and military have been investigating the bombing considered one of the worst attacks of its kind in Bangkok.

And as the police and military do their job, the Western media has been busy doing theirs - not gathering facts and objectively reporting them - but distorting or entirely fabricating events to undermine the Thai government which - ironically - is precisely what the bombers were attempting to do.



Among those helping to aid and abet terrorism and instability in Thailand is Jonathan Head of the BBC. Head's coverage during the political conflict of 2013-2014 which saw hundreds of thousands and at times, over a million protesters take the street to call for the ousting of Thaksin Shianwatra's proxy regime, was transparently biased and at times, dangerously dishonest. Head regularly spun or covered up news regarding Shinawatra's armed death squads who attacked protester camps almost nightly and would kill 30 and injure hundreds more before the military finally seized power and restored peace and stability.

That peace and stability, backed by the vast majority of Thais, was the target of last week's bombing. The Western media, along with the BBC's Jonathan Head have done everything in their power to undermine the government ever since.

Tampering With the Crime Scene

The bomb exploded at a popular shrine on the corner of an extremely busy downtown intersection - in the heart of Bangkok's largest shopping and tourist district. With the bombing's goal to disrupt peace and stability, investigators and city officials moved quickly to gather evidence and restore both the shrine and the intersection back to working order.

Head was not only coincidentally onsite before the blast occurred, he also spent days at the blast site combing it for any evidence left behind by investigators. Head's goal, however, was not to assist Thailand's government in solving the crime, but rather to help continue carry out the terrorists' goal of undermining the credibility of the government itself.

Image: Jonathan Head knowingly holds evidence found at the blast site in his hands, handling it, and using as a prop in a news segment designed intentionally to discredit the investigation. Under US and European law, this is a criminal offense. Head would remove the evidence from the crime scene, carry it down the road and attempt to hand it over to police - with cameras rolling - in an attempt to humiliate Thailand. 

Head, in a BBC report titled, "BBC team finds shrapnel at Thai shrine blast site," claims to have been handed "evidence" at the scene of the blast - including what he claims were ball bearings and shrapnel. Instead of calling the police to come and investigate, Head instead handles the evidence, using it as a prop in a news segment designed to undermine the credibility of the investigation before carrying it away from the crime scene, and all while on camera, turning into a spectacle his attempts to hand it over at the gate of Thailand's national police headquarters down the road.

For even common citizens it is well known that crimes scenes are not to be tampered with. Anything found warrants an immediate call to the police - and above all - nothing is to be touched or handled let alone carried away. For a veteran BBC journalist, this should not only be commonsense but through Head's actions, he has clearly contradicted the job of a journalist in the first place - to collect facts at a crime scene, not handle evidence.

Doing the Terrorists' Work For Them 

Head has since used both the BBC directly and his social media accounts to expand upon his public stunt in an effort to further undermine the credibility of the Thai government. He - having witnessed first hand terrorism carried out by Thaksin Shinawatra's "red shirt" terrorists - has made it a point to dismiss out of hand all evidence suggesting Shinawatra's red shirts may be possible, even probable suspects.

This includes the fact that previous pipe bombings carried out by "red shirt" terror cells used almost identical bombs and almost identical methods to deliver them. Since Shinawatra spent nearly a decade transforming Thailand's police force into a politicized paramilitary organization - the remnants of which may have been involved in the recent bombing - the current government must proceed carefully for a variety of reasons both political and pragmatic.

Head not only fails to mention this dimension, but he and other foreign journalists from other prominent Western networks including Reuters, Associated Press (AP), Agence France-Presse (AFP), CNN, and the New York Times, have begun spinning conspiracy theories lacking in both logic and supporting evidence to intentionally deflect away from this possibility.

Image: (Left) A recreation of the devices used in last week's bombings. (Right) A pipe bomb found in possession of Shinawatra's "red shirt" terrorists in 2014. 

Recently at a Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) meeting, these foreign agents attempted to push forward the theory that an obscure "Turkish terror group" called the "Grey Wolves" were responsible for this "one-off" attack.

They claim that the Grey Wolves sought revenge against Thailand for extraditing Uyghur terrorists back to China in July of this year. These claims, however, fail to mention that a second bombing was carried out the following day, and that another double bombing took place just down the road using nearly identical pipe bombs and put in place using nearly identical methods in February of this year - almost a full half-year before Thailand extradited the detained Uyghurs.

The FCCT would also claim that the "Grey Wolves" were behind the attack on Thailand's consulate in Istanbul - however it was widely reported even by many of the networks journalists at the FCCT work for that the protests were in fact led by the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), a Washington D.C. and Munich-based political front funded directly by the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).



Reuters would even report in their article, "Thai PM defends decision to send Uighurs back to China," that:
"We are here to protest Thailand's and China's human rights abuses. The Chinese cruelty has spread to Thailand," Seyit Tumturk, vice president of the World Uighur Congress, told Reuters outside the Thai Embassy.
It is clear that the FCCT is not attempting to ascertain the truth or report objectively in the wake of the bombing, but are instead engaged in actively misleading the public and skewing the narrative as far as possible away from the most likely suspects - Thaksin Shinawatra whose regime each member of the FCCT has disingenuously defended in turn as the "legitimate," "democratically-elected government" of Thailand."

A National Security Threat

Between tampering with the crime scene and actively promoting theories designed to deflect from the most obvious suspects, the BBC and other foreign journalists are not only failing to carry out their duties as responsible journalists, they are actively and quite intentionally attempting to further undermine peace, stability, and security in Thailand.

While Jonathan Head of the BBC and others have attempted to portray the current Thai government as a "dictatorship" - the Thai government itself has attempted thus far to tolerate and work around this growing national security threat.

In many nations, tempering with a crime scene is a criminal offense. Under US law - doing so can lead up to 20 years in prison. The BBC's Jonathan Head picked up what he admittedly knew was evidence, willfully removed it from the crime scene, and did so with the stated intention of undermining the credibility of the investigation - fitting all criteria under Western law to face criminal charges.

It is clear that uncovering and apprehending the perpetrators of this most recent bombing is only the beginning for Thailand in confronting the many threats facing the country. Agitators and agents of subversion posing as foreign journalists, tampering with crime scenes for the expressed purpose of disrupting an investigation upon which national security rests, are aiding and abetting the very terrorists who attacked Thailand last week. While the Thai government still has yet to identify the bombers - their rhetorical supporters are easily identified by their foreign press passes.