Thai military high alert now extends to the Nana Hotel on Bangkok's Sukhumvit Soi 4

Watching the international media coverage on CNN and BBC, it’s apparent that the redshirt side is winning the propaganda battle. As we reported several weeks ago, protesters fall into four main camps: Thaksin and his supporters, Radical Leftists (including Maoists), the country poor, and soldiers who have crossed over into the pro-Thaksin camp, looking to achieve higher rank with the return of a Thaksin-oriented government.

Based on their reports, the BBC and CNN appear to recognize only the country poor, while either ignoring, or being ignorant of the other factions. It has been commonly reported in Bangkok that the country poor are being paid 500-1000 baht ($15-$30 USD) to join the protest, yet those news organizations have elected not to inform their viewers that this possibility exists. In addition, these news organizations are reporting that red shirt protesters are resorting to sling shots and home-made rockets as red shirts’ only defense again the weapons of the Thai military, when in fact red shirts have caches of small arms such as AK-47, and had shouldered them at checkpoints until recently, when the international media arrived.

It appears as though the United Front for Democracy (UDD) red shirts have played the international media like a fiddle. The goal of the UDD team as far as international media is to portray the protest as the country poor battling for democratic principles against the “undemocratic elite” now ruling the country. The international press conveniently ignores the very real possibility of ex-PM Thaksin pulling the strings behind the scenes, while radical agitators in the group appear to be all too willing to sacrifice the country poor as cannon fodder once government troops get serious about a military solution.

Forgetting for a moment about some of the higher-end businesses such as hotels, there are thousands of vendors and shopkeepers, urban poor and middle class, whose businesses have suffered tremendously because of these protests. They have no income right now, an irony when compared to many of the protesters who are gladly receiving their daily 1,000 baht stipend. We talk to these small business owners every day, and what they say about the protests consists of some very strong language in terms of what they think the government should have done to clear the streets from Day 1. But the international media ignores their stories, as if these people didn’t exist. Instead, they interview an Isaan protester with a minimal education demanding “democracy.”

In terms of the international media, it is hoped that organizations such as CNN and the BBC will start doing a better job of reporting the entire picture, rather than parroting the proclamations of the red shirt leadership, if there is such as beast.