What is wrong with a quick update?

This is just a quick update on a couple of things in the last blog post. The situation in Thailand got worse, with civilian deaths reported to be around the six mark, but I wouldn't be too surprised to hear that number go up to about 15.

The interesting thing though is the independant media in the country are reporting much of the strife was caused by the anti-government demonstrators , backed by Thaksin Shinawatra. Apparently they were the agressors in the conflict, driving a bus into a crowd of soldiers to inflame the situation and whereas the sound of troop guns rung out, it's understood from vision of the incident that the soldiers were shooting into the air to warn off protestors rather than at them. Some of the conflict has been between anti-government demonstrators and ordinary citizens sick and tired of the demonstrators bringing their country into disrepute.

No loss of life is a good thing, but I thank whoever's in charge of the whole cosmic show that it's only six people. That situation could have gotten very bad very quickly, but for the meantime things have seemed to settle down and anti-government leaders have conceeded they face a PR crisis which will make public support of further demonstrations very dificult.

Onto Fiji now, and foreign journalists have been escorted from the country and the Australian Broadcast Commission radio broadcast tower has been powered down by the 'government' acting under, well, I was going to say unconstitutional grounds but there is no constitution in Fiji at the moment.

I also let you know about the TV station which has refused to broadcast pro-'government' stories and how it may just help the situation. Well, it seems the local rags have gotten into the act too and started running stories about 'a man getting on a bus', and 'what we had for breakfast this morning' rather than pro-'govenment' stories which are the only stories they're allowed to run under emergency rules.

You gotta love it.

Hopefully the stories will make people in Australia and New Zealand take a little more notice rather than trivialising the issue.