Crap and the linear flow of time

I so love it when people end an argument by calling my statements crap. A typical Thaksinite final word in a losing argument if ever there was one.

Today I spent a lot of time trying to reason with a certain someone who took exception to my comments on the PAD protest being peaceful. Just to clarify my previous post about former Senator Maleerat's comments at the PAD rally at Rayong, she complained of double standards between the Abhisit and Somchai governments. Somchai had charged the PAD leaders with treason, punishable by death or life in prison. Abhisit had charged most of the red shirt leaders in the Songkran mayhem with assembling in groups of more than ten to cause disorderly conduct which is, well, not punishable by death.

The gentleman in question cited a lot of events which happened after the treason charges were filed to disprove my comments of the PAD protest being peaceful. Well, the protests were pretty peaceful before the charges were filed, and even then, the flare-ups were mostly started by the police but there is no need to get into that right now.

My point being, it is illogical and unreasonable to use events that happened after the treason charges were filed against the nine PAD leaders to attempt to prove that the protests at the point of the charges being filed were not peaceful.

Let me repeat that. It is unreasonable and illogical to use events that happened after a certain point in time as a cause of something that happened at the point of time in question.

After a few so-called proof points (the shooting near Dtac was the first of which) were quoted to which I repeatedly said, "my points stands, that event happened after the treason charges were filed," the gentleman who I up until then had hope in responded that my statement of a peaceful PAD protest was a load of crap.

Of course, if you can't out-argue someone with facts, call them crap. Works all the time.

Finally, again let me reiterate. The point of the matter was not whether the protests were peaceful or not in their entirety, but that Somchai responded to what was up until then a largely peaceful protest by charging the protesters with treason, punishable by death while Abhisit only charged an arguably much more violent protest with the much lesser charge of gathering in groups of ten or more and engaging in disorderly conduct, a crime which is not punishable by death. That was the point that Maleerat was frustrated about with regards to the current government. That the courts threw out (and rightly so) the charges of treason does not lessen the intent that the Somchai government's organs had to execute the PAD leaders.

And to think I had a great story about Giles Ung to write about. Tomorrow then.