Enemy of the State #10 - The Witch Hunt and Denial

Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. ~ Stephen Jay Gould


I was reading Tony Hedges's Blog http://tonyhedges.wordpress.com/ and this idea came to me from something he had said about reconciliation.

The Abhisit government keeps trying to reassure the people that they are all for reconciliation but in reality they are conducting a Which Hunt on the UDD, the Reds, banned politicians, the PTP and still on Thaksin.

Someone on Twitter, I think @tri26, mentioned the Wiki page “Denial”. I opened it and read “Types of Denial”. Lo and behold there it was in black and white, jumping off the page - Denial of fact & Denial of responsibility - and I quote:-

In Denial of fact, someone avoids a fact by lying. This lying can take the form of an outright falsehood (commission), leaving out certain details to tailor a story (omission), or by falsely agreeing to something (assent, also referred to as "yessing" behaviour). Someone who is in denial of fact is typically using lies to avoid facts they think may be painful to themselves or others.

The reasemblance to what the Government, CRES, the Government PR people have been doing and saying is remarkable.  They have all been using Denial of Fact and the UDD is not off the hook with this one either but to a much lesser degree IMHO.

Denial of responsibility involves avoiding personal responsibility by:


blaming - a direct statement shifting culpability and may overlap with denial of fact


minimizing - an attempt to make the effects or results of an action appear to be less harmful than they may actually be, or


justifying - when someone takes a choice and attempts to make that choice look okay due to their perception of what is "right" in a situation.


Someone using denial of responsibility is usually attempting to avoid potential harm or pain by shifting attention away from themselves.

There it was wrapped up with a big Red bow. That is what the government and CRES has been doing all along. We all knew it but this made it too simple, too easy to see and explain the Witch Hunt that’s going on.

"This is a vicious witch-hunt aimed at crushing the voice of dissent". ~ Aidan White

Carl Forti had an interesting quote some years ago, “I'm going to call Roswell (N.M.) and warn them that Ronnie Earle is on the witch hunt for the Martians they have there“. The quote can be rearranged to reflect the current situation. “I'm going to call (Add any North or Northeatern town) and warn them that (CRES, Abhisit, Suthep, etc) is on the witch hunt for the Reds they have there".

What Thailand needs is some outside independent inquiry into what happened in April and May in Bangkok.

Abhisit has resisted any attempt by outside governments, Amnesty International or the UN to intervene. It's time he swallowed his pride and allowed an independent outside review. If the blame is all on the Reds, as he and Suthep keep stating, what has he to fear. Thailand deserves this let someone independent, who will not sway with the pressure exerted on them, from all the influences inside Thailand come up with a finding. Lay blame at the feet of the UDD if that is their finding; lay it at the feet of the army or CRES or government or media or all of them. We need to know the facts, not the facts as seen through a prism reflecting highly divided and transfixed views of the occurrences in Bangkok.

"You don't want a witch hunt and you don't want a whitewash". ~ William Doherty

BUT: - You do want the truth to come out, whatever it is. and you want those truly responsible for the bloodshed punished. Something that is not happening in Thailand at the moment.

"Better a thousand fold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech". ~ Charles Bradlaugh