BANGKOK, Thailand – Anti-government demonstrators in Thailand declared victory Tuesday and said they will end their occupation of the country’s two main airports after a court decision forced the country’s prime minister from office.

While an estimated 300,000 travelers stranded by last week’s airport takeovers breathed a bit easier, the question of who will hold power in a democratic Thailand remained unanswered.

The protesters — who seek to eliminate the one-person, one-vote system — left open the possibility of more unrest saying they will return to the streets if political change does not occur. At least six people have been killed and scores injured in clashes in recent months.

Also unclear was the extent of damage the weeklong airport blockade inflicted on the country’s economy, which relies heavily on tourism.

But none of that seemed to matter Tuesday as members of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, which led the protest, reveled at the fall of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat.

“We will party all night long before leaving tomorrow,” said Saisuri Pantupradij, a 45-year-old woman who camped out at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi international airport. “It’s sad to say goodbye, but our job here is done. So we must go home.”

She and four other women, all wearing yellow feather boas, were dancing and singing karaoke to a Thai folk song in the main hall of the airport terminal.

Around them, thousands celebrated, waving Thailand’s red white and blue flag, and cheering their nation, their king and themselves.

Still, the protest alliance, which crippled the country’s administration by occupying the offices of the prime minister three months ago and saw the courts sack two prime ministers it campaigned against, vowed to resume its militant actions if future developments displeased them.

The group is seeking to purge the nation of the influence of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whom they accuse of massive corruption and seeking to undermine the country’s revered constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej. He was ousted by a September 2006 military coup.

On Tuesday, the country’s Constitutional Court found Somchai’s People’s Power Party, the Machima Thipatai party and the Chart Thai party guilty of committing fraud in the December 2007 elections that brought the coalition to power.

“Dishonest political parties undermine Thailand’s democratic system,” said Constitutional Court President Chat Chalavorn.

The ruling sent Somchai, Thaksin’s brother-in-law, and 59 executives of the three parties into political exile and barred them from politics for five years. Of the 59, 24 are lawmakers who will have to abandon their parliamentary seats.

“It is not a problem. I was not working for myself. Now I will be a full-time citizen,” Somchai told reporters following the ruling.

The current coalition will remain in power. But Deputy Prime Minister Chaowarat Chandeerakul will become the caretaker prime minister, said Suparak Nakboonnam, a government spokeswoman. She said Parliament will have to pick a new prime minister within 30 days.

Somchai had become increasingly isolated in recent weeks. Neither the army, a key player in Thai politics, nor King Bhumibol offered firm backing. Palace circles have not hidden their enmity toward Thaksin and his allies, rattling a decades old consensus of absolute respect for the monarchy.

But lawmakers of the three dissolved parties who escaped the ban can join other parties, try to cobble together a new coalition and then choose a new prime minister. If their fragile unity fails, new elections are the likeliest outcome — with the chance that Thaksin’s allies would again triumph, setting off a whole new cycle of protests.

The alliance, often referred to by its acronym PAD, claims Thailand’s rural majority — who gave landslide election victories to the Thaksin camp — is too poorly educated to responsibly choose their representatives and says they are susceptible to vote buying.

It wants the country to abandon the system of one-man, one-vote, and instead have a mixed system in which most representatives are chosen by profession and social group. They have not explained exactly how such a system would work or what would make it less susceptible to manipulation.

“We’ve finished our job for now,” top protest leader Sondhi Limthongkul told reporters. “But if Thaksin’s puppets return, we will come back.”

The alliance’s rivals, government supporters who adore Thaksin for the generous social welfare policies his government implemented for the poor and rural majority when he was in power in 2001-2006, were angry, though uncertain what to do.

“People aren’t going to just sit and watch another elected government toppled. The court’s decision was wrong and we should question that,” said Pracha Niemjaroen, an electronics technician discussing politics with his friends at an open-air restaurant in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

Some of Somchai’s political allies were less diffident. Chaturon Chaisaeng, a former Thaksin Cabinet member, noted that the protest alliance had previously called for a non-elected government, and suggested that if they pressed for that, there could be civil war.

“Why do we still condone the PAD, who are waging terrorist attacks against government buildings and the democratic system?” he said. “Do all Thai people have to bow to the PAD’s orders and demands?”

Travelers were the only clear immediate beneficiaries of Tuesday’s developments, and even for them relief may not be so quick. Thai authorities have been running flights in and out of a naval air base at U-Tapao east of Bangkok, but its limited facilities left many travelers looking more like refugees than tourists.

Vudhibhandhu Vichairatana, the chairman of the Airports of Thailand, said Suvarnabhumi international airport will resume operations Friday. He called the plan a birthday gift for King Bhumibol, who turns 81 on Dec. 5. The airport reopened to cargo flights Tuesday.

Hardships related to the severing of air links with Thailand’s capital have rippled through the country and the region. The government’s finance minister lowered the country’s GDP growth forecast from 4.5 percent to about 2 percent amid the turmoil earlier this week and the country’s Tourism Council predicted that up to 1 million workers could lose their jobs if foreign visitor numbers plunge by half next year as it now expects.

The orchid industry said it was losing $1 million a day and thousands of families who raise orchids face losing their livelihoods as exporters throw away thousands of the exotic blossoms that symbolize the country’s famed hospitality and beauty.

But travelers Jennifer Cooper, 37 and Peter Cooper, 45, from Melbourne, Australia, who were trapped for days at the airport took it all in stride.

“It was a free-for-all. People were behind the counters playing with the computers. They were everywhere, back in the duty-free area. Who knows what they did?” Peter said.

“We love Thailand,” said Jennifer.

“But when we come back we’ll have contingency plans for escaping,” she added, with a laugh.

BEIJING (Reuters) - At least eight American blogger-activists and several other foreigners have been detained in Beijing as the government intensifies a crackdown on pro-Tibetan protests in the home stretch of the Olympics, rights groups said on Wednesday.

Students for a Free Tibet earlier said authorities detained five self-styled “citizen journalists” who were in Beijing to promote Tibetan freedom on Tuesday. The New York-based group said activist-artist James Powderly had also been nabbed.

Later on Wednesday, the group said four more protesters, including two Americans and a British national, were also detained after unfurling a Tibetan flag outside the National Stadium, or “Bird’s Nest.”

The Beijing Olympics have not been dogged by the widespread demonstrations that authorities had feared. Several protesters advocating for Tibet independence have nonetheless managed to breach tight security, in one case hanging a “Free Tibet” banner outside the headquarters of the state broadcaster.

China is particularly sensitive to criticism of its rule in Tibet, the far-western region Communist troops entered in 1950.

“In relation to foreigners holding demonstrations in Beijing in support of Tibet independence, competent authorities have the right to handle these things according to law,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference on Wednesday.

“I’d also like to emphasize that in China, activities that support Tibet independence will be strongly condemned by the Chinese people and will not be welcomed.”

Spain’s Olympic basketball teams have risked upsetting their Chinese hosts by posing for a pre-Games advert making slit-eyed gestures. The advert for a courier company, which is an official sponsor of the Spanish Basketball Federation, occupied a full page in the sports daily Marca, the country’s best-selling newspaper.

The advert features two large photographs, one of the men’s basketball team, above, and one of the women’s team. Both squads pose in full Olympic kit on a basketball court decorated with a picture of a Chinese dragon. Every single player appears pulling back the skin on either side of their eyes. The advert carries the symbol of the sport’s governing body.

No one involved in the advert appears to have considered it inappropriate nor contemplated the manner in which it could be interpreted in China and elsewhere. No offence was intended by the advert, but whether the Chinese see it that way is a different matter and it is likely to provoke more criticism at a delicate time for Spanish sport. The failure to recognise the potential consequences is striking in the light of the problems Spain has had with issues of race and the Spanish Olympic committee’s continued desire to host the Games in Madrid in 2016 or 2020.

In the past the Spanish have been left in no doubt as to the sensitivity of racial issues internationally, especially since Spain’s football manager, Luis Aragonés, made his infamous remark about Thierry Henry, monkey chants greeted England’s football players in a friendly game in Madrid and the formula one driver Lewis Hamilton was subjected to abuse in Barcelona.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian man who described local police as “scum” in an Internet posting was given a suspended jail sentence on Monday for extremism, prompting bloggers to warn of a crackdown on free speech online.

Savva Terentiev, a 28-year-old musician from Syktyvkar, 1,515 kilometers (940 miles) north of Moscow, wrote in a blog last year that the police force should be cleaned up by ceremonially burning officers twice a day in a town square.

Convicted on charges of “inciting hatred or enmity,” Terentiev was given a one-year suspended term on Monday, Russian news agencies reported.

Free speech campaigners said the ruling could create a dangerous precedent for free speech on the Internet, a vibrant forum for political debate in a country where the mainstream traditional media is deferential to authority.

“This was an absolutely unjustified verdict,” Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA centre in Moscow, a non-governmental group that monitors extremism, told Reuters. “Savva for sure wrote a rude comment … but this verdict means it will be impossible to make rude comments about anybody.”

The verdict was discussed in Russian blogs on Monday. “I don’t know now if I should be writing here or not,” blogger Likershassi posted on one website.

“The fact that Terentiev got a conditional sentence is unimportant. What’s important is the precedent,” a blogger named Puffinus wrote.

BONFIRE

Contacted by Reuters on Monday, Terentiev confirmed the sentence but said he was unable to make further comment.

The blog entry for which he was prosecuted has been removed from the Internet. Russia’s Kommersant newspaper quoted him as saying in the post: “Those who become cops are scum,” and calling for officers to be put on a bonfire.

After the prosecution was launched, Terentiev wrote an open letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev protesting his innocence.

“It is our duty to take responsibility for words on the Internet but … I did not call for the inflaming of social hatred towards the employees of the police department,” he wrote in the letter, posted at one of his sites.

Most Russians receive their news and information from television stations and newspapers controlled by the state or by businessmen with links to the Kremlin, with opposition voices confined largely to the Internet, talk radio and low-circulation publications.

Medvedev has said he views freedom of speech and a flourishing civil society as essential and that Russia should use a light touch when policing the Internet.

“Thank God we live in a free society,” Medvedev said last month in an interview with Reuters.

“It’s possible to go on to the Internet and get basically anything you want. In that regard, there are no problems of closed access to information in Russia today, there weren’t any yesterday and there won’t be any tomorrow,” he said.

On Sunday June 8th at about 2:30 Pacific time Google news has a top story qoute ” China Withdraws from Tibet, with Apologies” But as you can see the link goes to a news release on Al-Qaeda.  The top story was on Google news for over a hour despite it’s lack of validity. I assume it was there because of the hope that it was true. But this also brings up another underlined issue about automating news and how it can be manipulated.

[JURIST] Tibetan courts will swiftly prosecute demonstrators involved in protests against Chinese rule in Tibet [BBC backgrounder] last month, according to Friday state media reports. A top Tibet official was quoted as saying that over 1,000 protesters will face prosecution before May 1. Chinese officials have blamed the exiled Dalai Lama [personal website] for organizing the protests by Buddhist monks in the capital of Lhasa last month. Chinese officials and state media have also accused Western media of falsely portraying the protests as peaceful and of defaming Chinese efforts to develop Tibet.

China says that 19 people died after skirmishes between pro-Tibet protesters and Chinese authorities last month, but the Tibetan government-in-exile [official website] said that 130 had died [JURIST report]. The Dalai Lama has denied accusations that he was behind the riots and has said that he supports true autonomy for Tibet, not outright independence. Reuters has more. VOA has additional coverage.

Chiquita Bananas

Fresh Fruit, Bloody Wars

Here we have a company whose president was quoted as saying “it’s important that I don’t get too knowledgable about the past” upon taking control of the company in 1975. The previous president, Eli Black, had just left the company by way of leaping out the window of his 44th floor office in the Pan Am Building in New York rather than face prosecution for giving a bribe to the president of Honduras. The dude didn’t even give two weeks notice.

What’s this “past” he didn’t want to think about? Well, there’s the massacre of striking workers in Colombia in 1928, at the hands of the Colombian army and allegedly under the orders of the company. Seriously, how could they top that?

Well, bringing down the democratically elected leader of a South American country by way of a violent coup is one way.

Back in 1951 when they were still called the United Fruit Company, a president by the name of Jacabo Arbenz took office in Guatemala. Among the things that got him elected, the biggest was an ambitious plan that would distribute uncultivated land to over 100,000 peasants in Guatemala. The main obstacle to this plan was the United Fruit Company, who just happened to own the land.

According to their estimates, the land was valued at right around $525,000. When the Guatemalan government made a low ball offer of exactly that fucking amount, United Fruit responded with a completely logical counter offer of $16,000,000. When Arbenz balked, United Fruit reportedly took the term “breakdown in negotiations” to dizzying new heights by asking the CIA to intervene. And boy did they intervene. God-DAMN did they intervene!

Along with other connections in the Eisenhower administration, then CIA head Allen Dulles had previously served on United Fruit’s board of trustees. With that kind of direct access to the highest levels of the government and with McCarthyism in full swing, we imagine the telephone conversation that resulted in the CIA intervening on behalf of United Fruit went something like this:

CIA: “Hello?”

United Fruit: “BANANAS blah blah blah OUR LAND blah blah PEASANTS blah blah COMMUNISTS!”

CIA: **click**

United Fruit: “Hello? Hello?”

**Hears explosions in background, takes cover**

With the CIA on board to help with their cause, United Fruit launched a massive and highly successful propaganda campaign to paint Arbenz as a communist threat to the United States. Included in the campaign was a film that linked the taking of United Fruit’s land to the Communist Empire, awesomely titled Why The Kremlin Hates Bananas.

Some shit just writes itself. With the general public sufficiently convinced that Guatemala was a threat (good thing we don’t fall for shit like that anymore), the CIA was free to pounce and promptly launched “Operation PBSuccess.” They didn’t call it that because it failed. In short order, the US replaced the freely elected Arbenz with a right wing dictator more willing to answer to the demands of United Fruit and Guatemala’s brief flirtation with democracy and prosperity was over.

But this story does have a happy ending. The civil war that resulted from the CIA initiated coup did finally come to an end.

In 1996.
Iams Pet Food

Nutritious Dog Food, Cruelty

Boy do we Americans love us some misguided outrage. If the majority had their way, Michael Vick would have been bludgeoned to death by one of the Heartbreakers during the Super Bowl halftime show. Because, if there is one thing we don’t tolerate, it’s animal cruelty. At least not from NFL quarterbacks. Animal cruelty from major corporations though? Apparently not a problem.

People for the Ethical Treatmpent of Animals (PETA), known partly for saying batshit crazy things and for having the only public awareness campaign that people have ever masturbated to.

But, in between they sometimes actually do some good. One recent example happened in 2002 when, for nearly ten months, a PETA official went undercover at an Iams testing facility to expose harsh conditions inside the plant. What they found makes Michael Vick’s shenanigans look like some Arena League shit in comparison.

And, in case you suspected (as we did) that the stories were the product of PETA’s vegetable-induced imagination, they brought back a video of the facility that will ruin your day.

Most of the details, about mutilation and such, you really don’t want to hear about. Among the less nightmare-inducing tidbits were cats and dogs gone stir-crazy from constant confinement and an employee overheard talking about a live kitten that was accidentally washed down a drain. For fuck’s sake Iams! For you statistics geeks out there, one procedure performed at the Iams facility that involved (seriously, we’re not saying) resulted in 27 dogs being killed. Just one more record Michael Vick will never break.

When confronted with the findings from PETA, Iams attempted to turn the tables and blamed the undercover PETA official as the one responsible for the various atrocities, including a claim that the PETA official oversaw an incident in which several dogs were surgically debarked to keep them from crying out for attention. Because that’s exactly how PETA gets down. But a review of phone transcripts revealed the exact opposite. The PETA official actually tried to prevent the debarking. Iams officials acknowledged this to be the case also. And then probably beat their dogs out of frustration.

Coca-Cola

Refreshing Soft Drinks, Murder

Corporations don’t get much warmer and fuzzier than Coca-Cola. You think of fearsome NFL linemen tossing bright eyed kids their jerseys, playful polar bears frolicking in the snow, the world learning to sing in perfect harmony. Hell, some internet rumors even claim Coke invented Santa Claus.

The sweet bubbly deliciousness that is Coca Cola has been a beacon of happiness for generations of kids and adults alike, even those who weren’t lucky enough to have their Coke spiked with nose candy. With all of this universal joy spreading, some people may be surprised to find that Coke II isn’t the only atrocity lurking in the Big Red Machine’s closet.

If you work at one of the various Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, South America … fucking WHY? After all, there is probably less violence to be found working for a cocaine cartel in Colombia, South America. According to some descriptions, Colombia is “a country where union work is like carrying a tombstone on your back.” If you spend too much time thinking about it, you’ll realize that saying makes no damn sense, but just trust that it means working for a union in Colombia is a death sentence.

This is especially true at the Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia. At the Carepa plant, five union leaders were murdered between 1994 - 1996 alone. In case after case, plant managers at bottlers throughout Colombia, afraid that being forced to give their workers that bump from $200 per month to $205 per month would bring their business to its knees, contracted with paramilitary groups to force unions at their plants to disband. In the most publicized case (meaning not really publicized at all, unless you count on the internet, which you shouldn’t), union executive board member Isidro Segundo Gil was shot ten times near the Carepa plant gates by paramilitary thugs purported to have been hired by the plant management.

The details of Gil’s assassination were outlined in a lawsuit filed against Coca-Cola by the International Labor Rights Fund. Of course, that the thugs were acting on the direction of plant management is just an allegation, but the fact that the thugs returned the next day demanding that workers quit the union is at least a little suspicious. There is also the issue of them having resignation forms prepared in advance by plant managers in hand when they made these demands. But still, these are just allegations. You shouldn’t assume anything. Like the old saying goes, “when you assume, you just make an ass out of u and me and evil corporations that condone the slaughtering of their own employees.”

Dole Bananas

Nutritious Fruit, Sterility-Causing Pesticides

Making their second appearance on the list, bananas are the standard bearer when it comes to corporate atrocity. Following in the heinous footsteps of Chiquita, Dole has a long track record of bringing the pain to South American countries unlucky enough to grow their shit. And unlike most other companies on this list, Dole didn’t even try to hide their hell raising ways. Kudos!

When several chemical workers became sterile, tests determined the cause to be a pesticide made at the plant where they worked called DBCP. When tests revealed it caused liver, kidney and lung damage, the Environmental Protection Agency banned its use in the United States. Proving themselves to be a paragon of classiness, Dole made note of the “in the United States” part of the ban and continued to use DBCP overseas. When Dow Chemicals informed Dole of their concerns over the safety of DBCP, Dole did what any company concerned with the well being of its fellow man would do. They advised Dow they would be in breach of their contract if they refused to provide them with DBCP for overseas use and agreed to take any liability for the resulting damage it may cause.

A brave move, agreeing to take the liability. Or at least it would be if they thought for a second that they would ever have to act on it. When Nicaraguan banana workers suffering the ill effects of DBCP exposure sought legal advice on how best to proceed with a lawsuit against Dole, they were told about the legal doctrine of forum non conveniens, a latin term meaning “fuck a third world farm worker.” Ok, it really means “inconvenient forum” and states a case can be dismissed on the grounds that it would be more appropriate to hear it in another locale, like the impossibly corrupt courts of the plaintiff’s home country, for instance.

Rather than taking their case to the Nicaraguan courts, which would be about as effective as taking the case to Judge Judy, the workers pressured the Nicaraguan government to find a different way to see to it that justice was served. The Nicaraguan National Assembly passed Law 364 in January 2001, to help banana workers gain compensation from companies that used DBCP. The law, which establishes a rapid procedure for workers who bring judgments before the courts, was immediately challenged by Dole along with several chemical companies. So far, despite court ordered judgments favoring Nicaraguan banana workers totaling more than $400 million, the workers have yet to see a dime.

One banana worker was quoted as saying “I ask the companies…to have a little bit of conscience with us.” We’d like to thank that worker for providing us with the funniest line of this article so far.

Nestle Quik

Delicious Chocolate Milk, Child Slaves

For any youngster that cringes at the thought of having to choke down a glass of plain milk with their dinner, Nestle Quik is a little box of magic. One tablespoon of the powdery goodness that is Nestle Quik can transform that glass of white nasty into a delectable cup of chocolately awesome. Add to this the fact that every box is emblazoned with an adorable cartoon rabbit, and what you have is a certified childhood dream maker.

At least this much is true for most kids; lazy, shiftless bastards that they are. Some kids, on the other hand, have to work for their Nestle Quik. Without going into the grizzly details that we’re sure you aren’t coming to a comedy website looking for, we’ll just say this. The majority of the world’s cocoa supply comes from Africa’s Ivory Coast. There are probably a lot of things that are illegal in the Ivory Coast, child labor, trafficking or (oh dear) slavery are not any of them. But hey, if it’s alright with the bunny, how bad can it be?

After years of flying under the atrocity radar, word of the unspeakably harsh conditions on Ivory Coast cocoa plantations finally came out in 2001. In the face of an influx of negative publicity, Nestle valiantly leapt into inaction. After issuing a few public statements claiming they had no way of knowing who did what where and when, it took a rider attached to an agricultural bill to get Nestle to even acknowledge the problem. The new legislation, passed in July, 2001, would have created a federal system to certify and label chocolate products as “slave free,” a label Nestle would qualify for if it weren’t for all the enslaved children making their shit.

Even if they did qualify, on the list of words you don’t want printed on the label of your product, “slave” comes in at a solid #3, right behind “Hitler” and “shit.” To avoid having to abide by the new legislation, Nestle agreed to a voluntary protocol to end forced labor on cocoa farms by 2005. Being that the major chocolate companies would be overseeing this new program, it wasn’t too surprising that nothing ever came of it.

When 2005 came and went with little to no change, Nestle was ready with one of the stupidest excuses imaginable. According to them, an escalating civil war in the Ivory Coast prevented them from sending anyone in to monitor the situation. Amazingly though, their team of buyers, who must consist of nothing but crack military commandos, have yet to have a problem getting in and out completely unscathed.

To add even less credibility to their claim that making delicious treats without at least some slave help wasn’t possible, several chocolate companies are now selling “Fair Trade” chocolate which is monitored to insure no slave labor is used in its production, though some sophisticated consumers say that chocolate isn’t as good, since it does not contain the unique flavor of the bitter tears of children.

We don’t want to pile on Nestle, though. If we wanted to do that, we would bring up the third-world babies that died from Nestle formula, or the company demanding millions from famine-stricken Ethiopia over a 1975 business transaction or … fuck it, we’re getting depressed.