"according to his twitter page"

political times are a bit rough in thailand right now. this is to put it lightly--protests in bangkok are the headline story on bbc online right now. to be perfectly honest, i'm no expert on the situation, but i'll tell you what i understand of it (then you can google it yourself and tell me how wrong i am).

so thailand had this prime minister, thaksin shinawatra, a while back. thaksin is part of the red shirts, or the united front for democracy against dictatorship. rural farmers, especially from the north of thailand, make up a large base of the group, but it's also got a fair amount of students and activists who are worried that the opposition--the yellow shirts--are to elitist and are a threat to democracy.

the yellow shirts, or the peoples' alliance for democracy, are indeed mostly elite types--businesspeople, urban middle class, etc. about five years ago, they started accusing thaksin of corruption, abusing power, and generally not respecting the monarchy. (they wear yellow because it's the king's color.) they said he was giving lots of money to the farmer types illegally. in 2006, after thaksin had been in power five years, he was ousted in a military coup.

thaksin was accused of corruption and conflict of interest and was facing big fines/a jail sentence. so he fled the country and went to cambodia for a while. despite having been ousted from power and fleeing the country, he still has a lot of support here. the red shirts want him back, so they planned a big peaceful protest in bangkok today. a bunch of farmers have been traveling down from the north since friday. the government's handed control over to the military, and they've set up ID checkpoints for people coming into the city.

meanwhile, thaksin left cambodia, was in dubai, and has now gone to germany to kick it with his daughters. how does the government/bangkok post/everyone in the world know this?

"Thaksin Shinawatra has left Dubai to join his daughters in Germany, according to his Twitter page."
(from the bangkok post)

twitter, ftw!