Friday, September 09, 2005

Forand Watch, Continued

Ticket to ride, white line highway
Tell all your friends, they can go my way
Pay your toll, sell your soul
Pound for pound costs more than gold
The longer you stay, the more you pay
My white lines go a long way
--Grandmaster Flash/Melle Mel

Mathieu Forand, the BC native and English teacher found with drugs in Taiwan is again surfacing in the news. Mr. Forand's current condition is clearer, and it looks like he has seen a lawyer which is good news:
Forand, who briefly had a lawyer paid for by friends, has not appeared in court to enter a plea. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death.

Superscary.

Looks like they finally have some hard numbers on the amount of drugs he carried, and again the Sun was way off:
Coast Guard Administration police claim they found 586 grams of cocaine, 505 grams of marijuana and approximately 500 ecstasy pills.

Why the Sun was reporting up to 5 Kg of cocaine being seized is beyond me.

6 comments:

Michael Turton said...

The original English language media in Taiwan said he had 600kg rather than 600g, and the error stuck.

Michael

Shamrocks! said...

Michael:

That's a pretty big error. Any links for that?

Anonymous said...

also by the way, the hundreds of pills of e that the police claimed to have found...have in fact turned out to be vitamins....go look at the original taiwanese tv video of the "sting" and you will see that there is no way (unless MacDonald's somehow supersized them) that these massive vitamin pills could be pills of e.

Shamrocks! said...

Interesting....

Is there a link for that video somewhere? I can't find anything on this case.

Anonymous said...

Patrick: I wouldn't doubt the error regarding the "600kg" rather than "600g", sticking... that Michael mentions regarding Taiwanese English Language Media. More often than not, it is a non-native English speaker who has translated an article originally written in Chinese... Yes, I do agree it is a "pretty big error" However, the chances of finding a link with clear and concise facts regarding Mathieu Forand's situaion, I am afraid you will be hard pressed. Having been living here for nearly a decade now, I can only say that the only way you will ever know the factuality of numbers and information reported in the news (in Taiwan)...is to have been witness to the situations being reported...
Otherwise, try not to believe everything you hear (read) and only believe half of what you see.

Shamrocks! said...

Anon:

First of all, I think being mildly skeptical of what people tell me is a good thing.....

Which is exaclty why your last piece of advice is non-sensical: first I am supposed to believe what I'm told and then I'm told exactly the opposite.

Try editing your comments before posting so fearlessly without a name.