by Tony Cartalucci
December 21, 2011 - AFP reported that Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra met with and pledged full support for Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, still called by its British imperial name of "Burma" by many Western media outlets and even Suu Kyi herself. The meeting was hailed as, " Suu Kyi's first-ever meeting with the leader of a foreign country." On face value - we are expected believe this to be a landmark in "democratic development." In reality, it should be troubling to everyone from Myanmar to Thailand, and Asia as a whole.
Thailand's Wall Street Puppet
Current Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra squeaked into office earlier this year with a meager 35% of eligible voters actually picking her Peua Thai Party. While she is hailed as the "first female prime minister of Thailand," it is clear that she is merely a placeholder for her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra who runs the party from abroad while avoiding a 2-year jail sentence for corruption and a parade of pending legal cases resulting from his autocratic, mass-murdering 6-years in office.
Photo: Wall Street's grotesque puppet show: making a mockery out of the human dignity of those drawn in by the facade of hope and democratic reform Yingluck Shinawatra of Thailand and Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar both disingenuously sell their followers. (AFP/Pool, Soe Zeya Tun)
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Thaksin rose to power through a series of business deals and political maneuvering, as well as leveraging foreign support clearly aimed at shaking up Thailand's political order and replacing it with a more servile clique. Thaksin was an adviser to the US equity firm Carlyle Group and while serving as prime minister, attempted to ram through a Fortune 500 initiated US-Thai free trade agreement that would have gutted Thailand's economic sovereignty. In 2006 he was swept from power by a peaceful military coup, on the eve of which he was in New York City consorting with the corporate-funded Council on Foreign Relations.
Since the 2006 coup that removed him from power, Thaksin has been represented by Wall Street, London, and Washington via their lobbying firms, including Kenneth Adelman of the Edelman PR firm (Freedom House, International Crisis Group, PNAC), James Baker of Baker Botts (CFR), Robert Blackwill of Barbour Griffith & Rogers (CFR), Kobre & Kim, and currently Robert Amsterdam of Amsterdam & Peroff (Chatham House). The above mentioned Edelman, it should be noted, is also a sponsor of the US State Department's project, Movements.org which is on record training the Egyptian April 6 Movement that triggered the now admittedly US-engineered "Arab Spring."
Meanwhile, Thaksin's street mobs dubbed the "red shirts" who have attempted to overthrow his opposition while they were in power, have received rhetorical support by US-funded NGOs like Prachatai which received 1.5 million baht from the Neo-Con lined National Endowment for Democracy. Prachatai has also received funds from the Rockefeller Foundation, George Soros' Open Society, and the Sigrid Rausing Trust (who also funds the International Crisis Group) via the Global Human Rights Fund (2008). Additionally, a recent addition to Thaksin's red shirt mob's leadership includes Sombat Boonngamanong who has spent a lifetime in the service of UN projects and Fortune 500-funded foundations like "Ashoka."
Thaksin's "red shirt" leaders would even find their way to Washington D.C. earlier this year in April, where they met the same representatives from America's Fortune 500 that proposed the FTA Thaksin tried to pass during his term as PM, as well as Soros' Human Rights Watch and the above mentioned National Endowment for Democracy. The nature of their visit was to seek support ahead of Thailand's summer elections, from which Thaksin's sister tenuously came to power.
It is safe to say that Thaksin represents and works not for the Thai people, but for the foreign interests that have kept him relevant and politically viable for the last decade. The fact that he was "elected by proxy" through his own sister, who literally ran on the campaign slogan, "Thaksin thinks, Peua Thai [Party] Does," makes an utter mockery out of "democratic developments" as well as the rule of law.
Myanmar's Wall Street Puppet
Every aspect of Aung San Suu Kyi is the creation of a carefully orchestrated, immensely funded propaganda campaign carried out not within Myanmar but from Washington and the city of London. Every NGO associated with Suu Kyi, every pro-Suu Kyi news service in Myanmar, and every opposition movement supporting her, is either funded by, or a whole cloth creation of, the British and US government.
A 2006 36-page document out of the "Burma Campaign UK" explicitly details the enormous amount of money and resources both the US government and its corporate-funded foundations have poured into Suu Kyi's image and her "movement." It also details the complicity of then Thai Prime Minster and verified Wall Street-stooge Thaksin Shinwatra's government in aiding the West in their Burmese agenda.
The most telling information begins on page 14 of 36 of the report's .pdf. Titled, "Failing the People of Burma?" the report enumerates the vast resources the West has invested in building a "pro-democracy" movement, in tandem with similar disingenuous movements throughout the region, and indeed throughout the world, and insists that even more support be given to initiate a "transition" in Myanmar. It states:
"The restoration of democracy in Burma is a priority U.S. policy objective in Southeast Asia. To achieve this objective, the United States has consistently supported democracy activists and their efforts both inside and outside Burma…Addressing these needs requires flexibility and creativity. Despite the challenges that have arisen, United States Embassies Rangoon and Bangkok as well as Consulate General Chiang Mai are fully engaged in pro-democracy efforts. The United States also supports organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Open Society Institute (nb no support given since 2004) and Internews, working inside and outside the region on a broad range of democracy promotion activities. U.S.-based broadcasters supply news and information to the Burmese people, who lack a free press. U.S. programs also fund scholarships for Burmese who represent the future of Burma.The report then continues detailing the specifics of each organization mentioned, including the National Endowment for Democracy:
The United States is committed to working for a democratic Burma and will continue to employ a variety of tools to assist democracy activists."
"The National Endowment for Democracy (NED – see Appendix 1, page 27) has been at the forefront of our program efforts to promote democracy and improved human rights in Burma since 1996. We are providing $2,500,000 in FY 2003 funding from the Burma earmark in the Foreign Operations legislation. The NED will use these funds to support Burmese and ethnic minority democracy-promoting organizations through a sub-grant program. The projects funded are designed to disseminate information inside Burma supportive of Burma’s democratic development, to create democratic infrastructures and institutions, to improve the collection of information on human rights abuses by the Burmese military and to build capacity to support the restoration of democracy when the appropriate political openings occur and the exiles/refugees return."NED is cited as behind the creation of the New Era Journal, the Irrawaddy, and the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) radio, all posing, just as the recently exposed Thai-US propaganda front, Prachatai, as "independent" media sources despite the fact they are in reality fully-funded by the US government.
The role of US State Department-run Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA) is also discussed in detail, including the revelation that US foreign policy specifically supports and actively promotes Aung San Suu Kyi and "her" agenda."Both Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) have Burmese services. VOA broadcasts a 30-minute mix of international news and information three times a day. RFA broadcasts news and information about Burma two hours a day. VOA and RFA websites also contain audio and text material in Burmese and English. For example, VOA's October 10, 2003 editorial, "Release Aung San Suu Kyi" is prominently featured in the Burmese section of VOAnews.com. RFA's website makes available audio versions of 16 Aung San Suu Kyi's speeches from May 27 and 29, 2003. U.S. international broadcasting provides crucial information to a population denied the benefits of freedom of information by its government."
The US also pours vast resources into organizations affiliated with Aung San Suu Kyi, including "Prospect Burma," a London-based Soros-funded organization:
"The State Department provided $150,000 in FY 2001/02 funds to provide scholarships to young Burmese through Prospect Burma, a partner organization with close ties to Aung San Suu Kyi. With FY 2003/04 funds, we plan to support Prospect Burma’s work given the organization’s proven competence in managing scholarships for individuals denied educational opportunities by the continued repression of the military junta, but committed to a return to democracy in Burma."Of course, billionaire-bankster and geopolitical meddler George Soros not only funds and coordinates with the above mentioned "Prospect Burma" organization, but also directly funds activities through his "Open Society Institute" literally training an army of subversion meant to return to Myanmar and overthrow the government:
"Our assistance to the Open Society Institute (OSI) (until 2004) provides partial support for a program to grant scholarships to Burmese refugee students who have fled Burma and wish to continue their studies at the undergraduate, or post-graduate level. Students typically pursue degrees in social sciences, public health, medicine, anthropology, and political science. Priority is given to students who express a willingness to return to Burma or work in their refugee communities for the democratic and economic reform of the country."Throughout the period covered in the "Burma Campaign UK" report, includes a description of then Thaksin Shinawtra's government and its support of Western activities to subvert the government of neighboring Myanmar. The Thai Ministry of Public Health, also implicated in grants to the US propaganda front, Prachatai, is mentioned specifically:
"Last year the U.S. government began funding a new program of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to provide basic health services to Burmese migrants outside the official refugee camps in cooperation with the Thai Ministry of Public Health. This project has been supported by the Thai government and has received favorable coverage in the local press. Efforts such as this that endeavor to find positive ways to work with the Thai government in areas of common interest help build support for U.S.-funded programs that support Burmese pro-democracy groups."While many may be tempted to claim that such work is humanitarian in nature, it is mentioned several times that the actual goal of dolling out scholarships and other aid is specifically to create a pro-Western bloc meant to overthrow the anti-West regime in Myanmar. With names like "National Endowment for Democracy" people are meant to believe that a benign, benevolent agenda is being carried out that is in the best interest of all involved. In reality, the National Endowment for Democracy is packed wall-to-wall with corporate-fascist interests, warmongering elitists, and confessed imperialists.
Wall Street's Puppet Show
Again, what on face value looks like a landmark victory for "democratic developments" turns out to be an astounding mockery of such principles made by those with verifiably no interest in either democracy or human rights. Instead, the meeting between Yingluck Shinawatra, a puppet of her brother, who in turn is a stooge of Wall Street and London corporate-financier interests, and Aung San Suu Kyi, a verified, well-documented fraud - perhaps the most breathtaking example of such fraud in recent history - signifies the execution of what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared as "America's Pacific Century," a Hitlerian declaration of imperial intent for American "leadership" in Asia for the next 100 years.
Upon reading Clinton's declaration of intent for American leadership into the next century, readers may recall the similarly named, ranting "Project for a New American Century" signed off on by some of America's most notorious Neo-Conservatives, which almost verbatim made the same case now made by Clinton. In fact, America's evolving confrontation with China, marked acutely by Obama's announcement of a permanent US military presence in Australia just this week, is torn directly from the pages of decades old blueprints drawn up by corporate-financier funded think-tanks that truly rule America and its destiny.
As reported in June, 2011's "Collapsing China," as far back as 1997 there was talk about developing an effective containment strategy coupled with the baited hook of luring China into its place amongst the "international order." Just as in these 1997 talking-points where author and notorious Neo-Con policy maker Robert Kagan described the necessity of using America's Asian "allies" as part of this containment strategy, Clinton goes through a list of regional relationships the US is trying to cultivate to maintain "American leadership" in Asia. The US backing of puppet-regimes like Thaksin, his sister Yingluck, or Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi, installing them into power, and keeping them there is central to projecting power throughout Asia and keeping China subordinate, or as Kagan put it in his 1997 report, these proxy regimes will have China "play Gulliver to Southeast Asia's Lilliputians, with the United States supplying the rope and stakes." Two of these "Lilliputians" are Yingluck Shinawatra and Aung San Suu Kyi, the rope and stakes are the street mobs and disingenuous NGOs funded by NED to supporter their consolidation of power.
It is essential to look past the empty rhetoric of "democracy," "human rights," and "progress" used to justify foreign-funding and meddling to install servile autocrats like Thailand's Thaksin, Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi, or even Malaysia's stooge dictator-in-waiting Anwar Ibrahim and see the greater geopolitical game at play. It is also essential to expose the disingenuous organizations, institutions, and media personalities helping promote this global corporate-fascist agenda. Above all, it is important not to allow ourselves and our countrymen to be manipulated and their lives wasted in the inevitable conflicts that are sure to arise as Wall Street and London struggle to maintain, or even expand their global financial, economic, and military hegemony.
