Flash Back: Thailand's Thaksin and the US-FTA

Forward by Tony Cartalucci:

It has been recently reported that globalists are backing Thailand's "red" color revolutions and its leader Thaksin Shinawatra. For those interested in the back story, below is Professor Aziz Choudry, Ph.D.'s take on the US-Thailand free-trade agreement during Thaksin Shinwatra's premiership in 2004 and the grave implications such a deal would have had if Thaksin succeeded in passing it.

For those interested in America's official take on the 2004 US-Thai FTA, check out the document below. It should be of no surprise that the very corporations pushing this FTA on page 8, are now behind Thaksin Shinawatra's efforts to overthrow the current Thai government.

http://www.us-asean.org/us-thai-fta/ITC.pdf

Corporate pusher, Robert Zoellick attempted to negotiate a FTA
with Thailand's Thaksin Shinwatra in 2004. Despite Thaksin's
enthusiaism to sell his country out to foreigners, protesters
and local industry thwarted his efforts. Thaksin was
eventually ousted from power in 2006.

Fighting the US-Thailand Free Trade Agreement
28 March, 2004
by Aziz Choudry Ph.D.

The Elephant, the Rabbit, the Cobra and the Gold

Every time I visit Bangkok I see it. "Power is nothing without control" reads an advertising billboard for a transnational tyre company near Chulalongkorn University. This February, Pirelli's slogan summed up the US philosophy for its proposed bilateral free trade and investment agreement with Thailand.

On 12 February, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick sent a formal letter of intent to begin negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Thailand within 90 days to US Congress and Senate. Actual negotiations seem likely to start in June, but just days ago, Thai Commerce Minister Watana Muangsook led a large official delegation to Washington to meet with US politicians and trade negotiators in order to prepare the ground for FTA talks.

A US-Thailand Agreement, modeled on recently-signed FTAs with Singapore and Chile would advance the US Enterprise for ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Initiative (EAI). This envisages a network of bilateral FTAs between the US and individual ASEAN countries that are committed to domestic neoliberal reforms and free trade and investment. Not to mention the "war on terror".

While Thaksin's government promotes Thailand, through its agricultural/food production and exports, as "kitchen of the world", Australian National University academics Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite warn: "Bilateralism is like cooking an elephant and rabbit stew. However you mix the ingredients, it ends up tasting like elephant."

It is clear what the elephant wants from this relationship.

The Secretariat of the recently formed US-Thailand FTA Business Coalition comprises the US-ASEAN Business Council, representing US corporations with interests in ASEAN, and National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the USA's largest industrial trade lobby group. NAM boasts: "Our voice is not compromised by non-industry interests."

FedEx, General Electric Company, New York Life, Time Warner and Unocal are US-Thailand FTA Business Coalition corporate chairs. Steering Committee members include: AIG, Cargill, Caterpillar, Citigroup, Corn Refiners Association, CSI, Dow Chemical, Ford, National Pork Producers Council, PhRMA, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SIA, UPS, and the US Chamber of Commerce.

The US Chamber of Commerce wants "a comprehensive FTA with Thailand" to address "contentious trade issues" like intellectual property protection, customs administration and "permit market access for U.S. firms into certain restricted Thai industries, such as telecommunications and financial services." The US wants the Thai government to crack down on "intellectual property violations", not least, counterfeit software, clothes, and auto parts.

Liberalizing Thailand's agriculture sector is another top US priority. Ernest Bower, President of the US-ASEAN Business Council and former McDonnell Douglas executive, believes:

"a US-Thai pact could form "the precedent and the template" for future FTA talks with Southeast Asian countries having large farm sectors." A White House factsheet notes: "An FTA would particularly benefit American farmers, who currently face tariffs in Thailand averaging 35 percent in addition to an array [of] non-tariff barriers."

The US also wants greater "transparency" and expanded access for US goods and services to Thailand's government procurement market.

Then there is investment. To qualify for an FTA with the US, Thailand signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement in October 2002. Under the 1966 Treaty of Amity and Economic Relations, US businesses already enjoy equal treatment to Thai firms in many sectors of the economy, with a few exceptions. These existing privileges will be greatly expanded ' especially in the services sector - and phased into the FTA.

Zoellick wants Thailand to eliminate "unjustified trade restrictions that affect new US technologies" in agriculture. A ban on the import of genetically-engineered (GE) seeds for commercial planting has been in place since 1999, and in April 2001 the Thai government decided to stop GE field trials, including Monsanto's ongoing cotton and corn experiments. Last November, Monsanto announced that it wanted to make Thailand its regional base for GE Round Up Ready corn and bt corn by 2006, urging that the government lift its ban.

While the US heavies Thailand over its GE ban, pirated goods and sundry intellectual property violations, many Thais wonder who the real pirates are. Attempts to patent Thailand's fragrant jasmine rice have met with outrage and stiff opposition from farmers and others concerned at the apparent ease with which Thai biodiversity and traditional knowledge is being appropriated by others. The FTA would require Thailand to allow patents on animals and plants, further facilitating biopiracy by US companies and researchers.

US corporations and officials applaud Thaksin's privatization program, viewing the FTA as a means to advance and lock this in. But popular opposition, led by tens of thousands of state enterprise workers rallying regularly, caused Thaksin to postpone the privatization of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT). This may also delay provincial and metro electricity authorities' privatization plans. The state enterprise workers' union warns that privatization will mean higher rates and overseas ownership.

Advisers on the EGAT sale include Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase and Co. Planned sales of other state-owned enterprises include the Metropolitan Waterworks Authority, Provincial Waterworks Authority, the Government Pharmaceutical Organization, the Port Authority of Thailand, the Expressway and Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand. The FTA also threatens the subsidized pricing practice of state enterprises in transport, electricity, drugs and fuel.

We can be sure that the US will not offer tariff-free or quota-free access to any major Thai farm exports. Conversely, Thai farmers would face a further flood of subsidized US agricultural imports once tariffs are eliminated, threatening both their livelihoods and food sovereignty. This could lead to contamination by genetically-modified US crops and seed as has happened in Mexico under NAFTA. Many Thai critics of the US FTA point to the dramatic impact of the first phase of an FTA with China which took effect last October. With the removal of many agricultural tariffs, a flood of cheap Chinese fruits and vegetables threatens to ruin many Thai farmers in the rural north.

Organized by FTAWatch (www.ftawatch.org), a coalition of Thai organizations and academics against the FTA, the packed forum at Chulalongkorn where I spoke last month was entitled "Sovereignty Not for Sale". "Sovereignty" resonates strongly in the only South East Asian country to escape physical occupation by European colonial powers. Thai law generally prevents foreign individuals or companies from owning land. The realization that the FTA could remove these restrictions is anathema to many Thais.

At the February forum, Camila Montecinos, of GRAIN-Chile described the US approach on bilateral FTAs as the imposition of a blueprint rather than a genuine negotiation: "it is not really an FTA, but a Charter of Guarantees for US investments and investors."

Even the mere expectation of a gain or profit, or the assumption of risk is covered in the definition of investment and therefore subject to a possible investor-state dispute brought against the government by an aggrieved US investor. An "investor" would not need to be an actual investor in order to launch such a dispute ' but could merely be one that intends to invest. She pointed out that the US FTA template's "transparency" provisions grant US investors and enterprises information and lobbying rights that nationals do not have ' governments have to inform them before passing new laws or regulations, or applying certain policies, and allow them to lobby against them.

Dr Jakkrit Kuanpoth, of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University's School of Law explained that the FTA would restrict even narrow options available to the Thai government under the WTO's TRIPs (Agreement on Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property rights). It would extend the 20 year patent term by a further 5 years, and limit the circumstances for issuing compulsory licenses, (which authorize private or state use of patents without the consent of patent holders) and prevent the revocation of patents on public interest grounds.

This "TRIPs-plus" approach would increase social and economic costs and exacerbate the public health crisis, while making Thailand's self-sufficiency in technology impossible. Around a million people live with HIV/AIDS in Thailand. According to a 2002 UNAIDS report AIDS is Thailand's leading cause of death. The Thai Government Pharmaceutical Organization produces cheap reliable generic drugs including one of the cheapest anti-retroviral drugs in the world, GPO-VIR, which the government hopes will reach 70,000 people this year who otherwise would not afford treatment. Under the FTA, Thais can wave goodbye to hopes of accessible treatment.

The US-Thailand FTA is another example of neoliberalism and US military/geopolitical interests advancing hand in hand. Zoellick argues that the FTA "would further enhance our broader relationship with Thailand. We are partners in the global war on terrorism, and the extensive ties between the US and Thai militaries bolster US strategic interests in the region."

Thaksin's government sent troops to Iraq, and captured Jemaah Islamiah militant Hambali, accused of masterminding and plotting terrorist activities, delivering him to US authorities. Domestically it continues to marginalize, militarize, and criminalize the mainly Muslim south which John Brandon of the International Herald Tribune (February 10 2004) sensationally labels "Southeast Asia's soft underbelly" of "terror".

Over a century after Siam annexed the Islamic Kingdom of Pattani in 1902, resentment of the government's neglect of the country's South ' one of the country's poorest regions - and its refusal to recognize the culture, language, and ethnicity of some six million Thai Muslims remains high. With a wave of attacks on government buildings and military bases, the heavily militarized, predominantly Muslim, provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat near the Malaysian border are now under martial law. As unrest continues, so too do reports of human rights violations carried out by state security forces.

This April/May, Thailand hosts the 23rd annual "Cobra Gold" joint military exercise, involving US and Thai troops (and soldiers from Singapore, Mongolia and the Philippines). It remains the region's largest joint military exercise involving US troops.

One can understand why Thaksin is a willing ally of Bush. A former Lieutenant-Colonel in the Thai Police, he became a multimillionaire telecommunications tycoon. He is the self-styled CEO of "Thailand, Inc", and Top Cop. A division of his Shin Corp. media and telecommunications empire, Advanced Info Service, has the largest cellphone customer base in Thailand. He also owns iTV, Thailand's largest commercial broadcaster. "Democracy is the means to an end," he says, "not the end itself." Thaksin consolidated his power base by filling key government and military posts with family and associates from Shin Corp. But with fallout over a government cover-up of the Asian bird flu outbreak, the situation in the South, and mounting opposition against privatization, his popularity is plummeting.

Thaksin's party commands an absolute majority in Thailand's lower house, and can pass a trade agreement merely on a yes/no vote with a joint meeting of Senate and the lower house. A number of academics, NGOs, senators and the opposition have challenged the anti-democratic and secretive process of negotiating and signing FTAs. Chulalongkorn Law Professor and FTAWatch member Jaroen Compeerapap argues that Thailand's Constitution requires any deals affecting Thai sovereignty to be approved by two-thirds of Parliament. But Thaksin maintains that this FTA and others would not be subject to Parliamentary scrutiny. Thailand has concluded, or is pursuing bilateral FTAs with Australia, China, India, Bahrain, Peru and Japan. Thongbai Thongpao, human rights lawyer and senator, writing in the Bangkok Post (22 February 2004), asks: "If the government has nothing to hide, why don't they let Parliament scrutinise all proposed bilateral free trade accords?"

The FTA is Cobra Gold's economic soul-mate. Thailand will be swamped with poisonous cobras 'the US corporate variety - which will slither off with the gold.

There is an antidote to this kind of cobra venom. Strike before it bites.

As Thaksin's popularity falls, mounting opposition to this deal and his domestic economic reforms - could raise the social and political stakes against its successful conclusion from the Thai side. US interests in Thailand like the Chamber of Commerce, Monsanto and Embassy staff are nervously eying this opposition.

In a US election year where Congress is unlikely to approve new trade agreements it is tempting to feel that we have a little more breathing room. Soundly defeating this deal before it is signed could put a precedent-setting spanner in the works of US bilateral free trade and investment ambitions. To achieve that goal, US global justice activists should target this agreement and join hands with their Thai comrades already engaged in this struggle.

The original article was first found here. Professor Aziz Choudry is currently working on the bilaterals.org website, which is a collective effort to share information and stimulate cooperation against bilateral trade and investment agreements that are opening countries to the deepest forms of penetration by transnational corporations.

Hun Sen, a Globalist Model Pet

Cambodian PM Hun Sen (left) and Thailand's Thaksin Shinwatra (right), two globalist peas in a pod.

by Tony Cartalucci

"Prime Minister" Hun Sen of Cambodia has occupied the nation's seat of power for 25 years. Term limits don't exist, neither does any real opposition. In 1997, when last Hun Sen lost an election, he butchered and exiled his opposition in a bloodly military coup.

Such a man is surely a candidate for the "Axis of Evil" and should be mentioned in every other breath by the media along side Iran, North Korea, and Burma. But wait ... most people have never heard the name "Hun Sen" nor do they hear any news at all coming from this Southeast Asian backwater.

Indeed, Cambodia has enjoyed the benefits of mainstream media immunity, along with other brutal dictatorships like Saudi Arabia. While a 30 year old video of Taliban hitting women with sticks is left looping on CNN and Fox News, Saudi Arabia weekly opens up "Chop-Chop Square" to decapitate enemies of the state, under the watchful eyes of the United States, fully funding, training, and implementing defense and security within the Kingdom.

Likewise, Cambodia is a brutal dictatorship. While the Khmer Rouge might not be murdering its people by the millions, at least not as quickly, old Hun Sen, former Khmer Rouge himself, has displaced and oppressed millions under his long and very undemocratic rule. According to the London Guardian, nearly half of Cambodia's landmass has been sold to foreign investors by 2008.

Today, the Cambodian military is literally being sold off to corporations now possessing wide swaths of land as mercenary forces to crush any local opposition. Surely displacing millions, and selling land out from under people is criminal, and an affront to humanity. But strangely enough, this story goes unreported, the UN remains eerily silent, and in fact, the United States, as of 2010 has begun training many of the most notorious landgrabbing military units involved in this atrocity.

Indeed, Operation Angkor Sentinel kicked off in July 2010 as US Army troops trained with the local Cambodian troops. The United States shamelessly defends the exercises claiming that “Our military relationship is about ... working toward effective defence reform, toward encouraging the kind of civil-military relationship that is essential to any healthy political system,” according to William Burns, the US undersecretary of state for political affairs.

In reality, investors come from the United States, Europe, United Kingdom and Australia, buying tracts of land in some cases the size of Singapore in single deals, and which require protection from locals who have literally been pushed off their land at gunpoint. It is much more likely the Cambodian troops are receiving US military training and aid because globalist assets need protecting and Hun Sen has proven himself a stooge of serious potential.

Like previous stooges in their glory days, such as Saddam Hussien, the Shah of Iran, or even neighboring Thailand's notirous global stooge Thaksin Shinwatra, all can be forgiven, and covered up by the mainstream media, as long as the beneficiaries of atrocities and oppression are the globalists. Hun Sen most certainly is doing well for himself, and the key to his continued success will be back-bending compliance to the globalists and their designs.

Last year, Hun Sen's willingness to work toward globalist interests transcended the failed state he presides over, with his appointment of Thailand's ousted/fugitive Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra as his "Financial Adviser."

In addition, after the 2009 April riots conducted by Thaksin's Marxist "red shirts" many of the leaders fled to Cambodia as a safe haven and base to continue stoking violence and unrest, and even arm the Marxist rebels with weapons acquired in Cambodia.

Thaksin's proxy political party have repeatedly held meetings inside Cambodia with their exiled leader, and after the recent 2010 April/May unrest, again, Thaksin's scattered leadership fled to Cambodia for safety and to reorganize.

Thaksin's "red shirts" are reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, who between civil war, genocide, and a large dose of communism, reduced the Cambodian people to the easily exploited nation it is today. The fact that Robert Amsterdam, of Amsterdam & Peroff, major corporate members of the globalist nexus Chatham House, is behind Thaksin, along with the BBC, Economist and some of the largest banking and corporate interests on earth, doesn't bode well for neighboring Thailand. It is more than likely the globalists to a certain degree would like to recreate in Thailand their success in Cambodia, a globalist free-for-all amongst the ashes of a broken people. Thaksin Shinwatra is their "Hun Sen 2.0."

So while Robert Amsterdam churns out volumes of "white papers" regarding the Thai government's treatment of armed Marxist rebels, he is strangely silent about his
own client's ties to Cambodia's Hun Sen, and his continuing crimes against humanity.

Hun Sen appears to be standing on the precipice of another "Dubai." A land of zero taxes catering to foreign investors, and red-hot property speculation that will catapult the 3rd world nation to a faux-first-world showcase.

Unlike Dubai, which has a very tiny local population, Cambodia has a human obstacle standing in the way of wall-to-wall exploitation. It seems as if the US Army and the globalists are more than prepared to clear this obstacle, in the most abhorrent way possible - which is why you haven't heard of Hun Sen, or any news from Cambodia, and won't until Hun Sen back peddles or lines his pockets a little too much, and needs to be replaced.

BBC's "Stark warnings over Thai emergency laws"

Foward by Tony Cartalucci

Let's give some background before reading BBC's "article."

1. The International Crisis Group is a US based "think tank" with some of the highest level globalists making up its membership.

Kenneth Adelman: Former US Ambassador to the UN, former lobbyist for Thaksin Shinawtra, the very man behind Thailand's "red shirt" protesters, the riots, and the ongoing political instability in the country.
Wesley Clark: Council on Foreign Relations member, former NATO supreme allied commander.
Carla Hills; Council on Foreign Relations member, Trilateral Commission member, signatory of the CFR's "Building a North American Community" aka the North American Union.
George Soros: globalist extraordinaire, a personal and corporate member of the CFR.
Fidel Ramos: Former President of the Philippines, Carlyle Group member.
Richard Armitage: Council on Foreign Relations member, signatory of the Project for a New American Century,
Zbigniew Brzezinski: CFR member, Bilderberg member, Trilateral Commission member/director/co-founder.

This think tank is hardly an objective organization - as everything these men and women do in the CFR and Trilateral Commission revolve around the geopolitical manipulation of foreign nations and the extra-legal production of US policy. Kenneth Adelman's involvement alone derides any legitimacy ICG might have on the topic, as he is the former lobbyist of the "red shirt's" leader.

Nearly all of the ICG's "recommendations" are also, verbatim, Thaksin's ultimatums given to the government via his new pet lobbyist, Robert Amsterdam.

2. The word "terrorist" is not used once in describing the apparent bomb plot reported to BBC. In fact, the BBC takes a tone of warning directed towards the Thai government to back down or face inevitable violence. The legitimacy BBC tries to lend this story by including the ICG's statement, a repeat of Thaksin Shinwatra's ultimatums, coupled with the BBC's unprofessional, biased and frankly dishonest coverage of the violence in April/May 2010, illustrates how indeed the western media, along with these so called "think tanks" are merely another cog in the globalist gang.

If you are wondering why the globalists are so interested in Thaksin Shinwatra and the despoiling of Thailand via a communist "people's revolution," look no further than neighboring Cambodia where globalist shill, dictator for life "PM" Hun Sen has literally sold over half of his country right out from under his own people to foreign investors. Thaksin is the globalists' Thai "PM Hun Sen" in waiting.

3. BBC also features the "persecuted" Samyos Phruksakasemsuk, author of "Voice of Taksin." Samyos claims that the curbs on media are unreasonable and will force people underground. Of course, BBC makes no mention that Samyos's publication regularly featured death threats, calls to arms, and violent rhetoric that served as the blueprint for the violence that struck the city in April and May of 2010. Let's take a look at a few selections from Samyos' "Voice of Taksin" and see if this sort of hatred would be protected under any nation's "freedom of speech" provisions.








Translations can be found here.
http://2bangkok.com/category/thai-politics/red-shirt-publications

Obviously calls to kill people, burn down people's property, and otherwise destroy society at the expense of 65 million people's rights isn't protected under freedom of speech. Typically, if you threaten to kill someone or destroy someone's property, this is called "conspiracy to commit a felony/conspiracy to commit murder." Not only do you have no right to threaten others, you also face serious jail time for doing so.

4. And finally, not even a month went by after this article was published with its "stark warnings" that two bombs went off in the city, claiming the life of one, and seriously injuring 9 others.

Now, without further ado, the BBC article, giving Thailand "stark warnings."

Stark warnings over Thai emergency laws

By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Bangkok

With a state of emergency extended, there have been suggestions that underground groups are getting prepared to use violence in Thailand.

The details are unspecific and hard to verify, but pose a stark warning for the government to act with caution.

A "red-shirt" security guard during the protest in Bangkok city centre, who has been in hiding since the army ended the demonstrations six weeks ago, has told the BBC he has been asked to join an organisation training to make bombs.

"We have been approached by two or three groups who used violence during the protest and shot at soldiers," he said, over the telephone from an unknown location.

"They said they are operating underground and would like us to join them but we are waiting for now.

"I understand from the discussions among these groups that there will be bombs. There are 30 to 40 people being trained in how to use petrol to make a big explosion."

Most protesters on the streets of Bangkok from March to May were peaceful, but there was a violent element responsible for firing grenades and automatic weapons at soldiers and police.

There have been a number of small blasts in the last week, but it is not known who is responsible. A grenade attack on an empty gas storage vessel in Bangkok is suspected to have been carried out by serving troops.

'No more instability'

Fears over security was the reason given by the Thai government for extending a State of Emergency in Bangkok and 18 other provinces for another three months.

Five provinces previously under the Emergency Decree, which gives security forces extra powers, had the laws relaxed.

A recent report from the International Crisis Group recommended the government remove these laws, described as "draconian", across the whole country in order to prevent forcing opposition underground.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva: "We need to restore order now"

It also called on protest leaders to have charges of terrorism dropped in order to achieve effective reconciliation.

Ahead of the cabinet decision, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told the BBC: "There will be a gradual lifting of the state of emergency in the various provinces.

"We need to restore order, the last thing we need now is a repeat of violence or clashes," he said.

"We will do all we can to get back to normalcy as soon as possible. The last thing the country wants now is more instability."

The account from the unnamed former red-shirt security worker suggests the government has reason to worry about the threat of violence, but Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, disagrees.

"The continued imposition of the State of Emergency is alarming, it violates basic civil liberties," he said, speaking before the cabinet decision.

"It is being used increasingly as a political instrument of the government and the powers-that-be in Thailand to maintain control, to try to put a lid on the opposition, to stifle dissent.

"It will not allow space for dissent, disagreements and grievances to be expressed. If those exist they will be pent up and when they have a chance to come back they will be much more furious than we have seen."

'Repressed'

Opposition media has also been silenced in much of north-eastern Thailand, where the red-shirt movement originates.

It is here the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra focused his spending efforts and gained popular support while in power.

Samyos Phruksakasemsuk says the media curbs force critics underground

He is seen as a hero by many poorer people who gained from his populist policies of cheap healthcare and credit, but treated as a manipulative and corrupt leader by his opponents, who removed him from power in a coup in 2006. He has been convicted of abuse of power while in office.

Thaksin is blamed by the government for funding and encouraging the anti-government rallies in Bangkok and the efforts to force the current prime minister to stand down.

Many of the community radio and TV stations which were platforms for the anti-government red-shirt message have been shut down by the government and there is anger among people there who feel they have been silenced.

Samyos Phruksakasemsuk is an activist who produced a magazine called Voice of Thaksin, which was also banned, and has recently brought out a new publication called Red Power.

He expects it to be banned as well, but warned the government: "People feel repressed as they can't voice their opinions openly, so the fear is they will go underground and there'll be more violence."

Mr Abhisit said more space would be provided for opposition media.

"The stations closed have been involved in incitement of violence. That's not something I think the country can afford."

A number of commissions have been set up to look at national, constitutional and media reform, as well as a truth inquiry to establish exactly what happened during the protests. He says reconciliation is a priority.

But the red-shirt security guard sent a stark warning.

"What happens depends on what the government does against us. How much pressure they put on us and how patient we will be.

"I don't want anything to happen to our country, but when that day comes it might not be as we hope - the violence will be double what we have seen in the past."

The original article can be found here on BBC's website.

Globalist Hit Fails in Bangkok

By Tony Cartalucci

As the media tries to canonize fugitive ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinwatra as a visionary of democracy, and patriarch of Thailand's "red shirt" movement, his proxies on the ground in Thailand are either in jail or on the run.

“It is the beginning of class war,” said Natthawut Saikua, a UDD red shirt leader. Mr. Saikua, who was once a member of Thaksin's political party, had called on protesters several times before the final confrontation to "burn all of Thailand to the ground," should the red shirt leadership be caught.



The violent nature of the red shirts is well known in Thailand, but for observers overseas depending on the mass media for information, they appeared as gallant, slingshot wielding protesters on par with the Greeks. They attacked banks, just like the Greeks and fought against heavily armed riot troops, just like the Greeks. What wasn't mentioned was the fact that Thailand wasn't under any "austerity" measures. The media had also done a masterful job of concealing the army of ex-rangers, dressed in black, working on behalf of Thaksin and the red shirts.

They ambushed the military during a crackdown on April 10th, 2010, after conducting weeks of drive-by shootings and grenade attacks on offices and business fronts, including banks that were personal enemies of Thaksin Shinwatra.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2N8xAF5eUw&has_verified=1

From Reuters, "The red shirts' international spokesman, Sean Boonpracong, told Reuters elements of the army are with their movement. They are known as 'watermelons' -- green on the outside but red in the middle -- and they include the shadowy, black-clad men with military weapons that were seen at the April 10th crackdown.

'They are a secret unit within the army that disagrees with what's going on. Without them, the black clad men, there would have been a whole lot more deaths and injuries,' he said."

http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-47881220100421

Major General Khattiya Sawasdipol, know as 'Seh Daeng,' or 'Red Commander,' was a close associate of Thaksin Shinwatra, meeting him several times in Dubai during Thaksin's exile, also made a startling admission that indeed, there was an armed, militant wing of professional killers working on behalf of Thaksin. This report comes from "The Age."

"In one recent interview he declared that he had 300 armed men trained for ''close encounters'' and armed with M79 grenade launchers. In other interviews he denied he was the leader of the military wing of the UDD.

When a senior military officer was killed by sniper fire last month, he told the media that it was the work of a shadowy unit supporting Thaksin inside the military, dubbed the Ronin Warriors (a reference to the era of Samurai warriors in Japan). He strongly denied he was the leader of this death squad."

http://www.theage.com.au/world/red-commander-saw-himself-as-thai-william-wallace-20100518-vc54.html

Despite open admissions of armed insurrection against the Thai government by red shirt leadership, the mainstream news media did its best to bury these facts and continue portraying Thailand as another "Greece." Another premise they have made was that this movement was grassroots, organic, and fluid. Again, those in Thailand knew otherwise.

The red shirt leadership is an exclusive club of Chinese trained Maoists, current and former members of Thaksin's political party, and entertainers paid to place their stamp of approval on the movement for their impressionable audience. The organizing of the "red shirts" can be best described by this article from ISP, which exposes the fact that Thaksin's closest associates were actually conducting indoctrination camps all over the rural north of Thailand.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50274

The final impression the mainstream media tries to get across to its unsuspecting audience is that the protesters were fighting for "democracy." On face value, those fighting for "modern" democracy implies a globalist hit, but implications are not necessary. Thaksin's Marxist intelligentsia tried in vain to convince us that a Marxist welfare state equates to democracy and self-determination. This interview with self-confessed Marxist, red shirt leader in exile, and writer of the "Red Siam Manifesto," Giles Ungkaporn gives us a breathtaking display of hypocrisy and same-sentence contradictions as he describes the "democracy" the red shirts plan to bring to Thailand.



Thaksin Shinwatra himself, a CFR speaker, former Carlyle Group member, Asian Union proponent who proposed the Asian Cooperative Dialogue, has since the 2006 coup been supported by some of Washington and the West's best lobbyist firms These include Baker & Botts, Edelman, Amsterdam and Peroff, and Barbour Griffith and Rogers. With the mainstream media bending to the commentary of lawyers like Robert Amsterdam, repeating Giles Ungkaporn's rhetoric almost verbatim, and the UN attempting to pry its way into the conflict, again, it appears as if a globalist hit was in progress.

Of course, with the violence ended, and the red shirt leaders and their propaganda network shut down, it is uncertain what will come next. UDD red shirt leader Jakrapob Penkair, and former spokesman for Thaksin Shinwatra, told Asia Times "that the UDD had clandestinely moved small arms from Cambodia to Thaksin's supporters in Thailand's northeastern region, where the exiled premier's popularity runs strongest. He told other news agencies that the UDD was willing to launch an "armed struggle" to achieve its goals, which included the toppling of the government and restoration of Thaksin's power."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KK12Ae01.html

It seems for now, despite the mainstream media's best efforts and the most well connected lawyers and lobbyist firms on earth being involved, the "People's War" has been delayed, giving Thailand some much needed breathing room.

What unfolds in the days, months, and years to come will determine whether Thailand succumbs to the globalists or is able to maintain their sovereignty and work within their own system to end corruption, reduce poverty, and create better social justice through their own, real, self-determination.

On a final note, another convenient oversight of the mass media's new "saint of democracy," was Thaksin's ties to ex-Khmer Rogue, dictator for life; Cambodia's PM Hun Sen. Asia Times article "Plots seen in Thaksin's Cambodia gambit," referenced above, also points out that Thaksin Shinwatra was officially named as Hun Sen's "economic adviser." Thaskin, during his exile has landed more than once in Cambodia to conduct his business of undermining neighboring Thailand. His political party has literally met with him on foreign Cambodian soil to conduct political business. Thaksin Shinwatra's associations with dictator Hun Sen are most unsettling as Hun Sen is himself a globalist minion who has literally sold half of his nation out to globalist investors.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/26/cambodia

Considering this, and the nature of Thaksin Shinwatra, his nefarious associations and the dubious support given to him and his "red shirts" by the mainstream media, we must take a step back and recognize this for what it was. A globalist hit. It has stalled, and instead of being in "solidarity" with Marxist rebels, we should take the reprieve in violence as a victory and proof that the once 'all powerful' globalists are now showing signs of weakness and failing on every front.