Transcript of the above video:

So this "Big Joke" situation, for those who watch this channel you will know that "Big Joke" came on my radar when he became the head of Thai Immigration and I have since sort of tracked his career because it pertains to law enforcement here in Thailand and oftentimes can have a bearing on the expat community in Thailand because he has changed policies that have a tremendous amount of impact on expats over the years and also tracking Surachate Hakparn, that is "Big Joke's" real name, tracking his career has been something, it's been interesting to say the least. I think it is sort of for lack of a better term rather newsworthy unto itself. Now I didn't jump on this story immediately because I wanted to kind of give it a minute to see sort of how this was going to shake out. We saw a major development back some months ago when the new Police Chief was being installed here in Thailand and shortly before that "Big Joke", his house, people showed up his house, I hesitate say it was raided but as we talked about at the time, there was some kind of accusations brought at that time regarding something having to do with online gambling and he seemed to respond to that at the time and then he was appointed Deputy National Police Chief and has continued on in that role. So I have been hesitant to make a video immediately. I have never thought of this channel as news per se in the sense that we are trying to get a hot story every minute; that's not the function of this channel. In fact I like to think that we try to slow things down a little bit in order to analyze things on a little bit deeper level. That said, I think it's worth making this video now that we sort of see the posture of this overall.

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: "Big Joke" confirmed suspect in ‘Minnie gambling case’. Quoting directly: "Deputy National Police Chief Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn is a suspect in an ongoing online gambling case and could face multiple charges including money laundering, a Deputy Chief of the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) confirmed." Quoting further: "The five officers in the second case’, which to my understanding and those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail. I am not going to get in to the details of the accusations and things here and I will get to that in a minute but go check out this article in detail. There appear to be two different cases and "Big Joke" is sort of entangled in one or both of them; I am not quite sure exactly what is going on there so we'll keep folks updated but it seems like it is rather fluid and it's evolving sort of in real time. But quoting further: “The five officers in the second case would be initially charged with malfeasance and taking brides, under Sections 157 and 149 of the Criminal Code.” Now the way I read the overall article, looks like "Big Joke" is involved in that second case. Now again I want to stress this, I'm not saying that unequivocally nor do I understand the merits or the finer points of these underlying cases and I am not going to comment on that further other than to say it appears from the reporting in the Bangkok Post, that "Big Joke" is implicated in one or both of these cases. Again this hasn’t all shaken out, we don't exactly know what is going on here so not to go to the merits of the underlying case, all I will say at this point is this regarding the underlying case and "Big Joke" specifically. I have been watching this guy's career for a number of years now, not really out of any particular desire to do so from the outset, it just sort of became something we began monitoring as sort of a result of the natural course of this channel. One thing I will say though is, boy if anything, "Big Joke" has a real knack for survival in situations here in Thailand that have played out, that in the past I didn't think anybody could survive the types of accusations and the terms of events that befell "Big Joke" at various points, roughly the last six or seven years in which we have been at least keeping track of him specifically, I think it's been about five going back to 2018 maybe even earlier if I recall correctly even into 2017, talking about especially the initiatives that began in Immigration and then as we discussed at the time when he ceased to be the Immigration Chief, his sort of time in the wilderness if you will there for a while, and then he became the Deputy National Police Chief and we have seen a lot more activity since then. The point I am trying to make is boy if anything, I would say he's definitely a survivor. So I don't know how this case is going to play out; I don't know if there's any merit to these accusations at all quite frankly. That's the reason we have Courts so we will see how that plays out but the thing that I think is worth noting is yeah, one thing I can say from watching or observing his career to this point is man there have been some serious ups and downs but this is a person that I think you could say ‘survivor’ is a good word for him. He just always seems to survive a lot of different kinds of accusations, presumably because and in some cases in the past, those accusations have not had any basis and fact it would appear. Now again whether or not that's the case here, I don't know, that's for the Courts to figure out.

In any case and the reason for the video on maybe a deeper level is it does beg a bigger question in my mind and one that we haven't brought up here recently which is the whole notion of gambling in Thailand. I think that this is a topic that we have discussed at length, especially in the past Parliament there was serious discussion about the possibility of legalized gambling here in Thailand. Now whether or not we will actually see that remains to be seen. As I've said myself in the past, I came up through the gaming world; I worked in a casino all through law school. Quite honestly I think if I would have remained in the United States, rather than the course my life took and my career took out here in Asia, I probably would have been in the gaming industry, I probably would have been in the casino business most likely either as sort of in a legal capacity or just working in the business itself. I worked on the floor, I was a dealer, I dealt virtually everything that you could deal except for roulette. So gambling is something that I like to think I at least have some unique insight on, I wouldn't necessarily say I have expertise per se but I've worked in that sector and a big question posed by this is okay setting aside whether or not the Police including "Big Joke" who stand accused of possible malfeasance or whatever, involved in gambling, the underlying question is well if gambling was legal would any of this be an issue to begin with? And it's kind of the ever-present question of illegalization of vice which is when you illegalize something that is at the end of the day a personal choice especially for consenting adults, that has ramifications and one of the ramifications is it can create corruption. Again not speaking to the merits of this case or if anybody involved with it is guilty or innocent of any of the accusations, I don't know, but let's just talk conceptually. When you illegalize gambling, you create, when any state if you will illegalizes for example gambling, there is an opportunity if you will created in the marketplace for making serious money because it is illegal. Making something illegal it creates a possible higher profit margin as a result of the illegality basically. So the question posed is "is it a better idea to have legal gambling in Thailand or illegal gambling and then also have to deal with the possible upshot of that being that there from time to time will be scandals involving corrupt officials who are either engaging in the activity or facilitating that activity? And I don't know what the end result or the cost/benefit analysis is or the question of legalized gambling in Thailand, but I think it is something we all should be kind of concerned about because on the one hand - again I have seen gaming up close and personal at a very micro level if you will in sort of economic terms. There are major benefits that can be gained to the society by legalization of any kind of vice if it's well regulated. But there can be tremendous drawbacks and gambling I will be honest with you, scares me. For folks who watch this channel you know I have kind of been a proponent if you will of the legalization of Cannabis in Thailand because if nothing else the economic benefits, and I think we have seen a great many economic benefits as a result of legalization of Cannabis on a grassroots level. As I have discussed in other videos, the benefits to the commercial real estate sector at a retail level, I think that was one nobody particularly saw coming but as a result of legalization  of Cannabis, it's been a boon to commercial real estate. Again there are also downsides. We've discussed it. There are Public Health considerations. I don't think it should be this notion of recreational use should be something that really the state even involves itself in; I think it should just be regulated period, the same way we regulate alcohol. We don't regulate alcohol against recreational use of alcohol, that would seem very silly, I think to anyone at this point.

The point I'm trying to make with regard to gambling though is I think there are far more societal ills associated with gambling than either alcohol or Cannabis quite frankly because look at the end of the day if somebody has a problem with gambling and they lose a lot of money, they can impact their family, they can impact their business, they can impact society as a whole. For this reason, I think a great deal of public scrutiny on the issue of legalization of gambling is highly warranted.

That said, I don't think it's inappropriate to question whether the current legal status of gambling is the most optimal way to maintain the current legal infrastructure if you will; is this the best way to do things. I don't think that question is inappropriate at all again because you know whether these accusations are true or not, again not our place here on this channel to really try to come to that conclusion because we're not equipped to do so, but it is worth noting that if online gambling for example was legal, would there have been this scandal to begin with? I think that's worth asking the question and then the question becomes well okay if it is legal what are the other consequences of that? And again, I think there's a strong argument to be made. As much as I would love to see a situation where for example like card rooms are legal here in Thailand, and I've advocated that for a long time, I think something to look at if legalization were to happen is not to just concentrate on online gambling or casino gambling because again those are things - they are sexy, they are new especially online gambling, it's got the tech element associated with it; casinos again it has a sexiness to it, it has an allure to it than “oh casinos! Gambling! and slot machines and all this fun stuff”. With card rooms especially like a poker room, it's not all that sexy; it's kind of like a golf course really at the end of the day. It's a recreational kind of gaming and in the case of poker especially I would argue it is skill gaming, it's not gambling in the true sense of the word. So it lacks perhaps the panache if you will of the other kinds of gambling that people often talk about when they talk about legalization of gambling. But I would love to live in a world or in a Thailand where perhaps card rooms are legal and I'd even love to look into, I would enjoy dealing poker again myself, personally, on a personal level. Poker dealing honestly, I know this sounds strange has almost, the act of dealing for me personally has almost a Zen-like quality to it, it is almost like a kind of a meditation and I don't mean that in any kind of blasphemous way or anything like that, it's just the act of doing something repetitively where your mind is in tune to something because you are having to do something but it also kind of relaxes your mind because you are doing something that's very familiar to you. So again, I dealt cards for a number of years, almost 4 years, and I enjoyed it very much so I'm not going to sit here and say I wouldn't enjoy a world where legal card rooms in Thailand existed. I think that would be kind of fun but I am not unaware of the possible negative societal ramifications of that.

So I don't know that it's really necessarily a good thing, I really don't have the answer to that; I'm very much of a mixed mind on whether or not legalization of gambling is the best thing for Thailand. I don't know. But again these questions are all worth asking and they sort of arise out of this latest chapter in the "Big Joke" saga if you will here in Thailand, the question of well I think it should come up now. We're dealing with this for lack of a better term 'scandal' and the underlying issue comes from the fact that gambling is illegal in Thailand. So perhaps we might want to look at that underlying question rather closely and then maybe come to some new conclusions as to how we deal with gambling from a legal perspective here in the Kingdom of Thailand.