Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "Big Joke" yet again in the news. For those who are unaware, this is Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn who is presently the Deputy National Police Chief. We have kind of been following him on this channel ever since his meteoric rise through the Immigration ranks. Then he had a substantial impact on Thai Immigration Policy especially with regard to enforcement and administration of Thai Immigration Law. 

This I thought was a rather interesting article. This is from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Bar raid, sex claim hit Phuket. Quoting directly: "Night entertainment operators in Patong Beach in Phuket say that businesses have lost about 100 million Baht in the past week following a raid on a local bar operated by a foreigner who allegedly employed girls aged under 18 as sex workers. Weerawit Kruesombat, Chairman of Patong Entertainment Business Association, yesterday met nightspot operators to come up with measures to prevent venues from becoming involved in illegal activities including drugs and procuring minors to have sex." Quoting further: Deputy National Police Chief Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn said on Saturday the bar was operated by a foreigner, identified only as Ronny, who has reportedly fled to Laos." 

I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail; a lot of good information in there. A lot of information regarding clearly and we have discussed this previously in other videos, Big Joke as well as Thai Law enforcement, the law enforcement apparatus in general, has been serious about human trafficking and let me be even clearer, they are very serious about child trafficking and if I can make a personal statement, full disclosure on all that, we have discussed Big Joke on this channel many, many times. I've had my own reservations about certain policy endeavours that he undertook, or enforcement endeavours, on this one I have to say "keep up the good work", because yeah this needs to be torn out root and branch from Thailand. We don't need any of this and let's be clear so that people don't misunderstand this report, this is a rather anomalous situation insofar as this is not a broad practice in Thailand. Child trafficking is taken very, very seriously and I think it's interesting and I do sympathize with these business owners who say they have lost 100 million Baht, but at the same time I can understand the desire if you will on the part of law enforcement authorities to send a message that "hey if you get involved with that there are going to be nasty ramifications." Moreover, if that's happening in the vicinity of even otherwise legitimate businesses, if they don't take affirmative steps to curb at the least or to at least notify relevant authorities that this kind of honestly there is no other word for it, "crap" is going on, then I can see where there is sort of a thinking that it would be a good idea to have some measures in place to try to prevent this, act as a deterrent if you will, to prevent this from happening again. 

When I was reading this article I thought and this brought me back to years ago going back into the '90s folks and I'm sort of showing my age a little bit here, but I remember and this is back in the Talk Radio day so for those who predate the YouTuber era, and I know there are a lot of folks that are young now and watching these videos and things, yeah there was an era pre YouTube, pre-internet and in the Talk Radio era I remember being relatively young but I was driving so I was not that young and listening to G. Gordon Liddy of all people just on Talk Radio. I remember him talking about being part of the FBI. My opinion G. Gordon was an interesting person to listen to because there were things that I just thought he was kind of off the wall about and then there were other things that I found very interesting but he had talked about, there was a time that he worked in law enforcement, I believe it was the FBI, and he had talked about how especially in matters pertaining to like lost children or kidnapping or these kind of issues, that they would oftentimes be able to go to the local sort of the mob basically, the local kind of wise guys whatever you want to call it in certain locations because they had the authority for example, just one example over dealing with liquor licenses or liquor distribution and they could go to these folks who didn't necessarily have anything to do with this activity but were sort of periphery to it and didn't otherwise really like to cooperate with the police particularly but when it came to matters pertaining to children and those kinds of things, child trafficking, they could show up in a heartbeat and say "hey look, we have got a problem; this is going on; we have got evidence to suggest this is going on", and oftentimes there would be some pretty instantaneous cooperation between those parties because one, they didn't want their operation messed with and at the same time quite honestly no decent person wants child trafficking occurring, that is just a fact; nobody wants that. 

Thailand is no different and as we have discussed in other videos and as can be seen in headlines for example in other articles in the Bangkok Post, Big Joke has taken it upon himself to, the TIPS report, Trafficking in Persons Report, Thailand is very serious and Big Joke seems particularly, acutely serious about this. In fact we did a video about him meeting the Ambassador-at-Large from the United States regarding trafficking. Getting Thailand further up the list on the TIPS report, major priority here in Thailand because honestly trafficking is evil especially, not especially, evil generally but the type of evil we are talking about in the context of children is just really beyond words and again reasonable people may be able to disagree with things that Big Joke has done with respect to things like Immigration Policy in the past or something like this but on this one I have got to say "yeah, keep up the good work."