Transcript of the above video: 

I would like to first preface this video which is going to be a pretty long one I expect, by saying tip of the hat to the Bangkok Post. I have been keeping track a lot of these developments through you guys, Nation as well to some extent. I've got videos I'm making contemporaneously with this one that are sort of on similar topics sort of tangential to all this, the Nation as well but big time Bangkok Post; I really appreciated the following of this, and it's been done in my opinion, in a pretty impartial way. It doesn't look like there is a lot of partisanship going on there, just sort of Bangkok Post seems to just sort of be reporting. That said, I want to add some analysis and things here especially for folks who are outside Thailand or don't really understand Thai politics, don't know the history especially of roughly the last 20 years, because although we are sitting here in 2025, there are a lot of things that go back to 2008, ‘9 when I was first here when we saw similar political machinations although definitely not to the level we are at right now especially with regard to quite honestly threats to Thailand’s sovereignty and things which  I will get to here in a moment. Then also, there's some similar, it strikes a similar tone to certain things that happened then again in 2010 which again prefacing this video, when I make some of these more political leaning videos if you will where we're talking politics and let me be clear I'm going to express some of my own opinions in this, but I usually take a minute or a day or two which I have done here - the last video I did on this I did back on Thursday or Friday and I am doing this one on Sunday - because I usually kind of simmer down and then I am able to kind of make a more sort of calm if you will video, classic video if you will. I have to be honest, especially when I think back on things that happen in 2010, the more I thought about this the less I have been simmering down frankly. The more I think about what all has happened in the past week, the more I am really angry and let me be clear, not politically. I really don't love politics. I like to follow it sort of almost at academically. I have a Political Science Degree. It was what I had before I went to law school but I don't - there's a great line in the movie LA Confidential where Captain Dudley Smith is talking to Lieutenant Ed Exley and he says, "you have the eye for political weakness but not the stomach for it." I wouldn't say I don't have the stomach for it, I've seen a lot of really bad stuff in politics over the years, bad actors if you will, but I don't love partisanship, and I really think that polarization for partisan reasons doesn't help anybody. It doesn't really help the body politic; it doesn't help anybody. I especially have seen this in recent years in the United States. I started seeing it frankly when I left the United States, it was kind of one of the reasons I left there and came over here. Then I saw some of it here, but this may be difficult for outsiders to understand, but for the most part Thais tend to come together and they tend to kind of overcome a lot of this partisan stuff. It's one of the reasons I like the political system here. The Parliament is sort of there as a shelf if you will to put all those politicians, let them go fight it out over there. I quoted Simple Song of Freedom in a prior video which didn't do very well. I don't know why. As I said, I'm not particularly a war hawk either. I would prefer this kind of de-escalate, this Thai Cambodian situation, but that said, Thailand’s sovereignty cannot be subverted so, there's a difference between not wanting a useless conflict and not being willing to stand up for your own nation's interests, okay?

Back to that Simple Song of Freedom, that was sort of what I was trying to say there is I am in favour of de-escalation, but Thailand is a place where I felt truly free and it is Thai sovereignty that acts as one of many defense mechanisms to preserve that freedom. So I am going to be pretty zealous in my belief that that sovereignty needs to not be impinged or infringed at all, in any way, shape or form, which brings us to what we are talking about here with regard to the current Prime Minister who I can't imagine how this person is going to stay Prime Minister that much longer, because frankly it's just anathema to me that a country's leader could do what's been done here. So let's actually look at some context here before we go back into the whole issue of the leaked phone call. What's going on in the background? It needs to I think be sort of clearly elucidated which brings me to Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Army closes a border crossing with Cambodia. The thrust of that video goes in a slightly different direction, they are talking about a specific incident, but I am quoting this for background. Quoting directly: "The border conflict with Cambodia has been escalating since Cambodian troops entered Thailand's Chong Bok area in Ubon Ratchathani province in April. The incursion led to the construction of a Cambodian military base where Cambodian soldiers opened fire at the Thai soldiers who approached for negotiation on May 28. Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen repeatedly demanded the restoration of normal opening hours of the border crossing with Thailand as heard in a leaked and controversial phone call recording with Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra." But going back, that's how this started okay. They opened fire on Thai troops and look, this isn't good. Meanwhile, as discussed and as everybody is now aware, there is this leaked phone call between the again sitting currently Prime Minister and Mr. Hun Sen, (my Kansas accent I call him Hun Sen, apparently it's “Hoon” Sen, sorry if I mixed that up throughout this video. I'm not overly familiar with Cambodian pronunciations, I haven't lived in Cambodia. I've been over there, but I haven't lived in Cambodia like I have lived in Thailand. That said, all these demands and things need to be put in perspective when you consider how this all got started to begin with. I think it's important to point that out; again tip of the hat to Bangkok Post for that.

Now this is where I go back to how sitting around thinking about this has not made me sort of calm down. If anything, it's brought up some really bad memories. Just let me be clear here. I was here in 2010 okay and this city burned literally, okay and quite honestly one of the contributing, major contributing factors to it burning was Thaksin Shinawatra what sitting over in Phnom Penh with his buddy Hun Sen and saying all kinds of things that caused people over on this side of the border to get real upset and it caused a lot of consternation. And let me be clear, I understood the arguments of the so-called red shirts. I didn’t necessarily agree with all of them, but I understood where it came from. I understood the thinking, the notion of populism; I'm on board with a lot of that stuff. Now I think that they were misguided in a lot of different ways, especially as it pertained to being basically having effectively sort of a demagogic like figure rousting them up, rousing them up for frankly no good reason that I ever saw. Let me clear. I saw people die firsthand, bleeding in the streets during that time period, so I get real passionate in the negative about the people that in my opinion were instrumental in stirring that up okay. And I get real upset when I see their progeny if you will, now Prime Minister, cuddling up to the same person that that person was over there cuddled up to some 15 years ago, when that person was raising this, frankly hell that befell this city. So I apologise for the passion, but this really upsets me. Again you go back to that era and as I will get to in a moment, even red shirt leaders now are calling for the current Prime Minister to step down under current circumstances which whoever would have thought that could have happened but again, I understood the arguments of the so-called red shirts but I never questioned their patriotism; I never questioned what they believed was Thailand's interest at heart. Now again I felt it was misguided at some points, not all, but in many ways misguided, but I never questioned whether or not they were ultimately doing what they thought was right for this place, but I have serious questions about what the Prime Minister is doing. And that sort of brings up the reason for the thumbnail.

So first of all you see Al Pacino there. That is from a film called Son of a Woman and there is a great line in there where he is defending this young man who is accused of being a rat, or excuse me, he's accused of hiding something from this overbearing principle who tried to pay him off to get him to rat his friends out and basically there is this great line where Al Pacino says, “he won't sell anybody out to buy his future,’ and it goes on coincidentally and he says, “and that my friend is called integrity; that's called courage; that's what leaders should be made of.” After hearing and reading the transcripts of this call where our Prime Minister is calling this guy who by the way isn't the Prime Minister of Cambodia, but yes, we all know Hun Sen is very influential over there. As I have said before, I read a biography - I think it was called Strong Man - years ago about him. A political survivor, very politically canny, there is no doubt he is smart whatever, he's on the other side of the Border in all of this and here she is calling him ‘uncle’ and basically saying well we want to do whatever you want. It was, the term “sellout”, I don't know of any other term that seems to really describe the behaviour here, because it seems like that's  what was occurring like the whole thing about, as I discussed in the prior video about, “oh well how about we open it at the same time?” No, no. I want to do it 5 hours later. All of this. Well what are you doing? You're the Prime Minister over here. Again, and then on top of it, I'm not going to read this article that's in the Bangkok Post, they talk about Hun Sen named two rooms in his house after Thaksin and Yingluck, the sister of Thaksin who was a former Prime Minister as well. What is this? Is this man completely making a mockery of us over here? And are these people helping him? Is Paetongtarn helping him do this? Because he certainly allowed Thaksin a perch from which to snipe on what went on in 2010 over here, and it caused nothing but violence, unnecessary violence, Thais hurting Thai violence. Nothing good came from it and we have all tried to forgive and forget but God this stuff comes up, and how do you do that? And as I said, look quoting further, the Senate seems to be pretty upset about this. Quoting from again Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, article is titled: Call leak leaves PM on brink. Quoting directly: "The Senate speaker has submitted petitions asking the Constitutional Court and the National Anti-corruption Commission (NACC) to relieve Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra of her duties following the leak of a recent telephone call with Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen. (Hun Sen/'Hoon Sen', whatever.) First of all worth noting, the Constitutional Court ousted effectively Srettha which I wasn't particularly unhappy about over really you could argue, a picayune issue insofar as he hired somebody, and it was like an ethical issue and they said, "no he's got to go." This is orders of magnitude beyond that. I'm not saying I know what the Constitutional Court should do, but I look at this and I say wow if Srettha had to go for what he did, I mean in this situation how else could it be? I don't know. Again it's not me that would make that adjudication. That said, quoting further: "The official letter asked whether Prime Minister Paetongtarn had committed corruption by willfully violating the Constitution or laws, or seriously breached ethical standards. Simultaneously, a request was submitted to the Constitutional Court under Sections 170 and 8, to determine whether Ms. Paetongtarn's tenure as Prime Minister should be terminated in accordance with Sections 170 subsection (1), subsection (4) and 160 subsection (4) and (5). They accused her of lacking ability and credibility after she confirmed the veracity of the leaked audio clip." Well yeah, okay. That is a good point. She has confirmed this happened, so we know that this was the communication, which that brings up the next question. I am making another video contemporaneously with this one where I get into "double standards" as it goes here. One, I don't want to go too far down what the kids call the Red Pill sort of rabbit hole here, but I do have to ask the question, if this was a man that had done this, that had been on a call in this way, would this person still be, even nominally, sitting in the Prime Minister's chair? I am genuinely asking that because this whole thing seems to be being spun as well - and I even mentioned her "naïveté" in a prior video in quotes, because I was citing somebody else saying she was naive - but this whole thing is sort of spun as, "well she didn't really know", and it's all of this, "oh she's naïve or something." Well then she shouldn't be Prime Minister. If you don't know that you don't get on a call and by the way, undermine your own Field Commander who's in the field and has to be dealing with the opposite, whatever you want to call, the adversary, the counterparty on the other side of the border, if you don't know that's not a good idea, I don't know what to tell you, but I don't want you in the position of making those calls. Again, let's take the argument of not ascribing any ill intent, fine, but that person, in my opinion, probably isn't the best person to be Prime Minister. Again, now it's going to be left to the Constitutional Court probably it looks like to make determinations here, but just purely setting aside issues of ill intent or whatever, how do you not know that you don't do that? I just don't get that.

 

Then moving on, as I discussed previously, I was on the ground here in 2010 and again while I don't agree with the thinking and the arguments of most of sort of the Red Shirt movement, I did sympathize with the populism of it. I am at the end of the day; I'm in favour of the little guy. When the little guys not getting a square deal, I feel like that's wrong. So on a certain level, especially on the economic level, I could understand where there was a lot of consternation on the part of a lot of the folks that were in the red sort of camp. Now did I think it warranted what happened? No. But do I think it was stirred up by a lot of folks, most notably Mr. Thaksin from over in Phnom Penh, and there have also constantly been rumours and speculation that he funded a lot of things. I mean I did go into the red shirt area at the time and the audio-visual capabilities in 2010, in multiple places by the way because they had their whole area and it slowly grew as time went on, it was set up and kitted out like a KISS Concert down there. It did beg the question, 'who's paying for all of this?" That said, there were folks who were involved with that, that now seem to have their own issues with this Prime Minister. 

Quoting directly from a recent article in the Bangkok Post, again bangkokpost.com, article is titled: Thai PM apologises but Coalition on the brink. Yeah, that's another one. She came out and apologised. Neat! Great! Thanks for the apology. But still, if you did it intentionally it's wrong on so many levels, I don't even want to get into it. And if you didn't know that this was a bad way to operate, then I'm sorry you are not the person best qualified to be in that position. That said, quoting directly: "The 38-year-old Prime Minister apologised Thursday for the leak, saying her remarks were a negotiation tactic to ease tensions with Cambodia." - Negotiation tactic? What the hell kind of negotiation? Just give him everything? Quoting further: "But that's failed to assuage the nationalists and groups opposed to her father Thaksin Shinawatra, ruling Phue Thai Party’s de facto leader." Now that's where I get a little bit at odds with maybe Bangkok Post into how they frame that. Okay fine. I'm a nationalist, I'm a naturalized Thai. I love this place; I moved here. I'm an immigrant; it took care of me. Yeah, okay I'm a nationalist but that whole nationalist term in this world Economic Forum land, not land, but world in which we live in, not to be redundant. By the way, that's another one. Ms. Paetongtarn had no problem bringing those folks in to tell us all how we should own nothing to be happy. And by the way again, and I've said it before and I'll say it again, say what you will about the decade under the generals, they weren't bringing them people around telling us that we didn't need to have our sovereignty and we all needed to sing kumbaya and give away all our rights and property. So I've got issues when it comes to that. But again and then I also saw, this was in Bangkok Post as well, there was some professor in Chapel Hill, what is that North Carolina somewhere, who was talking about how “oh this is a big gift to the ultra-royalist faction” and all of this. First of all a guy in Chapel Hill! Maybe you should comment on the local city politics of Chapel Hill, okay? If you're on the ground, boots on the ground over here in Thailand talking about it, I might want to listen to you, but if you're not, I'm not interested. Secondly no. This is people who are concerned about the well-being of their country. Stop labelling us. We are Thais and we are concerned why our Prime Minister is on the phone with the father of the Prime Minister in Cambodia, the longtime strongman, the clear guy behind the guy if you will, talking to him, calling him "uncle" and just giving him everything he wants and undermining and saying that her own Commander in her own Army, is an "opponent". That isn't political to have problems with that; that's not partisan, okay? There is no one faction of Thais that are going to take issue with that as we get into here. Quoting further: "It is now evident that the Prime Minister is the opponent of Thailand and the Thai people," said Jatuporn Prompan, an ally-turned-critic of the Shinawatra family. "We cannot let her govern Thailand for even a day longer." Yeah, ally-turned-critic - that’s an understatement. Mr. Jatuporn, he was on the street here during the reds thing. If I recall, he was on that committee thing we saw on TV all the time, okay? So this, again for outside observers, it's not just me; people may think I'm just some weird, naturalized guy that has my own thoughts, it's not any one faction here. Everyone up and down the line is seriously concerned about this. That said, quoting further from another article, again Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Nationwide protests urge PM to step down. Quote: "In Prachin Buri, former red-shirt leader Chalerm Kiatbanchong," - Pol. Capt. Chalerm if I am not mistaken. Again another old school red shirt guy. Quoting further: "..shocked observers by calling for the premiere to step down. Quote: "I have supported Phue Thai for years, but what I heard in that recording is unforgivable," he said. "She has failed to represent us and has damaged the credibility of the country." Yeah, I mean yeah. How do you argue in the opposite. And I'm sorry, an apology isn't enough. I can believe that maybe she didn't exactly know the level of magnitude of bad that this was, but again I restate, if she didn't then she shouldn't be in the position to begin with. And before everybody says, "oh you're just being an unnecessary critic I have been talking at length as to my belief in this Coalition Government okay. I myself made videos as a sort of cheerleader if you will when she was going through her no confidence vote. You can go back and look at the record, okay. I'm not some partisan here. I'm upset because she got on the phone with Hun Sen and is calling him uncle and is saying her own Commander, our guy here who's in uniform, who has put himself in harm's way along with our other Thai uniformed personnel along that border, and she's calling him the opponent. That's what I'm upset about. Quoting further: "I would like to tell my fellow red-shirt supporters that it is time for us to open our eyes and seriously consider whether we should continue supporting the Phue Thai Party -- and in particular, Ms. Paetongtarn to continue in her post as our Prime Minister," he said.

Really quickly here. I want to go ahead and plug the paid new service, Integrity News Service. I'm doing long form, or longer form videos. I am making a new one I'm calling Batten down the Hatches - making it pretty well same day as I'm making this - I'm going to get in to some long-form stuff, expats, what to expect in possible future with regard to domestic politics possibly, as well as I'm seeing a lot of developments in the international markets that I think are going to be of interest to expats. So if you're interested in that you can email us at [email protected]. Also a quick plug here for Pancake Palace as I discussed in many other videos. Pancake Palace, we are down here on Soi Anuman Rachadhon. We have got American diner food, chilli, Buffalo Wings, cheeseburgers and breakfast anytime, as you would expect from a place called Pancake Palace. So hopefully we will see you soon there. I'll put a link in the description below to the address, Google link for the address. Back to this though.

Again these, Jatuporn and Chalerm are not two guys that are from the opposition to the Shinawatras, or to Phue Thai. In fact if anything, these were hardcore supporters not that long ago, okay. As I said everyone is currently concerned about this. I am not trying to get into an unhinged rant here but under any other context in any other country, I don't see how this person would still even be sitting nominally in the chair over the weekend following this. And candidly, I had to be honest, if this was unintentional and her motives were pure and honest and she was trying to act in an honourable manner, I would have to imagine that she would see that she's in over her head and would resign of her own free will and accord. What purpose does it serve to continue going on if indeed you did not know that that was a bad call. Because if you didn't and you don't see the aftermath of this for how bad it is for both the country, how bad it is here domestically, it's making everybody upset, myself included, you really shouldn't be doing that job. And this isn't me getting on her about I saw something a while back where Thais were saying, “oh she was doing her makeup in the Parliament or something”. I don't care about that stuff; that is nonsense. This is getting on the phone with a sovereign adversary, a representative of a foreign sovereign that we are in a conflict with along our border, and frankly just acting in such a way that I can only say at least at the end of the day operates to sell out Thailand's interest. If it's done intentionally, that's an order of magnitude something worse and I don't know if it was and I don't want to get in speculation about that. But if it was done unintentionally, at the very least have the presence of mind to say, “look maybe this isn't the right job for me”.