Featured image: The “two horsemen of US regime change,” US Senator’s John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, appear and surround the US proxies of choice ahead of any US-backed attempt to destabilize and overthrow a sovereign nation. Here they lend support to Yingluck Shinawatra ahead of her anticipated ousting from power in 2014. Efforts are now underway to have her and the party she represents placed back into power. (Source: Land Destroyer Report)
Ahead of a pivotal court case in Thailand, US interests – both political and across the media – are preparing the grounds for the next round of foreign-backed destabilization.
Efforts to reinstall US proxies into power in Thailand is part of a larger effort to transform Southeast Asia into a united front against a rising China in an attempt to reassert American “primacy” over the region. US support for the Shinawatra family dates back to Thaksin Shinawatra‘s time as adviser to US-based equity firm, the Carlyle Group, and continues to present day.
Ousted Thai prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, faces charges of negligence regarding a vote-buying rice scheme in which above market prices were promised to farmers if they put her political party, Pheu Thai, into power during 2011 elections.
As a global leader in rice production and exports for decades, Thailand’s markets were immediately disrupted as funds quickly ran dry, quality plummeted, and regional competitors found favor with the nation’s traditional trading partners instead.
In 2014 when Shinawatra
was finally ousted from power after months of street protests and a military coup, government warehouses were overflowing with unsold, mold-infested rice.
Billions were lost in the program, and the provisional military-led government that took power has since spent years repaying farmers and attempting to mend the nation’s agricultural industry.
It was a clear-cut case of a
vote-buying scheme riddled with corruption and incompetence that ended with the nation’s rice farmers more dependent on political handouts and more vulnerable to the realities of national and global economics.
What the West is Saying: The Lies
Despite these facts, the West through its various lobbyists and the media outlets that host them, are attempting to frame this current political juncture in an entirely different light.
Opposition lobbyist and Shinawatra confidant, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, who poses and is presented by the Western media as an impartial “academic” based at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies, recently posted a summary of the latest talking points being used by US and European special interests and their political proxies in Thailand.
Yingluck won a landslide victory in the 2011 election, riding on her party’s populist platform inherited from the government of her brother, Thaksin, who had been in power from 2001 to 2006. Thaksin implemented policies designed to empower rural residents of the north and northeast regions. They subsequently served as strong power bases for Thaksin’s party. Yingluck initiated the rice-pledging scheme, which resulted in purchasing rice from farmers at above-market rates, distorting global prices. This proved highly popular among her supporters in the rural provinces.
He also claims:
Therefore, if the junta decides to get rid of her through legal means, street protests are a possibility and political violence might be inevitable. Imprisoning Yingluck would not be the end of the political game, however. Already her supporters are comparing her with Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had to live under house arrest for 14 years over a 20-year period. Suu Kyi’s incarceration earned her the title of a democratic icon and she became the symbol of struggle against Myanmar’s military rule.
While Pavin admits that the scheme distorted global prices, virtually everything else is an intentional, well-rehearsed lie.
His attempted comparison between Yingluck Shinawatra and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi is apt – however not in the way Pavin likely intended. Suu Kyi – like the Shinawatras – is a decades-long recipient of US and European political backing – her political party and the Western-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) serve as an extension of foreign interests abroad.
Her “saintly” image has been carefully constructed through Western propaganda for years, so carefully that even the genocide she complicity presides over regarding Myanmar’s Rohingya minority has failed to tarnish her image in the eyes of many, including – apparently – Pavin.
