A Horse of a Multi-Color? It Looks Yellow to Me

Last week about 50 people protested outside the Japanese embassy against that government’s decision to issue a special one week visa for former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to enter their country. These pathetic individuals were led by Civil Network against Thaksin's Corruption Pardon coordinator and noted fascist Tul Sitthisomwong.

The fact that Thaksin is visiting Japan in order to offer assistance to the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami makes these so called “multi-color shirt” protesters in Bangkok truly low life scum. Even if Thaksin’s visit is self-serving, any group who would try to deny any chance of aid to disaster victims is the lowest of the low.

This should help prove to everyone that the multi-color shirts are really the yellow shirted People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) in disguise.

Due to pending court cases on charges of terrorism and many other criminal acts some of the PAD members and leaders have avoided openly showing their favorite yellow color, and instead they wear other colors when demonstrating their shameless hate.

Do these two protesters look familiar?

And Tul Sitthisomwong has often spoken about fascism on PAD stages such as the time these terrorists took control of the Bangkok airports in 2008 (video).

They call Yingluck Shinawatra a clone of her brother, however a better example of a Thai cloning would be Tul Sitthisomwong and his beloved mentor Sondhi Limthongkul similar to Dr. Evil and Mini-me in the second and third Austin Powers movies: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers in Goldmember.

Thailand's Version of Mini-Me and Dr. Evil

The Thais of Texas

I am happy to report that Abhisit and his ilk have not destroyed the good perception that Americans have of Thais. I only need to take you on a trip in the state I live in, Texas, to illustrate this. I’ll start in Denton, just north of Dallas.

Earlier this week, on August 15th, it was reported that Thai businessman and University of North Texas (UNT) alumnus, Charn Uswachoke, will donate $22 million to the school to help boost its prominence in business, music and engineering.

Charn Uswachoke

Uswachoke received his master’s degree in business administration from the Denton, Texas university in 1973 and later became a leader in the development of Thailand’s semiconductor industry. 

In 1995, he donated gifts of $1 million and $1.2 million. Those gifts were earmarked for music, business and international programs.

Uswachoke also made headlines in 1994 when he purchased 500 UNT football season tickets for $10,000 and donated them to various local groups. At the time UNT was seeking to move up to Division I-A in football and needed to sell an average of 17,000 tickets per home game to qualify.

“I owe a lot to UNT and to Denton,” Uswachoke said. “Denton is my second home.”

Denton and UNT owes a lot of gratitude to Mr. Uswachoke.

Now let’s travel 180 miles south down I35/I45 to Huntsville, Texas – the home of Sam Houston State University (SHSU).

In the 1970’s, Thaksin Shinawatra became the first foreign student to enter the criminal justice doctoral program at SHSU. While going to school in Huntsville, Mr. Shinawatra, his wife, Potjaman, and their three children immersed themselves in the Texas culture. She held a job and he worked at a Burger King and got up every morning at 3 a.m. for a Houston Chronicle newspaper route.

He made a lasting impression on his professors, including the head of the department, Dr. Beto.

"Dr. Beto, who had a part in admitting Thaksin and others into the (doctoral) program, said anybody who comes from the land of Thaksin is good enough for him," said Rolando Del Carmen, an SHSU professor who taught Mr. Shinawatra in the 1970s. "So, he opened the door for international students in the (doctoral) program, and it remains that way today."

Thaksin has maintained his ties with SHSU. In 1996 he received the Outstanding Criminal Justice Alumnus Award and Distinguished Alumni Award from SHSU. In 2002, he returned to SHSU to receive the Sam Houston Humanitarian Award based upon his notable contributions to humanity and responsible and distinguished leadership and service.

Thaksin Shinawatra Receiving Sam Houston Humanitarian Award

Throughout the years, he has been honored with many awards, however he said this one holds a special place in his heart.

"I have received many awards during my life, and I would not normally care, but this one is special to me because it comes from my university -- a place that I am proud to say I was a student at," Thaksin said. "I gained a lot of knowledge from Sam Houston and started my family life here, so it is special to me."

But Thais don’t have to be rich or famous to cast a positive image of their nationality. Travel south on I45 for about 79 miles.

If it seems like you can't throw a rock without hitting a Thai restaurant in Houston these days, you can thank Darawan Charoenrat. Charoenrat, the patriarch of the family that's quietly run Kanomwan in the East End for decades, was a pioneer in bringing Thai food and flavors to Houston before passing away in June 2010.

Kanomwan Thai Restaurant - Houston, Texas

Even as the restaurant grew in size and reputation, Charoenrat and his wife ran most of the operation: He taking orders and running the register, she cooking the food. Unlike others who dumbed down Thai cuisine to suit our American palates, Kanomwan stayed true to authentic original recipes.

The furious pace kept Charoenrat famously gruff — customers referred to him lovingly as the Thai Nazi (a play on Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi") — but he was known to soften, even smile, with prompt orderers or especially if asked about his family.

Though Charoenrat was often brusque, barking, "It's not time for you to order yet!" or "You should order this!" he came off more like a difficult grandparent than a heartless dictator. Diners willing to go along with his, shall we say, suggestions, found his bossiness to be part of the restaurant's charm, and tales of the "Thai Nazi" encouraged others to go and see him for themselves.

But those who got to know Charoenrat were able to pierce through his gruff exterior and discover his soft spots for teachers (he was one himself back in Thailand) and families with kids. In fact, when the news of Charoenrat's death broke, many of his regular customers thought immediately of his grandson. At dinner service, the Thai Nazi was often joined at the register by his young grandson, who apprenticed for him, ringing up bills, making change and offering customers a piece of Juicy Fruit gum on their way out the door.

Gracious, honorable, hard working, kind and generous are the true traits associated with Thai people. The scary thing is that there are those who are trying to redefine who a Thai really is.

Dr. Tul Sitthisomwong was once quoted “that, speaking as a doctor, love for the country and the king was embedded only in Thais’ DNA, not that of other peoples. It was a pity that many Thais had mutated and did not have the love for the king in their DNA and should not be called Thai.” Tul is the leader of the multicolor shirts, an antidemocratic mob in Thailand. You may remember that it was the multicolor shirts who was demanding that the military forcibly crackdown on peaceful protesters in Bangkok last year.

And you may also remember that General Prayuth Chan-ocha more than happily accommodated Tul and his mob of misanthropes. Prayuth was quoted as saying in a recent New York Times article, "If you are skeptical of the monarchy, you cannot be considered a Thai person." It’s not surprising that Prayuth and Tul are trying to set a warped definition of what constitutes being a Thai. They must realize that they are the ones who can never measure up. And they never will. Who are the real Thai Nazis?

Tul and Prayuth

Genetics According to Dr. Tul

Earlier this month I mentioned Dr. Tul Sitthisomwong, a lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine at Chulalongkorn University, and Leader of the “Network of Citizen Volunteers Protecting the Land” aka the Multicolor Shirts.

Well, he’s at it again. This time Dr. Tul is trying to get Yingluck Shinawatra, Pheu Thai Party's top party list candidate and current leader in most polls, disqualified. How un-democratic!

Make no mistake about it, Dr. Tul and the Multicolor Shirts are just camouflaged Yellow Shirts. Dr. Tul was once appointed by the People’s Alliance for Democracy to sit on the Committee of the Strength of Land on 24 July 2008, according to a July 2008 PAD statement.

Dr. Tul is also the definitive expert on Thai genetics which explains the PAD’s campaign signs. 

Evidently, Dr. Tul uses “The Island of Dr. Moreau” as a textbook to teach genetics to the Yellow Shirts.

Dr. Tul has many other wacky views on Thai DNA. He once gave a speech in which he said that speaking as a doctor, love for the country and the king was embedded only in Thais’ DNA, not that of other peoples. “It was a pity that many Thais had mutated and did not have the love for the king in their DNA and should not be called Thai,” he said. 

It is believed that members of the Multicolor Shirts and Yellow Shirts have a genetic disorder called Torsonic Polarity Syndrome or TPS. In layman’s term: “They have buttocks where their heads should be.” Their DNA has mutated by watching ASTV and reading Manager and now they should not be called Thai. The term “Buttheads” is more appropriate.

Conditioning and Lèse Majesté: The Royalists’ One-Two Combination

Opiates can cause a person to sleep their life away, not caring about eating, working, or even their loved ones, eventually sleeping themselves to death.  So with apologies to Karl Marx, in Thailand “the monarchy is the opiate of the masses.”

Thailand’s monarchy is used by the people in power to control the people who are not in power (the masses).  It is used like a drug to keep the people listless and sedated as an opiate or opium affects people. This convinces them to accept and endure the suffering and injustices committed by the government.  It also prevents the masses from questioning and ultimately changing the current ways so the people who are in power can stay in power.

Here’s a little example from a recent article in The Nation: 

The Thai ambassador to Singapore …  said in 2006 to diplomats who worked in the embassy, “If you criticize me, this can be regarded as you criticizing the King, since I am the representative of His Majesty.” This exemplified how the monarchy can be exploited to preserve the power position of an individual. Surely the Thai ambassador was not the first person who has taken advantage of the much-respected institution for his own ends.

So how do the people in power get the institution of Thailand’s monarchy to be so revered there?  They use a potent one – two combination of punches.

Firstly, they use extreme conditioning.  And Thai brainwashing is as subtle as a punch in the face; lots of pictures everywhere, royal family members on TV every day, and heavy indoctrination at school. Thais have rose-tinted blinkers fitted in primary school and most of them never learn to take them off.  

Propaganda and lies are fed ‘cradle to grave’ in order to perpetuate the “love” for the monarchy.  Sometimes it gets scary.  Here’s an example:  

On 24 Nov 2008, Dr Tul Sitthisomwong, a lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine at Chulalongkorn University (generally cited as Thailand's most prestigious one) gave a speech saying that speaking as a doctor, love for the country and the king was embedded only in Thais’ DNA, not that of other peoples.  “It was a pity that many Thais had mutated and did not have the love for the king in their DNA and should not be called Thai,” he said.  

So, if you don’t love the King then you have become some sort of mutant and not worthy of being a Thai?  Now I don’t want to go into a discussion on genetics but Lysenkoism was completely discredited decades ago. In fact, there are only two groups of people nowadays which spew this eugenic claptrap anymore.

But why don’t more Thais see through all this conditioning? Could it be that when conditioning kicks in, intellectual capacity gets crowded out? It is ironic that the group of Chulalongkorn University students and lecturers Dr. Tul was leading that day was called “Siam Intellect."

It is interesting that when Giles Ungpakorn published "A Coup for the Rich," his own University (also Chulalongkorn) wouldn't stock it in its bookstore. At the time, there was no suggestion that anything in it broke the law, just the fact that it was a left-wing examination of the actions of a powerful right-wing faction.  Anywhere in the free world that ban would have produced howls of outrage from his colleagues on the basis of "I may totally disagree with what you write, but I will defend to the end your right to write it, and my right to read it." But there was never such reaction.  That many of those silent colleagues had studied for their higher degrees in Western universities and would be 'intellectually' aware of the concepts of freedom of speech and of publication within the law makes me believe that it must be their earlier conditioning that was overcoming or blocking out their ‘intellectual capacities.’

Giles Ungpakorn

Although conditioning is a powerful tool, it is not 100% effective. The fact is that some Thais, like Giles Ungpakorn, slip through the cracks and manage to break their conditioning.  These people are known as free-thinkers and the problem the current Thai royalist regime has with free-thinkers is that they tend to ‘stir the pot.’ Free-thinkers are also contagious – causing other Thais to be free-thinkers too or, in the twisted mind of Dr. Tul, causing normal Thais to mutate.  

This is where the draconian lèse majesté laws come in - the second ‘punch in the face’ of democracy.  These are laws that mandate a jail term of three to 15 years for any person who "defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir to the throne or the Regent."

Pure and simple, Lèse majesté laws are made and enforced to suppress the free speech and civil liberties of Thais who object to those in power.   They claim they're protecting the royal family but in reality they're protecting their own sorry asses from criticism and opposition, and stamping the Royal Seal of Approval on their actions.

For instance, just recently a Thai-born American citizen named Joe Gordon (formerly Lerpong Wichaicommart) was arrested for posting a link on his blog back in 2007 while in the US to a download of the banned biographical book "The King Never Smiles." Mr. Gordon denies doing this and has requested help from the American Embassy. He was denied bail and now resides in jail at the Bangkok Remand Prison."

Apparently, posting a link on the internet four years ago to a book you can buy anywhere in the free world and under the counter in Bangkok, threatens Thailand's national security.  

What is interesting is that the story spread like wildfire all over the world and has sparked some extremely harsh criticisms and insults on Thailand and directly on the King.   Take a look at some of the reader comments on two different internet articles.

CBS News Story

Yahoo News Story

So why enforce lèse majesté on someone who posted a link on a website to a banned book while in the US when the repercussions of insults to the King and nation are far worse?

Because lèse majesté isn’t so much about protecting the monarchy from insults or criticism than it is for silencing free thinking and opposition to those currently running the Thai government (the Privy Council, Military and Democratic Party).  Lèse majesté is just a scam to attack, supress, silence and imprison enemies not of Thailand’s king, but of those who are in control.  

And why arrest this American now, when he has been in Thailand already for something he allegedly did 4 years ago after he has been in Thailand for over 6 months and wasn’t planning to leave until December?

The timing of this arrest screams pure politics. With the Election Date coming up early next month the arrest is obviously designed to try to scare Thais in the US, Australia, Europe and other overseas locations from posting anything anti government on the internet.  There is a large Thai community living overseas, some of whom tend to be more political than the people back home, and who are outspoken in their criticism of the monarchy and government. With the internet, they can be as effective posting from Bangor, Maine as they can be in Bangkok, Thailand.  Arresting Joe Gordon is most likely intended to scare them off the internet.

In my humble opinion, it isn’t going to work.  Nothing they have tried has worked.

Remember the failed threat from the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology in the form of a booklet explaining Thai internet laws.  It was a clear warning to Thais overseas (it is in the Thai language after all) that all those who do not recognize regime propaganda as truth and attempt to portray a different picture of royalist Thailand under a military-backed regime will be persecuted (and maybe even prosecuted too).

Here’s a page from the MICT booklet:

The page reads: Michael: Does everyone know that the bill regulating computer crimes is subject to penalize the wrongdoer outside the Kingdom of Thailand as well? If there is anyone who starts a website outside the country to distribute information disgracing the monarchy, destroying the security of the juristic system or generating fear among Thai people, the wrongdoer will be persecuted by law and receive penalties inside the Kingdom of Thailand.

So, it appears it’s the last round for the current Thai regime. They’re on the ropes, scared and desperate and flailing away wildly with both fists – conditioning and lèse majesté, hoping for a last minute knockout – that will never come.  Their demise is at hand.

 BTW:  Here are some links to download some of Giles Ungpakorn's Books at RedThaiSocialist.com.  They have been banned in Thailand.  The Thai junta can bite me.

A Coup for the Rich  - in English 

Thailand's Crisis and the Fight for Democracy - in English 

Good Reading and Free Joe Gordon - He's Innocent!