Tony Cartalucci
Alt Thai News
Protesters in Thailand's capital of Bangkok are planning another mass
march this Saturday in opposition of convicted criminal, fugitive,
accused mass murderer, billionaire, autocrat Thaksin Shinawatra and his
proxy regime. Protesters have been carrying out demonstrations
continuously since late October 2013, including a lengthy "Occupy Bangkok" campaign preceding sham elections that saw 7 massive encampments across the city bring its major avenues to a standstill for weeks.
The elections resulted in an unprecedented nationwide boycott of the polls, where over half of all eligible Thai voters refused to cast their ballots. Of those that did, many chose to deface their ballots or mark "no vote" in protest of both the regime and the democratic process it has hijacked and hidden behind now for nearly a year of political division and national instability.
What Did Thaksin Shinawatra Do?
The elections resulted in an unprecedented nationwide boycott of the polls, where over half of all eligible Thai voters refused to cast their ballots. Of those that did, many chose to deface their ballots or mark "no vote" in protest of both the regime and the democratic process it has hijacked and hidden behind now for nearly a year of political division and national instability.
What Did Thaksin Shinawatra Do?
- In the late 1990's, Thaksin was an adviser to notorious private equity firm, the Carlyle Group. He pledged to his foreign contacts that upon taking office, he would still serve as a "matchmaker" between the US equity fund and Thai businesses. It would represent the first of many compromising conflicts of interest that would undermine Thailand's sovereign under his rule.
- Thaksin was Thailand's prime minister from 2001-2006. Has since dominated the various reincarnations of his political party - and still to this day runs the country by proxy, via his nepotist appointed sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.
- In 2001 he privatized Thailand's resources and infrastructure including the nation's oil conglomerate PTT - much to Wall Street's delight.
- In 2003, he would commit Thai troops to the US invasion of Iraq, despite widespread protests from both the Thai military and the public. Thaksin would also allow the CIA to use Thailand for its abhorrent rendition program.
- Also in 2003, he initiated what he called a "war on drugs." Nearly 3,000 were extrajudicially murdered in the streets over the course of just 90 days. It would later turn out that more than half of those killed had nothing to even do with the drug trade. In this act alone, Thaksin earned himself the title as worst human rights offender in Thai history, and still he was far from finished.
- In 2004, he oversaw the killing of 85 protesters in a single day during his mishandled, heavy-handed policy in the country's troubled deep south. The atrocity is now referred to as the "Tak Bai incident."
- Also in 2004, Thaksin attempted to ramrod through a US-Thailand Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) without parliamentary approval, backed by the US-ASEAN Business Council who just before the 2011 elections that saw Thaksin's sister Yingluck Shinawatra brought into power, hosted the leaders of Thaksin’s "red shirt" "United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship" (UDD) in Washington DC.
