Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Taylor Swift and Thai Tax Policy which are probably seemingly mutually exclusive from an outsider's perspective but there is a lot going on here, and I personally think Thailand is being made the subject or you could possibly view it as the victim of a lot of international pressure, both direct and indirect, in terms of Banking and Tax Policies. And there is a lot of pressure from what I've called in the past or what I would say is outside undue influence, foreign undue influence in Thailand regarding matters to try to change aspects of Thailand's Banking and Tax Policy. Now this video is more kind of an exposition or what some would call Revelation of the Method, however you want to look at it, on techniques used to sort of distract the public during times when these undue influencers, for lack of a better term, are trying to change perception of a given topic. So, we are not actually getting into the substance of Thai Tax Policy in this video, but I observed something the other day that I found concerning when I was looking at information about Thailand's Tax Policies, and it got me thinking. It got me thinking along the lines of, well let me just jump in here with the first title of this article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Thailand inches toward Negative Income Tax. So I've talked about negative income tax before. I have talked about my concerns about it, most notably it's redistributive; it's basically a form of, for lack of a better term Communism, really, at the end of the day. I mean people can sit around and say, "oh but it's more socialistic". Well as Stalin himself said, "Communism is Socialism in a hurry", so you end up at the same place even though it might be slower. Frankly I prefer the honesty of a straight-up Communist over doing it through obfuscation. That being said, what are we talking about here? Again, it's the techniques being used to sort of push this through subtly and obfuscate while they're doing it. Now let's go ahead and quote directly, again Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, quoting directly: "The Finance Ministry is preparing a comprehensive overhaul of the government's welfare system, laying the groundwork to implement a Negative Income Tax system in Thailand." Well first of all, who asked for this? In the last Government they were trying to push some of this stuff; I didn't like it then; I don't like it now. I don't think many people, when they really get down to thinking about it, really would want this. And also again, I get it. There are people that are having maybe a hard time. Some level of financial relief could be useful to those folks. This isn't the way to go about that. These types of handouts; this is what led to the downfall of Rome, bread and circuses, the dole, all of that kind of stuff. It's better to have a resilient, ruggedly individualistic population that can take care of themselves, and yes needs to fund some limited amount of government in order to keep themselves at a good standard of living, because there are certain things that we do have to collectively finance and things, but again this move that I can only say toward a kind of Communistic approach to living is something that truly, truly gives me pause when I look at anything going on here in Thailand. I get really upset about this stuff; as you can see in my prior videos. 

That said quoting further: "According to Finance Permanent Secretary Lavaron Sangsanit," - which I believe I made a video in the past where somebody, actually the folks over at Truth Stream, Aaron and Melissa Dietz actually, noted that to me - I think I was talking to them on Twitter or something, when that name came up and they shot back at me and they said, "you know, that is an anagram for Glasnost Nirvana which I thought was kind of funny; I made a video at the time. That said, this has come up before, this is why I am bringing this up again now, and I do believe Mr. Sangsanit was part of the push in the past that we saw from this. Quoting further: "Within 2 years or less, the welfare system will be transformed into an NIT system." That is a Negative Income Tax System. Well, first of all, one of the telltale signs of these pushes by undue foreign influence is when they state it as a foregone conclusion. This isn't a foregone conclusion; they're talking about it. They've done this with OECD where they just continue and say, “this is actually happening” even though we are not part of it yet; it is still being explored. And again, I find that very disingenuous, especially from press outlets that are supposed to be objectively reporting what's actually happening, not what they would like or what they think is a foregone conclusion. The actuality of what is going on is that this hasn't happened. I don't think if most rank-and-file Thais look at the idea of a Negative Income Tax System, they are going to want it; and why would that be? Well let's quote further: "Under this approach, individuals whose income falls below the threshold for paying income tax would receive various forms of government assistance. Anyone wishing to receive welfare benefits, would be required to file a tax return with the Revenue Department. Now we discussed this in prior videos. They have tried to make tax filing mandatory; it's currently not in Thailand. There are various thresholds where it may become mandatory depending on earned income or unearned income, accrued Revenue, whatever, but just living and walking around breathing, does not mean one is required to file a tax return; it's not the requirement. That is not what the law is. Meanwhile, there is clearly a push to make everyone have to file taxes. We have seen this with all of the undue influence associated, especially with foreign charlatans coming in here and saying all kinds of things about Thai Tax Law that are patently untrue in many cases, and attempting to again push this narrative that this is just coming; we're going to end up with negative income tax; we're going to end up in a system where everyone has to file taxes, and this always is done from the standpoint of “oh you're going to get benefits; you're going to get all these goodies”. A real example of this I saw in sort of my lifetime, at a time when I was really able to comprehend what was happening as I watched it largely from abroad, when so-called Obamacare came in in America, where it was originally, I mean when they were pushing it before it went through Congress, it was “oh, everybody is going to get healthcare because of this and it's a benefit for people”, it was pushed as a benefit, a benefit a benefit. Then it gets passed and we immediately saw the narrative. It sort of just almost switched overnight and it became, “you have to pay your fair share, pay your fair share”, and then it went through the Supreme Court and they ultimately said it was a tax, even though when it was initially brought forward, it was brought out as a benefit and then we come to find out legally it has the posture of a tax which is what actually the Supreme Court cited in saying that it was legal by the way. So again, they used the Tax and spending Clause if I recall.

Again though, what I'm talking about in this video is understanding Narrative Management and how narratives are used and techniques are used in the narrative to nudge people toward things that they might not otherwise do. Now for those who say, “well what do you know about that?” Look, I was a professor at Bangkok University for a time of Mass Media Law. I have studied this stuff pretty extensively. I've read Edward Bernays; this is classic technique from Bernays. Bernays was actually the nephew or grand-nephew of Sigmund Freud; he's actually the one that came up with switching people's perceptions through narratives. A perfect example of this was women smoking. Cigarette companies hired Bernays to sell more cigarettes and what he figured out was he started putting cigarettes, he made cigarettes sort of a symbol, or cigarette smoking a symbol of the women's liberation movement which was at that time, sort of a proto-movement, or a prototype movement if you will. It was in its nascent stages, and they were primarily going for suffrage; they were going for the right to vote. At that point I think it was primarily in different states but again, the notion of equal rights for women and things. Smoking was brought in. Bernays talked about this in his own time, and we will get to - there was actually an interview with David Letterman from Bernays. I'll try to put a link in the description below to the interview with David Letterman with Bernays, but we'll get to, he was on the Late Show or Late Night with David Letterman, and then, later Letterman went on to host the Late Show and that has a connection here that we will get to here in a moment.

But Bernays talked about this stuff that by reframing issues or if you will sort of piggybacking or hooking one issue on to another issue, you could kind of move the narrative.  Now what we are talking about here is more a technique that I've heard described as sort of ‘big hides little’ if you will. It is sort of an effort to put out a smoke screen to get people to think about something else, while another topic that has the same sort of phraseology associated with it, is then sort of pushed out into the open narrative, sort of the public discourse. In a sense, messing with what some people call the Overton Window, what people talk about in their day-to-day, but meanwhile, our subconscious is also operating simultaneously and using these techniques, it conflates if you will, one thing with the other.

Now real quickly before I get into further evidence of this, folks have talked to me and they have corresponded with us and they have said,  “hey, we appreciate what you do on the channel; we know you are not monetized; we may not need to avail ourselves of a law firm - which is the primary function of this channel to basically be a promotional, semi-promotional platform for our law firm Integrity Legal - but again folks have said, is there any way we can support you even though we don’t necessarily need a law firm and we know you are not monetized. Look, the best way, as I have discussed in other videos, my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. The name is Pancake Palace; as the name implies breakfast any time, American Diner style food, American Breakfast. We also have an English breakfast on the menu, and we have got American diner style food: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, chilli dogs, buffalo wings. We have got grilled cheese sandwiches; we have got tacos; we have got coke in glass bottles. We also have adult beverages as well, so if you are interested, please feel free to check out the links in the description below; you can come on down and see us.

That being said, let’s move over here to why I thought of making this video. Because I saw this article about Thailand Inches Toward Negative Income Tax which again is a misnomer. They are talking about this like it is a foregone conclusion. It is not. We have a Parliament; it’s not just because Bangkok Post says this is going to happen, that this is going to happen, and a lot of this stuff can get rolled back. We saw this recently with the Hantavirus. Old Tedros, Communist that he is, tried to roll that one out and say, “oh, we all need to go back to lockdowns or something” because of Hantavirus which makes no sense because that is not how Hantavirus works, but that said, it is not a foregone conclusion these things. I don’t make these videos to be some kind of doomsayer that leads us down a sort of Black Pill Road if you will that just leads us nowhere. No, I made these videos so people become aware of what's happening and can start thinking for themselves in an effort to push back against this foreign undue influence. Again, so this video, this article that I initially read: Thailand Inches toward Negative Income Tax where it's sort of pushing this as a foregone conclusion was right next to this article, I mean they were literally right next to each other on the online platform on Bangkok  Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Thaksin tax case tests coalition unity which that's already a misnomer in the title. Look, having been here, especially this last year, and seeing the ups and downs of politics which you can go back and even look at this channel, I mean it has just been like I don't know, it's been like going through two primrose paths and then ending up back where we started. The long story short, I don't think anything having to do with Thaksin’s taxes is truly going to threaten the coalition. I'm just not seeing it, for a variety different reasons. It might threaten Pheu Thai’s position in the Coalition where if they want to make a big issue with that, well maybe the Coalition will sort of reform and shift; again I don't think that's a foregone conclusion either. And to be clear, there should be a designation made in the viewer's mind between the Thaksin faction or the Shinawatra faction within Pheu Thai and Pheu Thai itself; I'm not unaware of the distinction by the way.

That said, let's get into this and why I started thinking of this. Quoting directly: “The resurging calls for authorities to pursue former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra over the 2006 sale of Shin Corporation to Singapore’s Temasek Holdings have once again exposed the delicate fault lines within Coalition politics,” Really? Because after the past election I don't know that these fault lines are all that delicate. It is pretty clear to me where the polity in Thailand, what their thinking is especially after the events this past summer. Quoting further: “where legal accountability, political survival and longstanding ideological divisions remain deeply intertwined. At the centre of the renewed debate is the claims that state lost more than 17.6 billion Baht in tax revenue from the controversial transaction, which became one of the defining political flashpoints leading to the downfall of the Thaksin Administration and the military coup of September 2006.  Nearly two decades later, the issue continues to haunt Thai politics because it symbolizes what critics see as the unequal enforcement of the law for politically connected elites.” And they go on to talk about the fact that the Court here in Thailand basically rejected one of Thaksin’s, or one of the cases brought in this matter, and basically it essentially puts Thaksin back into a posture where he may have to end up having to pay these taxes. Again, the details of that are not really what I want to go into here. More is one, this notion that this is somehow going to upset the apple cart when it comes to Thai politics; I'm not seeing it. I think that's hyperbolic perhaps at best, maybe even disingenuous a little bit.

That being said, the point here is that these two things appeared side by side, and it looks to me like the issue of Thaksin and his taxes are acting as a sort of a smoke screen to obfuscate the issue of this Negative Income Tax because this Negative Income Tax is something that I don't think Thailand needs and I think if most Thais understood what it is, they wouldn't want it. What the Negative Income Tax looks to me to be like is a carrot that is being brought forth in an effort to get people signed on with the notion of negative income tax etc., which will then lead to mandatory tax filings for all Thais - which I don't think is necessary in Thailand, and frankly I don't think is right. It's why I don't like seeing this undue foreign influence being brought to bear to try to push this forward and this is all happening over the backdrop of the OECD trying to come in here, track and trace everyone’s banking functions and then what? Then we end up with mandatory taxes, so they just start saying, “oh you owe us all the time.” It's just constant tracking, constantly ‘we owe money’, for what? It's totalitarianism is basically what it is, but it comes in the guise of “banking regulations” and “oh taxes because we need to help people”. And don't get me wrong. I don't disagree with the notion that people who are having a hard time and need a leg up that there are ways to help those folks, but creating a totalitarian tax system  where we are all tracked and traced and everybody has to file their taxes now, that's not making it mandatory that even if you don't have any heretofore liability, you still have to file. I don't want an affirmative duty placed on me just for walking around and breathing. That's my problem with all of this.

Now that said, where does Taylor Swift factor in? Well about 2, 3 years back, I was just wandering around on Twitter somewhere, and the whole issue of, it was right around 2022 as 2022 progressed, the whole issue with SWIFT, which is the SWIFT System - which is the banking communication system that I believe is based in Belgium - it came up in the headlines in 2022 when the United States sanctioned Russia right after the, whatever they call it, Special Military Operation or whatever, in Ukraine commenced. And the reason I bring this up is because I think when historians look back on where problems started happening for the United States in the first quarter century of this century, I think they are going to look back at that moment, because at that moment, the rest of the world started saying, “whoa, whoa, whoa. If Russia’s assets could be seized, if they could be kicked off the SWIFT System, that makes other nations uneasy, and I think it has slowly led to ramifications for the US Dollar, and for the US trading system, the so-called Bretton Woods system, it is not the US System, I would call it the Bretton Woods system which came into existence in the aftermath of the Second World War. We arguably saw multiple iterations of it, but it has continued, but it threatened SWIFT. It threatened the SWIFT System because it caused other countries to start going out there and looking at alternatives; that isn't good. During that time period, I remember reading things on Twitter etc., because Taylor Swift started hitting the headlines a lot. She started dating a guy from Kansas City Chiefs - which that is especially pertinent to me because I am from Kansas - but all this stuff started happening; her Eras Tour and things; there was a lot of coverage of her in the press and there was speculation, especially on Twitter, that there was something going on here and it was basically a sort of a smoke screen to pull online attention if you will away from the issue involving the United States sanctioning Russia and basically knocking them out of SWIFT, and the possible negative ramifications that could spring therefrom, and sort of moving the narrative back over to talking about something more innocuous, most notably Taylor Swift and all of her, the various aspects of not only her career but her love life, things of this nature. And again, one could look at me and call me a conspiracy theorist; that term means nothing to me now by the way. Literally everything that people called people conspiracy theorists for in 2020 was pretty much proved right by 2023. And everything that has happened after that we might as well, it's just sort of the dénouement of that; we are beyond Thunderdome if you will.

That said, again what I'm trying to impart here and what I want people to see is that coverage of Taylor Swift, that word ‘Swift’, her last name was - again these algorithms and things, they can only follow the names of things, the actual alphanumeric characters that are put into articles and things - that's how sort of AI and things track these things, algorithms track these things. And essentially what I'm saying is Taylor Swift and that entertainment news, there were allegations, again a lot of them on Twitter, of that being used as a distraction from the underlying issue of the problems that may be emanating in the future regarding the SWIFT System. Now that said, I want to be clear. I went over to Grok and I asked it about this on Twitter and it sort of said NO but it is sort of one of these Grok answers, “NO, but it looks” – it is kind of like it doesn’t quite get to the question. It sort of answers another question. That said, I want to put this on screen and quote this. This came from Grok.  

Why this doesn't hold up.

One. Swift was not hidden: It was a major, coordinated international announcement with extensive coverage." That’s again not an answer. Yes, of course that's exactly what it was, but how does that go to the conclusion that the usage of Taylor Swift and all of the, for lack of a better term and again I brought up Bernays, he wrote a book called Propaganda - hard not to use that terminology here, but let's say the terminology of Swift and SWIFT. Yeah, the SWIFT System yes it was not hidden, nobody disagreed with that, but again, what I'm talking about is the technique of manipulating sort of the public perception of this as well as the algorithms online, so that people's attention started focusing on something more innocuous than the issue of Swift and the SWIFT System and thereby people just kind of went along and just essentially kind of implicitly acquiesced to what was happening with regard to the SWIFT System because they were sort of distracted by all the discussions of Taylor Swift. That said, quoting further: "Celebrity news is constant: Taylor Swift generates massive interest year-round; her 2022 activities aligned with her career trajectory, not a sudden pivot." Okay, Fair, but again not really an answer. Yes, we know that Taylor Swift is around. We know there is a lot of press coverage. We also know that the SWIFT thing wasn't hidden. I wasn't asking whether the SWIFT thing was hidden; I was asking whether or not the coverage of Taylor Swift was distracting from the issue of the SWIFT System.

Meanwhile, and if you continue to watch her trajectory, they actually pumped up the volume especially regarding her relationship with that - I think his name is Kelsey - member of the Kansas City Chiefs. So again, and this is especially in parts of sort of Middle America where people do get concerned about these things, again it was Taylor Swift being talked about and the SWIFT System stuff seemed to kind of fall by the wayside. Quoting further: ”Distraction theories are common but rarely evidenced. Real media priorities exist (e.g., clicks on entertainment) but that's not the same as deliberate government/media collusion for geopolitical cover.” Well nobody said it was Grok. That said, it seems a bit coincidental. Then quoting further: “In short, this is unfounded speculation. The SWIFT expulsion was a transparent sanction move amid the early Ukraine war, reported widely on it on its own merits. Taylor Swift's fame and output are independent of that.” Never claimed that they weren't. What I'm saying is that there may have been certain operators out there that were using the two things to kind of conflate and distract algorithmically as well as on an individual basis, because again, just the sort of coincidence of the names lead to a situation where again the algorithm will get carried away. Okay, there are 10,000 articles about Taylor Swift; there's four about the SWIFT system, even though SWIFT is out in the open. It's akin to what we would call in the trial litigation, “burying someone in discovery” where basically you do discover, you find a specific document and your counterparty sends over reams of things for you to have to basically essentially go through all of that to find what you're actually looking for; sort of a needle in a haystack. What I'm saying is all the coverage of Taylor Swift basically was the hay and the needle of SWIFT got kind of buried under that hay in the haystack, because of all the talk of Taylor Swift, instead of looking at the SWIFT System.

Now circling back to David Letterman, former host of The Late Show - at that time the host of The Late Show was Stephen Colbert who I have serious issues with, especially in light of the fact he made all those weird vaccine sketches and stuff - I actually did a video at one point talking about taxes where we used a clip from one of his vaccine things - but that being said, again correlation is not causation. I am not trying to create a relationship here where nothing exists, but the fact of the matter is I remember going through roughly 2022, even through 2023 and noticing Taylor Swift, because I follow a lot of stuff regarding geopolitics especially regarding currencies and things, so I was watching that and I noticed a lot, that again it just seemed like Taylor Swift was in the forefront all during that time period, when they were discussing matters pertaining to the SWIFT System, Russia etc.  That said, circling back to David Letterman and his old show, this comes from The Week, that is theweek.com, under the headline: The Late Show uses Taylor Swift to explain the SWIFT banking ban on Putin’s Russia. Quoting directly: “The U.S., Britain and the European Union and other nations went after a handful of key Russian banks by banning them from using SWIFT, the global messaging system that connects thousands of financial institutions around the world. The financial blockade of Russia, punishment for its invasion of Ukraine, was announced Saturday and detailed Monday, sending the Russian ruble crashing, and prompting Russia to close its stock market for two days and raised interest rates to 20 percent as people rushed ATMs to withdraw money. SWIFT or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications was founded in 1973 and is based in Belgium. Cutting off the Russian Banks mean they “are disconnected from the International Financial system and harm their ability to operate globally,” the U.S. and Europe said in a joint statement. You can read more about SWIFT and its repercussions for Russia at, among other places, The Wall Street Journal or USA Today, or you can get the quick version from Monday's Late Show and in a manner of speaking Taylor Swift.” Again, you can say that a lot of this is just coincidence, but one, I'll go ahead and put a link in the description below to the actual clip from The Late Show where they basically took Taylor Swift’s song Shake it Off, and they changed the lyrics and they sort of dubbed over it and made it all about what was pertinent to the SWIFT System and Russia/Ukraine situation. But again, okay you can view this as coincidences, but as Agent Gaad in the show The Americans points out, “coincidence is God winking at you”, at the end of the day. What I'm talking about here is again there was something that was happening and, in some circles, it was considered controversial regarding the SWIFT system. So again there seems to have been sort of a push amongst the for lack of a better term media sherpas of the world, to it seemed sort of pump up the volume on Taylor Swift while all this was happening, without actually censoring anything having to do with the news pertaining to SWIFT, and then the cherry on top being The Late Show has this clip of Taylor Swift’s song talking about the SWIFT System as it pertained to Russia and Ukraine. 

Okay, so presuming people understand now what I'm talking about in terms of this technique if you will of sort of smoke screening using similar terminology, I go back to what we're talking about here with regard to the tax system in Thailand, and again this article, again titled: Thailand inches towards negative income tax. Now again, the title of the other article, which again sat side by side on the Bangkok Post website titled: Thaksin tax case tests coalition unity. Okay, again when I saw this, I immediately thought of the Taylor Swift thing; that's the only reason I'm making this video. The minute I saw it side by side, look as I brought up in the past year, we have seen a lot of things happen especially in terms of foreign undue influence most notably back when then Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Mr. Thaksin’s daughter had the meeting with the World Economic Forum envoy in the Purple Room, but let's set that aside, let's not set that aside, let's actually sort of look at it from that angle. It has looked to me like a lot of this foreign undue influence stuff has - at least Thaksin has been around the periphery of it, if not right in the eye of it at certain points - and also there seems to be a constant media blitz associated with this particular faction and this particular person associated with this particular part of Thai Politics. The fact that I saw those two articles boom, boom in the Bangkok Post just right there together, again it looks to me like there is an attempt being made to bring on a system that may not necessarily be what most folks in Thailand would like to see, as well as a system that in my opinion is not in the best interest of this economy nor of anybody in this place because again, we've seen what redistributive overly zealous tax structures do. If you have any doubt about that, have a look at the West sometime, okay? The United States itself is in 125% debt to GDP ratio right now and everybody will say, "Well they are the world reserve currency and things", yeah, well things change too; we're in a time of change. My point being, this stuff does not go to a good place, and traditionally Thailand has been very, very assiduous in understanding that fact, and in guarding against it. And my worry is techniques are being used which have been utilized in the West to obfuscate objectives of various actors, utilizing various aspects of algorithms and sort of publicity in such a way that issues are sort of, for lack of a better term, sort of glossed over, while essentially the public is sort of distracted by this issue which in my opinion, they are making this issue up largely out of whole cloth; I don't really see that there are really a lot of problems in the Coalition or anything associated with this tax thing. If anything, I'd say the rank-and-file Thais are sitting there going, "hey, I pay my taxes, what's up with you?"

That being said, again it acts, in terms of between the two issues - one being the personal taxes of one person and the issue of redistributive economic system here in Thailand coupled with a mandatory tax system - one of these things looks an awful lot like a sort of smoke screen that again you can agree or disagree, I'm making this for people, it is basically just a video of food for thought, but it looks a lot to me like it's a similar technique to what we saw with Taylor Swift not too long ago.