Transcript of the above video: 

If you can see the grin from ear to ear on my face it's because - I don't love making some of these videos, especially here recently, where we have kind of waded over into the more political news, Parliament News and all this stuff going on here in Thailand, - but sometimes a video will come along or an idea for a video will come along that just makes me smile, and this is one of them. So let's do some background here. 

For those who watch this channel pretty frequently, you know that I have been following since the leak of the phone call between Prime minister Hun Sen, or actually former Prime Minister Hun Sen, now President of the Senate, but de facto sort of Mayor Domo sort of guy or de facto leader of Cambodia - his son is Prime Minister Hun Manet - and he had this phone call with our Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra which has been a giant political controversy, because, I have made the videos. I mean I have equated her to like those who were involved with appeasement. I have serious questions about her fitness for office, I've gotten into all of that in many other videos. Later, Mr. Hun Sen has now made further disclosures. Now I thought it was interesting the current Defense Minister, although he seems to be trying to become the Interior Minister, Phumtham Wechayachai mentioned that he was like, "oh don't listen to Hun Sen, everything he says is propaganda." I saw a line that said something akin to that and fair enough, and that is actually a good point. I do respect him for saying, "hey this is the sort of counterparty in this controversy that we have got going on with the Border." Fair. Fair point. That said, Ms. Paetongtarn corroborated the leak. She said, “that was me on the phone”, from what I've read. So that is already there. Meanwhile, there is corroboration to these assertions or at least ostensible corroboration that things happened, whether or not what happened behind the scenes is exactly true, but all things in their totality, it causes me to question, I think Hun Sen is telling the truth in this particular incident, or in this particular case. 

Let me just dive into it. So I thought of making this video initially, let me do some background, so going back, and this is also one of the things I am very angry about at this point regarding Mr. Thaksin because I was here in 2010 when Mr. Thaksin, under the wing if you will of Hun Sen at the time, was over in Phnom Penh making all kinds of comments and commentary about what was, Lord knows what was happening behind the scenes as well, but all kinds of comments and commentary about what was happening here in Bangkok, especially in the months of April and May with the culmination being that this city burned. I was here and I watched people die. My office, where I lived and worked at the time, still do, it was in the epicentre of this. This stuff was not good; it was Thais versus Thais and albeit at the time I wasn't yet a Thai, but I watched that, and it was terrible, and I never want to see it again. The hairs on the back of my neck always go up when I see anything about a protest going to happen in the city, and I think a lot of Thais feel this way. Whatever their political leanings are, we don't want to have that kind of fissure in our society, it's not good for anybody. But I get upset about it because he was over there kind of making it worse. He was exacerbating it, and he was doing it from the sidelines, from a foreign country. So when I hear these things about this leak from Paetongtarn where she is calling him "uncle" and undermining our own troops along the border by calling their Commander the "opponent" and all of this stuff, it makes me very concerned. It makes me very upset and frankly overwrought.

That said, the context for this particular video, Mr. Thaksin came back and let's be clear. One of the reasons I get upset about this is we all bent over backwards here in Thailand if you will, to have him back in. He was granted clemency from certain prior convictions, and then he spent his "prison" time, and I put that in quotes for reasons I will get into here in a moment, in a hospital because of his affliction that didn't allow him to be in an actual prison. What I will get into here in further detail is, he was deemed to be too sick to be in prison and to be in the normal prison hospital even, and was put over in this other facility which many are arguing now constituted him effectively not even serving his own prison sentence. But the point is Thailand tried to accommodate him. We all back in August the 2023 we kind of were in a predicament, and we said look, let's welcome him back with open arms. The Coalition was created, Srettha became the Prime Minister and we all try to get on down the road. Then Srettha fell out of Prime Ministership because of a Constitutional Court ruling and then his daughter was put in as Prime Minister and that brings us up to where we are today. So the polity if you will here in Thailand, has attempted to reconcile and down the line, all I have seen at least, has been negative consequences to that attempted reconciliation, most notably the attempt at putting Thailand on the Digital Wallet and giving all this handout, putting us into debt we really didn't need, and still don't need going into what I think are economic choppy waters moving forward, which I get into by the way in our paid news channel. And real quick, I'm doing a video basically there is an upcoming video on this channel called: Reflections on a Thai Peaceful Protest but I go into detail. I went to the protest just yesterday as of the time of this video; it was peaceful; it was actually really nice to see. I get into more detail of that, I am going to put some photos up of that. 

Also Pancake Palace, quick plug for that, we have a new restaurant here. My better half and I have set up here in downtown Bangkok. I will put a link in the description below. 

But again coming back, I went to the protest mostly because there hasn't been one like this in a while. It was a very interesting protest insofar as it has brought together a lot of disparate elements of the Thai political spectrum; I'll leave it at that. I will leave it to my later video on that specifically on this channel to go into a little more detail and for those who want to go to the paid news service, I go in a great detail in long form on there. 

Back to Thaksin specifically. He came back, everybody wanted him back, in a sense we wanted to reconcile, Thailand seem to want to reconcile and what did we get in the aftermath? The attempt to put us on a Digital Wallet; attempts, and now it looks like real strides being made to destroy the Cannabis industry which acted very much as a cushion against a lot of the economic fallout coming off of COVID. Meanwhile all kinds of moves to bring in the World Economic Forum, and now for whatever reason, Paetongtarn has been talking to the French Prime Minister; I'm getting to that in another video. The political consequences have been pretty negative down the line. I am not saying all of them but pretty negative under this "Core Coalition" party, what I am now calling the Rump Coalition in the aftermath of Bhumjaithai pulling out of the coalition. Then meanwhile, it now looks like he shouldn't have really been in that hospital facility to begin with because effectively it looks like based on what Hun Sen is saying, and now what doctors are even saying, it doesn't look like any of that was warranted. In essence it sounds like he was probably "faking it." Let me dive into this. So first of all understand that he was put in there basically on the assent if you will of three different doctors who said, “oh yeah, he can't be a normal facilities; we're going to move”, I think they moved him to the Police General Hospital or whatever it was called, and they were overruled by their own authority, by their own licensing body. Quoting directly from the Nation, that is nationthailand.com - I want to get background on this so people understand what is going on. "On July 4th, the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions will begin witness hearings in the case concerning the enforcement of Thaksin Shinawatra's prison sentence. The case relates to the controversial decision to transfer him to the Police General Hospital's 14th floor for treatment shortly after his return to Thailand." And then again further context here from Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, Medical Council upholds decision to discipline Thaksin's doctors. So the Medical Council of Thailand - that would be the equivalent to like the American Medical Association, the AMA or something - whatever, the Boards in the various states in the United States when you are a Board Certified Doctor, essentially reprimanding the doctors who said, “yeah, Thaksin should be put over here.” Quoting directly: "The Medical Council of Thailand on Thursday upheld its decision to discipline three doctors who enabled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to spend his entire prison sentence in hospital a day before the start of a Supreme Court case that could result in him being jailed. Quote: "More than two-thirds of the Council voted to uphold the punishments." So that's important. And also it's important to point out, this was not a political body. These are a bunch of doctors okay, medical doctors who got together and over two-thirds of them said, "hey, this was not a good decision"; ostensibly they are saying this was not based on good medicine - quoting further: "Prof. Dr. Prasit Watanapa, the Council vice-president, told reporters. Quote: "Members made the decision based on medical principles, evidence and reason." So it's important to understand, I know outsiders look on Thai politics and “oh, it’s all just mudslinging and dirty tricks and all it”. That's not what's exactly going on here, okay? The Medical Council of Thailand said, "hey what were you doing doctors who said that he needed to be transferred this way.” Okay?

Now let's get into the thumbnail real quick for a minute, because this gets into Hun Sen's latest accusations and it caused me to then go wait, what's he talking about and I went in and I researched, okay so let me let me quote directly. It's from the article in Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, Premier Opts for Forgiveness. Quote: "I flew to Bangkok to visit Thaksin. He was not ill at all," Hun Sen said. "But when it came time to take photos, he asked for props -- a neck brace, an arm brace -- to appear unwell. As soon as the photos were done, he removed them and went to dine. That's not illness, that's theatre. Thai people already have suspicions. I'm only confirming what many have thought, because both Thaksin and his daughter, Paetongtarn, are acting in bad faith. Hun Sen further claimed that Ms. Paetongtarn was fully aware that her father was not genuinely unwell, yet she still took part in deceiving the Constitutional Court. He also stated that Phnom Penh governor, Khuong Sreng, could serve as a witness to the staged illness, along with several Thais who were present at the time." Okay. As to Paetongtarn's knowledge and things like that, I don't know and frankly, that's probably where Mr. Phumtham has a point. Maybe just kind of take that with a grain of salt or just disregard it entirely, that could be sort of a propagandized statement. 

That said, the reason for the thumbnail, look at the photo, okay. It's like the minute I went and looked at that, I was like, I thought he was in the hospital with some kind of a heart problem or something; something Internal Medicine related. And then he is in this neck brace and arm brace! What, did he fall down 20 flights of stairs and then go meet Hun Sen? It's an odd photo, but the humour in all of this, the minute I saw it, I immediately thought, one of Bill Murray's most underrated and funniest characters I think he has ever played on film is actually a relatively small part in a film called Wild Things from the late '90s where he plays this for lack of a better term "shady lawyer". He's like what we would call like an ambulance chaser when you first come upon him in the film, because Matt Dillon's character has been accused of an awful crime and he's come to this guy to try, he needs a defense. The lawyer turns out to be quite competent and he ends up defending him and winning the case, and it is millions of dollars involved that they get out of a settlement for it was a false accusation, but it is funny because early on he's still this shady guy, and he is wearing this neck brace around and Matt Dillon asks him, he says, "what is that on your neck?" and he says, "oh this, oh I don't have to wear it all the time; there was some insurance guy poking around earlier," and you are like wait what? who is this guy? I mean it immediately, when I saw that photo, and taken in the totality with these accusations and the Medical Council of Thailand saying hey two-thirds of us don't think this was legit, all of it together made me make the thumbnail because it's like what's going on here? Are the Thai public simply being gas lit with regard to all of these things? It really is concerning. It's kind of funny, but it's still concerning.