Transcript of the above video: 

We have seen quite the flurry of activity with regard to the sort of political policy and even legal spheres here in Thailand in the past six to eight weeks. Frankly I have been doing a lot of videos on this stuff. I am pretty concerned about the way things are sort of shaking out in many ways, but I have some optimism; I am not completely pessimistic about Thailand. Also the thing to understand is look Thailand’s sort of political cadence if you will is kind of, for long periods of time things will just kind of plod along without much going on, and then you will get these kind of flurries of activity, things then kind of settle back down and we continue. For the moment we are in kind of a flurry, but the reason for the video is I feel like there is a lot of outside undue influence being brought to bear in Thailand that most notably I've talked a lot about the World Economic Forum but I recently did a video where I expressed my concerns about the fact we now have an acting Prime Minister who is a Communist or whatever you call it, former Communist whatever. I never thought I'd have heard that a million years especially having sort of come up out here over the roughly last 17-18 years and learning about Thai history especially during the process of my naturalization to become Thai; learning about the fact that - it's sort of interesting that in Western history they teach us things about like the Vietnam War and about how the so-called Domino Theory was just nonsense espoused by LBJ and let me be clear, Vietnam War was a big, it was a foreign intervention by the Americans primarily. It's not something that is just good, bad, you can’t analyze it in a dialectical approach. I'm not saying that that whole war was necessarily a good thing, but there was a struggle against Communism which ultimately sort of culminated in ‘91 for most folks in the West when we saw basically the USSR come apart and then China sort of took on a more capitalistic framework under Deng Xiaoping, but I don't want to go too deep into that. The point I am trying to make is the Domino Theory was not completely without merit. In the aftermath of Vietnam, look Cambodia, we saw the Khmer Rouge rise up over there, that was not great; Laos. Communism is a real ideology out there. It doesn't lend itself to freedom by any stretch of the imagination. I mean read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. There's all kinds of problems with it, and I think people especially the Anglosphere and foreigners and things, just now in our minds, in many of their minds sort of just dismiss this as if it's some relic of the past, something that does not need to be thought about any further. But I don't think people understand how Thailand stood as the bulwark; the red, white and blue stood out here as The Rock against those dominoes falling if you will. And when I see this stuff and especially this pernicious influence of the World Economic Forum which I saw comments on prior videos where they would say, "oh they're not communist." Hey, when they are saying, "you're going to own nothing and be happy", what is that, if not communism? I mean that just sounds like exactly the kind of rhetoric you would hear out of the worst kind of hyper-socialistic communistic regimes. I mean if anything, the WEF is totalitarian and that is what scares me. 

But the point with this video is it just seems like the politicians' priorities are entirely out of whack right now. They are just not in line in any way with doing anything for their constituencies or just Thai people generally. And as discussed in another video, there was recently a very peaceful protest here in Bangkok that drew a far larger crowd than I think anybody thought, and a crowd across a broad spectrum of the polity - who normally do not get together and demonstrate together - because all they were saying was” hey we're Thais, we are Thailand; we are a sovereign nation; we don't want this undue influence." That was it; it wasn’t partisan; it was just “hey, we are a sovereign country, that's what we are concerned about”. And that is what I am concerned about. That is the reason for the video.

The first issue is as I have discussed in other videos, this whole Casino thing. I was in favour of this at the beginning when they started talking about the possibility of Casinos here in Thailand. I came up in the casino industry; I worked my way through Law School in the Casino business. It could be beneficial under the right circumstances for Thailand, but everything that has been pushed thus far, appears that it would be Casinos owned and operated entirely by foreigners and I have done the videos on that where I am even concerned that possibly the new Interior Minister has been put in there with the eye toward maybe even selling the underlying land to casinos, not least of which is the fact that the Bill it is my understanding, still allows for foreign complete operation of casinos in Thailand, should it be passed. That said, I thought of making this video, one part of this video, actually I thought of making a video entirely dedicated to the issue of Casinos exclusively. I was going to call it: Coalition cracks coming from Casino Bill in Thailand, but I decided to sort of roll it into this sort of more broad based video here. I thought of making it after reading a recent article from Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Casino bill delay likely for review by new Cabinet. Quoting directly: “The controversial entertainment complex Bill needs to be reviewed by the newly formed Cabinet before proceeding with it further, Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat said.” Quoting further: “Speaking at a forum hosted by the Press Council of Thailand to mark its 28^th anniversary on Friday, Mr. Julapun said government whips and cabinet representatives have discussed the possibility of delaying the Bill for a thorough review by the new Ministers.” And this is the thing. This Bill has come up and people have sort of looked at it, myself included, and said, “hey, this isn’t really what we were thinking.” We weren’t thinking of oh, all these foreigners are going to come in and just run this, it was more Thailand is going to have this; how is this going to benefit Thailand? And every time we see these iterations come up, first of all they didn’t even show us the Bill, and we only go to see it via Reuters after Reuters commented on it because these foreign interests sort of seemed to be influencing what is going to be in it. Every iteration that we have heard about since then frankly just seems to be pointed at the interest of foreign business interests. That said, quoting further: “He dismissed speculation that the Bill’s fate was tied to the recent withdrawal of the Bhumjaithai Party from the coalition, saying the Coalition still commands a majority that is enough to secure its passage." Really? I have serious questions about that. I have done other videos discussing the fact that the Coalition, current what I would call the rump coalitions' margin of majority, I don't know if it's quite there. Good question. Quoting further: "Mr. Julapun admitted that the opposition might push for deliberation and vote the Bill down.” Well yeah, because again, as noted in other videos, it doesn't seem like they have amended the fact that foreigners could own these enterprises out right. I mean if we are going to do this, shouldn't it benefit Thai interests? What are we doing create a Bill that could bring in a societally detrimental type of activity like gambling, and let's be clear, whether you are in favour of this or not, and I have worked in the industry, I am not saying it is bad per se, but there are societal ills that come from it. If we are going to bring that in, why are we bringing it in and then all the benefit accrues to foreigners? Quoting further: "But the Government is confident it has sufficient support to either delay deliberation or withdraw the Bill for review he said." Okay, confident of withdrawing it; okay. Quoting further: "Visuth Chainaroon, the Chief Government Whip yesterday echoed the need for its withdrawal, citing the Coalition's slim majority and an unfavourable political climate." And amidst all of this, there has continued to be this push for this Bill. Meanwhile, there are other things that in my opinion are more concerning most notably the budget, and yet this Bill keeps popping up.

That said I go into some further detailed analysis on this in our paid news service. For those who are interested, you can email us, [email protected], you can get information about subscribing to our paid news service, that's via email [email protected]. Also, while I am talking this type of stuff, I would like to say that we have opened a restaurant, my better half and I down here in downtown Bangkok. Those who are interested in American diner style food, Pancake Palace is here in downtown Bangkok, between Silom and Surawong Roads. We are offering things like as the name suggests, all day breakfast including pancakes; we've also got great American diner style food, cheeseburgers, hamburgers; we've got buffalo wings, we have got fried chicken, we've got chilli bowls, we've got good old-fashioned glass bottled Coke. If you are interested in American diner-style food, we would urge you to come on by. 

Now, further to the title of this video, we get into this issue of Amnesty. I have got to be honest; in the past it seems like this Amnesty thing has percolated up kind of covertly while other things have been in the foreground. They didn't really talk about this that much going back a couple months, so I dug through and did the research and went back to a prior article from the Bangkok Post, the article is titled: Phue Thai MPs to promote Casino, Amnesty push. Quoting directly: "Phue Thai lawmakers have been instructed to promote the Casino entertainment complex and political amnesty bills.." - Well as I am going to get into here in a moment, it seems like there is a lot of self-interest going on in terms of what's being pushed by the “Core Coalition” Party. Then meanwhile, little Thais, especially right now in the Cannabis sector for example, that by the way two weeks ago were completely legal, completely legitimate, fully licensed, and then just unilaterally this "Core Coalition" Party Government just started saying, "oh no, we are going to be able to regulate” notwithstanding the fact they haven't passed any Bill through Parliament, they are just saying, "we can do this because we say so", and I have got serious problems with that especially where people went out of their way to go ahead and set up businesses and to get licensed up. And meanwhile, this Government seems to be pushing Amnesty for its politicians and a Casino that seems to be to the best interest of foreigners exclusively, and I will get into further analysis regarding the Cannabis thing, but my point is what are these folks doing? I mean is it all just for their own interests? And I do get politicians do things that are in their own interest, I am not a completely sort of Pollyanna type naïve person on this thing, but it's really getting concerning now. Quoting further: "According to Phue Thai spokesman and MP, Danuporn Punnakanta, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra..." - who now is currently suspended by Constitutional Court ruling; 9-0 to take the case and 7 - 2 to suspend her, so she is currently under suspension. We are going to see how the adjudication of that plays out. As discussed in other videos, that has led to this weird circumstance where we have an acting Prime Minister who on top of everything else is a Communist or former Communist, however you want to look at that but it is weird - quoting further: "...has instructed the Party's MPs to gauge their constituencies, opinion on a number of public concerns, including the government's push to legalize gambling in Casinos, which has caused tensions within the government coalition." It is not so much the issue of legalization of casinos per se, it's more the issue of who is this going to benefit? That's really the concern, at least in my mind. That said, meanwhile all this is going on and the politicians are concerned about their own amnesty and dealing with these casinos and things, now as I discussed in a video that went out probably this morning as of the time of this video I am making now, there are now raids coming across folks that were otherwise licensed and stuff perfectly legally in the Cannabis space and now we are seeing all these problems. Quoting further from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com under the article: Dope changes ‘harm economy’. “Cannabis advocates will hold a mass rally at the Ministry of Public Health on Monday," - that's today at the time of this video – “to protest the government's campaign to recriminalize the plant three years after it was removed from the National Narcotics List." And as I have discussed in other videos, to re-add this, I don't think they are procedurally doing it correctly; they need to go through Parliament to do that. Quoting further: "Dubbed "Operation 7-7” the gathering would "demand answers from the Public Health Minister and push for the right approach to regulate cannabis..." Yeah, like passing a Bill through Parliament. Quoting further: "..organizers posted on the rally's Facebook page." Quoting further: "On the agenda is "exposing the monopolization of Cannabis by Public Health Minister Somsak Thepsuthin", after Mr. Somsak earlier vowed to allow only the use of Medical Cannabis once the new regulations are issued." Yeah, and again based on what law? It's just "oh because we say so". There was a pledge to push this through Parliament so we could all have a say and it would be promulgated through due process of law and we could have something where we can point to where the rules are and what they are, and where the regulations stem from. Not just this arbitrary and capricious application of “whatever we say on the topic” which as I have discussed, and I know people, I have seen comments of people saying, "oh you're making too big a deal of this", but yeah look the business community, foreign investment community looks at everything when they are looking to invest in Thailand, and they are looking at this issue, I think very closely. That said, quoting further: "Thailand's Cannabis industry once hailed as a new economic driver and tourism magnet, is now at a crossroads." Well it has been proven it was a tourism magnet. I have real concerns about this upcoming high season in light of these recent events because I have a pretty good feeling people are going to make plans based on what they are seeing right now. Quoting further: "The re-listing of Cannabis is expected to push tens of thousands of small and local growers and entrepreneurs out of business." Yeah, and apropos of what law?

Meanwhile, the politicians seem completely enamoured with notions of foreign ownership of casinos and Amnesty for themselves and yet little guys, some 18,000 businesses as we talked about in other videos, that were perfectly licensed up, perfectly legal some two weeks ago are going to be steamrolled by all of this new “regulation” and again regulation apropos of what Bill passed by Parliament. 

Finally, just some comments I saw in prior videos from folks, quote: "I wonder where all those jobs are coming from if the government shuts down those facilities and people are out of work?" Yeah, 18,000 facilities that had licenses. Now those people are possibly going to be put out of work. I mean we are not talking about just 18,000 people. We are talking about multiple thereof because multiple people tend to work in operations. Quoting further: "They don't care. Many small business owners and their workers are jobless. So many chill and cool people I have met and gotten to know over the years. Very frustrating.” Yeah, pretty much sums it up.

I don't get where the politicians' priorities are at this particular moment here in Thailand, but it doesn't particularly seem to be with small business owners of little guys that were following the law, doing things right and then they just have the rug pulled out from under them. I hope there will be some cooler heads that prevail in Parliament, especially in this coming week, and we see some policy shifts in favour of the little guy rather than foreign interests and Amnesty for politicians.