Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing OECD yet again. Unfortunately and I have admitted this in prior videos; I have kind of a soft spot if you will or an affinity if you will for Mr. Anutin. I felt like he was a nationalist; I have watched his career for a long time. I felt like at the end of the day that notwithstanding the fact, look all politicians are politicians, they are what they are, I kind of felt like he at least had the notion of the national interest in mind when I would sort of watch him do things before he became Prime Minister and he has talked a lot about national sovereignty. 

Now what worries me is he seems very, very committed to the idea of Thailand joining OECD notwithstanding the fact, as we have discussed in other videos, Mr. Trump has done things that I disagreed with since becoming President the first and second time, but has done things I agree with like promulgating an Executive Order regarding OECD on his first day in office reversing the prior Administration which basically adopted OECD without passing any laws, but adopted it on the premise that we were working towards entering it, and then Trump basically pulled us out of it - the Executive Order - which is good. Also, by putting in that Executive Order, it also reversed the implicit legislative momentum which really shouldn't even be a word because you either have a passed law, or you don't, you don't have this gray thing where it's "well we are working toward it, so we are going to pretend as if a law has already been passed." His Executive Order destroyed that, but it was the content and the context of the Executive Order that are most important, most notably he noted that the accession to the OECD would create extra-territorial jurisdiction in the United States and that was a good reason not to have it. He also described the fact that it is a direct threat to national sovereignty. For those who are unaware, especially in a Thai context, the notion of extra-territorial jurisdiction should be extremely concerning. That was the crux of the so-called unequal treaties that were imposed upon Thailand during the so-called Colonial period, by the so-called “Western Powers”, by the Colonial Powers etc., and again it created a situation where they had their own Courts, they had their own legal system. It was extra-territorial; it was not something native to Thailand. As Trump pointed out, the OECD would be - in an American context - it would be bringing in non-native legal concepts and imposing jurisdiction of a non-native nature onto the country. The same can be said for Thailand. It truly concerns me that a Prime Minister, who espouses nationalism, which I do agree with under most circumstances, does not see the threat to the national sovereignty of Thailand that is coming directly from the OECD's quarter. 

So I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Will Thailand succeed in joining the OECD. I love how it is first of all phrased as if it is a “success” that we join this thing. Did anybody say "will Thailand succeed in being part of the British Empire in 1801?" No, because nobody would have wanted that, not 1801, 1901. No, because no one would have wanted that because it wouldn't have been in Thailand's National interest. It's not a success for Thailand to be part of this. That said, quoting further: "Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has set a bold target of 2028 for Thailand to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Such an ambitious deadline suggests he wants Thailand to secure membership during his term in office. That leaves the Government with less than three years to achieve its OECD goal by amending at least 244 domestic laws, not to mention numerous policies." Did anyone in the last election vote to amend 244 laws at the behest of some foreign organization? And before people say, "well it was a flank of the Bhumjaithai Party that OECD," - it was listed number 15, at the very bottom. They quietly put it on there. This wasn't what they campaigned on openly. They weren't saying, "hey we're going to change 250 odd of Thailand's laws to bring it in line with some foreign organization." I don't remember that being talked about during the campaign. Quoting further: "In practical terms, the Government and relevant Ministries would need to amend about two laws every week." At the behest of foreigners? At the behest of undue foreign influence? We need to change two laws a week? And what are the laws? Are they laws that protect the national interest here in Thailand? Are they laws that insulate our labour pool? Are they laws that insulate our Business Community? Are they laws that keep our people free in terms of being able to have privacy in their financial transactions? Because we are seeing all these changes in the banking system that nobody asked for, and it all seems to be happening at the behest of the OECD. Quoting further: "Given Thailand's notorious bureaucratic red tape and deeply divided lawmakers, it remains doubtful whether the target can be met." Now there is the success. ‘Our bureaucratic red tape and deeply divided lawmakers’. Good. Those are called checks and balances. Bureaucrats and globalists and these technocrats that want to rule over us with totalitarian tyranny, they don't like checks and balances. They call it bureaucratic red tape because they want to come here and strip all of us of our liberties and start telling us how we can all live and they want to know where our money comes from and what we are doing with it all the time. Quoting further: "Last week, Mr. Anutin established a steering committee to oversee Thailand's OECD accession process. Chaired by the Prime Minister, the Committee will coordinate cooperation between the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) and the OECD." Why? Our National Economic and Social Development Council, which pertains to our national interests, is now going to be taking cues from a foreign supranational organization. Who wants this? Why is this a good thing? As I have discussed myself in another video, I was quoting from the Bangkok Post print edition, where one of the guys who apparently brought this online, literally said this came about as a result of undue foreign influence. They learned about it from some Malaysian or something when it they were in Malaysia. And then "Oh, let's bring it over to Thailand". Why? Again, this is akin to during the Cold War saying, "hey we're going to join the Communist bloc." During colonialism, "hey let's become part of the French Empire", or some nonsense like that. It really is not good for this country. Quoting further: "The new structure is intended to strengthen coordination among all relevant agencies." Strengthen coordination, how? Insofar as foreigners will be telling our bureaucrats what to do? That is not coordination, that is subversion of our national interest, and subversion of our national sovereignty for that matter, as Mr. Trump pointed out himself in his Executive Order. This is a direct threat to National sovereignty.

Quoting further: "It is unusual to see Mr. Anutin taking the OECD bid so seriously. It has become one of the Government's top priorities." Why? There's no grassroots organic - you don't hear any hue and cry in the streets from the rank-and-file Thais saying, "hey, let's join this foreign banking syndicate", that the US won't join by the way, which is arguably the biggest economic player in the whole thing. And as we will get to, when they say "diversify", diversify to what? Quoting further: "It has become one of the Government's top priorities. The challenge now is whether he can mobilize the entire state apparatus to work towards the same objectives." Well let's hope he can't. I don't really want to be rooting against this government. I rather like them from a nationalism standpoint, but again, this is operating completely antithetically to what it seems to be espousing otherwise. Quoting directly: "In retrospect, joining the OECD has been Thailand's long-held ambition for more than three decades." What? What are you talking about? It might have been a few bureaucrats’ long-held ambition. As I discussed in the other video, this only became a brainchild of these technocrats recently, relatively recently, when that one guy heard about it from some Malaysian. I talked about that in another video. It was in the Bangkok Post print edition. I can't figure out why who was ever writing this in the Bangkok Post doesn't remember that too. Do they cite their own sources, or look at their own source material? Do you know the history of this stuff? There have never been banners running around Thailand saying, "we have got to get in the OECD, let's go." No. This is a Bureaucratic, technocratic pipe dream that they all want us to be all inter-connectedly under their totalitarian boot heel. That's all it is. When I see these kind of initiatives and it's not coming from anybody in the top of the social strata, it's not coming from anybody in the bottom of the social strata, matters pertaining to land tax reminded me of this some years ago, where the only people really pushing it were a discreet subset of the bureaucracy because that's the only way they can get their salaries paid, is sucking money off the rest of us. This is a very similar set of circumstances. We have a bunch of White-Collar technocratic bureaucrats within the banking system that want to get their claws into Thailand and start sucking wealth out of here. That's what this is. Quoting further: "Successive governments have believed membership would help the country escape the increasingly entrenched middle-income trap." "Middle-income trap" is the biggest nonsensical buzz word trope I have ever heard. Thailand will get out of the middle-income trap by just continuing to industrialize, create value for money, do more sophisticated business. How is bringing in a supranational cabal of bankers going to help Thailand overcome the middle-income trap? And then on top of that, we're going to escape this by going into it? How? Specify to me where is the economic benefit in Dollars and Cents, in Baht and Satang, where is the economic benefit that is accruing to Thailand here? Because all I have seen is we have seen the liquidity dry up, we've seen velocity of money decrease, we've seen people with the inability to access their money because their accounts are being frozen, all since OECD came around. Now we are seeing them say, "oh, you need to tell us where you got the money if you put more than 5 million Baht into a Thai bank account." Now they are even saying we want information if you want to make change at one of our banks. All of this has come in since we started seeing OECD coming down the pike. Quoting further: "The OECD is widely seen as a catalyst for reforms after two decades of disappointing economic performance compared with neighbouring countries." 

A couple of things here. First of all, this notion of "successive governments have believed membership would help the country". Which one? For nearly a decade we had the Military Government here who wanted nothing to do with any of it. They didn't go to the World Economic Forum; they didn't have anything to do with OECD. There was a lot to be said for that Government, and okay there's a lot to be said for them. Reasonable people can disagree on the things that they did etc. They certainly weren't trying to get us involved in this stuff, and frankly I'm glad, because at the end of the day, I think that they could tell that this was a direct threat to our national sovereignty. And also, "comparing to neighbouring countries". Who? Are we talking about a jurisdiction where if you put a laundromat over there, they would have a GDP increase by 10% overnight? Thailand is a sophisticated economy. If you are comparing it to a third world developing country; if you try to compare Thailand's economy to Myanmar, it's a false comparison. Yeah, of course anything they do in that jurisdiction is going to see an increase exponentially so, in GDP. Indonesia is the same. To some degree Laos, Cambodia - well definitely Laos, Cambodia - but to some degree Vietnam as well. They are always constantly comparing Thailand to Vietnam; "oh Vietnam is growing, blah, blah, blah." They have more room to grow. Thailand has already done that level of growing. It's a very disingenuous way of explaining the state of play. Thailand would better be compared to certain Nordic countries or certain economies in Europe or one of the states in the United States like Louisiana or something, rather than be compared to its neighbours. Thailand is exceptional in the region. It is exceptional in the fact it has never been colonized heretofore, and I hope it continues to not be, especially under the rubric of some nonsense supranational banking syndicate. Quoting further: "Thailand's economic outlook is worsening amid increasingly volatile geopolitical tensions and a US-led trade war." Is Thailand's economic outlook ever looking good by anyone in the English language press, ever? I've never seen it. Has there ever been a report that things are going well from the perspective of the Western Bankers and the English language press in Thailand which seems to be entirely financed by the Western bankers, the Western Banking syndicate. So one, eventually the boy cries wolf too many times. "Ohhh, our economy is terrible" and yet Thailand just continues showing growth, feeding its people, educating its people, becoming more sophisticated, but oh my God, the sky is falling all the time. Quoting further: "Thailand has been scrambling to diversify its export markets, improve the investment climate and attract more foreign capital in emerging Industries." First of all this is the reason for the thumbnail. Diversifying its export markets to whom? People they are already exporting to? Look at the map in the thumbnail, and by the way you should take the United States out of that, because they're not in it anymore. But again, it's Western Europe, Japan, Korea. As a friend of mine pointed out, take a look at Finland, take a look at Japan. They joined these places and where was this economic bonanza to be had? If anything, it stagnated their economies; it didn't help, or maybe there is no correlation, or no causation but maybe some correlation insofar as those places became stagnant the minute they joined OECD. Maybe it's like joining the old folks’ home of economies. Is that really where Thailand wants to go, if we want to remain “economically vibrant”? 

You can tell when there's a propaganda initiative when none of the different narratives seem to align congruently. It's all just sort of like "well, you will all get more economic benefit." Well have any of your members seen any massive benefits since they joined? Well, and then they go quiet. And by the way, again, no explanation as to and how we are going to mitigate against possible incursions on Thailand's sovereignty. No, no. No discussions of that notwithstanding the fact that otherwise this government seems to never stop talking about national sovereignty. Quoting further: "Truth be told, given the scale of the current economic disruption, the country's future growth will depend heavily on expanding export markets beyond its traditional reliance on the US and other Western economies." But that's all the OECD is. It is the Western economies plus Japan and South Korea and like Chile, which are basically just extensions of the Western economies. So what are we talking about? How does joining this thing diversifying us away from those folks? We are going exactly into their arms. Now there is the argument to be made, "well there will be more integration, and maybe some benefits associated with that." Not that I would tend to agree, we could do that without joining this massive framework that compels us all to change our banking system and puts all kinds of extra-territorial jurisdiction on our system here in Thailand. Again things that Mr. Trump brought up - rightly so - when he came into office. But I don't see, none of this makes any sense; the reporting on it doesn't make any sense. It is clear to me that this is not particularly in Thailand's interest, but on the train goes and with no explanation as to the concerns that I brought up.