Transcript of the above video: 

Wow, as the title of this video suggests, I never thought I'd be making a video where I would ask why somebody would be hiding in a bathroom, but here we are. I think it's important to understand the context of what's going on here and why I am pretty upset with Mr. Thaksin, just on a fundamental level. It is like 15 years is coming to a head right now is what it feels like. Because going back 15 years ago, we would have been sitting here going into August of 2010 and everybody's head was just kind of ringing from all of the violence and just the consternation of the riots and things, and understand why I get so upset about this, I lived through all of this stuff and it was all around me, for a long time. It's not all about me. It was all around everybody that lived in the area that I live and work, but it was egged on by Mr. Thaksin. And much like his recent foray to the bathroom, which I'll get to in a moment, he egged this stuff on from a safe perch, by the way in Cambodia, under the wing of Hun Sen; egged on what would result in this city burning and many losses of lives here. And at the time, I and many I think since then, now in retrospect especially, see that his so-called allies, the people he was claiming he was speaking for, whatever, he left them in a bad position. He left them in the lurch so to speak in all of that. And this foray into the bathroom to my mind is just one more chapter.

The thumbnail that we have up is from that great movie Scent of a Woman. And I am going to use some blue language here if you will for a moment, but there is a great line where Al Pacino's character is talking about the young boy who won't rat out the other kid. He basically says, "when the shit hits the fan, some guys run and some guys stay," and my observation in the history of observing Mr. Thaksin's conduct and behaviour, he ain't a stayer, let's just put it like that. And he ran off and he was over in Cambodia, and he egged on what happened in 2010; many people lost their lives, there was tons of fallout from that, it was terrible. Did he do anything to help anyone? NO, and now here we are again, in another situation. We are just egging on problems. I don't think that there is any doubt at this point that he and his clique the Shinawatra clique if you want to call it that, his daughter and whatnot et al., their actions have resulted in serious loss of life along the border between Cambodia and Thailand. I have done the videos, you can check the record, I have the receipts, that is not a hyperbolic or in any way rhetorical or in any way un-factual statement. And by the way, when they were gone - and you can say whatever you want about the military Government that began in 2014 and culminated with them leaving power in favour of the current Coalition Government, now Rump Coalition Government with the departure of Bhumjaithai, that began in 2023 - we had a time of some dozen years, we had no problems at the border. And one of the hallmarks of the administration prior to that era was that anytime there was some kind of domestic political tight-spot that they would get into, you would hear this border jingoism and that is what they would use as a sort of distraction. Well, it didn't work very well this time; it led to a lot of people dying again. That is what upsets me so much is his actions cause people to die here in Bangkok in 2010, and it caused me when I heard about this, and I will get into the bathroom thing in a minute, when I heard about this, it reminded me of something a good friend of mine said at the time when we were watching the violence break out from down here in Silom, down here near where our office is, this person told me they said, 'if Thaksin had the courage of his convictions, he would be here, he'd be like Gandhi in the march of the sea or something like that', but he didn't. It's all about self-interest; it's not about the Thai people; it's not about Thailand. As we will get into here in a moment, as another person pointed out to him and caused him to have to spend a lot of extra time in the bathroom. And what bugs me about that is I understood at the time, the thinking, the paradigm, the belief, the desires if you will, the objectives of the red shirts, the so-called red shirts in 2010. I thought especially in retrospect, I think it was very misguided unfortunately, because guys like him were misguiding them, but I got it. With this person, we are talking about somebody who is doing this purely out of self-interest, and as we have seen, when had some level of influence in Thai politics again, what did he bring in? World Economic Forum. His daughter had a meeting in the Purple Room with the envoy from the WEF. The Digital Wallet; let's put Thailand into a bunch of extra debt at a time she didn't need it, to foist digital money on the country that can be tracked, traced of every Thai person's financial transactions. What good was that for anybody? That's globalist totalitarianism. Meanwhile, another more localized example was, "oh let's have a casino, but let's let the foreigners run it all", and then it looked to me like, "let's jettison Bhumjaithai from the coalition so we can get the Interior Ministry, so I can put my guy in there because he would have the power to sign off on the ability to sell land to the casinos, and then the foreigners can not only run their own Casino operation, but then they can have the land underneath it." What is that? That is the worst of all worlds for Thailand. All the societal ills of having legal gambling and none of the benefits accruing to Thailand. Again it is just a constant refrain of this and where is he when the "S" hits the fan? Well, I'll tell you. 

Before I get into this directly, the reason for the family feud, quoting directly from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com. Phue Thai blames scam crackdown, not family feud, for border hostilities. First of all, Phue Thai, are you just going to be the answering service for Thaksin and the Shinawatra clique or are you going to be a Party that cares about this country? That is my big question. Quoting directly: "The Phue Thai Party has dismissed allegations that the Thai-Cambodian border dispute stems from personal or political rivalries between the Shinawatra and Hun Sen families, instead attributing it to Phnom Penh's dissatisfaction with Thailand's aggressive crackdown on Cambodia-based on-line scam centres." Quoting further: "Phue Thai Party MP and spokesman Danuporn Punnakanta said on Sunday that the root of the issue lies in Cambodian leaders' discontent over Thailand's efforts to dismantle cross-border on-line scam operations based in Cambodia." Well Hun Sen himself has come out and said stuff about this. I am not saying he is necessarily the greatest source of unbiased, unvarnished truth but we have heard the leaked phone call of Paetongtarn Shinawatra undermining our own forward area commander here in Thailand, which is concerning on multiple levels, but I mean I find it very disingenuous to say, "oh it's got nothing to do with this family feud." Really? Nothing to do with it? Even though the fact that clearly the principals on this side of the border emanated from the Shinawatra family, talking to the Hun Sen family. Quoting further: "He pointed to Phnom Penh's refusal to join a planned trilateral mechanism," - planned trilateral, what? - "involving Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar to jointly tackle transnational cybercrime, claiming that it would handle the matter independently. Quote: "It's not a conflict between individuals or political dynasties like the Shinawatra and Hun Sen families," - really? Are we supposed to not believe our lying eyes? Quoting further: "Mr. Danuporn said. Quote: "It's about the fallout from cyber-crime suppression. Key figures in Cambodia are being affected, and there is growing evidence to support this." I don't even know what that means. That just sounds like nonsense to me. And again, I want to believe that the Phue Thai Party has the best interests of Thailand at heart. I have said before, if in the event that Ms. Paetongtarn's suspension results in her removal, which I am not saying that is a foregone conclusion but it is hard for me to think that it wouldn't, especially in light of the fact that Srettha was removed, and he wasn't suspended pending the removal, and the adjudication on her removal was taken up in a 9-0 decision by the Constitutional Court with a 7-2 decision that she should be suspended in the meantime. So, it is hard for me to believe that she is not going to result in removal, but okay, we are not there yet. But I have talked about the fact that there is a third guy on the Phue Thai Party list who could be in line for PM. Why not go to him? Why deal with her? Well does the current situation result in things operating to the betterment of the "Shinawatra clique"? Seems to, and again to just dismiss out of hand that this has nothing to do with any family feud, that's just ridiculous to my mind.

That said, getting into this issue of the retreat to the bathroom here. Quoting directly from an article I quoted before, but I didn't bring this up. Frankly, I don't know, I hoped that things would sort of move in a direction that would be more positive and so for that reason I guess I didn't want to engage, maybe I was pulling my punches because I was hoping we could see things move in a more gentlemanly direction but it's not and I am really tired. Yeah, one thing is a good thing. We do have a current ceasefire that appears as of the time of the making of this video to be sticking if you will and that's great. I don't want to get into that, that is its own thing; that is a good thing. But what led up to this, I don't see how you say it wasn't this family feud, and everything that has happened the last two years; we were doing really well here in Thailand going into 2023. We were doing even better frankly I think going into 2024. No longer could the International Community really claim, “oh lack of democratic whatever”, and I am sick of hearing that too, but things were moving in a positive direction. And then another perfect example is apparently because of this guy's own ego, he just doesn't like Cannabis, so we have seen a massive move against Cannabis. 18,000 legal businesses here in Thailand have been harassed; they have been subjected to, in my opinion, unsubstantiated violations of their own due process, because they have licenses to do what they do and just because this person's faction now has "control" and I put "control" in quotation marks because as we discussed, there is another article that I talked about, I believe it's Thaksin is losing his ‘magic’ and influence. I'll put that on screen, the title on screen. I'm not going to quote from it, but it is a good article. Those who are watching this video, check that out. It's not just me that has these concerns and it's not just me that is observing that this person's magic and influence so-called are waning, because we are all sick of it. I'm sure the 18,000 licensed Cannabis operators are not really interested in the decisions of one tiny faction saying that, "oh you're no longer in business anymore, because we say so." Not apropos of legislative due process and in line with the Doctrine of Codification in a Civil Law jurisdiction oh no, no, we just feel like you shouldn't be doing this so you are done, or we are going to impose upon you, because we say so, we are going to impose upon you all these new rules and things. It is nonsensical. And you can point directly at the “Core Coalition” Government, the Rump Coalition as I call it, because that is where this is all coming from and a lot of this seems to be stemming from one guy's ego and again, leading into 2023, things were going in a positive direction. It was really an example of 'it ain't broke, don't fix it' but what came in? Digital Wallet was the first thing they tried to roll out. Put this country in an extra 10% debt to GDP ratio; huge amount of money. I think it was like a trillion Baht they wanted which then got rolled back and cut off and by the way his own daughter actually ended up scrapping the thing. Right before she was suspended, they discontinued the whole notion of the handouts to begin with which, Thais don't need a handout, Thais need the Government to get out of the way and let them do business. They don't need digital money to get tracked and traced whenever they go; can be turned on and off and can have an expiration date and they can set the terms of what you can buy with your own money and that's what this Core Coalition Government has brought us, Is this WEF nonsense. Maybe being in Dubai for the last 15 years, you have been drinking cocktails with the likes of Claus Schwab and these are the kind of things that you think are reasonable? Well the little guy here in Thailand, that doesn't benefit him one little bit. In fact, it operates quite to his detriment.

That said, getting into this article: Thaksin: Let military 'complete their mission'. And as I discussed in another video, he's injected himself in the trade thing which he has no business being in; it's under a non-disclosure agreement anyway, I don't understand how it is legal or proper in any context. I think it is a violation of the Political Parties Act as somebody has discussed in various articles; it may be, that needs to be adjudicated. But on top of that, it is under a non-disclosure agreement, so only government actors are supposed to be talking about the thing or involved in the matter. Why was he? He is not in the government. He is not in a Party; he is not in anything. Why are we putting up with this, from this person? 

That said, quoting from this article: "Former Prime Minister" - and as I brought up in, sorry I'm getting a little flustered, and it is causing my thinking to become less as acutely focused as I usually like it. But this really bothers me and it bothers me because I lived through the machinations of this that caused people to die and I feel like it's déjà vu or to quote Harry Carey, déjà vu all over again. And people are dying as a result of these terrible policies and just, I don't know what you want to call it, egomania. And the point I am trying to make in this was, in the prior video, injecting himself, how is that proper, to be going up to these horribly disaffected areas that have seen loss of lives, loss of property, and then to be going up and going around, as we discussed in the other video saying, "hey it's not me, hey". Nobody needs that, nobody wants that. Well somebody down at the venue that he went to agreed with that. Quoting directly: "Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra denies a family feud is behind the Thai-Cambodia border conflict, saying the military must be given a free hand to "complete their mission" before any talks can take place." And then in a lower part of the article which I didn't get to in a prior video, but the more I look at this especially thinking about the past and everything that has happened and especially now that we apparently have a ceasefire, I think it's important to note the factors that got us here, especially one particular factor. This guy. Quoting directly from the subtitle: 'He doesn't help Thai people': "A tense moment arose at the municipality when a local woman identified as Miew approached Thaksin shouting: "If you're friends, why did you let your friend kill Thais?" Because he came out and said, "oh there's no feud between us.” Well if there is no feud, why is your friend lobbing mortars over the border? Or missiles, I should say. Quoting further: "Ms. Miew said she had relatives displaced from Kantharalak district in Si Sa Khet and blamed Thaksin for not preventing the conflict, despite his long-standing relationship with Hun Sen." I would even go on to argue is look, I made the video about it, I felt like Ms. Paetongtarn's comments which he seemed to be getting distanced from, people were sort of presuming she didn't have any insight or input from him in that discussion. My question is, 'do we know that?'  They have been saying, oh he didn't know, or what I have heard, the implicit presumption is he wasn't involved in that. Well do we know? And by the way, I made the video where I said look it looked a lot like appeasement, a lot like that, when you basically say, "yeah we'll give you whatever you want", and then that can signal that we are not as resolved or something over here on this side of the border, and that could lead to then further problems: bad policy, bad execution, bad all across the board. Quoting further: "He doesn't help Thai people, only his own family. We've been abandoned. I didn't come here expecting him to take responsibility -- he never listens to people like us." I am reading that again. "He doesn't help Thai people, only his own family. We've been abandoned. I didn't come here expecting him to take responsibility -- he never listens to people like us." Quoting further: "She later told reporters in English that she was saddened by the suffering of her fellow citizens and accused Thaksin of siding with Cambodia. Quote: "If he is still supporting Hun Sen, the war won't end. Our people are helping their side." Following the confrontation, security officers escorted Ms. Miew out of the building. Thaksin emerged from a restroom only after she had left, defusing what had become a brief but emotionally charged disruption." You know, look, I go back to that. When the shit hits the fan, some guys run, and some guys stay. So some woman comes to this thing who has legitimate beefs, legitimate grievances on exactly what you are saying, and you can't face her? This is just wrong.

What are we doing here? This is nonsense. This guy is 76 years old. At this point we have seen two years of what he would like things to be like in Thailand and it ain't going great. Maybe it's time to seriously consider the retirement that you claimed you were going into when you came back here in the first place.