Hats off to Deputy Prime Minister and Chief Government Paranoid Suthep Thaugsuban for boldly revealing what we have suspected for so long.

 

There is an international media conspiracy to discredit Thailand.

 

Thanks to the investigations of a long-term ‘sleeper’ mole, Prachatai can reveal the insidious labyrinth of secret agents posing as reporters, editors and columnists, who have sacrificed all professional integrity.  In return for sordid cash payments from a shadowy central funder, they fabricate, distort and deceive, making it impossible for the international reader or viewer to understand how generous, honest, abstemious, virtuous, caring, prudent, and - let’s admit it – modest the Thais really are.  Especially those who wear uniforms or hold political office.

 

Only the people of Thailand itself, who can rely on the unbiased impartiality of the free and independent Thai-language media, have been immune from the corrosive slanders that dominate almost every foreign news report datelined Bangkok

 

Months of occupying a bar stool at the FCCT (and a small fortune spent on his bar tabs) have given Prachatai’s informant irrefutable evidence of the evil machinations of this vicious cabal of Thailand-haters.  While much of this evidence has necessarily been in the form of word-of-mouth whispers exchanged in the dead of night in dark corners of some of the sleazier nightspots in town, our spy has come into possession of irrefutable concrete proof of this many-tentacled intrigue.

 

Prachatai here presents just a fraction of the material evidence collected over recent months.  All the documents we have collected will, of course, be passed to the relevant government authorities, just as soon as suitable terms have been negotiated.

 

 

Exhibit 1

 

e-mail, 27 Jan 2009

 

Hi Operative #27,

 

A quick thank-you message for your help in setting up my visit to Ko Sai Daeng.  The flip-flops, shirts and other stuff left lying about was very realistic.  And the guy who played the Rohingya survivor was excellent – just enough English to get the message across but no so fluent that people will suspect that he was rehearsed for his role.  Pity that he got arrested but you have authorization to use the Special Fund to bribe his way out.  Then I should get him out of Thailand asap in case the government gets wind of it.

 

It must have been really difficult to find so many extras at short notice to cram into the boat and pretend to be left at sea.  I don’t know how you managed it.  Well done.

 

We are coordinating more Rohingya stories with our aim of discrediting Thailand, so stay in touch.

 

Thanks again

 

Dan Livers

CNN

 

 

Exhibit 2

 

Announcement to all Technical Staff, Operation Discredit Thailand

 

There will be a session at 2 next Wednesday on how to use Photoshop and other user-friendly computer graphics programmes to ‘assemble’ realistic photographic evidence of Thai officials engaged in human rights abuses.

 

Puat Chee-Mak of the SCMP will demonstrate how it was possible to ‘photograph’ ISOC’s Colonel Manat Khongpan to make him look like he was overseeing the detention of Rohingya refugees. (Some of you may recall how Col Manat was implicated in the Krue Se Mosque massacre with concocted evidence so compelling that even members of the Thai government were almost fooled into thinking they had a serial human rights abuser on their payroll.)

 

This workshop is part of the professional training programme in document forgery and all relevant staff members are expected to attend.

 

 

Exhibit 3

 

Conspiracy to Discredit Thailand

Secret Steering Committee

Meeting Agenda

4 February 2009

 

The meeting will be held in the upstairs room of Lola’s Bar, Soi Cowboy.  Give the secret knock and wait to be admitted.  No guests (other than female employees of Lola’s).

 

1 Approval of minutes of last meeting

2 Financial Report.  Frank will update us on the latest from The Man Who Used To Be In London.  Man City sale proceeds are still available for operations.

3 Review of recent operations (Rohingya, torture in south, Harry Nic and other LM cases, etc.) 

4 Future ops.  Jonno will float a few ideas for the next campaign – health scare cover-up, probably bird flu; financial scandal involving senior politicians; etc.  What we really need is another tourism scare story.  Shark attacks?  Policeman murders honeymoon couple?  Bring your ideas.

5 Counter-conspiracy.  High-ranking politicians and security people seem to be on to us.  Harry will flesh out his ideas for a counter-attack: psychiatric reports on Suthep or whoever, stern diplomatic notes from selected embassies, blackmail, etc.

6 Plans for this year’s Songkran bash (anyone fancy a boat trip? ha ha) and AOB. 

 

About author:  Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire). And if you believe any of those stories, you might believe his columns.