Thailand: Regime Scrambles to Rebrand “Red Shirts” to “White Shirts”

By Tony Cartalucci
Global Research, January 10, 2014
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Attempts to rebrand regime’s violent mobs are aimed at confusing public in Thailand and abroad. 

While regime supporters attempt to claim recent “white ribbon,” “white candle,” and “white balloon” campaigns in recent days along with the “Respect My Vote” push are a grassroots effort by people who support “democracy” and oppose growing anti-regime protests, it is in fact propaganda campaign engineered and implemented by the regime itself. 

Image: The regime believes the Thai people, and more importantly, international audiences are as ignorant as they are gullible. Recent propaganda campaigns featuring “white” balloons, candles, shirts, and ribbons are being passed off as a groundswell of support by “the people” in favor of up coming elections. In reality, these campaigns of “support” are being engineered by the regime itself, by it’s own “red shirt” enforcers and TV networks.

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Thaksin Shinawatra’s Asia Update TV network has been leading the campaigns for days, with presenters even exchanging their signature “red shirts” for white ones. There has been non-stop coverage of the various staged “white” stunts across the city with participants reciting regime talking-points verbatim. 

Image: White balloons for sham elections. A hundred or so people gathered in downtown Bangkok amid much larger anti-regime protests, to support the current regime and their single-party election planned for February 2, 2014. All opposition parties have boycotted the election, featuring deposed dictator, accused mass murderer and convicted criminal Thaksin Shinawatra running as defacto party leader. While the group, calling itself “Ant’s Power” attempts to appear as “pro-democracy” advocates, they are simply regime supporters who have exchanged their red shirts for white ones.
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Upcoming February 2, 2014 elections are being opposed by protesters because they are widely seen as illegitimate – dressing up what is otherwise clearly a dictatorship. Much in the way Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or North Korea used elections to tenuously disguise what is otherwise overt despotism, Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra has repeatedly employed elections to vindicate his numerous abuses, including unprecedented human rights offenses.

Image: The sign to the left reads, “Thaksin Thinks, Puea Thai Does,” the campaign slogan used by Thaksin and his regime in Thailand’s last general election. Thaksin, being an accused mass murderer and a convicted criminal, is openly running the country today despite not having been on the ballot nor even being in the country. He runs the country through his placeholder, his sister Yingluck Shinawatra in a display of humiliating 3rd world corruption and nepotism an increasing number of protesters are standing up against. The Western media, despite having reported all of this, still insists Yingluck represents a legitimate, “democratically elected” government.

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While Thailand is technically under the premiership of Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, by his party’s own admission, Thaksin is still literally running the country. The election campaign slogan for the last general election in 2011 was literally, “Thaksin Thinks, Puea Thai Does,” Puea Thai being his political party. Forbes would report in their article, “Thaksin in Exile: Advising Sister, Digging for Gold,” that:

Regarding his behind-the-scenes role in the party and policy, he is not shy: “I am the one who thinks. Like our slogan during the campaign, Thaksin thinks, Pheu Thai acts.”

The New York Times admitted in an early 2013 article titled, “In Thailand, Power Comes With Help From Skype,” that:

For the past year and a half, by the party’s own admission, the most important political decisions in this country of 65 million people have been made from abroad, by a former prime minister who has been in self-imposed exile since 2008 to escape corruption charges. 

The country’s most famous fugitive,Thaksin Shinawatra, circles the globe in his private jet, chatting with ministers over his dozen cellphones, texting over various social media platforms and reading government documents e-mailed to him from civil servants, party officials say.

The NYT piece would also report:  

“He’s the one who formulates the Pheu Thai policies,” said Noppadon Pattama, a senior official in Mr. Thaksin’s party who also serves as his personal lawyer. “Almost all the policies put forward during the last election came from him.” 

There is no question that an accused mass murderer and convicted criminal hiding abroad from a 2 year jail sentence, multiple arrest warrants, and a long list of pending court cases, is illegally running Thailand by proxy. Being unelected, Thaksin Shinawatra is by all accounts a dictator, and his “government” a regime, however cleverly they try to dress it up. 

In the days and weeks to come, the regime and its Western backers will attempt to portray pre-planned confrontations with anti-regime protesters as “the people” rising up for their “right to vote.” In reality, it is merely the regime’s red shirts rebranded to help continue a confrontation they are now finding difficult to sustain.
Articles by: Tony Cartalucci

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