Alternative Media Making Waves: National Thai Newspaper Responds to Blogger

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Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Editor’s Note: For the record, the Land Destroyer blog noted in the article below is run by an independent, lone, semi-anon blogger whose only expense is the Internet connection required to reach the free services used to publish Land Destroyer’s research and commentary.

September 7, 2011 – Recently, Thailand’s English newspaper, “The Nation,” responded to a Land Destroyer article exposing US-funded propaganda front “Prachatai.” In an article titled, “Transparency essential for democracy campaigner,” the author, Pravit Rojanaphruk, who admits, despite the obvious conflict of interest, of being a contributor himself to Prachatai since 2006, attempts to provide Prachatai with a robust defense in the face of what he calls “ferocious accusations.” While Pravit concedes that only after “months” of pressure did Prachatai eventually reveal its funding, he failed to venture into the full amount of funding or delve into the nature of those providing such funding, and merely advised Prachatai’s staff to “diversify” their sources of income.

Pravit also claims there “is no clear evidence that Prachatai is toeing the US foreign policy line on politics through its writings and reporting.” Pravit, while briefly mentioning the US government funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Soros’ Open Society Institute as being amongst Prachatai’s financial sponsors, fails to mention that much of what the website links to or publishes are in fact NED-funded Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) articles, as well as re-posted reports from Soros-funded Amnesty International (page 10) and Human Rights Watch. What Pravit also fails to share with his readership, either out of ignorance or willful duplicity, is that US foreign policy is indeed executed through these very US corporate and government-funded fronts. By ceaselessly promoting propaganda generated by fellow recipients of US funding, Prachatai is unequivocally “toeing the line” on US foreign policy.

Prachatai “Toeing the line” on US Foreign Policy

Prachatai to this day still insists that it is “an independent, non-profit, daily web newspaper” despite the fact that it is wholly funded by the US government via some of the most dubious organizations in existence. The National Endowment for Democracy, for example, despite its benign name, is loaded from top to bottom with members of the American corporate and financial elite, including notorious warmongers. The organization has a long, documented history of leveraging the ideals of democracy to build up opposition movements, enact regime change, and then extend US military and economic hegemony over targeted nations.

No example illustrates this better than the recent fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Despite being portrayed as an “indigenous” “spontaneous” uprising, the New York Times in an article titled, ” “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings” revealed, “a number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House.”

Photo: Taken from the NED 2011 “Democracy Awards,” Tunisian and Egyptian activists were congratulated for their role in a now admittedly US-backed mass uprising still ravaging the Middle East and Northern Africa.

The New York Times would go on to explain, “the Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department.”

After the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, IRI chairman John McCain, directly responsible for the premeditated destabilization and collapse of the Egyptian government, traveled to Cairo with representatives of General Electric, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Bechtel, ExxonMobil, Marriot, and Dow to tour the capital like conquering despots. Their main goal was not celebarating the birth of Egytpian democracy, but rather promoting “private sector growth,” or in other words, the expansion of American economic hegemony over the Egyptian economy.

Photo: Taken in Cairo, Egypt, John McCain and John Kerry, with Fortune 500 representatives in tow, prepare Egypt for another kind of “liberation.” That is, the liberation of Egypt from economic sovereignty as the corporate-financiers of Wall Street and London prepare to extend their hegemony over the newly conquered fiefdom.

Likewise, Soros-funded human rights advocacy groups, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, played a central role in justifying NATO’s war on Libya. In hindsight, as European powers line up to divide and plunder the nation, we see yet another example of how disingenuous these organizations are and that they entirely serve US foreign policy, merely using the pretext of human rights, democracy, and freedom as marketing ploys.

We see that the National Endowment for Democracy, despite the lofty mission statement articulated on its website, is nothing more than a tool for executing American foreign policy. Just as the military is used under the cover of lies regarding WMD’s and “terrorism,” NED is employed under the cover of bringing “democracy” to “oppressed” people. However, a thorough look at NED’s board of directors, as well as the board of trustees of its subsidiary, Freedom House, definitively lays to rest any doubts that may be lingering over the true nature of these organizations and the causes they support.

Upon NED’s board of directors we first find John Bohn who traded petrochemicals, was an international banker for 13 years with Wells Fargo, and is currently serving as a principal for a global advisory and consulting firm, GlobalNet Partners, which assists foreign businesses by making their “entry into the complex China market easy.” Surely Bohn’s ability to manipulate China’s political landscape through NED’s various activities both inside of China and along its peripheries constitutes an alarming conflict of interest. However, it appears “conflict of interest” is a reoccurring theme, just as it is with Prachatai, throughout both NED and Freedom House.

Bohn is joined by Rita DiMartino who worked for Council on Foreign Relations corporate member AT&T as “Vice President of Congressional Relations” as well as a member of the CFR herself. Also representing the Fortune 500 is Kenneth Duberstein, a board member of the war profiteering Boeing Company, big oil’s ConocoPhillips, and the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. Duberstein also served as a director of Fannie Mae until 2007. He too is a CFR member as are two of the companies he chairs, Boeing and ConocoPhillips.

We then consider several of the certified warmongers serving upon NED’s board of directors including Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate Project for a New American Century. Within the pages of documents produced by this “think tank” are pleas to various US presidents to pursue war against sovereign nations, the increase of troops in nations already occupied by US forces, and what equates to a call for American global hegemony in a Hitlerian 90-page document titled “Rebuilding Americas Defenses.” As we will see, this warmongering think tank serves as a nexus around which fellow disingenuous rights advocate Freedom House also gravitates.

The “Statement of Principles,” signed off by NED chairmen Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Vin Weber, states, “we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.” Of course by “international order” they mean meddling beyond the sovereign borders of the United States and is merely used as a euphemism for global imperialism. Other Neo-Con that signed their name to this statement include Freedom House’s Paula Dobriansky, Dan Quayle (formally), and Donald Rumsfeld (formally), along with Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Eliot Cohen, and Elliot Abrams.

Image: Just some of the colorful characters supporting both Thaksin Shinawatra and “independent” Prachatai who is funded millions of Baht a year by the US government and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. (click on image to enlarge)

A PNAC “Statement on Post-War Iraq” regarding a wholehearted endorsement of nation-building features the signatures of NED chairman Will Marshall, Freedom House’s Frank Carlucci (2002), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Martin Indyk (Lowy Institute board member, co-author of the conspiring “Which Path to Persia?” report), and William Kristol and Robert Kagan both of the warmongering Foreign Policy Initiative. It should be noted that the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is, for all intents and purposes, PNAC’s latest incarnation and just recently featured an open letter to House Republicans calling on them to disregard the will of the American people and continue pursuing the war in Libya. The FPI letter even suggests that the UN resolution authorizing the war in the first place, was holding America “hostage” and that it should be exceeded in order to do more to “help the Libyan opposition.”

An untitled PNAC letter addressed to then US President George Bush regarding a general call for global warmongering received the seal of approval from Freedom Houses’ Ellen Bork (2007), Ken Adelman (also former lobbyist for Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra via Edelman), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Neo-Con degenerates Richard Perle, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and the always disingenuous demagogue Daniel Pipes.

It is safe to say that neither NED nor Freedom House garners within its ranks characters appropriate for their alleged cause of “supporting freedom around the world.” It is also safe to say that the principles of “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights” they allegedly champion for, are merely being leveraged to co-opt well meaning people across the world to carry out their own self-serving agenda.

Surely Pravit of Thailand’s “The Nation” doesn’t believe these notorious characters are dedicated to the same ideals Prachatai purportedly stands for, nor believes that they would fund and support Prachatai year-in and year-out, expecting nothing in return. Indeed, Prachatai, by purveying the dishonest message of these disingenuous, destructive, and self-admittedly hegemonist organizations, most certainly is “toeing the line” on US foreign policy. Furthermore it is making a clear mockery out of the principles Prachatai claims to stand for.

Washington and Wall Street’s End Game for Thailand

At the heart of the matter involving Prachatai, is of course the conduit it serves as for Washington and Wall Street to enter and despoil Thailand. As in Egypt, where Egyptian traitor Mohamed ElBaradei was literally sitting on the board of trustees of a US think-tank while leading a US-staged uprising in his native country, Thailand too has a stooge of choice. That stooge is Thaksin Shinawatra. And just as Egypt had mobs of cannon fodder taking to the streets on behalf of ElBaradei’s US-backed uprising, so does Thaksin via the “red shirt” United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD). And just as Egypt’s April 6 street mob leadership was literally face -to-face with the US State Department and US corporate interests, so too was Thailand’s UDD leadership.

Photo: Deposed Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra on the eve of the 2006 military coup that would oust him from power. Since 2006 he has had the full, unflinching support of Washington, Wall Street and their immense propaganda machine in his bid to seize back power. 

Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s prime minister from 2001 until a military coup removed him in 2006, was a former Carlyle Group adviser and was literally reporting to the globalist Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on the eve of his ousting from power. While in office, Thaksin attempted to ramrod through the US-Thailand Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) without parliamentary approval, a 2004 FTA backed by the exact same US-ASEAN Business Council recently visited by Thaksin’s UDD street mob leaders in April of 2011.
Image: The US-ASEAN Business Council, a who’s-who of corporate fascism in the US, has been approached by Thailand’s “pro-democracy” UDD for support. The UDD never fully explains what corporations like Exxon, BP, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, or other banes to humanity have to do with democracy or what sort of support was asked for or promised. (click image to enlarge)

The council in 2004 included 3M, war profiteering Bechtel, Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup, General Electric, IBM, the notorious Monsanto, and currently also includes the criminal banksters of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Chevron, Exxon, BP, Glaxo Smith Kline, Merck, Northrop Grumman, Monsanto’s GMO doppelganger Syngenta, and Phillip Morris. These corporations are more synonymous with mass-murder, mass-corruption, war, and human suffering than any of the “democratic” and “open society” ideals Thaksin, his UDD, or Prachatai claim to be “bringing” to Thailand.

Since the 2006 coup that toppled his autocratic regime, Thaksin has been represented by US corporate-financier elites via their lobbying firms including, Kenneth Adelman of the Edelman PR firm (Freedom House, International Crisis Group, PNAC), James Baker of Baker Botts (CFR), Robert Blackwill of Barbour Griffith & Rogers (CFR), Kobre & Kim, and currently Robert Amsterdam of Amsterdam & Peroff (Chatham House). Meanwhile, his “red shirts” UDD street mobs have received rhetorical support by US-funded NGOs like Prachatai.

Thaksin most recently had his own sister run in his place for elections in July 2011, as he is a convicted criminal currently in hiding abroad, evading a two-year jail sentence. Thaksin’s proxy political party, with heavy rhetorical support from the Western media, including threats from the notorious Council on Foreign Relations to allow Thaksin’s proxy party to take power unhindered, won the elections with only 35% of eligible voters behind them. Despite gaining power, Thaksin’s legitimacy and support base is now exposed in full-light of the recent election as tenuous at best and still faces an entrenched Thai establishment and Thailand’s powerful military.

Quite clearly if the West is to get Thaksin ably behind the levers of power to make the sort of changes Washington and Wall Street desire, Thailand’s establishment must be further undermined, while the opposition is somehow rehabilitated. Enter Prachatai, the UDD, and even journalists like Pravit who have made careers of obfuscating facts and misleading people to this end. While all three hide behind the veneer of standing for “democracy” and “human rights,” we can see that those behind them stand for no such things. Both Prachatai and Pravit are forced to sustain their elected narratives by obfuscating, circumventing, and otherwise avoiding a long list of well-documented facts that damn their arguments as wholly illegitimate.

Bottom Line

Pravit specifically claims accusations that Prachatai is part of an American “neo-imperial” conspiracy to achieve global governance is “farfetched” “ranting,” and even “delirious.” Pravit’s failure to actually counter such claims with facts, and considering the verified ties between Thaksin, the UDD, Prachatai, and the most notorious, self-admitted hegemonists in America, there is no doubt that there is indeed a very real conspiracy. Pravit’s defense of Prachatai is not disappointing merely because of his overt invested interest in Prachatai’s reputation, nor his deferral to ad hominem attacks to make his defense, but also because he fails to address verified facts he must have surely read when assessing Land Destroyer’s “ferocious accusations” against Prachatai.

Image: There is a conspiracy by Wall Street and London to enact a global government. It is in fact out in the open for anyone who is honest and courageous enough to look. (click on image to enlarge)

That a single, truly independent researcher with nothing but a Blogger and Twitter account, with some spare time, can stir up a national newspaper and a US-funded NGO is but one of many signs that a true revolution is coming. Organizations like Prachatai, and the nefarious foreign powers funding them have crutched their agenda along solely by preying on the ignorance of the public. This ignorance, because of truly independent, alternative media, is being shed and is disarming the global elite of this advantage. For those that believe one person cannot make a difference, evidence that this is false is all around us. 

Start a blog today. 

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at 
Land Destroyer Report.