Regular PPT readers will recall that over the past few days we have commented on a barrage of ISOC propaganda in the English-language newspapers.
We can’t resist another jab at The Nation and its senior writer over what seems like an obsession about ISOC and a certain military “hero.” In our earlier posts we suggested some reasons for this, so we won’t go into those again.
However, we do wish to discuss Thanong Khanthong’s most recent piece (The Nation, 1 July 2009: “General fights violence in the south with green revolution”), which is little more than blatant propaganda, suggestive of a style of “journalism” that should have died with the Cold War. It is also suggestive of the royalist attempt to regain the influence they previously had in the south; what Duncan McCargo termed the “network monarchy.”
Thanong is apparently “embedded” with Lt-General Pichet Visaijorn and lauds him as “very strong” and having the “leadership qualities” required for the troubled south. Thanong claims that the general is “more like a movie star” and lauds his ability to be able to sit at the same breakfast table as “local Muslim people.” Of course, the noble general only uses military power against the insurgents, to fend them off.
Thanong also proclaims the general’s use of the sufficiency economy idea at a model farm where he is greeted by “several hundred villagers” who, it is claimed, relish the idea of dressing up to celebrate the general. By the way, this general also single-handedly “introduced organic fertilizer to the Northeast”!
PPT is sure those Northeastern farmers with cattle and buffalo will be eternally grateful, never having thought of organic fertilizer before.
Along with his fertilizer stories, the sufficiency economy nonsense and his adulation of the general, Thanong seems surprised to learn that “When you talk to the local Muslim people, you immediately find out that they are very nice people.”
If nothing else, this series of commentaries for ISOC indicates the level to which standards have declined at The Nation. It seems that hating Thaksin makes the military and security organisations the new heroes.
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