What’s up with Clinton?
PPT was just watching CNN and saw a clip of U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton talking about media freedom in Egypt. We went off to the State Department’s website to see if we could get a written form. While looking for it, we found British Foreign Secretary William Hague complaining about the crackdown on the media.
We found the Clinton clip where she “condemns” in the “strongest terms” attacks on reporters in Egypt. She says this is a “violation of international norms.”
Is it just us or did she conveniently forget to do this kind of thing so publicly when the Abhisit Vejjajiva government was presiding over events that saw the shooting of several journalists, with several witnesses, including journalists, claiming that the military deliberately targeted them. We don’t recall her condemnation of the monstrous levels of media censorship in Thailand, which is on-going.
Readers should correct us if they know of anything like this statement for Egypt being made for Thailand.
Part of the propaganda benefit that the Thai government has in Washington is a long tradition of “advisers” telling the State Department that it is only the royal family that matters and that the monarchy is the source of stability. Even today, despite the clear evidence that the monarchy has destabilized Thailand’s politics over the past decade, there are academics with thin publication records who have moved from government to universities inside the Beltway and who regularly get inside the palace and in return provide the necessary propaganda as “advice.”
State itself hasn’t been very well served in Thailand. The ambassador at the time of the 2006 military coup was Ralph “Skip” Boyce, who was a supporter of the coup and essentially spoke for it and provided the appearance of U.S. acceptance of the coup. Boyce drew much of his information from yellow shirts, Democrat Party politicians and the patricians of the palace. Eric John tried to provide some more balance and was treated as an “enemy” of royalist Thailand. New ambassador Kristie Kennie is taking a much lower-key approach, judging by her blog that appears remarkably undergraduate and lightweight.
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