G20: Blinken hails Thai help in US push to Asia | France24 |

In Thailand, "we have an ally and partner in the Indo-Pacific of such importance to us in a region that is shaping the trajectory of the 21st century, and it is doing that every single day", Blinken said after talks with Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai.

Thailand is America's oldest ally in Asia, famously offering elephants to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, but has also increasingly worked with a rising China.

Indeed a true ally to American morals and values on democracy ...

'Sapere aude'

Thailand's Military Dictatorship Endangered by Impassioned Students | CATO - Oct. 22, 2020 |

The current military junta traces its roots back to 2001. Politics was then dominated by a traditional business‐ oriented elite that was comfortable with the special and highly profitable position of the military and court. (For instance, Prayuth's family has enjoyed lucrative army contracts.) Left out were the poor, marginalized, and disadvantaged.

Along came billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, who played the populist card, winning election in 2001 and 2005. There was much to criticize in his policies, but what most angered his opponents was that they were out of power and the wrong people were benefiting from government. In 2006, the military staged a coup while Thaksin was out of the country. In 2008, he was convicted of corruption in absentia in a show trial. The military also dissolved his party and banned him and many of his allies from participating in politics.

Southern Thailand: A Cosmic War?

Vietnam War Major US Base Air Force

U.S. Bases in Thailand During the Vietnam War and Agent Orange

The CIA closed its original 'black site' years ago. But its legacy of torture lives on in Thailand

In February 2015, security forces in southern Thailand hauled in a 26-year-old Muslim man and demanded he confess to participating in a violent separatist insurgency. Officers tied him to a chair, covered his face with a shirt and poured water into his mouth until he choked.

It was one of dozens of torture cases documented by human rights groups in which Thais have been subjected to mock executions, held in painful "stress positions," deprived of sleep or waterboarded.

The methods were introduced here in 2002 -- by the CIA.

Thailand was home to the agency's first secret prison, or "black site," after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. There, American officers repeatedly waterboarded at least two high-profile detainees, part of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques that much of the world would later describe as torture.

That dark chapter in CIA history has reemerged with President Trump's nomination of a new director, Gina Haspel, a career undercover officer who oversaw the Thai black site in late 2002.

ICC in The Hague is friendly to its donor country USA, guarantees impunity for war crimes.

'Sapere aude'

MFA Lavrov

💬 Maria Zakharova: Blinken: Russia was isolated at G20, and Lavrov left prematurely.

This is the same Secretary of State Blinken who said that everyone who knows the president, "knows that he speaks very clearly and very deliberately for himself".

It is you, Mr Blinken, who drove yourself into self-isolation by failing to attend a number of G20 events, where few people even noticed your absence. Now you're making up stories to justify your own failure.

As for us, we have been told how you personally have been asking everyone to isolate Russia. Everyone you have asked is laughing behind your back because they know that your Administration is doomed to an ignominious end.

China's FM Wang Yi meets his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the #G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Bali. China's Wang Yi said the two countries Russia have maintained strong bilateral ties and promoted cooperation in various fields. pic.twitter.com/NgM3EWZYbe

— CGTN Global Watch (@GlobalWatchCGTN) July 8, 2022