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By Jeff J. Brown

Pictured above: Brian Berletic and his well-established, popular anti-imperial website, Land Destroyer Report.

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Sixteen years on the streets, living and working with the people of China, Jeff

Original audio and visual interview, with introduction,

Brian Berletic, a.k.a. Tony Cartalucci of Land Destroyer Report, talks about his life’s journey, journalism, Western empire and all things Thailand. China Rising Radio Sinoland 211124

Transcript

Jeff Brown – Good morning, everybody. This is Jeff J. Brown China Rising Radio Sinoland on the beaches of Normandy, and I’m feeling a little bit nostalgic because I’m going to go six hours to the east, back to Thailand, where my wife and I lived for almost a year. And today I have on the show Brian Berletic, who I’ve known for years. We’ve been email friends going back for years and but he had a different name. And so what I want to do is thank you so much for coming on, Brian.

And just go ahead and you have an amazing story. Of course, I read all your stuff and I read how you came out of the ID closet and your reasoning is it’s just a fascinating story and going back. So tell us about your career as a journalist and what you started while you came out of the ID closet, and then you’re an expert on Thailand and then we’ll move to that. Go ahead, sir.

Brian Berletic – Ok, so anyway, also, thank you very much for having me on. And so it started I had joined the Marines right out of high school. I was still 17 when I went to basic training. I was an electro-optical ordnance repairman, which means I worked on advanced weapons systems like fire control for tanks and anti-tank missiles and things like that. And I spent almost all of my time in Japan.

I never went to a combat zone. And because of my specialized occupation, I probably would never have gone into combat. But I did see enough of what the US was kind of doing around the world with my own eyes to where it kind of disillusioned me when I got out of the Marine Corps in around 2004, I decided and that was the time the US was gearing up to invade Iraq. I decided it wasn’t going to be done in my name and I didn’t even want to live in the US.

So I had visited Thailand as part of Cobra Gold. It’s like a US-Thai annual training exercise. I had visited Thailand and I decided, OK. I know Japan, I know Thailand. I’ll just go back to Thailand. It was because I liked Thailand a lot and I’ve been living there ever since. And how I got into writing and geopolitical analysis was simply just reading the news and just being frustrated with not knowing that what I was being told by the Western corporate media was lies.

And at the time the alternative media was gaining steam. And I just decided instead of being frustrated and tapping away at the comment sections on all these websites, just take my blog and start contributing. So it’s just kind of progressed from there. I’m not a professionally trained journalist or anything like that.

I’m just a citizen journalist or a citizen geopolitical analyst. And I’ve been doing it ever since. Probably real serious for 2009-2010. Because I was living in Thailand and I saw the US interference here and I saw them backing these extremely violent groups. They burned half the city down in 2010.

And I just thought I have to get this out to the world. The BBC, CNN and all of them were just completely – I was seeing it with my own eyes, and I know that they knew what was going on and they were deliberately lying about it. So that’s when I got serious about writing.

Jeff – Land Destroyer is quite an interesting name for your blog and then why did you go with the nom de plume and call yourself Tony Cartalucci all this time until just about a month ago, you finally came out of the ID closet. What was that about?

Brian – Ok, so Land Destroyer was a blog that I started when I was actually in the Marine Corps and I had an interest in history. And tanks and sometimes tanks are referred to as land destroyers. And I just, I just kept the name. I just figured it out. There are so many. You know you want to talk about conspiracy theories. There’s a lot of conspiracy theories about why it’s named. It is as simple as that. It started like just a practice website because I was coding in HTML and stuff.

And Tony Cartalucci was just a name that friends of mine back in high school is like an inside joke. I’m half Italian and I’m also half Russian, Berletic is a Slavic surname, and it was like an inside joke, Cartalucci, so I just up that as a pen name. Now why I picked the pen name was, like I said, in 2010, they were killing people in the streets.

There had been violence leading up to that, Thaksin, this billionaire ex-prime minister, he had killed thousands of people, especially during his war on drugs, (sarcastically) war on drugs. And, you know, I just did it out of concern for my safety. I’m not that well known even now. And back then, I was nothing at all. And I just figured it’s the minimum that I can do to try to protect myself from the people around me.

Jeff – Got it. All right. Well, half Italian and half Russian, that’s yes, that’s a great combination. Well, Brian, my wife and I, we spent almost a year in Thailand. If we hadn’t had this family emergency to have to rush back here to France to save the family home from being sold-out from under us by an unscrupulous trustee, we’d still be in Thailand. We loved it, we were learning the language, we learned the alphabet, we were going to school and we traveled around.

We were big fans of Thailand, love the people, culture and we studied the history somewhat, but you’ve been there for now from 16 years. And I realize we don’t have all day, but can you just give us a quick sort of a thumbnail sketch, Thailand 101. And if and then if you can maybe recommend a book. I understand there’s a really good book in English about Thailand’s history, kind of from the perspective of the Thais. If you know that book, let us know.

You know, a brief overview of the history, the monarchy there, wariness of foreigners and I don’t know if it’s, I read this how they used the Japanese in World War Two so they could keep the French and the British out of the north, which I thought was an incredible story.

Just give us, for those friends, fans and followers out there who don’t know a lot about Thailand, just kind of give us maybe a five minute rundown on its history, please.

Brian – Ok, so I think the most important thing for people to understand is that the monarchy is part of an institution that is over seven hundred years old. And throughout Thailand’s history, it has been a unifying force in Thai society. And just an example, you know, back during the age of pirates these were Europeans who didn’t like their monarchies. They were often doing things against monarchies and other European countries.

But when they came to Siam, which is what Thailand used to be known as. The one monarchy that they did respect was the Thai monarchy because they realized that if they created a problem with him, they were creating a problem with the entire country and they would be unable to do any business at all with then Siam today, Thailand. And this has continued through all of the centuries. This current dynasty, the Chakri dynasty, is almost as old as the US is as a country.

You know, Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia that was never colonized, and yeah, throughout their history, they have been fighting off Western imperialism and they did it by kind of staying in the middle and kind of balancing one large power against the other and kind of diversifying their ties.

Sometimes they would make concessions and they were right in the middle of the British and the French fighting over all these other countries. So every country on Thailand’s borders and even parts of China were being taken over by Europe. Thailand was the only country in the whole mix of things that was never colonized. And so you mentioned the Japanese during World War Two, yet that was another example of Thailand making concessions.

The Japanese tried to invade Thailand. There was fierce fighting, but it didn’t last long. And I think what they were trying to do was just to show the Japanese how difficult it would be to take the country by force. So what they did instead, made a kind of an agreement and it did exactly what you said.

It kept the French and the British out. It allowed Thailand to regain some of the territories that over the centuries they had to give up to the British and the French, especially the French regarding Cambodia and Lao. And so that was the story there. They weren’t diehard allies. They just didn’t want anything, anyone.

Jeff – I think they preferred Asians then.

Brian – Yes.

Jeff – For those of, let me just say, for those of you who don’t have a visualization of Thailand, you’ve got Malaysia, which was British back then to the south. You had Burma, which is now Myanmar to the west, which was British. That’s where George Orwell was and then you had the French in Indochina, in Laos, and Cambodia on the eastern side.

So I mean, Thailand was sandwiched in by empire and they managed to not get colonized. I mean, that’s just unbelievable. That shows wise leadership.

Brian – Yes and that’s owed to the monarchy. And a similar scenario played out during the Vietnam War. A lot of people this myth endures, even to this day, that somehow Thailand is this stooge state of the US because of its relationship with the US during the Vietnam War.

That was another case where Thailand figured it’s better to let us in and use it as a base and kind of having this uneasy alliance with the US as they had with the Japanese to keep from happening to Thailand what the US was doing to Cambodia and Vietnam, which they were decimating. All three of those countries.

Jeff – I think genocide and war crimes. I mean, that’s what it was.

Brian – Yes, exactly and they had this Communist Party in Thailand. But this is kind of murky because it’s hard to figure out if that was genuine communism or if this was because the US was doing a lot of things even back then, just like they do with the terrorists. Now, it’s hard to tell which groups were being genuine, which ones were being used as proxies of the US to kind of keep Thailand obedient and under its thumb.

It’s very hard to tell, for example, that the communists had this base in Udon Thani, and that’s also where the CIA is based, was it just a coincidence? I don’t know. So anyway, there’s a lot of stuff that went on back then. But, you know, as we’re probably going to talk about next, Thailand has pivoted away from the US, so people need to keep that in mind. That was decades ago. That was the last century. Thailand today in this century is a different story.

Jeff – Then if you ever go to, I’m sure you go there when you go to Chiang Mai, Thailand, there’s “Dash” a really good restaurant there called Dash and funny enough, the owner was a communist guerrilla for like 20 years and here she is now, she’s like this very sophisticated Thai woman and she was up in northern Thailand for 20 years in the bush. I’m sure she has some really interesting stories. She’s a lovely lady and the food is outstanding.

But anyway, thank you for that. Yeah, I think it’s funny, I asked my wife, she’s French and I said, tell me all the good kings in France.

And she could only name one. And that was Louie XI. And of course, he was made St. Louis. He was sanctified, beatified by the church. But I always say they did that because he was responsible for the Crusades and brought billions of dollars back to the church, while slaughtering millions and millions of Muslims and Slavs. And so but I think it’s difficult for Westerners to comprehend the fact that there are countries that have mostly good leaders, like China, mostly good leaders and I don’t think Thailand would be where it is today, if most of the kings were bad, I think probably most of the kings were at least neutral, if not quite good, especially the last one, King Bhumibol. So tell me, do you feel like the monarchy has had mostly wise, beneficial governance for the people over the last 700 years?

Brian – Yeah, I would say yes. They’re the reason why Thailand is the way it is today, where it’s a strong country, it’s a unified country. It’s not a superpower. But if you look, it’s got the second-largest economy in Southeast Asia, even though it’s the second largest. Yeah. It doesn’t have the second largest population, but it does have, the development here is good. Again, there’s a lot of misconceptions. It has a monarchy and the current government is kind of military-linked.

So people just assume that it’s a right-wing regime. Right? But this isn’t true. They have universal health care, which as an American, I’ve never known anything like that in my life. Um, they have public housing. King Rama the Ninth, he spent his whole life teaching people about building their wealth in a very efficient manner, avoiding debt and this was at a time where the economic crises of the World Bank, the IMF, when they were doing this, predatory lending all around the world, including in Southeast Asia.

And this was in the nineties where the economy collapsed all across the region. It was people who were following his theory of selft-sufficiency, building up their wealth step by step and avoiding that. These are the people that were able to prevail. And there were millions of them adopting this, so that the country was able to weather that.

And this has happened a couple of times during hard economic times for the region and for the world where Thais, because they have this strong sense of self-sufficiency and staying out of debt, that they’ve been able to kind of weather these storms, these economic storms. So, yeah, the monarchy has contributed a lot past and present.

Jeff – You know, we were amazed when we were living in Chiang Mai. You turn off onto like a road that you wouldn’t think goes anywhere and then there’s this bustling little neighborhood back in there with all these houses and all the mom and pop shops.

And I mean, they’re very entrepreneurial and they’re very, you can see, like I felt bad for one guy, he had he tried a little stand in front of his house. But this was when there was Covid and everything was being shut down. He, he didn’t make it. But they’re out there trying, then I saw someone else trying to open up a coffee shop, a little coffee stand, and again with Covid, it was tough for them.

But they do have this sense of you can see it, this sense of self-sufficiency, which goes back to Mao Zedong, actually, but this sense of self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship and independence. I mean, just in our little area, there were probably a thousand shops and restaurants and stuff. It’s an impressive culture.

Brian – Yes. It’s like that all around the country. I mean, if you go to the south, you’ll see entire communities where they practice the king’s self-sufficiency theory. And, you know, like for example, I don’t know if people are familiar with Yingluck Shinawatra, she was the sister of billionaire Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. She had this rice subsidy scheme where she promised way above market prices per ton for rice and eventually it got looted by her party members.

It ran out of funding and they were unable to pay rice farmers for over six months. Who do you know that can go six months without getting paid for their work? Nobody. Right? But in the south, where people put into practice the king’s theory of self-sufficiency, they already avoided monoculture where they were just growing rice. They already were growing fruits and vegetables. And this was something that they were able to fall back on because they also avoided debt and they built their wealth.

When they didn’t get paid for their rice for six months, they still didn’t have huge amounts of debt to pay off and they had a fallback plan with these other crops that they were already growing because when a crisis hits, it’s too late to start working something new.

Jeff – Well, in Chiang Mai, there were several places where they had what was called the Royal Project stores, and these were the monarchy stores, they opened up where you could go in and buy flowers and avocados and lettuce and all these high-value crops, and we were told that these were coming mainly from the north where King Bhumibol, he worked hard to purge Thailand of the opium and heroin trade in the Golden Triangle and the carrot to get them to stop growing opium and processing heroin was to start growing these high-value cash crops so that they can make a good living.

So is that what you’ve heard, too? Is that what is up?

Brian – Yes. And actually, a lot of the coffee and tea, in a lot of Thailand and those fields, those farms took the place of opium fields. And that is how the king of Thailand decided to deal with drugs, which starkly contrasts to this darling (Thaksin) of the West. And he was just mass murdering people. Most of them had absolutely nothing with the drug trade. And he was just out there killing people and he didn’t offer any alternative.

And a lot of people suspect he was allowing his police to just eliminate their enemies and also to displace one drug cartel and just have people allied to him take over. So, you know, you could see that the comparison and contrast between what the king, who was demonized by the West was doing to solve these problems. And it’s an enduring solution.

So even after he passed on, I mean, coffee and tea grown in Thailand is a huge industry now, and that’s something that has endured. What about Thaksin? And I mean, as soon as his three-month drug war was over, it didn’t change anything. And it’s still a problem today.

Jeff – I forgot about the coffee and the tea, because we visited a couple of coffee plantations up in the north and it’s just beautiful up there, back there. Hopefully one of these days we’ll get to go back

Brian – I hope so.

Jeff – With the first Thai meal and Singha beer is on me.

Well, listen, you have written a lot I mean, a lot about Thailand and I read it all. I think I even maybe posted one of your articles a while back. But anyway, just give us a little bit of an idea about Thailand vis-à-vis China, explained for the friends, fans, and followers out there what ASEAN is and how Thailand relates to it. As you mentioned, Thailand has the second biggest economy in Southeast Asia after Indonesia, which has three and a half times as many people.

And yet, you know, and Thailand has more as a bigger economy than Vietnam. Vietnam has more people than in Thailand. So as you said, it’s an extremely industrious country. Just tell us about China, Thailand, maybe the rail line from Kunming down to Singapore through Laos, ASEAN. And then. Compare that with what’s going on with the West.

Brian – Ok, so ASEAN is sort of like a political-economic union, but it’s not as coherent as the European Union, for example. National sovereignty takes precedence. And so it’s just kind of a loose association between these nations. Yes, they have visa arrangements and things like that, but a lot of it is still done now nation to nation instead of as a bloc, but that that’s basically what ASEAN is. And I think a lot of people wanted to make it like the European Union.

But then they looked at the European Union and they’re like, no, maybe that’s not a good idea. Let’s keep it like this. So far for Thailand, at the time that I’ve been here, I’ve watched. And you can go look at some economic data over the last 10 to 20 years. And you can see how as China has risen, how it has, not just Thailand as it’s transformed all of Asia and everyone is pivoting with this shift of economic power from west to east.

So I remember when I was here, all the tourist signs were in English or Japanese, and now everything is being written in Chinese and also Russian. And why is that? And the reason why is because now as China rises, as the standards of living rise in China, more and more people are traveling abroad. And for Thailand, the largest number of tourists that come into the country are from China. And so many Chinese tourists come here.

It’s more than every Western country combined, just from China. And then actually after China, the next largest groups are all nations in ASEAN in Southeast Asia. So you can see how the West, economically, politically, militarily, has just kind of shrunk from the region and how it’s being displaced by this new, you could say, order or paradigm that China is leading.

And it’s this, you know, this multipolar that we hear China and Russia talk about all the time. And just another example. I used to live someplace where military helicopters flew over and they always used to be Blackhawks made by the US. And then recently I saw Russian helicopters and I was like, oh, yes, they started replacing some of their Black Hawks with Russian transport helicopters. And something that people might not know is that.

Thailand is replacing all of their old US military hardware with Chinese, mostly Chinese alternatives, so all their main battle tanks are being replaced from China, armored personnel carriers, armored vehicles. They have, I believe, one submarine that has already been ordered and is on the way. And they’re talking about two more which have been delayed because of political reasons.

But essentially and people don’t realize this when you buy three submarines, you’re not just buying a submarine, you’re buying maintenance agreements, training and so much more. You’re buying military and political ties when you buy something as significant as these diesel-electric submarines, the ones is buying from China.

Let’s see, yeah, and yeah, and China is Thailand’s largest economic partner by far and then after China, again, it’s all countries in Asia that Thailand depends on economically, not the West so much. I mean, you could see if you look at the economic data, you can see it just fading over time, just going down, down, down. And so no matter what the US tries to do to correct this until they look at the fundamentals of their economy, they’re not going to be able to fix it. So what they’re trying to do is throw wrenches into the world.

Jeff – All these protests, by the CIA, Department of State, NED that they’re having now.

Well, they’re pissing up a rope because I don’t think the Thais are going to fall for it. So, by the way, for those of you who don’t know and maybe look more into it, the acronym is ASEAN, and I’m pretty sure it stands for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and is a very dynamic group. They meet frequently. And tell us just quickly, Thailand figures very much into China’s a big Belt and Road Initiative in Asia, and they’re building a railway from Kunming, which is in Yunnan, a beautiful place.

And anyway, just north of Thailand, although Laos comes in over the top, Thailand does not connect with China but has Laos in between. But just tell us and I think this train line is going to go through Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

They’re going to, they’re supposed to do a spur off to Chiang Mai, where we lived for almost a year and then further it’s going to go down to Bangkok and eventually down to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore in the south. Just give us a quick update on that.

Brian – Ok, so, yeah, again, something other people might not realize is that they are building this high-speed rail line already. It’s under construction. There has been a lot of progress in Lao and it’s already under construction in Thailand. There are sections of the line that are already being built and they’ve already built the ground station at Bangsu, which is gigantic, It’s modern, it’s still hasn’t fully opened.

But it’s being built specifically not only to accommodate all of Thailand’s other state railway trains but also high-speed rail. So this is something that is happening and you know, the first step will be to connect coming to Bangkok, and then after that, eventually it’ll go down further south. Hopefully to Singapore. But for now, what’s already being constructed is the leg from Bangkok to the border of Lao.

I mean, as far as Thailand is concerned, I think there’s also high-speed rail that they’re talking about going down if you look at the Gulf of Thailand. And this would continue down the West Coast. But they’re also talking about another high-speed rail line going down the East Coast. And I’m not sure if they’re going with Chinese or Japanese because, again, Thailand, they’ll try to balance their relations.

They don’t want to be too dependent on anyone. And you can see this with their mass transit in Bangkok. They do buy a lot of rolling stock from China, but also from Germany. And I think Germany is the other country that they try to balance everything with.

Jeff – Ok. Very, very interesting.

Yeah, I think that for Laos it is especially going to be massive because it’s landlocked, it’s sandwiched between Vietnam and Thailand.

That is going to turbocharge, allow Laos access to the outside world and trade and transport and everything else. So I’m happy for Laos because after what the United States did to it during the Vietnam War, which is total genocide, and they’re still suffering from all the what is it, 80 million unexploded ordnance, bombs, bomblets all over the country is just criminal. With my wife, we went to Vientiane. It’s all we got to see of Laos. But  we saw the museum about the bombs. And it’s just unbelievably tragic.

Brian – Yes.

Jeff – Well, listen, what about other countries? You know, I know Thailand has a history of being anti-communist, I mean, I don’t know, anti-socialist. Although you said they have universal health care, which is very much a part of socialism. But now do you mentioned Russian helicopters, but do they work with anti-imperialist socialist countries, like just ticking them off Russia, Iran, which is, of course, Islamic socialism, Venezuela, even North Korea? And of course, I know Japan has a huge presence, especially with automobiles. Just run through Russia, Iran, Venezuela, DPRK, and Japan for us.

Brian – Ok, so with Russia, it’s just I think it’s a matter of logistics as to why Thailand doesn’t do all that much trade with Russia, but as I said, they purchased helicopters from them. They went to them, among others, regarding main battle tanks. They were considering the T-90s and then they went with Chinese main battle tanks. So some, most of that is military-related. And they were also talking about making deals with them. Technology, because as part of US-backed color revolutions, social media platforms based in the US play a key role in destabilizing a country.

So I think they were also thinking about doing some sort of deal with Russia regarding that. So, yes, they are open to doing business with Russia. I’m not so sure about Venezuela, but I do know that they do trade with North Korea because it’s one of those issues that they have to constantly pay lip service to the US like, OK, well, we’ll do that. But then they just keep trading anyway. And that’s the same with Iran. Also, they do business with Iran and they do what they can to try to avoid trouble.

So it’s not like they’re going to side with the US. They’re going to just do whatever they have to do to get the US off their back. But then they’re going to still try to do what’s in their own best interests, which is trading with these countries because Iran also is not a small country. It’s a significant country. And you can’t just rule them out just because the US says you have nothing to benefit from doing that.

And so. Yeah, so Iran. Russia. North Korea and obviously like China, so this notion that the Thai government is anti-Chinese or that the monarchy is anti-Chinese or anti-communist or something like that, I think it’s kind of ridiculous, since they do business with everybody. They don’t have a blanket ideology that they go by, they kind of pick and choose whatever they think will work as like universal health care just makes sense. A good idea, it benefits everybody.

And so that they do that, they have public housing, they have a lot of public programs where the government is handing out state money to help people. They also have state-owned enterprises like I just talked about the state railway that is a state-owned enterprise. And a lot of the privatization that happened under Thaksin Shinawatra was the big national oil company that was privatized under Thaksin.

And that’s been kind of like a tug of war to try to undo that, which is difficult because once they sink their hooks in, it’s very hard to undo that. So, yeah, I would say Thailand is not anti-communist, they’re not communists, not anti-communist. And they mix a lot of socialist policies into what they do. They have to have a strong free market. But they also have a lot of socialists, I would say, like a safety net for the poor.

Jeff – Well, we went to one of the local hospitals in Chiang Mai Thailand, we walked out and it was like, I can’t remember what it was like a hundred and twenty or something Thai baht, like four dollars.

Brian – Yeah, that’s not even with the subsidies.

Jeff – Yeah, you get these if you’re Thai, you get coupons and so on. What else was that? What about… No, I mean it seems like every three out of four or five, or four out of five cars are Japanese. The Japanese must have a huge presence in Thailand.

Brian – They do. They do. It’s again, it’s mostly business. And like you said, the auto industry, and maybe appliances, the auto industry. There’s a lot of Japanese factories that are based in Thailand and these are all jobs for Thai people. It’s also a business opportunity for auto parts, third party auto parts manufacturers they send there. But they do. They have car factories here and Japanese, I’m not sure about, but I know for sure American and Japanese companies have their factories here in Thailand.

So, you know, part of doing business in Japanese businesses, especially when they were surging in the 80s. You know, they made a lot of inroads into Thailand then. So that’s still kind of the momentum coming off of that.

Jeff – Yeah. And also Thailand, our Internet connection was better, in Chiang Mai Thailand than it is here in France, and the post office is incredibly efficient and not expensive. And I don’t know if that’s government-owned or not but the post office is just unbelievable. And the roads and the infrastructure and, you know, it’s an incredibly sophisticated country and people.

Well, listen, this has been… I really want to ask you about one more thing. What about that project, the Kraz Canal? Is that going anywhere? I mean, is that even realistic, or is that just pie in the sky stuff?

For the friends, fans and followers out there: to avoid the Straits of Malacca, which the United States could easily blockade to keep all of Asia from shipping between Africa, the Suez Canal, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc., the US could blockade the Straits of Malacca between what’s that big island and in Indonesia and Malaysia.

And so there’s been talk about this canal to cut across Thailand, I think it’s called the Kraz Canal. What’s going on with that?

Brian – So, yeah, this is a topic that comes up very often, and it’s this idea that comes and goes, but I think now when you see the capacity of China to do these huge infrastructure projects, I think if they were determined to do that, they could do it. And I think right now, it’s political, it would be a political impasse, because you already see the US putting pressure on Thailand with these, you know, these mobs in the streets and everything.

And that’s because of the high-speed rail and the growing military relationship Thailand has with China and the trade. And so this would be like the last, you know, like the last straw.

Jeff – I don’t know, or more like the last stick in the ogre’s eye.

Brian – Exactly. But short of doing a canal, they have talked about doing, kind of like really developing the infrastructure so that you have a port on both sides and then connected by trucks shipping the containers. So that might be something that we do see. First, if you see that first. Yeah. Or rail, that would be a huge boom for that area. You know, the South is already a pretty prosperous place if you compare it to, say, the Northeast, for example.

But this would, again, like you said, that would recharge the area,  that would be happening. And I think that is possible in the short term. And if we see that happening, the possibility of actually doing a full-fledged canal that might follow it might from just being an idea that gets kicked around every couple of years to something that starts taking shape. You have to wait and see.

Jeff – Yeah. Well, Brian, I know you’re very busy with Land Destroyer and you do a lot of outstanding investigative journalism. Have you ever thought of, are you maybe going to write a book? I know you started a YouTube channel. Now that you’re out of the closet, you’ve started a YouTube channel that’s doing very well. Have you ever thought about writing a book?

Brian – I sort of kind of wrote a book about the conflict in Syria. And this young man named Niall Bowie, he put everything together. And I was going to let him have it, because at that time I was anonymous. No one knew who I was. So I said, if you’re willing to put the book together, you can take all the royalties or whatever from this company that wanted to publish it. Well, the company published it, but I don’t know if something went wrong with the deal between him and the company.

And he and I decided that we would just publish it for free. So if you go to Land Destoyer, my website and it’s on like the side right bar you can just download it for free, The Syrian Conflict. And it’s old, but if you read it, you could see it said like the gateway to World War Three and you can see how close that, if you read it, then that was kind of when it was still uncertain what was going to happen.

And you could see how Russia and China just completely clashed (with the US) in Syria after that book was written. So I think you would still learn a lot about how the US gets these kinds of conflicts going, the role of the media and these fake NGOs that the US creates and uses, and how they used this proxy violence to destroy Syria. And it applies to everywhere around the globe, even to this day.

So, yeah, there’s that. But I’m not sure if I would write another one, I think, because, like, I have to do a real job also on the side. After all, I like Land Destroyer. I don’t have ads or anything on there. I’m not going to monetize YouTube because they’re just going to delete my channel eventually anyway. So I have to do regular work.

Jeff – I’ve already gotten one warning from YouTube, so two more and I’m off. They said… It’s just the censorship that is just brutal.

Well, I’ll tell you what. Please, of course, I have your Land Destroyer website, which I’ll put online on the interview page. But if you don’t go to the web page, just search LandDestroyer stuck together and you’ll find Brian or his old pen name known to him, Tony Cartalucci.

And also, Brian, my wife and I were told there was a really good book in English about Thailand that was told from the Thai perspective and not from the American or European perspective, if you know the name of that book and can send me the link, I’ll add that to the list or any books that you can recommend about Thailand, for people who want to learn more about Thailand. Please include those and any anyway any closing comments before we say goodbye.

Brian – Well, I would just say that when looking at Thailand, just keep in mind that a lot has changed since the Vietnam War. And please understand that these protests in the street are, it’s a bad sequel to the Hong Kong mobs that we all know the US government was behind.

So I just want people to keep that in mind and not forget the idea that it has a monarchy and has a military-like government. Don’t let people on the left side of politics from seeing what’s being done to Thailand because Thailand has pivoted towards China and this is an important ally of China and has an important relationship with China. So if, you know, if you are a supporter of China and the kind of paradigm that China is trying to create to replace what the West has done for so many years, try to just take a fresh look at Thailand.

And that’s about it, because, I mean, I live here. I love the people here. I love this country. And I just don’t want to see it turned into Hong Kong or worse yet, Syria or Libya or something like that.

Jeff – Ukraine, the Maidan mobs, that was all from the US. I understand the ones in Myanmar, with the Muslims, those are being fomented by the CIA. I mean, everywhere you go, it’s just nonstop US imperial intervention in hopes of getting a stooge, a stooge, government or leader in so that they can rape and plunder the country.

So. well, listen, Brian, this has been super… I’ve had on the show today Brian Berletic and his website is Land Destroyer. And I will put all that on the website. For me, this is a personal pleasure because you and I have been communicating with each other for, I’d say maybe four or five years, by email and to finally know who you are and because when we were in China, I was saying, “I’d like to contact Tony, but I bet he doesn’t want me to know who he is”.

Brian – Yeah, true. I mean, at that time I was paranoid, so.

Jeff – So but now, when we go back to Bangkok, we can get together and have a Singha beer and a Thai meal together.

Hey, listen, Brian, thank you so much for being on. And I look forward and I will also get this transcribed for you because there’s a lot of people who like to read. And I’m really happy we did this together and let’s do it again, I’m sure we’ll stay in touch by email and share information.

So thank you so much for being on and we’ll be nostalgically thinking about you back in Thailand.

Brian – Thank you very much, Jeff. I appreciate it.

Jeff – All right. Bye-bye.

Brian – Bye.

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