Thai police bust huge Chinese crime ring

G'day all Fishwrap readers and their dearest friends and families.
We're another week older and deeper in debt here in splendid downtown Nong Bon of the not-quite-yet totally air-polluted far eastern Bangkok.
This stuff below is the very earliest Bulldog of Fishwrap, Monday 25 November 2024.

I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I'm all out of bubblegum.
 -- 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper, They Live(1988)

What would the world be without the microphones, cameras and pens of journalists?
 -- Samira Sabou, Niger, honoured by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPI) for so-brave journalism.
 NOTE: The CPI recognised no (zero) work by journalists in Asia or the Americas. So, the probable answer is "America"?

THAILAND ECONOMY INVESTMENT
Thai PM Loves A Good Movie
Prime Minister Paethongtarn Shinawatra, better known as Ung-Ing, was at a major economic conference as part of her current No. 1 Battle to get foreign investment and lots of it.
She has gone all-in on offering huge tax rebates and other perks to Hollywood.
PHOTO: The Thailand: Opportunities, Hope, and Reality forum was organised by Prachachat Business, the leading newspaper of the Matichon Group. All in Thai, some English translations by headphones.

Below: She went to Hollywood, where they put her in front of studio executives who said they love her and Thailand, both.

Police bust huge Chinese crime rings
Royal Thai Police have begun to release details of the biggest Chinese crime organisations in the country since Chinese tongs and triads were running the opium-heroin trade at its peak in the 1960s and '70s.
So far, the RTP reports, they have broken up Chinese-run cybercrime gangs that have conducted at least 730,000 criminal calls all over the world, using main-line numbers of the the Telephone Organization of Thailand (TOT) meant for business and homes.

Three Chinese-based firms have been accused of falsely registering "02" numbers and then using them to make calls worldwide to expand scam-calling networks:
Huanyun Information Technology Co. Ltd.; YTun Tian Ke Technology (ThailandO) Company and Preima Technololgy (Thailand). Using various criminal methods, these three companies along have been caught, mostly making their 11,200 (!) telephone lines, manned by slaves from Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and even Vietnam. The operations are also either closely related or directly run by Chinese human traffickers.
PHOTO: Chinese scam controller 'Mr. Yang' handcuffed and interrogated at his 8,000W mobile phone simulator used to control hundreds or thousands of scam callers at a time.

Young bikers vs Highway Police in northern Thailand
PHETCHABUN: Local highway police have intercepted Four Hundred and Thirty (430) youth-motorcyclists trying to reach this lower northern and cool province for an early winter (not kidding) Trip Nam Mai Arb [No Shower Trip]. Cops arrested and fine 72 of them for (alleged) traffic violations.
The Saturday-Sunday event has officially ended -- fun galore for young people, horribly misguided 'law enforcement' worthy of the military dictatorship that Thailand supposedly rejected last year.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/general/40043564
RELATED 'WINTER PHOTO'
Hundreds Thousands of weekend tourists also got to nearby Loei, Nan and all the way up to northernmost Chiang Rai (and other) provinces to feel the delight of early mornings between very cool and really cold. Below: photo of Phu Bo Bit viewpoint in Loei. So far, and bear in mind that thanks to Royal Thai Army mismanagement that the government has to encourage more and more foreign tourists in more and more so-far pleasant places that we are at the very final stage of being able to enjoy near-zero mountaintop weather without dozens of busloads of foreigners barging in.
Example: More than 1,100 local tourists atop Phu Kradueng (elev. 1,316 metres, also Loei) of whom several hundred camped out overnight.

MILITARY FIGHTERS F-35
Has Every Eligible Country Already Ordered The F-35?
It might seem that way, but nah. Portugal and Spain are in line to buy a few.
The U.S. has banned sales to Argentina because it could make the Limeys angry. (True)
U.S. President Biden has declared that Thais are way, way too dim to fly jet aeroplanes but maybe in 10 years. Or so. In the meantime, would Thailand like to buy some updated F-16s? Erm, no. Thailand will buy more Swedish Gripen fighters; if the Biden people don't like that, well, hard cheese and jerky.
https://simpleflying.com/eligible-country-ordered-f-35/

And Revealed! Precisely where stand Biden but then especially Bad Orange Man's opinions on Taiwan's requests for F-35s.*
*Which would be Episode rau caum-xya 2024, of 'China is so enraged!'

Pere et Fils: Tale of Two Trudeaus

In 2025, it’s Canada's turn to smack down the "eminently smackable" Justin Trudeau in, one hopes, will be a fair, free election. https://t.ly/HbIkn
Canadians should also Never Forget the disastrous wreckage of his family forerunner Pierre, unmatched in Canadian history for the large-scale wreckage he left behind that took 30 years to clean up the main part.
Justin Trudeau has been a world-class wrecker since 2015, when he began his work to take Canada's annual average growth rate from tip-top to third lowest in the world among 30 developed nations.
Justin is even a home-wrecker who couldn't even hold on to his somewhat attractive, mostly popular wife. In the words of the Canadian national anthem giving him and strong, clear boot would be a
plus brilliant exploit.

O Canada was completed, bilangue, in April of 1880.
On April 17, the French-language (only) Journal de Quebec stated
 At last, we have a truly French Canadian National Song.
The Journal published and distributed 5,000 copies, For Free!

Fight or Flight
Another Trudeau Easy Decision
When World War Two began in 1939 Pierre refused to serve, although he was the corredct age. Instead, he lit out for the Soviet Union where he served the dictator Stalin as a toady, similar but less well paid in money and women than the properly still-famed Walter Duranty of The New York Times in churning out day after day of unadulturated and traitrorous bovinal excrement.
But wait, No! C'mon man going to Moscow and working for Stalin doesn't prove that Pierre Trudeau actually had chronic flutter of the lower patellas, eh?
Well, yeah, kid, it kinda proves it away above doubt.

Cringely, can you turn that Ironyometer up to 11, please?
This is a documented Tale From My Father (died from Peter Panism, 101 at British Columbia), sorry Clint Eastwood, if you don't like it, just hat-up and un-ass the area, eh?
The very first RCAF Training Group* at Winnipeg in 1939 contained two Canadians and 498 U.S. citizens who busted the border to help Allies while America tried to sit it out and Pierre Trudeau was Gone Man to help the commies.
*Roughly, a battalion for zoomers.
Below: 'The Other Canadian' in the RCAF Training group of October 1939,
Turk Broda, Stanley Cup and Vezina Trophy winner who valued duty and honour

Cringely, just a tad higher on that Ironyometer if you please.
When the U.S. was in the worst part of the Vietnam War from 1965 to around 1972, about 50,000 Canadians volunteered and served in Vietnam, mostly in the U.S. Army where 134 (at least) were KIA. Canadian war veterans have their own Vietnam Wall, and even take it on tour despite opposition from the Two Trudeaus, at the time and up to now.
Thanks, Cringely. Here's a couple of bucks, get us each a Coke, eh?

It was not exactly life in the fast lane

It appears the bicycle lane launch on Sukhumvit Soi 39 last Tuesday didn't get off to the most auspicious of starts. In fact it had to be hastily abandoned after one day. All it succeeded in doing was to create a massive traffic jam leading to gridlock on 17 major roads along with a communal sigh across the city.
And as always much MUCH more Rog at https://t.ly/7cvRC
Like e.g. one of those tip-top reasons for Crutch's populatrity
A fearsome-looking dog has been seen patrolling the grounds of US president-elect Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in recent weeks. It answers to the rather unimaginative name of "Spot". On each of its legs there is a warning sign for passers-by, "Do Not Pet", although there is not much danger of that happening as this dog doesn't look particularly cuddly.
As you have probably guessed, Spot is a robot.

Oh, stop! We are no more likely to forget and drop Ammo Grrrll than Roger Crutchley.
With so many elections from my early adulthood on I was reminded of one of those wretched old rolling towel dispensers in public restrooms. Remember those? There would be a filthy, germ-infested wet part and you would take the very edges of that and pull hard and a "brand new clean dry towel" was supposed to roll around.
 Except when the dispenser had been used to the point that only more dirty towels appeared. And then the only option – and a good one even today when we’ve learned that the blow dryers are no more sanitary – is to just wipe your hands on your jeans and be done with it.
Hecka lot more at https://shorturl.at/TbHYT

Fear Of The Sixth Pogrom. USA SPECIAL
Moanin' Joe Scarborough and his designated nightly mattress girl Mika went to Florida -- yes!! -- not just Florida but Mar-a-Lago because who knows, maybe an interview, like real newspeople with that new guy, Literally, Hitler.
They were ushered into the Bad Orange Man's presence whene they did (as usual) absolutely no news reporting but fell serious and not-quite-but-nearly throat-sobbing and asked the Soon To Be President Again
Please puh-leaze don't force us into a ghetto slum and then blindfold us and put us inside a locked sealed freigght car and then unloaded and un-blindfolded and assigned to a narrow bunk bed in a concentration camp guarded and ignored by armed U.S. Marines until...
The Washington and Amazon Posturged all customers to turn off the Moanin' Joe show on Ms NBC to protest. Comcast went much further; America's largest cable-TV distributor announced it is jettisoning Moanin' Joe and all oif Ms NBC and at least a dozen other news and entertainment (there's no difference) channels.

Ex-Fox Newsreader Megyn "Badass" Kelly went to Strine where BadWords are tolerated right on TV and had a ball on Sky News.
Paul Murray, Ozzie: Can you imagine all the mirrors they have in their house?
Youtube:

Report, Daily Beast: https://t.ly/RHJdS