Last Sunday in East Manchester around 5:30 in the afternoon, the air resonated with the chant "Thaksin, Thaksin, Give Us A Wave" and the little gangster was helped to his feet by his security consultants to return respect to Harpurhey man.
Curiously enough this same cry was common in southern Thailand where Islamic separatists were gunned down by the gangster's men when his excellency was last in power in Asia.
Yep, to Manchester's, and in particular to Manchester City's, eternal discredit, the human rights abuser is back in town with his entourage. Having sent his wife back to test the legal waters in Thailand and finding that the said waters were not too choppy, Shinawatra decided to return early to Bangkok to lay the foundations for a financial deal regarding his corruption relating to land deals and the selling of national assets to the benefit solely of Shinboy's offshore bank accounts. Shinawatra's initial intention was to remain in Manchester until the end of the season but his PR vehicle, Manchester City, was judged to be surplus to short-term requirements once the idiotic dream of a Champions League place became realistically sidelined.
A new strategy was put in place - Top 10 for this season, UEFA Cup for next year culminating in a Champions League slot in three years time. Apart from being entirely different to the strategies of last week, last month and the mid-season break, this still represents a target of sorts for the Bangkok Blues.
Shinawatra flew back to Thailand to be arrested at the airport on his arrival. Fair dinkum. Criminal, crime, justice... The spectacular nature of the encounter was far more intriguing than the legal, for his excellency decided that he should return home for this date with courtroom destiny accompanied by Man City players Kasper Schmeichel and Kelvin Etuhu. These employees of Eastlands were pulled away from their loan spells at Leicester and Coventry respectively to be dragged halfway around the world so that Shinawatra could make his Siam re-entry with the aesthetic sporting choreography of blonde and Black extremities.
Lets get this straight. This gangster, for that is what anybody with half a brain in Thailand would call the man, is filed by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for abuses of power against humanity. He sold off a nation's jewels for proprietary gain; he runs the underground betting markets in Thailand; his wife undertakes illegal property deals in valuable Bangkok land; he arbitrarily orders the shooting of the competition in the drugs trade; he undertakes ethnic cleansing and is rumoured to be taking a slice of the trade in trafficking women from the very rural areas that are supposed to be the main beneficiaries of his populist largesse.
Not only is this fascist allowed to be effectively running Thailand again via his proxies but the English footballing establishment seem to be condoning the practices undertaken by Thaksin by giving him the individual equivalent of America's "most favoured nation" status. Richard Scudamore happily ignored the Premier League's fit-and-proper-person's rule to allow the gangster into the English game. Why? For a deal, that's why! What else would you expect from Mr Dealmaker? And the deal from Scudamore is this - you give us some control of the underground betting markets in Thailand and we will allow you to utilise Manchester City as a scam operation to help you regain power in Thailand.
And so it came to pass. In the first half of the season, Man City were "live" in the Far East on 10 occasions - City won 6 and drew 4 of those games and the bias in refereeing in their favour was marked, particularly when Mark Clattenburg, Shinawatra's stooge, had any say in the matter. When Shinawatra arrived back in Manchester for last weekend's game, there was great interest back home as to the great arrival of this great excellency into the great world of English football. Could Mr Scudamore have any influence over the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) selecting Clattenburg to officiate last Sunday's Tottenham game? Is the pope a catholic? Ireland's offside goal and Clattenburg's late disallowing of a Spurs goal and the job's a good'un.
"Wherever law ends, tyranny begins" according to John Locke and that seems a pretty apt appraisal to us. There are no effective laws overseeing the English game at its highest levels and there is even less clarification in the grey areas where football match outcomes share the same ground as the global betting markets. The butterfly effect between Bangkok politics and betting markets is mimicked around the global game as invalid influences leech themselves on to what used to be community clubs. For example, Gazprom should not have any effect on the Champions League Quarter Finals and yet three of the teams have links to the Russian hyper-power-company.
Of course, what we are dealing with here are fascistic and autocratic power abuses. Much mocking and sniggering was heard around Europe when Silvio Berlusconi first got into power in Italy using a heady mixture of mafiosi-links and statute of limitations legal loopholes to create a right wing teflonocracy. He bought Serie A and Champions League titles for the rossoneri while his lieutenant did the backroom deals that ensured suitable outcomes to suitable events. Brinksmanship was a core competency as demonstrated by the relegation of Juventus for crimes that were no more serious than equivalent misdemeanours undertaken by the Milanese. Corruption, mafia cartels and an abuse of power won for Berlusconi in both political and footballing fields. How is His Excellency The Doctor Thaksin Shinawatra any different?
Bored by Baudrillard? Well, you are not welcome on these blog pages then! "Monopoly structures (and any state is a monopoly, since it claims a monopoly in the political and social spheres) cannot but secrete a para-political society, a mafia of some sort, to control this form of generalised corruption. It is pure hypocrisy on the part of the political authorities to fight this mafia, since it is an emanation of those authorities themselves". In what manner is this template different to those employed by Berlusconi/Galliani or Shinawatra/Scudamore? Its not any different, evidently...
So, what will happen to City? We have been pretty accurate so far in our responses to realities at Eastlands. In the summer we said that short-selling the Blues was the trade of choice and that the majority of Eriksson's rushed signings would prove inappropriate. Proven. We then informed you that the nett transfer spend by City in January would be insubstantial. Proven. We followed up with mocking any pretensions to a Champions League slot. Proven. Football Is Fixed then had the temerity to schedule Shinawatra's timetable and we even released a consultancy document to clients highlighting the matches that the good doctor was planning to "buy" in the remaining part of the season. Proven and successful. Our current prediction would go something like this. Shinawatra will continue to use the Bangkok Blues as his PR entity and he will utilise as little money as possible to achieve this aim. Indeed, the smiling assassin was quoted yesterday as saying: "There will not be huge amounts spent this summer but maybe the following summer". Thaksin will continue his liaisons with the Premier League to mutual benefit but the Premier League need to be very aware of one key fact here. Shinawatra looks after himself. Win-win strategies are only achievable in the immediate term with psychopathic operators as such individuals are constantly looking for competitive edge that effectively undermines the validity of the original infrastructure. There will come a point where Shinawatra will see a strategic route that cuts Scudamore and his staff of one out of the equation.
Cioran states that: "You have to choose between the real or illusion" and Premiership football in 2008 offers a perfect experiment to test for realities and the hyperrealities of illusion. We could, if we so desired, prepare a post that would categorically demonstrate the clear mechanisms of this corruption but we choose instead to offer you something rather different so that we might be able to continue to trade the market's inefficiencies ourselves. We, ourselves, have decided to provide you with a plot, generally at least one year out of date, which signifies the corruption underpinning football in England. Because the mainstream media is so determinedly out of touch with modern realities even this one year millstone still allows for our analyses to be ahead of the general perception of a spectacular reality. It is up to you whether you wish to go with the real or the illusory. Its your life.
Baudrillard: "The real... as we picture it to ourselves, with its causal determinations and its truth-effects, is an exceptional phenomenon - in fact, the only true mystery".
Your choice...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
