Pravit in The Nation:

But this is Thailand, a country where writing about this or that general makes for best-selling books and where the Army runs a fat campaign to educate the populace about democracy – despite its checkered record of staging one coup after the other.

The latest campaign, which is very visible, involved wrapping a huge campaign sticker in orange, black and white on one whole BTS Skytrain, on the inside and outside of carriages.

The campaign was dubbed “Sustainable Thinking” by the Army and the Internal Security Operations Command (Isoc) and involved a guideline on mental “immunity” which involves: accessing news with mindfulness, spending money reasonably, |carrying out your profession |with perseverance and making one’s family sufficiently |happy.

“Mindfulness + reason = immunity” was its main motto.

Alright, maybe those messages – which also appeared on at least two large billboards along Bangkok’s expressways – may not be the worst messages to convey. But is that really the job of the Army and Isoc?

Earlier this year, the Army was paid by Cabinet to go to rural areas – mostly regions where ousted and convicted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra is popular – to educate people about “democracy”. Sounds like a bad joke doesn’t it?

BP: That is not the only ISOC ad campaign. There is another one with Abhisit, appearing as a Director of ISOC, and appears in a new TV ad for them which is below:

BP: You will note the sufficiency economy terminology and the use of HM the King’s “เข้าใจ เข้าถึง พัฒนา” (“Understanding, Reaching Out, and Development”). It seems to be re-packaged as “moderation society” to make it slightly hip – “New generation loves ‘moderation society’” and other buzz words. If you see the mosothai.com website you can see the entire campaign.