SteeleJoe

"...it isn't clear that he was even there. "

His injured brother, I believe, would not lie to him, if he was not there!

Why do you rule that out?

Besides, one needn't deliberately lie per se rather just tell a version that minimized any fault of your own and exaggerated the fault of others. Virtually everyone does that sometimes (consciously or not).

I have never seen a Thai man in a bar that I have felt needed an ass kicking. But I have seen many many many foriegners, sloshed to the gills and weened into a faults senese of security. And they push and push until they hit the trip-wire.

In sounds from the article that the Thai's did everything possible to avoid the confrontation including leaving their own gig.

Thai's in general arn't murders, well not for free anyway.

1) I have definitely seen Thais in fights who deserved an ass kicking (and I know for a fact my Thai friends agreed). In over 30 years, I've seen that more than a couple times...

2) The article does not say they tried to avoid the confrontation.

3) We have no way of knowing how accurate that article is.

4) Implying that Thais are generally not homicidal (except for pay) is absurd and in contradiction with the known facts.

RIp Yank

I guess the thing to learn here is

DONT knock the Tip Box to the floor.

We are too lazy, stoned or drunk to pick it up but we will kill you

Lesson to be learned might be --

if you are an uncivilized brute who gets arrogant, obnoxious and violent

when drunk, best to stay in your own country -- so you don't contribute to

the problems in other countries.

Yes but we have now heard the other side of the story from the son, he was just trying to walk away and they followed him out the door! Who should we believe the 3 Thai guys or the son?

Those aren't the only choices.

Keep in mind that aside from the obvious and perfectly natural bias the son would be likely to have, it isn't clear that he was even there. (And he never explicitly denies that his father was acting in a way that some would not tolerate, he merely characterizes it differently and feels it was within reason).

I feel so, so badly for the sons. However, objectively speaking, we've heard two sides but both from parties who have every reason to be biased and inaccurate (deliberately or not).

The Thais were on an unprovoked homicidal rampage / The foreigners caused it all.

The truth no doubt lies somewhere between...

This appears to be a photo of the band taken from their facebook page.

IS IT A SURPRISE that the musicians on the photo perfectly fit my description earlier in my longer comment on page 7... ?

Yes, perfectly. Well except for the distinct lack of cowboy attire. But who, other than someone with your extensive firsthand experience, could have predicted rock musicians with long hair?!

BradinAsia wrote:

Anyone who's lived in Texas and frequented bars there should be familiar with drunken obnoxious Texans.

Some folks seem to have a special gift for getting too drunk, becoming too obnoxious, abusing people, then

starting fights and often killing someone -- or getting themselves killed. Texans seem to specialize in this all

over the world. Should be no surprise that this could happen in Thailand as well.

Based on the information given in the news reports as well as my experience over the years in both Texas

and Thailand, this looks very much like another typical Texas style incident.

Some folks will sympathize with the abusers. Others, like me, will sympathize with anyone (including Thais)

who have to endure such barbarous behavior.

I think you mean (going by your posting history) ESPECIALLY Thais.

It's a rather extraordinary post. The problem is Texas?! And the ALLEGED actions of the tourists were "barbarous" but the people who killed one and seriously injured the other are victims deserving sympathy...

Early retired to Thailand in 2003. Returned to the USA September 2011 to help care for an elderly parent. Moved back to Thailand August 2012.

Changes I noticed in Thailand:

1 The Thais are wealthier -or perhaps more credit fueled prosperity- noticing many new cars & motorcycles, smart phones and dressing well.

2 The Thais are more "well nourished" and many kids are past being chubby.

3 Fewer smiles and more agressive overall. Not the majority however a significant minority of Thais are itching to remind us that we are not really wanted here.

I was happy in the US and really enjoyed the peace and quiet, good manners and not having people try to cut in front of me at stores, etc. In the US for nearly one year and never stopped by the police; back to Thailand for 11 months and stopped at least a dozen times for licenese/tax documents.

A lot of inflation in both countries but the US sales distribution is more efficient and there are values to be had. Bought a good pair of jeans at Wall Mart for the equivelent of 300 baht. Paid 500 baht for some Levi's copies at Jatujak market and they fell apart way too soon.

I still enjoy life in Thailand, ridingh my bike all year long and the opportunity to meet people from around thw world but I have no qualms about eventually returning home to live. I'll probably always yearn to travel and be out of the USA for two or three months a year, but my home base will no longer be Thailand.

Just one guys thoughts and I'm not saying that Thailand is not a good place to live. But its a big world out there and I've barely touched Africa and South America

You've been stopped a dozen times or more in 11 months?!

That is astonishing. I haven't reached anywhere near that total in decades...

Re post #60.

Just to add that Al Qaeda and its affilates kill many more Muslims, than non Muslims. Right now the death toll of Muslims killed by Al Qaeda and its regional affiliates in Syria and Iraq in a bid for Sunni extremist power is staggering. Pakistan & Afghanistan are also major killing grounds for Islamic extremists. Plus Africa is an increasingly critical issue for NATO countries with Al Qaeda sponsored terrorism.

Absolutely. Indeed, I nearly pointed that out but decided to keep it short(er) and simple - I tend to go on a bit if I'm not careful...

My reference to apostasy was partly with your point in mind: Muslims who aren't in service of the Jihad, or are even in opposition to it (eg most governments of nominally Muslim countries) are as much a target as anyone else and simply for logistical reasons if nothing else, will be a large percentage of those targets. Not to mention that Jihadis generally have little or no compunctions about "collateral damage" (except in regards to concern for strategic deficit).

EVIL MEN FROM KRABI

Another feather in the cap for KRABI TOURISM where you get raped fro havin dinner with a guy and killed for singing Karaoke

Nice place

It's astonishing the way people LEAP to distort things without any concern for facts, as long as it serves to support their basic outlook: nothing in the article suggest that anyone was killed for singing karaoke. (And unfortunately it is hardly an exclusively Thai thing for people to be raped after having dinner with someone - or to be killed in a fight outside a bar, for that matter).

can you believe that I was told once that it might even be known to happen in Western country`s, I find it hard to believe, it seems hard to see when your head is buried in the sand.....

No. People are never beaten, stabbed or killed outside bars in western countries.

Coincidentally, as a 14yo boy my best friend and I got permission to leave school every day to watch a trial for a project we were doing. With the help of a bailiff we picked an exciting one - a guy had been beaten to death outside a bar in a nice upper middle class Southern California town.

But that was probably the first and last time such a killing took place in the US...

Whidbeyboy wrote:

ExpatJ wrote:

Tragic outcome - when people behave like annoying , aggressive jerks ( ie by not getting off a stage), you have to figure that eventually they will get pay back ( but nonetheless, death is too much!)

People travel to Thailand to have fun and get a bit crazy. Especially in a bar. People who do what they did are not being jerks, they are having a great time that will be fun memories when they remember what a great time they had.

Being killed for acting like they did is unreal. If they were that bad police could have been notified and the situation fixed.

Killing your customers is bad business.

First of all, your position is absurdly biased and unrealistic - just because someone is holiday, obnoxious behavior isn't obnoxious because "they are having a great time that will be fun memories when they remember what a great time they had"? Ridiculous. I won't even bother to comment further on that.

They were allegedly hurt and killed in a fight. Said fight was supposed to have occurred afterwards. It is not at all clear that they were injured / killed for the way they were acting in the bar rather than the injuries occurring as a result of a fight that escalated later, in which the original behavior was a contributing factor but not the exclusive one.

People keep oversimplifying this in a way that puts the Thais in the worst possible light and diminishes or dismisses any possible wrongdoing on the part of the foreigners. I have no trouble at all with the idea that the Thais are entirely to blame or with the obvious conclusion that the foreigners almost certainly didn't deserve to be so badly hurt, but let's stick with the facts as we know them - they are bad enough.

This is INSANE ..... NO MERCY for those Thai jerks ... how can you kill for such infantile thing ... I guess they have nothing in the brain to react like this.

And there lies the question that folk must keep in mind. Forget the land of smiles, remember a different culture that takes a long time to take on board.

Welcome to the land of smiles... Thais think they can do anything to a foreigner and get away with it .. and in most cases they do.. while most of them make a living out of the tourist trade which is the biggest contributor to the economy...

Another one who thinks foreigners are more important than they actually are: most Thais don't ever consider foreigners and those rare ones who assault a foreigner don't do it because they think they can get away with it, they do it because they have issues and/ or the circumstances they and the foreigner(s) are in.

On what do you base your assertion on the economic contribution of tourists? The fact that you are casually certain most Thais earn a living from tourism says a lot.

Good to see that they have actually asked for outside assistance when needed. Expensive tho for a guy (Thaksin)) who is not even a politician but just a criminal on the run.

Divert people attention to gain some credit.

Else, political game is going on.

Great move. Let's see if this strategy works out for him to return back as this will create some sympathy in public heart.

Ah, more of the conspiracy theories! This is why TV is one of the most entertaining sites on the Net.

So let me get this straight... Darth Thaksin paid some Pakistanis to do a threat video so he could win the stubborn hearts of the Thai people and find his way back home. Is that a tear in my eye?

Would make for a great novel. Please tell me when the movie comes out... p.s. you may want to 'up' the medication

If we think logically, it is clear that, AL-Q or Muslims or Jihad have problem with 4 countries and 3 religions; viz

1] USA 2] UK 3] Israel and 4] India

1] Christians 2] Jews and 3] Hindus

Now, where does Thaksin fit in this picture?

Your question is a good one except it's based on a fallacy. If you think al Q or any other Islamists have problems with only those countries, you are very uninformed on the topic. And you are mistaken in thinking they have a specific animus towards those religions, per se; they view Buddhists as they would any other infidels. (In fact, Christianity and Judaism - as Abrahamic religions - are closer to Islam than Buddhism and with some Islamists would be regarded with arguably slightly more favor.)

I have no position on the veracity of the claim in the OP, but it's a ridiculous oversimplification to claim al Qaeda et al only have issues with people if they are from 3 countries and/ 3 religions or even to posit that they have an issue with people BECAUSE they come from those countries or are believers in those faiths.

Apostasy and infidels and opposition to the Caliphate. That's ultimately what it's about. Those who they perceive to be in opposition to Jihad come in many guises...

Crazy stuff.

... again.

Wonder what tomorrow's Thai news will be:

I've no doubt it will include deadly violence with extreme weapons by Thais against a Westerner or Westerners for something that in almost any other country would be laughed about.

Think you might be exaggerating just a wee bit?

Your post seems like a rather stark example of a lot of the sentiment behind many posts: the notion that this is violence directed towards foreigners and the outrage that idea inspires.

Far more violent crime is committed by Thais against Thais. People are often not only unaware of that but wouldn't care anyway...

rbrooks wrote:

SteeleJoe wrote:

transam wrote:

ExpatJ wrote:

Tragic outcome - when people behave like annoying , aggressive jerks ( ie by not getting off a stage), you have to figure that eventually they will get pay back ( but nonetheless, death is too much!)

With a knife ? Come on.

ANYONE can be removed from a stage without resorting to possible death.

Perhaps you didn't read carefully: according to the story, the Americans were not injured in the act of removing them from the stage. The fact that they allegedly refused to leave the stage apparently led in part to an eventual fight in which the injury and killing took place.

I guess that justifies killing an American tourist and beating his son in front of him. I read it just fine and it still disgusts me that a Faralang having a good time singing and maybe getting out of hand by not leaving the stage, deserved to be killed outside the bar by Thai musician standards. Is this the Thainess that the PM is promoting? Bet you also punishment or jail time is not given to the killers and they will still be singing in the band in Krabi waiting for the next Farang to piss them off.

"I guess that justifies killing an American tourist and beating his son in front of him. I read it just fine and it still disgusts me that a Faralang having a good time singing and maybe getting out of hand by not leaving the stage, deserved to be killed outside the bar by Thai musician standards. Is this the Thainess that the PM is promoting? Bet you also punishment or jail time is not given to the killers and they will still be singing in the band in Krabi waiting for the next Farang to piss them off. "

And all I have to say is that that is a really stupid and ugly straw man: who suggested anything so absurd and obscene as the killing was justified (let alone that it was justified for reasons in my post)? You should be embarrassed.

And by the way, no one has claimed - not even the killers - the Americans deserved to be killed for "having a good time singing and maybe getting out of hand by not leaving the stage".

Calm down. You might be able to make a more worthwhile contribution.

In an entertainment context, there should be no excuse for killing any person - nor for raping them for that matter.

There are a lot of commenters who are blaming the Thais for ganging up, killing one person and severely injuring his son for the most feeble reasons. Even if you get into a punch up you should not expect to be killed.

Of course this happens in every country, not just here in Thailand, but in most civilised countries there is an effective police force that actually engages some effort in tackling crime, an effective justice system that actually process cases in a fair manner and with a view to justice being served - especially in criminal cases. Also in those countries you have a population who are allowed to be far more vocal about injustices than here and who have a higher group sense of morality.

Unfortunately so many Thai people are so anesthetised to crime and the uselessness of the police force, the rampant corruption and criminals running away or getting off scott free at some point on the journey through the abominably weak justice system, that crime - and violent crime is becoming rapidly worse and more senseless and society more and more ambivalent towards the issue. That is the problem here.

Whatever; the fact that something wrong happens somewhere else is absolutely no excuse for putting up with it here. Many of us have children here and want them to grow up in a society that is getting safer and better - not more violent and corrupt as appears is the current trend.

An excellent post and I largely agree with it - with the possible exception of the claim that the prevalence of violent crime rapidly growing...that may be so, but I'm not at all sure it is. Thailand has ALWAYS been a violent place. I knew that (partly from firsthand experience and a LOT of anecdotal evidence) even when I chose to settle here and loved the place (as opposed to just mostly liking it, as I do now).

There's a dead man, for sure, but the word 'murder' isn't appropriate unless malice aforethought can be proved. Those who took this life can be so charged but the word 'murder' is used way wrong way too often.

Murder. Illegal killing.

I agree the word is often used too loosely but it needn't be as rigidly defined as you claim. (Have you never heard of second degree murder, for example?)

I find it ridiculous how so many posters in this forum routinely take something like this and turn it into a 'Thai vs. farang' thing. This is a case of drunk people (note: people, not Thai or farang) getting involved in a stupid bar fight that escelated to a point where someone was tragically killed. I worked in the bar business for 10 years and have seen similar incidents happen many times; 99% of the time they have nothing to do with race and everything to do with boozy aggression. They usually don't end up with someone getting killed but they very well can - and do - anywhere in the world. Incredible: a bar fight breaks out and someone gets killed - let's blame it all on Thai society!

NO, lets blame it on a knife that should never have never have been brought into the arena.

You keep focussing on the weapon - it shouldn't have been there, but it was harmless until someone used it.

So you and I walk around with a blade in our pocket just in case someone sings the wrong song eh. Now come on.

No, you come one. Why make up something and clam I said it? Don't respond to my posts if you can't be bothered - I don't blame you. But if you do, how about responding to what I actually said?

I find it ridiculous how so many posters in this forum routinely take something like this and turn it into a 'Thai vs. farang' thing. This is a case of drunk people (note: people, not Thai or farang) getting involved in a stupid bar fight that escelated to a point where someone was tragically killed. I worked in the bar business for 10 years and have seen similar incidents happen many times; 99% of the time they have nothing to do with race and everything to do with boozy aggression. They usually don't end up with someone getting killed but they very well can - and do - anywhere in the world. Incredible: a bar fight breaks out and someone gets killed - let's blame it all on Thai society!

NO, lets blame it on a knife that should never have never have been brought into the arena.

You keep focussing on the weapon - it shouldn't have been there, but it was harmless until someone used it.

Those happy carefree smiling Thais eh?? land of murders smiles

Gee the drama queens are out in force.

Some drunks got in an alcohol fueled argument and therefore all Thais are sinister and this is the land of murders.

These two Americans could have as easily been beaten up and killed in the US, and given their reported behavior it's unlikely this was the first time for them to act like jerks in a bar.

The saintly, sober farangs, eh??

PEORIA, AZ - A Peoria man has been arrested on a murder charge after his friend died from injuries suffered in a "fake" bar fight.

MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. -

A man arrested in connection with a July 4th death outside a Morehead City bar made his first court appearance Tuesday morning.

Two men are being sought in connection with the beating death of an employee at Pats II Cocktails in South Redondo Beach.

STILLWATER, Minn. (WCCO) – The Washington County Attorney’s Office has charged a Cottage Grove man over the death of a Bayport man whom he assaulted in a bar fight.Police say 22-year-old Eric Richard punched the victim, 28-year-old Adam McCloud, in the head at least twice at Smalley’s Caribbean Barbecue & Pirate Bar in Stillwater.

I share your disdain for the way people are blatantly using this to fuel the predictable bashing session but as you so often do, you have overstepped the mark - in my opinion - in your unceasing efforts to defend Thais and Thailand:

"...given their reported behavior it's unlikely this was the first time for them to act like jerks in a bar."

Do you really think that is appropriate? (I have little doubt had someone made the same sort of assumption about Thais, you'd not tolerate it.)

Tragic outcome - when people behave like annoying , aggressive jerks ( ie by not getting off a stage), you have to figure that eventually they will get pay back ( but nonetheless, death is too much!)

With a knife ? Come on.

ANYONE can be removed from a stage without resorting to possible death.

Perhaps you didn't read carefully: according to the story, the Americans were not injured in the act of removing them from the stage. The fact that they allegedly refused to leave the stage apparently led in part to an eventual fight in which the injury and killing took place.

On or off stage, killing for nothing is crazy. Am sure the locals could have sent the farangs on their way, UNLESS the farangs were wannabe Rambo's.

Totally agree.

I would guess that alcohol played a big part in this unnecessary death. RIP the father and I hope the son recovers quickly.

+1

Unnecessary weapons caused an unnecessary death.

No, people with unnecessary weapons caused the death - and chances are good that they wouldn't have made such a regrettable choice without the influence of alcohol. (Assuming that it wasn't simply a matter of self defense).

Tragic outcome - when people behave like annoying , aggressive jerks ( ie by not getting off a stage), you have to figure that eventually they will get pay back ( but nonetheless, death is too much!)

With a knife ? Come on.

ANYONE can be removed from a stage without resorting to possible death.

Perhaps you didn't read carefully: according to the story, the Americans were not injured in the act of removing them from the stage. The fact that they allegedly refused to leave the stage apparently led in part to an eventual fight in which the injury and killing took place.

Let's make it easier. Is there anyone they can rule out?

I think we can rule out Al-Qaeda.

They generally take credit for what they do.

How ever I would not put it past them. They are basically a world wide organization. Just because you don't hear from them in an area dosen't mean they aren't there and haven't been there for a long time.

Just ask the states if they were aware of their plans and actions on 9/11.

* In fact, al Qaeda has on many occasions NOT taken credit for actions attributable to them.

* They aren't a singular and cohesive organization in the sense that many people imagine. Often times they are essentially a corporate brand that merely endorses an action - sometimes after the fact - or at most facilitates it to one degree or another. And there are so many offshoots and affiliates that use of the descriptor "al Qaeda" may be a practical necessity but it's not very precise.

* The US was largely aware of plans (obviously not specifics) prior to 9/11 - and that's the great shame and tragedy of it. (I am NOT suggesting deliberate complicity, just lamentable failures and arguably unavoidable oversights).

Maybe, but can we rule out the role the CIA played in this video?

I rule out very little. Would they do something like that (or far, far worse)? Certainly. Did they?

Don't ask me.