SamMunich

Yeah, well, it's more and more Sarit Thanarat all over the place.

Last year Thailand seemed to have made a jump in time: leaping back 50 years.

Maybe thats why things looks so "been there, done that".

Actually what pi..ed me off is the company here, that knowingly sends people to Adelaide and taking 10.7K Baht from them, when they know the game is over since quite some time.

I mean how deep can you sink to make a few bucks...?

 

Maybe people should just stop giving money to "law offices" just to be issued with crafted credentials referring to non-existing work or business in Thailand.

If your friend works in Thailand he can obtain a work permit then the multiple-entry visa in Penang, Malaysia. Otherwise he'll have to obtain another type of visa just like everybody else.

In general you're right, but with the Thai govt being so strict, they force a lot of people to use this kind of detour.

My friend isn't 50 years old jet to apply for a retirement visa, but he has enough money to support himself in Thailand without having to work here.

But I think esp. the present govt is uneasy about anything foreign, as foreigners don't obey the military as much as locals propably are used to do. So they don't want to have foreigners around...

A friend of mine very recently went to Adelaide to get a 1 year Non-Im -B- Visa with multiple entries.

He had followed the advice of Sunbelt Asia Co., that Sunbelt Asia will issue him with all the necessary paperwork to apply succesfully in Adelaide, all this for a fixed fee of 10,700 Baht. The person at Sunbelt had assured him, that this is still working and many before him did this with success.

However the staff at the Consulate in Adelaide told my friend he can get only a single entry Non-Im -B- visa and that Sunbelt Asia should stop sending people over to apply for this kind of visa.

All in all my friend spend something around 2,000 US$, including the "fee" for Sunbelt Asia, for flights, hotels etc., only to get a single entry visa.

So others should be warned and avoid contacting Sunbelt Asia for this purpose.

It looks very much as if the generals are trying to turn back the clock by about 50 years.

No freedom of speech, so nobody can pinpoint corruption of the powerful. Who is corrupt is being defined by the military, depending on who is their enemy. Too bad, the military - by definition - have got no clue of the meaning of "personal oppinion" or "free speech". Military and "personal oppinion" is contradictory.

Where Taksin tried to shut up his opponents by million Baht libel suits, the generals use not only paragraphs but also corruption charges.

Meanwhile the world - except Thailand - moves further on...

... Again, TVF members should do some internet research regarding backgrounds related to RTP and the Thai military.

It is an eye-opener!

Any specific URLs to visit? C'mon give us some leads...!

The drivers licence have it written (and shown as an image) on the backside, if they are valid for cars or motorcycles. Are there any other licences for normal (private) drivers?

What I find most interesting is the point, that this licence would then be valid in all 10 countries of ASEAN. No more hassle with the police in Cambo or other countries, no need to apply for yet another licence.

Borwornsak Uwanno is right, when he says:

"Young men and women should be people with idealism and recognise the importance of justice. I don't understand where these people have gone. If we want society to be just and peaceful you can't just be idle and you must come out and take responsibility constructively ..."

But for this, the environment must be suitable. Subduing ever little bit of protest of difference of oppinion is certainly not favourable for a democratic behaviour as Khun Borwornsak is asking for. So far I am not aware of ANY kind of discussion about the pros and cons of yellow or red shirt politics of the past. Putting the lid on any such discussion will only increase the pressure to explode an a later time.

And if the present government is fighting against corruption, then why does it not allow public scrutiny of it's own handling of politics. That implies, that corruption NOW may not be pointed out. So why then should anybody trust the generals?

I'm no friend of Mr. T or the red shirts, but to suppress the freedom of oppinion and the freedom of the press is the wrong way that will lead backwards not forewards. And why should students take part in this?

That virtue council would then act like the sharia police in other countries, right? Take a personal look at the virtues of young ladies included? No more drinking after 10 pm? No more missing school? What else? Certainly nothing helpful for this country.

Some people should remember that wise word from very high up: Think first, and only then start to talk!

Let's face it, UBER and all those other "share economy" businesses are crap!

They only help their owner(s) to make a big profit by offering service at below cost rates through using people, who think they can make some money by the side. Too bad, this doesn't work out for anybody except the owners of Uber et al. Why is everybody so upbeat about this hustle kind of business?

As a matter of fact it kills of lots of jobs of decent working people, be they taxi drivers or others, and not only in Thailand, but all over the world. What is left are underpaid people, who struggle to make ends meet. Remember the old mom-and-pop-shops? Gone with 7/11. Remember the book shops, where you could peruse books at leisure? Gone with Amazon. The fashion boutiques, where the real trendy stuff would be? Gone with H&M and again Amazon et al. In the end, you can't even touch and feel what you buy, nor can you check or ask about the goods. Buy it from what you get to know online and be damned. And lots of people are out of work, for the riches of a few people, that are a pain in the lower back.

A good place, that can handle such amount and do it cheaply would be a university bookshop. I have good experience with the Chulalongkorn Bookshop, but there might be other universities closer to your place. Great: The also do simple binding including hardcover...

Me thinks, these are proposals, what should be done, not plans, what will be done. After all this was a seminar with people and organizations sharing their thoughts, nothing more.

And in general they are right, the income gap is far too wide and growing, leading ultimately to social unrest. But as already stated here, those which the money decide, and their decision is, that they need more money, before they can start pondering, if they might reduce the speed of their wealth growing.

Hazing is by idiots with idiots willing to be hazed in the name of an obscure bonding. Anybody with brains will laugh at the proposal by those upper level students to take part in a hazing. That is not for childredn, that is outright childish and shows, how little those involved have learned about the real life.

I still have problems to understand, how such a nonsense can take hold in Thailand...

An educated guess:

The money for the maintenance was prepared and set aside, but then - in a very strange way - disappeared. Right into the pocket of the top guys of the Airport Link,- just before they were sent to inactive posts by the new strong men.

I wonder why there is never a way to get this kind of fraudulent money back from these kind of guys...

Line,whatsapp , Facebook and others, are the sum of most Thai people life centers around now days,

the hell with real knowledge, real learning, world's events, Nope, it's all about gossip,

frivolous, mindless information exchange, I feel sorry for this generation's dependency on these

gadgets for every aspect of their life...

What makes me wonder: why nobody starts a campaign to diss these shit things like Facebook etc. I could imagine, that a movement to show, how un-cool this virtual world versus the real world is could gather momentum around the world. People are wasting time of their life in order to make the Suckerbugs et al richer than ever...

Folks, language is a vital part of a national identity. And being able to use your mother tongue well is a skill you can enjoy all your life. That ABR (abbreviation nonsense)is not much different from using "cool slang" words, and ABRs are an American language usage issue. This 'slang only' language is awful, when the people can't talk a decent language as taught in school.

I mean, who enjoys reading a book/ebook, that consists only (!) of slang and ABRs?

Rickirs wrote:

The problem of illegal weapons will never be solved as long as it is so easy to smuggle in weapons left, right and center. Beside that, it's a cultural thing, that people think, they need a weapon or that they are incomplete personalitiies without a weapon. Say thank you to the Americans. And as long as there is a policy, that the one with more power can do as he pleases, everybody tries to gain power by having a weapon.

And all that is beside the fact, that some have hidden weapons for the big final countdown between political sides.

What do you expect in a society where over the last 80 years there have been 13 military coups? Government by the gun is a Thai cultural tradition. How can you expect its citizens to have hope for a peaceful democracy? If the Democrats thought they could not (at least according to Suthep) rely on military intervention to prevail politically, they would either resort to weapons or free and open elections but obviously the latter has never worked. Compare this to America which has some of the most liberal gun laws in the world and never in its almost 240-year history never had regime change through military coup.

Sorry, there is no relieve in numbers. Most if not all coups were restricted to powergrabbing by top-echelon military folks, getting their opponents grabbed and taken away, but with nearly or no fighting at all. Pibulsongkram, Sarit, Thanom and later Suchinda or Sonthi in 2006. So that can't be the reason for the widespread ownership of weapons. The weapons used by military and police are "legal" weapons, they "own" the state monopoly on weapons and on killing others.

Weapons among regular citizens are most likely used in private altercations or fighting to gain advantage in a business (like illegal poaching, illegal ressorts, getting farmers off their land). They have little (as opposed to nothing!) to do with politics, except in situations like the red vs. yellow fights. The only ones to train to use weapons in a formation are the red shirts prior to 2010, when they had training in nearly every changwat in the Isaan.

And if I compare this with the USA? There are daily killings, nearly monthly killing spees at schools and all this would of course also happen, if there was no free gun ownership. That's why these school massacre also happen every once in a while in Western Europe, e.g. in GB or FRG. France is a sligthly different story with their North-Africans.

Back to Thailand: The military has always been involved in politics, since they (together with civil servants) overthrew the absolute monarchy. Their influence is diminishing, but it is still there and if the top guy thinks enough is enough they will just intervene. Still I think a coup in Thailand is very different from a coup e.g. in Africa. And that's what Western governments fail to realize.

The problem of illegal weapons will never be solved as long as it is so easy to smuggle in weapons left, right and center. Beside that, it's a cultural thing, that people think, they need a weapon or that they are incomplete personalitiies without a weapon. Say thank you to the Americans. And as long as there is a policy, that the one with more power can do as he pleases, everybody tries to gain power by having a weapon.

And all that is beside the fact, that some have hidden weapons for the big final countdown between political sides.

I would like to personally nominate this post as the most moronic America

bashing post ever seen on TV. Along the same line, I also propose some

sort of basic IQ test prior to being allowed to join TV.

America is to blame for militants in Thailand having weapons ? Wow.

Wait a minute. Was that statement satire ??

I would like you to do a comprehensive reading test before you post.

A comprehensive reading test or a reading comprehension test?

I'm a liberal, I leave it up to you <wg>...

The problem of illegal weapons will never be solved as long as it is so easy to smuggle in weapons left, right and center. Beside that, it's a cultural thing, that people think, they need a weapon or that they are incomplete personalitiies without a weapon. Say thank you to the Americans. And as long as there is a policy, that the one with more power can do as he pleases, everybody tries to gain power by having a weapon.

And all that is beside the fact, that some have hidden weapons for the big final countdown between political sides.

There was a time, about ten years ago, when a lot of American religious NGOs in Cambodia were hunting for Paedophiles. Problem was, about 87% of all paedophiles in Camboland were locals, according to some research. So in order to deliver the quota to be eligible to stay on in P.P., many resorted to "helping" the detection of paedophiles by sending young boys to places like the Capitol restaurant and pester the tourists there. The kids would approach the tourist and the NGO staff was waiting with a camera in place around the next corner. Showing empathy for the poor kid? Click did the camera. Give the kid some money to buy some food? Also click. Not being touched or getting any money, these kids would demand 10 US$ or else they would say, they were touched indecently. The only way to get rid of them was to offer them a beating, which wasn't in the NGOs interest. Finally the local police cleared out the place of these young buggers.
Why I tell this? because it sounds very similar to what is happening in Pattaya and what happened to Chris. Young Cambodian street urchins? They think they can go free due to their young age. And at the same time, if anybody knows their handler, it is easy to order and pay for an "incident".

Of course the local police in Pattaya knows this, but they don't stop it, as it provides them with lots of under-the-table-money! And as they know their public image is lower than that of any other living creature, they don't care about their image any more.
Now I have met Chris a few times and I can tell you, that he has - wonder, over wonder - an official dual citizenship, being both US and Canadian citizen. So don't continue on that nonsense lead.

Chris is spearheading legal action against an European, who will probably be deported and declared persona-non-grata, and that guy has not really many friends left in Switzerland either, if I read the web messages correctly about this guy. So I would guess, that this guy, in his desperation, has turned to the Cambo-Boys handler to set up Chris and hoping, that would de-rail legal proceedings against him. A guess of mine, but I dare to say, an educated guess, nevertheless!

I just switched to TRUE, because I had problems with my TOT DSL-line. Every now and then a hardware failure in one of the TOT switch boxes would take down my Internet access. but NOT the telephone signal!

If it was a soft problem it helped to lift the phone and check, that I got a signal, after which the DSL signal also remembered me again...

If all else fails, switch off the router for a few seconds, that switch in on again. Tunring a device off and on again solves about 50% of all errors/problems, no joke!

The hot weather has calmed down, so let's do the same and calm down as well.

It is good, that finally somebody is going after those, that thought they can do whatever they want without being held responsible. Now that the protection is gone, they can be caught. What most have assumed, now it turns out to be the most likly outcome, that most harrasment and killing came from the red shirt camp.

Give police a little more time to go after the real big bosses, but don't give them too much time, until everybody has fled the scene.

And after they got the heavy duty culprits, let's remember, that most red shirts (as many on the other side) were only joining due to peer pressure. So we better start the grand discourse among all people in Thailand, how the future should look like.

Or as Khun Karl the Marx would have said: Shirts of all colors: unite! You got nothing to loose but your buttons!

Last Friday immigration came and busted a car detailing outfit close to here. All but one we taken away.
On Saturday the place war seemingly working as before.

My guess is, immigration got paid off, the workers are back and will most likely have to work for free, until the bribes are paid off.

We should look a bit deeper and in detail:

There are Cambodians and Burmese and others with a legal status, i.e. visa and WP here. They need not fear gettting busted,- at least not according to official notion.

The majority are illegal here. But still they are humans like everyone else here and everywhere, so a bit of compassion would suit us all. They are not voluntarily here, but because their situation at home made coming to Thailand look the better alternative. Let's not forget there were and are also tens of thousands of Thais working abroad,- for the same reason. Working abroad is a heavy burden on everybody: no family, no friends, likely different food and miserable accomodation. And on top of that most likely your boss is cheating you out of some or all of the agreed amount of money. And don't mention occupational health hazards.

Why so many of them came here to work? Because they are the cheaper labour, compared to Thais. Because they are not so lazy (be it true or not), that is why the companies prefer them. Daily minimum wage is 300 Baht/day, at least on paper. I don't know, if the law stipulates, that this is also valid for foreign staff, but certainly not for illegal staff. So especially those companies, that are very unproductive have to rely on cheap illegal labour, else they could not continue to exist. There have repeatedly been articles in the newspaper, that non-Thai crew members on fishing trawlers were thrown overboard to drown. Nobody will ask questions...

So this issue has two sides. The reasoning, that these foreigners take away jobs from Thais is BS. We have somewhere between 1 and 3% of unemployment in Thailand. Compare that to around 8% in the USA or 25-30% in countries like Spain, Greece or Italy. And by the end of next year the borders are open for these people to come in to work legally.

If it is a measure to get rid of unproductive sweatshops, I can agree with it. Or a measure to reduce criminal attacks like beating up the men or raping the girls. But my fear is, that this is a measure to push the nationalistic button in Thais. And that is a bad thing!

dru2

Good, I hope to see Bangkok under water in the next few years.

You really are a very self-centred and stupid Thaksinista!

Folks, don't get taken for a ride by a funny snide. Taksin is out, Future is in!

I'm glad the generals dare to stop such big-scale project, as most others would have said, it is too late to stop it now.

For the anti-flooding projects as well as for the 2.3 Trillion (?) Baht infrastructure project a re-checking should be made on their usefulenss and the cost of it. Prefably from local and international experts from universities etc and not from companies, that have a financial interest in these projects.

So far, the generals have made no mistakes...