Dogmatix

Another wasted life. Thai policy in the Deep South over the last century a lose lose for everyone.

If she pressures you for more money than you can afford or want to give (without actually asking for it) and that is unacceptable to you, move on because it will only get worse. If you are only worried about whether she worked in a bar or not, and everything else about her is fine in your eyes, stop worrying about it. If she worked in a bar and you visited bars and took girls out, you are equal. Have you told her all the stuff you have done with girls in Thailand and around the world?

Right. The Thai justice system is all about extracting confessions and guilty pleas from suspects who can't afford proper legal representation, which is most of them. Before entering a plea in the English common law system, the suspect is entitled to see the evidence the prosecution has assembled against them. But this is not the case in Thailand and the suspect will be placed under great pressure to receive a lighter sentence by pleading guilty. When you look at the prevailing level of incompetence in the Thai police and prosecution service, it is obvious that they could hardly function at all without the system of torture and forced confessions and a court system that stacks the odds against poor defendants. If they had to abide by Western principles, how many convictions would they get?

The Thai police have many times claimed they would stop insisting on crime re=-enactments which serve no useful investigative purpose but earn money for the police because they charge the media to attend. If the onlookes try to lynch the suspect then it is well worth the media paying for ring side seat for their cameraman. It is this type of drama that keeps the system profitable for the cops and the media. 'This ((his refusal to participate) angered family members and relatives who had traveled a fair distance to Khon Kaen hoping to encounter the suspect in person and demand answers as to why he conducted the actions he allegedly did.' He deserves his punishment but I don't really blame him for refusing to play the cops' game and help them make money from corruption. I don't blame anyone, including those who are falsely accused for refusing. He has confessed anyway, so how will it help the police in their investigation. If their vital details they needed him to help clarify, they could just arrange a private session without onlookers and media. I still remember the re-enactment of the murders in Koh Tao by the 2B who had confessed after a plastic bag job and they obviously had no clue what they they were supposed to have done and had to be coached through it all by corrupt cops.

In Asia there is now only a jury system in Hong Kong and that only due to the joint agreement with the UK. China has already dispensed with juries in ' national security' trialsof disidents in Hong Kong. All the other former British colonies abolished jury trials in the late 60s or early 70s,

I suspect that, if Mr Rudolph was holding Mr Sathien's gun hand, trying to get it from him, when the gun went off, he would also have powder residue on his hand. If he needed to have Mr Sathien fire a shot into the wall postumously, he could have put the gun in Mr Sathien's hand and pulled the trigger with Mr Sathien's finger. That way they would both have powder residue. I am also wondering if Mr Lakh was actually awake and witnessed the fight. Her interview looks extremely shifty to me.

It seems like the articles that said Mr Rudolf was living with two wives all made the same misprint. The other woman in the house was actually his wife's mother, Mrs Urai, who said she heard the shot and the commotion from upstairs but was scared and decided not to investigate. It is certainly odd that Mr Rudolf's wife, Mrs Lakh, was not woken up by the shot. She had apparently returned home from a heavy boozing session, possibly with the deceased, Mr Sathien, and went straight to bed and passed out cold. Mr Rudolf had to rouse her from her drunken slumber to advise her of the unfortunate incident. Amarin News said that Mr Rudolf said he knew Mr Sathien as one of his wife's drinking buddies. The TV news clips I have listened suggest that police are investigating to see, if Mr Rudolf used excessive force and might have intentionally killed Mr Sathien. No one has doubted yet that Mr Sathien attempted a home invasion or that the .38 was his own. However, it looks as if there is some suspicion that Mr Rudolf might have continued to beat Mr Sathien after he was no longer a threat and even might have continued beating him after he had tied him up. Since Mr Sathien is no longer available to give testimony about the exact point he ceased to be a threat relative to the exact point Mr Rudolf finished beating him, it seems quite difficult to come to a conclusion. However, I would say that any gratuity Mr Rudolf can spare for the police pathologists' benevolent fund would probably be money well spent to ensure there is no exaggeration to Mr Sathien's injuries that would make it look as if their more than what was necessary to subdue him. It woud also be helpful, if they could find that Mr Sathien had actually died of alcoholic poisoning or COVID.

Very good point. The deceased and the Swiss man's wife were apparently both local drunks.

Thai law is deliberately vague to allow different legal interpretations of the same events for different people and precedent is not important. My understanding of this includes attending a course about firearms laws with a Thai lawyer as part of a shooting course at a Thai military owned range. The lawyer said the courts expect you to use proportionationate force to defend yourself and family and that you should not have intent to kill the intruder. It seems ridiculous but he said that, if you are armed, you need to check there is a really a credible threat to your life or someone else's and preferably fire a warning shot. Then you should aim below the waist. If you are sure you hit him, wait to see that he is no longer a threat before you fire another shot. I told him this is ridiculous because you need to aim at centre of mass to be sure of stopping the threat and, if you wait and see before firing again, he might shoot you first. Also I argued that shooting below the waist might hit him in the balls which might be far worse that being wounded in the stomach or chest, if he survived. His answers were that he agreed with me completely but that is the way Thai courts see it, as evidenced by cases he has looked at and the key thing is being able to prove lack of intent to kill. I asked him about ammo, since in the US lawyers have made cases that using hollow points in self defence killings showed intent to kill. He said he had never seen any cases where the court looked at the type of ammo used and recommended loading a self defence piece with hollow points to increase chance of stopping the threat and reduce chance of rounds going through walls and hitting other people. Another lawyer told me that, if you shoot someone in self defence in Bangkok, the police forensic team will charge you from 80,000 - 100,000 baht per shot fired in order to come up with a report that favours your account of events. So best to get the job done without firing too many rounds. I can see that, in order to extort more money and appease the family of Mr Sathien, police will try to argue that Mr Rudolf should have been more gentle with Mr Sathien. They will probably try to argue that he tied him up and beat him to death after disarming him. If it comes out that Mrs Lakh and Mr Sathien were lovers, they might produce jealousy as a motive for killed Mr Sathien after he was disabled and neatly trussed up. You can be sure that all manner of dirty tricks are used against Rudolf since he is only a farang married to peasants with no connections and therefore no rights.

I the video link in the post above, you can see that the cops didn't take any chances with the dangerous 63 year old farang killer. He was arrested and handcuffed immediately, making it difficult for him to perform in the instant re-enactment ordered by police. I have looked at several articles in Thai and (you can search for them googling the deceased's name เสถียร จันทรขันตรี). I note that, although they all feature different photographs, indicating the police invited the photographers, the articles are all nearly indentical word for word. Obviously the police gave them a press release or issued a verbal statement. Police are good at getting their own version of events over to the media with no contradictions, partly taking advantage of the laziness of reporters. In this case, however, the police version shows the farang is completely blameless, having killed an armed intruder in self defence. They need to investigate to confirm but arresting and handcuffing him immediately just because he is a farang is disgusting. That would not happen, if it were the pooyai baan or any respected Thai in the village. Presumably Mr Rudolf is now sitting in the police cells swatting mosquitos and has been subjected to heavy demands for cash with or without plastic bags. The AN translation omits this part but all the Thai articles point out that Mr Rudolf lived in the house with two wives. The one who is interviewed in the video, Mrs Lakh, is obviously a complete peasant, whom he must have met in a beer bar in Pattaya or somewhere. She speaks Thai with a heavy Isaan accent. In the Thai articles she admitted that she knew the deceased, Mr Sathien, and and even invited him round to drink at the house. She admitted that Mr Sathien made advances to her but claimed she didn't provide him with any sexual favours. She said she enjoyed going out to drink at various peoples' houses in the district. Most Thai farmers go to bed early and rise before dawn to put in some hours of hard graft before it gets too hot. Middle aged women going out drinking in other village people's houses late at night is synonymous with a local set of ne'er do well gamblers and alcholics and maybe she is a yaba taker, particularly if she has a background in prostitution. No doubt she was up to no good with Mr Sathien and probably provided favours to other gentlemen in the area too. It is also not beyond the bounds of possibility she was involved in a conspiracy with Mr Sathien to murder her husband and inherit what she probably imagined to be fabulous wealth. There may also have been a jealously issue with the other wife. There is nothing in any of the articles about the other women nor any pictures of her.

Liink to video report. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=239416618203511

A Thai policeman in Bangkok emptied his magazine into a guy he found on a window ledge trying to break into his flat several stories up. The burglar who was killed was no threat to cop's life at that moment and firing all 17 rounds seemed a bit excessive. But nothing happened to the cop of course.

I think it is unlikely that international courier companies are doing this on their own account but that doesn't mean there is no corruption involved. The Customs Dept is one of the most corrupt government agencies. Couriers use clearance agents to do the clearance. So it is possible that there is collusion between the courier staff, the clearance agent and the customs.

No, it is the threshhold to have to register in the paperless customs system. You can be asked to go to pay at customs for any declared or assessed value. If something coming through the post is assess for tax, you may be asked to pay at the post office. For more valuable items or things that might be illegal to import, you will be asked to go to the postal customs office in Chaeng Wattana, if in Bangkok. Couriers usually handle the clearance for you for a fee.

The declared value is not ignored. I was referring to packages sent by mail with a declared value of less than 1,500 baht. Unlike the post office, the couriers have no exemption and every package is opened and taxed with the customs clearance delegated to clearance agents. Often the customs will verify the value by searching for it online to see find the most expensive price you can buy it for and will charge tax based on that plus the cost of freight and insurance. Declaring at $700 will in the initial instance avoid the need to register in the paperless customs system for things over 40k baht but, if they arbitrarily decide it is worth more than 40k they will insist on registration in paperless customs anyway.

That is correct. You are a Thai tax resident if you spend more than 180 days in the Kingdom per tax year which is Jan to Dec but you are only liable for overseas income remitted to Thailand in the same year it was earned. In practice they don't have to file a tax return if you have no taxable income and they don't look into foreigner's pension remittances. If they ever did, you just say that you save your pension in your home contry and just remit the income paid more than a year earlier. It's not going to be a problem.

Don't use couriers to send stuff to Thailand. Either send it by mail and declare at less than 1,500 to avoid Thai taxes and risk losing it or buy locally. Couriers have no exemption from import tax and VAT but Thailand Post does under 1,500. Most packages are not opened and come straight through but if you are unlucky you will be asked to come and pay tax on the price they assess from looking online. If over B40k you have to register in the paperless customs system which involves giving your actually passport to the courier and pay some extra fees for clearance but the tax rate is the same. It also takes about a week to clear. I don't understand what the B20k importer fee is. Sounds like BS to me. You are allowed to import computer equipment as a private individual.

TAT thinking that if there are a billion Indians, if they do a few Amazing Thailand ads, 10% of them will come during Diwali. 100 million Indians will arrive and dump a million baht each without even having to let them buy land. So 100bn baht.

From Thai sources it seems like this couple were manufacturing guns. Some were the classic Thai single shot .22LR pen guns. Others were Thai pradit which is a single shot break action pistol that fires (very dangerously) a 12 gauge shotgun shell. But most seem to have been modified from BB guns which is why they had a lot of metal working gear. I guess the boy graduated from a technical college and had learned metal working. The frames of BB guns are quite realistic and it seems that they were turning parts such as barrels, cylinders and firing pins on a lathe. The only problem is that there is no way they could produce parts that would be strong enough to withstand firing many rounds of regular center fire ammunition. Maybe customers just wanted them to threaten people with or to fire one shot in case of emergency. Who knows? If google in Thai for peope arrested selling guns online it seems to happen all the time. I can't imagine the lifespan is very long if they promote openly on FB like this couple. Customers are happy to transfer cash from their bank accounts to pay for illegal goods, so they automatically get shopped too. This couple had also carefully maintained records of the names and addresses of customers they shipped to. So they will all be getting some unpleasant visitors. The couple are only 24 and 20. All very sad they couldn't find a legal way to apply to their entrepreneurial skills.

The Yingluck government approved three separate large budgets for flood mitigation but nothing of substance happened except theft from the budgets.

I corrected myself after I saw the pictures. Yes it was a new model Beretta, not the standard 92F that used to be popular in Thailand. I agree about Glocks but Thais love them. They are also relatively cheap in a country where legal guns are prohibitively expensive. I don't like the trigger on the Beretta 92F (I had one of the .380 Beretta Cheetahs which is virtually the same mechanism back in the day). I don't know, if the new models are much better . Probably not. I don't like Glock triggers much either . I like trigger on a 1911 or a CZ Shadow which can easily be tuned up to be very light. That is from a sports shooting perspective though. For a service or self defense gun, light triggers are dangerous and a Beretta factory trigger is a pretty good choice. I have mixed feelings about Glocks due to the lack of safeties. Even a 5.5lb factory Glock trigger can result in an accidental discharge under stress which happens quite often US police forces that use Glocks. Cops have quite often shot their buddies by accident in police stations with Glocks too, specially with the models that needed you to pull the trigger before removing the slide. So many accidants are aused by people just removing the magazine from a pistol without checking there is no round in the chamber.

I have been a sports shooter in Thailand for many years - pistols, revolvers, shotguns, rimfire and centerfire rifles. You get to hear this stuff from other shooters and gun shop owners and can read some online in English or Thai.

Out of accurate range but could still do some damage. I have seen people shoot 9mm pistols at 100 meters and not doing too badly. If you can see where the shots fall with puffs of dust, you can walk your shots to a man size target. (I have also tried this with a .22LR rifle at 400m which was fun). There are YouTube videos of 9mm pistol shots at 200m or more which takes a lot of practice. But, if the yobs pointed their guns upwards at arround 45% they would have a good chance of hitting the beach from 100-200m. Shotguns are also capable of shooting decent groups at a 100m, if loaded with slugs.

Now I have seen pics of his 9mm Beretta and ..357 magnum S&W revolver and both look pretty new and must have been bought on the black market at relatively high prices. Probably leaked from the civil service welfare scheme or stolen. The boatman was apparently arrested for possession of a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol. The guns look too good to be Thai copies. So cops should be able to trace previous owner, if legally imported and registered in Thailand. There are Thai and farang serial numbers on them and difficult and the numer can often still be read with a high power microscope, even if filed off. But no mention of the origin of the guns and, as already mentioned, it looks as if he paid off the Samui cops to make the charges go away. If not needed for evidence they would have been able to sell the guns back into the black market along with the dope too. A nice little earner for them. In the video on the Daily Mail's website, both idiots meekly signed confessions, which makes it indefensible that both were allowed to go free after that. But Thai police hierarchy would not be bothered about probable evidence of corruption being on foreign news outlets, if no charges pressed after confessions. Simpson looks like a bouncer, not a rocket scientist or a smart crypto trader. It is much more likely that he is a boiler room boy. They often pass themselves off as crypto traders to explain their ill gotten gains from ripping off pensioners' life savings and may put it into crypto for money laundering purposes. His driving license shown in the Mail video was issued in Surat, so he must have moved to Hua Hin after paying off the BiB in Samui. Presumably he <deleted> off some influential person in Hua Hin. Maybe another British boiler room boy who paid the BiB more. Perhaps he will also buy his way out of this one and will be toting his guns and yaba around Thailand for many more years. Thai police seem to love foreign boiler room boys and other foreign criminals, particularly if they pay well and mainly only prey on other foreigners.

BBL mobile app seems to work fine for me. I like that you can see recent transactions in the app. KBANK also works well but you have to request statements to see recent transactions. They arrive within a couple of hours but I want to check transactions immediately. Everything else about the same. I don't use the other bank mobile aps. BBL had a problem registering my Thai citizenship for a few months and I had to get other branches to call my branch to remind them to update details twice because they were still asking for my passport. That was before I started using the mobile app.