rabas

Remember, Anutin was a necessary evil for the previous government to form. Forces that support the 250 senators are unlikely to support Anutin, PTP, or Thaksin. In fact, that's why they are there.

If you liked Anutin's idiotic, corrupt, farang-phobic Covid vaccine disaster, you'll just love him as PM. Add Thaksin and you get a government packed with corrupt Thai billionaires, Ugh!

On a more serious note, a Ukrainian 'official' advises Russia on Black Sea safety. In truth, she's very active in many war related humanitarian projects tirelessly caring for children and raising money. Amazing people.

Amazing video of a Ukrainian IR drone attacking a mighty Russian T90 tank, in the dark. After being hit, the tank runs at top speed as the drone follows dropping more grenades, eventually disabling the poor tank before blowing it to smithereens. Wait for the final frame. The last blast was so big, the brave little drone probably didn't make it back. Job well done Ukraine.

Non-immigrant Type O is the base visa type used for many purposes. No one is going to get rid if it.

'O' is the base visa category, O-A was dreamed up for a specific class of foreign retirees. There's no reason to require criminal checks for everyone. So I doubt they do that. Also, why require yearly overseas criminal checks for people living here full time? As far as I know, O-A retires tend to be more mobile. Significantly larger financial limits on legitimate retirees would be counter productive. Among other reasons, criminals often have more money. Lol, how many retirees would start criminal activity to cover the increased expenses? Note, previous monetary increases have been grandfathered so they do understand the concept. Even Joke commended not going beyond 800K last time changes were made. They may make life more tedious, they seem good at that, but they won't chase long term retirees out of Thailand. That's not good for anyone.

Confucius? No, seahorses.

Arguably more, all things considered including that he is a recent appointment.

I didn't mention income tax. Hidden taxes (see link) are a substantial part of every country's tax base. Everything from Beer Lao, motorbike petrol, rice, even mobile phone fees has hidden tax. In turn Thailand's tax base supports these parks. Given that, all Thai as well as foreigners living here help support the parks via taxes. Foreign tourists do not because they spend little time here. Therefore, Thai and foreigners who live here should pay a lower price. Foreign tourists including Chinese should pay a higher price to support these venues equally.

So who replaced Prem? Ex-PM Gen Surayud Chulanont, Prem's right-hand man, was chosen to replace Prem as the all powerful head of the Privy Council. Surayud has been one of Thaksin's greatest critics all along. You can read about their relationship here, WIKI. Good luck on the pardon.

"He did what? Here, hold my tank ..." Honesty, considering all that's transpired between various parties, PT would surely be least favored for a Royal pardon, especially considering Surayud Chulanont's past and current roles.

The official term is 'hidden tax'. Everyone pays. In 2001, US citizens paid $657.5 billion in hidden taxes, $2,642 per capita. Likewise, everyone in Thailand pays hidden taxes into the tax base which in turn supports parks and attractions. So those of us living here, eating rice, using petrol, etc. also pay.

Thai tax revenues help support the venues, foreigners pay no tax.

Elsewhere, the Department of Corrections said Thaksin's safety is top priority when he is imprisoned on his Aug 10 return. For the full combined 10 year term, they said. They will also arrange family visit facilities.

Former massage parlor godfather and convicted criminal Chuwit Kamolvisit has just reported on a meeting in Hong Hong outside the jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Thailand between banned political leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit and fugitive convicted criminal ex-prime minster Thaksin Shinawatra to decide the next government of Thailand. Not sure how it could be any clearer.

So Putin will assault NATO, with little spare capacity after just trying to hold back Ukraine. Not to mention Western high tech weaponry is far superior as we all now see. BTW, the Chinese are in full denial that US systems easily shoot down Putin's unstoppable (cough) 'hyperbolic' missiles. Of course he won't attack NATO, take a look at these numbers.

True but tax structure is irrelevant to whether foreigners should contribute to maintenance and operation costs that Thai pay. Anyway, everyone not living deep in the woods pays heaps of unseen embedded taxes, everywhere. My point was that Thailand can easily burden the Thai citizenry for maintenance fees but has no reasonable way except entrance fees to get foreigners to contribute. I don't see it as unfair.

They do. About 1000B just to enter the US Shenandoah National Park, about 500B average up to 1000s to enter tourist attractions in Paris. You realize that the measly 10B - 20B that poor Thai pay does not begin to cover most attractions' operating costs. That comes out of taxes on Thai people, of which tourists pay nothing! So why on Earth should a poor Thai person pay more, though taxes and high entrances costs, that a foreign tourist? And even full entrance fees in Thailand are much cheaper than the West.

You mistake "legitimate threat to sovereignty" with "a threat to Russia's/Putin's opportunistic and illegal territorial expansion". These are not the same. Your friend Mearsheimer is an ultra realest and does not suggest Russia/Putin has any moral right to Ukraine, only that fear of NATO impeding Russia's plans of imperial expansion will trigger Putin the evil one. Mearsheimer is not defending Russia as you do. He simply explains the logic behind what may happen. To better understand Mearsheimer read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer. However, you may need to remove your anti-Western glasses to see his view.

"he's always had strong links to the Shinawatra family ..." What surprise. So this won't wash. Thakisin will buy a new return ticket, this guy will be founded to own media shares or other nonsense. Rinse, spin, repeat. In reality there are only two requirements for anyone to be PM, 1) Monarchy stays, 2) Thaksin stays far away.

True, maybe need a new theory. However, when programming these kinds of pages there are often parameters for position, box size, text size, etc. Get any wrong and things disappear. Not sure if Immigration has a Thai/English option. One way to switch to Thai might be to use Chrome translate, but that may or may not show a hidden star.

Got it. Page layout software bug. 'Given name' and 'Middle name' also have no stars. What's in common? The longest labels come too close to the entry box cutting out the star. Common software bug. Switch to Thai language and see if the stars reappear. Thanks, I'll remember that. This kind of problem could get anyone.

Crimean bridge hit again! Two explosions, some reports suggest at least one span collapsed. Lights are out along one section as seen at night.

No one said mRNA vaccines contain spike proteins, the mRNA is a genetic code for the viral spike protein. The question was: do they use (produce) all or part of the spike? The quote I posted from Nature answers the question. "The uniting feature of current genetic COVID-19 vaccines is the provision of mRNAs for the whole, membrane-anchored spike protein" Perhaps you misunderstood the term "provision of mRNAs" for the spike protein. This means they provide only the code and not the protein. In scientific parlance 'spike' can equally refer to the mRNA code or its expressed protein.

No, they use the whole spike. "The uniting feature of current genetic COVID-19 vaccines is the provision of mRNAs for the whole, membrane-anchored spike protein" [ref]