EnglishJohn

Red-shirts protesting for democracy and non-violence ?. They need to spend more time in school.

At least they can stand there and feel safe : nobody will be firing grenades at them.

Others gave their lives not so long ago so people can do that now.

Dear Thailand,

Remember last week you questioned why the US put Thailand alongside countries experiencing the most significant human rights setback?

This is why.

Oh please!!!

Those kids went there with full knowledge they would be breaking the current laws. Whether they agree with them or not they earned whatever punishment is meeted out to them. They could have found another way to show their displeasure with the junta without breaking any laws. And NO! I am not a junta lover or hater.

...you completely missed the point.

It's not whether the students knowingly broke the law by protesting and upset the Junta and "earned whatever punishment is meeted(sic) out to them"...

It's that there is a law to stop students peacefully protesting.

Understand?

Please try to keep up.

I do enjoy it when people who miss the point accuse others of missing the point.

The Junta are in power because Mr T decided he would MURDER peaceful protestors to cling on to power - not arrest them. The country was heading for civil war.

Prayuth is trying to prevent those same people inciting others to resume violent actions and keep the split the population as wide as they can. They are having a hard time doing it because they can't rely on the police to protect them any more and so they are trying to use children to do it. Spontaneous protests by the general public don't happen with red-shirts like they did after the amnesty bill : they only do it if they get free transport and parties.

These students are obviously being pushed forward by those same people. If you don't realise that, you must be new to Thailand. They don't want any reforms because they might have to play fair.

The Junta will be gone soon and then after the most free and fair elections Thailand has managed to hold (where non-red shirts do not get assassinated while campaigning), these students will be free to peacefully protest against the democratically elected government as much as they please.

Do you get it yet ?.

The anti-democrats merely advancing another cog on their wheel to destroy the PTP, Yingluck, et al. In effect the pro-democracy side of things

But destroying it at the Bangkok-centric elitist political level, will not work. Their reach does not extend beyond their narrow political base.

Attacking the Commerce Minister first, so they can move on to Yingluck as well.

It is this same anti-democrat chain-of-command starting with their favorite, the NACC, on through the judicial system as cover to provide legitimacy.

The same chain-of-command which never puts any component of the anti-democrats in jail, regardless of their excesses.

All in the service of clearing any electoral obstacles in the future for the anti-democrats, that 'reform' may have overlooked.

But a related fact that is conveniently omitted, is that the rice in question is being sold very successfully. It is placing Thailand in a top tier of rice exporters....Little of that money is flowing down to the farmers however...Re-distribution of wealth is not what the anti-democrats are all about.

Thank you for reminding us of the average intelligence of the Pheu-Thai supporter.

Ignoring the child-like rhetoric at the beginning:

So you think the government should buy the rice from farmers at a grossly inflated price using taxpayers money then - when that rice is sold - the money raised should be given to the farmers as well ?.

Ha ha ha ha

"Take the money from everybody else and give it to me". Democracy red-shirt style.

It's no surprise. Bangkok Post are well and truly bought.

Like most of the press here.

I am still waiting for The Nation to man up and place an appology for it assisting in the creation of the conditions that led to the coup. I hope that the junta stay in power for atleast another 5 years and they make the life on the Thai media hell. This will be the only way that the yellow livered Thai media will learn that you must allow time for a democracy to work on its own and not take the coup shortcut everytime.

Blame for the coup lies on all sides of the political spectrum.

The coup would never have happened if terrorism was not being used to murder protestors.

Prayuth would have let events take their course if the violence was not set to increase. First the Army had to provide security against the terrorists because the police were letting them through the checkpoints and then when it was clear Pheu-Thai would not compromise in the slightest (under orders of course) and the attacks would increase (possibly to civil war), he took the decision to end it.

All the conspiracy theories about collusion and it being a pre-planned event are typical Thai fantasies. The government had the rope and they hung themselves with the Amnesty bill. Not much more to it than that.

What is clear is just how far the rot in Thai society goes. The press should be key players in attempting to reconcile the two side during this transition phase - but it's very obvious that the leaders in that business are as dirty as everyone else.

I plead in your honest and earnest effort to seriously fight corruption, please do not neglect power corruption. Corrupt individuals exhibit moral deterioration by using their power to benefit themselves and their kinds. Its showing up more and more as each day passed.

But it was OK when they were elected, even by the party list?

It was OK as long as long as it is within the law. You break the law and you are duly punished as in the Thawil case. Contrast that with the coup breaking the law under Section 113 of the Thai Criminal Code, they cant be punished because they tore up the law and granted themselves amnesty which except the junta from guilt and liability. You cant live in denial all the time.

More of the unbelievable red-shirt hypocrisy.

"Corrupt individuals exhibit moral deterioration by using their power to benefit themselves" : after the amnesty bill which is the whole reason we had a coup in the first place, you should be too ashamed to try and criticise others for the same thing. Pheu-Thai tried to use their power to give themselves amnesty for 25,000 cases of corruption.

Can you even see it ? - or are you blind with your political bias ?.

I think you see it, but your personal moral standards are so low, you don't care. You just want them back in so the chance of a gravy train is on the menu again.

LOL, gotta love this forum.

All hopes and dreams smashed with the first reply telling him his new pup is a runt with genetic defects !.

the west didn't seem to have a problem with ousting Sadam with a huge army, causing the today's problems any way.

Well what stops them this time? Is it Bush's friend SA and its oil?

try explain this to all of the famiies of the 1000s of butchered victims.

The Twin Towers caused the problems of today. It made it clear that you must take terrorists out at the root. The rest is just politics and mistakes.

The reason the USA doesn't go in is because they don't have public support. You can put the continuing butchery of ISIS at the door of the media for ensuring this.

Which is worse, the USA waterboarding a known terrorist to find what they are going to do next or hundreds of men, women and children being lines up in a street and butchered with a knife one by one in cold blood ?.

Neither is right but it is all a question of proportion. The first makes headline news in all the papers, the second doesn't get a mention.

It will take another major event in a Western city before the brain-dead public will wake up and realise what the word 'war' actually means.

Mind you, the good thing about ISIS is that all these extremists are gathering together in areas out of reach of the lawyers and human-rights campaigners so they can be eventually be wiped out. They can never win : it's just a question of how bad things get before they get better.

When will the West and peaceful Muslim majority accept the fact that treating IS as part of the Human Race will not work.

We need to obliterate their strongholds. This may sound as though I advocate using the same tactics as they use and that is exactly what is required.

We in Europe only see part of the atrocities committed all over the world.

Stop being nice

In the UK, every time ISIS do something like this we get 10 other stories telling us how they are not really Muslim's (who are all peace-loving). Even those who go to Syria to fight with ISIS are entirely innocent and were 'groomed' online by some unspecified evil person.

At the same time, we get a deafening silence from those Muslim's. Yet if one of their own gets killed in any way which might be suspicious, they make more noise than a hen house with a fox in it.

Every week or so I check the internet about ISIS and there is always a new story about some atrocity they have committed. Yet we hardly hear about any of them on the news in the UK. They will be buried deep in their news website somewhere, but that's all.

The West considers a harmonious 'politically correct' society far more important than the lives of those murdered by ISIS. However it is a castle built on sand : they have to keep doing more and more things to hold it up.

Let's see what our government will do now after 30 odd Brits got killed in Tunisia. I predict a couple of 'Cobra' meetings then make a few statements about how we will fight terrorism tooth and nail. Anything more risks a backlash from indigenous Muslims.

"He confirmed that Pol Lt Gen Kamronwit Thoopkrachang did neither brought the handgun in his carry-on baggage or loaded in the plane."

There we go : he did his job perfectly and this proves it. His 'face' remains 100% intact.

Oh, hang on : we have the hard evidence of the guy admitting it was in his checked baggage so the above statement must be a complete crock. The man has stood up and made an idiot of himself : 'face' 100% in tatters.

I used to bring stuff from the UK which is expensive here, but soon realised that it is not a patch on Thai food and nobody ever ate it after the first try.

Now it's just tea bags and chocolate.

I can buy alcohol much more cheaply in the UK than I can in Thailand.

The main reason I like it in Thailand is that I feel free from the constant rules of nanny-state UK. I rely on my own common sense to survive instead of having a million and one 'Health and Safety' rules which are quite absurd, but everyone adheres to them 100% because their insurance is not valid if they don't - and with the ridiculous suing culture we received from the USA, they dare not risk it.

And I would say the Thai public are much happier and laid back than those in the UK (well, outside of Bangkok anyway). And if you keep yourself to yourself, everybody pretty much leaves you alone. In the UK the government never leave you alone : they are constantly trying to get money out of you so they can spend it on single parent families who have just had a 3rd child to a 3rd father and now qualify for a free house and car.

One thing which is pretty obvious is that the protestors were killed by UDD thugs paid to do it. What is also clear is that the UDD would never take such action in support of the government without being told to do it. And nobody would dare to do such drastic action without being told to do it from the very top. It is pretty much beyond doubt that it was government sponsored terrorism against it's people.

Yet in that report, the 28 deaths of completely innocent people gets one paragraph and it specifically makes the point that no evidence is available to link it to the last government. Nor does it mention how many of the dead were anti-government protestors. Nor does it mention that the likelihood of many more to follow were the reason for the coup.

Then 2 red-shirts who got killed get a paragraph each.

Something smells bad about that report.

It would be interesting to see her real net asset value including cash salted away offshore and through nominees. It must have swelled with her share of the fake rice export deals and other scams during her watch.

"fake rice export deals and other scams during her watch (Yingluck).."

Really?......Submit it to the electorate and see how much substance it has.

This sort of stuff certainly pleases the anti-democrats. They are not about to try and convince the electorate of their fabricated innuendo's.

But many believe everything they say as being factual......... In mature Democracies, that doesn't happen so much, except for when the Parliamentary Opposition is preaching to the choir. Usually Opposition stuff is judged by its' source.....For some reason, that does not seem to be the case for many in Thailand. Whatever the Opposition says about those they cannot defeat in an Election, is gospel truth for them....Why Farangs are particularly susceptible to this, I can only speculate about.

Even the Rice subsidy program...There has never been an independent analysis and audit, but self-serving Opposition tirades and their self-serving specious investigations are accepted as the truth....Self-serving being the operative word here. Yingluck's explanations and defense of this program before Parliament was never given the light of day in the media.

I enjoy watching them shudder in their boots at the very thought of facing Yingluck in an election....The electorate does not robottically following their every mantra....They are not so easily swayed as others.....So they have/are using their NACC brethren to prevent them ever having to face her in an election and their Election Commission brethren to cancel elections. Yingluck would destroy them electorally, and they know it.

I find it amusing how some red-shirts really believe they are the ones who are the most intelligent and then write claptrap like this.

Does it not occur to you at all that YOU might be the one who has got it wrong ?.

There is a reason that the posters on here who write something intelligent are generally anti-Pheu Thai / Thaksin and the ones who write childlike simplistic nonsense are generally pro-Pheu-Thai. An intelligent person would think about that.

When the arguments fail turn to insults..........if it helps you.

.

you trip over on the floor and bang your head at a slow speed and it can still kill you, ask the Germans why they aren't all dying in droves on their autobahns (unrestricted) its because they pay attention to their surroundings

On roads built for 200+kph traffic, organised lanes for those 'aware' kinds of speed and drivers in machines capable of executing controlled speed

Yet what moron would try that here.

A fool, (and there are plenty of those here), her and you seemingly.

Great analogy

Mai kow jai..

Cogency is what arguments are about. I have not insulted you but have asked how slowing vehicular speed down is not part of the equation.

As of yet the only thing you have contributed to this sorry Thai equation are German autobahns.

as is comprehension, you called me a fool.

If speed kills why aren't we all dead? we are all travelling at many thousands of miles per hour, your comment "speed kills" is "general" speed does not in itself kill, lack of awareness does, you stated SPEED KILLS as the be all and end all in YOUR FIRST comment, this was then altered to "lack of awareness +100kph" so you shifted the goal posts

Kannot get enough kannots on Thai visa. Almost as though the site breeds them.

"A fool" ,here, is part of a tripartite expression and was not directed at anyone. Indeed the article 'a' should make that comprehensibly obvious, ....... For most unless you cccannnot!

Speedingwas the point i initially made, and i take it we have all at some point have sped. That does not equate your "why aren't we all dead/" as you now wish to discuss theoretical astro-physics. The irony about that and forums is that i can discus that stuff in detail!! And without SHOUTING.

But it seems silly and we have gone beyond Anna's egregious error.

Go faster kannnnnooootttt

Wow, am I sick of people who say 'Speed Kills' - usually as a justification for putting another speed trap on a road where they are likely to raise more funds.

Speed does NOT kill. Dangerous driving kills. Going too fast for the specific situation would constitute dangerous driving, but there are many other things which are dangerous. The biggest would be people not paying attention.

There should be no such offence as speeding : it should be dangerous driving. But that becomes subjective and gives a possibility for a defence which would cost money - and the government wants to get money, not lose it.

Dont forget the honourable Dr.Pornthip ex-chief forensic scientist of Thailand who vigorously defended the GTX-200 as based on scientific facts and has never apologised after it was exposed as a fake

And also don't forget that Prayuth also publicly claimed that they worked.

Farang who had a decent education sometimes forget just how backward many people are here when it comes to science and logic. It makes us very frustrated with people who simply don't know any better but are oblivious to that fact.

It would help if they had the faintest clue just how they look to outsiders. They might think before speaking.

why don't they make them for themselves ?

oh I forgot, Thailand can't actually design and make anything for themselves - vehicles - electronics - infrastructure - heavy industry - railroads - aircraft - Pharma all of which are foreign technologies - they are the hub of wishful thinking all resulting from misdirected funds/corruption and an underfunded inept education system, the only thing they are good at is abusing tourists and greed

- 3rd world

Absolutely right : Thailand is incapable of any complicated project which involves R&D because when the R&D should be finished and the experience used for a real project, you quickly discover that 'R&D' involved buying off-the-shelf stuff from abroad and parading it around as if it was made locally, then skimming the rest of the budget as much as possible with fake family employees etc. When crunch time comes and something should be available, the school-project held together with string and tape does not impress and the project is scrapped as a total loss.

I did some tentative research about bringing my UAV related business here. I have the above take place more than once and decided to keep it out. I realised that any farang will be the first place the locals try to lay the blame.

That right General. Typical move don't blame it on students who wants to see elections and no more coups, blame it on the Red Shirts.

"blame it on the Red Shirts"

IMHO, both the yellow/Red thing has morphed into a Pro-democracy/Anti-democracy thing.

This article refers to the offending party as being a "certain political group"

When I think of a "group", I think of a dozen or so people."

What were previously known as the Red Shirts, are a huge segment of the pro-democracy side of things. Far removed from being a group...That would be akin to calling the Democrat Party a 'group' of people.

But one must recognize as well, this is a way of the anti-democrats attempts to denigrate their opposites......Calling a majority segment of the pro-democracy side "a group"

These students advocating Democratic practices would naturally be supported by the pro-democracy side.......To therefore tackle the entire majority side of the Thai electorate is a tall order.

Wow, how can you be so wrong. Have you ever been to Thailand ?.

I have been here 10 years and I know both red and non-red shirts. Few of the non-red-shirts are actually yellow shirts. They are just decent people sick of having everything stolen by politicians.

Red-shirts are more-or-less communists who think all the money should be gathered up and shared out amongst them. They have no clue - and no interest - in actual democracy. They think that if they can get elected, it means everything belongs to them and they can do whatever they want. I remember a story from a policeman after Pheu-Thai won : he was fed up with red-shirts, telling him they should not be prosecuted because they had won the election.

Non-red shirts always make a much more intelligent argument than any red-shirt I have met and are basically sick and tired of the old-style corrupt governments in Thailand. They understand democracy much more and they want it.

Everything I have experienced in real life is backed up by the comments I see on this forum. The problem in this world is that there is no cure for greed or stupid. I learnt long ago that there is no point arguing with an idiot.

That right General. Typical move don't blame it on students who wants to see elections and no more coups, blame it on the Red Shirts.

You think the students are doing this from their own ethics and are not being used as pawns by you-know-who and his cronies ??.

Ha ha ha ha. I think you know that, but are quite happy to be a hypocrite if it suits your purpose.

Then I wonder if they were out protesting against Pheu-Thai and the amnesty bill which represented the greatest abuse of power I have seen. I might be wrong, but I think not.

What is amazing is the head of security at Bangkok airport revealing their detectors can not find guns in passengers luggage.

' Phet said if the gun was in Camronwit's case, the CTX might have been unable to detect it as the machine was a bomb detector and because the gun was very small. "According to US standards, [if a metal item] is found [stored] under the plane, it is not dangerous as a passenger has no access to get to it to do harm to the flight."

When told that Camronwit was found with a gun and five bullets, which are explosive items, Phet said they may have been a small volume only. "We have to focus on the power to destroy and [cause] disaster," he said.

So it is OK for guns and bullets which contain gunpowder to be loaded on to aircraft departing BKK?

There is no way a bullet will go off by accident in the hold. Even if it did, the fire suppression would take care of it.

There is much more danger from all the lithium batteries which will 'vent with flames' if they short circuit. The systems cannot extinguish chemical fires like that. You should be more concerned with people taking these batteries with them than firearms.

A little education goes a long way.

Why is everyone going off on conspiracy theories and blame ?.

He went out with the gun in his luggage - where it was not detected and was not reasonably expected to be, and brought it back in his hand luggage - where it was detected in Japan.

The only person to blame here is Thoopkrachang who thought himself 'untouchable' and hence thought he could take a gun with him. He has now got a short, sharp lesson in how the civilised world conducts itself and I reckon he is going to pay the price.

It seems it's impossible to have a simple story in Thailand.

This kind of thing is exactly why Thailand is so xenophobic : they know what they do is wrong so they don't want anyone sticking their noses in and letting the rest of the world know.

I can't help but laugh at this ridiculous farce.

Red-shirts wanted these pawns to be arrested immediately by the Junta and we had all those claims on here about how nobody dare oppose them because they would disappear.

But they didn't. They got taken in, cautioned and released. So those people looked a bit stupid and shut up about that.

Then these people are trying their hardest to get arrested again - simply for propaganda purposes.

But they haven't yet - so now they want to make a complaint against the police. And those same people who said they would disappear are now crying like this is the worst abuse of human rights possible.

Absolutely pathetic.

Maybe someone should be filing complaints about the behaviour of the police during the protests. Like guarding ends of bridges while snipers shot protestors or letting red-shirts through road blocks with weapons, but making sure they disarmed protestors. Or taking pot-shots from the roof of the Department of Employment. Or for failing to arrest a single terrorist despite many murders taking place in full daylight or when the suspect was seen clearly on CCTV.

Note how the red-shirts try their hardest to cause problems and undermine the government, whereas the government avoid naming them directly because it will start them shouting and foaming at the mouth again.

Reconcilliation - red-shirt style. They have no interest in it and never have. They want whatever they can get and don't care about anything else. End of story.

My goodness : this whole scenario with this stupid woman and this handful of students who are trying their hardest to get arrested is absolutely pathetic. Why kind of dumbasses are directing these idiots ?.

Then we have 'Amnesty International' writing to the police chief because these students MIGHT get arrested ?. Jeez - I would have thought they would have been too busy with the dire state of the rest of the world and what ISIS are doing to worry about that.

If anti-junta campaigners want to gain support, they should start acting like intelligent people instead of uneducated fools. Mind you, after reading the comments I see on this forum, I now think this is pretty much the rule which divides the two sides.

but it if spurs changes that allow digital nomads to pay taxes and stay in Thailand legitimately, then wonderful.

They can do all that now if they want...so don't see your point

They mentioned this in the video like it was possible. I'm sorry, but I don't know about this change?

Of course it wouldn't apply to me, because I would never dream of freelancing without the proper visa, but I think my friend would very much like to know.

There's a visa now that digital nomads can apply for? And that visa will require them to pay taxes?

Yes...it involves registering with the government a thing called a Ltd company and investing a small amount of money, employing a few people, and getting a WP and paying income Tax and you will get a visa every year for the rest of your life if you want it

Yes: get your friend to pay to form a limited company, rent an office and pay every month to employ 4 Thai people he doesn't need to sit in it. Then he must get to work earning enough to cover that overhead plus make his own minimum salary every month otherwise he won't have a work permit. The government know about him now, so he had better be careful if he can't afford to keep doing it this way.

Or your friend could pay an agency to pretend he works for them then they will pay his own earnings back to him as salary minus their own fees of course. Completely fake and some skimmer outfit taking advantage which I hate.

Or your friend could keep his head down and make sure nobody outside his house knows he is working.

I wonder which one he will choose.