candide

That's why I said Thamanat was only an amateur! ????

Come on. How can coups be useful when they just replace elected crooks by unelected crooks who cannot stand to democratically lose their grip on the country? You are simply making up an alternate reality. How can an alleged remedy be a remedy when it's worse than what it's pretending to cure?

Sorry but the Yingluck government could have been voted out as it intended to have elections organised (by an EC appointed by Abhisit). Or do you mean cannot be voted out because people wanted to vote for her? Really? Sorry but the coup makers did exactly what you claim the didn't do. They changed the constitution to make sure they would keep control whoever would be elected, did rigg the last elections, did ban political parties, etc... I did not say they manufactured offenses (well, they did to some extent), but that was not the reason they made a.coup. For example, the yellow judiciary has been quite efficient to remove Yingluck. So the democratic system worked: she was removed and elections were planned, without the need for a coup. They did a coup because they did not want elections, they did not want the people to choose to vote out PTP or not.

How can a coup be virtuous as it leads to a government which is at least as corrupt as the democratically elected government, and on top of it cannot be voted out or be made accountable. Really? The main aim of coups in Thailand is not to avoid absolute power does slip into anyone's hand. It is to make sure absolute power REMAINS into the hands of the dominant network (the so-called old elite), and not ultimately in the hands of voters.

You seem to consider there may have been something like virtuous coups in Thailand. In the history of Thailand, coups have never been virtuous and always led to corruption. The current bench in power is not an exception. Coups have only been reactions by unelected clans who feel they are getting deprived of their power and access to the gravy train. And as the current topic confirms, regularly interrupting a democratic process has not led to any improvement. There is a learning process in Democracy, by trial and error. This process cannot happen when it is continuously interrupted by coups.

By "in this department" I meant criminal activities ????

You are right about the appointed Senate (plus a few other mechanism integrated in the Consitution). That's quite possible they would reject the PTP, but the green/yellow network would even less accept Move Forward. So whoever wins (unless elections can be rigged enough to allow a win by an alliance of pro-military parties), it will lead to a deep political crisis.

Well, he's an amateur in this department compared to some others. Smuggling weapons to the Red Khmer comes to mind.....

She's a puppet but she's an obviously "known" puppet. It means people who may vote for her will know exactly for whom they vote.

Actually it wasn't the Yankees who asked him to start the war on drugs but, ahem, it cannot be much discussed if you see what I mean. That's one of the reasons it has never been really investigated, except for a few small players. The Dems initially wanted to investigate it in order to incriminate Thaksin, but after they opened the can of worms, they quickly closed the case and decided to forget about it.

Come on, you don't really believe this fairy tale, do you?

It would be more accurate to state: at least, since the last coup there are no YELLOW shirts in the street. The people in the street assaulting government buildings and attacking election offices, while Yingluck was PM, were the PDRC. You could also add that there were no red shirts while Thaksin was PM. The red shirts have been created in 2006 as a reaction to the coup and the yellow shirts.

This is interesting from an intellectual point of view. However, predicting the future, based on innacurate data about the past, is useless.

It looks like brown envelopes are going to circulate.....

Exactly! Masks are useless outside, unless people are very close to each other. Probably even more useless in Thailand because of high temperature and UVs. However, in closed places where people are staying rather close to each other, such as bars and restaurants, It's quite possible to be contaminated.

Not sure. Most of it is sold to Algeria, China, Egypt, India, and Vietnam. But be sure the Chinese will take advantage of it to renegotiate prices! ????

Completely useless. Hotelbeds is a hotel room wholesaler. It means it buys rooms from hotels and hotel chains.TAT is not a hotel chain so It's purely cosmetic.

Which missiles in Ukraine? Only Putin stated the US wanted to put missiles in Ukraine. Do you believe the Russian propaganda? BTW, there are currently only two ballistic missile defence centres in Eastern Europe, in Poland and Romania, and they are not particularly near their Eastern borders.

As before (I.e. the coup), Prayut will do what he is told to do.

It surely makes Putin angry. However, this promise was made to an entity (USSR) which has been dissolved in December 1991. A dissolution mainly caused by the Russian Federation, when its democratically elected government decided to leave the Soviet Union in June 1991 and declared its independence. So basically, the head of Russia is complaining about unkept promises, which have been made to an entity that Russia officially left more than 30 years ago.

Please stop the BS. Russia is not "perceived as a threat". Russia has fully confirmed it is a threat by invading Ukraine. As about NATO being "responsible". The USSR colapsed because is was deficient. The Russian federation contributed to it as it left it in June 1991, as the democratically elected government declared its independence, 6 months before the USSR dissolution by Gorbachev. Then after an initial growth period, Putin <deleted> up by being unable to define and implement a Russian development model. Fact is that Russia is unable to attract any country, from both a political and economic perspective, unless this country is governed by another dictator (ex Belarus). Having said that, I may well agree with you that the EU should have its own army, but if there isn't any, It's not particularly because It's "forbidden". There was simply, up to now, no agreement about it among Member States.

Gulp! ????

What you are describing may happen, but not always, as you mention. Basically, it's just a statistical error factor and doesn't challenge the fact that there is a high number of deaths caused or triggered by Covid-19. There is an unbiased indicator, which is the number of excess deaths. Accidents etc.. are not causing excess deaths from one year to another, apart from minor variations. In developed countries, the number of Covid deaths is always near to the number of excess deaths, broadly in the +/- 10% range. That's fact, not conjecture. So it's poosible that there may be some errors in measuring Covid deaths, but the phenomenon is rather well captured within a margin of error.

OMG! I did not think about noodles. It seems to be common for instant noodles. Apparently the only way to take it out is to boil the noodles, throw away the water, and then only use the noodles. I.e. put them in the soup and not cook them in the soup As a general rule I avoid all what is mixed, mashed, etc... unless I know I can trust the maker or restaurant. Not only meat balls, but also Lasagna, Parmentier, chilli con carne, meat pies, etc...

I guess It's the same with the fish balls and meat balls which are very popular in Thailand.