mfd101

Mmmm, so it's a movable feast that depends on someone's entirely subjective view of how horrid the crime was. On that basis it would be hard to resist a movement to abolish the death penalty.

Is there clarity on the criteria for when they do vs when they don't?

That may well be the case. Do you have a sensible/rational alternative?

Too soon. The boys are still on R'nR. Give it another couple of years or soon AFTER the next election (if won by PP).

If you don't pay any tax anyway because your income is vanishingly small (as in my family and for millions of other Thais), then a 'negative income tax' will have little to do with income tax or educating you about income tax because any likely subsidy from the government will still leave you below the income tax threshold.

Mmm, you may be right. Certainly keeping on about the little lèse majesté problem (despite many warning signs) was a bit juvenile. As to the next round, we shall see. Too early to know whether the Pita-excitement can be maintained.

PT positioning itself in the Centre. Pushing out PPRP at the same time. Makes sense from PT's point of view. Getting itself nicely placed to face PP in the next round.

That doesn't sound quite right. More likely Pheu Thai positioning itself in the Centre (and in the process loosening military ties) so it can better face the People's Party on its left at the next election. Without such a move PT looks like loosing a great deal at that election. Meantime the military nitwits have nowhere much to go, apart from crying into their beers.

Thanks. No extensions planned or likely. Just a few days in Bangers with us, then we fly back home here for 2 weeks and will do some car travel to some parts of Thailand I & my b/f have never been before (Ubon/Mekong). Possibly also Korat. Then they fly back to Bangers & straight out back to Oz. Staying in hotels in the process will no doubt handle most of the issue (assuming the hotels do their job properly).

Mmmm, well, never done it before in 7 years living here in south Surin, with multiple visits by Oz friends over the years. My b/f is the land AND house owner, not me. In the extremely unlikely event of a problem arising, he will know how to handle it ...

In the broad I think Wallace is on the right track in thinking that The West tends to understand everyone else in the world - including the Chinese, Middle East and black Africa - as though they were just Westerners in disguise. Understanding the underlying motivators of political and military action in other cultures is fundamental to our security.

I assume that none of this applies to someone like me who expects 2 of my friends from Oz to fly in and stay with us here in Surin for 2 weeks in Nov/Dec? I guess they'll be on visa-free entry of one kind or another.

So the Soviet Union continues to exist? You are a true conservative and conservationist.

His sanity would come to the fore. Like all dictators he thinks that the Western democracies are weak, frightened and decadent. And, all too often, that is a not-unreasonable description. But when the West throws up strong leaders and they act, the dictator's self-preservation interest kicks in and he acts accordingly. In this instance Putin's chances of survival would be better facing his own people after a withdrawal from Ukraine than facing The West after he launched some nukes.

Time to buy up big in Korat.

NATO should admit Ukraine as a member immediately and NATO troops should enter Ukraine and retake the bits stolen by Russia. All with 'conventional' (ie non-nuclear) weapons. Russia would just roll over and walk away.

Presumably the statute of limitations could be overruled by a one-off law of the Parliament ...

No. Those are other people's cronies. Which is the whole point of the current move against him.

Yes. I wonder what the proposal was exactly? and how would it work? For example, just building new dams on the same river system looks like not a great step forward vis-à-vis cost. Just delays the flooding by a week or 3. If you could divert water to a different river system when required, that might represent real progress but the costs and effort required might be beyond all practical possibility ...

Mule.

He sounds like a sane & sensible doctor. All too hard to find amidst the pharmaceutical industry employees.

In sum, Thai 'history' books are full of b/s, humbug & hypocrisy. Much as 'Western' history books used to be - and still partly are - full of humbug & hypocrisy relating to European colonization of the Americas and Africa ...

At least the Kennedy weirdo will now vanish never (I hope) to be heard from again. Unless Trump wins in which case he'll be Secretary of State.

A fairly damning condemnation of Trump, I should think, for anyone who's open-minded and rational.

With 'recorded history' beginning in 1982, no wonder we're bewildered! Seriously though, I was under the impression that reliable weather records (and perhaps also climate records) date back to the C19th. Not to mention multiple historical and archaeological records of floods and desertification for at least the last 2000 years ... All up, our continuing bewilderment is itself bewildering. Ideology vs Evidence is never a nice scenario.