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Ah, I see. I hadn't scrolled down to see that second article. It looks like it was an article originally written in English by a Thai writer. I have serious doubts that it is accurate since they misuse the English language in identifying the suspect as a Shan national. There is no such thing as a "Shan national", as I explained earlier. The writer is a 27 year old who grew up in Bangkok, studied in Bangkok, and lives in Bangkok. Of course she could be very well studied and extremely diligent in her work and do a fantastic job, but maybe just missed this bit here, but if she might match my experience over the past 20+ years with Thais and their knowledge of history and of the northern minority ethnic groups, my guess is that she is wrong and the guy is a Thai national who is of the Tai Yai ethnic group. At any rate, there is no info regarding his nationality. Since she is a translator... I'm wondering if she might have based her article on the Thai language article in Thai Rath or, more likely, from the article that the photo on her Thaiger article is attributed to, from the Facebook page of "chiangmainews". In That article, they identify the perp with the same language as in the Thai Rath article - and from that, she likely translated this part incorrectly. It wouldn't be surprising at all. Anyway... thanks for pointing me to that second article that I didn't see.

I'd be interested where you read that. It didn't say that in the original article that I read on the Thai Rath website. It mentioned that the case started by the father reporting his son was taken. It mentioned that the father was a 32 year old ชาวไทใหญ่ (Tai Yai person). Then later when mention of the perp came up, it referred to him as a หนุ่มชาวไทใหญ่ (young Tai Yai person). Nowhere did I read anything about him being from Myanmar and living in Thailand. Yes, Shan is equivalent to Tai Yai, with Tai Yai being the more commonly used term in Thailand, but it doesn't mean he isn't a Thai national at all. Of course, the Thai media mentions his ethnicity because of their infamous prejudice against ethnic minorities, so they'd love you to think he's from Myanmar, but it sure doesn't sound like it in the way the article is written. Perhaps you don't know, not sure.... but Tai Yai is not a nationality. It is an ethnic group, a quite large one - in the millions, spread across several countries, primarily Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and China. And they've been living in what is now northen Thailand since long before borders were ever made after Thailand annexed the the Kingdom of Lanna. Arguments could be made that they are just as much, if not more, natives of Chiangmai as Thai people. And this guy most likely is a Thai national/citizen. Being how Thai media loves to deflect attention about anything bad to anywhere else but Thailand, I'm sure they would have specified he was from Myanmar if they knew he was.

Yes, it certainly occurs, no doubt about that. I only was contesting the part about it occurring often. Of course, that is subjective as to what "often" is and how often does it need to happen in order to qualify as such, but in the hundreds of times through airports and never having seen anything even remotely similar makes me doubtful re it being often. Airports can be strange places. One of the places I do my best to make my time in them as short as possible. Yeah, I can imagine you have a number of stories about your time in LA. I have a number of friends who are and were police as well as Highway Patrol. One of my cousins is retired San Francisco PD and his brother was a Deputy Sheriff in Santa Cruz County. The stories can be pretty amazing, in many different ways.

"This type of behavior occurs often at US Airports." That is nonsense. People watch too many YouTube videos and movies.... I've been in and out of airports in America well over 300 times and have never seen anything remotely close to this. I've seen some argumentative/irritable remarks made at ticket counters and boarding gates, but I've never even heard a voice raised to a yell, let alone police taking someone to the ground. And of course, due to quota hiring, you see that it's a female cop who resorts to the taser because she's incapable of doing anything else, sadly not uncommon in American female police. And the other male cop escalated the situation instead of deescalating... THAT, I can agree is a serious issue with policing in America. But the constant ridiculous remarks about cops shooting or getting violent all the time or whatever.... pure and utter nonsense.

Yeah, I guess I walked into that one. By the way you commented, it appeared that you already seemed to think that you know what assault in Thailand is. So, you could always say so more directly..... But since I stepped in it and gave what is just the law in the UK and the US as a reference, which is admittedly out of context, I suppose I should follow through and see about Thailand specifically, since you aren't being more forthcoming about your insinuation that it isn't assault if there's no contact in Thailand. I figured it wouldn't be difficult, so here you go, after about a minute to search and about 5 or 10 minutes of reading. It was actually fairly interesting.... and what do you know! They have the same understanding that criminal charges (whether you translate it as "assault" or not) are applicable with VERY similar definitions. Of course translation will give some difficulty, but it is understandable enough. Since assault in the UK and US, as I was mentioning, would include the following, even though they don't translate it as "assault", I believe it applies. The main point being that contact is not necessary to be charged with a crime. (Any typos in the definitions are from the website that I snapped the images from.) Section 397 appears to not be in force anymore? I couldn't find anything regarding what it says here about being repealed.... Then there are these that could apply to this case as well -

He doesn't need to come into contact. The threat and capability of carrying it out is assault. It's a common misunderstanding of the law. Just so I don't have to get into it beyond this with anyone... here's the definition from Black's Law Dictionary. "An unlawful attempt or offer. on the part of one man, with force or violence, to inflict a bodily hurt upon another. An attempt or offer to beat another, without touching him; as if one lifts up his cane or his fist in a threatening manner at another ; or strikes at him, but misses him. 3 Bl. Comm. 120; 3 Steph. Comm. 469. Aggravated assault is one committed with the intention of committing some additional crime; or one attended with circumstances of peculiar outrage or atrocity. Simple assault is one committed with no intention to do any other injury. An assault is an unlawful attempt, coupled with a present ability, to commit a violent injury on the person of another." thelawdictionary.org/assault/

Just the usual ones....

They could combine the base on the beachfront with a hub for their soon to be expanding submarine fleet!

What or where is "GOA"? You're writing it as an acronym and it isn't familiar to me. If you mean Goa, India, that would be interesting. And interesting not to write it normally and include the country name, since this is a forum dealing with things Thailand. So, I'm stumped as to what or where you are referring.

"Asks" Thaksin is asked not to return on a weekend? Since when do you ask criminals anything. You DEMAND them. You ORDER them. They are below asking, especially ones who are ongoing in their criminal evasion of the law. They are treating him as their equal or better. That tells you a lot about the level of criminality of the politicians....

????

Maybe the doctors in Thailand aren't as proficient for the kind of mental illnesses that he needs treatment for?????????

That was an awesome reply! I had a good laugh, but then I realized that maybe you were serious and weren't purposely being ironic, mimicking something a sociopath might say....????? I'm not an expert on sociopathy, but one thing I understand is that it entails a lack of ability to empathize. It may be no skin off of my back on "who is in or out", but I do care about the people that it affects. And it affects MANY people, many of whom are quite innocently ignorant and suffer deeply from the likes of leaders like this guy.

Narcissist sociopaths like him probably believe their own fairy tail storytelling. On second thought, maybe psychopathic could be more fitting.

Delayed!? Say it isn't so!! ????

Nothing like flaunting your own vacuous vanity. The only thought that came to mind was - How stupid!

Will insurance pay out for a company that (apparently) allowed welding to be done by stored explosives!??? That wouldn't be the brightest business model.

hmmmm I can think of another kind of gross.....

Not sure what kind of Thai friends you have, but every single one of my Thai friends (other than one guy who is a clearly ignorant, uneducated, and untraveled person.) are disgusted by it. Having a private laugh about it would be the last thing any of them would do. It comes down to intelligence and character. I generally make excuses to not go to those places when my friends want to go because they were always are so irritated by it and ashamed that they ALWAYS offered to pay my entry for me. Actually, a few times they yelled (edit: "yelled" may be a bit of an exaggeration... spoke very sternly with perhaps a bit of an elevated volume) at the workers and refused to let me pay extra and paid for me, the standard price. None of those places had the balls to call the police. I simply stay away from any of those places. I have been to maybe a dozen or so, but haven't gone at all for the past 15 years because of this insane racism. And from my memory, I don't recall a single one being worth an entry fee of even 100 baht. PLENTY of very nice non-racist and even free places to enjoy.

His education credentials gave me a laugh. Bachelor's at Chula and then a pitiful MBA at an institution ranked in a tie for 89th! among other U.S. universities with programs competitive to his. And that university is expensive, of course.... He could have paid a cheaper fee to go to a top 10 program! But if you can't qualify to get in, then I guess cost means nothing. Reminds me of the quality of student from many rich families in "international" programs I've encountered over the years at the top Thai universities. Kids that are mostly utterly useless and don't care a whit about their education. They're just after that piece of paper that says they graduated from one of the top universities in their country. Speaking with some professors who were extremely frustrated that they couldn't fail their students (which they said could sometimes be over 50% of them if they could actually grade them as they deserved) was also quite eye-opening. Combined with other things I read about him, this guy appears to be just another one of the elite puppets. No surprise there.

I doubt anyone here is actually surprised, sadly. I remember a friend once told me something that I thought had some good insight as to why Thailand was where it was at the time (some 20 years ago). He thought the reason Thailand was more or less prosperous through the many decades since mid last century was due to influence (read: politics and money) from America (this is not a pro-America post. I don't believe there are any good arguments that America was there for altruistic reasons). The tens of billions of US dollars (a lot in 1950 money) pouring in to build up Thai military, police, and a bit of infrastructure (and of course lots of VERY fat brown envelopes among the Parliament) from 1950 and ensuing decades did some amazing things, obviously not all with good endings, but it did keep Marxism/Communism, which destroyed much of SE Asia, out. All of this along with propping up/supporting a young man, who had just recently lost an eye and who apparently had a decent moral compass (of course, there are diverse opinions on the matter). With these two major differences, along with many other things (the 1950's and 60's in Thailand was incredibly complex), Thailand escaped the disaster of all the nations surrounding her. These days, those two things are not clearly evident anymore, at all. And the corruption that all of that American "support" brought with it has created a whole other set of problems. This friend of mine thought that the mindset of the Thai is not so different from her surrounding nations, at all. But with these two major differences, they were brought in a different direction. Be that good or bad... these things are temporary and have consequences in many different ways. But, in the end, I don't believe a "democracy" can succeed with an immoral or corrupt people. If education means anything, it must elevate a people beyond Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Sadly, everyone knows the state of education in Thailand. It is no surprise that "democracy" is not finding success in SE Asia, just as it has had varying degrees of success in the "west". And I don't think it will until the people find their way out of corruption and this begins in the heart. It will be a long journey.

Nothing new or surprising to see here.... business as usual.

Looks not all that unlike how Burma runs things, just with more finesse. Or perhaps, I should say, how they ran things before the somewhat recent total dictatorial control and open genocide (which the world stands idly by, barely even paying enough attention to watch, all the while shedding tears and untold billions of dollars over, Ukraine), when the military ruled by keeping 25% military membership of both houses of Parliament (appointed by the Commander-in-Chief of the military), which conveniently needed 75% to pass anything through it. So... good luck getting anything through that the powers-that-be don't want. The people's voice is virtually meaningless, but puts on a good show and keeps the foreign market open and money flowing (for the elite, at any rate).

I remember back in 2010 (pretty sure it was that year... kinda all blur together), during the red-shirt protest out in Sanaam Luang, in front of Thammasat Uni, where I, unfortunately, needed to be everyday and also lived nearby... passing through checkpoints every day, and later where also dozens of people were killed, I was wandering through and up on this huge screen they had erected, was Thaksin broadcasting a speech to the red-shirts telling them how he would be coming back to fight with them! The people cheered wildly! I was thinking... what a joke, these numbskulls actually believe him! Yep... as you said, the garbage he says is always accompanied by smoke and mirrors, AKA lies and deception. Is it ok to say that about a criminal in exile? Or can even scum like him file suit... probably.... oh well, go ahead, be my guest.

You'll notice, in context of my comment, "woke" was not being used in relation to the event itself. It was in reference to the law, with its attendant causes and consequences.