way2muchcoffee

OK Everyone, seems this thread is taking the usual nasty track with a few members who can't debate in a reasonable manner without resorting to flames. Drop the flaming or suspensions will be handed out to the worst transgressors.

as for the other issue: from what it looks like to me a moderator probably edited Siam simon's post to remove the unconfirmed inflammatory and propagandish post and forgot to use the edited by button. Its not good, but accidents do happen.

I beg to differ. The original post by TallForeigner is still intact:

as are all the replies quoting it, including the one by Insight.

I stopped reading Buchholz' posts because he appears to be a new cyber-incarnation of a repeatedly banned well-known TV trouble causer. The above posts have brought his quote of my post "Where?" to my attention. He has clearly modified my quoted post to include the line by TallForeigner. Wasn't this sort of behaviour one of the reasons why Sriracha John was banned?

What is your deal with SRJ? I've read no less than 20 posts from you over the last several months accusing multiple users of being SRJ. You sound disturbingly obsessed. Let it go man.

Which tells the forum where you stand with Sriracha John and his couple of dozen forum aliases. He does have his fellow right-wing allies, doesn't he?

Actually it is indicative of your obsession more than anything else. I remember SRJ from the past, barely, as the guy who posted lots of articles. That's about it. If you check my posting history you will see that I was barely active at TV during SRJ's run. A few years ago he disappeared for some reason that I am not privy to, nor do I care.

What I have noticed in recent months are your inexplicable accusations of various posters, stating or implying they are SRJ. It seems that you see SRJ behind every rock. You see him and hiding in shadows, lurking, under the bed or in the closet perhaps. It is this behavior that suggests to me that you have some kind of unhealthy obsession.

I do not understand how people cannot comfortably live on <$800- $1200USD ( $24k - $36K baht). For comparison I live quite comfortably with my GF within that range and we own a Townhouse, a Car and do whatever we want for the most part, we do not go with out. $2000 to $2500 seems like an awful lot. Now I understand everybody has a different set of needs and expectations but I personally came to Thailand to shed myself of excessive behaviors and waste the US instills in people.

$15,000 Baht a month for support is more then reasonable, in my opinion.

Are you saying you bought the townhouse and car on only 25,000 bt/month without any extra cash added? It would seem very difficult to do unless you used up some cash from savings you earned in the west.

What about saving for retirement, holidays, a private school for a child? Include saving for a down payment on a house and car or monthly payments. Could you do all this on 25k?

If you need money for the child's clothing and school then I suggest that YOU buy the items needed on your return visit. Understand of course, that no matter HOW much money you send, it will never be enough. The reason being that you would be paying for the entire village to suck off the rich farang. You would be supplying funds for the mother in law's gambling habit and the Thai boyfriend's drinking problem. You can never buy enough beer to supply the whole village.

Mostly good advice. Not very nice to assume that the maternal family are hard drinking gamblers though. It could be true, but it may well not be. Would have been a better post without the extra garbage on the end.

Yes. 15,000 bt/month is sufficient for a mother and child to live relatively comfortably in Issan so long as they lived the native lifestyle. But there wouldn't be much left over for extras.

Personally I would want my child to have a bit more in the way of clothes, toys, proper nutrition, games, bicycle, books, be able to go to a movie, a show, an event, a trip, have a computer etc. These things are not really possible on 15,000 bt/month.

Marrying a thai should never be reason enough to be granted a long term visa.

Perhaps you would care to explain your reasons. Do you have something against families? I guess you would prefer to discriminate against people who are not well off. That would make you elitist.

RIP to the deceased. Unnecessary deaths are always tragic.

What thais are them,the Bangkok elite or the rice farmers who get stitched up every day with the middlemen making all the money

Don't you think the rice millers and middleman would more appropriately be called the 'rural elite'? The Bangkok elite by and large are into a whole other game, and a much more profitable one, with manufacturing and exports.

I quite like Chiang Rai. Prachuab Khiri Khan (ampher muang) is also nice. Both are quiet, have enough western amenities to make things comfortable, things to see and do, are beautiful, and relaxing.

isn't it amazing how normally the police could not find their own &lt;deleted&gt; with both hands, yet they seem to be finding unexploded bombs in places they would not normally even visit, the more sceptical amongst us can see these alleged explosives for exactly what they are, an excuse to continue with the pointless and oppressive state of emergency that is keeping other political parties down.

Amazing thailand

Your evidence?

and yours?

I don't believe phetaroi made statements that require proof. You did.

You could have phrased your post as a belief or speculation, but you didn't do that. You emphatically claimed that the government is behind the recent spate of bombings. It is only natural to expect you to provide evidence for such an assertion.

1) Wikipedia is user-edited. Fact-checking is complicated and not reliable. Anything on Wikipedia must be taken with a very large grain of salt. This is particularly true for contentious topics. Whatever you find on Wikipedia today may well change tomorrow.

2) The Nation is heavily biased against Thaksin. The Nation takes this position because of the severe abuse they received from him in the form of lawsuits and extreme political pressure. Anything written in The Nation must be viewed with this in mind.

Every day that the government keeps the SoE alive they are losing political clout and supporters amongst the electorate. I believe the Democrat leadership know this and would prefer not to have an SoE in effect anywhere.

Unfortunately recent history has shown us that the redshirt movement is violent, dangerous, and willing to target civilians and their businesses. It is for this reason that the government has not choice but to maintain an SoE in very limited areas.

The government has the duty to protect innocent civilians from harm. The SoE may or may not be effective in this, but it is the duty of the government to do what they can nevertheless. I suspect that the present government believes the SoE is a necessary evil to do just that - protect innocent citizens, their property, and their businesses.

Moreover, this government loses esteem and respect on the world stage for every day that the SoE remains in effect. It is bad press. While Western governments may agree that the SoE is necessary under present circumstance, they certainly have difficulty supporting it.

For these reasons I believe that government concern for the safety of Thai citizens and foreign tourists/expats is the primary driver for retaining the SoE.

That is my take on the situation anyway.

More Government propaganda, Another reason for them to keep the emergency rule in place.

Please provide plausible reasons why the government would prefer the SoE remain in place.

Consider some numbers.

Let's take Bangkok. I don't know the actual numbers, but here is a guess.

1) 10,000,000 people earn 6,000 bt/month.

2) 1,000,000 people earn 30,000 bt/month

3) 500,000 people earn 60,000 bt/month

4) 500,000 people earn 100,000 bt/month

5) 100,000 people earn 300,000 bt/month

6) 50,000 people earn 1,000,000 bt/month.

In this case the average monthly salary would be a little more than 18,000 per month. And yet over 80% of these people are earning only 6,000 bt/month, while a little over 0.4% are earning huge incomes. Numbers are elusive and it is easy to make assumptions without a strong grounding in numeracy.

OK Everyone, seems this thread is taking the usual nasty track with a few members who can't debate in a reasonable manner without resorting to flames. Drop the flaming or suspensions will be handed out to the worst transgressors.

as for the other issue: from what it looks like to me a moderator probably edited Siam simon's post to remove the unconfirmed inflammatory and propagandish post and forgot to use the edited by button. Its not good, but accidents do happen.

I beg to differ. The original post by TallForeigner is still intact:

as are all the replies quoting it, including the one by Insight.

I stopped reading Buchholz' posts because he appears to be a new cyber-incarnation of a repeatedly banned well-known TV trouble causer. The above posts have brought his quote of my post "Where?" to my attention. He has clearly modified my quoted post to include the line by TallForeigner. Wasn't this sort of behaviour one of the reasons why Sriracha John was banned?

What is your deal with SRJ? I've read no less than 20 posts from you over the last several months accusing multiple users of being SRJ. You sound disturbingly obsessed. Let it go man.

maybe the elitist columnist and the "Nation" are really out of touch with reality. By now every child older than 4 years can tell that Sothi is right. It was first of all a criminal act to dispose of an democratic elected government. And yes the failure of continuing the Thaksin economic policies have led to fare more problems. Sonthi must have noticed that jokers who are far more corrupt and self serving than Thaksin has ever been (and all politicians including thaksin are corrupt and self serving in this part of the world) are bringing the country to the brink of collapse. Suthep is power horny and is at odds with so may of his fellow citiznes in his home province for blocking off the sea side and dividing the riches between his family and that of the CP family while the poor are suffering. abhisit does not even know that rice grows in mud. He thinks it is made in a factory. Newin and his father are only busy filling up their pockets and ruining the last remaining nature. Banharn has build a construction imperium on government orders and sanan is not only suspected of dishonoring a female journalist but also for running llegal betting scams on race tracks, for buying overpriced medicines and so on. The list goes on and on. <div><br></div><div>the Nation does not seem to realize that the voter is ALWAYS right. You cannot rob them from their votes without a backlash. The country is doing far worse than under Thaksin. Who is out of touch? A coup taker who admits a mistake or a rich spoiled Nation columnist who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth?</div>

Too much propaganda here to even respond properly. Would you care to back up your points?

but clearly the aim here is to not maim people, it is to frighten the people into accepting the continuation of a unneeded state of emergency.

A person is smart but the public are panicky, keep the masses in fear with these alleged bombs and that way keep the State of emergency, and that way keep the opposition down. It is so clear and I am amazed that other people do not see this.

That is one opinion. There are others in stark contrast with that one that are equally valid positions to hold.

The US will pay for a ticket back for their citizens held in immigration detention in a foreign country. The person will have to pay back the loan. Upon returning to the US the passport will be confiscated until the travel debt is paid in full.

Moreover, they will only do this one time. If the need arises a second time then the US government will not assist.

Seems the US will look after Russians even better.

I hear theres a private plane waiting for one at present.

Indeed. And prisoners also get free taxi rides to and from court and on to the prison. They even get free room and board while they are in prison. A travesty I say.

Let's see. Bombs are found and/or detonated routinely in Bangkok for over a year. Citizens know this.

A citizen sees a suspicious object laying in a public place. They call the police. The police arrive to find it is a bomb. The disposal crew are called out.

Rocket science?

The US will pay for a ticket back for their citizens held in immigration detention in a foreign country. The person will have to pay back the loan. Upon returning to the US the passport will be confiscated until the travel debt is paid in full.

Moreover, they will only do this one time. If the need arises a second time then the US government will not assist.

A friend of mine from Harvard is doing his PhD research on motosai drivers. You all might be interested in reading his interview with New Mandala as well as the accompanying videos.

Video -

Video - Thai PBS Interview

That Mandala article was very interesting. Thanks. I take on average 3-4 motorcycle taxi rides per day. I have done so for nearly a decade. I know the routes I know the prices. I never ask, just give the correct amount and a bit more if there is heavy traffic or rain, or there are any special requests like a quick stop in a 7-11.

They seem to be decent guys for the most part. They are blue collar and they drink. Yes. But they could also be dead tomorrow given the insanity of driving a two-wheeled vehicle on the streets of BKK. They have run errands for me, helped me find a couple of good apartments/townhouses, and have backed me up in a conflict. They do a dangerous job and mostly they do it well. In their way they are the unsung heroes that make BKK work and my hats are off to them.

Yes, sure... but my example was about whether foreigners should speak out or not where you see what you perceive to be an injustice. Which is why I changed the incidents, the country and the nationalities involved. I'm interested in the principle of the matter- is it ever right for a foreigner to speak up about the politics of a country that he's in but isn't his own? Is it ever right for them to break the law by doing so, if they feel it's in the interests of justice?

That's the point of using a hypothetical situation. And, like I said, I'm not red shirt sympathiser, I'm more interested in some of the extreme reactions people have to Purcell speaking out- not in content of what he said, but in principle. What was it about the content of Purcell's speeches that you found to be particularly inflammatory..? Genuinely interested, because nobody really seems to be able to articulate what it was that he said that was so bad, beyond "A foreigner shouldn't get involved in another country's political situation".

Of course he could get involved and speak out. Only not by speaking on a stage in an area taken over by armed protesters during a state of emergency.

He could have spoken out through the internet, interviews with journalists, interviews by redshirts in an area where his presence was legal, writing an article, a blog, a book, a forum, or any other number of ways that are within the law.

Unfortunately he chose to break the law, knowing full well what he was doing. He did so publicly, almost daring authorities to arrest him. In my opinion he was very lucky to have gotten off so lightly.

This is ludicrous.

Person A

Chooses to work in rice farming or other agricultural endeavors

Does work involving full-time labor for perhaps 1/3 to 1/2 of a year

Engages in off again on again work for the remainder of the year

Has plenty of time off not working, often several months per year

Pays no rent and has little transportation costs

Lives in a serene and pastoral environment

Invests nothing in professional development (not even in agriculture education)

Person B

Works in business fields

Does work involving full-time labor all year long

Works 50-80 hours per week

Has very little time off, perhaps only a week or maybe two per year

Pays high rent and transportation costs

Lives amongst massive noise, light, and chemical pollution

Invests significantly in higher education and professional development

Is it any wonder why Person B makes considerably more money? There is nothing wrong with either Person A or Person B. Each has made life choices. Each lifestyle has advantages and disadvantages. Many of the expats living here spent their working lives as Person B with the express purpose of spending their golden years as Person A.

Well, apparently 5 minutes is too long, since he's not prepared.

Perhaps you should actually read the article before you post.

It's truly Amazing Thailand, where even 4 years after the military coup nobody is willing or able to tell the public why there was a coup.

If it was Thaksin's corruption, I would have expected that the coup makers have a thick dossier with all the evidence to show us the corruption, but this has never been shown to the public.

Oh but it has. Perhaps you are forgetting the 9-hour reading of the verdict from the 3-year assets concealment and corruption trial?

Seems like news to me. Any spotlight or public scrutiny on corruption in this country can only be a good thing. It might be pissing in the wind, but every little bit helps.