ericbj

Educating the population to return to more traditional diets, and give up eating synthetic-chemical-laden industrial "food", is the way to go… Raising taxes is just an easy cop out, giving governments more money to squander And besides, most of the table-salt sold these days is not real salt. It has been "purified" by removing all but the sodium chloride (with a bit of iodine then added back), to sell the rest to other industrialists. Sea-salt (when uncontaminated with micro-plastic particles) contains a balanced mixture of trace elements very close to that of blood serum. If in doubt, check out the historical uses of "Quinton Water", once upon a time very successfully used in place of blood for transfusions. You cannot do that with isotonic saline. Just as governments promote Big Pharma and AgriBusiness, so also they encourage the market for <deleted> food. And just as an after-thought, why does the government not organise the testing of cooking oils used by street-vendors ? According to what I have learnt from more than one source, expanded polystyrene is sometimes dissolved in the hot oil. It causes batter, such as in 'roti', to retain its crispness. Traces of unpolymerised styrene present are toxic.

Where is the medical research showing a CAUSATIVE RELATIONSHIP between drinking a glass of wine with your dinner and falling ill with Covid ? In Australia it has been demonstrated that when ice-cream consumption rises there are more shark attacks. But still no ban on ice-cream.

Positive action is preferable to positive noises.

Economy-wreckers are damaging the country.

It depends which country you are in, as you probably realise. Go west and see the difference.

Correct ! It is not true. These are the first four search-results from DuckDuckGo : https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/10/27/thailands-beautiful-mauser/ https://ammoterra.com/gun-from-thailand https://carbinesforcollectors.com/thaipage1.html https://armamentresearch.com/royal-thai-army-acquires-domestically-produced-mod963-self-loading-rifles/

It is important to know which "charitable foundations" - and THEIR funders - fund or otherwise support Mahidol University Medical School and its attached public hospital. This is in order to guage the degree of independence of the research.

I believe you were well informed. The guest-house where I used to stay in Thewet for many years when arriving in, or departing from, Bangkok increased the room-fee steeply not long after a new owner acquired the property. She explained to me that she had to do this to make ends meet. Because fewer tourists were coming. On my next visit, I, a patron for perhaps fifteen years, was unable to book-in. Because "I am only accepting group-tours." On my succeeding trip to Bangkok the guest-house was gone. Closed down. A pity. It was a nice place. Simple, clean, friendly, favoured by French people. Where one sometimes bumped into people one knew. Convenient for the ferryboats. And with an excellent, cheap restaurant close at hand.

If only the decision-makers would charge 1,000 baht they’d exclude the πολλοι - hoi polloi - myself included, and could have the place entirely to themselves. Personally I never did much like the Khao San Road. But there were some useful places in the neighbourhood ; and my favourite, simple, friendly, family-owned hotel not far away.

True. Some of them went to the same prep school in England as myself in the 1950s, and one of them later became governor of Bangkok. And in 1967 on my way by train from Bangkok to Singapore, I travelled between Haadyai and KL in the company of a Thai army general and his son. He was taking his son to school in Kuala Lumpur.

Maybe the Thai education authorities should study education in Finland : https://leverageedu.com/blog/finland-education-system/

Fine if you never leave your rural backwater. But if you wish, as I do, to go occasionaly to the big smoke for a check-up by one's preferred dentists, see an excellent traditional-medcine doctor, visit favourite restaurants, stay in cheap and homely private hotels and guest houses, go window-shopping, and have a break just mixing with the crowds, there may not be so much choice without the tourists.

I wonder if their earnings are included in Thailand"s GDP figures ? The U.K. now includes in its GDP the earnings (but how arrived at?) of prostitution and crime. All part of a growing concern by politicians in power to make falling GDP look better than it is. Government statisticians manipulate the CPI figures in the opposite direction. By - for example - substitution of a cheaper food for a more expensive one, judged to be "equivalent". In the U.S. and France they do the same sort of thing, but the British are a step ahead of them on this.

Looking at the proposal to entice foreigners to settle on the basis of a business scheme, the government might do well to commission some market research to determine the potential clientèle, what they are looking for, and how to tap into the market. This might be a better start than merely trying out preconceived ideas, one after another. And so money well spent. But whatever conditions are decided for future foreign settlers, those already settled here, some for decades, should not be subjected to radically new conditions than those that brought them here in the first place. Stability and continuity creates confidence in the Kingdom. Somewhere in one of the two books by Philip Wylie (on establishing a business in Thailand and on owning a property in Thailand) he writes "Never invest in Thailand what you cannot afford to lose." The authorities should seek to create a situation that counters this viewpoint.

Could this help to kill his business : https://myskunkworks.net/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=74 ?

In that case it will need to be beer made from organic grains. Almost all conventionally grown grain crops, whether cereal or beans,, are treated with glyphosate shortly before harvest. Why? - Because the plant dies and while doing so all the grains ripen together, increasing yield and permitting easier threshing. And, added bonus, the weed-free soil is left ready for planting the next crop. Note also that "organic" in Thailand (as in China) does not denote a reasonable absence of synthetic agricultural chemicals. Several years ago there was an article, probably in 'The Bangkok Post', maybe 'The Nation', about two Thai consumer organisations that sent samples of crops from conventional and "organic" sources to the U.K. for analysis. The results were shocking: conventional agriculture, horrendously high rates; "organic" agriculture, high, but less so. Note to those who think you can wash off agricultural chemicals. Nowadays they are designed not to be washed off, but to enter the crop where rain will have no effect: so-called systemic pesticides and fungicides. When a farmer converts from conventional agriculture to organic, the poisons in the soil do not simply disappear overnight. In biodynamic agriculture (at least in the U.K.) the farmer must have converted at least seven years previously before he can call his produce biodynamic. Modern varieties are designed for yield. Very successfully so. Yield of weight (thanks partially to high uptake of irrigation water, at the expense of nutrient density). In many cases they cannot be grown without artificial fertilisers. And they are more susceptible to insect pests and diseases. With tconsequences that are obvious. And one has not even touched upon the destruction of the life of the soil, which resides in the organisms and micro-organisms that dwell therein.. Nor upon spaced crop rotations, the laying fallow of fields, and grazing by domestic animals, the role of trees in pumping micronutrients from the sub-soil, etc., etc. Organic farming cannot be practised by simply abstaining from the use of synthetic chemicals. Government and private institutions have an important role to play in educating both farmers, distributors, and consumers in the important role that the various forms of organic agriculture have to play in restoring public health, halting soil degradation, and reducing fossil fuel dependence.. And if large numbers of urban dwellers should find themselves permanently out of work in an ongoing economic crisis (which has yet to take shape) a return to rural, village based, life-styles may offer a partial solution.

Globalisation is coming to an end, it seems. The world is becoming increasingly regionalised. It makes sense for Thailand to pass important contracts with China, while making-believe they are on the other side. That was so in the days of confronting colonial expansion between Britain and France. And during the Second World War - brief, face-saving, military resistance, followed by alliance with Japan and joint occupation of the hitherto self-governing Shan States. Plus two resistance movements: a left-wing one backed by Britain and a right-wing one backed by the U.S. The latter subsequently seized power and the Premier had to flee. With results that are with us to this day.

I suspect that tourism is going to rise very slowly from present levels. But OPPORTUNITIES (not certainties) for gathering foreign exchange from farang - in the mid-term, when hopefully exiting the forthcoming depression - might be found by policies that intelligently encourage: - retiree settlement. Even those of modest means likely spend far more in a year than the average holiday tourist. - young independent nomad entrepreneurs. - tourists from the middle classes of India and China, especially once these countries are linked to Thailand by rail. There is one big black cloud on the horizon : the possible re-introduction of the foreign exchange controls that existed in my younger years (You could only take 50 GBP out of the Sterling Area)

"More than a year after the deadly COVID outbreak, the world is still waiting for consumers to fully return to their old spending habits. But a new study indicates that the pandemic may have changed some of us forever. "That prediction comes from a working paper by the European Central Bank, which gathered information from 7,750 households in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands. The data, collected after initial restrictions were first lifted in in July 2020, looked at spending across tourism, hospitality, services, retail and public transport."

Yes, I think it may be a long haul to rebuild a tourist industry. Boom times have ended - everything is cyclical - and long distance air-travel may become as expensive as it was half a century ago. A significant proportion of travellers spentfive weeks on a boat emigrating to the Antipodes. Or if you were a hippy you travelled overland through the Middle East, Afghanistan and India. Of course the private-jet setters will still be flying everywhere, which should please the present Thai government which several years ago announced it wished to promote tourism by the wealthy rather than mass plebeian tourism. Another factor that might poke a spoke through the tourist wheel is that earlier this year the Global Vaccine Expert (Bill Gates) told us that the coronavirus pandemic is as nothing compared to Climate Change. He has now set his sights on the latter. Perhaps we must expect Climate Lockdowns in the near future? Pollution levels are said to have fallen dramatically as result of recent lockdowns. Note also how mainstream opinion-formers screech loudly about the need to reduce carbon dioxide and skim over the issue of the growing number of untested synthetic chemicals being introduced into our environment. Thousands of new substances every year.

The statistics for Covid "cases" can be very simply reduced with the PCR test by reducing the number of test cycles, which reduces the number of false positives. This was done in the U.S., after Biden was installed, from as much as 45 cycles to 27 (the highest number of cycles capable of giving a reasonably accurate figure. Bear in mind also that the PCR test does not look for the virus itself but only what are presumed to be bits of it.

Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19? Are health authorities and parents studying the available published evidence regarding Covid vaccines for children? The following are précis'd extracts (not literal quotes) from the introduction to this 21-page report in 'Toxicology Reports' published by Elsevier: https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S221475002100161X The bulk of the official COVID-19-attributed deaths per capita occur in the elderly with high co-morbidities, and the COVID-19 attributed deaths per capita are negligible in children. The bulk of the normalized post-inoculation deaths also occur in the elderly with high co-morbidities ... while the normalized post-inoculation deaths are small - but not negligible - in children. A cost-benefit analysis showed that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic. The risk of death from COVID-19 decreases drastically as age decreases, and the longer-term effects of the inoculations on lower age groups will increase their risk-benefit ratio, perhaps substantially. In the USA, nearly 600,000 deaths have been officially attributed to COVID-19. "VAERS received 4,863 reports of death (0.0017 %) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.” -- The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. VAERS is a passive surveillance system managed jointly by the CDC and FDA. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report about 1% of actual vaccine/inoculation adverse events. We use the term ‘inoculated’ rather than vaccinated, because the injected material in the present COVID-19 inoculations prevents neither viral infection nor transmission. Since its main function in practice appears to be symptom suppression, it is operationally a “treatment”. After testing began, the main diagnostic used was the RT-PCR test. This test was done at very high amplification cycles, ranging up to 45. In this range, very high numbers of false positives are possible. Most deaths attributed to COVID-19 were elderly with high co-morbidities. Attribution of death to one of many possible co-morbidities is highly arbitrary and can be viewed as a political decision more than a medical decision. The CDC recently admitted that about 94% of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 could just as easily have been attributed to one of the co-morbidities. Thus, the actual number of COVID-19-based deaths in the USA may have been on the order of 35,000 or less, characteristic of a mild flu season. Even the 35,000 deaths may be an overestimate ... If pre-clinical conditions had been taken into account and coupled with the false positives as well, the CDC estimate of 94% mis-diagnosis would be substantially higher. ------------ From Appendix D COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF COVID-19 INOCULATION People in the 65+ demographic are five times as likely to die from the inoculation as from COVID-19 ! The deaths from the inoculations shown in VAERS are short-term only (~six months for those inoculated initially); and for children extremely short-term (~one month). Intermediate and long-term deaths remain to be identified, and are possible from ADE, auto-immune effects, further clotting and vascular diseases, etc., that take time to develop. Thus, the long-term cost-benefit ratio under the best-case scenario could well be on the order of 10/1, 20/1, or more for all the demographics, increasing with decreasing age, and an order-of-magnitude higher under real-world scenarios! In summary, the value of these COVID-19 inoculations is not obvious from a cost-benefit perspective for the most vulnerable age demographic -- and is not obvious from any perspective for the least vulnerable age demographic [i.e. children].

Regarding public versus private hospitals: There's something to be said for both. About a dozen years ago it was recommended to me by the ophthalmologist in a private hospital that I undergo an operation to remove what was described as a "para-retinal membrane". It involved drilling two holes, one on either side of the eye-ball, to give access to the instruments to be used. The cost was quoted as about 80K baht, plus the cost to purchase the instruments. I said that was too much. So he suggested I go to a public hospital attached to a medical university. The public hospital was packed. The waiting to be interviewed took many hours. But when I finally got to see the ophthalmologist it was the same person as before, and the cost was half that quoted before. I arranged for the operation. But then by chance, I met on a bus journey a Thai woman whose mother had an operation to improve her sight and it had blinded her in that eye. I also discovered that 3% of eye operations - in the U.S. - result in blindness. I cancelled the operation. And do not regret it.

"A system that no one believes in any more." - Tucker Carlson is out of touch with many ASEANnow members, some of whom may be irritated by this interview. But on the subject of free speech it is informative, yet brief. https://rumble.com/vl3eot-my-segment-with-tucker-carlson-on-my-move-to-rumble-and-growing-online-cens.html

Rebar is protected from corrosion by the alkalinity of cement in the concrete. However, particularly in or near industrial areas, acid rain (all rain is mildly acidic due to CO2, but here we are talking more of things like sulphuric acid) causes the concrete to become slowly acidic. When the acidity reaches the rebar - which depends partially upon how deep it is buried in the concrete, the rebar begins to corrode, and the expansion then causes spalling and accelerated corrosion. High-rise buildings in London dating from early post-War years have had to be demolished because of this. Chlorinated swimming-pool water is slightly acidic. Use of a waterproofing additive combined with high cement:water ratio + vibration will reduce moisture penetration. But not entirely prevent it. Reinforced concrete is always subject to microscopic fissuration due to the thermal expansion of steel relative to the inert concrete. This latter fact is why marine concrete such as the hydro-electric dam on la Rance in France uses relatively little steel, embedded deeply within the concrete.