wrecker

This article makes no sense. If the banknotes have been sent to Bangkok to determine if they are a forgery, they are either damned good fakes or simply new and real. I have encountered numerous problems exchanging notes from European countries in the past. In Izan each and every note was compared with an color copy in a huge binder. My notes were rejected more than once, because they were slightly different than in their "big" book. It always worked out that they did not had their book updated. Why should anyone go to a bank to exchange 20, 20 pounds notes that were fake? They would have been exchanged in shops or hotels not in banks. The fact that a foreigner is released on bail is also proof that they are far from sure. Take my word for it that half the police force have checked the notes already, and the notes have seen numerous banktellers.

There is no forgery here as it looks, at the most passing on fake notes, but I dare to put my money on the fact that nothing is wrong.

How interesting. If the farmer group had concluded that their own people paying peanuts for their land and than sell it to American owned hotel groups than they had a point. On the other hand those hotel groups cannot load the land in an airplane or a ship and take it away.

The Thais are absurd sensitive as they grab land wherever they can around the world. Have a look in Cambodia. But than again, our yellow shirt friends must find a way to sway the Northern vote. I do not think that the Northerners have any problem with it anyhow, so it is wasted time.

Of course this was entrapment and of course the Americans do not give a dam_n about the rule of law, wherever they operate in the world. If there is one people who have studied Mein Kampf very well it are the Americans as they behave like the new super race. The other fact of life is that the Thai police and military seldom follow proper procedure and entrap their own all the time even enlisting children, something the East german secret police would not have dared.

Is this supposed to be a joke?

No it is far more sinister than a joke. Health issues are a great opportunity for religious people to make a point, even if it is complete and utterly nonsense. In Cairo all the pigis of the minority Christians have been slaughtered, causing a health problem instead of a solution as the filth is not cleaned up anymore. These statements fall in the category "Masturbation makes you blind" local doctors working in the countryside tell teenage girls not to look at the private parts of men, as it can cause blindness.

It must have been the same doctor who accused Anwar of Sodomy. What a joke.

what did they do

Swindling, swindlers. Phoning people who did not pay their debts and convince them to pay to them instead. I do not see the Thai authorities punishing them, after a few months they will be send home, because it will be impossible for the Thai authorities to prove that they have swindled people out of their money, unless Thai Nationals were involved of course. Not too good for those with a Chinese passport. We have seen it with the Boiler room operations in Bangkok a few years ago, there is not so much that can be done if non Thai citizens or banks have lost money.

Maybe he was banged up in one of the (by now) abolished secret US prisons?

If the latter is through, and foreigners do have to pay for their medication, the Thai government would be guilty (and not for the first time) of manslaughter in case someone dies, whose dead could have been prevented if medicines were supplied. I suppose that the International Red Cross will discuss these kind of issues with the Thai government.

If life saving or potential life saving medicines are withheld from any person in the kingdom for the reason of payment, the Thai authorities are in serious breach of their international obligation.

I can't however imagine that this is the case. It is far more likely that there simply are no medicines available at all. Not for Thai prisoners, not for foreigners and unfortunately also not for visitors and guards who will mingle with regular citizens. Prisoners are worth nothing in thailand unless they get attention from foreign media in such case the angry outside world and the lingering loss of face is mostly enough to get the Thai governments going.

Although the US authorities will understand that it is incompetence on the Thai side and that long ago everything was written by hand and some Thai officials were not able to read the Thai numbers properly (I assume there lays the problem) I would rather forget about my Thai passport than my American passport. It is even a bigger headache than when you end up with a stolen Identity. Do not bother to change anything just forget about it. The legal documents will work out not to be that legal because than you have to go to the mills of the ministry of foreign affairs and a few other ministeries in Thailand.

This happens very often in certain societies in Western countries authorities often recreate a birthday themselves as half the village went to the authorities once or twice a year to register their children.

In order to get their priorities right, they should start arresting their "own" first for demanding bribes. When Thaksin still was in charge of a certain TV station we had daily shows where policemen were caught red handed taking bribes. Now all tv stations are safely in the hands of the royalists and the army even CNN kisses the bud of these stations by not reporting on certain cases which are too "sensitive". So it is just another way to make money, my advice, put them all on candid camera!

Let's be clear that theft is not a problem limited to Thailand. In all major airports from the US to Australia and from Hong Kong to Europe people get robbed. It is good that the Thai authorities have recognized the problem and seem to work on it. All these negative comments make Suvanabhumi look bad. All frequent travellers know that on all airports worldwide the same problems exists. You get robbed by illegal taxi drivers anywhere, drugs are smuggled by crooked cleaners (who seem to make too little money anyhow, anywhere, luggage get stolen, valuables disappear and scams are in progress. Customs and immigration officers are bought in each and every country too. But as the Germans like to say: By uns zum hause is alles viel besser, which is obviously nonsense.

It would be a good thing to recognize that the airports in the countries where we come from are often less customer friendly and that authorities are surely often rude. I dare to say that Suvanbhumi is much better than stated in this forum.

Good to see that this government is busy solving the economic problems of businesses by creating more useless unenforceable laws. Never mind, I understand too that the elite is heavily involved in the police and army and thus this provides an great money making opportunity to bribe the police. Even if you do not provide singing partners (What is wrong with that?) the police will claim you did as a busniess owner. An enveloppe will solve the problem.

It is high time that the courts will end this useless government by enforcing the ame absurd standards as they did on Samak. New elections are absolutely necessary.

Thamassat is spot on with the cnclusion that the spin-off is huge. the problem however with this government and the former military government is that they cannot pocket the billions of baht spend by these wealthy foreigners and that is what it is all about. Nobody in his or her right mind will pay golf courses huge amounts. Especially the reinstated courses have received fine amounts of money and belong to the clique of Sanan. On the other hand court cases will be rare. I do not see any businessman going to court for a loss of less than 30,000 US and last but not least the government could still decide to keep them main privileges intact being express access to the country by allowing the holders to check in at a sparate immigration counter and allowing them a five year visa.

People who hold these cards seldom want to be seen to ask for a rebate by flashing the card, they will be far more interested in beating red tape.

This government lacks plans, lack creativity and is made up out of individuals who are used to think of themselves first instead of the country, therefore it might be better to forget about terminology like "Spin-off" and "investment", the main goal of this kind of governments is not to get foreigners in but to get foreigners out.

They complain on the one hand that Tourism is at an all time low, yet they are cracking down on the use of tourist visas, they find the time ripe to kill the elite card program, they crack down on nominees holding land. What more proof is needed that Thailand likes to become an isolationist country. Thailand is becoming inhospitable, and their slogan is really "spend an awful lot, but do not stay too long" and that will backfire.

Good to see it is not you George....after all the inappropriate comments on the red/vs yellow news in the news section

Oops ...

I think that we may congratulate Foreign Minister Kasit, he considered the airport occupation "fun". We may congratulate the army too for using absurd force and distrusting the police for not being able to do the job. We may congratulate Suthep and Newin fro assembling a shirt of Blue shirted ex convicts who ignited the red shirt mob in Pattaya and we must absolute congratulate the army for screwing up the economy. The bottom line: economic crisis? Sure, but in the case of Thailand: Som Na Naa

Beautiful country. The Thai Government motto: Spend a lot, but do not stay too long.... And about the tourism industry; who gives a hack. The government will pay the interest bill of the hoteliers anyhow. Not everybody on tourist visas are working, I assume.

here is not really a need to explain the wrongful terminology that is used in this rubbish article. With a chance of just 6 out of 1000 to end up in a bad situation, people should keep their cool. a seasonal flue is a mass murderer too. Just because it is a pandemic does not necessarily mean that the number of deadly victims will be significantly higher nor would it imply that the number of infected people is higher.

I guess that the word Pandemic equals a lot of money opportunities for politicians, hospitals, pharmaceutical industry and even the textile industry. That is seen by some as a nice bonus.

I am not sure if these claims are real. They are surfacing every few months. They range from King Power shoplifting when leaving Thailand to Cigarette smuggling when arriving. Fact is that the Thai government would be incredible incompetent if this were true. [snip]

Fighting a case in Thailand is an absurd assumption. People do neither have the means, nor the money and on top of that they will probably lose their job as happened when the standup guys from PAD blocked the airports.

These same PAD boys have accused this very government from accepting money from King Power. Maybe that is the reason why it stays very silent.

It is also another example why the entire police department should be overhauled. Fire the entire police force, you have more police than mosquitoes in the Land of Smiles, and the police are bitting worse than their flying equals. Thailand is a de facto police state, by sending home half of the upstanding boys in brown the other half will get a better salary and there is less need to shame the country.

Bottom line is that Suthep has a cozy relationship with both the Police and King Power, so nothing will happen. A typical case of bad luck for the tourists the statistics were against them.

I understand that it is difficult for people to wash hands if they are not used to it. The virus however spreads indeed through coughing, and attaches itself to everything that way. So washing hands probably makes far more sense than closing schools. After all grown ups go to factories where people are treated like sardines just as in Thai offices where they have less space than in a concentration camp.

The bottom line is that commons sense cannot prevent the spread of the virus but at the best slow it down.

I am afraid however that this virus is a great money making opportunity for some in the government.

I am completely baffled by the idea that Sana has a say in matters of public health. Did he suddenly became a doctor? It might be possible after he checked out the physical health of a journalist in a bangkok hotel room and than used his power to intimidate the girl. Sana seem to be in charge of buying millions o face masks too. They will normally retail for 2 - 5 baht. I think Sanan will pay around 20 baht.

Over and over again it seems that the ethical standards of this government is at least a factor 10 times lower than the already not so good standards that Thaksin imposed on his stealing cabinet members.

Sanan should be told to shut up. IF someone can comment it is only the health minister, not a race rigging, vote buying former convict who was banned from politics for 5 year already for corruption.

Besides the fact that the recommendations are ridiculous, you cannot shut down a country and especially not for a relative mild sickness that will only slightly the increase the chances of getting killed by a regular influenza virus.

I suspect that there is a political motive here. By telling the people to stay home they want to avoid demonstrations which can disrupt another ministerial meeting, this time the Asean. It cannot be coincidence that the time frame fits exactly.

If it was really related to a matter of public health other people would be involved and certainly not Sanan and Suthep. The numbers do not add up either. Every day just a few hundred cases are reported, if there was so much danger the number would have been in the tens of thousands of cases a week not measured in less than a thousand. I start to believe that the government has hired one of the poll agencies to massage the numbers. I am talking about those poll agencies who think that the country has just 17 provinces and that they can extrapolate the outcome to the entire country. Thailand's statistics are as unreliable as thise polling agencies.

Any which way you look at it, people have the right to peaceful demonstrations. Luckily for the government here, hardly any country in the Asean group is legitimate, freely elected and democratic. So there will be no questions from most countries.

I wonder if they have consulted Burma on how they deal with legitimate demonstrations. On the other hand this government is power horny and they have just a few months left to steal as much as possible, so they would have asked non Asean member China for advise.

It is not so much incompetence of the life guards but of the maintenance people who did not closed it properly. As always in Thailand they will find a scapegoat probably the boy or girl that washes the towels. The hot shots will get away with it.

Only the fact that the idea pops up in the heads of lawmakers to consider closing the country is ludicrous. Not only it shows that the government does not have a clue how porous the border is. Besides the fact that Burmese, Cambodians and Laotians can cross almost at will and unhindered, thousands of people have already been diagnosed. They are within the borders of Thailand and therefore there is no way they can prevent the spread. It is a good thing to proof to the yellow shorts that they do everything to make an isolated banana republic like country out of Thailand and that is what they really want.

in general I am not really impressed with any embassy operating abroad, not with Western Embassies and not with Thai embassies. Their normal point of view is one of "som nam naa" and your own problem. Chapeau therefore that this embassy has reacted in a decent and great manner. Human trafficking should be stopped at all cost.

The last time Suthep boasted too that the Security was up to world class standards. he was mistaken. He meant to say that the money paid to the forces were up to international standards. He did not told us what happened with the money. Never mind, as long as Suthep is not sacked (how could he, he is the de facto Prime minister) security is never great. He fails in the South, he ruined the tourism industry by asking hotel operators to send in a force to beat the hel_l out of red shirts in pattaya (before they had broken into the summit) and he used the army to shoot on demonstrators instead of using the police. by appointing a minister of foreign affairs who said it was "fun" to block the airports and not prosecuting the culprits of the airport siege he lost all his credibility. Unfortunately credibility in Thai politics is very unimportant, that is why we have brothel owners as commercial ministers, people who sexually assaulted journalists as deputy PM and others who flew around Asia in an aircraft from TAC became in charge of security.

Draconian style is Draconian Thai style, Draconian for some, lackluster for others.