jonclark

So rather than whinging and blaming the Chinese for being highly competitive...what exactly is being done to make Thailand's producers more competitive by the government - protectionism? That doesn't make Thai producers more competitive, if anything it achieves the opposite. So what is the government doing to improve Thailand's competitiveness?? I have bought plenty of Thai stuff here that fell apart....including my house!!

21 hours ago, NoshowJones said:

Then why did they not do anything about the stupid Thai defamation law when they were in power?

I think Taksin was too busy using them to silence his opponents when he was in power. I remember he used the defamation law against PAD in 2006 and there may well have been other cases..it was a long time ago. 

And Taksin and Yingkucks grandmother was Chinese....

Drug use reflects poverty and poor family structure. Unless those two conditions are improved, going after the dealers will be generally  ineffective as the conditions that support drug use and demand remain. 

7 minutes ago, lordgrinz said:

 

In the End, the Junta and Elite stay in power, coups trump all.

In the short term yes - which is why they have to keep having coups - It just perpetuates the cycle, and puts the good old boys back in power for a few years, but the ideology remains and grows right under their trough entrenched noses - Do you think FFP / MFP would have done as well and grown without a coup to ferment such an opposite popular response. I think UTN and PPP thought they would waltz the election - all the political commentators at the time were saying MFP would do well to equal the 80 seats from the previous election (most commentators expected significantly less) and 141 was a huge shock and public rebuke to UTN and PPP. The ideology remained, despite MFP dissolution in 2020 and grew and it will do so again, even with a possible dissolution, as recent history has shown. 

9 hours ago, bannork said:

If they dissolved Bhumjaithai (hard to believe), most members would go back to their old home, now, Pheu Thai.

 

 I know - but wouldnt it be funny if they joined the opposition camp out of spite - Oops a minority government. 

I guess the elephant in the room now will be if the retirement / married extension of 800'000 is going to be a gross or net figure in the future? 

4 hours ago, Gilligan In Drag said:

There's also a pretty important consideration that gets ignored and thrown under the bus:

 

The dangers of prohibition.

 

Recreational drug use can  harm some, but so do governments that propagandize their people and render them 

that much more confused and ignorant in that process, or so can driving a car harm people. Supernovas explode with the power to annihilate whole local

star clusters, but also provide the material to form new worlds. Get used to it, Shiva. the god of destruction  is not worshipped

by 100's of millions of people in India for no reason, its a profound and prevasive aspect of life that the polite genteel gardners

of the western world think they can get under control by spraying their gardens with pesticides. When governments embark on drug wars and prohibitions you are effectively spraying your people with pesticides adding something equally as dangerous as rampant drug abuse if not more so

to the whole mix. Its not like no one knew that even 100 years ago either and its often what you read as to why they stopped alcohol prohibition in the west: its doesn't work and and creates more problems than it solves.

 

Prohibition is already a long discredited way to control the harmful effects of mass recreational drug use on society if it ever

is sincerely carried out to protect society, and personally I don't think it is done for that purpose.

 

It is clearly useful as a political tool, social control, and for the profit of entities like colonial and neo-colonial entites and drug companies,

branches of government and criminal elites. It is NEVER done to protect you, lets not be naive, there are no governments

that exist or who have ever existed that were sincerely that interested in their citizen's welfare. It isn't their job, its your job

if you want to live your life fully as a sentient sensible adult human being and if you think the government is able to protect you

from reality even if it wanted to, realities like there are many chemical compounds and plants that change people's behavior in ways that may be dangerous,

then you have been duped into helping them very actively not help you.

 

As we well know from the Iran-Contra scandal in the United States in the 1980's, an illegal drug market

is a great way for rogue actors in government and military to get funding they need to run wars and other projects

without approval, public knowledge and oversight. So in our weak efforts, efforts that seem these days to have completely failed, to have representative

and transparent government that genuinely serves their people throughout the world, drug prohibitions add even more problems to the human problems with running sovereign nations that treat its citizenry with due respect and are corrosive towards those ends of an accountable

government which acts with purpose that is clear to all making for a life that without intervention and stupid nannying

is actually genuinely safer and better for everyone.

 

People wax all snarky-barky on the forum whenever the cannabis legalization in Thailand topic comes up, "Oh, they just wanna

make a bunch of money!" The same can be said for illegalization, just that who makes the money will be different.

If its illegal then who makes the money changes hands those in government and business who are positioned to profit from illegal sales will benefit.

 

making weed illegal is not to save the children and adults of Thailand, if they were interested in that, other more key things would be prioritized

such as banning toxic chemicals, chemicals banned all over the world no less,

but used ubiquitously in food, agriculture. Or working to effectively ensure people have clean air and water.

Or how about protecting people from predatory doctors and pharmacies with malpractice laws.

Or how about instilling in people good basic health and safety awareness, or tryin gto create a system

that does not run on corruption so that laws protecting people from harmful pollutants, food and medication

will be enforced and Thailand can honestly test foods and drugs for harm creating capabilities. Theres plenty

of dangerous chemical compounds galore everytime you step into a shop or market or supermarket. Really, cannabis

and alcohol are scapegoats, even though of course one must be judicious in their use. But that goes without saying

for anything.

 

The health of Thai people is very poor, among the worst in Asia. Anywhere you go in Thailand you are exposed to life shortening levels

of agricultural poisons, a witches brew of compounds in the air from burning refuse and exposed in the cities to clouds of

auto-motive exhausts from easily solvable traffic problems. But there is no will to solve these problems because Thailand like many

countries is hopelessly corrupt and because of that the mentality is theres no immediate gain or opportunity to be gained from

solving those problems. Apparently there is somethingto be had from this cannabis legalization re-criminalization game or it would ne all shrugged off.

 

In addition to providing bad actors with illegal markets and their attendant inflated prices,

With drug prohibitions in place, drugs can be used as a way for government and law enforcement to

falsely imprison, fine and smear who ever they like.

We all know in urban areas everywhere that the police can and do plant drugs

on people who have broken no laws whenever they want to target someone to be taken down or merely fined.

Someone's occasional use of a recreational substance can be a way of completely removing

them from their well earned and capable positions. So, OK go ahead, re-criminalize cannabis

and hand law enforcement another tool to abuse their positions for their own gain and society's loss.

 

And then there's workplace and law enforcement drug testing that prohibition gives you.

And apart from the obviosu it has the unfortunate effect of having normalized the situation whereby

people forefeit their right human right to privacy and bodily autonomy and now your boss or the government or the police can

then have some not insignificant control over your neurochemistry, its not just the big bad

government or law enforcement standing between you and your brain, its your buddy you work with and say good morning to everyday.

Prohibition via drug testing then sets up these subtly corrosive and insidious relationships

like a cancer within the society. People like to recall the old communist regimes where

social empowerment and cohesion was shattered, even down down to the family level

by snitch networks. To me it seems the drug test is another species of this found in the post communist

uni-polar world soon to become multi again.

 

The drug test is also a routine way that law enforcement can arbitrarily extract fines whenever they like and detain who they like.

We are conditioned by the high-techness and scientific glamor of it to carry on in the media and to each other and ourselves

as though testing were actually a legitimate means to control the problem of drug use. Its a gizmo, wow! It must be the answer

to the problem of determining whose on drugs and who isn't. It clearly is not, its very well known drug tests

do not have high enough levels of accuracy and people who do not use drugs can be subject to life ruining

consequences should a law enforcement operative run a money saving or god forbid counterfeit and completely

arbitrary drug test and get a false result.

 

But we now mostly accept drug testing and naively think, and you deny the flakiness of drug tests and assure yorurself well I don't use drugs I have nothing to fear and this will help create a safe world and put the druggies in jail and rehab where they belong and all will be well. Just because you have a piece of technology doesn't mean you have anything legit. It could be anything and you don;t know

how that test actually comes by its results, its all completely opaque to the average person and the agencies and the compaines that make these

tests can hide behind that. They don't even have to make legitmate tests, in most countries such as the United States that even have

supposed consumer standards checks, the outfits are wholly corrupted. Why bother with selling a real test. Just pay some

person with a science degree 2 thousand dollars and presto you have a test that without fail and in 15 minutes tells you whether someone has taken an

illegal drug. Or consider how far you are going to get in Thailand investigating and challenging  whether even a fake test was conducted, all the police have to do

is say, "This is a drug test...and the drug test says you took an illegal drug...you'll have to give up your green papaya shaver manufacturing enterprise to us

because you'll be in for quite awhile." Just ask Americans about that kin dof thing, how now the government routinely seizes all of your assets

and has railroaded many innocent people, ruined them and never returned what was wrongfully seized from them because of a drug charge. there som ehorrific ironies afloat such as in one case traces of cocaine were found on crisp bank notes foun din a safe of one successful balck american business man and his defense attornies presented studies that found that because there is so much illegal drug running done by unmonitored military and government organizations in the United States, there is enough cocaine on every US dollar to incriminate and seize the assets of anyone they choose. So yeah, great, run a drug war and prohibition Thailand.

 

The story of this man who was run in and had yachts and homes and his business empire and assets seized because of a drug test is to be found in the  highly recommended two volume memoirs, Volume 1-Phikal and Volume 2-Tikal of the discoverer of the benefits of MDMA,

and inventor of hundreds of psychoactive compunds the experimental neuro-pharmacologist Alexander Shulgin. Shulgin himself was an eminently thoughtful and articulate and humane advocate for human freedom and potential. He experimented on himself and his friends and chronicalled in voluninous detailed the findings of the beneficial effects of compounds he created at his home laboratory funded by royalties he'd gained earlier in his career working for Dole Pineapple and his salary as a professor and public speaker at UC Berkeley in California. His interest was in psychoactive compounds long before they were in the public eye and concern, and so he got out of working as a chemist in big agriculture as soon as he could. But despite being among the very few given license to investigate and create psychoactive chemicals  by the US government, the DEA decided eventually to go in and tear his lab apart and end his activities by prosecuting him to destroy his work and even ban his book which detailed to the public the effects and methods to synthesize just about anything he found or made himself. The power of a mandate of a drug prohibition gave the DEA, the agency charged with fighting the drug war against the whole world  the overeach to go in and bust up the research. The library of Alexander (Shulgin) has been burned to the ground and decades have now passed in which the befits and nature of the human mind may forever remain obscured.

 

And then there is the way that  drug testing  has opened pandora's box to use flakey technologies  to be able to

predict or even read a person's mind for pre-crime and of course as we know there is much discussion

by governments and law enforcement authorities about how

a pre-crime or a test result saying you were about to commit a crime will be tantamount in the future to

having actually done the crime. To me it would seem that drug testing is a similar operation. Your crime of

having been inebriated and thus a danger to yourself and others is not otherwise apparent. So you have to

take the drug test which in effect says, you are a danger before the fact, its a type of pre-crime indicator in many cases.

 

And also, not to mention, that drug testing, like background checks and monitoring employee

internet activities is used as a shabby substitute for   critical thinking and

evaluative skills, and distracts probably all

companies to some degree from spending time and resources and getting actually competent management

who are foscused on actually able to evaluate employee work and performance and actual behavior on the job.

The society that is on drugs and "on" prohibition, as prohibition is just as capable of creating a deluded nation as a drugs are 

hallucinates as it runs the drug test, the surreptitious background check, the application gathered  look at

an employee's comments and other activities  on internet.

The normalization of superfluous and glamorous high tech tools with limited benefit especially in places

like Thailand where critical and evaluative skills are under developed no doubt lowers the quality of life for everyone.

Indeed ruling institutions and individuals do not want people to have the ability to evaluate performance and behavior

lest their managerial class begin to turn those well honed workplace skills against them. So, you give them the drug that is

drug tests and multi-choice personality investigation quizzes and monitor their twitter posts in lieu. its also no doubt a lot more fun

and inspiring for managers to get to play god and say lets see if Nigel was smoking dope on the weekend and ask him to submit a drug test

rather than going through the monotony of actually looking at what he is doing and having to weigh many considerations

as to whether he's helping the company or organization or govt branch that pays him. You can just save all that headache and hours of boredom

by doing a simple and fun drug test with lots of cool bells and whistles and colors and charts and then be able to proclaim with complete conviction,  "Ah ha! He uses drugs! And he talks a load of crap that i don't appreciate on facebook! I knew he was on drugs! He's out of here! I don't care that he is the star developer!"

 

How much does it matter if your star developer tests positive for cocaine and marijuana, especially if you never ran

a test you'd never have known. Just the act of running a test for drugs is an admission that there is no obvious problem

with your employee's performance in the first place.

 

So thanks to drug prohibition its now acceptable for management to go through the

motions of monitoring the effectiveness of their employees, its essentially a ritual substituting for

real discernment: is the employee an asset in his actual behavior and real contributions. I have never

worked under any Thai manager, and I have worked under many, who could evaluate the quality of anyone's

work or understand the value or liability to the work environment of employees in their charge. They look at

anything but, they understand almost everything but is this work he's doing good or not.
 

Yet the discussion here on the threads and in media and by the government ignores the dire price to be

paid by society as a whole for a drug war or prohibition. They seem blithely unaware despite the precedent

despite the semi-detente in the west regarding recreational cannabis.

 

The end of alcohol prohibition in the United States left us with that conclusion, that was nearly a century ago

yet as soon as alcohol prohibition ended JD Anslinger picked up the reigns and fired the fuel of hysteria against cannabis.

But as that all begin sto end Thailand not only makes a false move to undo it but it decides to say no actually screw all that.

It really seems to doubly affirm their commitment to harming their population to using prohibition for political gain and enriching themselves

and their overlords.

 

 

Jeez. ChatGBT has been busy!!

FFS. Rather than focusing on the tourist dollar to expand the economy, focus on developing the skills, opportunities and education of the people. 

A skilled and motivated population will be better positioned to leverage and create better business opportunities than a poorly motivated and rewarded population who are dependent on foreigner visitor numbers to provide work opportunities in the travel and tourism sector. 

The economy here is clearly on life support and desperation is starting to take hold. 

"Domestic tourism will reach 292 million visits"...really. Household debt at 80% of GDP and people have the money to go on holiday..lol. 

The only way that number will be reached is if the daily school run is classes a 'visit'. 

4 hours ago, Liverpool Lou said:

All convicts can decide who they accept visits from and MPs do not have the right to inspect him in his accommodation without his agreement, or force their presence on him, whether he is in hospital or in Klong Prem.

I am fairly sure as he is detained at the taxpayers expense, MPs are allowed to view his accommodation to ensure value for money for the taxpayers.  Can prisoners pay for private accommodation? 

1 hour ago, Confuscious said:

Who was the youngest wives of Muhammad?

A preponderance of classical sources converge on Aisha being 6 or 7 years old at the time of her marriage, and 9 at the consummation; her age has become a source of ideological friction in modern times. Aisha had an important role in early Islamic history, both during Muhammad's life and after his death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aisha#:~:text=A preponderance of classical sources,life and after his death.

Bible: Child Marriage in Ancient Israelite times – Paedophilia?

In Biblical times people were married at a very young age. Girls were usually betrothed before they reached puberty – majority of the time the marriage would have consummated when the girl reached puberty, and that was usually between the ages of 8, 9 or older,(Note: when a girl reached puberty prior to the 20th century, she was considered to be an adult in most cultures/societies). In this article I will mostly quote Scholarly sources to prove that marriage in ancient Israelite times took place at a very young age, sometimes the girls who were married off were pre-pubescent. There was no law against a pre-pubescent girl being married off. Actually as you will read further, you will come to realise that the Mishnah gave approval for a Man to have intercourse to a betrothed girl, any-time after the age of three years old.

https://discover-the-truth.com/2013/09/14/bible-child-marriage-in-ancient-israelite-times-paedophilia/

According to my knowledge, the Chinese are not the only ones who fancy to f..k young girls.

 

 

Luckily we have moved on since biblical times eh and have the knowledge and understanding that many of the practices from 2000 years ago were wrong which is why we have developed laws to put an end to such actions. 

Using the ancient Israelites and Islam to deflect from illegal and frankly amoral actions in the 21st century is absurd. 

I hope that your knowledge of the carnal lust that drives people to prey on young girls does not come from personal practice.