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There is a really interesting back story to this available on Wikipedia if you do some research on Thailand-WW2-Free Thai Army. In the later years of the war while Thailand was still functionally occupied by the Japanese, a Thai resistance force called the Free Thai Army had formed and was effectively mounting successful raids against Japanese facilities.

There were several American former diplomats involved and when the Americans began large scale bombing of Bangkok, especially the Bangkok Noi railyards, they desperately tried to get the US to stop. The bombing was very inaccurate, little of strategic value was being destroyed and thousands of civilians were being killed. Public opinion was swinging back into Japans favor and making things very difficult for the pro-American free Army. US bomber command totally ignored them and continued the basically useless raids for several months longer causing a lot of bitterness on the part of Free Army leaders.

One interesting fact of WW2 was that while Great Britain and France were officially at war with Thailand, the US never was. The Thai Ambassador in Washington refused to deliver the Declaration of War to the State Department the day after Pearl harbor, thus, never technically at war.

This odd fact had a huge affect on post war reparation negotiations and the US blocked many British and French reparation demands.

Very interesting history for those who care to dig.

Thailand declared war on the US on 25 Jan 1942, not the day after the Pearl Harbor bombing. Whether it was accepted or not, they still declared war. Thailand also declared war on the UK. Oh, and the Seri Thai (Free Thai Movement) - really didn't do much for the war effort in Thailand as they didn't return from the US/UK until around mid 1944. Show me proof of raids against Japanese facilities..

It's quite true that Thailand did declare war on the US and irrelevant that the Thai ambassador refused to deliver the note. Thailand put up little resistance when Japan invaded and soon after threw in their lot with the Japanese in making a declaration of war against the US and Great Britain.

Before the Japanese invasion the British had asked permission to enter Thailand's southern province in order to set up a defensive line to protect its interests in Malaya against the Japanese, the Thai government refused. The resulting loss of Malaya and Singapore was undoubtedly altered by the Thai governments decision as General Gordon Bennett, the Australian Divisional commander, had to organize his defenses with one hand tied behind his back.

When the bombing campaign against Bangkok in 1944 started to have a real detrimental effect on Thailand (and having seen the Japanese increasingly use Thais as forced labour), they then wanted to switch sides. The Japanese simply shut out the Thai government and used many more Thais as slave labour.

The conjecture was that Thailand had known all along about the Japanese invasion and had took a stand against British imperialism, only to swap it for Japanese subjugation later in the war.

Thailand was briefly occupied by British forces after they surrendered in 1945, Winston Churchill wanted to impose punitive reparations against the country but the US government opposed this, so a deal was done to revert Thailand back to democracy and the UK was given Thai rice!

You whistle at us.

We shoot you and throw grenades at you.

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As she wasn't in the car it was a sure fire way of getting some great anti-government press, I'm hoping the Thai police collected the ammo shells for forensics!

Yeah, the fall looks fake, but they say the guy died....dunno.

looks fake. so if a person i shot in the stomache how should they fall. i mean you have obviously seen many people shot in the stomache - or are you talking absolute nonsense

You'll get used to it on TV.

Whilst most of us will feel very sorry for the victims I had to laugh at the Thai-ness on Facebook. They have several pics of Super-fortresses and make several comments about the Thai & Japanese air forces chasing them off, one pic has a B29 in flames and they are making much merriment of their military achievements. This sad incident has at the very least made them aware of UXB's but regarding the downing of these bombers just a little research would tell them that B29's operated @ 5,000ft above the most powerful Zero fighters and only the biggest artillery pieces could reach them. B24's and Wellingtons were far more vulnerable to interception and several were lost over Bangkok. Sadly some of those brave aircrews who survived were executed and I know of one RAF airman beheaded several day's after the Japanese surrender. It should also be remembered that some Japanese officers indulged in the cannibalism of US airmen.

forgive my ignorance, but why are "POLICE" cadets doing jump training anyway ?....I mean how many people can you extort money from at 10,000 feet ?...

They like to collect macho badges, I've yet to find any other reason!

It also seems that everyone in the army is jump qualified!!

Cutting a bomb with a torch! wow the IQ levels in here seems to be very high

It could have been so corroded over time that is was not recognisable as a bomb though. But if that was the case, you wouldn't be able to gas-axe it either, as anyone who's ever oxy cut badly rusted steel would know.

The guy selling it passed it of as a hammer broken of a crane, so it can't have been that rusted. These hammers are not bomb shaped and the recycle shop owner was suspicious, so I guess he retired to a safe distance and went for a coffee whilst his Burmese/Cambodian employees cut it up!

from where they got 2ww bomb in thailand?

Read the report...it says it all there

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Not one Thai that I have spoken to, and most are teachers, know anything about Thai involvement in WWII or the Allied bombing of Bangkok . There are bound to be quite a few of these still around Don Muang or rail and bridge areas, a 500lb uxb can penetrate several feet and are often found around Europe during construction work.

The beach booms are very helpful to protect against the jet skies. Small round balls would not keep them off the swimming zone. They would just drive over them.

Why Thais don't learn swimming (and many other subjects as well) in school?

You can't learn common sense!

I don't like Thais pretending to be westerners or endless posts ending up with political mud slinging.

What I find more irritating are people who don't know how to load minutes into the phone they own, and have the cashier do it for them. Meanwhile everyone waits.

It's called customer service & when I've left my glasses at home it's a great help.

This will go on until the next election , most likely in May. If PM Yingluck falls on her sword, there are several candidates that stand ready to take her place, with the most likely her sister. However, the big issue is the impeachment. As much as the current government can be criticized over the rice pledging program, in a functioning democracy, punishment would be meted out at the ballot box if merited and not by a judiciary legislating from the bench. If the corruption commission can show the PM was directly implicated in corruption, then fine, impeach the PM, and put her in jail. However, to date, there hasn't been any tangible evidence of her corruption and that's why the NACC had better be able to make a good case. If not, then a popular uprising against the judiciary and its puppet masters would be expected.

The current state of affairs are a direct result of the judiciary biased constitution imposed on the Thais, anyone seems able to shout foul against the government for just trying to govern. In a modern democracy parliament sets the laws by which the judiciary operate and as you say, the ballot box reflects how the governing party are performing. Thai opposition party's have to come up with policies that are attractive to the electorate in order to win at the ballot box, instead they try to impose a government drawn from a cabal of the elite. This is not democracy and would return Thailand to the turmoil seen through much of the last century dating from the 1932 coup that resulted in the King fleeing to Britain. Coup followed coup with the military and judiciary setting laws that tied the hands of government. The rural farmers are much more politically savvy than back then and will not accept rule by a dictatorial regime so the elite had better wise up and accept democracy.

Could that have been because money problems? No more money? Thai wife get up and leave, man kill self...

Why do people assume that all Thai women marry a man for money? just because a few deluded fools fall for some bar girl who sees money as no 1, i know a guy who is very ill and has little money ,but his wife has nursed and cared for the poor sod for years and will be devastated when he finally goes ,he is her life and she is Thai and from a poor familly.

A little gem found in an ocean of sadness. I only wish this poor man had had a similar spouse.

"The tank had some water in it, he explained, and when he hit a bend in the road the water sloshed to one side,"

Bullshit. You were driving too fast. All water and fuel trucks have baffles inside to keep just that sort of thing from happening.Without them they would be impossible to keep under control.

Not all have baffles.

So only safe if full or empty.

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So, who let this idiot on the plane in the first place?

And why did the cabin crew allow him to drink so much alcohol of the flight?

Probably pissed before the flight as they are so stingy with on-board booze these day's, so it's the departure airport check-in staff who should have refused to board him.

Who on earth is Somi Guha when she's at home? You might ask

Turns out she is an actress but the guy on the bridge is probably better known than she is.

Not a bad way to get yourself better known now is is it?

I thought JG's remark was quite witty and if I were Asian I doubt if I would have been offended in anyway whatsoever.

Having been called a sheepsha**er by many an Englishman in jest I've been around long enough to know there's nothing racist about those type of jibes. It comes with the territory no matter your race or colour.

Never ceases to amaze me why Caucasians are always the ones branded as racist yet whether we be at home or abroad we can mix with virtually anyone unlike some races who no matter where they go set up single race communities and want nothing to do with others..We have all cracked jokes about other races at sometime or another but without malice.

God forbid the day we have to stop telling jokes about the Scotsman the Englishman and the Irishman because we fear we might end up in court.

This Somi Guha is being deliberately controversial in my opinion. It's the oldest trick in the book to gain fame and some people have made millions doing it and if the truth be known they couldn't care less about any man anywhere on any bridge.

The BBC should file her complaint where it belongs....in the bin

Well said sheep shagger; I'm a Yorkie, that's similar to a Jock but just that little bit tighter! I know it's gay wedding day but I wasn't inferring anything about &lt;deleted&gt;!!

I wonder if his son is of legal (motorbike driving) age, has a license and wears a helmet? Call me cynical, but...

Totally irrelevant.

But probably true!

One can but hope that this objectionable piece of human excrement will indeed suffer the equivalent of ''the death of a thousand cuts'' whilst it festers in the Bangkok Hilton.

People like this have a very serious mental health problem. Sadly, the brain is part of the human body and, just like your heart or lungs, things can go wrong with it. That's why respectable human rights organisations oppose the death penalty. Unfortunately lowlife people, even for cases of this appalling and vile nature, still call for people to be hung, drawn and quartered. There are many despots whom have committed vile acts against their fellow human beings, or encouraged others to do so. I can think of thousands really: people such as Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Thaksin, Saddam, the Taliban, Bush and so on and so forth. Yet people in the main don't call for their execution. But their crimes ended the lives of children, women, innocents all. Seriously, we should be looking at the mental health of people who commit crimes that go against human values (such as they are) and as a society, a global society, work out ways in which these people can be kept safely away from the mainstream. I know that all you witch-hunters out there will oppose my words, but I'm telling it as I feel it.

So cut off his head & let medical science investigate his brain; simple!

OK, some of the points are valid, but I base my personal ranking on more than just clean streets and 8-Dollar Lattes. My very own personal ranking (no facts, just persoanl comfort):

1. Thailand

2. Cambodia

3. Myanmar

4. Laos

5. Vietnam

6. Singapore

7. Malaysia

Can't speak for the Philippines or Brunei.

Malaysia 7 out of 7 & Thailand 1 from 7: Right?

Deport them both, there is enough hot headed farang idiots in the country as it is. If you are involved in a fight and use weapons your visa should be cancelled and stamped never to return. Might make some farangs act a little more civil if they know boom boom is going to be cut off.

You're being to heavy handed with a pair of hard working citizens keen to integrate within Thai society.

They seem right at home in Thailand and are already displaying much empathy towards Thai culture.

supreme leader sounds a bit like the great leader

Oberste-fuhrer Suthep eh!

The Thai authorities not to get a strong grip and hold on these Russians coming here. This is only the beginning and will make all the local corruption look like child's play.

For me, 10 years here and these guys are my biggest worry for the island and my children's future here.

I saw the same thing happen to Cyprus when the Russians finally got passports; what a laugh I had when the Cypriot banks went tits up.

Very funny!

Brake failure, failure to brake, all same same.

Lack of maintenance isn't the same as driver incompetence.

I reckon they have known for sure the last few days, hence why the Chinese have brought their large planes. The speech and the fact the families are all going to Oz I would expect the black box etc to have already been located.

With all the false leads and flack the Malaysians have had recently I would think they would have said if the aircraft dropped sonar buoys had picked up a signal from the "Black Box Data Recorder". At the assumed depth of the wreckage the more powerful shipborne sonar would have to sail pretty close to the Black Box in order to locate it. Hopefully the ship now in the search area will pick up floating wreckage to finally confirm the worst.

Thai politics is like TV soaps; mind numbingly boring but once watched it gets you hooked!