wandasloan

A misleading headline, to a different context.

As I advised before, learn how to read a story during the time(s) of censorship.

The truth is in there. If you don't see it, that's your fault. The words of the colonel are reported accurately. The truth of this whole story is ALSO written accurately.

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Thank goodness the government/regime/junta/whatever is on top of this problem before Thailand gets a bad reputation! This will probably make the United States delay release of its human trafficking report to change the Thailand section, give The Guardian's writers pause, and make all those Cambodians wish they hadn't been so hasty.

We suspected foul play and knew it was something like this. Thanks to the mouth of the drunkard Chalerm. He'll get his.

Good to see the army out there trying to clear things up and get the system under better control before October. Boy oh boy do they have their work cut out for them.

I missed the part where the army is involved in this case.

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No thanks. First of all, at this stage, I don't believe ANYTHING coming from ANY media source within Thailand. When the military no longer controls them, I'll consider taking what they say seriously. Secondly, they can hardly cook a hotdog properly at 7-11 and pick their nose around the clock, they are not touching my phone.

This has been the law for many years, enacted because people in the South were using phones to set off bombs. The law part is very clear - no SIM of any type can be sold without ID offered and recorded.

The law is observed very much in the breach - until now at least.

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Yeah, I was waiting for that point to be brought up.

It wasn't me, it was the wife. She doesn't see why we should be charged more. I don't see it either. Look at it the other way, the vendor was happy to receive the lower price, why should we give more? We are not a charity and the vendor is not destitute.

Have you ever been on an airline?

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Is there a car that is not for travelling?

Its not your country, you are not invited to vote because they are not interested in your opinion and they don't want your opinion.

Chill out and enjoy the world cup. Its free to watch aswell!

Oh dear, still smarting from your master's recent humiliating defeat, eh...?! In time, you will come to realise that what the good General has done is all for the good of the country, and not, as in your master's case, for the good of himself...!!

Yes! Thank you. I didn't think there would be any vestiges of outrage, resulting in a call for a corruption cleanup. Always good to confirm that and get it behind us. Time for your gang to take it over now, get your retirement funds set. Only those you detest deserve a corruption investigation summary conviction..

I'm an equal opportunity graft investigator. I'll be cheering on every anti-corruption move you take, even if you bend the truth like top dogs always do. And every time you make pathetic, defensive excuses for your pretty boys, as above, I'll realise what you are actually up to - and of course so will you, although hypocrites never admit it.

Were I you (and fortunate me on that score!!!) I would consider the advice about being civil to the lower classes on the way up, since you will meet them again on the way down. It's quite a risk in Thailand to think your time at the top is unlimited and unfettered. It hasn't happened in your lifetime for sure. Strictly-punitive and made-up and unfair corruption probes work all ways, unfortunately. It's why no REAL corruption investigations ever get anywhere because only enemies of the current top dog are worthy of them.

A perfect illustration of how corruption works, inside that quote box.

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Just say it is Red Bull owner, isn't his son going thru the legal system?

So the father in your opinion is not just responsible for his adult son, but answerable for him? Why?

So the brother of the junta commander is responsible for the balloon purchase, and is answerable for it? Or what?

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there are very many credible reports that ADHOC is anything but a credible organisation. as with the vast majority of these ngo types. its all about the money and nothing else. so if they can make up a story that brings them more money, any story will do. truth reality, whats that, when there is a new lexus to be had for the lie spinning?

The above is a rumour. Good example of one, too. ADHOC is NOT an organisation, it is an (ahem) ad hoc collection of 21 organisations.

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Reading’s new owner, as yet unnamed, will now have to undergo the Football League’s fit and proper persons test before the takeover is confirmed.

That'll be a breeze then.

In case of disagreement, they could refer it to the Official Thai Visa Takeover Vetting Committee, which recently approved the takeover of an entire country by the Thai man who signed the GT200, Ukraine armoured car, combat balloon and aircraft carrier refurbishing contracts. The Committee also unanimously approved rejection of hypocrisy charges against its members.

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Rumor is a great weapon of those who would subvert the truth.

We see here what trouble it can cause.

Rumour is a great weapon, indeed. But in this case we don't see that.

There are not any important rumours involved. The junta IS forcibly, sometimes brutally deporting people. The junta IS dumping thousands at the border. The junta HAS WARNED officially it will keep deporting them by the tens of thousands. These all are entirely official statements.

I loved the foreign ministry denial that Thai forces didn't shoot many Cambodians. heh. Can't beat that for an official statement.

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At present we don't buy fishmeal without certified documents [from the Fisheries Department]," Adirak said.

That unfortunately is apparently genuinely not worth the paper it is written on.

Time for a bit of self regulation sir.

Yessir. Just another link in the network. "Well the Fisheries Department's stamp is on it." How reliable can you get, eh? Everyone and everything is protected by the next level up. That's the PROBLEM, is, it's tentacles everywhere. Untangling them won't be simple.

Of course there is ONE MAN in Thailand with the full power to order any part of the government including the Fisheries Department to do anything he wants, since he is the government.... He seems to get a lot of good comments in these parts.

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But these things tend to snowball. Note the Cambodians all running for home scared of the army. That would have been a non story only 10 years ago.

And the ILO slavery vote. And the general distaste with the coup. And the Rohingya. And the Cambodians aren't RUNNING for home so much as they are being beaten and driven there. Supposedly some killed, according to NGOs.

But you've got a lot more faith in boycotts than me. Did you notice how everyone stopped buying T-shirts and gowns from Bangladesh for killing 2,000 people in a fire and building collapse? Or how Sri Lanka lost all its tea business for massacres and other human rights abuses? Burma is the world's fastest-grown drug nation in the world, a place where people are massacred over their religion, and it's everyone's darling!

I'll stick with "we'll see".

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Its a start. Once this story starts all agribusiness will tighten up. From rice to fish sauce. No one will risk it.

Then, the NGOs will put a scare on someone, tourism? Construction? Something. Thailand cannot hide in a bubble if it wishes to business with the west.

Teflon Thailand?

Well, we'll see. I've been here a while and remember some of the times people told me it was finally in the cards for Thailand - and a time or two I agreed.

We'll see.

The normal story is that Thailand reads The Guardian story, Thailand puts a thumb on a couple of pressure points, Thailand puts out a press release saying (truthfully) "We have investigated this and there is definitely something wrong, and we intend to take this very seriously." In a couple of cases people went to jail or worse.

Fade to next scene.

The next five, six days are going to be the absolute worst in Thailand's human rights life. It's the perfect storm of anti-Thai abuse. We'll see how it goes down.

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Wanda. How do you know it is only a few hundred? That is a big assumption.

Beyond that, to solve it should then be quite simple and if it can be done it should be.

We were inspected by the buying companies own SRP teams. Different crop but no external audit, everything in house.

Pick a number, then. A few thousand? I'll not quibble. I wish I did know, or someone knew.

Every one of those men is an important life, and no question. But in the Big Picture, they are a small number. Last year's US report mentioned 49 total fishermen, of whom 29 were slaves. Obviously that's a sample, but what's the real number? If someone comes up with a credible number, I'll adopt it immediately. I definitely won't argue over number until we get it down to "less than 100" then we can quarrel over that. Until then...

But overall, we're talking tens of thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands of trafficked, indentured, enslaved or hugely exploited people who should be liberated or aided or sheltered. And every one of the NON-fishermen matter too. Many are children.

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"Carrefour said it had carried out checks on the factory in 2013 which had not revealed anything out of the ordinary."

This has got to be the weakest excuse a company could ever use. The slave labour is on the boats, not in the factory so why even put out this kind of comment?

In other words, we know it's going on, we chose to totally ignore it and we are now trying to blow smoke up everyones *ss.

The people they employ to do their inspections must have car loads of bribe money to not be aware of how unethical their product it.

You're scratching at it.

Yes, definitely, the slave labour is on the boats. But this is the old lady who swallowed a fly, or the log in the bottom of the sea. This is a serious, tremendously organised crime syndicate of which, in step one of many, many steps, farmed shrimps are a part of the (Big Business-Medium Business) fishmeal trade. The fishmeal makers use some junk fish caught by dodgy boats, some of which use slave labour.

So at the very first stage, not buying farmed shrimp puts a few hundred thousand people on the street who were farming shrimp, buying fishmeal from factories that bought fish from middlemen who deal with fishing fleets, some of which have some boats with slave labour. All to free several hundred, probably not more, indentured fishing boat employees. Who, by the way, don't have jobs.

Meanwhile tens of thousands of other trafficked slaves, indentured people or just plain ripped-off, beaten and barely surviving people in debt, thrall or gratitude for not being killed today - employees in fish and fruit packing firms, brothels, factories that make the British child-looms look quite nice.... this human trafficking is a huge, multi-billion dollar enterprise to the very, very top of the current regime.

If you wipe out the entire fishmeal slave-labour problem - and it is a big problem - you've really not even made a dent in this.

If you end your project by it saying, "Well, okay, The Guardian should be happy now," you literally have not started on the problem.

And here (edit) is a sad note. Sending you after the big chain stories is in the interest of the people behind all this. It's a totally legitimate thing to do, "We're going to boycott and butcher Tesco", but it's The Organisation's version of prestidigitation - "That's right fellows, look at my right hand, see, I've got Walmart in it." If you lose sight of the left hand by focussing on the right, which people have been doing on this growing industry for 40 years, you've lost sight of the WHOLE problem.

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It is now the Junta's responsibility and if they want to gain some respect from the world they will start pulling in those involved including people like the owners of C.P and order them to clean up the mess.

The slave operators and slaves should just go about their business.

You're kidding, right?

CP buys the ship operators' goods. Those goods are the result of slavery. Therefore, they are a direct party to funding slavery.

Tesco et al. buy CP's goods, Therefore, they are a direct party to slavery in funding CP which funds the shipping goods.

This is not in parallel; it's in series, and it's not third or fourth hand optics, whereby one blames the other. This is a matter of who supports the chain, and all chain members need to break their links, not one. If one link is broken, there is always a dick-link to step in and repair it, so far.

It is not a junta responsibility to stop the trade. That is a moral and purchasing responsibility involving the ruddy whole lot of the parties involved.

As for your comment, "The slave operators and slaves should just go about their business" - despicable!

Yes, I WAS kidding that was what you SEEMED to be saying. But it turns out that's what you mean. So now I'm not kidding. According to you, the junta should not stop the slave trade. According to you, the slave operators and slaves should just go about their business while CP and similar chain members are busted. And repeat: According to you the junta has no responsibility to step in to stop the trade because slavery is just a moral issue.

And *I* am despicable? I'm tempted to wear that proudly as a badge. Good grief.

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I do not know why you guys are so excited, its not like anyone took it seriously after first 3 days anyway.

Stockholm Syndrome. "Thank you very much brave General for taking your boot off my neck!" They believe it.

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While in no way condoning the slavery in the Thai fishing industry, this is not a new story and something should have been done about it by the PTP government.

The Guardian Newspaper is very pro PTP and have swallowed their "Democracy " rant hook line and sinker.

The Guardian has been at the forefront of the foreign presses criticism of the coup.

Now they have decided to revive this issue as a stick to beat Thailand and the military coup.

While not condoning your post or slavery, this is not a new story and something should have been done about it by the Democrat government, the coalition government, the Thai Rak Thai government, the coup fascist government, the PPP government, the Democrat government, the Pheu Thai government and the Coup '14 government rulers.

Good for The Guardian to take the forefront. Not to condone slavery, but The Guardian and 5,000 other media worldwide and in Thailand should have done something about it many years ago and should be ashamed they didn't.

I'm not sure who else BUT Thailand and the current government junta regime should receive the beating today, though. Any suggestions welcome. Thaksin? George W Bush? They're not the ones putting tens of thousands of entirely harmless people in trucks, beating them, allegedly killing them and dumping them at the border while refusing to track, catch and prosecute very high-ranking military officers involved in human trafficking. Thailand and its current authorities are doing that. Other governments and military officers WERE doing that, but aren't any more.

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if it is legal for her to enter on a Swedish passport then she should do it and apply for Thai passport while here and when she gets it she might be able to just go to immigration to cancel the visa on her swedish passport now that she has the Thai one, probably without border run, which sounds like a stupid idea for a Thai citizen

I mention if legal because not all countries will let you enter with a visa on a foreign passport if you have a local one, ie Australia mentions that if you are a dual citizen, it is illegal to request a visa on another passport to enter australia, however they will happily welcome you on an expired passport and we know as we did it. The only issue was to persuade the staff at Suvarnabumi to let us board without valid passport.

Terrible advice. Like everyone who gave similar advice, yours is really, really bad.

A Thai citizen should enter Thailand and leave Thailand on his/her Thai passport. Period. There is NO reason at all for the girl of the OP to do anything else.

As usual, the person giving straight, legal, document-backed advice is ubonjoe. The OP would actually be UNwise not to follow it.

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BoT asserts Thai economy picking up slowly this year

You mean it has a choice? Is there just one reader who thinks the BoT of June 2014 would ever, EVER assert the economy is NOT picking up?

People, please learn to read the Thai media under censorship. The point of this story is nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with what the BoT MUST report.

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So basically, you're envious of a man large and in charge, getting stuff done with courage that NEEDS to be done and HASN'T been done, and is intimidated by no one. Penis envy?

I'm confused. What got done? Did tourists stop sweating? Did Bangkok get rearranged in squares (whatever that means)?

This man appears not even aware of Thai history, that Rattanakosin was not just designed and built long before there was a "Town and Country Planning" board (who knew about THAT?) but that its winding streets are a feature?

He doesn't seem aware he is committing lese majeste by criticising the designer of Bangkok either.

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Don't worry Thumper. These blokes are crapping themselves that the hired Cambodian men in black are also being deported and that they, the hard core red supporters, are losing their relevance and the army knows it and making sure it happens. They also realise as their comrades/sheep dwindle in numbers...the army may actually come after them. Then we will see a rush to Swampy (assuming these blokes are even in Thailand, which I doubt).