wandasloan

Some of these places are dangerous, dirty and no medical certifications. Good on the police military.

Any pictures? I doubt that. I think you know about nothing about salons, and doubt you've been in one.

Why would a paying customer go to a dirty salon with no certificates? Also. Why would a salon not wash the floor and hang up some paperwork? I'm positive your post is plagiarised from the Official ThaiVisa Committee On Identifying Criminals By Their Appearance.

I'll not even give you "dangerous". Some "illegal" salons are more meticulous and safer than some legal ones. But I can assure you that inspectors can't spot an illegal one by all the dirt and lack of framed paperwork on the walls. They have to, well, inspect, and very closely at that.

Also, the military isn't responsible for this. You will know this in about, oh, three or four weeks when you follow up the campaign to see how successful it has been, and every military office where you inquire will say something like, "Oh, that failed operation? That was a civil service thing, nothing to do with us." And in this particular case, they will be right. This is another regular campaign, approximately semi-annual. It looks ever so good on the personnel evaluations.

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Thailand's going to hell in a basket and the nation is worried about this ...

Sometimes you really couldn't make this stuff up.

Stupid comment.. actually we start to see the various government agencies start to do their jobs after having received some a** kicks by the generals.. and the health ministry's job IS to crack down on illegal "clinics", now that they were forced to stop taking bribes for their closed eyes..

Sent from my HTC One XL using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

You are reading news reports that are being 'filtered' by the government. No more stories about the Myanmar refugees being 'shuttled' around, no more stories about 30 navy personnel assaulting a cell phone vendor at a police station, then escaping, no more stories about the 'opposition' being found guilty of one single thing.

You are buying what they're selling because it suits you.

First of all, I wouldn't carry water for these coup people if they were on fire. But it is actually, really stupid to suggest that every resource of the country has to go into coup mode and that not a shred of public life and lawn forcement can co-exist. The semi-annual crackdown on illegal beauty salons has nothing to do with the junta jeadquarters anyway, it is strictly low-level police work. The generals didn't ask for credit when it started and they sure as heck won't be accepting the blame when all goes back to normal in a couple of weeks.

Mr Snig, please get a grip. "The nation" is not concerned with this. It is one of more than 100 stories by this particular news agency today. It is worth a few paragraphs, as your own intense interest proves. What's that? Oh yes you ARE, or you wouldn't have stopped your life and commented.

Second, yes indeed, it is extremely wise to be wary of "news" these days, not least of all at Thailand's leading discriminator of alleged "information" and comment-stopping. But the fact that some stories are played down or short-stopped, is not relevant to the fact that a crackdown on illegal beauty salons is under way. This story would have got printed and would have attracted comments from the ThaiVisa Official Law Enforcement Commission no matter coup or no coup, idiotic censorship or self-censorship or no censorship at all.

And FangFarang - no, unfortunately reports are NOT filtered by the government. "Unfortunately" because timid, fear-induced self-censorship is far worse than censorship imposed at direct gunpoint. Self-censors, as we see several times a day, eh? It goes much further than the government (the army, actually) would actually go if pressed on the matter.

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@wandasloan

"...why should an unlicensed radio station be "illegal" automatically?"

"Radio broadcasts need regulating for good reason - basically to prevent any kind of interference with each other and to assure the public airwaves are used in the public interest.

But they are. These 3,000 stations never interfered with other traffic"

You are incorrect.

"Most" every country in the worls requires a licence,

Sigh. Read my post next time before replying. What you wrote is simply what I wrote. Most countries require a license. Also, radio stations need regulating for many technical reasons.

You are only being disagreeable instead of disagreeing. In the above, and in your technical discussion, you don't disagree with a word that I wrote.

Also. May I suggest you reply by clicking the Quote button so that what you quote and what you write are clearly separate? I definitely don't want to mix my writing with your writing.

I can't understand why I have been able to watch a range of overseas news channels on WETV from about four days after the coup while my neighbor, who has True, only got his news channels back yesterday. Does anyone know the reason for this?

It is very strange, especially given that Thailand has both a domestic and worldwide fame as the country where everything down to the most minute detail is organised with total precision. The Thais trained Germans in exactitude, after all. It is almost incomprehensible how they would get something like this wrong when it is so vitally important to the future of the country.

To put it another way, Hanlon's Razor.

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You obviously have no clue what ya talking about nothing going on in CM, and no reason for the Curfew

How droll. Do you REALLY think there is "nothing going on in Chiang Mai?" Really?

Actually, because there is quite a lot going on in Chiang Mai, they definitely need a curfew to enable the 3am knocks on the doors.

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The Thai military dictatorship is easing the "gag" on selective media outlets. This is good news. When seeing this word "gag," it always conjures up the news of criminals binding and "gaging" their victims. Maybe the Thai press should say "eases restrictions" rather than eases "gag."

What do you object to? "Binding"? "Selective"? The verb gag and the gerund gagging seem 101% spot-on to me.

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And I thought that there was supposed to be rules on commenting on the political situation in LOS by the little people that are not fact and rumor mongering???

This video is far from fact and extremely one sided, now that is a fact!

Corrected with a small red addition.

I found this YouTube video someone has put together showing a Somtow-Kerry dialogue

http://goo.gl/FUcXea

"and 3,000 illegal radio stations operating without licences." One would think they should be shut down permanently.

Well, on the other hand, in a country where the law specifically bans licensing for newspapers and magazines, why should an unlicensed radio station be "illegal" automatically?

Radio broadcasts need regulating for good reason - basically to prevent any kind of interference with each other and to assure the public airwaves are used in the public interest. But they are. These 3,000 stations never interfered with other traffic and never were accused for a New York microsecond of misplacing the public's trust or interest. So why are they "illegal"? Well, because some puffed up man with a large hat size because of his swelled head has a gun. No other reason.

In no way, in any decent society, do they need government permission just to broadcast. It is slimy, unjustified and insupportable censorship to even believe otherwise, let alone to carry it out at gunpoint as has always been done in Thailand - and in almost all other countries in the world.

This is right up there with "if Aspirin were invented today it would be a controlled substance". Which it would be, without doubt. Why? And why are radio stations licensed like they were.... beauty salons or plumbing firms?

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Irony, thy name is National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).

Fantastic news (finally!). CNN, BBC have been back on Thai TV since last night.

All cartoon stations including CNN and BBC began broadcasting again legally on Tuesday morning.

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Buy the baby from the gardener for 8,000 baht, sell it on Ebay for 800,000 baht.

(Sorry - couldn't resist this JOKE)

Try harder then. It is definitely not a joke. If it were, it would be even just a tiny bit funny.

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I would prefer not to say anything about people's intelligense, but I'm fairly tempted.

Find out what the real world is all about before writing ignorant replies.

The lowest salary to give a Thai person is 300TBH per day, so 2X300 TBH is 600TBH , BUT that is only registered employment with the labor office.

There IS NO set minimum wage outside the labor system.

It could be 50 TBH per day or even less for the poorest.

I personally would welcome your offer to refer to talk about people's intelligence.

When I stay in Thailand, which is more time then when I live in the west, I stay at the gf's Parents Farm on the outskirts on Bangkok.

FOR A FACT ... the gf's father employs one full time farm worker to manage the fish ponds.

He works 6 days a week.

Paid Bt 6,000 a month, has had a modest place built for him to live rent free on the Farm, has his elec, rice and fish paid for. He walks out of his door and he's at work.

When the Boss hires in casual Farm workers to harvest the fish, it's Bt300 for a 1/2 day, plus drinks (Water, soy milk, milk coffee, Red Bull, bottle of Whisky) and sometimes food.

So as for ... "It could be 50 TBH per day or even less for the poorest." ... please, unless you are genuinely hiring Thai Labours, keep those sort of comments to yourself and don't show your ignorance.

Actually David, you are showing your ignorance. The Rider person has it exactly correct.

Hired labour is paid 300 baht a day by law.

But people who are NOT hired labour make what they make. By the OP's description, for example, the poor Thai man is a saleng driver, typically a rubbish collector. They make whatever he gets recycling trash, garbage and the like. Many of them make 50 baht a day, some of them day after dreary day. But whatever his job, he makes whatever he can, and the 300-baht guarantee does not apply to him because he is not employed, he is self-employed.

I would also note that your girl friend's father is a law-breaker, according to your post - by paying his employee 6,000 baht per month. The law does not allow employers to claim that items like room and board and electricity are part of the salary.

In a typical four-Sunday month, like the one just passed working six days a week, that poor exploited man worked 27 days. He should have received, at 300 baht per day, a minimum of 8,100 baht. Yet you claim he was paid a paltry and illegal 6,000 baht. If you are correct in your accusations against your girl friend's father, he short-changed... well, cheated his worker out of 2,100 baht, last month alone.

All the man has to do is drop by the local Labour Office, sign a couple of papers, and he'll be in for a bit of a windfall.

But as the Rider person pointed out to you, the old Thai man of the OP has no such legal protection, since he is self-employed.

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the OP is realizing for himself, what I also concluded months ago.

he is wise to leave before things get worse for him, and they can indeed get worse,

For anyone with the attitude expressed in the OP, I can pretty much guarantee they will. Not that I care at all.

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That's why they're already doing a helluva lot more and a helluva lot better in a matter of weeks than PTP did in 3 destructive, inept, years of extortion.

Wow, one so-called fiasco. Now, for PTP, we could write 100 volumes.

So you claim that the Supreme Court is under the direct control and orders of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) and its commander Gen Prayuth.

Hmmmm. I thought I was cynical. Very humbling to think how far I have to go to reach the top.

Of course, the horrible part is you may actually be correct. Wouldn't THAT be something if you are?

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Have to laugh at that one. The Thai economy no thanks to the Thaksin 'put' with the hopeless rice scheme and a government effectively non-governing in economic matters while totally focussed on Thaksin's personal interests.

Have to laugh at that one.

Through Thaksin, mass military killings, another coup, a moribund government, mass protests... through it all, the economy not only survives but is rated worldwide, in all measureable ways, as stable - as the ThaiVisa Economic Council of Expertise struggles for traction.

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What is bad for Thailand .... is good for its neighbors like Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.... Hmmmm... But, the "Right" guys are now at the helm, so NO WORRIES! Right? Nah!

It actually *is* amazing that it's such bad news that Thailand will *only* get 25 million tourists because of all that killing and soldiering that is going on. How many places would give up quite a lot to get *only* 25 million? Canada? Australia? Korea? Japan? Switzerland gets a little over a third of that "worrying" number of tourists to Thailand.

Success brings higher expectations, and that's a fact.

Wow, what a dumb post. Sorry. Karma? Is that like the the story of the guy in the sky who watches over all of us?

We foreigners owe Thailand exactly FA. We pay to play. Matters not what our currencies buy us here. We don't owe the Thais anything because their country is relatively uncompetitive and poor. Where do you get these strange notions?

I don't remember giving or mailing you my proxy. I'm pretty sure you don't have it.

So stop saying "we". I'm going to assume it's just because you are too afraid to take responsibility for yourself. But it could be worse than that of course. In any case, don't hide behind me.

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Doesn't look like any of the other women I've seen in Myanmar

Pretty indeed but in a very generic way - she could be Miss Philippines, Miss Singapore, Miss somewhere-in-Asia or Miss Productcatalogue.

Very Pan-Asian. Advertising houses will love her. I am confused at this "Miss Asia Pacific World" contest - complete with a Miss Italy and a Miss Armenia (picture in first link in the OP). Did they run out of regions for the title's name?

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you could look at it from another way,,,

how many who are working,,,,,,PAY TAX?????????

If you looked at it that strange way, the unemployment rate in the United States would be about 65% because of rather generous welfare-state-type deductions. Not to mention it is a pretty stupid way to look at it, assuming there is some correlation between government tax rate, government tax collection and people earning an income.

Why not use how many who are working have eaten in a Japanese restaurant in the past six months? It is equally sensible. No, come to think of it, it's not equally sensible. It's more sensible. Unemployed people generally wouldn't or couldn't eat in a Japanese restaurant.

Thanks. I think we're on to something here.

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Have you researched how many of those Gitmo detainees were not terrorists but were captured and sold to US forces by competing warlords simply for the reward money?

The US is not going to release known terrorists.

Oh my. Someone has not researched anything at all. You are badly, sadly misinformed and spreading nonsense here.

Not only is the US almost certain going to release known terrorists, it has released many dozens of them. According to the Defence Intelligence Agency of the United States in 2008, "Of the 531 Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) detainees transferred from Department of Defense [sic] custody, 18 are confirmed and 43 are suspected of subsequently reengaging in terrorist activities..."

I was actually aiming more at media coverage on the other side. Cutting down on the unavoidable media fanfare, or at least

distancing it a little from the trade itself will provide some mitigation.

Agreed that stifling voices speaking out against the trade or about the circumstances which led to this case is wrong, not to mention silly.

The deal itself is not good, but as far as deals of this sort go, it could be worse.

Fair enough. I don't mean to be disagreeable in disagreeing here, don't take this the wrong way. As a general maxim, it is true that "no matter how bad it is now, it could be worse". Just look at Thailand two weeks ago and now for proof of that. But in this specific case, I can't think of anything that could be worse than the secret Obama-Taliban deal to return a deserter to the US side. I'd be riveted by an example of what you think could be worse.

During the Vietnam war and during the Korean one, there were several Bergdahls who were eventually abandoned. (One of the Korean cases, Charles Jennings, finally left on his own to return to the US. He had supposedly been "married" to a kidnapped Thai, officially still missing in that horrid country. The US gave up precisely nothing in his case.)

In lieu of any perfect resolution to such cases, I find surrendering to terrorists' demands to be the very worst I can imagine. The knock-on dangers rather frighten me, in fact. In a way, it's like philandering, on a national scale. For a moment, it feels good, in return for which you have endangered the entire structure - not just of marriage but your entire life, future and the lives and futures of everyone you touch.

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