Lodestone

On Guard at Bangkok's Frontlines

He boasts of killing 20 Thai communists and fondly recalls working with the United States Central Intelligence Agency, but denies suspicions that he leads a death squad that is involved in bombings and shootings to help the red-shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship protest group cripple Bangkok.

Major General Khattiya "Seh Daeng" Sawatdiphol is one of the biggest reasons the government and military are afraid to attack the red shirts' barricades and clear them from Bangkok's streets.

By Richard S Ehrlich

...

Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California. He has reported news from Asia since 1978 and is co-author of the non-fiction book of investigative journalism, Hello My Big Big Honey! Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.

How many degrees of separation are there between any topic about Thailand and prostitution?

There are two stories in the Post today. The one that starts off with unnecessarily slamming the royal family is pure junk that has wayyyyy too many facts wrong including talking about a 'recent" Australian documentary that was not recent at all .. I don't want to cross the line here but there was just no reason to throw out these comments at all especially considering they are telling half truths at best but why bring up something as being an issue only to talk trash and leave out soooooo very much.

What is crazy is there is another article that includes most of the same news worthy stuff but without the unneeded disrespect and BS.

See Link

"Another article," uh-huh. Only slightly less juvenile than saying, "Made you look!"

...many overseas observers don't have the slightest clue what is below the intense superficial conflicts.

It makes it difficult when you're required to speak in code words.

The six-week demonstrations are the latest chapter in years of turmoil pitting the ruling elite against the mainly poor and rural Reds, who say the government illegitimately came to power in 2008.

...

The country is largely split between the Reds and the pro-government "Yellow Shirts", who staged their own street protests that heralded the 2006 coup.

See if you can decode what I've highlighted above -- I'm sorry, I can't decode them for you here without getting myself into trouble. Now take those decoded words and ask yourself why they can't be mentioned anywhere in Thailand except in certain approved ways. The answer is a font of cluefulness as to the cause of the protests.

i passed rajaprasong today........the number of REds are not as many as i thought..........they could be easily disperse if proper plan is taken...

Actually, in the daytime, particularly the hot mid day sun, the crowd in front of the stage often isn't that dense. Many of the Reds seem to be resting in their tents. After the sun goes down, between 7 and 9pm, is prime time when the leaders take their turn on the rally stage -- although now it seems they're staying sheltered and speaking only through live video, likely worried now of becoming a sniper's target. In the evening the whole area from the intersection itself to up past Big C is completely packed with people. Also keep in mind that tent city not only stretches from the Chitlom intersection to MBK in one direction, but now all the way along Rajadamri to the Sala Dang intersection -- and there's a lot of people down along that way. It's really a massive encampment.

Prediction (not sure if anyone's made this yet (I'm about 12 pages behind)):

Following Thai tradition, there will be another(!) military coup, Anupong will install himself (or an appointee) as acting prime minister and he will agree essentially to some version of the 30+60 Red Shirt timetable of parliament dissolution and new elections.

I believe this is a probable scenario because:

1. Anupong must be extremely pissed at Abhisit for flat out rejecting the Red Shirt compromise offer (that Anupong may've had a role in himself) and was just starting to bring things back from the brink.

2. Anupong has said multiple times he's against any kind of forcible removal of the Red Shirts that would likely result in injuries and deaths.

3. Anupong also understands that the current situation has dragged on about as long as it can and something has to be done.

In my experience the brits are the worst now in any airline / customer delay situation. They think by creating enough fuss they will get what they want. I put this down to them Airport TV shows, teaching them how to throw the toys out of the pram !

If Thailand were to make more liberal use of the persona non grata, aka "black listed", designation I think that might remove a good portion of these. Once they, and their friends, understand they've gotten themselves into a database that permanently bars them from ever being allowed back into Thailand because of their airport behavior, I think they might finally begin to grow up.

Hmmm, seems this kind of rudeness isn't anything new:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/world/europe/24crete.html

I'm not sure how the army can even go about forcibly evicting the Red Shirts. Every time it's mentioned it seems two gathered forces are imagined opposing each other at the Ratchaprasong intersection itself, when the reality is the Reds have a manned encampment that stretches along one axis for a mile from the Chitlom intersection to MBK and along another axis for a mile and a half from Petchaburi to Silom. Trying to agressively push a combined army/police force through all that can only result in mass casualties and deaths on both sides.

Both Abhisit and Anupong claimed multiple times that the soldiers and police only fired into the air AND in self defense. Where do bullets go that are fired into the air and in self defense?? Bullets fired into the air will eventually come down somewhere and will still keep enough energy to be lethal...

Here what Panithan said yesterday at a press conference:

"There were no live rounds fired at protesters," Mr Panithan said on national television.

"Weapons were used only in self-defence and to fire into the air," he said

The video clearly shows soldiers and police taking aimed shots (you can see at least one of them even using his scope). Why would they be putting themselves at further risk by setting up and taking aimed shots if their weapons didn't have live rounds in them?

Would this be one of the "terrorists"?

Screen capture from this video:

http://www.france24.com/en/20100411-exclus...-thailand-crack

The clip does not prove anything, especially not who started the bloody mess anyway.

Abhisit and Anupong claimed multiple times that the soldiers and police only fired into the air and never at the protesters. The above video contradicts that. And their response now is to claim the only ones shooting at people were outsider "terrorists." Which takes us back to my question above.

Would this be one of the "terrorists"?

Screen capture from this video:

http://www.france24.com/en/20100411-exclus...-thailand-crack

As I recall [Obama] hasn't shown proof that he is a natural born citizen of the country

Sure he has. He produced an official stamped birth certificate issued by the state of Hawaii. Those kinds of certificates are accepted as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding. It has further been authenticated by Factcheck.org.

Oh, and his birth was also announced in two Hawaii newspapers:

http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/obama...ertiser0000.gif

http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/Obama...tarBulletin.jpg

And if you don't consider the above evidence sufficient, it is incumbent upon you to prove with your own specific evidence exactly how the above is forged or inaccurate, much as that bogus Kenyan 'birth certificate' was shown to be.

Took a bunch, but this panoramic shot captures it about as well as any.

Looked like a pretty good crowd. People and traffic began to get heavy at the Ploenchit station and got denser as you moved towards Chitlom and the Ratchaprasong intersection. A very peaceful, easy going crowd, many sitting back with clappers that they'd use every so often in response to the speaker whose voice was amplified by sound trucks.

This being Thailand, I also picked up a short time on the way back.

The problem with that is, that the whole red shirt organisation exists only to put Taksin and his cronies back into power.

At the moment. But undoubtedly there are also a great many red shirts who actually believe in their ideals of democracy and fair representation, along with their local leaders, both established and emerging.

It's easy to look at the past few days' rally as an utter failure or even a joke, but it's assembly and organization has shown how much is possible. At this point I think it's just as easy to see what's happened as a point for future growth rather than any final flame out. And this growth could include simply strongly competing in the next, not too far off, election.

This is the full monty from the UK Passport website:-

"The photographs you supply with your application must:

show you with a neutral expression and your mouth closed (no grinning, frowning or raised eyebrows)

For U.S. passport photos it's OK if you smile:

http://travel.state.gov/passport/guide/com...sition_874.html

http://travel.state.gov/passport/guide/faq/faq_881.html

Would like to dial a mobile phone in Malaysia from my AIS mobile for 1 baht/minute or better. The cheapest I've found so far are calling cards offering 2 baht/minute (e.g. http://www.thaitel.com ). Are there any better deals? Thanks.

Starting January 4, 2010 the One-Stop Service Center for Visa and Work Permit will be located at

Chamchuri Square

18th Floor

319 Phaya Thai Road

Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330

This is essentially on the corner of Phaya Thai and Rama 4 Roads, right in front of the Sam Yan MRT station, and about a kilometer south of Siam Square. All this is according to two flyers I picked up today at the old Rasa Tower 2 location.

New location.

I've been putting off a computer upgrade for a while. A disk crash of one of its two IDE drives has finally given me enough reason to do so. One disk, the C drive, is the primary master (and boot disk), and the other, the D drive, is the primary slave. Everything was fine one morning while I was browsing some files in Explorer on the C drive. When I clicked to switch to the D drive I heard a slight mechanical click, then my mouse and keyboard froze up and I noticed the hard disk light was solid red (continual disk access).

I completely powered off my computer and then restarted. During booting neither hard disk could be found and it hanged with a 'no boot drive' message. After trying a few things, I found that if I disconnect the ribbon and power cables from the D drive the computer operates fine on just the C drive. When I reconnect the D drive I get the no boot drive message again. As is perhaps typical, the C and D drives are daisy-chained on a single ribbon cable that's plugged into the primary IDE connector.

Given all that, is there anything I can do, or more likely place I can go, to fix the D drive or at least get the data off of it. As part of my upgrade process, I've already completely copied over my C drive to my new computer using an ethernet crossover cable. Ideally (and probably wishful thinking on my part) I'd like just some temporary hacked fix of the D drive so I could reconnect it long enough to get the data off. Are there any Pantip Plaza shops or other places that could do something like this? Barring that, I'd like to know what other data recovery options I have. Maybe I'm being naive, but for a drive that seemed to be working OK right up until that moment I tried to access it, it can't be massively trashed.

I'm not sure exactly what to buy. But, roughly, I'm looking for a

desktop PC

ASUS motherboard

Seagate drives

Intel dual-core

dual monitor support

2 gig ram

DVD writer

I'll be using it mostly for MS Office stuff, some Photoshop and Inkscape, Web surfing, and watching downloaded movies. I'm thinking a pair of 160s for the drives ought to be enough, and I guess XP Pro for the OS (unless you can convince me to go with Win 7). Not sure about the rest. This will obviously be a custom built PC that I'd like to bring the spec sheet for to a shop in Pantip Plaza and have it assembled while I wait. I haven't closely looked at a modern board but I'm guessing that ethernet and sound are built-in these days? I also haven't done much pricing, but I think this kind of box can be put together for under 20K, is that right? Under 15 would be even better, as again I'm not looking for the very latest or fastest. Quality and, at the utmost, reliability are far more important. Any tips on specific brands and model numbers of the above and/or alternatives? And on anything I might've left out?

Somehow I got signed up on my phone for T-Sport, which seems to be some kind of sports update text message service through AIS. Everything's in Thai, which I can't read, and I haven't been able to find anything on the AIS website on how to cancel. The worse part is every few weeks it knocks about 30 baht off my phone balance, so I'd really like to get rid of this thing. Anyone know the code to enter, or however else to cancel it? Hopefully, doing so won't put me on some other weird, costly 'promotion'. Thanks.

Not sure if this has been posted, or maybe it's too obvious to bother, but I hadn't seen it so clearly spelled out before as far as PAD also having the people running Suvarnabhumi in their pocket:

Airport general manager Serirat Prasutanond, touring Suvarnabhumi on Wednesday after the protesters finally abandoned their siege, told Reuters: "They did no damage. They love Thailand."

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."

Just bumping this back up to find out if anyone knows of an alternative to WU for sending cash from Thailand to a U.S. bank account if you don't have an account in a Thai bank. It's OK if transfer time is as long as a week or 10 days and it can only be done from Bangkok. Hmmm, for that matter would it be possible to just walk into say a Siam Commercial or Bangkok Back and do a wire transfer (or preferrably a kind of ACH electronic check that'd be slower but cheaper) without an account?

Just as an update, I went to a Siam City Bank branch with a Western Union sign in front on Rama I today and they said the fee for sending 5000 baht to the U.S. via WU would be 600 baht, i.e. 12 %.

My income is Thai baht in cash and as I don't have a work permit I've not had luck opening a bank account. What is the cost of using Western Union to send money to a Citibank account in the U.S.? I checked their web site but it seems more oriented to sending money in the opposite direction. Any one have any experience using WU for this or can suggest an alternative, say if I want to do this right away (tomorrow)?

Because of various obsessive stalker type Thai girlfriends, I've had to make it a regular practice of shutting off all my phones before going to bed in order to keep from being awakened at 4am by pointless drunken phone calls when I need to get up early for work the next day. This is of course not a problem with a mobile phone as I just power it down and it remains perfectly happy until I turn it on again. However, my apartment also has its own conventional direct dial land line, and for this I've been just been doing the naive simple minded approach of taking the receiver off the hook. I have two of these phones: one a 200 baht ultra cheapo I bought at Big C and have plugged into the extension by my bed; the other, next to my computer, a much more fully featured one with a digital display that came with the apartment. The cheap one's dial out ability died only some months after I bought it. Rather than the former digital tone for any of the keypad buttons pressed, I now get nothing and can't dial a number. I suspect that having the receiver off the hook all those times may've caused some special built-in, non-replaceable battery to drain and eventually die, but I've been unable to find anything to verify this.

The problem now is my other room phone seems to have a similar problem: a nice clear dial tone when I pick up the receiver but instead of a tone when I press a numeric button, now I'm getting a clicking noise: one click if '1' is dialed, two clicks if '2' is dialed, three for '3' and so on, almost like it has reverted from a touch tone to a kind of pulse dialed phone but without being able to actually dial out. Anyone know what's going on and if this can easily be fixed, or am I looking at just tossing it and buying a new one? The phone is a Luckyphone model LK-783.