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The Supreme Leader talks as if the economy is a machine with controls and that all that the President has to do is hit the controls in the right way.

This is not true except in command economies, such as the former Soviet Union and even then it was not that successful.

However, Iran has a very strange economy and government. Some of the economy, judiciary and government is controlled by the "revolutionary guards" who are very conservative and powerful and don't want modernisation as it will affect their position. Meanwhile there is also a very young demographic that wants to learn and move forward - a kind of old duffers who want to hold onto their goodies and young bloods who want their piece of the action.

This split personality also plays out in the placards and large notices of "Death to America" and others with related theme while at the same time huge numbers of Iranian students go to the USA to study and many young people yearn to study there or work there.

What would really help the economy would be if the revolutionary guards stopped firing off ballistic rockets in test firings (allegedly with Death to Israel written on the side in Hebrew!) and allowing Western economies to trade with them.

5 hours ago, fxe1200 said:

The U.S. are harassing Venezuela since decades. The spent millions to topple the government, destabilize the economy, provide the pro-capitalistic opposition with money and finance their newspapers. It is about time, that the U.S. keep their dong out of countries with large oil reserves. The results can be seen in the Middle East and also in Africa (Shell in Nigeria, decades of oil spills).

Actually the USA have treated Venezuela with kid gloves in recent years. What about the recent scandal where Venezuelan officials (which goes all the way up to the Foreign Minister!) were selling passports to anyone. The whistleblower was arrested and is now presumed killed by the Venezuelan government. And yet the country was not included in the recent ban order. Hardly a case of being singled out for special treatment!

The USA does not have to spend any money on toppling the government or destabilising the economy. The low oil price has done that and the government has made the entire economy dependent on oil - unless you claim that the USA buying oil is destabilising the Venezuelan economy?!!

Besides, USA is now almost self-sufficient in oil and does not care so much about countries with large oil reserves. By the way, Shell is a European company, not American, and Nigeria sells no oil to the USA, certainly not in living memory.

I am just as quick as the next guy to criticise the American government and Trump and before him Obama but why not keep to the real stuff - do your research rather than pick on some random news story and then throw together some unrelated facts that have nothing to do with it. It just makes you look stupid.

5 hours ago, bkkgriz said:

I have no problem with abortion. I know it's a highly sensitive topic and if you are against abortion I totally respect your opinion. I don't want to fight over the aspects of legality or morality. My only thoughts on the topic are if you want or need an abortion, you pay for it. I don't believe taxpayers should be on the hook for abortion. 

Even if the woman's life is at stake due to implantation in the fallopian tube (and the foetus will die anyway) and the woman and her family have no money? Let them die? Just a question . . . 

Does that include the teenagers who are married to each other?

I think that all falang should create the following kind of collective activity, which is to clog up all immigration offices EVERY DAY with reporting, requests for information, with requests for paperwork and any other requests and especially reporting their addresses EVERY DAY or even several times a day. Once Immigration gets sick of it, they will then change the rules or at least make them clear.

I am waiting for he day when a university offers a Masters Degree in Thai Immigration studies which will qualify the recipient to be an immigration advisor for all those foreigners in Thailand or wanting to live in Thailand.

Why would he ever agree to Palestinian statehood?

1. If the Palestinians ever had statehood, there would be no threat - that would mean he could never do his shroud waving and frightening his population and make noise in the USA about the state of Israel being embattled and surrounded by enemies. Being in its current state keeps Yetanyahu in power even though it is more risky for the State of Israel  and the rest of the world, including the USA relations with with Iran. And that is all Yetanyahu really cares about.

2. His own coalition partners would never agree - they are too extreme.

3. Israel under a Palestinian state agreement would have to at least stop the building of settlements and might have to do something about the illegality of the existing ones.

4. Any version of "statehood" for Palestinians would be a version that not even a crazy man would agree to - they would remain occupied by the Israeli armed forces and their trade would the tightly controlled. Such a state would be undemocratically controlled by Israel and therefore would never be a state.

Can you ride a motorbike, I mean a small one, what they call a "twist and go." That way you can live almost anywhere in Chiang Mai.

A few years ago I used to live in a soi opposite the university at the edge of the jungle where I could hear the monkeys in the trees, clean air etc and yet be downtown in minutes.

This is the trouble with victimless crimes that are very easy to prosecute and the police - the temptation is to go for the easy stuff. Consenting adults engaging in same sex activity in the UK before it was abolished, catching individuals urinating in hidden places where there are no toilets (still goes on in the UK), sodomy in the USA (covered just about every sexual practice except the missionary position) until the government stopped it in the 1990s, in some USA states drinking alcohol while in view of the road on your own property etc etc.

There is a serious side to the Thai government not getting around to creating standards and allowing things like so-called e-cigarettes (vapers) and sisha pipes - the trouble is that they also don't get around to accepting new medications that are standard in other countries. This is all part of the same malaise - it was not accepted before because it did not exist and it comes from abroad and therefore no one gets in trouble if they don't put it forward for acceptance. Thailand is slowly slipping away while countries like Vietnam are moving forward.

Welcome to the worst poison chalice of your life, Dr. Price. Easy to slag off Obamacare. But it is going to be comic to watch you try to "replace" it, that is if you don't mind the tragedy of those who will be left to suffer without cover afterwards, as is inevitable with this Trump regime.

As if we ever needed proof that the cartels are numpties who could not run a regular business ever - they put the cocaine in good quality bags and each bag contains several million dollars worth of cocaine but they don't bother putting any GPS/trackers on any of the bags when they send them off to sea.

Only in Thailand can you convert a case of police harassment (they will have to visit the noodle shop EVERY DAY) into a fun story that gets into the media and ..... promotes the hell out of a silly idea of getting "pretties" to serve noodles. Hmmmm

You and your wife need to decide where you both want to live - UK/Europe or SE Asia.

If you want to make UK/Europe your home base, most of the good advice has already been given, especially the "get a few stamps from other countries into both of your passports" idea - great if you could have one for Schlengen - bring her to visit your son in Paris, for instance. Also, you need to do more research and pay for expertise - that means get a good quality immigration lawyer on your side and at her side if possible during the interview (if they want to know why you want a lawyer present, use the phrase, "to preserve the veracity of the interview content."). But the big problem is that your lady has no ties in Thailand and so no official is going to agree to give her a visa. She needs a job and an employer who is prepared to state in writing that she is required back at her place of work within X number of weeks. It would also help if she had a car in her name. Even better if she had a condo or some property in her name. It all adds to the boxes that are ticked.

If you want to make SE Asia your home base - I say SE Asia as I get the impression that you are having visa troubles re Thailand for some reason. If this is so, you might want to consider basing yourselves in a neighbouring country - Cambodia is easiest where you just buy the one or two year visa at the airport - no questions. Laos might be more suitable for your wife especially if she is from Issan and if Vientiane you are very quickly in Thailand. There are a few hoops for the visa but at least you can get a one month visa on arrival and extend it in country for 30 days in addition and there does not seem to be any limit on that.

8 hours ago, loong said:

Would the police be interested?

It would surely be a civil, not criminal matter. They can't arrest you for anything.

I don't know how the courts work here, but I imagine that the court procedure would have to be started by her, not the police.

Even though it might be a civil matter, the mother of the child could get a court order and the police would then act on the basis of the court order. Going to the local police is often the first point of call for any such issue in life for Thais - in the USA or other countries, it might be to phone a lawyer. 

If I were in your shoes, I would just get the DNA test done without fuss for the following reasons:

1. I would like to know whether there is or is not a child of mine out there

2. I would not like to give the impression that if it is my child that I don't care

3. If it is not my child, the DNA tells me definitively.

Since the DNA test is so non-invasive (just a rub of your cheek with a sterile swab), I don't see why you are making such a fuss, about it unless it is because you think that the child might be yours. If it is, just man up to it and find a way of supporting her without having too much to do with the mother. And, next time either wear a condom or if you don't want children ever then get the snip.

In the noise of discussion there is a lot that is overlooked about Marijuana. Back in the day when it was first banned, it was a relatively harmless substance - enough said. Since it was banned, because of narco-economics the suppliers needed to make it stronger so as to make it more worthwhile the risky trafficking across borders - more punch in a smaller packet, if you will. This is how we got Skunk and even stronger versions.

This was equivalent to making a beer or glass of wine into 90% alcohol. It allowed people to ingest it at much higher rates and thereby allowed certain people to develop psychosis and other mental/health issues.

I am in favour of making marijuana legal but only if they control the THC content. Apart from making it safer, it will also help to put those cartel types out of business as they will not have the plant stock to make the weaker version. But, as we have seen in the USA and in the few countries where marijuana is make legal or decriminalised, the cartel does not want to get into the legal marijuana business as it is far from their business model and they don't get to jack up the prices at will as they invariably end up with a monopoly.

You gotta love the way people take in each other's washing. Myanmar people get to draw attention to their religious icon and major tourists attraction and the ladyboy idol gets to star outside her Facebook fanbase. It is a win-win all around.

12 hours ago, ezzra said:

 

You live by the sward and you die by the sward... if you scam people long and

bed enough chances you'll pay very dearly for it, that guy must have thought that

he's invincible and bullet proof, guess what? he wasn't... let me a lesson to all

other scums who profits from people's misery...

sward? as in grass surface or turf?

Unless Thailand has a law against theft of copyright, this is clearly a civil matter.

It is also possible that the folks to whom they sold the rights to publish their naked photos on Playboy may have also sold those photos on to the so-called "dirty" CD. Whether this was a breach of contract or rights is unclear and would be settled in a civil case. The involvement of the police adds nothing to their case other than as a publicity stunt!

We used to have this problem with car washers that use sponges and other materials that collect dust. There is a lot of dust in the atmosphere and on the ground right now and by right the washers should rinse your car first before trying to wash it. Otherwise rubbing it with the wrong kind of cloth or sponge along with the dust will act as an abrasive and cause small scratches in your paintwork

This is probably the kind of "non-political" court that Trump has been talking about. It just does what it is told by the BOSS!

A simple solution would be to sell the assets of the company, including the machinery and lease on the building, and pay the workers what is left.

There is a small problem which goes as follows:

USA has the most expensive healthcare system in every sense (most expensive medicines, most expensive doctors etc).

Expensive healthcare is only matched with what has been a really nasty insurance system that has been coddled up to by the politicians. This has reached such an outrageous situation that people are afraid to lose their jobs because they might lose their corporate health cover, thus affecting labour mobility in the country. It has also led to the level of uninsured and otherwise uncovered for health population that one usually only finds in less developed countries.

Obamacare tried to force the insurance system to accept the less well off as subscribers. The insurers seemed willing to spend huge amounts on lobbying and trying to turn the population away from this program rather than actually spending on covering their subscribers.

But now comes the really good part. Trump has promised everyone and some Republicans have gone along with him (such as Ryan) that not only will they get rid of Obamacare but they will replace it with a program that will be much CHEAPER.

OOPS - you cannot make the insurance costs cheaper without hiking the deductibles. But wasn't that the problem with Obamacare? You could make the insurance costs cheaper by reducing cover? But that would not be popular - there has been a history of people being left to rot in the USA because they "ran out of cover."

There are two solutions: one is to force everyone into one obligatory scheme which they pay through their taxes or mandatory deductions. The British National Health Service is an example. But that would be considered "communism" by most American lawmakers and so you cannot have that.

Another solution would be to look at why other folks from other countries can have full health coverage without paying a fortune. Hint - an actual case, a private provider covers a man in his late 50s for anywhere in the world, including repatriating him or evacuating him to a good hospital if he is in a less developed country for less than $5000 per annum but won't cover him for the USA at all.

The solution is to break up the medical cartels, the price-fixing, the overcharging, the unnecessary procedures and attendances etc etc. But that would mean the politicians would actually have to do their job by representing their voters by going up against one of the toughest sets of lobbies around. Hmm. Will that swamp ever be drained?

Big deal! It is not like they are going on manoeuvres with the Cambodian Navy!

If you want to get rid of underage sex workers in Thai massage parlours:

Put it out among the foreign and Thai customers that if they report a place with underage sex workers, they will not be prosecuted or their name/photo published. This is as much to protect them from the mafia who run such places as to spare their blushes.

In fairness to what the police actually found, the parlour's license had lapsed (which probably means that they were not paying the unofficial tax which motivated their downfall) and there were foreigners working without documentation. Only one person was found to be underage. This is what allows the police to then charge the parlour with trafficking.

If he has no assets in the Kingdom, you are wasting your time. This is a civil matter, unless you can prove fraud - not paying someone what you owe is not fraud. He would have to have blatantly broken theThai laws on fraud.

I would consult with a quality Thai lawyer - and I said consult. Make it clear that you have no plans of taking a case at the moment. You just want to see what your options are. For instance, would it be possible to seize some of his moveable assets, such as a car or a boat? Most likely he had anything he "owns" in his Thai lady's name but it might be worth a try. But this is one where you go in with very low expectations.

23 hours ago, Enoon said:

 

She will work till she drops.

 

Of her own choice.

 

 

In no other profession would that be allowed. I rest my case!