Acharn

12 hours ago, bojo said:

 

Is this an American thing, weapanised words and politicised by the far right?......................... I wasn't aware of this from a European/British perspective......................

Yes.

I have never heard the definition given here, before. In American political the word is only positive to the center right group called "centrists," primarily fans of the Clintons. People on both the left and right denounce the attitude, The term gained currency after NAFTA Billy Clinton imposed the Republican agenda on the government and got legislation passed which greatly widened the inequality of wealth by making it legal to do things which had been illegal before, like outsourcing productive capacity to countries with lower labor costs and borrowing money to pay as dividends or stock buy-backs. Government propagandists had some success in the Clinton and early Bush years putting lipstick on this pig by claiming it would raise everybody's standard of living and the downsides were not really felt until the Great Recession. Since then a great many people have come to consider the movement a policy to de-industrialize America and reduce the former middle class to serfs who will own nothing and like it.

12 hours ago, bojo said:

 

Is this an American thing, weapanised words and politicised by the far right?......................... I wasn't aware of this from a European/British perspective......................

Yes.

It arises primarily from the Free Trade doctrine established by NAFTA Bill Clinton and the propagandists hailing "globalism" as bringing prosperity to everybody in the world. I never heard the definition given here before, but that certainly is not what the word means in political discourse in America. It is not only criticized by the right. Critics on the left think the ideology tries to justify the great inequality of wealth brought about by de-industrializing the U.S. and outsourcing production to countries with low labor costs.

7 hours ago, ChaiyaTH said:

You need to be either vaccinated or do a test, that is it aside of the standard apps that rarely are checked, similar to QR in malls. 

I sometimes wonder about this. I do not use the internet on my telephone account, which is prepaid. I only use internet on WiFi, so when I go to the local BigC, for example, I am not able to upload the QR to the app, because they don't have an open, free WiFi . It seems a lot of other people don't, either, because they have a notebook that almost everybody signs in on. Is this also true in Bangkok?

6 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

It did not have soapies at that stage, to which he was referring.

And you know that how? They certainly had brothels. Have you ever heard the word "mangda?" There used to be folklore about kidnapping women on the street and forcing them to work in brothels. The mangdas were the men who controlled them. I don't know if the stories had a factual basis, but believe they did.

11 hours ago, internationalism said:

next step - vegetable/salad diet for a few days or even fasting. Just short, for try.

Another white death is salt

But you need to find the balance. A certain amount of salt is essential to good health. That's why ancient empires either taxed it or used it as money. The problem is much modern processed food adds lots of either sugar or salt (or both, I guess) because it tastes good.  I think naam blaa counts as salt. Anyway, keep an eye on the amount you take in. You can avoid sugar completely and have good health, but you can't entirely cut out salt.

20 hours ago, cliveshep said:

Take it to the Police who will be able to do - well, nothing probably! After all if they cannot after 6 years get the on-line 90 day Report working you can bet your last s'tang they aren't going to track down the originator of this scam without some pretty smart outside agency's help.

 

Shame you can't get the Americans tracking it down as they almost certainly have the expertise, or maybe the Japanese or even Koreans but Thais? Highly unlikely! This is probably some of those Russian Mafia sorts from Pattaya who are so clever at this sort of activity.

13 hours ago, ChrisY1 said:

Never give a Thai a microphone!

My niece and her husband run a small business. They usually have three or four employees, usually paid daily, no other benefits. Part of the traditional Thai patron/client culture requires them to treat their loyal workers to parties on their birthdays. What I hate is when they crank up the karaoke machine to 11, because they think the neighbor half a mile away would enjoy the music, too.

It's a good question. Thailand is incredibly more prosperous than it was in the 1950s, when the World Bank recommended developing the sex trade as Thailand's best prospect for development. I don't think the kind of tourists Prayuth wants will be attracted in the numbers he wants  needs, but what do I know. Covid has so completely disrupted the old economy the future is more unpredictable than usual. There is still a large reservoir of rural poor who have been accustomed for decades, if not centuries, to sending their daughters to work in the sex trade for a few years. I'm sure the business is still operating at a reduced level everywhere in the country, and will resume in full when Covid restrictions end. Just don't know if their customer base will return.

I don't do opera, so I've never heard of the Italian, but Lisa is pretty, and she works hard. ฿100 million baht is only (approximately) $3 million, not bad for the bush leagues, but she's gotta grab it while she can. I don't think her dancing is very interesting, but I'm not in her target demographic.

I live about 10 km outside the city of Nakhon Sawan and have had 3BB for at least 12 years, upgrading until my contract now is for 100Mb. Whenever I think to run a speed test I get 300Mb for download, so no problem.

On 10/9/2021 at 1:02 PM, xylophone said:

The gun belonged to the Thai intruder, and that has already been established and attested to by relatives and friends, so that's where it came from.

 

As for the first part of your sentence, living here for many years, I don't think anything about Thais, I know because I've seen it first hand many times.

 

The BIB are not the sharpest knives in the drawer and are the most corrupt" division" in Thailand, and that was stated by the Thai ombudsman (or similar) a few years back, and printed in the newspapers.

I had not seen that the ownership of the gun was established. Thanks for telling me. That's important and should have been reported more widely. I've lived here a long time too, and would agree many Thai high ranking police officers seem a bit dim, but if you ever watched the TV show Hogan's Heroes you must remember Sgt. Schulz, "I know nodding, nodding." I generally do not know why Thais do and say whatever it is they do, even when it's obvious they are not being entirely accurate. I'm a little oversensitive to assertions that don't cite evidence since 2016 and the collapse of critical thinking in the U.S.. Well, since 9/11, really, but it went into overdrive after She Who Must Be Elected lost. Also, news media have pretty much lost all credibility.

I have two credit cards issued in America, one BofA, the other from Pentagon Federal Credit Union (much better). Neither one has been denied renewal yet, and I'm 84. I should say my Army pension and Social Security are both direct deposited to my credit union and there's an automatic monthly transfer to Bank of America which is more than the monthly minimum. That might have something to do with it, but I don't know. I've never used a debit card. I remember once having my credit card refused because it was foreign and the vendor wasn't approved to receive payments from overseas VISA, but I found other places that did accept them and have never had any denial since.

9 hours ago, pablo el sueco said:

My transfer this morning was not usual, though.  On the first Send screen where I entered the amount of dollars I wanted to transfer, It said the deposit would take seconds; not the usual one to three days.  Then after I finalized the transaction a few screens later, the deposit into my bank was indeed immediate.  That has never happened before.  A transfer on the weekend has never posted to my account until Monday or often Tuesday.

That happened to me last month when I transferred another amount and did not select "funds for long stay in Thailand." I got the notice from my bank that a transfer had arrived in the account almost immediately, but when I transferred my pension on 1 Oct. it took until 2:00 PM as usual. This is worrying, indeed.

There's a step where you have to choose a method of transfer. I've always left it on ACH, even though it's usually a dollar or two more expensive that Wire Transfer. I wonder if choosing Wire Transfer will solve the problem.

1 minute ago, AsiaCheese said:

Not allowed here. Only Thai lawyers get a license.

Not sure if that's true. 45 years ago when I was considering divorcing my Thai wife I contacted a firm of farang lawyers (they had Thai lawyer partners, too) named Tilleke and Gibbons. I think they were Australian, but might have been British. It may have been that only their Thai partners could actually plead the case in court, but they certainly offered legal services.

6 minutes ago, bbko said:

Elephant in the room?  The Swiss guy told the police where he threw it within hours, it's not like he was trying to hide it.  Like the Swiss guy and others said, it was so the intruder or others couldn't find/use it.

Well, the story the Swiss guy told makes perfect sense. One of the things that gripes me about Thai action soap operas, the hero never kicks the gun away from the hand of the bad guy(s) after he knocks him out, or picks it up. Of course there are other possible explanations for how and why the gun might have gotten into the pond. Maybe I'm too cynical, but it's well known in America that many police officers have handy a "throw-down gun," an unregistered/untraceable gun that can be tossed on the ground near a dead body after a shooting. I'm afraid I'm not as ready to take this story at face value as most of the posters here.

6 hours ago, meechai said:

Man with a gun entered another mans house

 

Owner beats him to death...where is the problem?

 

Who cares what dead man's mother claims he may or may not have had cash wise? That he previously "had" 300k baht does not mean  a thing in this story. This story is centered around an armed intrusion into another mans home period.

 

Bottom line any intruder found with a gun in my house at night will be found there in the morning (albeit motionless)

 

Side Show: This Thai man was supposedly having an affair with the Swiss mans wife....Now he shows up after midnight with a gun in the Swiss mans house? Guess what the plan actually was at that point?

 

Now dead Thai man's mother makes a claim the dead man had 300k baht & what?? Udon Police visit Swiss man why? They think maybe he set it all up? Had Thai man appear at his home with gun & 300k so Swiss could rob him? Amazing Thailand

Ah. "Man with a gun entered another mans house" And you know this how? Because the house owner said so. A gun was found in the pond? Yeah. Where did it come from? I can think of a couple of alternatives. Dead body with lacerations on its face in the house when police arrive. House owner says he fought with intruder. House owner has lacerations and/or bruises? Story doesn't say. I infer you think Thais are stupid, especially Thai police, but I disagree.

16 hours ago, 2 is 1 said:

Most of  offshore entities  are not illegal!

Funny, that's like the reason President Obama gave for the Department of Justice not prosecuting the bankers in 2009. Of course, "most of" implies that "some of" IS illegal. I don't know about Thai law,  or Finnish or Estonian law, but it's become known that under American law a lot of income that IS taxable gets hidden in Cayman Islands, Lichtenstein, Isle of Man, and Las Vegas. Yes, America provides some of the most opaque tax shelters in the world, but of course we never mention that. Sorry, I'm going off topic. From what I've been able to learn of Thai history, they have reasons to distrust people with foreign connections.

9 hours ago, digger70 said:

Say If,If he's by chance Not guilty.How can he do a Reenactment of the Event.

If he does the Reenactment That sure proves that he's guilty. 

 

Some of the "reenactments" I've seen on TV news, the cops are pretty obviously coaching the defendant through the play. Not always. Anyway, it's one of the reasons for the Fifth Amendment  to the American constitution, and why the judge is supposed to question the defendant pretty closely when he/she enters a guilty plea. Farangs mostly come from legal systems with similar safeguards against self-incrimination and don't understand the background of the Thai legal system.

8 hours ago, smedly said:

what ?

 

The Thai was armed with a firearm and made an unauthorised entry to the property to commit armed robbery and discharged the firearm when challenged, he was then disarmed during a violent struggle and incapacitated - the Swiss man should be getting a medal

 

pretty clear to me

Well, we have been told a firearm was found in the pond, and the Thai guy was found tied up and dead with cuts and bruises in the house. We only have the Swiss guy's and his wife's stories as to how that came about. You seem to believe their story. Do you have a reason for that?

On 10/3/2021 at 5:24 PM, Skeptic7 said:

Sure. Thailand was the epitome of Old Asian Charm and "Innocence". It didn't take itself overly seriously until Taksin in the early 2000s. Attitudes were better. Smiles were abundant and genuine. Jai Yen, Mai Pen Rai and Sabai Sabai were the national mottos. And mostly, there were WAY fewer tourists back then. A Westerner was a novelty and welcomed sight. It truly was Land of Smiles AND Amazing Thailand back then.

 

It's still pretty good, but nothing like back then. Glad I was here for it and still glad to be here...but back then it was Fan-<deleted>-Tastic! ????

I remember one year while I was stationed at the Pentagon, I took leave to come back and visit my wife, probably 1979 or 1980. My wife had sent her daughter to stay with some relatives or friends in Lop Buri and we went to pick her up to stay with us while I was here. Lop Buri was where  Special Forces had their base during training Thai Army people, but they were pulled out in 1975, and most of the people there had never seen a farang. Even when the SF were there they rarely went off base because Thais in those days had no bars or pubs -- they did their drinking in restaurants without entertainment. Anyway, the kids had never seen skin as white as mine, and one, maybe six or seven years old, was brave enough to come up and rub my forearm to see if the white came off. Yeah, there was much more opportunity for your average Thai in those days because of the deforesting of the Northeast opening up so much land. It was like the Wild West in many ways. The atmosphere was buoyant.

Well, I was stationed at the Army port at Sattahip from 1971-3, married a bar girl, and spent nine years in The States and then Germany. Retired and came back permanently in 1982. I have to say I liked the '70s. It had a freewheeling feeling like the Wild West. You had "communist" insurrections going on in the Northeast and the South, the army was deforesting the Northeast as part of their campaign, generals and even colonels were getting rich from illegal logging and the cleared land was available to anybody willing to work hard enough to farm it. There were even ways to establish legal ownership of the land, but it was still a patron/client society, with power held by local "godfathers." Thailand had had military dictators at that point for 25 years. When I came back permanently in 1982, former Gen. Prem Tinsulanond had been appointed Prime Minister by the Revolutionary Council, the military junta that had been running things since the counter-revolution of 1976 and there was almost no open corruption. He forced elections and a blatantly corrupt former general became the "civilian" Prime Minister. His cabinet was so visibly corrupt the people welcomed the coup in 1989 but protested so strongly when Gen.
Suchinda tried to establish a dictatorship that the junta appointed a businessman, Anand Panyarachun, Prime Minister. Like Prem, he was completely honest and competent, and the country prospered. After him were a series of tolerably corrupt governments, until Thaksin Shinawatra was elected. Most upper and middle class Thais will violently disagree with me, but he was the best Prime Minister of the whole period. I admit he was blatantly corrupt, but he offended the elite because he shifted the graft to a different set of families than had been in control for so long. He enacted populist reforms that led to an explosion of prosperity in the countryside that has led to Thailand now being a poor first world country. His reforms were so popular that the dictatorships that have followed have not dared to do away with them, so that now any Thai city is only distinguishable from an American town by the temples. I think the '70s and '80s were more fun, but now we have a lot more creature comforts and conveniences. We're in kind of an awkward transition now. PM Prayut was not a particularly bad dictator, and has not been a particularly bad "civilian" Prime Minister, but he lacks charisma and is boring. I look forward to whatever comes next.