Honkytowner

I think the guy in the prow of that boat is hoping to harpoon a US submarine.

"Maybe it will have a video feature built in, so as you are being shaken down by 'rogue' police, you could upload the video on the spot !!!
The possibilities are simply endless..."

Such apps already exist. I have one on my Galaxy Note. OpenWatch is a free download from OpenWatch.net. Start the app and whatever your smartphone camera sees and hears can be automatically posted directly to the OpenWatch online public archive.

There's another, called Police Tape, which works in a similar way. It's available from the Google Play Store.

I am constantly shocked at what people without any personal experience of Thai prisons or the so-called justice system here write about doing time in Thai prisons, so I'm writing a veritable essay, even though it may fall on deaf ears. I personally know a 24-year old university student, the recipient of awards for good citizenship with no priors, doing 20 years in maximum security for a white collar crime she didn't commit because the police were bribed to falsify the report, her lawyer didn't show up, and the judge refused to allow an appeal.

Do you know how many scam artists there are in Thai villages taking advantage of people's ignorance of the law? The so-called village lawyers may be no better than the scam artists. If you have to defend yourself in a Thai court without an attorney, how well do you think you would fare, regardless of your innocence? All it takes is a group of Thais to organize a case against you--your fine upstanding citizens think nothing of perjuring themselves for the economic advantage of their family, and I wonder if it is even a crime in the LOS.

How many arm-chair justices know that Thai law guarantees the prisoner 1.5 square meters living space, which is the absolute minimum, compared to 10 square meters in the USA? Yet Thai prisons are overcrowded 3X the legal limit so the average prisoner gets less than a square meter for living space, and there is no legal recourse to hold the government accountable.

Do you have any idea how crowded that is? Prisoners literally have to walk on each other's bodies to get to the open hole in the corner that serves as the toilet for 50 or more inmates in a 20 square meter room. Do you have any idea how hot that room gets with bodies literally stacked like sardines in a can? This is against Thai law and any kind of humane standards, regardless of whether it is women or men. Westerners often get sick and die under these conditions, but Thais accept it without complaining, and so it doesn't change.

Without a good lawyer, the court ignores first time offenses or extenuating circumstances. A person simply riding on a motorbike with a friend who has a few hits of speed can get a 10 year sentence under those brutal and illegal conditions. Poor women--single mothers in particular--are more likely to be the victims of guilt by association, given their abject poverty and the way they are condemned to subservience to whatever man will help them survive. You can talk about equal rights when a man who gets a woman pregnant is kicked out of school and forced to take care of the baby! Or when a man submits to a life of prostitution to take care of the baby and the grandmother who winds up raising the baby.

Women are obviously more likely to commit crimes of survival, especially when they have a newborn baby abandoned by a brutal alcoholic father. What legal options are provided by Thai society for them to survive? The UN seems to recognize that babies abandoned by the mother--to pay what you all seem to think are her debts to society-- are more likely to continue the cylce of crime arising from ignorance and poverty. How is that paying off any debts to anyone?

A just legal system determines the debt of the felon based on how much society has actually invested. It is hard to talk about the debt of someone who has been abused and misused her whole life. The UN mandate seems to recognize that women are more often subjected to sexual abuse and economic exploitation than men, and these circumstances should reduce their debt. In many cases it is society that owes the woman--and her baby--rather than the other way around. .

Civilization requires investing in the youth--and their families--believing in the potential of people, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, to repay that investment through creative and useful activity. It is not about "paying debts" by being tortured at public expense in inhumane conditions.

Bravo, wjthornton. This needed to be said, and read!

I don't understand why farang's live in Thailand when they seem to abuse it, put it down, sarcastically comment on just about every part of society and how the country is run. If it is so bad why don't people head back to their own country. See a lot of this crap on here with people putting the place down. Sure it is not perfect but a lot of people don't give anything or anyone much a chance here and only assume that it has to be dodgy, something under the covers, a bribe, a lie - basically saying that everyone and everything in this country cannot be trusted. I don't know where these people hang out, but along with the bad there are a lot of good things and people in this country that earn a lot of respect from me. Sad people seem to think this country is so crap and yet you stay in it and keep ranting on.

So how about all you negative sour people try saying something positive for once on this forum - eg. Good work Bangkok for being number 3. Otherwise don't bother venting your negativity.

Many of us are here because we simply can't afford to live anywhere else, after our employers, the banks and governments stole our homes and pensions in our home countries. Is there a law that says you have to like the place where you must live?

This unassailable evaluation is based on the views of readers of "Travel and Leisure" magazine, published in the USA, where 48% of the population believe in creationism; 45% believe in angels; almost 30% believe cloud computing involves actual clouds(!); 24% believe dinosaurs and man co-existed; 18% still believe the sun revolves around the Earth; and 18% believe their president is a Muslim.*

No wonder they voted for the Big Mango. They'll fit right in here.

*http://www.alternet.org/education/37-percent-people-have-no-clue-about-whats-going?paging=off

"Thailand ... poised to join the South's fast-growing middle class..."

I must have blinked. When did Thailand move south of the equator?

This rather changes the tenor of the article, as Thailand now finds itself in the company of dirt-poor African and South American nations. Big loss of face!

"...the authorities are keeping a close watch on the movement of a major producer of IP-infringed products, his warehouse and distribution channels in Bangkok and upcountry.

"An arrest of the violator is imminent..."

Phew! Thanks for the heads-up, BiB! Time to lie low until the next flavour of the month.

Is it me or are stories of this nature getting more frequent.

It is almost reverse anarchy where those in power run amok.

You seem to have a distorted idea of what "anarchy" means. Please don't perpetuate the misconception that anarchy = chaos. It simply means a society without political rulers, which is very different from "running amok".

"Pol Sub-Lieutenant Somkid Sawangnil from the Metropolitan Police Bureau said ... he wanted to stand up for the dignity of police."

Can someone please explain to me how corruption and incompetence equate to dignity?

Thailand thus has the choice between having forests or supporting stupid, greedy criminals.

I thought supporting stupid greedy criminals was Thailand's very raison d'être.

All ThaiVisa emails are initially blocked by Hotmail with the banner: "This message looks very suspicious to our SmartScreen filters, so we've blocked attachments, pictures, and links for your safety." There is, however, the option to "Show content". Perhaps Yahoo has something similar in place but without the option? It would be interesting to know. It's hard not to conclude that TV is merely trying to protect its advertising revenue.

"Maybe he thinks shaving is dangerous in Thailand? Scruffy representative that has been very quickly replaced, I wonder why?"

I hear there were complaints from members of the British business community that when they attended breakfast meetings at the Embassy, they couldn't get bacon or bangers because his missus has banned all pork products from the Embassy premises.

The first? I don't think so! There's already at least a couple of these cash-strapped overseas universities, "colleges" and "institutes" in Thailand, linked with similarly desperate local universities, for what they pretentiously call a "double degree". The Mountbatten Institute (U.K.) is partnered with Naresuan University in an "Asian business studies" MBA programme, as was Southern Cross University (Australia) until recently, when they severed ties following a row over endemic cheating, and I hear that Pha Yao University's "Bangkok campus" (operated by the same people who are behind Naresuan's "double-degree" MBA) is actively scouting for partners in a similar venture. There are others, but my information is for the time being sketchy. Watch this space.

"...80 per cent of the Thai students from both private and state schools will be able to speak English fluently in the near future."

And how many of those naïve young people will make it back home without having been scammed, beaten, robbed, raped or murdered, I wonder.

If you don't trust the police not to frame you in an all-too-familiar attempt at extortion, buy a breathalyser kit of your own. http://alcohol-breathalyzers.com/.

Refuse the police-administered test and then have the test independently administered in the presence of witnesses.

"The Post reports the sisters were spotted at various night spots on Phi Phi island alongside Tinto and another unidentified Portuguese national."

If the BiB have yet to locate Tinto, and his companion has not been identified, how do they know he is Portuguese?

Humbug! This is a ridiculous "solution" to a minor problem. Kratom (mitragynine) is a relatively harmless drug that has several useful medicinal properties. As a recreational drug, at low doses it is mildly stimulant while at higher doses it is mildly narcotic. It enables people to do hard physical labour and then to "chill" afterwards. It has few side effects, produces no hangover and is rarely addictive unless used to excess. What kind of legislation entirely outlaws a naturally occurring plant?

Coconut Island, eh? Why not run the diesel generators on coconut oil, as we do at our home in the Philippines? It works just fine and smells a whole lot better than petro-diesel!

"Medium-speed diesel engines can operate well on the use of straight and unprocessed vegetable oil such as coconut oil. Compared to the use of biodiesel, vegetable oils will considerably reduce fuel cost in such engine."

www.thebioenergysite.com/articles/116/coconut-oil-as-diesel-fuel-vs-cocobiodiesel

I heartily agree with those singing the praises of Linux. Why pay many thousands of baht for buggy Micro$oft software that offers no meaningful after-sales support when you can get a superb open OS that is constantly maintained and upgraded by an army of geeks worldwide, who do it all for love, not money? Then, of course, there's Open Office, which is every bit as good as the Micro$oft Office suite.

I suspect the answer is that most people are either just resistant to change or else too lazy to learn something new.

There's nowt as queer as folk.

OzMick: "I keep getting images in my mind of Bill Bixby as My Favourite Martian with the aerials coming out the back of his head."

In the interest of accuracy, Mick, it was Ray Walston who played 'Uncle Martin', the Martian, not Bill Bixby. See the photo following your post.

I've seen it spelled "cahones" "kahunas", "cajones" and now "cahooners"!

Gentlemen (and ladies), the word is "cojones", and it's Spanish for balls.

"...smuggling rubies out of Greenland to Krabi" sounds a bit "coals to Newcastle" to me, though I note that "More recently, large ruby deposits have been found under the receding ice shelf of Greenland." (Wikipedia)

Not much of a punch-up. Where are the brandished rulers, the flying chairs, the hurled jugs of water? Looks more like an unruly queue at McDonalds.