FarangKyAy

As other members, I heard about Tokay's strong bite but some people also told me that tokays can get sticked to your skin. Because of their skin structure, it's very difficult to remove them. Is that true?

Meanwhile on Ao Manao Beach in a military base at Prachuap Khiri Khan there are plenty of chairs and umbrellas businessmen right on the beach, you can order strong liquores to waiters some of them seem to ne military (depending or the operation you choisies to sur)

No crackdown here apparently 555

To there discharge them do let good space for people who want to sit on the beach, in full Sun beware the sunburnts!

Each business cleans its part or beach every day

"Why insist on the whiteness?"

Perhaps anytime there is a search in Sukkhumvit soi 5 or 7 (called soi Africa) targetting black people for drugs and finding nothing unless a few visa cases, some people still beat the drum about them being bad people per se?

Maybe? Just a thought... :-)

Ok, I think, maybe a little biased here, that I am pretty intelligent. But if I can't understand what the heck these politicians are doing, how in the world is someone like rice farmer Somchai up in Udon Thani going to understand?

California is having the same problem. Some lawyer/economist/politican writes up a proposal to submit to the voting public that can't be understood by someone with less than a Phd degree, and not even by some of them.

What say we break it down into understandable terms.

1. Do you like Somtam? yes or no

2. Do you want your taxes to be raised? yes or no

etc., and etc.

I quite agree, this method should have been applied with the initial referrendum as well ...

Chiang Mai isn't a special administrative zone?

I thing this piece of news is quite reducing, PAD and UDD stances' differences can't be summarised to their struggle/support with Thaksin.

I can think of some "minor" points such as people representativity: UDD wants to come back to the one man one vote system, whereas PAD promotes either "more selected people to manage the country", of course honest and well-intentionned (this is sometimes called "democraty thai style" or a system that links voting rights to the level of tax paid (and so income)...

Yep Maidu some valid points in your posts, This tax would be a one shot tax or annual? I think the implementation might cause problem, there have been various project of land tax to fund local expenses such as road maintenance ...but I can't remember if this have been discussed in Parliament.

Anyway, it's also not the first time I was answering about Dam management as the main cause of flood as I see people telling that the dams were not full before the last general election, that Yingluck screwed everything up etc ... so I may keep repeating some key points that must have been said in other topics by other members.

Dike it might prevent flood in certain areas but can make things worst for longer if not well managed.

This Constitution have been "approved" by a referrendum weirdly conducted ;

- compaigning for the "No" was if not strictly "prohibited", it was actually highly not recommended by the army

- the "Yes" campaign was strongly supported by Army statement such as "vote yes or else .... we pick any previous Constitution that we will amend as we wish without submitting to people approval"

What was their mandate at this time?

Without being partisan of one side or the other, it might be good to have more elected people in Senate (instead of selected ones)

The rule that could conduct to a party dissolution if one member of the direction is caught for corruption or vote buying is quite unheard of (ban and punish the one who is corrupted and his culprits, not the whole party)

The voting system helps more small party to access to Parliament but on the other side except in case of landslide victory, it requires deals to form a majority and a government, thus making them instable.

Looks like as if it has been designed to reduce government stability, making it weaker whereas Bureaucraty and Army retain significant power...

Gregb let al

That is not a reason to stop the release of water. That is a poor justification for the highly political action taken by high level officials to prevent the flooding of a few rice farms at the expense of the rest of the country. Once the meterologists informed the Royal Irrigation Department of the serious consequences headed their way, it was the duty of those in charge to open the dams to the maximum extent possible to get as much water out of those dams as possible before storms hit. Any flooding at that point would be minor and inconsequential compared to what was coming. They knew this, and the Agricultural Minister prevented them from taking this obvious action for the benefit of his constituents so that they could harvest their crops first. Those were the most expensive crops in Thai history.

Nobody is arguing that all flooding could have been prevented, but proper action when people could have reasonable recognized the seriousness of the problem would have prevented much of the tragedy we have experienced, saved trillions of baht in lost revenue for the country, and likely saved hundreds of lives.

You can not justify mismanagement of the dams with an off the cuff statement like "there was already flooding downstream." Yes there was, and it was well known that the flooding was going to be made much, much worse by the actions taken by the current administration. But there was political gain to be had by doing it, and they didn't give a rats ass about the rest of the country.

And that is the essence of the problem, and the reason for the lawsuit. This will all be made public during the trial.

"Mai pen rai for northern people already flooded, just flush the water out of dams, now" ? Even if I think it's quite a hard stance I respect your opinion , I think the main mismanagement was having the dams already so full before the rainy season started...

The other factors : wild urbanisation that conduct people to build / buy their home in floodable area, and of course deforestation that forbid the rain water to infiltrate in the soil. For theses ones responsibilities are more dilluted than dams management, so it may be mor difficult to tackle.

Finally dikes management was very poor, you just can't block water to protect some place without letting another way for the water to flow down..the water upstream won't evaporate ...

The responsible are the 2 governments , The democrat for not having see the seriousness of the fact in Ayutaya as it started in july and the actual government for very little action ..specially to sacrifice the whole Bangkok north provinces to keep BKK dry . We cannot blame only the actual PM. I am not an expert but for sure something different could have been done . Lets hope that will not happen again for the next rainy season .

Yep ... the Democrats should have done something in the 2 days that they were in care-taker government when Typhoon Nok-ten started causing flooding in the North East on July 31.

Ayutthaya didn't start flooding until late August (or maybe a bit later).

Just go and check data on dams water management, the amount of water entering the dams was considerably higher and the volumes released were (comparatively) lower/slower than previous years, even if the water releases have been stepped up in late june / july, it was too little / too late... and released had to be stopped when there was flood downstream (which occured much earlier than late August, just have a look in the news, by mid july there were already flood in northern provinces) until technically compelled to release water (unless the dams could be damaged because of the water pressure)

Source

Edit : I was to quick to answer, I didn't realise that some members have already noticed and answered about this.

What the fuss about? She gaves orders but the administration (or bureaucraty) is slow to implement them, therefore she has the right to tell them to move "leow leow" ... Bureaucraty, pretty much like the military, seems to be an entity by itself ... they can drag their feet or even screw the works so that the government looks bad (or at least worst than it actually is)

Humm I don't forget that Abhisit was asking the PPP government to "take responsibilities" for the death of a PAD protester during dispersal operations at Parliamen (seeminlgy the deat was either due to a flawed chinese lacrymogen device, or propably the police had shoot this device from close range directly to the crowd), so I assume it's fair to ask if he has anything to do with or has any information on the causes of the 90+ deaths that occured under his government... what counter-measures have been implemented to avoid more deaths etc etc.

Don't look like a vendetta to me.

Whybother, he must be referring to the 2007 Constititution providing an amnesty for the coup-makers (Article 299). Besides, contrary to the 1997 Constitution that clearly stipulate that Military coup are illegal the 2007 Constitution doesn't state that.

Who's freshly minted politicians are you referring to?

More Water should have been released in June, it was too late to do so in July because there were already floods downstream, there were a few tropical storm in a row (and so flood downstream) that prevented any releasing unless technically forced to do so.

I think the agency responsible for dam management should indeed review its case and "take responsibility".

This event is also an opportunity to assess everybody's role and responsibilities, the strenghts and weaknesses of the system in order to prevent such a mess to occure again

One of the first few things they need to do is enhancing water management of the dams that were almost full before the rainy season started : closer monitoring, linked with weather forecast should help.

Then a real national coordination of the flood prevention and flood evacuation is needed : if some changwat just block the water (i.e : w/o setting up ways for the water to flow down), they just make the situation worst for people upstream, and by the way the water will eventually go through the dykes (except some well cared for areas such as Inner Bangkok ...).

Yingluck said she had only heard about the bullying incident yesterday morning, adding that she wanted to see positive election campaigns so Thailand could leave the conflicts behind after a new leader was elected.

She added that she would like to call on all sides to exercise patience and express their feelings by voting on July 3.

So Yingluck says she want a positive campaign and call everyone to wait until the July 3rd to express their opinion through the ballot ... Many members here seem to have missed the phrase and focus on the "I can't tell the red shirts to stop bullying Abhisit".

Maybe she can't tell this because that would further emphasize the link between Puea Thai and the Red shirts movement. Even officialise her link with the red shirts, making her in some way responsible for what they do ... EC is watching and she may not want to be involved with this.

Just my two cents, don't throw too much mud at me...

My English may be not good, for example:

The Red have caused much material damages (arson) and 90 deaths (plus 2,000 injured) The yellow only cause minor incontinence for a few days. Just go ask yourself; who is the devil and who is the saint here.

I understand there that reds caused the 90 deaths (plus 2000 injured) but I may be wrong. We all could see these deaths were not the unwanted consequences from a balanced dispersal operation, unless all the reds killed has been shot in self-defense as they were directly threatening the life of the shooter.

By the way I'm not a fan of mob rule, seeing the thai army shooting thai people is really saddening that's all.

When you compare the media coverage of the poor lady who died because of a defectuous tear gas grenade (the gvt was asked to take responsability for ordering the dispersal if I remember well) and the rather mild coverage of these 90 deaths, focusing on material damages, I can't help thinking there's something strange with the media in Thailand.

And unless the rule of law is applied to all sides with a common line, elections soundly organised without biased interferences I can't see how thailand would reach Reconciliation...This government supporters may even agree with this last one as it is in the line of Abhisit's speeches,

Though I can't tell so far any actions tending toward this, it's definitely not the time to even think of achievement with these matters. With all the good intentions in his speeches, let's truly hope Abhisit will do better during the remainings of his mandate and that Thaïland will bring itself together

I surely blame the reds hot headed who burnt the mall, but some seem to blame reds for causing the 90 deaths ... You mean they were all killed by the reds? It's insane, there're videos, pictures and reports showing military shooting to people who apparently were not in a position to threat soldiers' life ...(I expect the "but they were terrorist!" typical answer ...)

I dont see too many people shocked by theses so numerous deaths, many prefer focusing on the building arson ... Where are all the cries heard (and read) when one PAD demonstrator has been killed unfortunately (seemingly a chinese grenade with a flaw used by police force during dispersal operations)? The other PAD demonstrator killed himself because he was carying homemade bomb so I don't talk about him as a "victim"...

Two wrongs don't make one good but after seeing PAD demonstrator occupy government house for so long and shut down the airport then walk free (Thailand was open bar at the time?), maybe the hard-core reds felt it was there turn to cause trouble and walk free ... Few expected such a harsh reaction from authorities, the arson may be an (over)reaction to the many deaths caused in cold blood by the army...

I'm not sure about that : the Thai legislation isn't qualifying the trespassing of an international airport or any demonstration leading to the close down as "Terrorism"?

If the law is written lik this, there's no matter to discuss wether it should be considered as Terrorism or not ...

Rucharee, I thought Thai Airways has claimed compensation to the PAD for the losses incured by the airport blockade (passengers and fret)