OPINION

Farangs fed up

Re: "Irked by dual pricing", (PostBag, July 12).

I have been visiting Thailand for the past 30 years. I love the people, the food and culture. Especially a river cruise early in the morning on the Chao Phraya. Travelling by bus or train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai is a pleasure, then going on to Pai and Mae Hong Son. But this dual pricing, one for locals and another for tourists, is ridiculous. I'm not coming and I'm sure many others won't as well.

Re: "Prayut focuses on 'prosperity'", (BP, July 9).

While I am happy to support our prime minister on the occasions when I think he is right and respect him, I frankly perceive some major problems with his long-term vision for expanding prosperity and levelling out Thailand's huge wealth gap.

First of all, prosperity for any nation comes from excellent education, but Thailand's schools are frequently badly out of date, were often shut for long periods of time in the Covid crisis, and are generally antiquated; unless you're a wealthy Thai who can go to an international or elite school. Our universities also rank very low in many international ratings and our outdated immigration protocols drove many foreign teachers to other countries. So, why did I read no grand plan to revitalise our schools in this speech?

My final concern is also on infrastructure and cannabis policy. Thailand's current Skytrain and MRT are rather expensive by this economy's standards, so if all this new infrastructure winds up also as high in cost, it's likely that the poor will still be stuck on a 50-year-old, smoke-belching bus. Plus, infrastructure has to be paid for, is not guaranteed to be successful and is expensive to maintain as it ages. So, with no offence intended, some conservative onlookers from more conservative countries who see Thailand from afar might criticise its current public policy as putting a higher priority on letting people get high on cannabis products to forget they are poor rather than putting a priority on equal education opportunity and modern schools to let them get reliably less poor.

Re: "No laughing matter", (PostBag, July 10), and "Unmasking the situation may take a while", (PostScript, July 3).

Kuldeep Nagi uses pejoratives such as inadvertent comics, sceptics, conspiracy bums, all-out deniers to disparage those who disagree with the government and big media narrative he subscribes to. I will allow Mr Nagi is free to admire conspiracy bums from afar, but suggest he avoid parading his predilections in public for the following reasons.

In support of his favoured narrative he writes, "it was natural for the pharma industry to develop vaccines to combat the spread of infection". This is an entirely incorrect statement.

First, the vaccines do not combat the spread of infection, and they were never intended to. Although that was part of an initial fraudulent sales pitch (remember herd immunity?), the manufacturers have retracted this claim as it has extensively been proven false (witness the continuing number of infections despite billions of vaccine doses administered and extensive mitigation measures).

Second, it was natural for the pharma industry to not develop vaccines for a member of the coronavirus family. No vaccine against any coronavirus has ever worked before. Why? Because coronaviruses mutate between two to 10 times faster than influenza viruses and vaccines accelerate that mutation process. This is well-established virology.

Thus, we see vaccines designed around the spike protein from the Sars CoV-2 virus Wuhan strain now exhibiting negative effectiveness against the current BA.4 and BA.5 variants of the Omicron strain. The pharma industry knew they simply could not keep up with this well-known characteristic of coronaviruses to rapidly mutate from the very beginning, but they had planned for such a scenario and knew how to profit from it. They continue to sell millions of doses of utterly useless, obsolete and dangerous vaccines on a daily basis for the single purpose of making money.

The jig is about up for this round of pharmaco-terrorism. We need to reform our regulatory mechanisms to prevent further abuses by these greedy and power mad people.

Re: "Squid game politics", (PostBag, July 12).

Kuldeep Naji continues to blast and belittle Western nations. Yet he lives in his current "back yard" where dubious leaders are still in office, but he doesn't chastise them. His own country is not so squeaky clean, either, with all their previous uprisings and assassinations. His accusation that a Western leader "unleashed his armed mob" is debatable and is but a personal choice of a disparaging verb and noun.

Re: "No guns for me", (PostBag, July 12).

Bruno Sapienza, please don't bring a knife to a gun fight. My post was not misinformation about understanding the gun culture in the US. Yes, the technology of the time was generally single-fire guns.

As to your stating a skilled shooter took over a minute to load a weapon, this demonstrates your lack of experience and wisdom. A competent shooter can easily reload four times in a minute. You did not address my point that guns are required to protect one from nature and natural predators.

Last year alone over 50,000 bears were hunted in 32 states. If there were no hunters culling the wildlife in a managed way, how often would you go unarmed into the woods with your family and children? Over 29,000 mountain lions were hunted in a decade.

Again, would you hike a trail unarmed if the population was not reduced?

Enough of the "assault weapon" hype. Every weapon is for assault -- even when used defensively. The majority of shootings in the US are with handguns, and the majority of the guns used in crimes are "illegal". So how could banning law-abiding citizens from having gun ownership protect them from people that are not following the law?

Re: "No guns for me", (PostBag, July 12).

My thanks to Bruno Sapienza for his illuminating letter.

It suggests that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, to satisfy its devotees, should be revised to read: "... the right of the people to keep and bear arms capable of firing only a single shot before being reloaded shall not be infringed".

Re: "Kill or be killed", (PostBag, July 10).

Darius Hober's claim that the reason there hasn't been a coup in America is because its citizens have guns is absurd. If the American military -- the most powerful in the world -- chooses to overthrow the government, there is nothing armed citizens can do, unless they want to get killed.

American democracy has survived because the military respects the fact that they serve the president of the United States, who is a civilian. This is in sharp contrast to Thailand, where any civilian government knows that any time the military is unhappy, it may step in and overthrow the government. That's how the current government came to power.

So what do American generals do when they don't like the president? They do what any other American citizen does: vote for the opposing party in the next election!

Re: "Voices of doubt", and "Observable error", (PostBag, July 3).

I must commend Khun JT and Khun Tarquin for their respective pieces in the Post Bag of July 3. The Bangkok Post has a moral, and perhaps a legal responsibility to fact check the dangerous misinformation you allow to be featured in your newspaper. I believe there are local laws against spreading false/fake news. It has become tiresome reading the constant drivel from vaccine and mask deniers. I suppose they are entitled to their opinions in private, but surely you don't have to amplify and spread their nonsense.

Re: "Chapter and metaverse", (PostBag, July 3).

Unwilling Snail Mailer might wish to compare my recent experience of 90-day reporting.

On Friday, July 3, I visited the Thai immigration website at 3.35pm and successfully completed the online 90-day report form. After submitting it, I received an immediate email reply acknowledging receipt of my report. Just over one hour later, I received confirmation by email that my report had been accepted with an attachment to print and keep in my passport.

Congratulations to Thai immigration on fixing a longstanding problem. Looks like online 90-day reporting is back and working again.

As a years-long reader, the Bangkok Post has failed to address the road accident issue, except twice a year to highlight the so-called Seven Dangerous Days.

May I suggest all national or provincial road deaths be reported on a regular or even daily basis. The message might save a life or two. Education, folks.