Bedwyr is probably the most active commenter on this blog. He is one of my favorite commenters to read because he usually says some offbeat stuff that incites discussion. In the absence of my beloved Sooksiam, there haven't been many arguments in the comments recently… until now. Just yesterday, a new commenter, Gonzobrains, joined the fray and left a lengthy comment for Bedwyr, although he did it on a very old post. Allowing him his constitutional right to reply, this one is for you Bedwyr.

Bedwyr, I am curious about your background. Like Sooksiam, you frequently come up with interesting intellectual tidbits but really manage to disappointment me on other occasions. Why does Thailand produce people who are “essentially dirty, incompetent, stupid and amoral”? BECAUSE THEIR F*CKIN’ POOR, DUDE!!! You think everyone here consciously chooses to live in a cess pool? You think they choose to be incompetent and stupid? Let’s face it, man, Thailand is a poor country. Ignorance is a result of lack of education, by definition. Not everyone is stupid here, but the country as a whole is simply poor. That is that.

I was born in the USA, and we have a lot more dirty stupid people than Thailand (if you want to make such a gross judgment). But, then again, we have more people.

Actually, Thais are some of the cleverest people I have ever seen. They make some of the most ingenious creations from our trash and hand-me-downs. I have seen street vendors make barbecue grill blowers from old vehicle radiator fans. I have seen vehicle reflectors made from old computer CD-Rs and compact discs. I have seen mopeds converted into “work trucks”, and toilet paper passed as napkins. You may scoff at it as jerry-rigging, but, for as poor as Thailand is, I look at it as ingenious improvisation.

As for producing “amoral” people, I assume you mean they lack morals. I do not think the Thais lack morals. I think their morals are just different from yours, whatever those morals may be. When I first got here, I used to get angry at all the blood-sucking touts, beggars, etc. that used to bother me because I am white and round-eyed. Just like the mosquitoes that bite me here every night, they can spot me even in the dark, and never let up. But walk a mile in their shoes, and maybe you would realize you would do the same if you only earned a few dollars a day.

This morning I heard on the news a boy was sent to jail for petty theft, because his poor mother upcountry continued to nag him for money. I don’t think trying to help your mother is “amoral” by any standards. If he had a Harvard degree and $250k/year job and was engaged in thievery, okay maybe you could call him amoral. But the guy has nothing in a country that has little, so what can he do? This kind of thing goes on all the time here. At least when the thieves steal from homes they leave some sort of religious gift/icon to apologize to the owners. Ridiculous? Yes, maybe to us Westerners but such a gesture indicates to me at least a modicum of morality, even for a thief.

I think it is useless to harp on the monarchy. Monarchs have existed worldwide for centuries. If it works, why break it? Maybe you should learn at little bit about it before start talking trash? Why make fun of people who are proud to live in the country? If they want to wear yellow shirts on Monday what’s it to you?

Every country has their nationalist tendencies. As an American, I prefer to look inward rather than criticize Thailand. I live by the idea that we play the same game but in a different ballpark. To criticize Thailand is only criticizing their specific manifestations of our human tendencies. Thailand has the same problems America does ( or anywhere else humankind exists ). America has prostitution, gambling, corruption, pedophiles, morality issues, etc. We have false ideas about our national identity. One thing that really gets me miffed is all this negative talk about the Thai monarchy when, in fact, it is more respected than any European royal family could ever hope to accomplish. Now, much of it may be by royal decree but that’s how royalty works.

Even in America, we get caught up with whining about the Constitution, Founding Fathers, blah blah. The Constitution is just a paper. Action over words, in my book. And the Founding Fathers that wrote it are not gods, the are fallible humans just like the rest of us.

And “the good old days” are no more holy or sacred than “nowadays”. People were pissing and moaning over the same bullshit we are today.

Same game, different ballpark.

Could someone with the Firefox web developer app take a look at my style sheet and help me figure out what I need to change in order to have a line break between each paragraph in a blockquote? Take a look at my newest post to see a blockquote. I want spaces between those paragraphs. Thanks in advance.

It has taken the death of 54 Burmese migrants to provoke the government to redraft a law prohibiting human trafficking. The way the law is set up at the moment, the Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act is ineffective.

The National Operation Center on Human Trafficking is part of the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. On a national level, the ministry is “designated as a focal point to coordinate prevention and suppression of human trafficking with relevant agencies”. (humantrafficking.go.th)

The Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act defines human trafficking as:

recruitment, buying, selling, disposing of, taking from or sending to any place, detaining or confining, harbouring, or receipts of persons

by means of the threat, use of force, of abduction, of the abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person

for the purpose of exploitation for oneself or for others, if such offence is committed against a child shall be considered “trafficking in persons” even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in (2) and the consent of the child shall be irrelevant

If you’ve been following news reports on the case of the 54 Burmese migrants who died, there have been six arrests made. None of the charges brought up against those six is related to human trafficking.

This from TNA:

Currently, the Kingdom has a more modest law barring the trafficking of children and women and the new law which prohibits the activity will replace the current one, they said.

Although it’s still unclear what “prohibiting human trafficking” means, a new law will be issued on June 6. To me, this suggests that human trafficking is not even illegal.

I have never really thought about a definition of “human trafficking”. What concerns me is the enormous jump in logic that has seen this case quickly turn into one of human smuggling and not human trafficking. For such a transition, there must be some concrete evidence put forward.

This from the Bangkok Post:

Human trafficking must involve smuggling of people with the specific objective of employing them in slave-like conditions and jobs, such as forced prostitution. People smuggling was a crime of lesser degree. The penalties were also different.

Police originally said there were 121 migrants on the truck, but now say their original count incorrectly included a Thai man who had fainted at the scene and was hospitalised.

The disdain with which the Burmese survivors have been dealt with by Thai authorities is sickening. Again from TNA:

Participants at the meeting told a press conference that the 66 surviving Myanmar workers from the April 10 tragedy would be charged with illegal entry and given a suspended jail term and be fined 2,000 baht (US$63) each.

Workers without money to pay as fine were instead jailed for 10 days, said Immigration Police commander Pol. Lt-Gen. Chatchawal Suksomjit.

TNA is a government news agency, don’t forget. This is all happening too fast for any of it to make sense.

One crucial factor, were this investigation not already a farce, would be to determine why there was an eight-year-old girl on that truck. Remember, by Thai law, “if such offence is committed against a child, shall be considered “trafficking in persons” even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in (2) and the consent of the child shall be irrelevant”.

This, and many questions, has been left unanswered. The swiftness with which the government wants these Burmese migrants out of the country is perhaps a telling sign.

Even the Bangkok Post article reads that “authorities say that under Thai law human trafficking required an act of exploitation, which was absent from the smuggling of people seeking proper work”.

Proper work? Are you seriously expecting me to believe that taking $160 each from 121 of the region’s poorest people in order to cram them into a container spanning a little more than 13 square meters is not exploitation? Is this how we do job seeking in Southeast Asia? Is taking in excess of half-a-million baht from people who have nothing “to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage”? (Merriam-Webster definition of “exploitation”)

By Thai law, according to a Thai government website, human trafficking IS:

Taking from or sending to any place by means of a position of vulnerability to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation for oneself or for others.

So, were those 121 Burmese exploited? There is so much that we will not be able to find out about this case.

Don’t forget that these immigrants were being brought to Phuket to work. They were not here on holiday. Furthermore, Ranong Provincial Police Superintendent Maj Gen Apirak Hongthong said, “We are working very hard to ensure the arrest of all the suspects and to severely punish them as an example to all those involved in the trafficking of illegal immigrants.” (Gazette)

What are your thoughts on this matter?

I’ve just spent the past couple of hours looking through about 300 Thai blogs – I’ll tell you why later. Out of about 300 blogs, more than 200 are dead, left by their owners to gather dust. Almost all of the dead blogs end with a post apologizing to the world that the blog is about to end.

From looking at every Thailand blog under the sun, I think it’s safe to conclude that we are a pretty boring group of people who write about exactly the same things at exactly the same times.

It really started depressing me, looking at all of these blogs. Two things usually happen when foreigners move to Thailand. The first is that they decide to write a blog because the wealth of information they have to take in on a daily basis cannot be handled without writing some of it down. After the blog stage, foreigners will usually decide that their musings are too big for a blog to contain, at which point they begin working on books.

We are a predictable, often downright weird, bunch. One blog that I came across was written, by the child’s father, from the perspective of a four-year-old. The last post goes something like this:

I am really happy that daddy put up this picture because its the first time that I can see my other mummy on my website! Her name is K. Su. For a reason I am really puzzled, my mummy says she is Enemy No. One and that I will never see her. I dont know why my mummy is so anti-Su because she looks like a very nice woman. I think you will agree.

My daddy said that when my mummy went away, he met K. Su and they were just good friends and nothing more. After my mummy in Rayong province split up with her new boyfriend she went back to daddy and asked if they could get back together, but when mummy found out about daddys new lady friend she was very angry and ran away again. I dont blame daddy though, because my mummy was away from him for many many months.

I guess that’s one way of dealing with your issues.

One positive note from my browsing was the discovery that Lyle (Bangkok Expat Mama) has started blogging again. I love Lyle because she once bought me dinner and anyone who buys me food receives my eternal respects.

The Bangkok Post ran an unusual story today about a guy in Phetchaburi who has harnessed the power of the sun to cook chickens. He roasts whole chickens with sunlight reflected by an enormous wall of small mirrors.

Sila Sutharat found the inspiration for this brainwave from when, as a child, he would use a magnifying glass to harness the power of the sun’s light.

Unfortunately for K. Sila, he appears blissfully unaware of the damage that reflected UV rays can do to the skin. This guy roasts up to 50 chickens a morning with intensified UV rays. I guess it’s comparable to sticking your head in a microwave while heating something up.

To give you an idea of how intense this light is, he can roast an entire chicken in 10 minutes.

He has been awarded an honorary bachelor's degree in the field of production technology from the Phetchaburi Rajabhat University.

Let’s see how many bachelor’s degrees he is awarded when his arms fall off.