Thais tend to be bad at listening to criticism and at the bastion of Thai bureaucratic elites, it is worse because they think they know more and are smarter than us. The crème de la crème of the Thai bureaucracy is accustomed to telling others what to do and what is best for Thailand.
They think since they are smarter or better educated than most of the rest of us, we, Thais, expats, and foreigners, should simply just listen, concur, and applaud them. In case there is any doubt, one should just keep one’s opinion to oneself and not criticize the foreign ministry and its senior diplomats.
Pravit Rojanaphruk
It will be a long way before many of these Thai bureaucrats truly think of themselves as public servants and not masters of the public. People need to hold them accountable and shame them whenever they have the audacity to behave in such an appalling manner and publicly display their dictatorial and autocratic nature.
In general, the bill aimed to amend the Excise Tax so that homebrewers who do not intend to produce alcohol for sale no longer need a licence, and home alcohol production would no longer be a punishable offence.
The amendments would also allow small- and medium-scale breweries to enter the alcohol market, since anyone would be able to get a licence without having to meet minimum production capacity requirements. Community distilleries could also be established without being subject to capacity or employee number requirements in order to boost the production of traditional Thai liquor.
The bill was introduced to eliminate the high barriers to market entry erected by the Excise Tax Act and 2017 Ministerial Regulations.
Niwat Roykaew, who is known around his northern border community as Teacher Tee, was awarded a Goldman Environmental Prize for his role in convincing Thailand to cancel a devastating project.
Niwat along with other local river advocates along the Thai-Laos border, successfully stopped a blasting project that would have devastated about 400 kilometers of the Mekong – all its biodiversity, fisheries, and wetlands – to make way for passage of large Chinese cargo ships.
It marked the first time Thailand’s government canceled a transboundary project for environmental reasons.
The big three tropical rainforest nations – Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – are in talks to form a strategic alliance to coordinate on their conservation, nicknamed an “Opec for rainforests”, the Guardian understands.
The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, has been followed by a flurry of activity to avoid the destruction of the Amazon, which scientists have warned is dangerously close to tipping point after years of deforestation under its far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazil, Indonesia and DRC are home to 52% of the world’s remaining primary tropical forests, which are crucial to avoiding climate catastrophe, and the conservation talks are fulfilling a campaign promise by Lula.
Six reporters were credited for the story that contained this line, which has almost as many errors: Guaidó was not even a candidate in the May 2018 (not January 2019) presidential elections; Maduro won that race with 68 percent of the vote, a credible total given the opposition’s boycott of the balloting. Guaidó was chosen not by voters but by the National Assembly—which has been suspended by the Venezuelan Supreme Court—and ultimately by the Trump administration. As for “pressure…mounting on Maduro,” that seems like a dubious reading indeed of the post-coup attempt political terrain.
After much social media ridicule, CNNcorrected the line, keeping in the bit about mounting pressure, but acknowledging that Guaidó “declared himself interim president.”
The New York Times hasn’t done any better. On the day of the fake coup, the Times reported, in an unusual unbylined article (at the end there was a note saying only that reporting was contributed by Isayen Herrera, Nicholas Casey, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Ana Vanessa Herrero, Rick Gladstone and Katie Rogers) headed “Venezuela Crisis: Guaidó Calls for Uprising as Clashes Erupt”:
CARACAS, Venezuela — It was a meeting that just a year ago would have been nearly unthinkable.
But on Tuesday, the president of Colombia, a nation that for years has been the strongest ally of the United States in Latin America, flew to Caracas to meet with the leader of Venezuela, a man whom the United States does not recognize as his country’s president and who is accused by the United Nations of crimes against humanity.
The meeting between Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s newly elected leftist president, and Nicolás Maduro, a socialist-inspired leader who has eviscerated his country’s democratic institutions and helped drive much of the nation into poverty, marks a new chapter in the global approach to Venezuela.
For years, a coalition led by the United States has sought to push Mr. Maduro out through sanctions and isolation. But a growing number of nations, particularly new leftist governments in South America, have begun to soften their approach to Mr. Maduro.
In response to the visit, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said that Washington urged Colombia “to hold accountable governments that have discarded democratic norms, such as Maduro’s authoritarian regime.” But the Biden administration did not explicitly criticize or praise the move.
Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, swept to power in 1999 following a democratic election. When he died in 2013, his chosen successor, Mr. Maduro, became president.
Over time, corruption and mismanagement destroyed the economy, triggering a humanitarian crisis. To maintain their grip on power, Mr. Chávez and Mr. Maduro cracked down on the media and threw opposition figures into prison.
Since 2015, a quarter of the population has fled, and today Venezuelans are the largest group making their way through a treacherous jungle called the Darién in a desperate attempt to make it to the United States. A record number of Venezuelans have crossed into the United States in recent months.
The U.S. accused Mr. Maduro of rigging the 2018 presidential election, and in 2019 it recognized an opposition figure, Juan Guaidó, as the country’s legitimate president, a move that was followed by dozens of nations.
Since then, the U.S.-led strategy has been to try to move Mr. Maduro toward a new election through punishing economic sanctions.
And in recent months, many nations have opted to start engaging with the Maduro administration, a reflection, in part, of the election of leftists across South America. Following Sunday’s election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, all six of the largest countries in Latin America are or will soon be led by leaders who profess leftist ideals.
Bolivia resumed normal relations with Venezuela after the election of Luis Arce in 2020. Peru did the same last year following the election of Pedro Castillo. Earlier this year, President Alberto Fernández of Argentina said he would do something similar.
On Monday, Mr. Maduro stated that he and Mr. Lula had spoken on the phone and agreed to resume binational cooperation.
Members of the Venezuelan opposition alternately welcomed and condemned Mr. Petro’s visit.
In a statement sent to The New York Times, Mr. Guaidó, who is still recognized by the United States as the president of Venezuela, called Mr. Maduro a “dictator” and said that Mr. Petro must move away from “being an accomplice in the violation of human rights.”
But in an interview, Stalin González, part of another faction of the opposition, said that the international community had exhausted the strategy of isolation.
Only dialogue remained, he said, and the Venezuelan opposition should embrace attempts by the new left in South America to bring Mr. Maduro to the negotiating table.
“I hope that Petro will be an ally of democracy in Venezuela,” Mr. González said. “In the past, the strategy of pressure and more pressure was used and that did not work. We need people who encourage Maduro to democracy, to respect human rights and institutions again.”
Mr. Petro has described his decision to reinstate relations as a practical one.
“It’s no surprise that after months of extreme price gouging, Chevron and Exxon raked in a whopping $73 billion in profits so far this year,” said Jordan Schreiber, director of energy and environment at Accountable.US. “But, instead of providing badly needed relief to consumers, they spent over $32 billion to enrich their wealthy shareholders while forcing American families to foot the bill.”
“Make no mistake,” Schreiber added, “Big Oil has launched an all-out war on American consumers this year, needlessly extracting every last dime out of working and middle-class people.”
“Shareholders have been the main beneficiaries of Exxon’s post-pandemic comeback,” the outlet noted. “At the beginning of the year, Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods reactivated share repurchases that had been on hold for more than half a decade. The $15 billion-a-year buyback program is about the same cash outlay as Exxon’s dividend, already the second-largest in the S&P 500 Index.”
In a column for the Boston Globe Wednesday, Owens observed that “executives are admitting to the strategy of keeping prices high because it means bigger profits for their companies and massive payouts to their shareholders.”
“The need for urgent action is undeniable—but you don’t have to take the word of watchdogs or critics,” Owens continued. “Corporations themselves are admitting to profiteering at the expense of American consumers. And one thing is clear: These companies won’t stop doing the ‘inflation dance,’ as one CEO called it, until we change their tune.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is sending Ukraine a new $275 million package of weapons and other aid, in a move to bolster the effort to drive Russian forces out of key areas in the south as the winter closes in, U.S. officials said Thursday.
Officials said there are no major new weapons in the U.S. package, which is expected to be announced on Friday. Instead, the U.S. aid is largely aimed at restocking thousands of rounds of ammunition for weapons systems already there, including for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, which Ukraine has been successfully using in its counteroffensive against Russia.
Military intervention into Haiti is in the air again.
And the East Coast establishment media—which have on occasion remembered that Haiti is a near neighbor and has been ravaged by anti-government demonstrations, a failing economy and gang violence—seem to be breathing a sigh of relief.
The Washington Post (10/11/22) ran an editorial: “Yes, Intervene in Haiti—and Push for Democracy.” That followed on the heels of a piece in the other big opinion-maker, the New York Times (10/7/22), whose tall title read: “Haiti Appeals for Armed Intervention and Aid to Quell Chaos.”
