Contempt for law

re: "'Boss' case the rule not the exception" (BP, Opinion, July 28) 

But Ms. Atthakor, Boss was merely practicing the lesson taught by generations of amazing Thai leaders exactly like the current PM. When the law is not sufficiently amenable to your needs, ignore it, subvert it, or in the case of a coup leader, simply overthrew it completely and make up new laws to suit your personal agenda. That is what every coup leader has taught the rich and worthless of Thailand's high society. In suborning utter contempt for the rule of just law, Boss merely follows perfectly the example set by Prayuth and his many predecessors who staged coups against justice for the Thai people.
  
Meanwhile, Mr Bull is clearly eminently well qualified to be appointed to the PM Prayut's amazing cabinet as either Minister for Transportation or Minister for Justice, or perhaps both portfolios.

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The above is the text that was actually posted as a quick comment on the article by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text of that quick comment as edited was published in PostBag on July 28, 2020, under the title "Contempt for law" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1958559/no-doubt-until-now

  

Face the book of demons

re: "Facebook accounts for up to 60% of child abuse reports to AFP, data shows" (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2020, July 24) 

Undermining the rights of people to hold private discussions, making it legally impossible to have assured privacy for good people to discuss personal issues, can only be remotely sane if you have absolute trust in the current and every possible future government and official authority. If you have that sort of unreasoning blind faith in all politicians past, present and future unknown, you are truly kooky.

Yes, there are real crimes that encryption can facilitate, but that cannot justify the state, unless you commit to the worst extremes of communism, interfering to disable basic protections for all. There are other solutions to criminal activity that focus on the criminals, not the innocent, and those are the options that a just society pursues, not a blanket dictate of distrust of all by all.

Also worth remembering is that after the famous Christian churches, it is families and family friends who hide the greatest numbers of paedophiles, and you don't need to invade everyone's privacy to get them. You just need to enable children to speak out against the vile relatives, family friends, teachers, priests and other abusive scum.  The way to do that is end blind faith in the traditional institutions beloved of conservative law and order types, the same type whose social consensus of silence to protect the undeserved reputations of traditional institutions enabled so much abuse to go on unspoken for so long.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The Sydney Morning Herald article.

It is published there at https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/facebook-accounts-for-up-to-60-percent-of-child-abuse-reports-to-afp-data-shows-20200723-p55ep7.html#comments

Open your mind

re: "Protests must be heeded" (BP, Editorial, July 23, 2020)

Dear editor,

The intelligent, educated, morally aware young Thais, and their less young supporters, are right that Thailand deserves constitutional reform. A healthy start to constitutional amendment would be to revise the sections of the constitution that currently undermine it so that free speech has solid legal protection from suppression. That protection is foundational to democracy. As much as democracy, good morals also require that a people, even the Thai people, be able to seek, to speak, and to know important truths about their nation that errors may be corrected and new paths explored, something that is currently too often criminal for Thais trapped in the domestic coconut shell. If reality is ugly, inconvenient, or otherwise upsetting of cherished fake claims, so much the worse for those fake claims. Wilfully clinging to fake beliefs is not a healthy way to live; it is morally corrupt.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 24, 2020, under the title "Open your mind" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1956655/make-students-good
  

Stark male contrasts

re: "Two hospitals damaged by angry mob after bloody brawl" (BP, July 20, 2020)

Dear editor,

Showing us what is and what can be, the contrast between the committed hot heads loyally committing violent battle against all on behalf of their fatally injured mate at arms could not more starkly contrast with the peaceful young Thais calling in reasoned, measured voices for reforms to move their nation forward. The gang of ultra-loyalists who smashed hospital equipment and threatened the  medical staff seeking to help are far from the encouraging example being set by the patriotic young Thais who over the weekend assembled at the Democracy Monument and elsewhere throughout Thailand to petition for redress of perceived wrongs, who did not attack, and who left in peace at the conclusion of their speeches. Thailand needs more of the former, those who reflect critically on what is, what could be, and what should be; the nation needs far less of those whose first, middle and last reactions are angry violence and intimidation to suppress what they dislike for any reason, smashing all in their path as thoroughly as a coup maker overthrowing the nation's constitution and form of democratic government merely to assert a too male lust for power over others.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 22, 2020, under the title "Stark male contrasts" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1955459/brit-pensioners-unite-
  

Infallible Sameness: the fatal wokeness of Christianity, communism, and all that crap

re: "How a Famous Harvard Professor Became a Target Over His Tweets" (The New York Times, July 15, 2020)

We would think the lessons of thousands of years of religiously devout zealots witch hunting, torturing and cancelling those who dare question the least of their articles of blindly dictated faith would have taught us the evils, the ignorance, the very real hells on Earth that must come from their slavish devotion to sincerely believed dogma.

Communism and the other non-theistic ideologies of more recent times have taught exactly the same as their true believers have striven with equally fanatical zeal to root out and cancel any sign of dissent from the dictated orthodoxies, as we see Hong Kong today. The wonder is that the ravening woke have not yet sought to cancel such earlier luminaries as Bertrand Russell and George Orwell, to name but two of many saints who had the honesty to turn a critical eye on the popular prejudices of their day backed by and backing despotic regimes of social conformity to beloved ideologies demanding ruthless adulation.

The golden rule that history teaches from the likes of despotic communism, from Christianity and its brutal siblings, and now from sincerely self-adulating wokeness, is perhaps that any ideology that denies the right to question its foundational beliefs for accuracy deserves our hearty contempt for its pretensions to infallibility, ever a fake claim of the highest order.

Mr. Pinker, like Socrates before him, that earlier enemy of the righteous protecting the children and traditional gods from newfangled ways, would be the first to review his own beliefs and admit not merely their eternal fallibility but actual wrongness when critical reason and new evidence demanded it.

Alas, human ideologies from the theistic despotisms of Christianity and its relatives to the equally despotic evils of Maoism and today's rampant wokeness know no such humility, nor honest openness.

_______________________________

The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/us/steven-pinker-harvard.html#commentsContainer&permid=108153683:108153683

  

Jesus Christ, again?

re: "God Did Not Commute Roger Stone’s Sentence" (The New York Times, July 15, 2020)

The staunchly faithful, those willfully blind Christians who support Trump with the true religious fervour that rejects reason along with facts and moral pause, too perfectly epitomize what passes for much Christianity in the US. That version of Christianity shares much with the high priests of the Sanhedrin, the loyal keepers of the temple at ancient Jerusalem,  arch-conservatives intent on law and order. The self-deemed Christians who laud their chosen president for faithfully co-opting the might of the state to force all to bow before their vision of righteousness copy with high fidelity those holy men calling on the might of Rome to lawfully protect their inherited traditions, values, perks and collateral privileges.

And were Jesus to arrive in the United States in a second coming today, he would, just as he did 2,000 years ago, be out on the streets protesting the injustices of the conservative status quo, he would be accusing the money makers who had invaded the temple, overthrowing their tables piled high with riches, and he would not only practice but preach acceptance, compassion, and justice.

Could Christ not be treated for the same Christ-like behaviour as 2,000 years ago on the streets of ancient Judea in the same way today by those who demand that strict law and order protect their beloved customs, values and cherished chattels as the high priests of the temples of Judea demanded that the lawful authorities 2,000 years ago deal with the rabble-rousing Jesus?

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/opinion/roger-stone-trump-god.html#commentsContainer&permid=108146575:108146575

  

Christ! Not in our country, by Jesus!

re: "'Pray for your uncle,' a Predatory Priest Told His Victims" (The New York Times, July 15, 2020)

How many years, decades, centuries did the abuse unspeakable go on?

Thankfully the faithful today are no longer so blindly trusting as the church's dictatorial (the correct adjective) ideology (the correct noun) serving the men (women?) who made it up to serve the men who serve the ideology behind their veils of unquestioning silence dictated by tradition would have them be.

The miracle is that so many could have believed for so long that so few should be protected in their abuse by something so perfectly opposed to the plain example of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels, but then, that was why the popes had holy inquisitions to torture those suspect of the faintest suspicion of heresy, such as those who said nasty things about priests, bishops or popes.

But then, how many of the Christian churches today (look at Trump's most zealous support!), with their obsessive concern to force others under pain of legal punishment by the state to follow the narrow path they dictate, remotely resemble the example of Jesus Christ, whom the law and order crowd of religious conservatives protecting traditional values had ... put to death by their strict law and order almost 2,000 years ago in Judea.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/opinion/theodore-mccarrick-catholic-abuse.html#commentsContainer&permid=108141542:108141542

Problem for Buddha

re: "Ignoring Buddha" (BP, PostBag, July 13, 2020)

Dear editor,

Michael Setter, if the Buddha were to reincarnate in Thailand today and start preaching his ideas about right understanding, compassion and the like, not to mention the first precept of Buddhism, he would be charged with causing social panic at the very least, and very likely fomenting sedition. The Computer Crimes Act and other Thai rule by law would do its job of silencing unwelcome speech based on sound thinking.

Similarly, were Jesus to appear in the US, he would be out on the streets protesting the failures of the "nice" conservatives, who preach law and order to protect their beloved traditions that have wrought a bitterly divided, unjust US society characterized by demonized groups stigmatized by intolerant bigotry. And as do those claiming righteousness to oppress in the US today, so too did the Jewish Sanhedrin 2,000 years ago, those paragons of the conservative status quo of many generations of ancestors unquestioningly proud of their heritage, have Jesus put to death by strict rule of law for his rabble rousing on the streets of ancient Jesusalem and his quintessentially Christ-like disrespect of traditional authority in the temples and society, as bluntly related in the gospels of the Christian Bible.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 14, 2020, under the title "Problem for Buddha" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1950916/hide-and-sikh
  

Gospel truths

re: "The Mistakes That Will Haunt Our Legacy" (The New York Times, July 12, 2020)

Mr Kristof's essay reminds us, yet again, that it takes courage to dissent from the majority, a powerful reason that solid legal protection is needed to protect prophets from the reactionary tendencies of conservative majorities, who have a habit of being wrong.

But at least in the US, radical change is possible because brave women and men of all colours can and do speak out against the blindly followed precepts taken as gospel truth, too often literally gospel truth, by the great majority who see themselves as the "good". It is not so long ago that racial segregation was accepted and enforced by unjust law, and many of us are old enough to remember the hate directed with religiously backed law against those of us who dared to love another human person of the same sex.

The way we treat animals, especially the reasons we give for that treatment, can also illuminate. It's not merely, as Mr Kristof points out, that our full on lust for meat produced by inflicting great suffering shows that many humans daily and blatantly contradict the moral code they profess.

It's worse. If your moral code is the sort that holds that only persons deserve moral consideration, perhaps because your moral growth has been stunted by primitive texts that tell a fake story of man (woman?) having dominion over all other living things, then two sets of facts test your conviction: First, some non-human animals seem to quality as persons; second, no human foetus has ever so qualified as a person.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/opinion/sunday/animal-rights-cruelty.html#commentsContainer&permid=108091614:108091614

  

Amazing ghost fuss

re: "TV show probed for distorting history" (BP, July 10, 2020)

Dear editor,

Seriously? Could the good citizens of Korat be quite as portrayed by the reports of their reaction to a TV show called "Real Ghosts"? The amazing fuss and even more amazing official reaction from the National Office of Buddhism (but of course) raises far more disturbing questions than it answers.

What exactly is the alleged distortion? What is the alleged "historical reality" that has been distorted? And how strong is the evidence that the alleged history is in fact the reality supposed to have been distorted in unspecified ways?

Deeper questions worth asking: Why do people think that any TV show shows reality, let alone one calling itself "Real Ghosts"? Are artistic entertainments allowed licence where the evidence is less than 100% compelling, as historical evidence must, without exception, always be? Every claim posing as a piece of history is surely subject to revision in the light of new evidence or simple critical thinking. But even if the facts are well-attested and generally accepted, must it be illegitimate to explore alternative imagined possibilities? Must it be illegal were, for example, a TV show to imagine Isaaac Newton discovering Einstein's theory of gravity instead of the one he actually did?

Finally, is merely causing offence a sufficient reason to ban anything? If, for example, I'm offended by some weird religious teaching, must that teaching therefore be banned? Or does it take a majority offence to criminalize the expression of an idea, however popular?

 Felix Qui

_______________________________

The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 11, 2020, under the title "Amazing ghost fuss" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1949544/a-britons-apology

What Thai unis lack

re: "Can Thai unis attract foreign pupils?" (BP, Opinion, July 10) 

I think you have to have a solid academic reputation that is well-founded before the international students will start beating a path to your doors. What Thai university is internationally acclaimed for academic excellence? Which Thai university regularly has work by its academics published in leading international journals? Which Thai university is not infected with Thainess caught from the Ministry of Education and other official Thai bodies? But it's a sweet dream. The Thai students are excellent: intelligent, eager to learn, compassionate, creative, and hard working when allowed; alas, so much is forbidden by the ruling Thainess.

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The above is the text that was actually posted as a quick comment on the article by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text of that quick comment as edited was published in PostBag on July 10, 2020, under the title "What Thai unis lack" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1948952/what-thai-unis-lack
  

Paved with good intentions

re: "Artists and Writers Warn of an ‘Intolerant Climate.’ Reaction Is Swift." (The New York Times, July 9, 2020)

Good to see some of our most respected artists and intellectuals taking a clear stand for free speech against the assault from those who would, sincerely moved by the best of intentions, undermine an essential foundation of any just, democratic, morally healthy society.

Too many who think themselves supporters of free speech draw a line that coincides remarkably with what they themselves personally deem acceptable and what they deem beyond the pale. But the true test of  your commitment to free speech is the length of the list of unacceptable speech, vile ideas, absurd claims, idiocy, outright filth, the sickest, most hateful garbage and the like that you insist be protected from suppression by the state, however well-intentioned that suppression.

If you cannot point to repugnant filth that you think the law must protect from suppression by the state, then you do not support free speech; you are not a liberal in the great tradition of John Stuart Mill, and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

There are grounds for restricting what may legally be expressed, but merely being truly hateful is not among those grounds in a just society, a society that respects the individuals who each contribute to making that society, who are equally persons, or apparently not equally as the suppressors assume when they seek to silence their voices to "protect" others, until those others become me and you.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/arts/harpers-letter.html#commentsContainer&permid=108018802:108018802

  

Retarding the nation

re: "Speech curbs hold back nation" (BP, editorial, July 5, 2020)

Dear editor,

All well said in the Bangkok Post's editorial "Speech curbs hold back nation" (July 5). Because it allows honest mistakes, errors of judgement, misunderstandings and outright falsehoods to flourish by protecting them from honest review, the suppression of free speech has grave real world consequences. But the corruption runs much deeper, touching not only the economy, but also society's moral heart.

When the law protects any privileged belief from critical investigation, it privileges dogma over honesty, myth over truth, and the fake over the real. This in turn puts Thailand's most revered institutions in a precarious legal position because the amazing Thailand claims sometimes made on their behalf are but rarely supported by the solid research necessary to substantiate any factual claim as well-founded, leaving many such claims necessarily suspect of being fake. Thus does it also disrespect the institutions it falsely pretends to protect as unjust law against free speech works to retard the nation socially, politically, morally and economically.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 7, 2020, under the title "Retarding the nation" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1947004/retarding-the-nation
  

PM makes Thaksin shine

re: "'Care' already being taken for next poll" (BP, Opinion, July 4)

But Khun Chairith , since even Thaksin is an angel compared to the PPRP minion of the little dictator, who is in fact known to have overthrown a Thai constitution, thereby dealing another blow to a Thailand's democracy with a constitutional monarchy, why would it matter that a party is suspected of ties to Thaksin? That is surely better than having known ties to the man who overthrew Thailand's supreme rule of law and smashed the nation's form of government in his lust to make himself PM and profit his allies against the Thai people. The most impressive achievement of Prayut and those colluding with him is to make Thaksin shine in comparison.

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The above is the text that was actually posted as a quick comment on the article by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text of that quick comment as edited was published in PostBag on July 5, 2020, under the title "PM makes Thaksin shine" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1945976/focus-on-real-issues
  

And all that: re. 1984 redux

re: "1984 redux" re: "Reading Orwell for the Fourth of July" (The New York Times, July 4, 2020)

For doubters:
What thousands of years of civil society teach is that if respected as decent human persons, human persons tend to express themselves as ... decent human persons who want to contribute to the community.

Sure, you'll get radicals like Socrates, who question the conservative status quo so seriously that the guardians of decency just have to use the law to exact the final solution on him. How else could the innocent children be protected from his corruption?

And you'll get even worse extremists like that Galileo person who argued, with actual evidence of all the god-awful things, that the Earth was not the centre of the universe. Again, it was thanks to the righteous efforts to protect innocents from his heresies that the popes managed for a while to suppress his evil incarnate.

But what we conspicuously did not get was a public sphere full of filthy language: that came, rather, from fulminating "protectors" condemning those new-fangled upstarts like Socrates and Galileo, or that even worse Jesus radical who caused the high priests of conservative Judaism such frenzied vituperation as they called on the law-and-order brigade to silence him with another final solution to the threat of free speech.

When free speech is protected, the decent people whose rights are protected continue to behave as decent people, however radical their ideas in the tradition of Socrates, Galileo, Jesus and all the others in that long line of ultra-radicals espousing shocking ideas.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/orwell-fourth-of-july.html#commentsContainer&permid=107946429:107948118

  

1984 redux

re: "Reading Orwell for the Fourth of July" (The New York Times, July 4, 2020)

A useful litmus test of your commitment to free speech, the founding principle of democracy, is the length of the list of vile, disgusting, worthless, false, fake and generally abhorrent speech even unto the outright hateful whose expression you insist be protected by the law from suppression either by the state  or by ostensibly well-intended social consensus. The longer this list, the more genuine the commitment to the liberal principle of free speech essential to honest thinking as to a healthy democratic state.

Too many who think themselves liberal have a zero-length list that fails utterly to demonstrate the progressive liberality that they piously claim for themselves.

Orwell, who managed to consistently offend the leftist progressives and rightist regressives of his own day, yet has much to teach us.

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/orwell-fourth-of-july.html#commentsContainer&permid=107946429:107946429

  

Rich not helping

re: "Covid crisis compounds new school-term woes" (BP, July 2, 2020) 

Dear editor,

Reading the story of the woman caught stealing school uniforms for her children, who would not be touched by the human kindness of the other shoppers in the store who banded together to help the poor woman from their own meagre pockets? It reminds us that when faced with their immediate distress, the natural impulse of ordinary people in Thailand as everywhere else is to help those in need.

My immediate thought was that it is perhaps time to abolish uniforms when they cause such needless misery. The second series of thoughts were: Why has the Thai government failed to help this family and the many others like them in desperate need due to the Covid emergency? Why are the filthy rich of Thailand not asking, not demanding, to be taxed far more to help their fellow Thais in need?

Then there was the less pleasant reflection that the inhuman "law and order" zealots in government, those who insist on strict compliance with them to excuse every act they commit irrespective of justice, fairness, or simple human decency, doubtless wanted the poor mother to be imprisoned because she broke their laws made up to protect the corrupt Thai status quo founded on a long history of coups against the Thai people.

Finally, the story in the same article of the police officers who chipped in to help the woman whose daughters' uniforms had been stolen from the washing line, presumably by another poor parent also reduced to desperation by the burden of the Covid emergency measures whose brunt has been unfairly borne by the poor, reminds us that even the Thai police are in person not so heartless as Thai law would have them be.

As the ongoing Covid emergency highlights, perhaps many of the traditional corruptions that have long beset Thailand are rooted in unjust law protecting a heartless system that rejects natural human goodness to instead profit only a small number of Thais at great economic, social, and moral cost to the wider Thai society.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 3, 2020, under the title "Rich not helping" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1945036/slim-state-albatrosses
  

Liberty or life?

re: "Seriously, Just Wear Your Mask" (The New York Times, July 2, 2020)

Not wearing a mask poses a direct threat to others. It is the same as driving while drunk, which the state rightly criminalizes to protect others from the harm posed by such recklessly selfish acts.

For the gun loving, an apt analogy might be walking around in public firing your weapons at random with no regard for other people in the vicinity: it tends to treat that as manslaughter or attempted manslaughter as the law restricts the individual's liberty to indulge such whims. 

_______________________________

The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to the The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/opinion/coronavirus-masks.html#commentsContainer&permid=107933183:107933183