Pathetic justification

re: "Time for cops to come clean" (BP, Editorial, August 28, 2021)

 
When the fatally effective Royal Thai Police officer in his officially approved PR stunt "said he regretted the death, but justified his abhorrent treatment of suspects 'as a means to an end' in the war against the illicit drug trade in local communities," there is no reason to think he was not lying. But the reality he lets slip about the ethos of the Royal Thai Police is much worse: even if he were sincere, even if there were grounds for thinking the suspect had knowledge about a ton of heroin, the use of torture as a matter of course, which the proffered excuse implies is an accepted operating procedure in the Royal Thai Police, shows that traditional Thai institution to be morally abhorrent in its very principles.

Yet worse, that excuse that the ends justifies them, however truly vile those means be, sounds exactly like an equally Royal Thai Army general giving the usual excuses for committing a coup against the Thai people to overthrow a popular, democratic government. Worth noting here is that such repression of democracy by intimidation using threats of violence is the foundation on which stands the decades of corruption in the Royal Thai Police and other famously corrupt Thai institutions.

The best, the only credible, antidote to corruption is democracy. To reduce systemic corruption, democracy must be allowed to develop institutions that protect free speech rather than stifling it with brutish prison sentences, that ensure the people can protest perceived wrongs rather than using police violence to suppress them, and that create transparency rather than systemically enforcing ignorance of what is being done by whom by the use of unjust law.

It would have been naive in the extreme to ever have expected those who committed a coup against the evolution of functioning democracy to allow, let alone initiate, police or any other healthy reform. That is not how the world works.

 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 August 30, 2021, under the title "Pathetic justification" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2173175/pathetic-justification
  

Cultures scorned

re: "Do we need more rockets in the stratosphere?" (BP, August 27, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Or rather than cramming into economy class or reclining in expansive privacy to visit a culture of which they are essentially ignorant, people who care about the planet could just get over the tourism that gawks uncomprehendingly at the artifacts and quaint customs of other cultures and instead divert their time and resources to actually learning about other cultures by attending university or other study options where they they learn the languages, the literature, the history, and other aspects of other cultures, which they might then visit with some appreciation.

Of course, there are sound reasons for visiting a country other than a veneer of interest in its culture.

 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 August 28, 2021, under the title "Cultures scorned" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2172555/shake-up-police
  

Tip of the iceberg?

re: "Custody death clip sparks storm" (BP, August 25, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

It comes as no surprise that the Royal Thai Police officer who masterminded the alleged torture and murder at a police station by police officers is in fact "Regarded as one of the best drug suppression officers" as reported in the Bangkok Post ("Custody death clip sparks storm", August 25, 2021).

It must be wondered for how long such extortion of suspects has been going on in that police area. It must also be wondered, given the prevalence of such accounts of brutality and extortion, how widespread throughout the Thai nation such practices are. It must further be wondered what other evils lie secreted in closets protected by repressive censorship from healthy public knowledge and open debate. Had the video of this latest alleged torture and murder by those famously upstanding men of law and order waging war against druggies not gone public, would there have been even a pretense of seeking justice?

Perhaps if Thailand's drug laws, which have conspicuously failed decade after decade to reduce drug use or drug-related harms to society, were reformed to respect individual rights, we would see not only no significant increase in drug use, but a great saving of currently wasted  tax money and police resources, a substantial reduction in drug-related harm to society, and certainly the elimination of such corruption as seen in the extortion leading to murder by Royal Thai Police officers who are officially "Regarded as ... the best drug suppression officers".

 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 August 27, 2021, under the title "Tip of the iceberg?" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2171995/stop-squabbling
  

Toxic Apple 'candy'

re: "Apple defends child protection features over privacy concerns" (BP, August 14, 2021) 

 
Dear editor,

It is so comforting that "Apple was adamant it would not accede to any government's request to scan for anything other than images showing child sexual abuse." And of course, in a future with the scanning ability firmly in place, Apple will not get new leaders who might extend it just a little; or if China bought in, they would not comply; or if the US government tended more to the totalitarian end of authoritarian law and order, Apple would not extend the scanning just a little to monitor for other criminal activity, like communist tendencies, or conservative tendencies, or perhaps the wrong attitudes towards those of different skin colours or ethnic origins. Of course Apple will never comply. It is touching that they have such absolute faith in their prognostications for the future use to which the tools might be put by persons as yet unknown with causes as yet unknown.

Healthy institutions assume that the humans who compose them are or can become corrupt, that great evil can be committed by authoritarians sincerely believing themselves to be doing god's work or some other noble cause, such as Mao's in China. It is similarly the great strength of democracy to trust not in mythically angelic persons, but in strong, widely supported institutions founded on sensible suspicion of all persons. It is prudent to assume that all with power are human beings subject like all of us to the same temptations to do evil, especially in the name of what we wrongly believe good.  It is idiotic in the extreme to imagine that any group of human beings, whether politicians, priests, professors, poets, publicans or whatever are now and always will be only angels.

Are there some out there childish enough to take the candy Apple is offering?

 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 August 18, 2021, under the title "Toxic Apple 'candy'" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2167011/toxic-apple-candy
  

Meaty technology

re: "You eat meat from factory farms. Why not a lab?" (BP, August 9, 2021)

Dear editor,

It is a joy to read that yet again modern science and technology enable us to switch to morally better lifestyles, in this case our dietary choices. The end of the abomination that is factory farming is a demise greatly to be wished for.

A complementary benefit for Thais is that all those who claim to be Buddhists can stop paying others to kill sentient animals on their orders in markets and restaurants. By opting for the healthy, lab-grown variety, they will be able stop lying about following the First Precept while they continue to indulge their natural lusts for tasty animal meat.

 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 August 14, 2021, under the title "Meaty technology" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2165171/keep-schools-clean
  

Kratom victory

re: "8,000 to be cleared after kratom's removal from narcotics list" (BP, August 11, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Praise where it's due: the government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has taken a step in the right direction by having kratom removed from the list of seriously illegal drugs in popular use. This is especially good news for the "More than 8,000 convicted people and suspects (who) will be cleared of legal charges" that were always unjust.

Now do the same for marijuana and the related unjust criminal charges for its sale and use, and continue moving forward until people may in accord with more moral law freely choose how they waste their lives using their recreational drugs of choice provided that they not directly harm or threaten to harm others.

Such decriminalization and legalization in line with the established policy for the more socially harmful drug alcohol, along with similar regulation and taxation, also happens to be the most effective route to reducing the harms that drugs cause to society and to 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 August 13, 2021, under the title "Kratom victory" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2164531/another-whitewash
  

Ugly truths lurk

re: "Govt living in fear of its own frightful errors" (BP, August 10, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Censorship is imposed for only one reason: to impose ignorance so that others cannot form informed opinion of worth on a topic. It is clear from what speech is censored where the ugly truths lurk in Thailand. Equally clear are the sort of people who want to protect those unspeakable truths from just exposure in a transparent, open, and free society that respects democratic principle under which all have an equal right to a voice in determining the form of their society, whence comes their government, and thence the laws of the land.

Unless they are at every level the result of just democratic process, those laws of the land can not be justly imposed on citizens denied by censorship a fair voice in either their creation or their evolution by amendment.

 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 August 11, 2021, under the title "Ugly truths lurk" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2163499/cut-the-cameras
  

re: "What Should Conservatives Conserve?"

re: "What Should Conservatives Conserve?"  (The New York Times, August 4, 2021)

 
Conserve the open society, the willingness to consider alternative views and to allow others to explore what you might not wish for yourself. That valuing of openness led its healthily dissenting writers to craft the expansive founding documents of a United States.

That openness to new voices exploring new ways to pursue human thriving has a long history from disparate elements of the Western tradition, seen in such rebels as the street activists Socrates and Jesus. Follow their lead, not the repressive, stultifying example of the law and order mob, the repressive social morality mob, those brutish traditionalists who put the likes of Socrates and Jesus to death in strict accord with their stunting rule of law.
 

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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/2021/08/03/opinion/what-should-conservatives-conserve.html#commentsContainer&permid=113946085:113946085