Wilful ignorance

re: "A slap in the face of civility" (BP, Editorial, March 30, 2022) 

Dear editor,

To be honest, when I saw the title "A slap in the face of civility", I thought the Bangkok Post's editorial was going to be about the Prayut Government's latest assault on civil society, the bill to slap down pesky NGO's that raise embarrassing truths about Thailand and its allegedly revered ones such as forest encroachers, human traffickers, Joe Ferraris and the like, all benevolently and righteously doing their best to selflessly serve. Still, some discussion of the Thai parallels with the literal use of violence to slap down what offends is not amiss. 

In his apology subsequent to slapping Chris Rock on live TV on Oscar night, Will Smith calls violence not only "unacceptable and inexcusable," but also "poisonous and destructive". That is a lesson you would think Thailand might have learned long ago from the persistent malaise it has for decades been plunged into by coup after coup committed by those practicing violence as they preach peace, respect, unity and all things glorious. Those acts of violence against it have for many decades poisoned Thailand's civil society and wrought destruction on the nation.

The poison delivered by the example of using it in response to alleged offences is glaring in the perversion of justice by law made up to inflict violence on those alleged to have offended by peacefully expressing dissenting opinions, which may or may not be comical. That iconic photograph taken in Sanam Luang in October 1976 of cheering Thais still seems too apt an expression of the too true nature of too large a portion of a "country (that) prides itself on being a peace-loving nation," as the Bangkok Post alleges it to. Locking people up for years merely because they said something that offended someone is exactly like Will Smith or a school yard bully lashing out to slap down someone for an imagined insult, except that such law and its execution is arguably worse in that it is blatantly wielded not only, and still indefensibly, against what might be construed as an actual insult, but also against honest calls for reform and discussion to discover truth. 

The comically offensive Chris Rock and the mythic Will Smith are perhaps not looking so bad after all. At least they have the decency to admit their wrongs and to apologize. 

 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 March 31, 2022, under the title "Wilful ignorance" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2287926/wilful-ignorance

Organ opt-out

re: "Stick to humans" (BP, PostBag, March 25, 2022) 

Dear editor,

Having conceded in his first paragraph "that the recipient of a pig heart transplant had died after two months," that, in other words, they did in fact live for two months, in his following paragraph Eric Bahrt then makes the extravagant claim contradicted by this that "animal organ transplants never work." The person who had the two months of life thanks to the transplant of a specially bred pig's heart might beg to differ with the claim that it did not work. 

Mr. Bahrt does, on the other hand, make a good point about the need for more organ transplants from dead or dying human bodies. To achieve this, a better solution than a media campaign urging such donations would be to change from an opt in to an opt out scheme: unless a person has explicitly opted out, their organs should by default be available for transplants after death. As the experience of the Netherlands, England, and an increasing number of countries shows, this greatly increases the number of organs available for transplants. Thailand could immediately implement such a law so that organs that could save a life were extracted before cremation or other funeral services.

However, even with default opt systems increasing the number of available organs, there is a need for more. And there is no good reason why the groundbreadking research into breeding genetically modified pigs to grow organs for harvesting to save human lives should not proceed with due concern to minimize suffering. Pigs lives matter, as do the lives of every sentient being, but the lives of human persons matter more to the extent that the human is a person to a greater extent than the pig or other animal being killed. There are much stronger grounds to ban the brutal factory farming of chickens, pigs and other animals merely to sate piggish human lusts for tasty animal flesh got from deliberately killing, or paying others to kill on command, than there are to ban research into xeno-transplants to save human lives.

 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 March 29, 2022, under the title "Organ opt-out" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2286734/why-only-now-

All going to plan

re: "Trafficking case in limbo" (BP, Editorial, March 23, 2022)

Dear editor,

I fear that the Bangkok Post's editor fails to understand the Thai way, having perhaps been led astray, doubtless by foreign influences with malicious intent. There is nothing either amiss or remiss in the conduct of the case against influential Thais involved in human trafficking. On the contrary, it is all proceeding according to the proper, established norms and practices of the very best Thai society. To call for reform in line with the mere discovering of truth or bringing about of common justice for influential figures would be to seek to topple a pillar of Thainess, something that is not permissible. Pol Maj Gen Paween Pongsirin, forced to flee into exile, is suffering the force of Thai justice precisely for violating those venerable mores of traditional Thai society held dear for many generations and therefore inviolable. 

 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 March 28, 2022, under the title "All going to plan" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2286074/play-on

In a brutish family

re: "Preventing a proxy war in Myanmar" (BP, March 22, 2022)

Dear editor,

In "Preventing a proxy war in Myanmar" (March 22), Kavi Chongkittavorn compares ASEAN to a family, concluding with the inspiring message that "The faster the regime (the military enemies of the Myanmar people) follows the Asean peace plan, the better chance of a return to the family and normalcy."

For once, I am in agreement with Kavi. ASEAN does display characteristics that define a particular type of family: the grossly dysfunctional family. 

In the ASEAN family, domestic abuse is the order of the day, with the children being regularly beaten, malnourished and worse by thuggish parents, who are too often evil step-parents, unfit for the roles they have greedily grasped solely to abuse their own children. Under threats of more dire punishments, the rapacious parents put the abused children to hard labour, the fruits of which they seize to deck themselves out in a sufficiency of fairy tale luxury.

For the children suffering under the reign of so abusively dysfunctional parents, dissolution and a thorough smashing of the old ways is surely preferable to continuing the brutish normalcy Kavi alludes to. 

 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 March 26, 2022, under the title "In a brutish family" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2285522/porn-on-the-streets

Despotic tradition

re: "Father of hazing victim rejects B500,000 offer, will take case to court" (BP, March 18, 2022) 

Dear editor,

It was a most welcome departure from the usually reported to see the parents of the young man most recently sacrificed to the despotic traditions of "Seniority Order Tradition Unity Spirit" (SOTUS) reject the proffered bribe to acquiesce in that voracious social more responsible for killing their son just as he was setting out on life. As the killers themselves explained, they were merely following hallowed tradition, in this case SOTUS, in respectful reverence to the institutions that they deem sacred enough to literally sacrifice human life to. 

It brings to mind that famous image from October 1976 wherein is captured the same perfect faith in a too similar social more that led to even greater human sacrifice. Who could forget that image iconic of modern Thailand? Indelible is their ecstasy blazing on the faces of the cheering devotees gathered to honour with ritual blood sacrifice their equally sacred and revered institutions. 

Let as pray that all faith in such social mores is swiftly wiped from 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 March 22, 2022, under the title "Despotic tradition" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2282986/update-donor-policy

Booze bans are bananas

re: "Regulate in moderation" (BP, March 14, 2022) 

Dear editor,

A personal devotion to the teachings of a religion is an excellent reason for those so devoted to follow when making personal decisions as to how they live their own lives. Devout Thai Buddhists might, for example, choose to abstain from drinking alcohol on the holy days of Buddhism, just as they similarly abstain from paying others to kill sentient beings on their orders merely to enjoy some tasty animal flesh. However, neither the personal religious beliefs of some, not even of a majority, nor the teachings of any religion, are legitimately relevant to forming public policy and law.  For the state to be persuaded by some group to force their personal religious doctrines on all is to expose that religion as an authoritarian despotism, something I do not think that the Buddha set out to create. The ban on alcohol sales on Buddhist holy days is every bit as rationally defensible as a universal ban on the sale and consumption of meat on those days. 

Prima facie, the capriciously timed ban on alcohol sales at certain times every day appears more reasonable in order to "minimise the impact of (that popular drug of addiction) on society, claiming it causes health and family problems, accidents and crimes." No one disputes that alcohol is harmful, not only to its users, but to others in society. Indeed, although heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine are all more harmful to their users, alcohol is by far the most harmful drug to others in society. A more careful analysis shows, however, that the excuse of protecting society cannot justify the draconian laws currently controlling the sale and consumption of alcohol any more than such considerations can justify the policy that has for many decades uselessly, and worse, criminalized the sale and use of a range of other drugs.

The state may only use law to punish behaviour that directly harms or threatens to harm others in society. That is why laws against obnoxious public drunkenness are just, and this is the most that good Buddhist can reasonably expect the state to impose on others. The restriction of direct harm or threat is also why laws against driving under the influence of drugs such as alcohol are right and reasonable. It is true that society suffers when instead of going to work productively, alcohol users are hungover or worse. But those who so harm themselves are not the property of the state, which may not punish their rash recklessness in getting drunk. Employers might very reasonably decide to dispense with the services of employees whose drug use makes absence or incompetence a recurring event; they may not, however, have the state act as policeman controlling the private lives of employees and citizens in general, who are not in fact slaves either of the state or of corporations.

The retailers and restaurant owners peacefully petitioning for reform of the laws regarding the sale, and also advertising, of alcohol are doubtless acting from the capitalist profit motive, but that does not reduce the cogency of their of their call for reform of bad law. 

 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 March 20, 2022, under the title "Booze bans are bananas" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2282063/inspired-thai-diplomacy-

re: "America Has a Free Speech Problem"

re: "America Has a Free Speech Problem" (The New York Times, March 19, 2022)

To the lame excuse for censorship that "those who complain about it [cancel culture] are offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech," the appropriate response is: You may well be right, but the foundational principle of free speech requires that we allow even bigots to spread their vile, worthless, repugnant hatred and worse. The cut off point is calls for violence, not mere hate speech or other filth. Democracy and its founding principles never promised to be easy or nice or to fit our own personal set of likes and dislikes. 

Even less should right-wing authoritarians preaching biblical intolerance of the Exodus 20:3 variety be allowed to get away with banning books or ideas in classrooms, including critical race theory and sexuality: children are not idiots incapable of making critical assessments when given the tools to do so, but that means they have to first be given the necessary tools. 

If university students can't rebut ideas they hate, they should consider that those hated ideas might in fact be correct. Unless they are debated, not cancelled, the popular errors can never be discovered as they deserve to be. 

 

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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/2022/03/18/opinion/cancel-culture-free-speech-poll.html#commentsContainer&permid=117428286:117428286

Whiskey business

re: "Govt warns against sharing Lisa Blackpink's whiskey ads" (BP, Life, March 16, 2022)

Dear editor,

The reported crackdown on former Thai resident, now Blackpink superstar Lisa Manoban, for creating apparently star-stunning advertisements for "a famous Scotch whiskey company currently conducting a global publicity campaign" raises several questions: 

1) Where can we see the forbidden images?

2) Is this vindictiveness because Lisa declined the Thai government's invitation to join Andrea Bocelli in that mega-successful, world famous New Year's Eve countdown that, despite being ignored for unspecified reasons by local media, so made the international headlines a few months back and still being gushed over today? 

3) Are Thais really so much less mature than the citizens of the rest of the world that exposure to an image of alcohol in an advertisement really has them rushing to get blotto before before jumping behind the wheel of the Ferrari for a high speed spin down Sukhumvit, with or without cop cleaning en route? 

4) If good citizens unsuspectingly Google Lisa and the forbidden images pop up by transmission over digital media, who is legally liable for the severe punishment being threatened: Google, or the innocent star gazer, or the star herself, or the star-making gods? 

5) Is Lisa still an official Thai mega-star, even though she has now sets the prudent example of leveraging global success to pursue a sufficiency of sustainable income generation?

6) When will Lisa be appointed to Prayut's cabinet of the most absteamious to raise everyone's spirits, unspeakably Scotch or otherwise? 

7) Does the advertising also feature that famed Thai headdress that caught the world's notice for about a second? 

8) How much did the unnamed famous company pay whom to create this added publicity for their deliciously forbidden product? 

Perhaps the Bangkok Post could contact the most righteously threatening Office of the Alcohol Control Committee for answers to these and other pressing questions that Lisa's latest cavortings to global renown for Thailand to piggy back on must raise for uniquely immature Thais who might be exposed to such forbidden knowledge of good and evil.  

And
9) is the Bangkok Post permitted to give more explicit details regarding the unspeakably taboo images of this revered former resident of Thailand? 

 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 March 18, 2022, under the title "Whiskey business" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2281034/eye-on-wrong-test

Hazing solutions

re: "End student hazing rituals" (BP, Editorial, March 16, 2022) 

Dear editor,

As Anand Panyarachun, arguably Thailand's most effective and reform-minded prime minister of the last 70 years or so, bluntly put it in a recent interview: "The succession of military coups, one after another, since the adoption of constitutional monarchy in 1932 has retarded Thailand's democratic development, leaving a legacy of failed administrations and corruption," (Bangkok Post, March 6). Is there any reason not to suspect that this same succession of coups against the Thai people's aspirations for democracy has not also produced the social and moral corruptions of which the killing by beating to death of a university freshman is but yet another depressing repeat? Is the latest death by brutal hazing not at least in part a symptom of the moral effect of coups on the Thai mindset and social mores? 

It might be objected that hazing is not uniquely Thai, that it is, in fact, a tradition taken from Western university systems and still occurs there. This is true, but overlooks the salient differences: deaths from hazing in the United States and other nations are typically from overdosing on alcohol or the result of accidents that occur as a result of intoxication with that drug; they are not a result of vicious, deliberate physical assault. The same violent beating of freshmen might still characterize the Russian army and universities, but that equality of abuse there cannot excuse its inexcusable continuance in Thai institutions, military or civil.  

Coups are acts of violence. Beating a freshman to death is an act of violence. Coups are committed on the deceitful excuse of enforcing unity. The same lie is explicitly offered to excuse brutal hazing activities. Those who commit coups so sincerely believe in their own righteousness that they give themselves amnesties for past, present and future crimes. Those who killed 19-year-old Padyos Chonpakdi in the name of their revered institution similarly admit what they did, but claim as an absolving circumstance, their amnesty card, that they did it in sincere service to a greater good — upholding the sacred traditions of their beloved institution.

It is, of course, the need to protect their absolving deceits which requires that dissenting voices not be tolerated. That is perhaps the crux of how coups nurture the mindset that thuggish hazing follows. Having committed a coup, dissent cannot be tolerated. Dissent based on critical thinking is a direct threat to the fake justifications for the bullying that is hazing or a coup. Dissent brings into question mythic tales of amazing benevolence that might too easily be shown hollow. Dissent invites peaceful calls for openness, transparency and accountability, all the things that hazing, like coups, reject in principle. When your most sacred myths are dubious shams, you cannot allow independent thinking; rap nong must, therefore, beat out with a sufficiency of thuggish brutality any inclination to question, to assess truth and moral worth, to entertain any suspicion that the revered institution might be less worthy of mindless respect than blind faith dictates, or to take a stand for what is right against what is traditional.

Those who commit or conspire in coups against the nation corrupt social mores, creating the mindset that brutish hazing rituals faithfully follow. The use of indefensibly unjust law that is, as Anand also bluntly reminds us, "used as a tool for persecution" against those who question and think differently, is also wrong, and no amount of zealous faith in their own cause can make such intimidation right, no matter how blessed by written or unwritten law and rule. 

Ending brutish hazing requires more than exclaiming loudly about the latest death and promising zero tolerance of hazing: that non-remedy has been tediously repeated after every such killing for decades. Like eradicating the usual forms of corruption, ending the culture of bullying dressed up as rap nong requires a change in mindset, the reform of rotten social mores and norms entrenched by example over many decades. If Thai society and institutions are serious about ending Thailand's traditionally abusive rap nong initiations, they must begin by encouraging dissenting voices that can expose to critical review real defects in traditional social mores and mindsets. A good place to start would be to stop using the violence of imprisonment in strict accord with unjust law against peaceful protestors calling for the honesty of openness, transparency and accountability. 

 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 March 17, 2022, under the title "Hazing solutions" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2280379/hazing-solutions

Coups and corruption

re: "Ex-PM Anand says coups have retarded Thai democracy" (BP, March 6, 2022)

Dear editor,

The Bangkok Post's article, comments banned of course, "Ex-PM Anand says coups have retarded Thai democracy" (March 6) was a timely piece of plain speaking. It was most encouraging to see former PM Anand Panyarachun bluntly speaking the truth: that coups committed by those with lame excuses for trampling the Thai people's aspirations for democracy into the dirt beneath their jackboots have, in Anand's words, "retarded Thailand's democratic development, leaving a legacy of failed administrations and corruption." Spot on. The single greatest cause of Thailand's persistent corruption is the military coups committed against the Thai people.

 To Anand's comment that "most governments between coups did not do much better in terms of Thailand's democratic development," the salient response is that although those governments were indeed rotten, they were also fledgling efforts towards democracy that would, if allowed, develop the transparency, openness and accountability that is the only antidote to pervasive corruption and other abuses. Few would dispute that, for example, the governments of Chatchai Choonhaven or Thaksin Shinawatra were fonts of corruption; what was needed was stronger protection by the laws and courts for free speech on all matters so that their corruption had no place to hide. 

 Had due democratic and legal process been allowed to do so, even the worst of those abuses by civil governments could and would have been solved, as the history of other nations prove possible absent coups. But some did not want democracy to succeed in Thailand. The military coups against the Thai people's popular governments did exactly what Anand says: they retarded Thailand's political development to ensure that corruption could and would continue, thereby also retarding Thailand's social, moral, and economic growth, for which the Thai people have for many decades paid a heavy price.

 Fitting for the latest spate of arrests and imprisonments of Thais peacefully protesting for openness, transparency and accountability, for exercising, in other words, the free speech that is foundational to democracy and that is essential if corruption and other abuses are to be effectively dealt with, Anand's conclusion reminds us that "The law should not be used as a tool for persecution." 

 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 March 13, 2022, under the title "Coups and corruption" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2278347/needs-must-not

Asean values

re: "Might doesn't make right, unjust wars will fail" (BP, Opinion, March 3, 2022)

Dear editor,

In his opinion piece, Josep Borrell,  High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, makes a series of solid points. It is true of Putin's actual violence and threats of further violence to intimidate dissent that "Such use of force and coercion has no place in the 21st century." They are relics of the bad old days of humankind's more naturally violent past. But absent constant vigilance and the learning of history, those bad old ways can too easily come back to haunt us all too materially. 

Mr. Borell also rightly points out that "To justify its crimes, the Kremlin and its supporters have engaged in a massive disinformation campaign ... with the aim to deceive and manipulate." 

But the title under which the Bangkok Post published his essay, "Might doesn't make right, unjust wars will fail", was excessively optimistic, as Thailand's own recent history, like too much of ASEAN history, attests.

It is true that "Might doesn't make right."  Overthrowing a nation's rule of law founding a people's popular, democratic government, flawed though that government will always be, with actual violence or intimidating threats of violence can never be right. Neither invasion of a neighbouring state nor a coup committed against their own people can ever be made just merely because retroactively legalized by new laws made up by the conquering usurper. Every violent aggressor, whether Moses and his hordes who committed genocide against the Canaanites, or Putin who previously aggressed against Georgia in 2008, or those who commit coups against their own people, claim legal right for their acts founded on violence against others, and make up law to fit those claims contrary to justice.

But those claims of legal entitlement beloved of aggressors using actual violence or threats of violence, whether shooting and bombing, or arrest and imprisonment, are not only contrary to justice; they are also fake claims. And this is the problem with the Bangkok Post's admittedly hopeful headline. We would certainly wish that "unjust wars will fail"; the ugly reality is that they have often succeeded. It is not yet certain that Putin's war will not succeed. It certainly seems, to cite another current example, that the war against the Myanmar people that began a year ago with the military coup against the rule of law founding that nation's popular democratic form of government has not failed. The thugs in uniform who use threats of violence, especially of arrest and imprisonment in perfect accord with the laws and legal systems they set up for that intimidating purpose, have plainly not yet failed in their unjust aggression against the people of Myanmar.

In that pursuit of unjust gain by violence, both coup committers and war wagers also wage disinformation war by suppressing free speech. They do so because critical thinking and truth speaking would undermine their false claims made up to justify the unjustifiable. Putin conjures for the Russian people mythic past glories of Russian hegemony under the benevolent rule of righteous Tsars to fabricate a sacred right to restore that past. Such nationalistic myths overlook the fact that they are nothing more than dubious stories gilding what was more often brutish, greedy, and oppressive for those not in palaces. When such claims protect themselves from critical review and dissent, that is already a sound reason to distrust their amazing claims; nor can alleged public reverence enforced by brutish law justify what by its own acts of suppression proves itself unspeakably indefensible. 

On a  more optimistic note, the global response that seeks to non-violently punish Putin's aggression is appropriate. Let us hope it will prove victorious. It is encouraging to see so many nations, organizations, even international businesses, unite in working to deny the aggressors the economic fruits so dear to them. Under Putin's repressive rule, the Russian people have been subjected to financial inequality as gross as that which has also come to exist in Thailand, with the spoils going, no surprise, to those close to and supportive of Putin. As Mr Borrell explains, Thailand should join in those actions to punish those using violence and intimidation to force their personal agenda on entire nations. 

Did ASEAN and its member nations individually hold to any decent value such as respect for democracy founded on just law or respect for human rights protected by just law, it would unequivocally join in the global actions to punish Russia's military aggression against Ukraine. Even traditionally neutral Switzerland has joined in the non-violent confounding of Putin's aggression. But then, had ASEAN any commitment to such values, it would also act to isolate and economically punish those who commit coups against the people of ASEAN member nations. 

 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 March 6, 2022, under the title "Asean values" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2274567/window-of-opportunism