Thais lead the way

re: "Thailand to legalise abortion up to 20 weeks" (BP, September 28, 2022) 

Dear editor,

Thailand's government is to be commended for moving to further expand access to safe, legal abortion on request. It is a welcome change to see Thailand set the good example to the US, which under the baneful influence of faith-driven theocrats is moving morally backwards on this issue.

There is not now and never has been any good reason why a woman should not be able to have a safe, legal abortion on request. While the human fetus is certainly a human being, it is no more a human person than is the fetus of any other mammal, all of which possess to an equal degree the defining characteristics that make a human person a living being to be valued: self-awareness, plans, social bonds, preferences, dislikes, and moral sentiments. 

To think that there is anything morally special about having a beating heart or a clearly formed set of limbs would make every other mammal, if not every other animal, deserving of the same moral consideration as any human being. Such is the logical outcome of taking seriously the anti-person arguments put forward by anti-abortion proponents in the US, who must, therefore, logically also treat any killing of animals for meat as much murder as they deceitfully label abortion. 

 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 September 29, 2022, under the title "Thais lead the way" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2402918/thais-lead-the-way

Dope changes needed

re: "Lack of rules hits farmers" (BP, September 23, 2022) 

Dear editor,

Bhumjaithai appears to have had the right idea, but lacked the guts, or competence, or both, to do it right. Cannabis should be legalized for recreational use by adults. It should be treated like cigarettes and the far more harmful drug alcohol, but not to the extent of giving monopolies to rich drug-dealing families intent on getting richer by having a monopoly on their lucrative drug dealing. Let small farmers also grow the crop to meet the clear demand from adult Thai consumers. 

Stop the lame, dishonest pretence that the cannabis shops that have sprouted up around Bangkok, including in my area, Silom Road, not Khaosan Road, are selling marijuana solely for medical purposes. They are not, nor need they be. Enjoying life without harming others is a good thing, in fact, a very good thing. Let the eager farmers profitably provide what many people enjoy without inflicting on society the violence and fractured thinking that so often accompanies alcohol use. 

 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 September 25, 2022, under the title "Dope changes needed" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2399806/election-fever

Heady days of 2006

re: "Thaksin, 16 years on: Coup was a stab in the back" (BP, September 19, 2022) 

Dear editor,

Looking at the photograph of the seriously armed young lads on their tank parked in the street on those heady days of 2006, I wonder what the young soldier conscripts think when they are ordered to move against the Thai people whom they should know it is their duty to protect from such armed assault? Has any study been done where they are interviewed at periods after the event to discover the truths lurking in those dark places?

How were they led to follow such orders? What sacred ideology led them so far astray from their duty to protect the Thai people from armed attack? How did they feel at the time? What did they think of their acts against the Thai people and their popular form of democratic government thereafter? 

The American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg famously said that "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion." What, one wonders, does it take to make an otherwise good young Thai soldier in the ranks actively oppose the will of his own nation by actually taking up arms against his own fellow citizens? 

 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 September 22, 2022, under the title "Heady days of 2006" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2397493/heady-days-of-2006

Worse than weed

re: "Anutin slams call to re-list cannabis as narcotic plant" (BP, September 20, 2022) 

Dear editor,

Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul may be right that "there is no evidence of improper use of cannabis under existing laws," but even if there were such improper use, that would be no reason to recriminalize a drug that should be at least as freely available for recreational use as the far more harmful drug alcohol has long been. 

The doctors concerned about the drug's possible harmful effects have every right to speak out about those harms, just as they regularly bewail the greater harms of cigarettes and alcohol on users, especially the young. But the doctors are not experts on public policy and are certainly not competent to speak with any authority on matters of ethics. The essence of democratic principle is accepting that others will have different values and make different decisions as to how to live their own lives as they judge best according to what they value, including doing what doctors deem foolish and even idiotic. Merely being idiotic and harmful, as so many popular activities are, from smoking cigarettes to pigging out on salty, hyper-processed food, is no reason to criminalize such acts by consenting adults, although due regulation regarding sales to children might be just. Have the doctors also called for criminalizing the sale of McDonalds, Coca Cola and like to those under 18? 

The "hilariously misnamed Democrat Party" is, of course, merely showing its traditional loyal contempt for the Thai people in its insulting presumption that Thai parents are not to be trusted to refrain from pushing alcohol, cannabis, cigarettes and whatever on their own children. I believe the reports were that the Democrat Party's long-nurtured poster boy Prinn Panichpakdi found alcohol, not cannabis or any other, a very useful drug to give to his intended victims. But then, alcohol has a long history of use in furthering non-consensual sexual conquests, as university jocks and other such manly types have long embodied in popular culture.  

 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 September 21, 2022, under the title "Worse than weed" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2396566/more-expats-please

Gracious wisdom

re: "Loss of a great monarch" (BP, Editorial, September 19, 2022)

Dear editor,

The Bangkok Post rightly quotes my late queen's honest wisdom that "There can be no doubt, of course, that criticism is good for people and institutions that are part of public life. No institution -- city, monarchy, whatever -- should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support, not to mention those who don't." Bluntly and unequivocally well said Queen Elizabeth II.

Nor need more be said, save perhaps that Queen Elizabeth welcomed the benefit of knowing to a percentage point the publicly varying degree of her own personal popularity and that of the institution which she graciously headed for seven decades. Could any prefer ignorance to such highly pertinent knowledge of reality? 

It is fitting that the world's nations send their heads of state, irrespective of their own varying political systems and opinions, to show respect for her achievement as leader of the monarchy she worked to keep honestly open to a world rapidly evolving both domestically and globally throughout her long life. 

 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 September 20, 2022, under the title "Gracious wisdom" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2395733/gracious-wisdom

re: "How Book Bans Turned a Texas Town Upside Down"

re: "How Book Bans Turned a Texas Town Upside Down" (The New York Times, September 12, 2022)

Yet again, the cheerleaders in banning free thinking, in suppressing liberty to engage with a wide range of ideas, in stunting notions of what it can be to be human are too often those groomed by Christians to practice their despotic First Commandment that, as the Bible's Exodus 20:3 explicitly puts it, dictates absolute intolerance of other ways of seeing the world and our role in it.

_______________________________

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

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/magazine/book-bans-texas.html#commentsContainer&permid=120355623:120355623

Open inquiry

re: "Bombshell UN Xinjiang report lists litany of rights abuses" (BP, September 1, 2022)

Dear editor,

If China sincerely believes as reported that UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet's report on "the so-called Xinjiang issue is a completely fabricated lie out of political motivations", the solution is simple and obvious: invite a variety of independent observers in to freely travel around, freely talk to people and freely discover what is the case to be more accurately reported. Such open and transparent discussion is always, without exception, the best, perhaps the sole, way for truth to be discovered and false claims exposed as the lies they are.

Censorship, in contrast, including the criminalization of peaceful speech that contradicts official stories, is resorted to solely to enforce ignorance lest ugly facts come to light, which censorship of dissenting opinion must, therefore, itself constitute prima facie good reason for suspecting that the glowing myth so viciously protected by draconian prison sentences and like violations of human rights, all according to unjust law, is largely fake. 

 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 September 4, 2022, under the title "Open inquiry" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2383803/power-to-him

End eating rule

re: "Novices get advice about fighting flab" (BP, September 2, 2022) 

Dear editor,

If a major driver of unhealthy obesity in Thai Buddhist novices is the fact that "monks are not allowed to eat after midday," that suggests that a sensible solution will embrace more healthy, natural eating habits by ending that old rule of dubious merit. 

Is there any good reason to stick with an unnatural and harmful rule merely because it happens to be traditional? Surely the good health of children is worth more than blind adherence to habits based on dubious beliefs that modern science has improved on. 

An honest, healthy meal in the evening is far preferable to the current situation of cheating the rules by drinking sugary milk and other sickly things that the hierarchical legalism does not define as meals. 

 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 September 3, 2022, under the title "End eating rule" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2383338/van-death-tragedy

re: "The Anglican Church’s ‘Kick in the Guts’ to Gay Parishioners"

re: "The Anglican Church’s ‘Kick in the Guts’ to Gay Parishioners" (The New York Times, September 2, 2022)

Who would want to be in communion with self-styled Christians who present that religion as one that abominates love and commitment to others? 

Perhaps the the trouble with the homophobic, love-denying Christian traditionalists is that they love rules and regulations more than human persons. In this, the anti-LGBTQ+ type of Christian seems rather in spirit with the rule-followers who put Jesus to death according to the letter of the law as written, and seriously at odds with the ideals of the Jesus who was so killed by the devotees of written rules. 

_______________________________

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

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/world/australia/anglican-church-homosexuality-new-zealand.html#commentsContainer&permid=120203994:120203994