The comments by Chiang Mai Mike raise some interesting issues and are consistent with my own observations. While I wouldn’t be so quick to paint all females as tough-minded and industrious and all males as lazy and immature, there is more than enough evidence to give this thesis some credence.

The question is why this is so. Are those grandmothers coddling those little boys? Do Thai males, like Chinese males, have a vaulted status within the family? Are they just spoiled?

I’d sure love to hear an informed discussion of this issue.

Adak

Chiang Mai

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Thaksin has several options to choose from

Let us look at the options PM Thaksin may be exploring.

First, resigning the premiership and appointing a Thai Rak Thai Party member to take over. Our CEO hates this alternative with a passion. He will lose face, and he will no longer be the primary headliner nationally. The thought gives him chills in the spine and makes him depressed.

Second, dissolving Parliament. When he thinks of the expense involved in trying to recapture a parliamentary majority, he feels totally uncomfortable. He is at home with monopolies and business enterprises where the government pays his overhead and he collects profits. This is not a preferred option either. What if Thai Rak Thai did not win majority control?

Third, declaring martial law and getting the military out to crush the protesters. He salivates at this idea. Think of the lives lost in the war on drugs and the Krue Se and Tak Bai massacres, and this could be his ace in the hole. Maybe he made a note to himself to consult with Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam: “Wissanu may have an idea”.

Fourth, buying time while trying to ignore all of the protesters. This is not a choice he likes either. These people annoy him no end.

Fifth, convening the top astrologers in Asia and go with their recommendation. Stay tuned while the stars converge.

Netirat Intira

Bangkok

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They call it democracy, but I don’t think so!

I am puzzled why Thailand is considered a democracy, whenever I hear that the military leaders are upset about this and about that criticism concerning the government. Death threats and out-and-out false statements are not to be accepted in any form from either the public or politicians, but rightful criticism about what is perceived by others as wrong should not be censored, period! What thin skins those who shut down newspapers and radio stations must have!

Maybe the guilt they really feel about what they know is really wrong with the system overwhelms them. Or maybe they are on the receiving end of monetary or political gains – pretty obvious to most people what drives this willingness to shut down what they are afraid of – and I ask what right the military has to stick its noses into this public criticism. It is not their business or their job – sounds and looks like something too close to military dictatorship to me?

Golfing with the top police and military people also has an unsavoury smell, one that is frightening, to say the least.

Big problems are looming for this country if the people are not kept informed or allowed to speak, and I mean much bigger problems than are now present. Lawsuits galore each and every time someone takes another to task for questionable actions. You think the US is over-litigated – give me a break, please.

Chok dee khrap, Thailand!

Hyde Park

Chon Buri

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Krabi tourism proving to be less than grand

Re: “2006 to be a Grand year for tourism industry”, Business, February 17.

On Valentine’s Day, the beach at Ao Nang was crowded with tourists, which I had never seen before. One hundred and twenty long-tail boats waited for customers, and some were riding around making loud noise.

In addition to all of the rooms, there is a new hotel with 400 rooms waiting for tourists from China. Every week, 300 tourists arrive from Sweden at Krabi Airport on charter flights.

There is a reservoir full of black water, because there is no water-cleaning system. On the eastern end of the beach, behind all the new massage huts, is a small lagoon, full of black water leaking into the sea, covering the beach with a black slick. In the air is a bad smell. Last year, it was possible to see to the ocean floor and also some fish. Now the water is dirty, and the sand is turning black.

Ao Nang, where are you going?

The Krabi bus station is surrounded by deep holes full of water; there is no pavement. Krabi Airport check-in is under water when it rains heavily, resulting in only one check-in counter being used for 300 passengers.

Dear Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) governor Juthamas Siriwan and Tourism and Sports Minister Pracha Maleenont: where is all the money going from the tourist tax?

Why is there no investment in infrastructure? Why is there no answer to complaints to the TAT office in Krabi?

Kude

Switzerland

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Thai stamp honouring Iranian relations is incorrect

The new stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of Thai-Iranian diplomatic relations cannot be correct, since such relations date back more than three centuries. At the royal palace in Lop Buri, there are the ruins of a hall that was used for the reception of the Persian ambassador to the court of His Majesty the King Narai. At about that time, in 1685, His Majesty also received in audience the first French embassy.

I think it is wrong to date diplomatic relations from modern times with presentation of credentials in stiff morning coats! The Dutch and the French, for example, have a better sense of history and force us to date diplomatic relations from the Ayutthaya period.

As for our diplomatic exchanges with China, if we accept our own Eastern custom, they date back at least seven centuries and not 30 years as recently celebrated by the government. That made us look as if we have a short memory.

Sumet Jumsai

Bangkok

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BOT bears responsibility for big-money deals

Reading about the large money transactions being talked about in the “mega-deal of the day”, one may get the impression that there is no law or rule to prevent money laundering. What is apparent amid all the talk is that nobody wants to bell the cat. The entire Bank of Thailand organisation, and not the present governor, is the entity that should be answering any questions, and it should own up to its responsibility.

Individuals who say this has happened during the regimes of previous governors sound silly; otherwise, the whole country would be sold one day.

A Person Who Loves This Country

Bangkok

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Cheney remorseful only for those he personally shoots

Re: “Cheney takes blame for shooting”, News, February 17.

US Vice President Dick Cheney said that shooting and seeing his hunting partner fall was a sight he would never be able to get out of his mind.

I wish he were able to be at more than 2,000 mothers’ sides on the day they saw the babies they raised return from Iraq in a box. Would those memories be able to get out of his mind?

I wish he were at the side of more than 16,000 permanently disabled US soldiers when they looked down at their bloodied bodies and saw their limbs missing. Would those memories be able to get out of his mind?

I know his mind is much too narrow even to conceive of himself being able to imagine what is in the mind of the hundreds of thousands of casualties that have been inflicted on the people and relatives of the dead and wounded in Iraq. What memories will an eight-year-old be able to get out of his mind when his immediate family and dozens of his extended family’s mangled bodies are loaded into the backs of vehicles to be buried and lost forever?

What are the memories of the new thousands of killed and wounded victims, monthly, who see no hope, due to an invasion of their country based on deception, deceit, barely partial truths and a complete lack of respect for international laws and procedures?

What kind of mind could Cheney have to say that his little peppering of a Texas lawyer is one of the worst days of his life, when he is directly and personally responsible for an ill-conceived invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation that has left it awash in blood that has failed to stop flowing? People are experiencing the worst hundreds upon hundreds of days of their lives as he continues to hope his cronies and former business associates can make huge money keeping their oil flowing.

As an American, I would like to start a fund in which Bush and Cheney would be subsidised to go quail hunting every day together, and we would pay all of their costs; the results could be beneficial to the world.

I know one memory that is firmly in his mind, and that is the smiles of his former employers’ faces when they were given no-bid contracts worth billions of US dollars to work in Iraq after the invasion.

Tom Duzanica

Prachuap Khiri Khan