Message to excitable expats: You are not living under a vicious dictatorship
For some expat complainers, Thailand is obviously as bad as living under the Generals in Argentina, with 30,000 killed or “disappeared”, some of them brutally dropped from airplanes.
Why are they still here, and feeding the newspapers with propaganda and rant based purely on emotions, like this from Eric Bahrt: “[M]any Thais … are still suffering terribly – politically and economically.” Statistics do not register with these kinds of people, because they are on a propaganda ride where facts do not count.
Thai tourism is up, exports are up, the economy is up, and just lately comes this: “The World Bank hails Thai development” and “Thailand [is] among progressive prosperity countries that have largely eliminated extreme poverty [and has] continued to move large numbers of the economically vulnerable into economic security.”
This gives a little relief to those of us trying to keep our thoughts clear and sober in our comments, unlike the out-of-proportion thoughts of the “complainers”.
Another complainer, of a different sort, is Somsak Pola. He writes: “The only concern of expats like A Johnsen is that there are no street shutdowns under the junta’s rule, so their daily activities [like shopping] are not interrupted.”
Sorry, I am a working class guy who luckily got some education. I know where I come from so I have great concern for the poor – my main objective in politics. But please don’t tell me that concern will be addressed by a billionaire charlatan with ill-gotten money and his red-shirt militant army, manipulating and misleading the poor. And tourist shoppers bring money to the state coffers, to mutual benefit, but expats living the “Cheap Charlie” life upcountry, shopping at the local market, don’t generate much progress for Thailand and instead can be a burden to the country (they use state hospitals). Khun Somsak adds: “They don’t care about the widespread repression and about people being jailed, keys thrown away, for not kow-towing to the soldiers in charge of the country.” Somsak, this is not Argentina – and have you scrutinised the people who do want Thai regime change? Could it be they are paid provocateurs, funded and encouraged by foreign and exiled forces?
Go seek alternative news and then make up your mind! I suggest landdestroyer.blogspot.com/ is a good place to start, and it even has a Thailand section.
A Johnsen
