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Stickman this week regarding violence .


jitagawn

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pattaya127 said:

Stickman surprises me--I thought he had a little more in the way of brains

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why say something like that?

I don't read Stick's column, but i am sure his point was that thailand is not what it used to be 15 or even 10 years ago, as far as incidence of farangs being assaulted, so readers who come with the idea of Thailand, the Land of smiles, just be careful and aware of your surroundings. I think most thais will agree with him. Thailand has never be a non-vilent place, but petty theft can be now more than ever preceded by violence, not to mention wanton violence, on the rise, no contest.

 

Pretty much right on. NOWHERE is safe as it used to be...partly because much of the board members are of olders years and have been around 20 something years ago to report what it was like then compared to now today. Violent crime is growing fast but the part about the crimes is that they do not match the crime. For instants, being killed in a bank robbery vs being killed for smokes. The percentage level of bank robberies have not increase therefore no percentage increase in people killed in the process of robbing a bank. But more and more people are being killed or violently mugged for small, everyday stuff. The violence used to aquired this stuff is on the rise.

 

Why, well the population (doubled) has grown this includes the portion of low lifes. These low lifes far out number that portion of hard core bank robbers. How may bank robbers live in your neibourhood? Thus percentage wise it is only correct to assume that the world has become a more violent place than is used to be. Ask anyone who was around 40 or 50 years ago.

I would just assume that everyone is out to rob, meance, kill me....than when they don't than it is pleasant supprise.

 

Hardcore?? you bet. But at the end of the day I keep my fags.

I could rant on and on thought...goverment...business...bank, insurance company's, the colur of money, etc. But the bottom line is for me to save my and my families's neck. Since I have the time now I think I will board up my windows, lock the doors forever and break out the guns. You just never know who lives next door.

It just percentage wise: there is now more low lifers than ever before. Gotta go for now I think I hear my door knob rattling...

 

Shit. :(

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Here is a Thai teenagers view on the violence problem and his friends:

 

http://www.gorsworld.com/badboys_story.htm

 

I wasn?t going to tell you the story of my friend with the tattoos until much later. But, the other day, White and two of his friends were beaten up by twenty students from a rival technical college. Luckily, some policemen came by and stopped the fight before any bones were broken. But still, one of them was unconscious because he had been kicked in the throat.

 

That made me think about the tattoo story I wrote last week. White had told me that the tattoos he had on his body protected him from being hurt. It shows me now that the tattoo thing is not 100 percent foolproof and it doesn?t have any supernatural powers. But, most technical students who have tattoos still think that they can help them from being seriously injured.

 

Myself, I don?t really believe much in this kind of thing. I believe in karma. If you do good, you receive good. If you do bad, you receive bad. Whatever happens is the result, or consequence, of something you did before. I understand this much better now which is why I don?t fight as much as I did in the past.

 

Technical students treat fighting as a part of their life. It is like some kind of tradition that is passed on from the older students. I don?t think anyone knows when and why this tradition started. Really, they don?t care about whether you are a good or bad guy. If you come from a school that is listed as the enemy, then they will fight you. In Paknam market, there are often fights near the bus stop.

 

I did talk to White about this and I think I understand a little why he fights so much. At school he was just an average student. He didn?t shine in the class and the teachers treated him as invisible. No teenagers want to be treated like that. The only students that get noticed by the teachers are the grade A students and the students that make trouble. So, if they cannot get good grades, the only way they can get noticed is by fighting!

 

Really, I was shocked when I first heard that White was beaten up the other day. Usually it is the other way round. When it comes to fighting, he is a crazy monster fighter. None of us would dare to mess with him. I feel sorry for him that he got hurt so much, but I cannot really do anything to help him with what happened.

 

If this was last year, I would be joining my friends tonight to pay back for this attack. I would be sharpening my long knife now and discussing with my friends where and when we would attack them. But, things are different for me now. I no longer have the long knife and things like this don?t seem to be so important. I am now more concerned about which is the best brand of pampers to buy and finding out why my baby doesn?t like breast feeding.

 

I am not saying I don?t understand or never get into trouble any more. I still do bad things but not so often. I think the difference is that I now understand about consequences of my actions. Fighting and stealing are only short term answers to problems. It is like my friends are trapped in this kind of life. Everything they do just makes things worse. It will just continue like this for them until they either end up in prison or dead.

 

I wish I could help my friends but really sometimes you have to find your own path and purpose in life. Maybe one day in the future, if I am ever rich and famous, I will use my power to create jobs for teenagers. I will also set up youth clubs and basketball courts so that there are healthy activities for them to do in their free time. Maybe this is just a dream, but I think someone should do something.

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Gadfly1 said:I have lived here for over 10 years, and I don't think I know any Thais or long-term ex-pats who would disagree with most of what Stickman said in Sunday's report on violence here. I also think the problem has become noticeably worse over the last few years, in large part because of some very foolish policies on the part of the current government.

 

People who visit here may have the luxury of viewing Bangkok through rose tinted lenses, but not those who live here long time do not.

Gadfly1, I agree with almost all you say here and in the other threads of similar topic.

 

On the subject of violence towards farangs, I'm posting, with permission of the author OldAsiaHand, a couple of posts he has written on another board and which perfectly sum up my thoughts on the matter.

 

[...] Bangkok is more dangerous for foreigners now than it was a few years ago. For my part, as a long-time resident, I don't see any doubt that's true.

 

On the whole, Thais have never liked us much, but they've generally been careful in their contacts with us. Somehow taking on a foreigner, whether verbally or physically, always seemed a bit too risky. Too much unknown and unknowable stuff there.

 

In this new-era, local-pride, we-Thais-can-give-the-finger-to-anyone age, however, foreigners have been pretty much stripped of our historical immunity from harassment. There's even a degree of status to be obtained from your fellow Thais these days when you go around pissing on foreigners, literally or figuratively. In a couple of short years, we foreigners have both lost our historical exemption and become real targets.

 

And if you don't know that, either you don't live here or you don't understand what's really going on around you.

 

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[...] The first big wave of change in our standing hit when the baht collapsed due to the utter ineptitude of the Bank of Thailand, and the second started with Thaksin's election on the back of what passes here for neo-nationalism. There is now real face to be gained for a Thai when he stands up to a foreigner and shows him who is boss in this country, even when (perhaps especially when) that's not an particularly issue.

 

That's nothing fundamentally new in that, of course. Smugness and arrogance have always been major elements of the Thai character. It's just that more Thais now seem to feel less constrained about expressing themselves agressively, both verbally and physically, at least with respect to their long-standing resentment of foreigners living among them. It's my wife's observation as a Thai that the more confrontational style of life can be seen generally these days, by Thais and foreigners alike. She says that she more often now is made to feel uneasy as a result of being married to a foreigner than she was a few years ago, certainly more than she was ten years ago.

 

Still, Thais are fundamentally cowards and won't take you on unless you are at a disadvantage by virtue of numbers or rank or some such. Remember the we've-never-been-conquered-by-foreigners nonsense they love to throw at you? Of course they haven't. Thais alway surrender before anybody has the time to get a good conquering organized.

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More anecdotal stuff-

 

One of our tenth grade students was beaten soundly by a group of kids from another school the other day, middle of the day, at Siam Sq. Some bruises and stitches given by the brave gang that set on him.

 

The kid is a bit of an asswipe and probably provoked it, but it was no one-on-one.

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On the whole, Thais have never liked us much...

 

Smugness and arrogance have always been major elements of the Thai character...

 

Still, Thais are fundamentally cowards...

 

Funny how these analysises made by "we-who-live-here-experts" always contain a reversed bias.

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Straycat said:

On the whole, Thais have never liked us much...

 

Smugness and arrogance have always been major elements of the Thai character...

 

Still, Thais are fundamentally cowards...

 

Funny how these analysises made by "we-who-live-here-experts" always contain a reversed bias.

So, which part of the quote do this other "I-who-live-here-expert" find so untrue?

 

My quick comments:

 

- Thais like us so badly that's so damn easy to make true friends in the LOS, right? (we may disagree on what a "friend" is, of course. I don't use this term loosely like many others seem to do.)

 

- RE smugness and arrogance, simply take the farangs out of the equation to make it easier and observe how Thais of different social classes intercact, starting from the top of the ladder with service staff or merchants, passing from the same merchants with the commons and the ordinary Thai with Burmese, Cambodians and Laotians...

Ever asked a BKK taxi driver how he is often treated by his countrymen in business suits?

Never witnessed big-haired rich Thai ladies cutting others of lower status in queues like avoiding dog shits on the pavement?

And what about the way the richer/higher status/better connected ones flaunt their wealth in the face of the poorer/lower status/less connected ones or freely infringe just about every other "sacred" Thai cultural taboos (BS such as not raise your voice, always be calm, polite and smiling, "mai-pen-rai" etc etc etc)?

 

- cowardly, is any comment really necessary on this one?

The way the Thais fight is exactly the same in which they do everything else, in groups.

The things that usualy make you "lose face" in the West and mark you as a coward/lowlife seem to make you "gain face" in LOS... Attacking someone from behind, using weapons on a disarmed person, coming back with your mates, ambushing someone when he is more vulnerable, going on savagely on someone who is already knocked out cold, hiring someone else to beat him, being violent towards the weakest like women, elderly and children etc etc etc

Does "pack dog mentality" ring a bell?

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"I have lived here for over 10 years, and I don't think I know any Thais or long-term ex-pats who would disagree with most of what Stickman said in Sunday's report on violence here."

 

I agree that there always was and still is violence in Thailand. This “violence" I'm referring to is NOT terrorist related, simply random acts of violence, muggings, etc...My problem is the way stickman presented his article. He rattles off some instances of violence and then concludes that Thailand is now dangerous...While these instances my of violence may be true, it seems a bit sensationalized designed to produce a quick negative reaction in the reader. There has always been some violence in Thailand, what his article is lacking is the evidence of a major escalation rather then conjecture.

The term dangerous obvious is relative, while Thailand, and Bangkok specifically MAY be more dangerous than it was 5 years ago, it is still safe when compared to most major cities anywhere in the world. I still consider Thailand "safe" and these reports will hinder or change my usual behavior on my next trip in Oct...

 

"I also think the problem has become noticeably worse over the last few years, in large part because of some very foolish policies on the part of the current government."

 

Governmental policies may have provoked violence in relation to the militants in the deep south. I don't think that they have had too much of an effect (at least as far as direct Thai on Farang violence is concerned) on the average Thai citizen.

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Will tourism be adversely affected by current trends?

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I doubt it. the vast number of tourists is hardly staying in big metropolis like BKK and there or anywhere else rarely outside of normal tourist sights, including nightlife. So i do not think any of us are really affected by the raise in violence, truly.

It will be hard to measure.

 

But there is no disputing that tourism is way off goverment projections for this year. The government still maintains that it will reach target. To do so, we will need to see an almost 19% increase in tourism during the last six months of this year over last year. There hasn't been a big surge thus far, and I don't see it happening. In brief, their dreaming.

 

Now determining why tourism is suffering is another matter. I do think publicity about violence against farangs (for example, the murders of two backpackers from the UK in Kanchanburi) does have an affect, but I am not sure how you would measure it (bring in Steve Levitt from the University of Chicago for some clever use of regression analysis?) and, even if it could be measured, the quality of the data here is so bad that I seriously doubt you could do much with it. We'll need to rely on a bit of commonsense.

 

And doing just that (relying on commonsense), I think there are a number of reasons why tourism is suffering, and violence is one - and probably not the most important - of the reasons. The pretzel logic employed by the authorities to hush-up and cover-up such violence is probably the best evidence that they agree with this assessment.

 

But I think there are other reasons, and most of the reasons do have one thing in common: they are all grounded in very bad policy decisions and practices by the current government. Should we go there...?

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LOS = land of smile = thailand

 

I go to thailand as often as I can (I even plan to go working there) and I never had the slightest problem.......

A matter of "behavior", of luck and the fact that when in Thailand I am almost always in a group of friends, relations etc......

 

If I compare the crime "rate" of my hometown with Bangkok.......

my hometown is hell on earth and I do not live in Bagdad nor in bogota or La...

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