Re: "Government exploits Wild Boars", (Opinion, July 30).
If the government was truly serious about protecting and helping the 12 Wild Boars and their coach, one of the best things it could do would be to grant citizenship to the three boys and the coach who remain stateless.
The hypocrisy of government officials in declaring their concern over the welfare of the young players and their coach is clearly evident when they continue to deprive those who are stateless of basic benefits and rights that all other citizens enjoy.
Samanea Saman
Inscrutable Thais
I wish to praise BKKGuy in his July 31 letter, "Identity crisis", for uncovering Thainess from the watery depths of the letter-page cave. The very essence of Thainess, as Prof Thongchai Winichakul points out in "Siam mapped", is that it can never be understood by Westerners, no matter how soaked in water, no matter how involved in the activity that expressed it (the cave rescue).
The function of ideology is in the sizzle not the steak, or, the smell of the pad thai and not the food itself. The form and not the content. It's the ritual/act (form) and not the belief (content) that matters.
Giving rice to the monk (form) is more important than believing the volumes of doctrines on non-self (content); you end up with a society of Buddhists and somebody else can act as their proxy for believing, saving them the anxiety and stress of having to think.
The sizzle of the pad thai has done its work on BKKGuy; he is now obsessing over the notion and dividing the world up into an Us and Them, he is marking out the followers (form) of the ideology. His slight mockery of the ideology does not undermine it, since it works whether you believe (content) it or not.
Indeed, his cynicism towards it, ensures he is knee deep in the dirty waters of ideology: he doesn't believe it (content) but follows its ruse of making him act (form) on it. His act of Thainess was to write about it in PostBag.
Iain F Cowie
Playing the Trumpette
Re: "Every state counts", (PostBag, July 27).
Richard Reese is a true Trumpette. He correctly states that GDP was under 3% during the Obama years. He however fails to mention that Obama inherited the catastrophic banking debacle and sub-prime lending fiasco of 2008 by most all major financial institutions that put the world's economies into a tailspin. Obama actually pulled the US out of that disaster.
Furthermore, Reese fails to mention that while Trump had a good quarter, Trump's 2017 GDP growth was a mere 2.5%. The complete picture for 2018 is unfinished.
Lastly, Reese does not mention that the US government needs to borrow a staggering $769 billion to finance the remaining two quarters of 2018. And, with Trump's much-touted tax cut package this year, that's money that will not be coming back into the US Treasury.
MWB
Migrant melee
Looks like I have created a hornets' nest, firstly to Felix Qui in his July 31 letter, "Migrants work harder".
Sorry to say this but migrants do not work harder than the next person. However, university students and schoolboys/girls do very well in either form, as they are urged by their parents to perform well as education is very costly. They might also be expected to repay their parents if they study extremely hard and pass with flying colours.
Moreover, older migrants are happy to take any job available as a lot of them speak little or no English. Even the wife works to create a better life. But in this day and age, the Australian dream of owning a home has gone. All the facts and figures in the world mean nothing unless they mix with the rest of society.
Barry Wallace
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