Re: "Activist lines Premchai up in sights" (BP, Feb 26).
Sasin Chalermlarp is quoted as asking:, "Why are suspects who are poor people prosecuted very quickly, while those who are influential figures are treated differently?
This, I think, points to the need to revamp the criminal procedure code." Khun Sasin asks, and answers, his own question in the same sentence.
Suspects who are poor are prosecuted quickly, simply because … they are poor.
Yankeleh
999.99% nonsense
In a Feb 25 news report, a deputy director of the Thailand Centre of Excellence for Life Sciences (TCELS) was quoted as saying that the Thai people are 99.99% genetically similar. I can only assume that he was misquoted.
As I understand humans -- depending on their location on the world map -- carry between 2-5% of Neanderthal and/or Denisovan DNA (except Sub-Saharan Africans which in their history never moved out of Africa).
In a way we are similar to Neanderthals or Denisovans but at the end we are considered to be even a different species.
In the Thai case there are the Thai-Chinese, the Muslims in the South, the Isan people with their Lao and Khmer influences, the Lanna and the hill tribes in the North and even many people in the Central Plains who were brought in as slaves from all over the place from neighbouring countries a few centuries ago.
To claim that they are all 99.99% genetically similar does not sound as if it is scientific excellence to me.
Instead it sounds like kowtowing to a political system myth.
Karl Reichstetter
Merit lasts minutes
Roger Crutchley's take on Thai social norms makes me laugh. I suppose there is no sure way of measuring happiness or misery in the Land of Buddha.
This is what Siddhartha set out to find, when he left his palace, fame, fortune, wife and parents behind.
So in a Buddhist context, the absence of happiness will be misery.
It seems Thailand is blessed to score high on both measures. The absence of one leads to the other, or for most Thais, it leads to a visit to the wat for merit making to improve the score on the happiness or misery index.
I have tried it with my wife and I can say with confidence that it only works for a few minutes.
Kuldeep Nagi
Industry must invest
Re: "Universities 'must listen to industry'", (BP, Feb 24).
Most universities and colleges in Thailand lack all of the elements to answer industries' demands.
Why do industries not invest in the necessary facilities and instructors for those schools to create the work force they need, provide scholarships for perspective students and promise super employment conditions for qualified graduates?
Don't wait for them to listen.
RH Suga
Shooting down myths
From America we keep hearing this demented nonsense that you can't take away people's gun "rights" because they're guaranteed by the US constitution.
But as a PostBag contributor (Feb 25) noted, the 2nd Amendment was written shortly after the American Revolution and it refers to a "regulated militia".
But even if Americans are so deranged that they believe our Founding Fathers meant to say that the rights of every madman to have a gun is more important than the lives of children, there is a simple solution: Add a new constitutional amendment.
It is perfectly constitutional to add a new amendment to invalidate an old one, and that includes the 2nd Amendment.
But the "pro-life" Americans will never do that because they don't care about human life unless it's unborn.
Eric Bahrt
Trumping buffoons
Mr Richard Rees in his Feb 25 letter makes a good point regarding Donald J Trump. Mr Trump may be theatrical but he won the presidential election against all odds, against the other runners-up from the Republican camp, against a woman backed by Wall Street, the globalists and the giant corporations who poured close to a billion dollars to support her election, not mentioning the mainstream media pounding fake news such as "Trump has less than a 2% chance to win the elections (a survey by the Huffington Post on Nov 16 gave Mr Trump a 1.6% probability of winning).
Is that the feast of a buffoon? His achievements also speak for themselves as opposed to the chaos worldwide left by the smooth-talking politically correct former president and his main accomplice, the one that lost the elections and won't quit.
Clara Holzer
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