Thailand to Ask U.S. to Take it Off Piracy Watch List
This week the powers that be in Bangkok suggested that they would once again ask to be taken off the piracy watch list by the United States, fat chance.
All you have to do is walk around Bangkok or Pattaya for 5 minutes to realize the proportion of pirated items in Thailand is a huge problem for companies world wide. The day a hit movie hits the theaters it’s also on sale on the streets for 100 baht note. And movies are just the tip of the iceburg, clothing, music and everything else under the sun gets copied as soon as it hits the market and is on sale to you on the streets of Thailand within days.
Although there are highly publicized raids on markets and shopping centers throughout Thailand these raids usually net a very small amount of pirated goods and the sellers are back at it within 24 hours. Just this week in Pattaya Mikes Shopping Mall was raided and a total of 101 bags, 47 wrist watches, 35 shirts and 10 hats with a combined street value of around 20,000 Baht were confiscated. Anyone else with half a clue could have found 20 times that amount in the same mall just casually perusing the outside vendors and those on the first floor. Seems the vendors had an inkling that the man was coming.
Until Thailand owns up to it’s piracy problem and actually does more than make a modest show of doing anything about it they will be on the piracy watch list for a very long time. And that’s good news for you and me because you can find some decent quality pirated goods at a very good price, especially when you are talking about video games.
Filmmaker Oliver Stone Still Irrelevant
Ever since his hit film JFK was released the self proclaimed conspiracy theorist has been giveing lectures world wide on the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. And this week found Mr. Stone expounding on said conspiracy to a host of 300 Thai high school students who were no doubt bored to death.
Stone was in Bangkok as part of a series of talks facilitated by the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation. Who, no doubt, couldn’t procure anyone more interesting to speak. While I’m all for a good conspiracy and the JFK assassination is the mother of all conspiracies, Oliver Stone is just way too far out there for anyone with an actual brain in their heads. Aside from the fact that his film on the assassination fudged some very real facts and created new characters out of thin air and is widely regarded as being a bad speculation as to actual events, who actually cares anymore?
JFK is more relevant today than Oliver Stone is and that’s saying something considering the former has been dead for 47 years! Maybe if Stone would stop boring Thai students to death and found a good movie to make the studios might give him some money and he might make the news again for something other than a long dead conspiracy.
13 nations vow to save tigers
This week a dozen nations including Thailand and Russia met in Hua Hin, Thailand to discuss the wild tiger population throughout Asia. The nations which also included China, India, and Myanmar vowed to join together and double the population of wild tigers by 2022. The plan includes cracking down on poachers as well as limiting the building of roads and infrastructure in the tigers natural habitat.
Tiger numbers in the wild have plummeted because of human encroachment and poaching. From 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century, the number of tigers today is less than 3,500. Hopefully this pact between the nations holds up and is much more than a diplomatic meeting. These beautiful creatures need to be preserved and it will take a multi-national collaboration to make that happen.
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