Caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra must be commended for putting his criminology education to use when he gave an exciting account of the plot to assassinate him last Thursday.

However, the details of this particular case seem to have come from only one source: Thaksin himself. So far, the police seem to be lagging far behind our premier in conducting their investigation; the results of their probe seem readily to confirm the premier's previous assessments.

What's interesting was Thaksin's dismissal of General Pallop Pinmanee from the post of deputy director of the Internal Security Operations Command on the same day, without waiting for the results of an official investigation first, as would have been normal practice.

Since the case was fishy right from the start, Thaksin in turn is accused of having constructed a plot and stage-managed the assassination attempt on his own life and fired Pallop on the very same day for some political objective.

The latest Bangkok University poll found half of those surveyed believe that the alleged plot on Thaksin's life was a hoax. That speaks for itself.

Chavalit Van

Chiang Mai

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Hard-won freedoms from  trying times deserve respect

When Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat was prime minister in the 1960s, he added Article 17 to the Constitution, giving the PM the power to jail or execute anyone without a trial. Notorious gangsters were jailed, drug traffickers and arsonists executed, no more than five people were allowed to assemble in public, and the press was silenced. Sarit once ordered his men to smash a newspaper's printing press because he didn't like what he read. Political activists were branded communists and jailed or executed - or they just disappeared. But those days are gone.

We have come a long way from the era of dictatorship. Now we have the best Constitution in the world, all 336 articles of it! We have freedom of speech. We can cuss the elected prime minister in public; the media can ridicule him, even children can yell at him to get out. We can even tear up ballot cards and get away with it. Our democracy has fully proliferated, which is good. But is it good enough?

We can't be too complacent. We need to push for more rights.

For starters, a right to nullify an election if we don't like the result, a right to avoid paying taxes, a right to refuse paying debts, a right to destroy someone's reputation without being sued and a right to ignore court warrants.

Meechai Burapa

Bangkok

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AOT inexplicably charging higher fees for fewer services

Re: "Airport fees to go up", News, August 29. The news says Airports of Thailand Plc (AOT) is raising the airport departure tax, because there are more services at the new airport. Also recently, AOT's third-quarter profits jumped 171 per cent, or Bt2.1 billion. It was also announced people would have to be bused to taxi stands and that a link to the Skytrain had been delayed, due to poor construction efforts.

So in summary, the company that just made an unexpectedly large profit is asking for a price increase for a new airport that is harder to get to and away from and on the basis of the better services it is providing. Is this just plain greed?

One other question: why is Thailand one of the few remaining countries that does not include departure tax in the ticket price?

Krisidah Suwansri

Bangkok

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Phuket Airport keeping tourists from Khao Lak

On August 20, I made inquiries at Phuket Airport concerning transportation to Khao Lak and was informed that Khao Lak was still not ready for tourists. Having spent much of the past two years there, I knew this to be untrue.

Why is it that Phuket tourist businesses seem to have exclusive rights to promote themselves through Phuket Airport, while Khao Lak businesses seem to have no way of promoting themselves as a destination from Phuket Airport?

At the very least, there should be a Khao Lak tour desk and shuttle-bus service to transport much-needed tourists to Khao Lak. Why is it that the big resorts in Khao Lak are not pushing to have such a desk?

Who was this airport built for? Was it only for Phuket resorts and hotels?

Like many tourists, I stay in Phuket as well as Khao Lak, but the more such restrictions apply, the more I will vacation in Khao Lak. Phuket Airport should be the gateway to a stunning part of Thailand, and choices should go beyond Phuket.

Stuart

Darwin, Australia

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Israeli-Arabs are denied basic democratic civil rights

First one of your readers wrote in claiming Israeli-Arabs were denied citizenship ("Editorial on Mideast repeated fallacies on basis of conflict", August 23).

Then another reader rebuked him and compared Israeli-Arabs with any minority group in a Western democracy, like African Americans who have civil rights ("Israeli Arabs enjoy high standard of living, citizenship", August 25).

Neither is correct, according to the "CIA World Factbook", Israeli Arabs are about 20 per cent of Israel's population, more than a million out of approximately 6 million.

Although they have citizenship and are allowed to vote, Israeli ID cards indicate their ethnicity, that they are Arabs. In addition, they are represented by only 2-4 per cent of the seats in the Israeli Knesset and barred from serving in the Israeli Cabinet. There are no civil-rights laws in Israel, and discrimination is rampant.

Their situation is similar to that of blacks in America prior to the civil-rights movement. But this says nothing of an estimated 4 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians are denied representation and have limited self-rule in a system of fenced-off cantons.

Israel has encroached on their land and migrated up to 400,000 Jews into these areas, making a viable Palestinian state all but impossible; that situation makes it more like Apartheid-era South Africa.

Flank

Pattaya

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To put it simply, Muslims resent land theft by Israelis

Re: "Western guilt hides the nature of extremism", Opinion, August 30.

I am finally moved to comment on the non-stop confusion and misinformation regarding Israel's "problems" in the Middle East that one encounters daily in newspapers and news broadcasts. Your Wednesday Opinion piece is just one example of this.

The article asserts that Islam in general and Arabs in particular hate Israel and attack it because they are anti-Semites, and the West, feeling guilty and being no stranger to anti-Semitism as well, is complicit.

One encounters statements from nearly every quarter that attribute the problem to every imaginable cause, from Iran's desire to distract the world from its nuclear programme, to Hizbollah's desire to consolidate its standing in Lebanon, to the simple desire of loony fundamentalist terrorists to chase all Western influences from historically Islamic lands.

The problem with all of these views isn't that many are direct or indirect public-relations emanations from Israel or even that many are either silly or just plain wrong. The real problem is that few commentators have zeroed in on what is really behind the antagonism towards Israel by Arabs and many other Muslims. The root cause is, purely and simply, that Israel has stolen Arab lands and refuses to give them back.

The theft began in 1948, when Israel was created, and grew in scale during the 1967 war. To keep this land over the objections of its Palestinian and Syrian owners, Israel has - inevitably - had to maintain a decades-long, harsh and illegal military and civilian occupation of it and the indigenous residents. Assertions by Israel and its supporters that the country has tried seriously and sincerely to negotiate a settlement are simply not true, as any fair-minded student of the peace process knows.

Just for the record, I don't feel that what Hizbollah has done and is doing is either right or commendable, since they are driven by their own motives more than by a concern for a just land settlement and associated issues in Palestine. And besides, the slaughter of civilians can never be justified. Regardless of Hizbollah and its other enemies, however, Israel can never gain the moral high ground and earn the right to attack others until it agrees to negotiate with the Palestinians and Syria for a just settlement of the stolen lands.

Until then, let's try to focus on the real cause rather than cook up silly and self-serving excuses for Israel's egregious behaviour.

Richard Moore

Bangkok

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Emblems on packaging might help to encourage recycling

It is good to see that the Food and Drug Administration intends to include information on food packaging about the nutritional content of snacks.

Is there any likelihood the Pollution Control Department (under the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment) might also pass legislation that stipulates all packaging or containers in general include a recycling emblem? If such emblems depict how the product should be disposed of, there might be less of an attitude of leaving litter where it falls.

Litter Bugged

Chon Buri

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