Thought experiment: What if in 1938 Trinidad, a Jewish-Danish escort was sent to Berlin instead of Copenhagen after a sex scandal involving prominent Nazis? By a country that had done everything to keep this woman arrested on trumped up prostitution charges even though similar prostitutes are usually out in hours?
That’s what Thailand just did. A woman operating as an escort in Thailand, who fell afoul of her former benefactor Oleg Deripaska, decided to start leaking anything and everything she could get her hands on. Thailand threw her in prison She is a Belarussian citizen. Belarussia didn’t defend her (Putin puppet). Thailand sent het to Moscow where she was arrested at the airport (Rachel, of course). She’s currently in a Russian jail asking for forgiveness from Deripaska.
Thailand is not a land of law. But they are a land of tourism.
Stop. Visiting. There. Now!
They almost sent back a Saudi Arabian 18 year old to likely death who did not want to get married and rejected her former religion! Thank you Canada. Moral, guiding beacon in sad times. Where is US moral authority? *laughs*
We don’t always have a lot of power but where we do have power we can use influence. And I will not spend a single dime visiting a country that does not respect international law and human rights.
Skip Thailand. Go to Polynesia, Micronesia, or some tiny place that will love every euro/dollar you spend there. Like lush greenness? Costa Rica is wonderful. They don't have a standing army and used the money instead to provide citizens with decent healthcare and education. Most importantly, they survived the civil wars of the 80’s in Central America (and, yeah, I know their leaders likely worked with the CIA in order to out people in the neighboring countries that were devastated by civil wars. But no standing army? That had downstream effects that cannot be ignored). The cloud forests have gained in acreage in Costa Rica as people have found jobs in tourism -— as opposed to the guns, drugs, gangs we see right wing Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala. Just don’t let them try to convince you that a ceiling fan equates to air conditioning. Sheesh, I took a lot of cold showers. Dole might actually be working with Costa Rica instead of just being the historical bully United Fruit once was. Feel free to call me out if I’m wrong here but I think CR found the happy compromise during a horrid age. Visited once. Loved the people.
But I’m not the authority here, You are. And if I were European I wouldn’t spend a single dime in the US until Trump is out of office.
Good — bad — mediocre list (please feel free to contribute):
Good: Western Europe, Ireland, Scandinavia in general, all the other little countries that participate in NATO.
Bad: Russia, China, Brazil, Thailand, Indonesia,… heck, most all of SE Asia unfortunately. Belarussia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, obvious war zones, and yes Iran and Venezuela. Venezuela reminds me of an old 70’s movie where the dictators alternate left and right, depending on the conversation.
Conflicted: US, England, Israel, Italy, Hungary — some bad, some good. Bad needs to be called out first. It is not Ok to treat some ‘types’ of people differently than others without consent (reasonable accommodation of the differently abled, etc.). Period. Exclamation point. End of conversation. Not a peep. Shut it.