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For those who get sort of angry at me for making videos where I talk about for example the World Economic Forum, undue foreign influence and just the general direction the way things are going, I think the next couple of citations I am going to make in this video, they kind of put a lot of that to rest insofar as, "Is this really the world we want to live in? Is this the Thailand we want to be living in?

Getting into this Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Facial recognition to help manage Maya Bay crowds. Quoting directly: "A facial recognition system will soon be adopted in Maya Bay to manage visitor-flow and enhance conservation efforts, according to National Park Officials. The face-scanning system will be set up at the entrance to the popular attraction and will start operating on October 15, said Saengsuree Songthong, Chief of the Hat Noppharat Thara-Mu Koh Phi Phi National Park". Quoting further: "He said the system with link with the existing e-ticket platform under the e-National Parks scheme and allow real-time verification tourists against pre-booked data." 

Why? If the issue is numbers, who cares what they look like. You can't just have somebody counting or have a turnstile there that everybody walks through, that just counts how many people are there? I understand the underlying reason for this. That area of Koh Phi Phi is delicate; its ecosystem is delicate. They don't want all these tourists tromping all over it. If I remember correctly, that was the area that was used in the film The Beach. They don't want everybody just tromping all over it - it is kind of famous - and just kind of ruining the ecosystem. I completely agree with that. Why do we need facial recognition for that? It's not bad enough that we have already got this in the airports where they are tracking and tracing us like so much cattle. Now we have got this stuff at a National Park where again, if it's a matter of just people, who cares with these people look like. Who cares what their biometric data is; it's just a matter of numbers. I just find this ridiculous. I find it really scary and Orwellian. I ask the question, is this really the Thailand we want to live in? Meanwhile just quickly here I get into deeper analysis on this stuff in our paid news service. For folks who want to get on the mailing list for our paid news service, Integrity News Service, you can email us [email protected]. and you can get on the mailing list for that. While I'm talking my book here, it's worth pointing out also in my opinion that we also my better half and I have set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok, Pancake Palace. As the name implies it has breakfast anytime including pancakes, American style breakfast, but we also have English breakfast as well for all you Brits out there. We also have American Diner style food including cheeseburgers, hamburgers, we've got buffalo wings we've got chilli bowls, we've got pork chops. If you're interested in that kind of food, come on down to Pancake Palace here in downtown Bangkok. The link is in the description below.

That said, on the other things in this Orwellian dystopia, I got a recent email regarding issues pertaining to banking. Quoting directly: "On the 10th of July, I received a message from” - I'm going to redact the bank name, just - “my bank asking me to call into my Branch with my passport and Bank books to check my phone number was as shown on their system. I visited the branch on the morning of the 11th of July, and I was just asked to log on to my mobile banking account which I did. I was informed that my accounts were all okay and nothing to worry about. The Manager even came out of her gilded office to assure me of this. On the 14th of July, I tried to log on to my mobile banking only to receive a message to say that my mobile banking was suspended until I visited my Branch with my passport and bank books. I visited the branch on the 15th of July, dealt with the same member of the staff who first of all told me he had never met me before, then informed me I had to obtain a receipt from AIS to confirm that the phone number really did belong to me. He also gave me a copy of someone else's receipt to show AIS so that they would know what was needed. While I was still in the bank a Thai lady married to American and holding an American passport, was going through the same procedure. I visited the local AIS shop on the 16th of July and found a long queue of various nationalities waiting to get their receipts. When it came to my turn, well I have had my Thai phone number for over 20 years and I was English when I first registered it with my passport" So he means that the first time he registered it his nationality was noted as English, now it is noted as British. Another thing is this long queue of nationalities and things; I thought all this digital banking stuff was supposed to make our lives easier and more convenient. Where is that? It's making it worse. Quoting further: "The AIS system did not recognize “English”; we are all “British” now. This took 56 minutes to sort out with lots of phone calls to various AIS offices. I took my receipt to my branch of the Big Bank" - we will call it that - "they were satisfied with it but told me I would have to wait 7 days before I could use my phone banking." Why? What is the deal with this? This is like Soviet nonsense on a computer, that is all it looks like to me. That said, quoting further: "I have had an account at this Branch for over 17 years, and the staff have always been helpful and very polite. Over the past two weeks, they have been positively hostile." Quoting further: "I understand all the extra work they have had to do and just hope things get back to normal." Well you can hope in one hand, and I'm not even going to get into that. I don't think hope is the right strategy at this point. This needs to end, okay? Thailand did not join the OECD; they are just talking about it. If this is going to be the way things are going, this needs to stop, this needs to come to an end, yesterday, okay? This is not conducive to new investment in Thailand. It is not conducive to anything good for the Thai people or anyone else. This is what we want to live in? Facial recognition at the beach? And your digital banking doesn't work anymore, which by the way they're trying to push us all to cashless anyway? So we have to use this and now we have to queue up in lines to get little tickets and talk to different offices to just do basic functions that we used to be able to do as a matter of course? Quoting further: "I had been through all of this in February when making a 90-day report at Immigration. The Immigration Officer suggested that I visit the nearby AIS shop and check that my phone was correctly registered. On my way back to the shop, I received a message to visit the AIA shop, report to a numbered counter where they were waiting for me. All checked and I was on my way a few minutes later thinking all of this was now behind me, that's it, rant over."

Well my rant is not over. I think this is wrong. This needs to end. Thailand I'm hoping, cooler heads whoever are out there in a policy position, prevail. This is not good for the country, this will drag us down in a morass of Byzantine bureaucracy that will do nothing but ultimately destroy us economically, make us less competitive on the world stage, and result in not only a lot of foreign investment looking elsewhere, but folks that are already here trying to do business saying maybe it's not worth it and moving on themselves. Please, please, please I hope in the aftermath hopefully of these forthcoming possible changes with the with respect to the Thai Government, that we see policy makers who see this for the foolhardy endeavour that it is, reverse course and get us back on a track of doing business and operating here in Thailand that is not some neo-soviet hellscape.