Lessons for all
Re: "Diplomacy via education", (Editorial, Aug 16).
This editorial debates about whether the Thai government should provide education to undocumented workers and Cambodian students at cross-border schools, which offers the opportunity to evoke the United Nations position on the right to education.
The article reminds us about the UN General Assembly which invited all states to consider the adoption of appropriate legislative, administrative and other measures to ensure the full implementation of the right to universal education through, inter alia, free and compulsory primary education, universal and gradually free-of-charge secondary education, equal access to all educational facilities and the access of the young generation to science and culture.
Ioan Voicu
Costly devotion
Re: "PP MP sorry for critical comments", (BP, Aug 18).
I almost choked on my patangko this morning when reading the article. The so-called progressive legislator was apologising for having earlier criticised a 5-million-baht budget to ferry 100 monks to Buddhist pilgrimage sites across the world, including India, Nepal and … hold your breath … a Thai Buddhist temple in Las Vegas!
The MP Nont Pisarn Limjaroenkit openly says in the parliament fiscal debate, "It costs 50,000 baht per person just to go there and pay respect to something we do not even know about."
Alas, the version of Buddhism currently practised in Thailand would be unrecognisable to Lord Buddha.
Amulets, talismans and fortune-telling have replaced the edicts whereby monks were expected to live a life of renunciation, detached from material possessions and worldly desires.
Vichai
Sin or joy?
Re: "Price of hedonism", (PostBag, Aug 1).
Although it seems to me perfectly irrelevant, let me follow Jason A Jellison's lead by reminding PostBag, again, that I, too, am an older "gay man with decades of experience in the LGBTQ community". With that irrelevance out of the way, let's review Mr Jellison's other notions.
He thinks hedonism is a bad thing. But enjoying a quiet beer in a favoured pub is also a hedonistic act: It is wilfully seeking pleasure when you could be out picking up trash, standing up for democracy, feeding the hungry, caring for abused street dogs, and so on.
Mr Jellison speaks as though healthy humans do not enjoy sex except to breed more humans in "monogamous marriages and the traditional family". His dismissive assumption that an orgy is wrong is way off base.
If the people at the bacchanalia were there because they wanted to be and were only having sex with equally eager and consensual partners, they were doing nothing wrong. They were simply acting as decent, responsible human beings enjoying what is natural and healthy for humans.
As for the illegal drug use reported, unless that drug use was actually harming or threatening to harm anyone against their wishes, it was not immoral. For the law to treat it as such only proves the law is unjust.
Felix Qui
