OPINION

Ethnic hypocrisy

Re: "Shoulder chip", (PostBag, May 21). Yes, Don Graber, using your line of thinking, I could easily say that you are defending the wrongdoings of Western nations in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places in the world because of your ethnicity.

Does that make sense to you? It is straightforward. By the way, I also mentioned Pakistan in my letter, and I am not a Muslim. Hypocrisy is rooted in everyone's ethnicity, my friend. The fact is that now Western nations are doing the same against Iran and North Korea. They also used the same tactics against China till it blew up in their face. Now China and India are major contenders.

Re: "Critical point" and "Made his day", (PostBag, May 14).

As he so often does, Eric Bahrt misses the point of any letter that challenges him.

The point of my letter was to highlight the carping, whingeing, whining tone of so many of Eric's letters to Postbag, and his assumed monopoly on truth.

I thank Khun Songdej Praditshanont for understanding my letter. As a person who has learnt English as a second language, he would seem to have a far better grasp of its nuances than Eric.

Re: "Grim reflections in the mirror of Ukraine crisis", (Opinion, May 20).

"Everyone has the right to express their opinions", this is not quite right -- many can, but people in your home country can't, you forgot about the state-controlled media law, your suppression of opposition leaders, your suppression of peaceful anti-war demonstrators in Russia. Russophobia? Many Russians are living peacefully in Europe and other parts of the world, while many in Russia watch their future destroyed by their own government.

The term "Nazis" is used as randomly as "genocide" in Russian state war propaganda.

It's an insult to victims of the Nazis during World War II or any genocide. Yet still, you use these terms to justify starting a war of this dimension.

You are responsible. You invaded a country, like you did a couple of times before. You can end that war today.

Re: " 'Porjai' speaks your language", (BP, May 21).

Thank you for your recent article featuring Porjai, our innovative project to create a system that can understand the many different dialects of spoken Thai.

The article does an excellent job explaining the goals, methods and benefits of this research.

Hopefully, it will motivate more people to visit the website and contribute samples of their own speech patterns, so that Porjai can continue to learn and improve.

I would like to point out, however, the disturbing gender bias in the article. The text refers to Assistant Professor Dr Orathai Sangpetch, the principal investigator, as "Ms Orathai", not once but multiple times.

At the same time, it is careful to use the title "Professor" for the only male academic mentioned. This systematic difference seems to reveal an assumption that female researchers have less education or status than males.

My colleague Dr Orathai is a senior professor and research scientist, one of the founders of CMKL University, a unique collaboration between KMITL and Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. Like all academics, male and female, she deserves to be cited using her official title.