OPINION

Land solution

Re: "Govt bows to pressure on foreign land buyers", (BP, Nov 9).

Using big money to allow foreigners to buy land in Thailand risks attracting dangerous foreign billionaire mafia godfathers and political oligarchs laundering money they have amassed abroad by crime and corruption, and pushing up the price of land beyond what ordinary Thai citizens can afford.

Instead, the criterion should be the residence-status of foreigners determined by the Immigration Department. This will be for foreigners who will benefit the country by bringing in professional expertise, good industrial investments, retirement pensions, and so on.

Long-term foreign residents should be allowed to buy, for the period of their residence, a leasehold of land that is classified by the Land Department as residential. In the case of permanent residents the leasehold would be of indefinite length, and would terminate on the death of the foreigner. The holder of the land deed will be a Thai legal person, such as a property developer or a life insurance company.

This will avoid the problem of "selling off" the country to foreigners. Leaseholds such as this will be open to Thais as well as foreigners paying the same prices, and the market will not be distorted.

Anti-hate hating

Re: "Reflecting on a century of fascism", (Opinion, Nov 7).

This opinion piece is indeed hating disguised as virtuous anti-hating.

Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University, first sets us up by showing his politically correct and safe hatred of fascism. After all, no decent person doesn't hate fascism, right? So now we are all of one virtuous hating mindset, right.

We are told we should additionally hate Christianity. Ever expansive in his hatred by association, the professor says fascists "peddle Christian nationalism". Thus, patriotism, love of country, conservatives, and Republicans join our fascist-associated "must hate list". Fascist "Hitler made his virulent opposition to democracy abundantly clear". The US "Republican Party has become beholden ... to a white nationalist leader [Trump]. He plotted in the open to overthrow American democracy." Eighty percent of the BP editorial commentary page is devoted to this seemingly endless list of hateful smearing. For shame!

I conclude by asking, is this shocking democratic scepticism so strongly expressed by this critic of the fascists for their undermining of democracy, itself the distrust-in-democracy basis of the left-wing authoritarianism that he ignores and yet was also so much a part of the 20th century follies? This man is truly scary, for own anti-democratic views and the dark dictatorial promise of his own words.

Readers want say

Re: "Puzzling question", (PostBag, Nov 8).

In today's world, journalists push everyone to open up and be transparent as "the public" demand to know. It would be an idea for the Bangkok Post to do this to itself in regard to the above as the public wants either a say in what is included, or at least to know the logic behind the unannounced changes.

Happy corner

Re: "Smart move!" (PostBag, Nov 9).

I think your new format is very neat. Cartoon, puzzles, news and all. You cannot please everyone. Just keep doing your best. Readers need to get used to change, as nothing remains the same.