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A Night Out with Pattaya’s Tourist Police, Thailand’s Seediest City

Police mobile unit stationed at the entrance to the resort town’s infamous Walking Street.

PATTAYA – Thailand’s most sinful city, Pattaya is famous for getting men a little hot under the collar. And discontent is boiling over at the police mobile unit stationed at the entrance to the resort town’s infamous Walking Street. A giant Pakistani man is stating his case vociferously to the volunteer foreign cops who patrol the red-light district on a nightly basis. Beside him, a feminine Asian form on skyscraping stilettos chews gum and shoots him sour looks. “I am not a homosexual,” cries the man. “This thing deceived me,” he says, jabbing a finger at his companion, whose perceptibly manly features and guttural tones make it obvious she was born a he.

“He refused to pay her,” says Andros Plocins, an English member of the Foreign Tourist Police Assistants (FTPA), as we watch the scene unfold. “So now we have to sort it out.” The situation is soon defused. The man, who it transpires, had got a degree of value for the transaction before he realized the reality of the situation, has to pay the agreed price. The ladyboy, meanwhile, is hit with a 200 baht ($6) fine for soliciting. “He should have just paid in the first place,” continues another policeman, laughing. “She was pretty hot.”

Taking care of such misunderstandings is among the many responsibilities of the FTPA. Foreign volunteer police have been pounding Walking Street since 2002, when Pattaya’s Tourist Police Division invited foreigners to assist them. At first, their primary role was to help Thai officers with translation and to provide an informal tourist information service. The FTPA still provides support to foreign visitors, but its scope has been widened to include duties such as stopping bar fights and apprehending thieves. Although volunteer officers don’t have powers of arrest (approval is needed from a supervising Thai officer), they carry handcuffs, batons and cans of pepper spray. Indeed, with their black SWAT-esque uniforms, they cut imposing figures.

The FTPA numbers around 60 members from 20 different countries while its reach extends across the greater Pattaya area thanks to the recent introduction of motorbike patrols. Despite this diversification, however, Walking Street, which they patrol every evening from 9PM to 3AM, remains the primary beat for volunteer officers.

To a legion of visiting men, the thoroughfare is something approaching paradise. Extending a little over a mile from the center of town to the ferry port, the pedestrianized strip is a neon-lit playground of wall-to-wall go-go bars. Teams of mini-skirted girls patrol the exterior of the larger venues hoping to lure in johns. Smaller operations rely on the age-old tactic of employing impressively vocal barmaids whose throaty cries of “welcome handsome man” can be clearly deciphered over the thumping techno that is the street’s constant mating call.

Pattaya is not just about sex tourism however. The city’s proximity to Bangkok’s Suvarnhabumi Airport (it is a short two hour hop away) makes it one of Thailand’s most popular destinations for package tourists. Russians in particular flock here, as do Chinese, Indians and Arabs. The town’s civic leaders have gone to great lengths to rid the city of its reputation for sleaze and many of these new visitors are families, couples or tour groups who seem blissfully un-bothered by the trade in flesh that is as integral to Pattaya as its slightly shabby beach.

It is an eclectic mix of people, and the various nationalities generally rub together peacefully. However, for all the efforts of the local authorities, it will take more than a few Siberian families to burnish Pattaya’s image. Bar fights, drug crime and tensions between tourists and sex workers are regular currency on Walking Street. Elsewhere hundreds of freelance prostitutes ply their wares; drivers donate their lives to one of the worst road death tolls in Thailand and scores of methamphetamine pills fuel further craziness.

Keeping a lid on the mayhem would be a tough job for the most hardened police team. The fact that much of the grunt work is carried out by foreign volunteers is therefore even more remarkable.

“This place isn’t what it used to be, that’s for sure,” laments Dave Eke, another British member of the FTPA. He should know. A one-time security manager at tough East London nightclubs during the era of mobsters like the Kray twins, Eke left the UK for Thailand over thirty years ago and has been living in Pattaya since 1979. For the last twelve of those years he has devoted most of his nights to pounding the streets of the city as a volunteer officer.

A lugubrious character anyway, Eke’s hangdog features droop visibly as he reflects on the nightly parade of humanity on Walking Street. “I wouldn’t say that Pattaya is exactly a magnet for bad eggs,” he says, “but there’s definitely a good proportion of idiots that come here. They will get uncontrollably drunk and then refuse to pay a bar bill or something. The Thais used to be very friendly, but they have been worn down and now it is a lot more cynical. What a lot of visitors don’t realize is that it is very dangerous to anger Thais. And if you cause trouble in one of the go-go bars or you get into an argument with a girl or the management, you face the prospect of a beating from a bouncer, most of whom are trained in muay thai.”

If Eke seems weary, his FTPA colleague Plocins is clearly living the dream. He came to Pattaya on holiday following his retirement from a police career in Befordshire and fell in love with lifestyle. The novelty clearly has not worn off. “Pattaya has its moments of course, but it still feels like a dream to me,” he beams. “I could be back in England, retired and bored with a retired and bored wife. Yet here I am, the sun is shining and I’m surrounded by hundreds of beautiful women. It is a no-brainer.”

Despite his downbeat disposition, Eke is clearly a well-known and well-liked figure in Pattaya. We join him and Plocins as they leave the mobile unit to patrol the length of Walking Street. Eke, resplendent in his military beret, leads the way, stopping frequently to exchange wais—the traditional Thai greeting—with mama sans, bar girls and ladyboys. “It is not enough to walk around in a police uniform to get people to respect you,” he says. “You have to build up a relationship with everyone over time. That means everything here.”

It is certainly not a good idea to cross the locals on Walking Street. Use of ya ba, a methamphetamine derivative which translates literally as “madness drug” is prevalent in Pattaya, especially among sex workers and other nightowls. Originally given to horses to give them energy to pull carts up steep hills, the drug, which comes in tablet form, typically engenders euphoria but it is highly addictive and its side-effects are unpredictable. “If there wasn’t so much ya ba doing the rounds, there wouldn’t be half as much trouble,” claims Plocins. “Booze can make people leery and aggressive but the drugs can really step things up a notch.”

Unsurprisingly, catching dealers is a top priority for the regular Thai police and there are stiff sentences for those busted. To avoid being nabbed in possession, pushers have devised a number of hiding spots for their product in the vicinity of Walking Street.

Eke takes pride on being able to sniff out these nooks and crannies. “You’ll need to get away from there,” he instructs a group of confused-looking Russian teenagers who are drinking by a wall at the port end of Walking Street. Eke removes a loose stone from the lower part of the wall and lowers himself onto his haunches to perform closer investigation. “I find bags in here all the time,” he says as he stretches his arm into the space vacated by the rock. On this occasion, however, he comes away empty handed.

Back at the mobile unit the atmosphere is relaxed. FTPA volunteers give directions to lost tourists and have their photos snapped by jovial vodka-fuelled Russians. To pass the time they share some of their Pattaya horror stories. Ladyboys brandishing stiletto heels as a weapon seems to be a common occurrence, while gruesome motorbike accidents and dead bodies washing up on the beach attest to the city’s darker underbelly.

This particular evening, however, is something of a non-event. “It is one of the quiet evenings,” admits Eke. “Thankfully these are the most common nights but we always have to be ready and on our toes. It is Pattaya. You never know what might happen next.”

By Duncan Forgan

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.

Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.

Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.

shkreli

He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.

Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.

SOURCE | AP