• THAILAND

  SMOP is a flop

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 08/10/2017

  » Last Sunday night, an anti-drug squad caught two men carrying 400kg of crystal methamphetamine from Myanmar, ya ice worth 400 million baht on the street. On Monday and on Tuesday, police in Udon Thani and Mukdahan busted two cross-Mekong shipments of compressed marijuana from Laos, now Japan's major weed supplier. Combined, they weighed a tonne.

• OPINION

  Life without populism

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 06/05/2018

  » Once upon a time in a land very, very far away with a "government by the people, for the people" there was a plan to fix recalcitrant taxi drivers and make them pick up passengers, politely, and then to reward the drivers with a fare increase. And that plan was carried out in the faraway country, and passengers were happy to reward deserving, hard-working, uncomplaining taxi drivers.

• THAILAND

  Prayut fires warning shot

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 11/12/2016

  » What a huge surprise it wasn't that authorities went for the jugular of the BBC when perusing foreign news coverage of succession to the throne.

• THAILAND

  Peak army

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 29/10/2017

  » We have seen Thais come together so many times, but never like that.

• OPINION

  Inching towards legalisation

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 26/08/2018

  » Getting a sensible new law into the books is an extremely difficult task. But it's lightning compared with getting sensible changes to your great-grandfather's laws still on the books "because that's how we've always done it".

• OPINION

  Censors without borders

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 17/06/2018

  » US President Donald Trump announced last Thursday that the North Korean nuclear threat is over, and that "fake news" is thus the No.1 threat. The men of Asia's only remaining military regime nodded.

• THAILAND

  Live and kicking

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 11/03/2018

  » They say Thailand is an ageing society. Thailand's getting older, they say. At one end, old farts and fartettes live longer, they point out, and at the other these young couples today, you know, they say a lot of them don't even want to have kids. All true, too.

• THAILAND

  Brave the third wave

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 07/01/2018

  » The regime is about set to spring the third wave of its plan to extend government by elites. They're careful plans and they seem foolproof. But we will continue to live in interesting times, because not all military attacks proceed as planned.

• THAILAND

  Uniting the nation

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 03/12/2017

  » The general prime minister has once against shown his power to unite the country. He doesn't need Section 44. He doesn't need fun, fairs and games. He definitely doesn't need the minister of truth by his side.

• OPINION

  Punishment and crime

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 10/09/2017

  » A country without clear rule of law is a nation adrift. Citizens have pride, patriotism but little control or input to their own country's future.

1 2 3 4 Next Last