Showing 1 - 10 of 56
Rule by law
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 18/11/2018
» As RoboCop said to arch villain Clarence Boddicker in the climactic scene of the original movie: "I'm not arresting you any more." Rather than bringing them to justice, the green shirts now hope to be able merely to bring the world's only brother-sister fugitive ex-prime minister duo to heel.
Promises, promises
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 19/08/2018
» The general prime minister is off to the South this week. The trip to Chumphon has been planned for a while, so the irony is coincidental.
T-Minus 195
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 12/08/2018
» The founder and chairman of Asia's only military kratocracy passed a milestone last Tuesday. Gen (Ret) Prayut has now been in office four years and 82 days, more than half the time of the general he had hoped was his mentor, the leader of the 1980s, Gen Prem Tinsulanonda.
Art of the graft
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 03/06/2018
» Coup leader Gen (Ret) Prayut Chan-o-cha first mentioned his programme concerning corruption in late May, 2014, not long after seizing power. It was so long ago that there wasn't even a National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO). It was still called the National Peace and Order Maintaining Council (NPOMC).
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.
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.
The Isoc solution
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 26/11/2017
» Two weeks ago, the general prime minister warned "anti-coup elements" he was on to them. Last week, he told the media to stop annoying him. Two days later, he showed brand new fangs.
Silence rewarded
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 05/11/2017
» The prosecutor of Pattani province officially dropped the army's charges under the criminal defamation and Computer Crime Act laws against three civil rights veterans who had the audacity to detail 54 incidents of torture in the deep South and publish a book about them, entitled <i>Torture</i>.
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.
Kra me a river
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 17/09/2017
» They say that in 1677 King Narai the Great came up with the idea of excavating a ditch for a canal from Songkhla to Burma. His French engineer de Lamar travelled to the South, looked around and reported back that it was impossible.