• 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

  A walk in the Park

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 24/06/2018

  » So the latest unchangeable, confirmed, guaranteed date of the 2015 Thailand general election isn't "definitely in February" after all, but some time in the next 371 days. To put it another way, voting will be, in the words of the country's official political cartographer, "early in 2019", or by Sunday, June 30.

• OPINION

  A ripping yarn, but not the Pentagon Papers

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 26/01/2018

  » <i>The Post</i>, opening for this weekend's cinema trade, is an unfortunate movie in the spirit of <i>All the President's Men</i> that lionises but lies about what happened during seminal moments in recent US history.

• NEWS

  Rough road ahead

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 21/01/2018

  » The general prime minister, aka the politician who used to be a soldier, is strolling into a battleground and exhibits no sign he is aware of it.

• THAILAND

  Vale of Tiers

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 23/07/2017

  » It was a great trial. But rather than prime the pumps for a lift out of the basement, it actually illustrates why Thailand is stuck at that Tier 2 (Watch List) level on the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons (TIP) list that obsesses the general prime minister and millions more including the media.

• THAILAND

  End of an era?

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 25/12/2016

  » Planning for the third Cobra Gold war games since the 2014 coup d'etat is pretty much complete, and it is going to show better than any other public event the diminishing passion of the long US-Thailand affair.

• OPINION

  Engine failure

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 04/12/2016

  » The green shirts last week got what they came for back in May 2014. While happiness was returned to the National Council for Peace and Order, it became unclear how long it will last.

• OPINION

  The big issue: The US-Thai nexus

  Alan Dawson, Published on 17/07/2016

  » The Law of the Sea Tribunal demolished China’s claims about the nine-dash line, historical ownership and even — this one is quite out of the blue for everyone involved — the claim that rocks, outcroppings and shoals are "islands" that can belong to a country.

• OPINION

  The big issue: You can't win 'em all

  Alan Dawson, Published on 03/07/2016

  » If demotion was humiliating two years ago, the promotion from the dark and dank cellar of Tier 3 wasn't exactly a champagne moment either. Even the new designation, "Tier 2 Watch List" is a 24/7 reminder that the world policeman is still watching the human trafficking scene in Thailand.

• OPINION

  The big issue: The week in terrorism

  Alan Dawson, Published on 29/11/2015

  » Around the world and around the country, we were all Belgians. Brussels lowered the national terror alert on Friday from “imminent” to “serious and credible”. (Fact check: True. Reality check: Who could make it up?) One day it was “be very afraid” and a mere day later it had dropped to “be afraid”.

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