<p><em>The venue</em><em>:</em>&nbsp; The meeting room of the Thailand 4.0 Policy and Planning Division, Scenarios Section.</p>

<p>On November 16, HRH Princess Sirindhorn visited the 2015 CRMA Exhibition at the spiritual heart of the Thai military - Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy. For those who have never been to the academy, it was founded in <a href="tel:1887" target="_blank" value="+661887">1887</a> in Nakhon Nayok in the Fifth Reign and is a living testimony to HRH King Chulalongkorn the Great (Rama V), with various busts and statues of him dotted around the base.</p>

<p>I have a theory about Thai society.</p> <p>Don’t worry.&nbsp; This happens every 30 or 40 years or so and eventually I get over it.</p> <p>The last Georgian Thai Social Theory (c 1980) explained why Thais are described in the guide books as an extremely polite people and yet drive like homicidal maniacs, prefer push-and-shove scrums to orderly queuing, and politically vacillate between anarchy and autocracy.&nbsp;</p> <p>(The pushing and shoving has since begun to fade with the introduction of new technology, i.e. queue tickets and yellow arrows on mass transit floors.)</p>

<p>While critics and apologists alike sift through the pronunciamentos of Suthep Thaugsuban, founder, leader, ideologue and sole spokesperson of the Civil Movement for Democracy, in a desperate search for something that is both practical and constitutional, there is one demand of his that deserves study.</p>

<p>It has been a difficult couple of weeks for the national security watchdogs in the Ministry of Interior. First they attempted to stop a stateless 12-year-old paper folder from attending a paper plane competition in Japan. </p>