<p>Witness testimony has ended in the defamation case brought by the Royal Thai Navy against two fruit vendors in Phuket, with the verdict set to be delivered at the end of the next month.</p> <p>The case rests on a misspelled English sign, written in marker pen on a scrap of cardboard, which the defendants displayed on their fruit stall last year.&nbsp; The sign read ‘Naval oranges cheep’.&nbsp;</p>

<div> <p>Khaosod English just <a href="http://www.khaosodenglish.com/detail.php?newsid=1436349932">reported</a> General Prayuth Chan-ocha’s lecture to a group of young Thais who were raised abroad on the importance of revering HM the King, who he described as <em>like</em> a "deity", presumably the <em>sammuti devaraja</em> concept or ‘quasi god king’, which derives from Hinduism but which has parallels, though not exact, in the pre-World War II Japanese concept of the ‘Emperor as God’, wherein the Japanese Emperor claimed direct lineage from the gods.</p> </div>

<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3355550c-949a-7cca-bd16-649cd5170d4d">Dear Dao Din Students, </span></p>

<p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/447/19419515760_089da56375.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 281px;" /></p> <p>Ladies and, er, …</p> <p>Start again.</p> <p>One hundred and nine gentlemen.&nbsp; Captain Yu-er Phuct and his 218-member cabin crew would like to welcome you aboard this China Repatriation Airlines flight to Life Imprisonment.&nbsp; We look forward to serving you in the best traditions of Chinese human rights.</p>

<div><em>Note: This essay first appeared in Matichon newspaper on 25 September 2014. Nidhi Eoseewong offers a comparative analysis of totalitarianism, nationalism, and love. </em></div>

<p>Before anyone can hope to comprehend Thailand’s performance in terms of human rights and therefore have the temerity to develop policy implications, it is necessary to first understand the obstacles that have to be overcome in their totality. In fact, in the situation Thailand is currently facing, the problems appear to be enormous, and the concepts involved are huge and widely discussed, with a massive associated academic literature.</p>

<p>I got this cycling thing all wrong.</p> <p>Somehow I foolishly thought that the government and the BMA and everyone else who has been talking up the idea of cycling were thinking in terms of public transport.</p> <p>Silly, silly me.</p> <p>It now seems that cycling is an activity with a number of purposes, but none of them are related to using bikes to get somewhere.&nbsp;</p>

<p>In one of Thailand’s men’s prison, the homosexuals are categorized as transgenders with breasts, attractive transgenders, older transgender, gay and transexuals. They are entitled to different “class” and treatment. A former inmate wrote the article in detention.&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: center;"> </p>

<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f9b860f2-4847-93b4-6c3f-7bee88720b5d">This analysis is based on a </span>Business Insider <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-ii-dies-2015-3">column</a> earlier this year about preparations for the demise of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II">Queen Elizabeth II</a> of England (my Queen, as I am British). Of course, it is rude to discuss the impending death of anyone in polite society, yet the case of a monarch in an advanced Western democracy presents special circumstances.</p>

<p>“What is your relation to Supot Jaengrew?”</p> <p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-4c424c6d-4827-aaff-27d4-dabb58294e9d">“He is my grandfather.”</span></p>

<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-242e43f1-3f8a-0287-27ad-95e17ef79873">The </span><a href="http://www.prachatai.com/english/node/5193">story</a> of embattled human rights activist Sombat Boonngam-anong, aka Nuling or the Polka Dot Editor, is now reaching the international media. Currently being persecuted by the Thai state in what has become an absolute military dictatorship due to General Prayut invoking Section 44 of the Interim Charter, Sombat is facing approximately five charges, including the possibility of lèse majesté (Section 112).</p>

<div><em>Note: This essay was first published in Thai in Matichon over six months ago on 16 December 2014. The truths contained within it, however, remain unchanged. The NCPO remains in power and continues to exercise domination without hegemony.—translator.&nbsp;</em></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>The ruling power of the state is comprised of two aspects. The first is domination, which refers to the control of the state apparatuses, such as the armed forces, the civil service, the organs of communication, etc. </div>