<p>I don&rsquo;t know if you&rsquo;ve ever tried to report a crime to a Thai police station. &nbsp;It can become a somewhat surreal experience.<br /> &nbsp;</p>

<p>Recently on one Facebook account (called &lsquo;IUV&rsquo;), a picture showing crowd formation that appears similar to one popular photograph of HM the King holding and talking on a walkie talkie attracted over 66,000 &lsquo;like&rsquo;. Last week, a red-shirt woman who &lsquo;defamed&rsquo; a portrait of the King by her foot was later confronted with a group of ultra-royalist protesters as she was trying to leave Suvarnabhumi Airport for New Zealand where she resides. One of the protest placards read: &lsquo;blasphemy&rsquo;.</p>

<p>[This abstract is for a paper intended for presentation at the Governance, Human Rights &amp; Development:, Challenges for Southeast Asia and Beyond, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand, 19-20 May 2011. While travel plans interrupted the presentation and completion of the longer paper, this abstract may prove of brief interest in the subject of what is termed &lsquo;Thainess,&rsquo; an elusive characteristic said both to be imaginary and real. - Frank G Anderson]</p>

<p>With the London 2012 Olympic Games in danger of being rained off and mired in controversy about security, traffic jams, strikes by transportation workers and immigration officials and complaints about price gouging, Thailand has reportedly made a surprise secret offer to the International Olympic Committee to nominate Bangkok as a last-minute replacement venue.</p>

<p>Photo Caption from the Bangkok Post:<br /> Try Not to Laugh: &nbsp;A shy schoolgirl giggles as she walks past a line of sailors during a ceremony to mark the 119th anniversary of the Royal Thai Navy&rsquo;s defeat of an intruding French battleship sailing up the Chao Phraya River in July 1893. &nbsp;<br /> &nbsp;</p>

<p>In an unprecedented move, the Constitutional Court has demanded that all 15,744,190 voters who chose the Pheu Thai party in the party-list vote in the last election must submit statements to the Court explaining their decision. &nbsp;</p>

<p>7 August 2012: House Speaker Somsak Kiatsuranont was criticized by the opposition Democrat Party for changing the House agenda. The speaker had ruled that the debate on an aborted NASA weather research mission should be cancelled. &lsquo;Parliament has the obligation to debate issues of national importance,&rsquo; said a Democrat MP &lsquo;and since this matter was referred to Parliament by Cabinet, the Speaker has no right to cancel the debate.&rsquo;</p>

<p>Every society has its shibboleths.</p> <p>My childhood was blighted by a fear of foreign food. Except that wasn&rsquo;t what we called it. Foreigners didn&rsquo;t eat food; they ate &lsquo;foreign muck&rsquo;.</p>

<p>The scene is an investigation room in the headquarters of the Royal Thai Police. A Police Captain is checking the football section of Naew Na for possible crime leads, while a technician is hunched over some electronic gadgetry. From time to time he punches a button. From the next room, visible through a one-way mirror, come the kind of groans and moans that normally form the soundtrack of a porn movie. A Police Sub-Lieutenant is seated at a desk holding a pencil over an exam answer sheet as he writhes and jerks about.</p> <p>Pol Capt: Bugger. I had Denmark down for a draw.</p>

<p>On 8 June 2012, one month after Ah Kong (Amphon Tangnoppakul) was found dead in prison custody, <a href="http://www.prachatai.com/english/search/node/thanthawut">Tanthawut Taweewarodomkul</a>, or &ldquo;Num,&rdquo; wrote an account of his life and death. Tanthawut, who, like Ah Kong, was serving a sentence following a conviction of alleged violations of the 2007 Computer Crimes Act and Article 112 of the Criminal Code, was imprisoned in the same zone of the Bangkok Remand Prison. Num took care of Ah Kong during the nearly two year period Ah Kong spent behind bars, until his death.</p>

<p>This is part two of my look at human rights groups, lese majeste and political prisoners in Thailand. Part one can be found <a href="http://www.prachatai.com/english/node/3249">here</a>.</p>

<p>The Constitutional Court enraged football fans around the country by telling the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission to rescind its order to TrueVisions to carry the Euro 2012 football championships.<br /> &nbsp;<br /> The UEFA rights to show the games in Thailand had been won by GMM Grammy, which had then made deals with upcountry satellite channels and the free-to-air channels, but not with TrueVisions, which has a virtual monopoly on satellite TV in and around Bangkok.<br /> &nbsp;</p>