Word: siam
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...million years ago, a ferocious, flesh-eating creature roamed Thailand. It had four-inch teeth, measured 21 feet from snout to tail and ate other dinosaurs. When they discovered its bones in 1996 in a jungle riverbed, scientists called it Siamotyrannus isanensis, after the country's old name, Siam, and the impoverished northeastern Thai region where the bones lay, Isaan...
That was 1956, when 20th Century Fox released The King and I, starring Yul Brynner as the King of Siam. It was an annus mirabilis for hairless potentates but also the twilight of their brief golden age--the last time heads of state were not synonymous with heads of hair...
...majority of people in the southern provinces of this otherwise overwhelmingly Buddhist nation. Resistance to Bangkok's assimilation policies-banning Muslim headscarves, closing schools not conforming to the national curriculum, preventing civil servants from attending Friday prayers-has simmered and boiled ever since Thailand, then known as Siam, annexed the Pattani sultanate a century ago. In the 1960s, the separatist Barisan Revolusi Nasional (National Revolutionary Front, or B.R.N.) was formed by a religious teacher after the state tried to force Islamic boarding schools to adopt the national curriculum. B.R.N. and other insurgent groups were neutralized by government amnesties...
...itself on its way with Westerners. After all, the kingdom survived the Age of Empire as the only country in Southeast Asia to avoid colonization. Success in deterring the foreign barbarians came from deftly playing the Western powers off against one another, and throwing open doors to European traders. Siam, at it was known then, didn't so much repel the Western invaders as charm them into submission with armfuls of exotic bounty and respites from their malarial colonial outposts...
...Proposed amendments to the Foreign Business Act, for example, could force thousands of foreign firms to sell shares to Thai locals if they wish to continue operating in Thailand. "There is a lot of confusion about what exactly is happening in Thailand," says Sukit Udomsirikul, assistant managing director of Siam City Securities in Bangkok. "Such uncertainty negatively impacts business sentiment." A mysterious bombing campaign is sure to rattle confidence further. After such a tense and tumultuous 2006, Thais can only hope that the new year restores some measure of stability...