Word: thais
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...tempest broke on Thursday, after video clips of a television debate broadcast three days earlier were posted on the Internet. In the clips, far-right politician Marine Le Pen reads truncated extracts from Mitterrand's novel, including passages in which Mitterrand describes visits to Thai clubs and brothels to procure sex from prostitutes he at times calls "boys" and "young boys." "The profusion of young, very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire that I no longer needed to restrain or hide," Mitterrand writes. (See pictures of the French crackdown on migrants...
...even as the international community fetes the fresh-faced Prime Minister, Abhisit is being accused back home of an increasing disconnect with Thais living outside the air-conditioned comfort of Bangkok. Despite a brightening economic outlook that his technocrat-filled administration is quick to take credit for, there's no doubt Thailand is fraying at the edges. On Sept. 19, two days before the PM jetted off to the U.N., more than 20,000 antigovernment demonstrators bedecked in their signature red shirts flooded the Thai capital from rural areas to mark the third anniversary of a military coup against their...
...battle between urban and rural, rich and poor. Certainly elements of these divisions infect the body politic. But the strife is also the result of a clash between two sets of political élites that have failed to find common ground. Pitched against Abhisit, the scion of an old Thai-Chinese family with connections to the country's royalty, is Thaksin, who is everything the current PM is not: a brash, populist, new-money billionaire who was sentenced in absentia to two years in jail on a conflict-of-interest conviction. Both camps have amassed vocal - and occasionally violent - supporters...
...other unity-building efforts have fallen flat, like a project announced by the PM's office on Sept. 15 to induce all Thais to sing the national anthem every evening for a month and a half. The initiative faced ridicule in the national media, but it was presumably designed to placate the nationalist army faction to whom Abhisit's administration is beholden. Thailand also continues to court international criticism for the strict application of lèse-majesté laws that dissuade open discussion of the royal family and succession issues. Under Abhisit's tenure, the number of high-profile...
...Abhisit who signed off on the sentencing. But royalists are among his greatest supporters, and publicly criticizing such punishments might be political suicide for Abhisit. A chap named Mark would have had a hard time explaining to his friends back in Oxford how all this fits into the modern Thai democracy he says he's trying to build...