Word: thais
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Intertwined Fates. Quickly Dulles made clear that the U.S. sees the defense of the SEATO area as only a part of the defense of the whole Pacific. Thailand's Premier Phibun Songgram, pointing out nervously that 20,000 "Free Thai" troops were mobilized across the Chinese border, wanted the U.S. to put troops right in Thailand where everybody could see them. The Communist threat, Dulles replied, is not a local problem but a coordinated assault on the free world by a unified power controlling 800 million people. No nation could keep enough power within its borders to combat that...
...year later there was a small revolution. Marshal Phibun Songgram, Pridi's ancient rival in the seesaw of Siamese politics, took over as Premier and charged that Pridi himself was responsible for the King's murder. (Pridi has since turned up in Peking, leading a "Free Thai" movement blessed by the Communists.) In the years that followed, successive courts of inquiry tried to fix the blame for the King's death on other guilty parties to no positive avail...
...General Phao a helicopter tour of the defenses, and persuaded him to help work out a "general pattern of operations" on the narrow Kra Isthmus, north of the Malaya-Thailand border. The British have evidence that the Communists are training new jungle forces in a safe redoubt across the Thai border. "We will have to be more careful about our future," agreed Thailand's tough General Phao...
Glass in the Gum. Such biweekly settos are a "reformed" remnant of medieval tournaments in which Thai warriors jousted with sword and lance from the backs of elephants. Once a man was unseated, the fight was finished on foot, without weapons. After a while Thais stopped bothering with elephants and did all their scrapping hand to hand. Fighters took to wrapping their fists and forearms with cotton twine, dipping the resulting gauntlets into gum and sprinkling them liberally with broken glass. Before a fight, the gum was allowed to harden until a man's arm became a club. There...
...Some Thai fighters get so expert at their special form of assault and battery that they run out of opponents. Often, to keep busy they try western-style boxing on the side (Chamroen, Robert Cohen's opponent in last week's western-style bout, is also his country's featherweight, bantamweight and lightweight champion, Thai style). But without their music, forbidden to use their feet, forced to depend on their padded fists, most Thai fighters are hamstrung. Effete westerners, Thai fans agree, have ruined a fine, manly sport with foolish rules...