<p><em>A small tornado bursts through the door of the meeting room</em><em>.&nbsp; And stops dead in its tracks</em><em>.</em></p> <p>‘Where is everyone?’</p> <p>‘Sir?’</p> <p>‘Why is there no one here?&nbsp; There’s supposed to be a meeting.’</p> <p>‘Quite so, sir.’</p> <p>‘I rushed like mad to get here on time and look, by my watch I am in fact a bit late.’</p> <p>‘Late, sir?&nbsp; But the meeting isn’t scheduled to start for another quarter of an hour.’</p> <p>‘What are you talking about?&nbsp; Look here, my watch says I’m ten min-&nbsp; Oh.&nbsp; Two hours and ten minutes late.’</p>

<p>President Trump has just been to China.</p> <p>Just before he arrived, the trial of Taiwanese NGO worker Lee Ming-cheh was streamed online from Yueyang City Intermediate People’s Court in Hunan province. Lee had been arrested on 19 March when he crossed the border from Macau.&nbsp; He then disappeared into the gulag that is the Chinese judicial system. He had not been seen for 6 months before his trial for “subverting state power” under a new Foreign NGO Management Law.</p>

<p>So when are we going to get there?</p> <p>I told you.&nbsp; In about two hours.</p> <p>But you said that two hours ago.&nbsp; The farther we go, the longer it seems to take.&nbsp; At this rate I don’t think we’ll ever get there.</p> <p>No, it’s just that I have follow the roadmap.&nbsp; It says we have to go through here and here and here before we can get to there.&nbsp; And it takes time to get to each one.</p> <p>But you drew the roadmap yourself.&nbsp;</p> <p>No I didn’t.&nbsp; It was him on the back seat.</p>

<p>It’s rather nice of the Bangkok Post to ensure that we get a regular dose of capitalist economics through a biweekly op-ed from the Thailand Development Research Institute, a corporate-funded think tank that can be trusted to think corporately.</p>

<p>Two weeks before he was unleashed on the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump gave a speech in Bismarck, North Dakota, supposedly to outline his plans on tax reform.&nbsp;</p> <p>(<em>A quick aside for the historically-minded</em>: Bismarck is named after the Iron Chancellor who invented realpolitik and Germany.&nbsp; Could there be a starker contrast?)</p>

<p>‘Govt sets B3 trillion tourism target’ reads the Bangkok Post headline (together with a pic showing ‘Chinese tourists at Wat Phra Kaeo’ who have fair hair and big noses) (the dastardly Chinese tourists must have started wearing disguises!).</p> <p>So that’s alright then.</p>

<p>How’s your arithmetic?</p> <p>In April this year, North Korea celebrated the 85th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army.&nbsp; And it was no secret.</p> <p>USA Today’s headline was ‘North Korea marks anniversary of its military with massive live-fire drill’.&nbsp; Reuters ran with ‘South Korea on heightened alert as North Korea readies for army anniversary’.&nbsp; The Daily Mirror: ‘Terrifying rally in North Korean parliament to mark army’s 85th anniversary as fears of war grow’.&nbsp; And lots more on Google.</p>

<p>A bomb goes off at Phramongkutklao Hospital and 25 are injured.&nbsp; The Prime Minister next day says that if such things go on, the election (in the most optimistic scenario at least 18 months away) may have to be delayed.</p>

<p>As if our non-elected Prime Minister didn’t already have little enough faith in democracy, Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal has gone and got himself elected as president of Chulalongkorn University Student Council.</p> <p>Chula, that bastion of elitism, conformity and 100-year-old privilege in pink; the university where students wear uniforms to sign petitions against uniforms, and where new graduates give Nazi salutes in front of murals of Hitler (just for the laugh, of course); Chula, of all places, has elected a free-thinking anti-authoritarian, anti-militarist iconoclast.</p>

<p>The Ordinary National Education Test (ONET) results this year are as disappointing as in previous years.&nbsp; Almost as disappointing as the wilful ignorance that produced the tests and the sadly misinformed comments on them in the media.</p> <p>Let us take the Prathom 6 English test as an example. For kids who have in all likelihood been taking multiple-choice tests since pre-kindergarten, it starts by helpfully showing them how to answer this kind of question:</p> <p>‘Directions: Choose the correct answer.</p> <p>‘Example</p> <p>‘Item 0: Which province is in the south of Thailand?</p>

<p>Recent news item:</p> <p><em>‘</em><em>The Department of Land Transport </em><em>(</em><em>DLT</em><em>) </em><em>said that despite their positives, Uber and the Grab Car do not provide customers with the essentials that regular taxis offer</em><em>. </em><em>Under the law,</em> <em>taxis come under public transportation, so taxi drivers are required by law to register themselves with the DLT</em><em>. </em><em>The agency conducts a comprehensive background check on the drivers and when problems occur, <strong>they can be traced easily</strong></em><em>.’</em></p>

<p>Well it didn’t take long for the other shoe to fall.</p> <p>The recent Ordinary National Educational Test (O-Net) in Thai language contained what could have been a bolt from the blue for the Thai schooling system.&nbsp; Instead it turned out to be a bolt that ever more firmly fixes Thai education into authoritarian irrelevance.</p>