Cities and suburbs, real and imaginary.

Monday, January 19, 2009

अ नोट तो थे थाई रोयल फॅमिली...

A book that had about fifty copies published (I can't find the book on Amazon or ABEBooks or anywhere else) has a single paragraph that gets an Australian author jailed.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/19/thai.jail/index.html

So, I'd like to say this:

The Thai Royal Family are a bunch of stooges. The Crown Prince? Stooge. The King? Stooge.

They are both only comparable to the portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in Rowan Atkinson's BBC Series, "Blackadder".

I hope everyone re-posts this information, and continues do so until this author is freed. I don't care what that paragraph said.

My favorite part of the CNN Article?

[quote]CNN has chosen not to repeat the allegations made by Nicolaides because it could result in CNN staff being prosecuted in Thailand.

Nicolaides had been living in Thailand since 2003, lecturing at two universities about tourism.

He was about to leave Thailand when he was arrested on August 31 last year. It is not clear why the authorities waited three years after the publication of his book to bring charges against him.

[\quote]

Can anyone find the paragraph in question so we can blast it across the internet like it's never been blasted before?

EDIT: Update to add that someone found the entire text of the 127-page book. I've started skimming it.

EDIT 2: I can't find "three sentences" that offend the Royal King or the Crown Prince. As this is a self-published text - which does not diminish the injustice of the situation in the slightest, in fact, it ramps it up a notch or two - I must confess to being unable to slog through the material in total. This isn't really the time to go into a detailed review, so I'll skip it. Needless to say, I would love someone to point out the exact three sentences that got this fellow in all this trouble.

Full text is here:http://psydj.tv/text/verisimilitude-harry-nicolaides.pdf

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have not able to understand the reason for keeping the title of your post in Hindi (Devnagri script) and text in English. If you have not done it purposely then there could be many reasons for this.

There are two places where you can set language: one is at dashboard and the second is at setting - Formatting. Change it to English.

In Setting - Basic, go to the bottom at 'Enable transliteration?' and then disable it. Re-title your post in English and publish. Your titles should change back to English.

Please remove word verification. It not only troubles the people of my age but also discourages them from commenting.

J m mcdermott said...

Thanks for your comment!

Word Verification prevents an invasion of spammers, and was turned on during the course of an invasion. I don't have time in the day to moderate the comments hour-by-hour.

As far as the Devnagri script titles, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. I don't understand it, nor do I worry about it. When it does it, I make sure my title is mostly meaningless. Since most of the titles are, it doesn't matter much.

I think it adds character.

Again, thanks for your comment.

Alina said...

Wiki has the answer. Here it is:

The passage in question was from Nicolaides' novel, Verisimilitude. Is the truth, the truth? which sold seven copies. The paragraph which resulted in his imprisonment discusses the personal life of a fictional prince:

From King Rama to the Crown Prince, the nobility was renowned for their romantic entanglements and intrigues. The Crown Prince had many wives "major and minor", with a coterie of concubines for his entertainment. One of his recent wives was exiled with her entire family, including a child they conceived together, for an undisclosed indiscretion. He subsequently remarried with another woman and fathered another child. It was rumored that if the prince fell in love with one of his minor wives, and she betrayed him, she and her family would disappear with her name, familial lineage and all vestiges of their existence expunged forever.[2]

J m mcdermott said...

Alina! You do good wiki-work!

You are the reigning queen of wiki-fu in this little corner of the blogosphere!