Hmm..

Maybe They're On To Something...

If it weren't for the fact that I know that Thaksin Shinawatara is a former telecom guy, I would have suspected a hoax in his plan to buy cable television for all coffeeshops in Muslim southern Thailand. Yeah, sure... the kids will be so busy watching soccer that they'll forget to jihad.

Hm. Maybe they're on to something after all:

In the wilds of southern Thailand, where people believe Islam first took root in Southeast Asia, plans to dish out cable TV with free English soccer to quell ethnic Malay unrest have not gone down well.

"The kids will just watch TV and leave the Koran and their school books behind," said Haji Mustafa Bin Haji Abdul Latif of Ban Sawo Hilir in Narathiwat, one of three provinces rocked by 20 months of violence in which more than 800 people have died.

"I don't think it's a good idea," he says, taking a long drag on a hand-rolled cigarette at his run-down tea-shop in the exclusively Muslim village deep in the jungle.

Around him, a handful of customers give similar verdicts on the proposals by Interior Minister Kongsak Wantana to use Thai TV, karaoke stars and European soccer to wean Muslim youths away from violence.

The plans, they say, illustrate clearly the lack of cultural sensibility from Bangkok's Buddhist government which critics say is fuelling resentment in the far south, where 80 percent of the population are Muslim, ethnic Malay and non-Thai speaking.

Well, it may not be "culturally sensible," but as I reflect on it, it does have a certain history behind it. The Romans kept the mob of Rome from rising up against them through a combination of bread and circuses. Free soccer? Every day? Could be just the trick.

Or, as Bill Waterson said, Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet.