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Crikey readers weigh in on the big issues of the day.

Another setback yesterday for free speech, as Colorado car salesman Joe Gordon was sentenced in Bangkok to 2½ years jail for insulting the king of Thailand.

Crikey readers have their say.

Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand’s first female PM, is staying “on message” and embracing the same line delivered again and again: “everything will be done according to an established procedure…”

Despite coups, bloodshed and political upheaval, Thai voting behavior has been shown to be remarkably consistent.

Crikey media wrap: The difficult political history in Thailand just got even more interesting, with national elections over the weekend ensuring that opposition leader Yingluck Shinawatra will be the country’s next prime minister.

A new and possibly dangerous chapter in Thailand’s volatile political history begins on Sunday.

In the lead-up to Thailand’s July 3 national election, which many hope will bring stability to a turbulent period, The Bangkok Post call for calm, defending ‘the institution’ and its role in guarding culture and tradition.

Each morning she is there, her stall set up beneath the stairs of the Thong Lo skytrain station in Thailand, long before the sun is up. Damian Doyle guesses her story.

Now that Thailand is slowly getting back to something approaching civility, it’s time for an accounting. A lot of unquantifiable damage done to the country’s reputation by the disorder, but we won’t find out until much later in the year if the economic fabric of the economy has been affected.

The chaos in Thailand continues, with enormous shopping mall CentralWorld burnt out by protesters overnight. But the violence isn’t entirely surprising to Thais. Foreign Policy examine’s Thailand’s decade of political discontent.

With the dust settling on the rubble of the former Red Shirt strongholds in Bangkok, Crikey intern Nicole Eckersley speaks to Professor Damien Kingsbury about the future of Thailand’s democratic process and the role of the monarchy.

Beyond yellow and red, the bloody battle being fought on the streets of Thailand is fundamentally about rich vs. poor, urban vs. rural, explains Andrew Walker.

As Thailand’s streets grow bloodier by the day, the only person who can bring some stability to the country is its beloved monarch, King Bhumibol Ajulyadej, says HDS Greenway. Will he speak up before it’s too late?

The Thai riots are at a critical stage. Yet nobody offers a clear way forward, or a reason why tensions that had been bubbling in the background for years had come to a head now, writes Brett Debritz from Bangkok.

Craig Knowles lives in Bangkok and is sheltering friends in his living room which has become a defacto yuppie refugee camp. He writes to Crikey as the violence in Thailand is becoming dangerously unpredictable.

The moderate voices in Thailand have disappeared, leaving just the militant forces of the Red Shirts and the government remaining. If the killings continue, will it descend into civil war?

How did a modern, prosperous, thoroughly Westernised country descend into a spiral of violence and chaos? Because a system in which only “the right people” are allowed to get elected is not democracy.