1 .

Victim of his own elevated expectations
At the Bunch of Grapes bookstore on Martha's Vineyard, the sojourning President Barack Obama bought a few books, including ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' by Harper Lee. It was for his daughter, but it may have also conjured a sweet memory for the beleaguered president. Only a couple of years ago, when he was campaigning, Mr Obama inspired comparisons with the noble lawyer Atticus Finch. Now, after flipping about on some hot-button issues, most recently the plan for an Islamic community centre and mosque near ground zero, he's more likely to be painted by disillusioned supporters as Atticus Flinch.

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23 Aug 2010

2 .

Climate scapegoats?
Serd Tanmak, from Nayong district in Trang province, says he is being asked to pay a very high price in the name of mitigating global warming. ''One hundred and fifty thousand baht per rai, plus interest _ that comes to 1,434,375 baht for the nine-rai para rubber plantation on my ancestors' land,'' he said.

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3 Jan 2010

3 .

Wearing out his welcome
Li Yuzhou's children think their father is in jail, training to be a police officer. This is what the children, aged five and six, tell neighbours when they ask.

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6 Dec 2009

4 .

The liquid of life
The very survival of the Libong people in a sustainable environment has always been at risk due to continued excessive use of groundwater for agriculture and household consumption. Water scarcity has often led to confrontation and conflict among the more than 2,500 Muslim inhabitants on the island. ''When I was young, severe water shortages were routine every summer. The average person knew he had to sweat it out in the baking sun, waiting in an endless queue for water from the bore wells,'' recalled Usin Choke-amnuaysit, the local public health official.

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19 May 2009

5 .

On International Women's Day, it's still a man's world
Warp knitting machine technician _ man. Administration assistant _ woman. Flight operations officer, foreman leader, technical coordinator, project development officer _ men. Secretary (bakery production officer), Japanese translator, reservation officer, accountant _ women. If these designations were not intuitively obvious, you must not work in the Nonthaburi synthetic fabric factory where warp knitting machines are a masculine domain, or haven't been cruising the online jobboards, where it seems employers and recruitment agencies _ labour laws be damned _ still cast a slightly discriminating eye when it comes to hiring.

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8 Mar 2009

6 .

Falling between the cracks
Ratchaburi native Panisara Boonnarong is willing to work hard, and she is used to doing so from dawn to dusk at her own home. At the moment, however, she finds herself jobless, with no government assistance, and at 47 she is no longer healthy. Before this period of unemployment Ms Panisara normally woke up about 5am to prepare food for her family, then after finishing the morning chores she moved directly to her sewing machine, usually about 6am.

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1 Mar 2009

7 .

Demands of the landless
LAST WEDNESDAY, more than 500 members of the Thailand Networks for Land Reform (TNLR) submitted a petition to Deputy Minister of Interior Thaworn Senneam at Parliament. The NTLR is comprised of many grassroots organisations from all four regions of the country, as well as a large number of the urban poor who are deprived of the right to land and housing.

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15 Feb 2009

8 .

Fear in the forest
'!Do you know the word 'fear','' asked Prue Odochao, a Thai-Karen whose home is in the Mae Lan Kham forest reserve area, soon to be part of the Ob-karn National Park in Chiang Mai province if the measure gets approval. His own fear stems from not knowing if providing for his family will get him arrested.

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15 Feb 2009

9 .

Economic forecasts only 'guesstimate'
Having heard a few so-called ''economic gurus'' predicting that the condition of the Thai economy would be negative this year, Varakorn Samkoses, a former deputy education minister writing for Matichon, tried to clarify the issue, saying he wanted to lead the general public away from confusion and uncertainty.

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14 Feb 2009

10 .

The ongoing fight for citizenship
It's a safe bet that luxury sedans _ particularly those flying a Union Flag and carrying foreign dignitaries _ do not often find their way to Kham Pheng Ngam. Yet, two weeks ago, late on a sunny Tuesday morning, there it was _ a sleek, silver Jaguar, nosing its way through the shady back sois of the Chiang Mai community and dropping its passenger, British Ambassador Quinton Quayle _ with an entourage of Thai TV cameramen in tow _ at the entrance of its urban slum.

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1 Feb 2009

11 .

Where does the money come from?
The Abhisit Vejjajiva government has been in charge for nearly one month and the supplementary budget is under consideration in Parliament, noted a Matichon editorial. The stimulus measure has been labelled a populist scheme by government critics, and some aspects have caused confusion. For example, some people misunderstood the one-time 2,000 baht grant to workers who contribute to the social security fund with less than 15,000 baht monthly salary, thinking they would get 2,000 baht every month. The 2,000 baht one-time grant was later extended to cover state enterprise employees and civil servants, including tambon and village heads.

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31 Jan 2009

12 .

Old wine in a new bottle
The Democrat Party's economic stimulus measures have been compared to the populist policies of the old Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party by Dr Niphon Phuaphongsakorn, president of the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI), noted a Matichon writer.

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24 Jan 2009

13 .

Tutu urges fasting for Zimbabwe
JOHANNESBURG : South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu has called on all South Africans to join his weekly fasting in protest at the humanitarian crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe, media reports said yesterday. The 78-year-old Anglican archbishop said he had been fasting once a week in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans facing food shortages and a cholera outbreak.

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12 Jan 2009

14 .

LOCKED OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM
Nai Jam, a 35-year-old from Burma's Arakan state, lives behind the padlocked door of a local NGO's library _ a tidy but sparsely furnished room in a crumbling concrete apartment complex in Samut Sakhon.

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11 Jan 2009

15 .

Abhisit builds economic teamwork
This week Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva led the government's economic team, including Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij, to pay a visit to the Bank of Thailand (BoT), to square differences in attitudes and exchange economic information and opinions so that everyone can be on the same wavelength with regard to the economic situation the country is facing, reported a Thai Rath writer.

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10 Jan 2009

16 .

Abhisit will be hard-pressed to govern successfully
If Abhisit Vejjajiva had come to power in a period of political stability by virtue of his Democrat party's winning the majority of votes in a general election, he would have had high potential to become the most outstanding prime minister Thailand has ever had due to his personal attributes, said Boonlert Changyai, a Matichon writer.

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27 Dec 2008

17 .

Parliament ushers in a new day
The House of Representatives extraordinary meeting on Dec 8, 2008 to select the 27th prime minister of Thailand taught an expensive lesson to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his supporters in the newly formed Puea Thai party, said a Matichon writer.

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20 Dec 2008

18 .

Iran policy has failed
Mohamed ElBaradei is director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. He sat down in Vienna on Dec 2 with Borzou Daragahi of the Los Angeles Times. Excerpts of that interview follow:

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13 Dec 2008

19 .

Fortune looks favourably on Democrat party
There are no permanent foes or friends in politics. It is quite normal for politicians to switch camps in a democratic form of government, noted a Thai Rath writer.

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13 Dec 2008

20 .

Party dissolution ruling comes as no surprise
It was no surprise that the Constitution Court voted unanimously to dissolve the People Power and Matchimathipathai parties, and the Chart Thai party, by a vote of 8:1, last Tuesday, stripping Somchai Wongsawat of the prime ministership while he was in the process of holding a cabinet meeting in Chiang Mai. The 37 PPP, 43 Chart Thai and 29 Matchimathipathai executives were also barred from engaging in politics for five years.

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6 Dec 2008

21 .

All of Thailand loses
One must accept the truth right now that the country is facing an economic tsunami from the US sub-prime problem that is causing global economic recession. What makes it worse is the internal conflicts raging in the country, said Chetana Chanit, a Matichon writer.

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29 Nov 2008

22 .

Southern disappearance: A case study
Before June 24, 2007, Mayateh Maranoh was a school caretaker in Yala's Bannang Sata district. He lived with his wife and two children in a small A-frame house, surrounded by palm trees and, at the time, Paramilitary Unit 41, which was conducting a survey of villagers in the area. The unit had set up its camp behind Mayateh's home, and according to the testimony of one Unit 41 junior officer, the caretaker was quite neighbourly, and provided water for the unit's cooking and consumption.

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23 Nov 2008

23 .

Paddy price support scheme costly
While the government of Somchai Wongsawat may dream that by implementing a paddy price support scheme at a higher-than-market-price would raise Thai farmers' incomes and prosperity, rice exporters have come out to warn that the scheme is distorting the market mechanism and may destroy them. The reason is that global rice prices have declined rapidly since the first half of this year and Thailand is facing stiff competition from other rice exporting countries, noted a Thai Rath editorial.

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22 Nov 2008

24 .

Helping students and dairies
IN 1992, THE school milk programme was started to provide free milk to schoolchildren to improve their dietary intake, and also to help local diary farmers. Dairy farming has been promoted by the government as an alternative career for farmers who had planted rice, corn or tapioca. Due to the high price of local fresh milk in comparison to imported milk powder, Thai dairy farmers faced difficulty, and the school milk programme offered a partial solution. In the beginning the scheme was run by the Ministry of Education, which allocated a budget for each year for schools to buy milk.

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16 Nov 2008

25 .

Thaksin opens allbattlefronts
After he was stripped of his United Kingdom visa, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is seen by some pundits as a cornered dog who has no option but to fight to the death , noted a Matichon writer.

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15 Nov 2008

26 .

Another day at MBK
HIGH QUALITY LEATHER and fashion goods, and watches that could be classified as ''perfect fakes'', are sold in large quantities on a daily basis at the bustling Mahboonkrong Centre in central Bangkok. Shops selling the top-flight fakes typically open around 10am and close around 9pm, seven days a week.

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9 Nov 2008

27 .

Army chief's challenge continues
Last Saturday's mobile ''Truth Today'' program was held at Rajmangala Stadium, with nearly a hundred thousand red-shirted loyalists of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in attendance. The highlight of the program was a live phone-in by Thaksin himself, noted a Matichon writer.

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8 Nov 2008

28 .

Patience and the burning Bush
This Tuesday, most Americans (perhaps all but an imperturbable 28%) will live out the moment they've been waiting years for. They'll go to their voting place and tick a box, for Barack Obama, or John McCain, or maybe that libertarian Bob Barr. Presumably they will be voting for the candidate they believe to be most qualified, but they will also be voting for a candidate who is not George W Bush. Though it can be easy to forget in times like these, Thaksin Shinawatra, Samak Sundaravej and their People-Powered band of merry men are not the only corrupt, bad, nation-shaming politicians to have held power in recent times.

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2 Nov 2008

29 .

Silent majority wants reconciliation
A Thai Rath editorial applauded the effort of the Thai Journalists Association, Thai Radio and TV Reporters Association, Phra Pok Klao Institute and Political Development Council to initiate the ''Stop Violence, Find Peace through Dialogue'' campaign.

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1 Nov 2008

30 .

Singapore's open secret
Lest there be any question as to the character of Singapore's Geylang district (and if you wander over at night, you probably won't have any), one need not look further than its hotels, most of which promote a S$10 hourly rate, and are named like pornstars. There's the Fragrance Ruby _ or in the space of several blocks, its Fragrance franchise brethren, the Pearl, the Crystal, the Sapphire and the Emerald.

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26 Oct 2008