<p>The media has recently reported that the sky is now clear over Dawei for the Italian-Thai Development Company (ITD), the developer of the Dawei deep seaport and industrial estate project. For the thousands of people for whom Dawei has been their home for generations, there are only dark clouds on the horizon.&nbsp;</p>

<p>That’s it with Thai schooling, isn’t it?&nbsp;</p> <p>‘A Peace to End All Peace’, David Fromkin’s magisterial account of how the modern Middle East was created from the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire before, during and after the First World War, has recently been re-published 20 years after the original version came out.&nbsp; And while I’m telling people what a cracking good read it is, the comment I almost invariably get from Thais is:</p> <p>What does the title mean?</p>

<p><span id="internal-source-marker_0.13989656102566772">The Scene: The Election Strategy and Excuses Section of the Democratic Party’s Central Planning Committee. &nbsp;A younger member is enthusiastically expounding his latest Great Idea.</span></p> <p>No, no, hear me out. &nbsp;This one’s a winner. &nbsp;We’ll never have to lose another general election again.</p> <p></p>

<p>The Bangkok Post Sunday columnist Voranai Vanijaka has a reputation for being fearless and forthright. &nbsp;Which perhaps says more about the pusillanimous pap in the rest of the Post than anything else. &nbsp;But he does write some interesting 500-word pieces wrapped up columns that are three times that length.</p> <p></p>

<p>The Bangkok gubernatorial election was held last weekend and ended with a great fanfare. The incumbent governor, Sukhumbhand Paribatra, from the opposition Democrat Party, managed to hold on for another term despite implementing a number of failed policies during the past four years under his leadership.&nbsp;</p> <p></p>

<p>Laboratories in Europe are racking up inordinate amounts of overtime as they test more and more samples of ‘beef’ products.&nbsp; &nbsp;A small percentage turn out to contain something else, the something else in most cases being horsemeat.&nbsp;</p> <p></p>

<p>Claudio Sopranzetti, <em>Red Journeys: Inside the Thai Red-Shirt Movement. </em>Chiang Mai, Silkworm Books, 2012. xiv + 131pp.</p> <div>At the time he wrote this memoir, Claudio Sopranzetti was doing fieldwork in Thailand for his dissertation in anthropology. Based on his interactions with some of the 200,000 motorcycle taxi drivers operating semi-legally in Bangkok, his study focuses on mobility and politics. Many of the taxi drivers are from the northeast, a region populated by people of Lao descent and historically one of the most disadvantaged parts of the country. The Lao cultivators and petty traders, who migrate to the capital to work in services such as driving motorcycle taxis, have long suffered from the disparaging attitudes of wealthy, urban people who view them as country bumpkins and harbour an engrained fear of an empowered labour force.</div> <p></p>

<p>Regarding political conflict in Thailand, many years ago I proposed that the political system (relations of power) is unable to adapt and broaden itself to accept the expansion of a new group of people who I referred to as the lower middle-class. This group of people is vast and needs a space to politically negotiate within the system, because their lives, their worldviews, and their interests have changed.&nbsp;</p> <p></p>

<p>And there I was thinking it was just uninventive students who believed that any amount of perspiration could disguise a complete and total lack of inspiration.</p> <p></p>

<p>WARNING!&nbsp; This article has been written so as to conform to the restrictions on freedom of expression imposed by Thai law and its normal interpretation and practice.<br /><br />That should do it.<br /></p>

<p>Japan’s Shinzo Abe administration had decided to raise the defence budget for the first time in 11 years. The government called for spending 4.68 trillion yen (US$52 billion) on defence, an increase of 0.8% from last year, in the new fiscal year which will begin this April.</p>

<p>Been a cracking couple of weeks for the Royal Thai Police. &nbsp;<br /><br />First they nab long-term fugitive from justice Somchai Khunploem, aka Kamnan Poh, godfather of the naughty bits of the east coast (and more), father of the Minister of Culture and the Mayor of Pattaya (and more), and on the lam to escape prison terms for murder and corruption (and more).<br /></p>