<p>At the end of the People&rsquo;s Dalliance with Democracy rally last Sunday, a Thai People&rsquo;s Declaration to the World was read out and is available in Thai, Cambodian and English on the Manager website. Like all such declarations, it went through a few drafts before emerging in its current form.</p>

<p>A guidebook launched today gives tourists an alternative view of Shan State by providing a pictorial expos&eacute; of the deliberate neglect, destruction and reinvention of local cultural and historical sites.</p>

<p>This is a story about a recent incident of police violence in Thailand. For reasons that will become obvious, the persons and places involved cannot be identified.&nbsp;</p>

<p>The furore, carefully stoked by The Sun tabloid, about UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown&rsquo;s handwritten letter of condolence has revealed a shocking combination of misspelling and illegibility. Blamed on the loss of sight in one of his eyes and fading vision in the other, compounded by a natural tendency to slovenliness, the PM&rsquo;s difficulties with the written word were not widely known until now.</p>

<p>The article was originally written under the request of Fah Diew Kan Magazine in which the Thai-translated version will appear on its latest edition. Pravit Rojanaphruk is currently a Katherine Fanning Fellow for Journalism and Democracy at Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio.</p>

<p>Amidst the current political climate where the ideological dividing lines within political parties take form, there is an obvious phenomenon that is occurring. &nbsp;This comes in the form of politically motivated media organization. What has gone down over the past several years is quite interesting from the perspective of those who study how influential media outlets can become.</p>

<p>The Thai armed forces&rsquo; plans to purchase 222 more GT200 remote sensing units for national security purposes are raising concerns. At a price of 900,000 baht per unit, there are the usual unsubstantiated rumours of kick-backs and corruption, but such stories swirl round every military purchase of any size.</p>

<p>The translation of a Bloomberg news report was posted on the Prachatai webboard jus after 6 pm, after the Thai stock market had already slumped and closed on 14 Oct. &nbsp;The news report in question is Richard Frost&rsquo;s <em>Thai Stocks, Baht Slump on King&rsquo;s Health Speculation</em>, whose title indicates that the &lsquo;slump&rsquo; had already taken place.</p> <p>Theeranan Wiphuchanin, using the alias BBB, posted her translation at 18:09. &nbsp;</p>

<p>In response to long-standing land problems in the country, the government has just passed a resolution to allow communities to farm state land for a period of 30 years. &nbsp;A mechanism will be created to issue &lsquo;community title deeds&rsquo;, and oversee the practice of the farming communities. &nbsp;However, farmers who have long struggled over land rights issues are sceptical of this government measure, as opposed to their own version of community title deeds.&nbsp;</p>

<p>The last session of the Sri Lankan Advisory Mission on dealing with the problems of Thailand&rsquo;s deep south was intended as a wrap-up session to deal with any outstanding questions arising from the previous days&rsquo; specialized strategy workshops on Military Actions against Dissident Civilian Populations, Approaches to Negotiation, Treatment of Internally Displaced Persons, Squeezing Terrorist Funding, and Control and Suppression of Independent Media.</p>

<p>The Thai Government recently reiterated its policy to formalise the status of around 2 million migrants from Burma working here - <em>nationality verification (NV)</em>.&nbsp;</p>

<p>It&rsquo;s hard going at the Department of Special Investigations (DSI) where the Detecting Scapegoats for Irresponsibility (DSI) Section is conducting a Detaining Suspicious Individuals (DSI) operation by the Doing Simultaneous Interrogations (DSI) process. </p>