Nation reveals its plans today:

The launch of Daily Xpress, Thailand's first-ever freesheet newspaper, to be published in English with a compact form, will take place along with the transformation of The Nation into a paper with a firm focus on in-depth business and political coverage.

The changes, which will start on March 5, are meant to better serve our readers, who we regard as smart, daring, knowledge-able, and tech savvy. Thanks to a thorough survey of media in Thailand we know that our readers are exactly that and we have planned the changes accordingly.

About 100,000 copies of the freesheet will be distributed daily including to all current and future Nation subscribers, making it the largest-circulated English daily newspaper in Thailand.

Tulsathit Taptim will be editor of Daily Xpress. The Nation's managing editor, Thanong Khanthong, will replace Tulsathit as editor of The Nation.

"The younger generation of sophisticated readers is a largely unfufilled or untapped market as far as English language media is concerned. And we hope Daily Xpress, with a focus on lifestyle, human interest news, talk of the town events, entertainment and fun, will help serve their needs for a new kind of media," said Tulsathit.

I saw a preview copy of Xpress and it was pretty impressive in terms of how much copy was in it. Xpress staff will have a lot of content to write on a daily basis. I hope they can sustain that. Might be worth a read now and then.

We were all wondering what was going to happen to The Nation once Xpress is launched and I guess now we have an answer. We’ll see how it works out.

I’m starting to wonder what we are all doing here. We live in this bizarre world where we can no longer look at teachers and take them seriously. I’m not even talking about the hapless travellers who make their way to Phuket and discover the meaning of life — there are individuals even more despicable.

A brief digression about these travellers: I was sat with work colleague at a restaurant during my lunch break yesterday. On this particular lunch break, a dreadlocked lady walked past, looked at us and burst out laughing. Nobody saw her except me, but I knew exactly what she was thinking.

We weren’t doing the Thailand right. We weren’t living her dream, sat in that restaurant. It’s she — with her refined sense of worldliness — who sees things from the other side. A group of shirted foreigners eating Western fare is unacceptable.

My editor and news editor were having lunch in the same restaurant some time ago, when an aged teacher walked over to their table and said, “I feel bad for you guys coming to Thailand and just eating Western food.” They just nodded and said, “Thank you.”

There must be some great disorder in the world if these are not the people who give teachers a bad name.

James John Betts: He could be any one of the thousands of teachers working in Thailand. Fifty-one years old. Employed at an all-boys school in Bangkok. Wanted in the US on 184 counts of child pornography. Investigators announced his arrest yesterday.

The stigma that now goes with being a teacher in Thailand comes from the motley bunch of characters whom you have seen skulking around the country without suspecting them of being anything more than introverted.

Will it end? It’s unlikely. We can but hope that America stops allowing its wanted criminals to vacation to Thailand, Mexico and so on.

The new “war on drugs” is a serious worry. While it is important not to make rash judgments about how this initiative will pan out, from the offset, it paints a grim picture. This from The Nation today:

"Should we do nothing because we are afraid that someone is going to criticise us for silence killings that may occur?" Samak said, when asked about the revival of the government's "war on drugs" and the possibility of many more killings.

"Why are you worried about the fate of drug traffickers?" Samak said, insisting his government was going to launch a serious crackdown.

Speaking to Interior Mini-stry executives, provincial governors and district chiefs, Chalerm said it would be natural if more than 2,700 people were killed during the upcoming crackdown.

This sounds like a green flag for extrajudicial execution.

More:

Meanwhile, police yesterday reported two large hauls of methamphetamine tablets. In one case, 198,000 tablets were seized from four foreigners at a house in Chiang Rai. In the other, police confiscated 100,000 tablets after two drug traffickers were shot dead.

The dealers opened fire after they discovered they were delivering the illicit drugs to undercover policemen. The police shot back, killing the two men.

I expect to see a lot more reports like the above.

In a related development, Sompong said he was going to propose to Samak that the authorities should be able to investigate the assets of drug suspects' extended families.

"Seven generations would be appropriate," he said, "Such an investigation would allow us to see money circulating in the illicit drug trade."

Monitoring the funds of drug suspects lead to a number of deaths during the last war on drugs. From The Telegraph:

Yet the government's narcotics control board concluded that more than half the victims had no involvement in drugs. One couple from north-eastern Thailand were shot dead after coming into unexplained wealth and being added to a black list. They were, in fact, lottery winners.

Evidence that pawns are being moved into place comes from the Bangkok Post today:

The director of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI), was ordered to clean out his office late Friday afternoon and take an immediate transfer.

The media noted that Sunai Manomai-udom, head of DSI since the Sept 19, 2006 military coup, had handled several significant cases involving ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra and his family following the 2006 military coup.

He will be moved to become head of the Office for the Prevention and Suppression of Corruption by Government Officials. It is a new agency set up to focus on corruption involving junior government officials – only up to civil service Level 8.

Samak just doesn’t give a damn — and why should he? He hasn’t even retracted his bizarre claim that only one person was killed in the uprising on October 6, 1976. Reporters apparently left him “pale” this week:

Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej became pale when reporters showed him his picture which he took with Field Marshal Prapass Jarusathien following the massacre of student activists on October 6 1976.

"Is that me? I didn't know I took this picture. I didn't know when I pos[e] for this picture and why," Samak exclaimed when seeing the picture. (Nation)

There has still been no public apology. Samak said previously, “One unlucky guy being beaten and burned in Sanam Luang.”

How long before we see another C-word?

No details as to which province she was in, but another Canadian has died in Thailand. Although this makes five so far in 2008, this particular case looks to be nothing more than a tragic accident. Of course, that could all change once the global media gets hold of the story. From Canwest News Service:

A 20-year-old Victoria-area woman has died during a holiday in Thailand, the fifth incident of Canadians being injured or killed this year.

Tara Kimber was in Thailand with friends when she died suddenly Saturday.

The father of a friend travelling with Kimber said he was told the young woman slipped and struck her head on a hard surface near a swimming pool

A family spokesman said details are sketchy and no family members are willing to speak about the tragedy until some of the questions have been answered.

Saanich police Staff Sgt. Jamie Rhodes said police helped the family get in touch with Federal Foreign Affairs officials on the weekend.

It’s only a matter of time before more reports like this come out. The headline reads, “Thailand can be a haven for those fleeing the United States.” From Statesman.com:

In downtown Bangkok, street vendors offer forged American driver's licenses for about $35. Medical clinics provide plastic surgery for a fraction of U.S. prices. Hotel owners often look the other way if guests give false names.

The combination of lax law enforcement, easy hospitality and thousands of backwater towns has attracted a wide roster of fugitives to Thailand and other nations in Southeast Asia.

Fugitives are attracted to Southeast Asia partly because of lax enforcement of immigration laws, experts said.

The problem is clear in the Khao San district of Bangkok, where [Morgan] Hoke was detained last week. Residents and tourists said many hotels do not ask guests to register with their passport numbers, as required by Thai law.

So clearly it's the fault of 100-baht guesthouses. It confuses me how wanted criminals get out of their home countries in the first place. Nobody can deny that there have been a number of high-profile cases of fugitives caught in Thailand, but I don’t like the way the media is starting to present Thailand as a lawless state. These criminals usually come to Thailand via other Southeast Asian countries, but no questions are being asked of those nations.

From the same report:

Thai immigration police used information Hoke had listed on customs forms to find her within hours of receiving her name and photograph from the FBI.