October 25, 2011: In the south, the government is trying to organize growing popular anger against Islamic terrorists. Increasingly, the casualties are civilians, both Moslem and Buddhist. The terrorists and their smuggler gang allies have wrecked the economy and made life harder in those three southern, majority Moslem, provinces. The people there want their lives back, but the terrorists and gangsters are entrenched, and destroying them has proved very difficult. This is partly the result of the terrorists lacking an overall leader. There is no one to negotiate with. All the several terrorist and criminal gangs can agree on is independence. But it is obvious to most Moslems in those three provinces that independence would mean living in a religious dictatorship that was very friendly to gangsters. Not an attractive prospect.

The military will be occupied with disaster work for the next few months. Huge floods, the worst in over half a century, are rampaging through the northern and central Thailand, damaging 28 of 77 provinces. Some ten million people are in areas subject to flooding. Nearly a million homes have been destroyed so far, and many businesses. Some 700,000 are out of work. So far, nearly 400 people have been killed and over 2.5 million affected. The largest city, the capital Bangkok, is partially flooded. Major airports are out of action. So many factories have been shut down that the economy is expected to take a major hit this year. Thailand is a major producer of hard disk drives for computers, and the prices of these have shot up in anticipation of worldwide shortages.

October 23, 2011: In the south, several terror attacks left seven dead.