Thailand will never be the same again

 Bangkok Post Country's in for it in very bad way.

"Thailand will never be the same again,"

top 20% own 69% of the country's assets while the bottom 20% own only 1%.

less than 1% of the people own nearly half of the country's savings.

How will this political mess end? Will Thaksin Shinawatra finally return to haunt us with his bottomless greed?

Or will the old, oppressive system that perpetuates social injustice prevail to suffocate us?

Is there any way out of this madness?

Ask historian/thinker Nidhi Eeo-seewong, and his answer is a resounding no. In his latest column in Matichon newspaper, he predicted that the proxy wars between the two ruling elite groups - one led by Thaksin, and the other by the old ruling clique - will not only continue to play out on the streets, but they would also get more violent.

"Thailand will never be the same again," he wrote. "There is no use in being nostalgic. Instead, we must put our heads together to find out how to minimise the damage."

How, indeed? How can normalcy return when the root problem of extreme economic disparity remains unaddressed? How extreme? Prof Pasuk Phongpaichit did not leave room for doubt about our shamelessly unfair society in her recent keynote speech on "Towards a Fair Society" at the King Prachadhipok Institute conference. Among the glaring facts:

- The top 20% own 69% of the country's assets while the bottom 20% own only 1%.

25m lives loose to AIDS

AIDS has killed 25 million people worldwide but new infections are slowing sharply, the UN said on Tuesday as it issued its annual report that mixed hope with a warning against complacency.

Almost 60 million people have been infected by the HIV virus since it was first recorded but prevention programmes are having a significant impact, the UNAIDS agency said in its latest report, released here in Shanghai.

Around two million people died of the disease in 2008, bringing the overall toll to around 25 million since the virus was first detected three decades ago. The UN figures

Some 2.7 million were newly infected in 2008, it added, bringing the world total to 33.4 million.

Michel Sidibe, UNAIDS executive director, told a Shanghai news conference on the report's launch that the number of new human immunodeficiency (HIV) virus infections has been reduced by 17 percent over the past eight years.

"The good news is that we have evidence that the declines we are seeing are due, at least in part, to HIV prevention," Sidibe said.

Some of the most notable progress has been reported in Africa, the report said.

HIV incidence has fallen by 25 percent since 2001 in East Africa while the figure for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole was around 15 percent -- equating to around 400,000 fewer infections in 2008.

In South and South East Asia, HIV incidence has declined by 10 percent in the same time period, the report said.