Thaksin and his entourage sought ways to cultivate the nationalist feeling that had emerged in the aftermath of the crisis. This was a delicate matter given the relative external orientation of the Thai economy, and the sort of reaction that Thaksin evoked with his first speech on “looking inward. ” The solution was to tilt at largely symbolic and harmless targets, particularly foreign journalists and UN agencies. Critical or careless commentaries by foreign journalists evoked an immediate and sometimes savage reaction. In early 2002, the government threatened to expel two Far Eastern Economic Review journalists because of an article that had mentioned the king. When Washington queried the action, Thaksin claimed it was an issue of “national security” and insisted “Thailand’s sovereignty is our business”(TN,27 February 2002). After a critical article in the Asian Wall Street Tournal, he said: “The news standard of this particular foreign newspaper is very low…just nonsense… Thai newspapers should not quote from foreign publications which are hopeless” (TN, 6 May 2003). When Philip Bowring, an experienced Hong Kong commentator, questioned Thaksin’s optimistic growth predictions, he was treated to an epithet for which the Bangkok English-language press struggled to find a translation printable in a family newspaper (“idiot scum,” TN, 10 January 2004). Many domestic commentators had raised very similar doubts but drew no riposte at all. Thaksin was publicly putting the idiot foreigners in their place.