New Mandala

New Mandala readers who can’t get enough news and views on Burma may be keen to bookmark Burma Digest.  It carries regularly updated comment and opinion, and often links to useful Burmese language material.  Its political agenda is helpfully explained in the page on “Missions and Visions“.  Burma Digest covers events both inside and outside Burma and is [...]

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A fascinating interview with General Prem conducted by the Far Eastern Economic Review just hours before the coup.
One extract:
[FEER]: On the issue of the book The King Never Smiles, by Paul Handley, isn’t the type of discussion that the book can promote—namely open debate on the role of the monarchy—good for Thailand?
General Prem: I don’t [...]

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Just a thought (from Brighton, the Hua Hin of the UK). A lot of the recent discussion of Thai politics is based on the rural-urban divide. Many recognise that this divide is blurred by demographic fluidity. But how many Thais are, politically at least, fixed in place by the rules of the electoral system? For [...]

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