New Mandala

Nouhak Phoumsavanh, former president of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, died of old age on 9 September. He was 94. Along with the late Kaysone Phomvihan and Prince Souphanouvong, both of whom (in reverse order) held the presidency before him, Nouhak was one the three principal leaders of the Lao revolution that succeeded in overthrowing [...]

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Following yesterday’s post about Sondhi Limthongkul’s activities in the 1990s, a long-time New Mandala reader has sent through a scan of a 1997 Far Eastern Economic Review piece.
At that time, Sondhi was trying to develop “his media and telecoms interests into an empire big enough to fight off Western media titans like Rupert Murdoch.”�
According to the decade-old [...]

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Underlying the heated political and academic debates on forest policies in Thailand are the following assumptions: (1) the area under forest cover is continuously declining and threat of further deforestation is high, especially in the highlands of the North; (2) deforestation poses serious problems; and consequently (3) more should be done to conserve and rehabilitate [...]

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