New Mandala

Vajiralongkorn is a graduate from Australia’s Royal Military College in Canberra and has trained with the U.S., British and Australian armed services…His Western lifestyle is not discussed openly, thanks again to lese majeste. But people have privately asked whether he has the natural authority to unify the nation, especially given his partisanship towards the military. [...]

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Wassana Nanuam, Lap luang phrang phak phitsadan [Secrets, Trickery, and Camouflage: The Improbable Phenomena]. Bangkok, Post Books, 2009. 303 pp. In Thai.
Soldiers, guns and coups have played a big role in Thailand’s politics for centuries. Historians think that the Front Palace incident in 1874 early in the reign of the fifth Bangkok king was actually [...]

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From the Asia Society:
The Asia Society wants to let you know about an upcoming webcast, Tearing the Land Apart: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand, featuring the author, Duncan McCargo, Southeast Asian Politics, University of Leeds. This event will take place at the Asia Society headquarters in New York tomorrow, Friday, November 6, 2009 from [...]

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Sitting here at the National Thai Studies Centre’s 2009 Thai Update I am struck by the news that two Thai citizens have been charged with “feeding untrue information through a computer system which undermined the security of the nation”.  They have been accused of spreading rumours about the king’s health.  Apparently a translation of a Bloomberg article is [...]

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If you go the website of Thailand’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology there is a page where you can alert the authorities to the existence of any “inappropriate website”. 

The “types of complaint” to choose from  includes lèse majesté, obscenity, gambling, narcotics, etc.
Do any New Mandala readers have experience with the site?  Has anybody made [...]

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The latest program for the 2009 Thailand Update is pasted below. The Update has been organised by the National Thai Studies Centre at the Australian National University.
New Mandala will be experimenting with some live coverage of the update using Twitter. Our Twitter account is newmandala.  If you don’t already have a Twitter account create one (here) and add newmandala to [...]

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“Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; real becomes not-real when the unreal’s real”
- The story of the stone, or the dream of the red chamber, Xueqin 1973, p.55)
The award winning NGO “Reporters Without Borders” (RWB) noted that Thailand has slipped to 130th this year from 124th the previous year in terms of comparative [...]

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There is an interesting analysis of Thai politics that was just published at Asia Sentinel.  It draws attention to “a feckless heir”, “a muddle-through scenario”, and “anti-monarchy radicalism”, among a large number of other issues.

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Patchara [Kerdsiri, a 32 year old Web program developer] said Twitter opens the chance for users to be close to famous people. Fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, or @thaksinlive, veteran politician Chaturon Chaisang, or @chaturon, and Patee Sarasin, or @patee122, have replied to his “tweets”.
- Extracted from Kornchanok Raksaseri, “Calling Twitterers…to Thai coffeeshop”, Asia [...]

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