New Mandala

A breaking story from the Bangkok Post:
Candidates in next month’s fiercely contested Thai election have been offering Viagra in exchange for votes, it was alleged Friday. Elderly male voters are being wooed with the little blue pill used to treat sexual dysfunction at social functions, claimed Sayan Nopcha, a campaigner for the People Power Party [...]

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Critics of Thaksin’s “populist” policies often condemned the wasteful expenditure of village credit on consumer goods such as mobile phones. I always found this a strange criticism, given that those making it probably couldn’t last a day without their own mobiles. But it does reflect the anachronistic view many commentators have about the nature of [...]

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Two new films about Laos are notable for their radically different depictions of the results of the American intervention there.
Bomb Harvest, the highly acclaimed documentary about the continuing effects of the American war legacy in Laos, is as explosive and as hidden from mainstream media as its subject matter.
The story centres around Australian bomb disposal [...]

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Here is an important press release from Human Rights Watch:
(Bangkok, November 29, 2007) - Thailand’s failure to address the HIV epidemic in the hardest-hit population, drug users, is jeopardizing its record as a leader in the global fight against AIDS, Human Rights Watch and the Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group said today in a report [...]

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This post is part of New Mandala’s series of interviews with academics, activists and writers who contribute to major debates in mainland Southeast Asian Studies.  These interviews are designed to probe the experiences, arguments and ideas that have helped shape the field. The ninth in New Mandala’s series of discussions with prominent personalities is with Professor Michael Aung-Thwin, Professor of [...]

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Observers in Chachoengsao could be forgiven if they did not think that we are actually in the middle of a vigorously fought election campaign to fill the House of Representatives and put a post-coup “democratically elected” government in place. While the national-level newspapers do substantially report on election-related matters, the physical public sphere in Chachoengsao [...]

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On Thursday, November 15, 2007, the Election Commission of Thailand (ECT) led representatives of political parties to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok in order to pledge that they would conduct their election campaigns honestly and fairly. In an editorial, The Nation (November 17, 2007) strongly criticized this event as an appeal by [...]

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The Army’s analysis of the current situation goes like this. There is a “war for the people” in process, meaning a contest for popular support. On one side is the Army. On the other are politicians, and especially former communist activists who lurk in the background of party politics.A generation ago, the Army won the [...]

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The Bangkok Post reports that the community forest bill, a long-time rallying cause for activist academics and NGOs in Thailand, has finally been passed:
The long-awaited Community Forest Bill sailed through the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) yesterday by 57-2 votes with one abstention.  The passing of the bill, which combines one proposed by the Natural Resources and [...]

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