New Mandala

…there is no reporting of what is going on in Thailand.Â
I had been wondering about this very issue and in my admittedly brief surveys of media produced inside Burma I had come to the same conclusion as The Irrawaddy’s much more detailed analysis.
While all eyes understandably remain on the unfolding saga in Bangkok, spare a [...]

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The Times (of London) has a wonderful archive that allows anyone who registers to dip into the paper’s long and distinguished history.  Today I had a scout around to see how useful it might be as a resource for New Mandala readers.Â
For starters…the archive begins in 1785.Â
As a result, searches for words like Burma, Thailand, Bangkok and Kachin unsurprisingly turn up all [...]

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Sometimes I am a bit slow off the mark…just a moment ago I learned that The Nation is reportedly in dire condition.  Late last week 2Bangkok ran a short piece announcing that the paper is for sale, and that there are rumours of massive staff cuts and other re-structuring.
In response, Fonzi (of Thailand Jumped the Shark fame) has [...]

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Online security is a concern for almost anyone who runs a website.  There are many potential challenges and, for most of us, only ever limited resources to plough into protective measures.  It is rarely feasible to defend against every conceivable threat.
With that in mind, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) reports that over the past week it has [...]

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Is New Mandala the best english-language blog about Thailand?
We’re not sure but…
…after a small technical glitch we are (for the moment) back at the top of The Lost Boy’s Top 100 Thailand blogs.  It calculates rankings by grinding together a number of measures of online success.  It also encourages readers to influence the machine generated results by voting for [...]

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From time-to-time I get asked, “So Nich, what are the longest threads of comments on New Mandala?”Â
With that question in mind, the following list, current as of today, may be of interest to readers, new and old, who are looking to chew over some of the more contentious issues in mainland Southeast Asia.
And do feel [...]

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It was way back in 1999 that I first visited Panrit Daoruang’s website.  Back then he was known by the firstname Nattawud.  In the following years he went on to become a famous Internet and media personality.  During his years of fame his life took an abrupt turn and he ended up in Samut Prakan Central Prison.  If you [...]

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Latrobe University political scientist Michael Connors has an opinion piece over at Asia Sentinel that will be relevant to the many NM readers who are closely following the political jousting in Thailand.  He writes:Â
The rationale for wanting to dismantle Thailand’s electoral system is evident: pro-Thaksin forces keep winning elections. And as Thaksin is said to represent [...]

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The vocabulary [of Jinghpaw] is not as meagre as has sometimes been stated. The opinion that tribes are found with a vocabulary of only a few hundred words simply reveals the ignorance of the dialect in question and linguistic studies in general. It has more than once been asserted that the illiterate Kachins have at [...]

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