New Mandala

A “flash mob” for Burma will hit London tonight as campaigners urge commuters to remember victims of the cyclone and decades of human rights abuses in the country.
- Extracted from Joanna Sugden, “Flash mob for Burma hits London”, The Times, 25 June 2008.  If any New Mandala readers were there, or have thoughts on this [...]

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Courtesy of Bangkpok Pundit I learned of a new political party taking to the streets of Bangkok.  The Pundit has this post in his “light relief” category (alongside, I noticed, a brief piece about Big Brother UK’s Thai housemate).  Hippy politics in Bangkok?  A cookie addict in Hertfordshire?  Crazy times.

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A New Mandala reader has sent through these comments on the period immediately before Cyclone Nargis hit the Irrawaddy Delta.  It will, I’m sure, be of interest to many.
I was due to go to Yangon on the Sunday but was told by the Burmese friend I was going to meet there that they were expecting bad [...]

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Bertil Lintner and Andrew Marshall - who have penned, between them, some of the more interesting books on modern Burma - have both come to the (renewed) attention of the Burmese authorities in recent days.  The Irrawaddy has the details.
On the topic of journalistic access to Burma, I noticed in this Saturday’s The Guardian that Cathy Scott-Clark and [...]

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New Mandala readers who take an interest in the human rights situation in Thailand will be keen to learn about an innovative blog project.  In the run-up to the appointment of a new batch of National Human Rights Commissioners it is asking for ideas on who should be given the nod.  The current group of Commissioners were appointed [...]

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During last year’s uprising against the military dictatorship in Burma I put together a summary of academic opinion.  It has continued to serve as a useful resource for readers looking to find out what the world’s scholars made of that all-too-brief period when the world watched Burma and waited for change.  The current crisis - [...]

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Contributor’s note: This post was written before Cyclone Nargis went through Myanmar on May 2 and 3. The government has since not said whether or not the May 10 referendum will be postponed. It has declared Ayeyarwady, Yangon and Bago Divisions, and Kayin and Mon States disaster zones. At this time housing, food and clean [...]

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The generals expect the Burmese people to just shut up, follow their orders, and approve the draft constitution without any discussion or debate. That’s not exactly how democracies are born.
- Brad Adams, Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, in the press release launching a report on Burma’s constitution.  The referendum on the new national charter will [...]

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Roving New Mandala photographer, Tim Forsyth, spotted this bizarre image on a mobile phone advertisement at Chiang Mai airport. No doubt some will be offended by its crude exploitation of ethnicity (as zoological oddity) in pursuit of profit, but to me there is something eccentrically inclusive about it. Perhaps even less pernicious (as stereotypes go) than some of [...]

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Australia has been caught up in Thailand’s Valentine’s Day moral panic about adolescant sexuality. The Sydney Morning Herald reports on disturbing developments at Sydney’s Taronga Park Zoo:
Taronga Zoo’s Thong Dee, the Thai elephant cow found to be five months pregnant this week, seemed a good deal calmer yesterday than the humans fiercely debating her welfare. [...]

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