28 01 2021
An op-ed at both Asia Sentinel and Eurasia Review, titled “Hierarchy, Power And Inequality In Thailand,” and published a few days ago, there’s a useful, short account of the country’s oligarchy. We reproduce the interesting bits:
Although Thailand is one of the region’s wealthiest states and has been cited as a success story of modernization and development, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Thailand is placed in the world’s top inequitable countries, in terms of wealth and income distribution.
According to a recent Credit Suisse study,
one percent of the population holds 66.9 percent of the nation’s wealth, with 36 percent of equity held by only 500 people. According to the World Bank, poverty has grown from 7.21 percent in 2015 to 9.85 percent in 2018.
Cortina de Hierro –Castro’s Iron Curtain
In 1946 after the end of the Second World War what Winston Churchill described as an Iron Curtain stretched across Europe separating East and West with all professional sport banned in the East. That brought an end to any fledgling careers and any future hopes of a professional career for boxers on the Eastern side of the Curtain. After just over forty years with the dissolution of the USSR the Curtain is no longer a barrier to professionalism and fighters such as the Klitschko brothers and Vasyl Lomachenko have since graced our sport.
In 1961 after Fidel Castro adopted Communism as Cuba’s creed another Iron Curtain banning professional sport was woven in the West every bit as important for boxing as the one in Europe. Unlike the European Curtain this one is still in place and still denying professional boxing access to the wellspring of talent that has made Cuba the most successful nation in amateur boxing.