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SHAN State Chief Minis- ter U Sai Htein Soe and his wife, accompanied by state ministers, the state advocate-general and of- ficials, released 207,000 fingerlings into the nat- ural waters of Inlay Lake in Nyaungshwe on
Myanmar President U Min Aung Hlaing met local officials, community leaders and departmental representatives in Minbu Township, Magway Region, yesterday afternoon, emphasizing the importance of education, agricultural dev
DEPUTY Minister for Construction U Myo Myint, accompanied by members of the Chin State Reha- bilitation and Reconstruction Committee, inspected a collective cleanup campaign at Falam People’s Hospital (200-bed) on 11 Jul
PyinOoLwin Greening Project was launched this year to become greener with abundant trees and forests, health- ier, more pleasant to live in, sustainably developed and clean. T he national-lev- el monsoon tree-growing cer
THE Ministry of Elec- tricity and Energy is or- ganizing a workshop to increase the contribution of solar power systems to Myanmar’s electricity supply. The event will bring together experts, busi- nesses, relevant organ
STUDENTS from the remote Cocokyun have shared their joy after the township achieved a 100 per cent pass rate in Myanmar’s 2026 matric- ulation examination, a milestone made possible through the combined ef- forts of teac
PYINOOLWIN, Myanmar’s famous hill station known as the “City of Flowers”, is preparing for a rise in visitor arrivals during this year’s open tourism season following the reopening of Anisakan Airport. Local tourism oper
The government, in their tenure, pledges to develop Agri-based industries based on cotton cultivation to achieve the targeted per-acre cotton yield. A s cotton cul- tivation and production are beneficial for the country,
An informal meeting of ASEAN Foreign Ministers concerning the current situation in Myanmar was held on July 12 in Bangkok, Thailand. At the meeting, ASEAN member states reiterated their strong demand for the swift releas
Guest contributor James Shwe When Myanmar’s junta foreign minister sat down with his Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) counterparts in Bangkok this weekend, the images that mattered were manufactured before anyone entered the room. This was not an act of diplomacy. It was an act of information warfare — and it is the front on which the generals now expect to win. Consider what the junta actually did on the way to that table. It is reported to have refused ASEAN’s request for access to Aung San Suu Kyi, offering only a verbal assurance that the “sister” would be “looked after.” Its own parliamentarians publicly dismissed the Five-Point Consensus — ASEAN’s founding framework for the crisis — as foreign “interference.” And having repudiated both the person and the process, it still obtained the first minister-level ASEAN engagement since the 2021 coup, with all the optics of a normal government. A regime sincerely trying to satisfy ASEAN would not insult the framework it needs. The contradiction only makes sense as a message. Denying access to Suu Kyi blocks independent verification while projecting absolute control: we hold your leader, we reject your framework, and none of you can make us blink. The intended audience was never in Jakarta or Manila. It was the people of Myanmar, and the engineered message is the one the junta wants us to absorb above all others: ASEAN sits with us anyway. Your resistance is pointless. You are alone. A whole apparatus, not a single stunt Bangkok was one move in a sustained campaign. The junta cannot govern what it claims, cannot recruit without kidnapping, and survives only on Beijing’s sufferance. It has one asset left that is cheap, deniable, and potentially decisive: the power to shape what people believe. So it has built the machinery to do exactly that — and by credible reporting it stood up a major-general-led task force for psychological warfare and counter-information in 2026. A government that could actually rule would not need one. You can watch the apparatus work across several registers at once: Buying the messenger. The junta’s information ministry is paying the American lobbyist Roger Stone a reported $50,000 USD a month to “rebuild” its relations with Washington — an open attempt to purchase legitimacy it cannot earn. Manufacturing the narrative. A steady stream of op-eds, “analysis,” and polished web platforms now urges the region to “move beyond Naypyidaw,” accept the post-election order, and treat junta rule as a settled fact. Some of it is sincere fatigue with a long war. Some of it is seeded. The effect is the same: it normalizes a criminal enterprise as a government-in-waiting and quietly moves the world toward premature recognition. Bending the coverage. The most instructive example came this month, and it shows how the manipulation actually works. Agence France Presse sent a team to a single People’s Defence Force camp in Sagaing and first produced an honest, sympathetic dispatch — “Jungle spirit: Myanmar fighters try to keep hope alive,” carried by France 24. It was candid about retreat and dwindling ammunition, but it took the fighters seriously and closed on their defiance: “we organize and revolt with a spirit of defiance and a refusal to accept injustice.” It made no mention of ASEAN, the election, or the “civilian” president. That version did not suit the normalization campaign. What followed was a second AFP treatment of the very same reporting from the very same camp — recast as “Myanmar’s pro-democracy revolution weakens five years on.” Same fighters, same jungle, opposite conclusion: the retreating rebels now open the story, but the frame is in decline. It leans on outside analysts, threads in Chinese-brokered truces, the military’s “sweeping gains,” the new “civilian” president, and the July 12 ASEAN meeting, and lands on the line that the opposition is “increasingly irrelevant.” The decisive part is what happened next. The junta did not need to suppress the hopeful story; it only needed the demoralizing version to be the one that travelled. And it was — the “weakening” framing is what search engines surface, what algorithms push, and what therefore lands on the desks of the policymakers and journalists who shape the next round of coverage. Identical facts on the ground; the demoralizing conclusion optimized to win the click and the citation. That is information asymmetry in the flesh, and it is the junta’s true theatre of operations. Why this is the generals’ most effective weapon The military has decades of practice at one thing above all: divide and rule. It kept power for half a century not by winning arguments but by setting Myanmar’s peoples against one another and its opponents against themselves. It is now applying that same craft to the resistance — and it has found the seam. Because here is the uncomfortable truth the junta understands better than we sometimes do: it does not need to defeat the National Unity Government or the ethnic revolutionary organizations on the battlefield. It only needs Myanmar’s people to lose faith in them. So it invests relentlessly in two ideas, repeated until they feel like common sense: the resistance has no real leadership, and the resistance is not united. Every grievance is amplified, every failure magnified, every internal disagreement dressed up as terminal rot. And crucially, the junta attacks the very habit that would inoculate us — critical thinking — because a public is trained to ask “who benefits from this framing? ” is a public it cannot manipulate. This is why perception, not territory, is the junta’s growing advantage. On the ground it is losing the ability to win. In the mind, it still has a chance — and we keep handing it openings. The common sense no one is saying out loud Somewhere in all of this, an obvious truth has gone strangely unspoken. The resistance does have an organized political leadership. The NUG and its partners are not a rumor or an aspiration; they are a functioning, if imperfect, structure that has held together under exile, bombardment, and blockade for five years. They are not flawless. No government-in-exile, with no territory of its own, no reliable revenue, no recognized army, and no seat at the U.N., could be. But the practical choice in front of us is not between this leadership and a perfect one. It is between improving what we have and dismantling it to start again from scratch — in the middle of a war, against an enemy praying for exactly that. It is far more sensible to strengthen, reform, and hold accountable the institutions we have built than to tear them down and hand the junta the collapse it cannot achieve by force. That is not blind loyalty. It is the most basic strategic realism. I notice that the loudest calls to dismantle rarely come from those with a workable alternat
ASEAN Foreign Ministers meet with regime ‘counterpart’ Foreign ministers from the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met with regime Foreign Minister Tin Maung Swe at an “informal” gathering in Bang
In a rare public acknowledgement of an escalating nationwide campaign, the military regime has confirmed it is removing statues of General Aung San, the country’s independence hero and father of jailed State Counsellor A
It is reported that cleaning operations are being carried out at the damaged sections of the 200-bed People's Hospital in Falam Township, which was damaged due to terrorist incidents. It is reported that Deputy Minister
Foreign ministers from the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were told on Sunday by their Myanmar regime “counterpart” that jailed State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi is in good health and would be
Article by – Dr. Moe Thit Nay (Ayeyarwaddy Times, July 12) Carrying twins is a cause for great joy for a family, but it also presents a situation where increased medical care is needed for both the mother and the twin in
Giant Time July 12th According to sources on the ground, the Thai-Myanmar border town of Mae Sot has overflowed due to continuous rains, and some low-lying waterfront homes near No. (1) Friendship Bridge are being evacua
AYEYARWADDY TIMES July 12 The Kachin State Interim Government has announced that the Myitkyina-Mogaung-Mawhkin railway section in Kachin State will resume operations from July 21. Local military sources say that this act
Erawati Times On July 12th, the army under the coup d'etat military council and the elected government in Erawati Division brutally killed two militia recruits who fled from the front lines in Erawati Division after fo
It has been learned that the film "Fruit Gathering," the debut feature film by Myanmar director and screenwriter Aung Phyo, won the Grand Prix Crystal Globe award, the highest honor, at the Karlovy Vary International Fil
Former Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah has expressed extreme concern over the decision by the Philippines, as the current ASEAN chair, to hold an informal meeting between ASEAN foreign ministers and the for
ASEAN foreign ministers will hold an informal meeting with the Myanmar military junta's foreign minister today, July 12, in Bangkok, Thailand. This meeting comes as the new government backed by the military in Myanmar, w
Yangon, July 12 According to information obtained as of July 12, 535 junta members have been killed across Myanmar, based on statements and reports from People's Defense Forces. Yangon Khit Thit Media compiles and publis
Yangon, July 12 Authorities conducted a large-scale Operasi operation around the Klang bus terminal in Klang city, Selangor state, Malaysia, which is a major gathering place for foreigners, and carried out surprise raids
Yangon, July 12 It has been learned from the statements of Wetlet Informational Network and local residents that the terrorist military is setting fire to and destroying refugee tents in Wetlet Township, Sagaing Region.
ASEAN has reaffirmed that it will continue to implement the Five-Point Consensus (Five-Point Consensus) for the promotion of stability and peace in Myanmar, Thai PBS reported after an informal meeting with the Foreign Mi
The water level of the Thanlwin River, which forms the border between Myanmar and Thailand, had not yet reached the warning level for Myawaddy city as of 6:00 AM today, July 12, but it is possible that it could rise by 9
Myanmar's Foreign Minister, U Tin Maung Swe, told ASEAN foreign ministers on July 12 that former State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who is being detained, is in good health and under care, Myanmar's ASEAN Special Env
The Ministry of Electricity and Energy announced on July 12 that as a digital system that can be monitored by Control Centers is being built, illegal access and consumption of electricity will be relaxed if reported by J
YANGON, July 12 The State Counsellor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under arrest, is in good health and is being cared for like a relative, the military-appointed Foreign Minister, Than Swe, told ASEAN foreign ministers.
The diplomatic landscape surrounding the Myanmar crisis has reached a volatile inflection point, characterized by a dangerous convergence of false legitimacy, internal betrayal, and a crumbling regional consensus. As ASE
Yangon, July 12 Two military camps in the western part of Matta Township, Mandalay Region, were attacked and seized, resulting in the deaths of 15 soldiers and the seizure of one weapon, Ko Daung, the information and pub
The Federal Democracy Union Steering Council (SCEF) is planning to continue its visits to countries supporting Myanmar's democracy and revolution, and is also scheduled to hold separate meetings with the ASEAN Chair, Daw
National Unity Government -The People's Defence Force (PDF) of Sintok Township announced that they paid tribute with gunfire and held a memorial service for the heroic soldiers who sacrificed their lives in the fighting
A 2,000-ton seed potato cold storage facility in Heho of Kalaw District was opened on Sunday. Shan State Chief Minister U Sai Htein Soe attended the opening ceremony of the new facility operated by H & J Success Company
Bago Region Chief Minister U Myo Swe Win visited Phaye Village in Thanatpin Township on July 11 to observe a collective monsoon paddy cultivation activity using locally manufactured and distributed agricultural machinery
President U Min Aung Hlaing on Sunday attended the 2026 Monsoon Tree Planting Ceremony in Pyin Oo Lwin Township of Mandalay Region, where he planted a commemorative tree. A total of 3,000 saplings from eight various spec