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By Ooi Kee Beng The Edge Malaysia Weekly (May 2017) Humans are land animals. The history of humanity has been largely played out on land. The sea was something that rivers emptied into, and much of seafaring had hugged coastlines. Lakes were simply smaller seas. Access to fresh water, though, is vital to human life. … Continue reading
Review of “The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace” (Ridge Books, 2017) by Kishore Mahbubani and Jeffry Sng. In MEKONG REVIEW, May-July 2017, Volume 2, Number 3. By Ooi Kee Beng The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, founded on 8 August 1967, famously holds more than 1,000 meetings a year. Some say 1,400 would be … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng, editorial in Penang Monthly, May 2017. IN LIEU OF a normal editorial, and in keeping with this month’s cover story being about Penang Hokkien, I am providing here in somewhat truncated form, the Introductory from “The Hokkien Vernacular” (edited by George Thompson Hare and published in Kuala Lumpur in 1904). I … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG For The Edge, Malaysia. 1 May 2017. Although one may forgive those who laugh off the Sustainable Development Goals developed by the United Nations in 2015 as a vain exercise to create Heaven on Earth, it is nevertheless vital for the credibility of goals that seek to change the direction of … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial for Penang Monthly, April, 2017 A racist act is the conscious effort by one group identity to effectively reduce the social status and the security, the rights and the privileges, and the integrity and dignity of another group identity. The intended dynamic is two-fold, and lies firstly in the racist’s … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng In The Compass, March 2017. Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia. With the world caught up in the reality show we call the Trump Presidency, it is important for those of us who are not Americans to retain some distance to the partisanship of their domestic politics. No doubt there is … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng For The Edge Malaysia, 27 March 2017. Also published in Penang Monthly, May 2017. I paid at the counter for a taxi at KLIA2 a few weeks ago to take me to Bandar Sunway. My cabbie was an elderly Malay man who liked quoting Shakespeare. (Well, he was somewhat older even … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial for Penang Monthly, March 2017. “The Present” is a strange concept. For one thing, it is really not possible to think of “The Present” without relying on images of “The Past” and imaginations of “The Future”. They are after all three sneaky sides of the same strange coin. (Yes, a … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG For THE EDGE, Malaysia; 6 March 2017. THERE IS something captivating about the generation of people in Malaysia and Singapore who were born in the decades before the Japanese occupation. The times had definitely been very uncertain throughout the region. The British colonialists were arguing among themselves about how the Southeast … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng for The Edge Malaysia, 30 January 2017 There is a forceful quote from John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), the political economist and philosopher, which reads: “A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes – will find that with … Continue reading
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