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By Ooi Kee Beng, Editorial, Penang Monthly, August 2017 As with all agreements, consensus and contracts, a Constitution is a hunt for a balance – and a dynamic one at that, between the expressing on one hand of lofty national aspirations and ambitions, and on the other of compromises meant to be more binding than … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG For The Edge, Forum July 24, 2017 In the time of Brexit and the tenure of Trump; with the triumph of Putin and the threat of Kim, instead of thinking about how Globalisation is being reversed, we should take a longer perspective and think about how the global battle in modern … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng, Editorial, Penang Monthly, July 2017 It’s a complicated subject, this thing we call Economics. I don’t always know what it means. I remember once talking to Robert Kuok about it. His reply was (and I paraphrase from my vague memory of that conversation): “Economics is simply about living, isn’t it? As … Continue reading
The immediate success of Singapore led to a grim court battle to decide who her actual founder was. That clash continues in this new and superbly researched book. BOOK REVIEW Book review: William Farquhar and Singapore: Stepping out of Raffles’ Shadow by Nadia H. Wright. Entrepot Publishing, 2017. By OOI KEE BENG The present always … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng Editorial, Penang Monthly, June, 2017 EDITORIAL Ecotourism sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? We do know that tourism brings benefits to a place, but we cannot deny the larger truth of what I like to call The Paradox of Observation – the more we look at something, the more we change … 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, 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, 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 Penang Monthly editorial, February 2017 Culture, if you ask me, is the joint expression of the inter-personal behaviours of a particular society over time. Within that, we find comfort and orientation in life. The key word is “time”. When profound changes come at us at great speed, how we behave towards … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng Penang Monthly Editorial, January 2017 How does one show respect? How does one show tolerance? How does one show acceptance? These are important questions to answer when the ethnic and religious diversity of modern societies are increasingly considered a persistent problem and not a cultural wealth. If we wish for greater … Continue reading
