Showing 1 - 10 of 10
The unbearable bleakness of government TV news
Oped, Philip J Cunningham, Published on 17/10/2020
» The outpouring of popular dissent on Wednesday proved to be a flash in the pan; by dawn the next morning, the sit-in at Government House had been disbanded, rank and file protesters were sent packing and the protest leaders were put under arrest.
Ajarn Ben's Southeast Asian analyses still enlighten
News, Philip J Cunningham, Published on 15/12/2015
» When I studied with Benedict Anderson at Cornell University in 1974, he seemed the quintessential absent-minded professor; at once erudite and bookish, idealistic and dreamy-eyed. The fact he had just been kicked out of Indonesia only added to his aura. Giving lectures about coups and counter-coups and revolutionary martyrs, he'd pace the front of the classroom in clunky boots and mismatched outfits, captivating class attention with his soft but mellifluous Irish-accented voice.
US hubris has real-world consequences
News, Philip J Cunningham, Published on 23/12/2014
» The Interview is based on a deeply-flawed conceit rooted in American exceptionalism: that a film about the killing a leader for the fun of it is funny as long as the target is unpopular and foreign.
Thanks to the media, the US can get away with murder
News, Philip J Cunningham, Published on 15/10/2013
» The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert this month for helping the world understand how a background field can cause phantom particles to acquire mass. The relatively irrational world of politics, riddled as it is with contradictions, offers its own version of the Higgs Field in terms of divergent national narratives.
Miyazaki and Aso battle for Japan's hearts and minds
News, Philip J Cunningham, Published on 03/08/2013
» Unresolved issues of history continue to haunt and distort the present, all the more so when hidden from view. Historical controversies need a good airing from time to time, not so much to salvage the past as to save the future from repetition of past mistakes.
Surveillance scandal signals a creeping police state
News, Philip J Cunningham, Published on 12/06/2013
» Even before an unlikely freedom fighter named Edward Snowden revealed his hand in the firestorm of a story about massive US government surveillance, Diane Feinstein, Peter King and other congressional mouthpieces for the US security state did their best to turn attention away from the message and onto the messenger.
All crackdowns are not equal
News, Philip J Cunningham, Published on 27/02/2013
» When politicians stake out the high moral ground and announce a crackdown, it can be a smokescreen for business as usual, or it can mean they really mean business.
Fire in the South poses existential threat to the nation
News, Philip J Cunningham, Published on 31/01/2013
» Perhaps one day there will be a monument to all the brave teachers who sacrificed their lives trying to keep alive the light of education in Thailand's strife-ridden southern provinces.
No matter the drama, the joker's out to play
News, Philip J Cunningham, Published on 09/01/2013
» The case of the popular soap opera Nua Mek is unusual because it's not everyday a powerful TV station suddenly self-censors, unilaterally banning its own popular show, without a plausible explanation.
Thailand slips back into a divisive war with itself
News, Philip J Cunningham, Published on 15/10/2012
» It's a brisk autumn day, all sun and no rain, in the upstate New York town of Ithaca. The leaves are turning and the hilly landscape is alive with a profusion of colour; a good day for a walk. Meandering along tree-lined streets under blue skies, I look forward to meeting a legendary scholar from Cornell's golden age of Southeast Asian studies, an historian who had left before I arrived but whose stellar reputation lingers through books, classroom discussion and reminiscences of his colleagues.