Showing 1 - 10 of 16
Recalling a world of dots and dashes
Roger Crutchley, Published on 04/05/2025
» I forgot to mention in PostScript last week that Sunday, April 27, was Morse Code Day which marks the birth of Samuel Morse, inventor of the famous communications code. The reason for my interest is that it brings fond memories of the late 1960s when I worked at Cable and Wireless (C&W) communications company in Holborn, central London.
Vietnam: Fifty years since the Fall of Saigon
Oped, John J. Metzler, Published on 30/04/2025
» Fifty years ago, on April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese military units surged into Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, forcibly reuniting the country, thus ending 20 years of conflict.
Vietnam's tourism star is on the rise
News, Lebawit Lily Girma, Published on 28/03/2025
» Thailand may be fully in the spotlight, where Southeast Asian tourism is concerned. Its starring role in Season 3 of The White Lotus has supercharged vacationers' (already high) interest.
Kabul collapse emboldened global despots
News, John J. Metzler, Published on 16/08/2024
» The collapse of Afghanistan to the Taliban three years ago on Aug 15 signalled an inflection point on the geopolitical scene. While the appalling stupidity of the Biden/Harris administration's botched and humiliating withdrawal of US forces from this South Asian land stained and sullied the reputation of the United States, the fiasco equally opened the floodgates to the deluge of refugees fleeing the toppled Afghan government in Kabul.
Myanmar as interim 'non-state' state
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 01/03/2024
» Myanmar, also known as Burma, has become a de facto state that is dominated by non-state entities. Contrary to facile claims, Myanmar is not a failed state like some that beset parts of Africa and the Middle East. The ethnically diverse country of 55 million still functions despite widespread violence in an ongoing civil war. Unless and until Myanmar is understood and re-conceptualised as an interim state comprising non-state entities, it will be difficult to move forward to remake and reconstitute a new country after the civil war and the passing of the military junta that seized power on Feb 1, 2021, led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.
The true cost of our 'wars' and 'wreckonomics'
Oped, David Keen & Ruben Andersson, Published on 16/02/2024
» In Constantine Cavafy's poem Waiting for the Barbarians, the much-feared barbarians never turn up. "Now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?" the poem asks. "Those people were a kind of solution."
Station confusion
Oped, Postbag, Published on 17/06/2023
» Re: "Yet another missing rail link", (Editorial, June 4) and "Partial Pink Line launch urged as traffic worsens", (BP, June 3).
Can China correct course on Covid, like Vietnam?
News, Shuli Ren, Published on 18/08/2022
» The world's two largest Communist countries have a lot in common. Just over a year ago, Vietnam's party leaders gave General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong an unprecedented third five-year term as the top leader, crediting him with successfully containing the Covid-19 pandemic. China's President Xi Jinping is poised to win a third term as well later this year. Both countries waived politicians' age limits for their supreme leaders.
Singapore is a laboratory for urban mobility
Oped, Carlo Ratti, Published on 13/08/2021
» Tiziano Terzani was no fan of Singapore. The Florentine writer and journalist explored every corner of Asia. He had witnessed the fall of Saigon to the People's Army of Vietnam, and the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge. When he visited Singapore, he concluded all it had to offer was its airport: "The concentration of everything Singapore has to show: its efficiency, its cleanliness, its order." Otherwise, the wealthy city-state was nothing more to him than "the largest supermarket of consumer goods, futility, and prissiness in Asia".
How did they think the Afghan war would end?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/08/2021
» 'I will never kneel before such a destructive force [as the Taliban'," declared Ashraf Ghani, the soon-to-be ex-president of Afghanistan. "We will either sit knee-to-knee for real negotiations at the table, or break their knees on the battlefield."