qui tacet consentire videtur

Nothing is more precious than freedom.

Yesterday I went to see the NYC premiere of Journey from the Fall with one of my surrogate-mothers on campus and other members of the Vietnamese Students Association, and after the film ended I knew that the long list of film festival awards was well justified. The film tells the story of one family’s journey from the fall of Saigon in 1975. When we were in the ImaginAsian cinema I was looking at the table of posters outside the theatre when I noticed several boxes of tissues available - It’s not possible to watch the film without crying a river. Perhaps seeing it was therapeutic for me since I’ve been holding back tears for a while now. Here are some thoughts on the film.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I attended Mariam Nawabi’s presentation at the Southern Asian Institute on counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan. Nawabi is a renowned attorney, diplomat, and activist who currently serves as Strategic & Business Development Director for Afghanistan Market Development International and Senior Advisor to the Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce. I attend a lot of SAI events on campus, mainly because they often screen Bollywood films.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I skipped a macroeconomics lecture to attend Dr. Amien Rais’s talk at SIPA. He gave a broad historical overview of Indonesian politics and spoke about his experience with the democratic reform movement, but things began to get more interesting when he gave his explanation about why resource-rich Indonesia is still largely poor - he blames something he calls a ‘corporatocracy’ of multinationals, foreign governments, international agencies, mass media, and academic ‘intellectual prostitutes’ (his words) that coopt local elites. Sounded a lot like Confessions of an Economic Hitman. He spoke about multinationals that operate mining and oil extraction in Indonesia and how the profit-sharing agreements were unfair and operations did not create opportunities for technology transfer or technical training. Afterwards, I crashed an 8000-level polisci class which Dr. Rais was giving a guest lecture to, where he spoke at length about Islamic fundamentalism and Shariah law - he does not believe Indonesia is in danger of becoming less secular. Which is a lot different from the picture I got from a muslim women’s rights activist in Indonesia, who visited SIPA late last year and spoke about the difficulties she faced in speaking out in the debate on women’s rights in Islam.

In retrospect I should’ve taken notes since I am writing this from memory.