Silent Lonesome Man

Speaking about South America, I don't have so much knowledge outside sharing similar Spanish heritage, beautiful women and passionate football fans. Yet, when going to the Latin American world, I always have a fascinating question: why is the region so uniquely difficult to characterise? Well, my favourite country in South America has to be Chile, or maybe Uruguay. I'd say Brazil and Argentina when it comes to football. I admire the Chileans for their eagerness to progress despite difficulties to maintain a healthy, though far from a perfect society. I like the Uruguayans because of their progressiveness that allowed Uruguay to become one of the wealthiest. I can also add Ecuador and Bolivia, because of Leo Rojas, mountainous music of freedom and their native cultures untouched by time. But in the mind of a Vietnamese person, I'd expect more to speak about two South American countries that are definitely worth making the world feel sympathy. It has to be Colombia and Peru -...

When people are talking about the widespread uprising in Myanmar nowadays against the junta, so many people try to draw parallels with some kinds of other dictatorships. Some think of South Korea's military junta. Some think about the reformed communist dictatorships in Vietnam and China. Some look at the old Indonesian, Filipino juntas or current Thai monarcho-junta. There are even comparisons to the strongman rule based on monarchial power like Cambodia, or isolated outcast North Korea. Well, yeah, it is not wrong to compare, but there is a major problem. And we need to address it immediately. The root For most of its history since independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar, or also known as Burma, has always been beset with military coups and violence, as well as government's mismanagement. And this is what led to the downfall of Myanmar from grace. In the history of ancient and medieval Burma, the country produced three major empires, the two latter, Taungoo and Konbaung, w...

The protests in Myanmar have been the biggest since the 1988 Uprising in Myanmar, and the number of fatalities is rising days by days, nights by nights - triggered by the coup on 1 February 2021. This has triggered widespread international condemnation, but attempts to pass out a solution over the coup d'etat, was not successful, because of counter-attempts to block the condemnation by China and Russia - both Beijing and Moscow regard it as "internal affairs" of Myanmar. Later, it was reported that not just China and Russia; there are two other nations on the list of trying to prevent condemnation on the Myanmar junta. India and Vietnam are the two nations being on the list, and this has led to criticism that New Delhi and Hanoi are "playing on the lives" of innocent Burmese people being gunned down by Tatmadaw soldiers. As the world concentrates its eyes on Russia and China, so does India and Vietnam. However, the decision by both the governments of India and V...