Our 21-st Century witnesses a new phenomenon: card-board people, card-board cutouts (from Amazon discarded boxes)….from homeless folks using it for make-shift signs, to faces cutout at empty stadiums, least of which, the Tokyo Olympics… We perform still…like comedians with the aid of laugh sound-tracks, and red-dot cameras sans operateur. In short, talking to ourselves…tweeting to…

The boy in a Black-and-White picture stared back at me, his future self. He was standing in a Saigon slum, wearing a pull-over shorts and a striped shirt. His flip-flop completed his tropical daily wear. I tried to tell him Not to grow up, not to be in a hurry and that he was in…

None of us can lay claim to monopolising post-war pain and suffering… Dante might…People who existed before novocain might. Human cry out from the depth, like animals, might… But war and aftermath…loss and betrayal…disbelief and feeling vain…. We have yet measured its full weight – veteran affairs or civilian affairs. WWI was supposed to end…

On 9/11, Bush hand-scripted his notes to assure a befuddled nation, to project calm and control. He – from his Decision Point memoir – ended up off script, repeating what his Dad, former President H.W. Bush had said, that “terrorism against our nation will not stand”. pg 128 (the exact quote that he “plagiarized” was…

We will never get another 9/12, the day after 9/11. That day saw even cut-throat media agencies share film footage, Texan barbecues for free 24/7 on Ground Zero and the Wall-Street hustlers help carry a disabled lady and her wheelchair down 46 stairs….to be loaded onto an emergency vehicle (to later retell to CBS) before…

For me, some images just stick….In long-term memory; there was childhood flooding, night thief, day bully, monk-burning and later, nuclear-power-plant melt-down. But two events never elude me, amnesia withstanding: the last scene from the Saigon river the day I fled Vietnam and 9/11 Twin Towers collapse. I have spent the whole year (pandemic-bound) to do…

First was the ball. Then the radio. Last but not least, the guitar and the Larousse (French-Vietnamese). Water needed to be hauled in. No fridge. No TV. No nothing. By the time the walls got another coat of paint, and the paintings up, then it’s time to flee. A lifetime of memories – clustered around…

Soon…just like the Vietnam Memorial….WWI and WWII Memorial…Windows of the World looking for missing persons (9/11). Commander-in-Chief, Comforter-in-Chief, Consoler-in-Chief… The world inflicted pain on the US; the US rightfully struck back, or has been up until now (July 9th, 2021). a long knee-jerk reaction. We are more united in grief. More determined for closure, for…

The left-behind, ghost towns, abandoned air fields and ammunition supplies, heaps of them: pick your weapons. Kabul! Ka-boom! Warlords, landlords leaving in droves (the elites, the elite wanna-bees – just like those orphans flights out of Saigon decades ago. What we feared most – the end, the destruction etc.. ended up materialized, self-inflicted. Back then,…

Just a modest proposal. State of play. Give ‘m free apps. Free phones…Free broadband. Spend hard dollars on soft infrastructure (internet and cyber infrastructure) and softwares. Go nimble. This should drain the recruiting pool and drive the ISIS and Taliban of the world crazy. they can’t find young recruits…who are busy posting on their Tik…