Feeling ignorant about the issues in the region with regards to what I'm studying. I spent the past few semesters concentrating on samurai, exotic heritage sites and culture and naively thought tpolitics had nothing to do with them. Power, it seems, is the lowest common denominator for the desired life. Ideology and culture are the velet cloth covering it.
Well this semester I had the golden luck to read minority issues in Southeast Asia. The inter-ethnic conflicts in SE Asia (and I believe in Iraq as well), which I have been mostly indifferent to, had such complex causes that I should have paid more attention to in class. Again, I was more interested about the opium-producing minorities in the golden triangle and their relevance to Andy Lau's recent gangster movie. haha.. bummer..
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