It is hard to speak collectively about a region of so many different languages, ethnicities, religions and political traditions. But as I start a new assignment in a part of the world that may as well be a different cosmos — Northern California — I have been trying to make sense of what I have seen in Southeast Asia.

I come back to one theme again and again: impunity.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/world/asia/reporting-on-life-death-and-corruption-in-southeast-asia.html

I know and respect Tom as a journalist but in a piece about corruption and impunity I thought that even he might at least mention the greatest practitioner of those in SE Asia in recent decades. But evidently he's leaving as much of a Thaksin partisan as he was when he began. I will not miss his largely one-sided writing on this country.

I know and respect Tom as a journalist but in a piece about corruption and impunity I thought that even he might at least mention the greatest practitioner of those in SE Asia in recent decades. But evidently he's leaving as much of a Thaksin partisan as he was when he began. I will not miss his largely one-sided writing on this country.

So anti-Thaksin views aren't equally partisan?

So anti-Thaksin views aren't equally partisan?

Of course they are. The job of a journalist is to present a balance. You only know you're doing it right when you start to upset everyone.

Telling it like it is Thomas, THANK YOU.

Good Luck in your new Job.

I know and respect Tom as a journalist but in a piece about corruption and impunity I thought that even he might at least mention the greatest practitioner of those in SE Asia in recent decades. But evidently he's leaving as much of a Thaksin partisan as he was when he began. I will not miss his largely one-sided writing on this country.

That was something always predictable in a Fuller article. He would criticise one side for an action but when the other side did the same thing it was conveniently ignored or whitewashed.

I'm going to miss his reporting although I know the Thai establishment will not. That said...the final quote in his article "I came to see Southeast Asia as a land of great people and bad governments, of remarkable graciousness but distressing levels of impunity" leaves me, a proud American but also an expat, confounded as to what is really so different here than in the rest of the world. Great people, bad governments and -- I'll add this one on my own -- misinterpreted Gods. Woe are we.

Real journalism has gone the way of the Dodo bird. You can find so called journalistic material to support whatever point of view you already have, no need to question or expand your current world view. The problem is not journalism though, the problem is us ... we are getting the journalism we deserve. Does Taksin really matter? I think not, he and his family will be just one more forgotten name among those that plunder and pillage. The real issue is, as this gentleman rightly points out is corruption and what can be done to eradicate corruption. What I find sad is that Thailand made great economic progress in the last several decades. However, corruption at many levels has sucked all of the financial value out of this progress. That value should have been invested in better and free education, infrastructure, and in building a strategic industrial and service capability for future generations that would allow them to continue to create value. Instead that value has been squirreled away in the bank accounts of the wealthiest 2%. Who knows when Thailand will see such an opportunity again? Certainly not in my lifetime. It has doomed generations to come to a feudal life. So I take the journalists message to heart even if he does not touch on my favorite examples he opens everyone's eyes wider.