Item 1: "Why Obama does not want a multipolar world order" by Zaki Laidi
- Power is currently expressed in terms of three assets:
i. material wealth, without which nothing is technically possible
ii. strategic power, which implies the capacity to project force to one’s periphery and beyond
iii. power instinct – that is, the will to weigh in on world affairs - through one’s ideas, capabilities or attractiveness.
- There are now four great economic centres of power: the US, Europe, China and Japan. They are very distantly followed by India, Brazil and Russia
- Europe is the only region in the world that refuses to increase military expenditure
06 December 2009
05 December 2009
Fifth December Two Thousand Nine
Item 1: "Switzerland’s Invisible Minarets " by Peter Stamm
- However bellicose the political face of Islam often appears, in everyday practice what I experienced was a religion of hospitality and tolerance.
- Islamic immigrants don’t live with us but beside us, just as French, German, Italian and Romansch-speaking Swiss live alongside each other without a great deal of animosity — or interaction.
- Muammar el-Qaddafi’s absurd proposal to abolish Switzerland.
Item 2: "‘Neo-Ottoman’ Turkey?" by Suat Kiniklioglu
- Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu - “we are indeed neo-Ottoman.” - Davutoğlu and all of us in the AK Party foreign policy community never use this term, because it is simply a misrepresentation of our position.
- Turkey’s neighborhood policy is devised to reintegrate Turkey into its immediate neighborhoods, including the Balkans, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean
- The symbol of the Byzantine and the Selçuk empires, which occupied roughly the same geography that Turkey does today, was a double-headed eagle looking both east and west
Item 3: "Dubai is Still a Beacon of Success" by Hamida Ghafour
- It is simply that Dubai remains a beacon of hope, opportunity and stability in the midst of a strife-torn region and, as such, helps stem a descent into extremism among the young.
- For India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka cash transfers represent between 4.2 and 11.4 per cent of the country’s entire GDP
- The youth unemployment rate in the Middle East is 25 per cent, twice the global average
- In The Times of London’s ranking of top 200 universities, not a single institution in a Muslim-majority country made the grade
- The fact that 79 per cent of university students in the Emirates are women sends a powerful signal
- However bellicose the political face of Islam often appears, in everyday practice what I experienced was a religion of hospitality and tolerance.
- Islamic immigrants don’t live with us but beside us, just as French, German, Italian and Romansch-speaking Swiss live alongside each other without a great deal of animosity — or interaction.
- Muammar el-Qaddafi’s absurd proposal to abolish Switzerland.
Item 2: "‘Neo-Ottoman’ Turkey?" by Suat Kiniklioglu
- Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu - “we are indeed neo-Ottoman.” - Davutoğlu and all of us in the AK Party foreign policy community never use this term, because it is simply a misrepresentation of our position.
- Turkey’s neighborhood policy is devised to reintegrate Turkey into its immediate neighborhoods, including the Balkans, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean
- The symbol of the Byzantine and the Selçuk empires, which occupied roughly the same geography that Turkey does today, was a double-headed eagle looking both east and west
Item 3: "Dubai is Still a Beacon of Success" by Hamida Ghafour
- It is simply that Dubai remains a beacon of hope, opportunity and stability in the midst of a strife-torn region and, as such, helps stem a descent into extremism among the young.
- For India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka cash transfers represent between 4.2 and 11.4 per cent of the country’s entire GDP
- The youth unemployment rate in the Middle East is 25 per cent, twice the global average
- In The Times of London’s ranking of top 200 universities, not a single institution in a Muslim-majority country made the grade
- The fact that 79 per cent of university students in the Emirates are women sends a powerful signal
24 October 2009
Twenty Fourth October Two Thousand Nine
Item 1: "Speech on Renewable Energy Policy " by Barack Obama
- energy research being conducted at MIT Energy Institute: windows that generate electricity by directing light to solar cells; light-weight, high-power batteries that aren't built, but are grown; engineering viruses to create batteries; more efficient lighting systems that rely on nanotechnology; innovative engineering that will make it possible for offshore wind power plants to deliver electricity even when the air is still.
- alternative energy market estimated at more than $2 trillion over the next two decades
- energy research being conducted at MIT Energy Institute: windows that generate electricity by directing light to solar cells; light-weight, high-power batteries that aren't built, but are grown; engineering viruses to create batteries; more efficient lighting systems that rely on nanotechnology; innovative engineering that will make it possible for offshore wind power plants to deliver electricity even when the air is still.
- alternative energy market estimated at more than $2 trillion over the next two decades
18 October 2009
Eighteenth October Two Thousand Nine
Item 1: "A Fair Plan for Honduras" by James A. Baker III
- free elections supported by the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration, and by both sides of our polity, helped end a destructive civil conflict in Nicaragua
- The solution? Stop looking backward. Forget about who might be most at fault. Look forward.
- Non-interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign country is a cardinal principle of the U.N. Charter
- As part of a negotiated settlement, all sides should agree that there will be no criminal charges filed against Zelaya or against those who may have illegally deported him
Item 2: "Pakistan, the Privatised State" by Faisal Devji
- religious forms of protest and even militancy were widely held to pose only a local and certainly not an existential threat for Pakistan
- Controlled by the army, the state has no independent existence - The army in its turn is a corporation
- Pakistan's army is not a national institution, being drawn mostly from a few districts in the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province
Item 3: "Feminism's Freedom Fighter" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- I refuse to (distinguish between mainstream and radical Islam)because one gives birth to the other. You are born into mainstream Islam. You are taught: Do not question the prophet; everything in the Koran is true. And then the radicals come and they expand on that, they build on that. So it is up to so-called mainstream Islam to tackle the radical element. [Mainstream Muslims] have to question the infallibility of the prophet Muhammad. They have to quit teaching children and young people that everything in the Koran is true and has to be taken seriously.
- The United States is not a welfare state. American Muslims have to have a job. European [nations] are welfare states so you have a lot of poor people who depend on the state for their survival. That makes it very attractive for radicals.
- Did God create man, or did man create God? I belong to the group who say man created God.
Item 4: "The End of RI’s Democracy or a Rebirth of Pluralism?" by Ahmad Junaidi
- coalition between Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party and Megawati Soekarnoputri’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Golkar would kill the country’s young democracy
- endorsement of the anti-pornography law and sharia-inspired bylaws in regions, including the recent stoning bylaw for adulterers in Aceh, highlighted the government’s failure to maintain pluralism
- burning and closing down of churches and mosques belonging to the Ahmadiyah Islamic sect are evidence of the failure of the state to protect its minorities
- sharia-inspired laws were suggested mostly by lawmakers from Golkar, not the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS)
Item 5: "World Without Hunger" by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- "food security" -- empowering the world's farmers to sow and harvest plentiful crops, effectively care for livestock or catch fish
- Since 2007, there have been riots over food in more than 60 countries
- Farming is the only or primary source of income for more than three-quarters of the world's poor
- food security initiative will be guided by five principles:
i. no one-size-fits-all model for agriculture
ii. address the underlying causes of hunger by investing in everything from better seeds to risk-sharing programmes to protect small farmers
iii. no one entity can eradicate hunger on its own
iv. multilateral institutions have the reach and resources that extend beyond any one country
v. long-term commitment and accountability - to prove it, we will invest in monitoring and evaluation tools
Item 6: "Bullish in China Shop" by N.D. Batra
- China is using its growing trade power to enhance its global influence
- In 2008, its foreign trade volume exceeded $2.56 trillion 70 times more than what it was 10 years ago
- China has now become the world's largest exporter, beating Germany
- it has been establishing listening posts, bunkering facilities at friendly ports and in some cases developing altogether new harbours to protect ocean routes and sea lanes
- China makes resource-rich countries offers so attractive that they just cannot refuse - long-term trade and development opportunities bundled in benign aid packages
- Diplomacy is the art of persuasion by all available means
Item 7: "No More Hot Air in Copenhagen" by Bjorn Lomborg
- immediate promises of carbon cuts do not work
- Copenhagen Consensus Centre commissioned research from top climate economists - expensive, global carbon taxes would be the worst option - focusing investment on research into climate engineering as a short-term response, and on non-carbon-based energy as a longer-term response
- marine cloud-whitening technology - Boats would spray seawater droplets into clouds above the oceans to make them reflect more sunlight back into space, reducing warming - a total of about $9 billion spent implementing marine cloud-whitening technology might be able to offset this entire century's global warming
Item 8: "This Massive INvasion will Benefit the Continent" by Ian Birrell
- China's scramble for Africa, arguably the most important geo-political change since the fall of the Berlin wall
- the 53 nations in Africa comprise more than a quarter of the UN General Assembly
- Cheap Chinese goods are stifling African markets - And many Chinese companies win contracts by paying low wages, bribing officials and ignoring environmental concerns. Some deals insist that the majority of work goes to Chinese companies or that a majority of the workforce is Chinese, hindering development and angering residents who see much-needed jobs go to immigrants
- Resentment is growing to such an extent in some areas that politicians have campaigned on anti-Chinese sentiment.
- "I would prefer the Western world to invest in Africa rather than handing out development aid." - Paul Kagame
Item 9: "The Dark Side of India's Medical Tourism" by Jason Overdorf
- 2 million children under 5 die every year in India - one every 15 seconds - the highest number anywhere in the world
- medical tourism has a dark side - encouraged wealthy and influential Indians to forget about the crumbling and overburdened government-run health system, because they now believe they have access to the world's best care from private hospitals
- Forty percent of the primary health centers are understaffed; India has fewer than one hospital bed per 1,000 people, compared with a world average of nearly four
Item 10: "Obama's Nuclear Agenda" by Joseph Nye
- Iranian officials met in Geneva with representatives of the permanent members of the UN Security Council (plus Germany) and agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the hitherto secret plant
- United States and Russia, whose stockpiles contain more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, are negotiating in Geneva to produce a new strategic arms reduction treaty to replace their START I arms-control agreement
- When the NPT entered into force in 1970, it was intended to limit the number of nuclear-weapons states to five (the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China) - three states that never signed the treaty have acquired nuclear weapons (India, Israel, and Pakistan)
Item 11: "Asia's Regionalism Block" by Michael Auslin
- Efforts at integration often fail because they overlook the role of the U.S.
- Mr. Hatoyama has called for an "Asean Plus Six" approach that would include the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian nations as well as Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand
- region's nations must take care not to forget that the U.S. system of alliances undergirds stability in Asia and is central to lubricating political engagement among countries large and small
- free elections supported by the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration, and by both sides of our polity, helped end a destructive civil conflict in Nicaragua
- The solution? Stop looking backward. Forget about who might be most at fault. Look forward.
- Non-interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign country is a cardinal principle of the U.N. Charter
- As part of a negotiated settlement, all sides should agree that there will be no criminal charges filed against Zelaya or against those who may have illegally deported him
Item 2: "Pakistan, the Privatised State" by Faisal Devji
- religious forms of protest and even militancy were widely held to pose only a local and certainly not an existential threat for Pakistan
- Controlled by the army, the state has no independent existence - The army in its turn is a corporation
- Pakistan's army is not a national institution, being drawn mostly from a few districts in the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province
Item 3: "Feminism's Freedom Fighter" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- I refuse to (distinguish between mainstream and radical Islam)because one gives birth to the other. You are born into mainstream Islam. You are taught: Do not question the prophet; everything in the Koran is true. And then the radicals come and they expand on that, they build on that. So it is up to so-called mainstream Islam to tackle the radical element. [Mainstream Muslims] have to question the infallibility of the prophet Muhammad. They have to quit teaching children and young people that everything in the Koran is true and has to be taken seriously.
- The United States is not a welfare state. American Muslims have to have a job. European [nations] are welfare states so you have a lot of poor people who depend on the state for their survival. That makes it very attractive for radicals.
- Did God create man, or did man create God? I belong to the group who say man created God.
Item 4: "The End of RI’s Democracy or a Rebirth of Pluralism?" by Ahmad Junaidi
- coalition between Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party and Megawati Soekarnoputri’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Golkar would kill the country’s young democracy
- endorsement of the anti-pornography law and sharia-inspired bylaws in regions, including the recent stoning bylaw for adulterers in Aceh, highlighted the government’s failure to maintain pluralism
- burning and closing down of churches and mosques belonging to the Ahmadiyah Islamic sect are evidence of the failure of the state to protect its minorities
- sharia-inspired laws were suggested mostly by lawmakers from Golkar, not the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS)
Item 5: "World Without Hunger" by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- "food security" -- empowering the world's farmers to sow and harvest plentiful crops, effectively care for livestock or catch fish
- Since 2007, there have been riots over food in more than 60 countries
- Farming is the only or primary source of income for more than three-quarters of the world's poor
- food security initiative will be guided by five principles:
i. no one-size-fits-all model for agriculture
ii. address the underlying causes of hunger by investing in everything from better seeds to risk-sharing programmes to protect small farmers
iii. no one entity can eradicate hunger on its own
iv. multilateral institutions have the reach and resources that extend beyond any one country
v. long-term commitment and accountability - to prove it, we will invest in monitoring and evaluation tools
Item 6: "Bullish in China Shop" by N.D. Batra
- China is using its growing trade power to enhance its global influence
- In 2008, its foreign trade volume exceeded $2.56 trillion 70 times more than what it was 10 years ago
- China has now become the world's largest exporter, beating Germany
- it has been establishing listening posts, bunkering facilities at friendly ports and in some cases developing altogether new harbours to protect ocean routes and sea lanes
- China makes resource-rich countries offers so attractive that they just cannot refuse - long-term trade and development opportunities bundled in benign aid packages
- Diplomacy is the art of persuasion by all available means
Item 7: "No More Hot Air in Copenhagen" by Bjorn Lomborg
- immediate promises of carbon cuts do not work
- Copenhagen Consensus Centre commissioned research from top climate economists - expensive, global carbon taxes would be the worst option - focusing investment on research into climate engineering as a short-term response, and on non-carbon-based energy as a longer-term response
- marine cloud-whitening technology - Boats would spray seawater droplets into clouds above the oceans to make them reflect more sunlight back into space, reducing warming - a total of about $9 billion spent implementing marine cloud-whitening technology might be able to offset this entire century's global warming
Item 8: "This Massive INvasion will Benefit the Continent" by Ian Birrell
- China's scramble for Africa, arguably the most important geo-political change since the fall of the Berlin wall
- the 53 nations in Africa comprise more than a quarter of the UN General Assembly
- Cheap Chinese goods are stifling African markets - And many Chinese companies win contracts by paying low wages, bribing officials and ignoring environmental concerns. Some deals insist that the majority of work goes to Chinese companies or that a majority of the workforce is Chinese, hindering development and angering residents who see much-needed jobs go to immigrants
- Resentment is growing to such an extent in some areas that politicians have campaigned on anti-Chinese sentiment.
- "I would prefer the Western world to invest in Africa rather than handing out development aid." - Paul Kagame
Item 9: "The Dark Side of India's Medical Tourism" by Jason Overdorf
- 2 million children under 5 die every year in India - one every 15 seconds - the highest number anywhere in the world
- medical tourism has a dark side - encouraged wealthy and influential Indians to forget about the crumbling and overburdened government-run health system, because they now believe they have access to the world's best care from private hospitals
- Forty percent of the primary health centers are understaffed; India has fewer than one hospital bed per 1,000 people, compared with a world average of nearly four
Item 10: "Obama's Nuclear Agenda" by Joseph Nye
- Iranian officials met in Geneva with representatives of the permanent members of the UN Security Council (plus Germany) and agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the hitherto secret plant
- United States and Russia, whose stockpiles contain more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, are negotiating in Geneva to produce a new strategic arms reduction treaty to replace their START I arms-control agreement
- When the NPT entered into force in 1970, it was intended to limit the number of nuclear-weapons states to five (the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China) - three states that never signed the treaty have acquired nuclear weapons (India, Israel, and Pakistan)
Item 11: "Asia's Regionalism Block" by Michael Auslin
- Efforts at integration often fail because they overlook the role of the U.S.
- Mr. Hatoyama has called for an "Asean Plus Six" approach that would include the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian nations as well as Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand
- region's nations must take care not to forget that the U.S. system of alliances undergirds stability in Asia and is central to lubricating political engagement among countries large and small
31 August 2009
Thirty First August Two Thousand Nine
Item 1: "Australia's Liberals Need Foreign Policy Lesson" by Greg Sheridan
- How foreign affairs can be politically decisive:
i. opposition has to show it can be trusted with economic management and national security
ii. governments do sometimes make serious mistakes and an opposition can make them pay
iii. engages basic human and political values
Item 2: "Under the Influence: Finding a Voice for Foreign Aid" by Andrew Bast
- "Foreign aid is probably the most flexible tool -- it can act as both a carrot and a stick, and is a means of influencing events, solving specific problems, and projecting U.S. values."
- U.S. has a $30 billion foreign aid budget for 154 countries
- less than 6 percent of foreign aid is delivered to multilateral development projects, which include programs like the U.N. Development Program and UNICEF, the children's fund
- military aid, which has largely decreased since its peak in 1984 - power balances now tip due to much more than just increasing standing armies, weapons stockpiles, and the confidence of military capability
- How foreign affairs can be politically decisive:
i. opposition has to show it can be trusted with economic management and national security
ii. governments do sometimes make serious mistakes and an opposition can make them pay
iii. engages basic human and political values
Item 2: "Under the Influence: Finding a Voice for Foreign Aid" by Andrew Bast
- "Foreign aid is probably the most flexible tool -- it can act as both a carrot and a stick, and is a means of influencing events, solving specific problems, and projecting U.S. values."
- U.S. has a $30 billion foreign aid budget for 154 countries
- less than 6 percent of foreign aid is delivered to multilateral development projects, which include programs like the U.N. Development Program and UNICEF, the children's fund
- military aid, which has largely decreased since its peak in 1984 - power balances now tip due to much more than just increasing standing armies, weapons stockpiles, and the confidence of military capability
30 August 2009
Thirtieth August Two Thousand Nine
Item 1: "The Picture Awaits: The Birth of Modern Counterinsurgency" by Ann Marlowe
- Larrabee reserved the “Recommended” designation for the highly specialized 1956 volume Guerrilla Communism in Malaya, by Lucian Pye, a prolific Sinologist and advisor to President Kennedy.
- “We faced not a real army, but the population itself.” - Alexis de Tocqueville
- “The pirate is a plant which grows only on certain grounds. The most efficient method is to render the ground unsuitable to him. . . . There are no pirates in completely organized countries.” - General Francois-Jacques-Andres
- "Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy’s rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water the latter to the fish who inhabit it." - Mao Zedong
- Why did these wise men not apply its tenets in the war that was soon to engulf them? At the simplest level, the explanation is fairly straightforward: they chose not to.
- "One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the environment they live in . . . What fish are able to see bears a close analogy to that degree of awareness which all people have in relation to any new environment created by a new technology—just about zero." - McLuhan
Item 2: "Think Again: Realism" by Paul Wolfowitz
- In the words of one leading realist, the principal purpose of U.S. foreign policy should be "to manage relations between states" rather than "alter the nature of states."
- Whether the Iraq war was right or wrong, it was not about imposing democracy, and the decision to establish a representative government afterward was the most realistic option, compared with the alternatives of installing another dictator or prolonging the U.S. occupation
- Critics of realism, like myself, do not think that a businesslike management of the "relations between states" should lead us to neglect issues regarding the "nature of states."
- n the 1970s, the great controversy was over the policy of détente, which called for ignoring the inherent brutality of the Soviet regime in an effort to reach accommodation with it.
- Critics of détente, such as President Ronald Reagan and Sen. Henry Jackson, did not oppose negotiations with the Soviets. But they argued that negotiations needed to be on much stiffer terms and accompanied by pressure for internal change.
- Hans Morgenthau was among the first to put realism -- a philosophy that puts national interests ahead of moral concerns --at the heart of U.S. foreign policy
Item 3: "Just Because He Walks Like a Realist" by Stephen M. Walt
- Realists:
i. see international politics as an inherently competitive realm where states compete for advantage and where security is sometimes precarious - keep a keen eye on the balance of power
ii. other states will defend their interests vigorously, that successful diplomacy requires give-and-take, and that advancing U.S. interests sometimes requires us to do business with regimes whose values we find objectionable - nationalism is a powerful force and that most societies bristle, and ultimately rebel, when outsiders try to tell them how to run their own affairs
iii. not indifferent to moral concerns, including the virtues of democratic government and the value of basic human rights
- Larrabee reserved the “Recommended” designation for the highly specialized 1956 volume Guerrilla Communism in Malaya, by Lucian Pye, a prolific Sinologist and advisor to President Kennedy.
- “We faced not a real army, but the population itself.” - Alexis de Tocqueville
- “The pirate is a plant which grows only on certain grounds. The most efficient method is to render the ground unsuitable to him. . . . There are no pirates in completely organized countries.” - General Francois-Jacques-Andres
- "Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy’s rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water the latter to the fish who inhabit it." - Mao Zedong
- Why did these wise men not apply its tenets in the war that was soon to engulf them? At the simplest level, the explanation is fairly straightforward: they chose not to.
- "One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the environment they live in . . . What fish are able to see bears a close analogy to that degree of awareness which all people have in relation to any new environment created by a new technology—just about zero." - McLuhan
Item 2: "Think Again: Realism" by Paul Wolfowitz
- In the words of one leading realist, the principal purpose of U.S. foreign policy should be "to manage relations between states" rather than "alter the nature of states."
- Whether the Iraq war was right or wrong, it was not about imposing democracy, and the decision to establish a representative government afterward was the most realistic option, compared with the alternatives of installing another dictator or prolonging the U.S. occupation
- Critics of realism, like myself, do not think that a businesslike management of the "relations between states" should lead us to neglect issues regarding the "nature of states."
- n the 1970s, the great controversy was over the policy of détente, which called for ignoring the inherent brutality of the Soviet regime in an effort to reach accommodation with it.
- Critics of détente, such as President Ronald Reagan and Sen. Henry Jackson, did not oppose negotiations with the Soviets. But they argued that negotiations needed to be on much stiffer terms and accompanied by pressure for internal change.
- Hans Morgenthau was among the first to put realism -- a philosophy that puts national interests ahead of moral concerns --at the heart of U.S. foreign policy
Item 3: "Just Because He Walks Like a Realist" by Stephen M. Walt
- Realists:
i. see international politics as an inherently competitive realm where states compete for advantage and where security is sometimes precarious - keep a keen eye on the balance of power
ii. other states will defend their interests vigorously, that successful diplomacy requires give-and-take, and that advancing U.S. interests sometimes requires us to do business with regimes whose values we find objectionable - nationalism is a powerful force and that most societies bristle, and ultimately rebel, when outsiders try to tell them how to run their own affairs
iii. not indifferent to moral concerns, including the virtues of democratic government and the value of basic human rights
27 August 2009
Twenty Seventh August Two Thousand Nine
Item 1: "DNA Swap Could Cure Inherited Diseases" by Mark Henderson
- DNA can be transplanted safely from one egg to another to correct genetic defects that damage health
- Such children would be the first produced by germline genetic engineering, in which genes introduced by artificial means would be passed to successive generations
- DNA can be transplanted safely from one egg to another to correct genetic defects that damage health
- Such children would be the first produced by germline genetic engineering, in which genes introduced by artificial means would be passed to successive generations
22 August 2009
Twenty Second August Two Thousand Nine
Item 1: "Time to Boycott Israel" by Neve Gordon
- The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state
- Israel - 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside
- Two moral ways of abolishing an arpatheid state:
i. One-state solution - offering citizenship to all Palestinians and thus establishing a binational democracy within the entire area controlled by Israel - demise of Israel as a Jewish state
ii. Two-state solution - which entails Israel's withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, division of Jerusalem and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return
- the only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure
Item 2: "Still Going Nowhere Man" by Jacob Heilburn
- Deputy U.N. Ambassador Mona Juul called Ban -- the South Korean foreign minister elected secretary-general in 2007 -- "spineless," "charmless," and, most importantly, "incapable" of setting an agenda
- visited Sri Lanka - failed to secure any relief for the Tamil refugees who the government had herded into camps by waging an indiscriminate bombing campaign
- in Burma - offered the ruling military junta political cover by meeting with it - failing to win any concessions on human rights generally or in the case of Aung San Suu Kyi in particular
Item 3: "OPEC's Greed will Herald the End of the Oil Age" by Bill Emmott
- The world is not running out of oil - What it is short of has been investment in oilfields and production - the reason for that can be found in a different four-letter word: Opec
- oil producers’ cartel has deliberately cut production by nearly five million barrels a day - more than the drop in global demand, to keep prices high
- Opec members account for only about 35 per cent of world supply, but Russia, a non-member, accounts for a further 11.5 per cent and is co-operating with their efforts
- US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, swallowed her human rights scruples and paid homage to the Angolans on her tour of Africa, lest they become overly friendly with China instead
Item 4: "The Default Power" by Josef Joffe
- China is a place where the rest of the world essentially rents workers and workspace at deflated prices
- Chinese economy is extremely dependent on exports — they amount to around two-fifths of G.D.P.
- What puts America in a league of its own?:
i. world’s most sophisticated military panoply
ii. U.S. economy to be worth $14.3 trillion, three times as much as the second-biggest economy, Japan’s
iii. per capita income - $47,000 per inhabitant
iv. unmatched research and higher-education establishment
- United States is the default power because there is nobody else with the requisite power and purpose - does what others cannot or will not do
Item 5: "NATO and World Security" by Zbigniew Brzezinski
- NATO has institutionalized three monumental transformations in world affairs:
i. end of the centuries-long “civil war” within the West for trans-oceanic and European supremacy
ii. United States’s post–World War II commitment to the defense of Europe against Soviet domination
iii. eaceful termination of the Cold War, which created the preconditions for a larger democratic European Union
- alliance also needs to define for itself a geopolitically relevant long-term strategic goal for its relationship with the Russian Federation
- global NATO would dilute the centrality of the U.S.-European connection, and none of the rising powers would be likely to accept membership in a globally expanded NATO
- ideologically defined global alliance of democracies would face serious difficulties in determining whom to exclude and in striking a reasonable balance between its doctrinal and strategic purposes
- The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state
- Israel - 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside
- Two moral ways of abolishing an arpatheid state:
i. One-state solution - offering citizenship to all Palestinians and thus establishing a binational democracy within the entire area controlled by Israel - demise of Israel as a Jewish state
ii. Two-state solution - which entails Israel's withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, division of Jerusalem and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return
- the only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure
Item 2: "Still Going Nowhere Man" by Jacob Heilburn
- Deputy U.N. Ambassador Mona Juul called Ban -- the South Korean foreign minister elected secretary-general in 2007 -- "spineless," "charmless," and, most importantly, "incapable" of setting an agenda
- visited Sri Lanka - failed to secure any relief for the Tamil refugees who the government had herded into camps by waging an indiscriminate bombing campaign
- in Burma - offered the ruling military junta political cover by meeting with it - failing to win any concessions on human rights generally or in the case of Aung San Suu Kyi in particular
Item 3: "OPEC's Greed will Herald the End of the Oil Age" by Bill Emmott
- The world is not running out of oil - What it is short of has been investment in oilfields and production - the reason for that can be found in a different four-letter word: Opec
- oil producers’ cartel has deliberately cut production by nearly five million barrels a day - more than the drop in global demand, to keep prices high
- Opec members account for only about 35 per cent of world supply, but Russia, a non-member, accounts for a further 11.5 per cent and is co-operating with their efforts
- US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, swallowed her human rights scruples and paid homage to the Angolans on her tour of Africa, lest they become overly friendly with China instead
Item 4: "The Default Power" by Josef Joffe
- China is a place where the rest of the world essentially rents workers and workspace at deflated prices
- Chinese economy is extremely dependent on exports — they amount to around two-fifths of G.D.P.
- What puts America in a league of its own?:
i. world’s most sophisticated military panoply
ii. U.S. economy to be worth $14.3 trillion, three times as much as the second-biggest economy, Japan’s
iii. per capita income - $47,000 per inhabitant
iv. unmatched research and higher-education establishment
- United States is the default power because there is nobody else with the requisite power and purpose - does what others cannot or will not do
Item 5: "NATO and World Security" by Zbigniew Brzezinski
- NATO has institutionalized three monumental transformations in world affairs:
i. end of the centuries-long “civil war” within the West for trans-oceanic and European supremacy
ii. United States’s post–World War II commitment to the defense of Europe against Soviet domination
iii. eaceful termination of the Cold War, which created the preconditions for a larger democratic European Union
- alliance also needs to define for itself a geopolitically relevant long-term strategic goal for its relationship with the Russian Federation
- global NATO would dilute the centrality of the U.S.-European connection, and none of the rising powers would be likely to accept membership in a globally expanded NATO
- ideologically defined global alliance of democracies would face serious difficulties in determining whom to exclude and in striking a reasonable balance between its doctrinal and strategic purposes
26 July 2009
Twenty Sixth July Two Thousand Nine
Item 1: "Reset Reviewed" by Mikhail Gorbachev
- agreement on a framework for a future legally binding treaty on reducing strategic offensive arms - reaffirmation of the interrelationship between these weapons and missile defense
- resume military-to-military contacts between Russia and the United States - rebuilding mutual trust
- danger that the new relationship could be mired in inertia and routine
Item 2: "Will the US- Japan Alliance Survive" by Joseph Nye
- with the Japanese experiencing a period of domestic political uncertainty, and North Korea's nuclear tests and missile launches increasing their anxiety, will Japan reverse its long-standing decision not to seek a national nuclear-deterrent capability?
- 1996 - the Clinton-Hashimoto Declaration stated that the US-Japan security alliance was the foundation for stability that would allow growing prosperity in post-Cold War East Asia
- the alliance faces three major challenges:
i. North Korea - violated their agreements, knowing that China, the country with the greatest potential leverage, is most concerned about regime collapse in North Korea, and thus the threat of chaos on its borders - Japanese fear that the credibility of American extended deterrence will be weakened if the US decreases its nuclear forces to parity with China - a mistake, however, to believe that extended deterrence depends on parity in numbers of nuclear weapons - best guarantee of American extended deterrence over Japan remains the presence of nearly 50,000 American troops
ii. Dramatic rise of China's economy - Japan afraid of being passed-over - little prospect of such a reversal because China poses a potential threat, whereas Japan does not, and that the US shares democratic values with Japan, and China is not a democracy
iii. New set of transnational challenges to vital interests, such as pandemics, terrorism, and human outflows from failed states
Item 3: "Africa's New Path" by Fareed Zakaria
- In 2007, before the economic crisis hit, 37 countries on the continent were growing at 4 percent a year or more, and 34 countries there are classified by Freedom House as "free" or "partly free."
- OECD reports that, in a first, Africa gets more money from investors than from foreign aid
- Paul Kagamen paints an intriguing picture of what a more hopeful African future might look like—driven by capitalism, pride, indigenous traditions, and a prickly nationalism that insists on finding its own path to success
Item 4: "The Ten Commandments for Ambitious Policy Wonks" by Stephen Walt
i. Thou Shalt Not Question U.S. Membership in NATO
ii. Thou Shalt Oppose the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
iii. Thou Shalt Not Question the Need for a Nuclear Deterrent
iv. Thou Shalt Not Question the Desirability of American Primacy
v. Thou Shalt Not Call For an Accommodation with Cuba (or North Korea, or Iran, or….)
vi. Thou Shalt Not Criticize the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, IISS, Brookings, or other major foreign policy institution
vii. Thou Shalt Not Take the Armed Forces’ Name in Vain
viii. Thou Shalt Acknowledge the Importance of Human Rights, Democracy, and Other American “Values”
ix. Thou Shalt Not Question the Right of the United States to Intervene in Other Countries
x. Thou Shalt Not Favor Negotiating with “Terrorists”
Item 5: "It's All in the Low Enriched Uranium" by Mohamed ElBaradei
- The 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, is in disarray:
i. The five main nuclear-weapon states have not taken seriously their NPT obligation to work for nuclear disarmament
ii. Nothing to stop countries that sign the NPT from simply walking out after declaring that “extraordinary events” have jeopardized their supreme interests
iii. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is supposed to police the non-proliferation system, is shamefully underfunded
iv. Export controls have failed to prevent the spread of sensitive nuclear technology
v. The international community, spearheaded by the United Nations Security Council, has more often than not been paralyzed in the face of challenges to international security
- To end proliferation of nuclear weapons:
i. Bringing into force the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
ii. Negotiating a verifiable treaty to end production of fissile material for use in weapons
iii. Radically improving the physical security of nuclear and radioactive materials (which is vital to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists)
iv. Strengthening the IAEA
v. Establishing an IAEA bank of low-enriched uranium to guarantee supplies to countries that need nuclear fuel for their power reactors
Item 6: "Why the World Needs a United Nations Army" by Gideon Rachman
- Ronald Reagan once asked Mikhail Gorbachev to imagine that there was “suddenly a threat to this world from some other species, from another planet”. The late American president speculated that this would ensure “we would forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries”
- An extraordinary international flotilla is patrolling the waters off Somalia, in an effort to stop attacks on the 30,000 ships that pass through the Gulf of Aden every year - US, China, Iran and Japan are policing this crucial international waterway
- Growing demand for international peacekeeping forces means that it is time finally to bite the bullet and give the UN a permanent, standing military capacity
- Such a force need not be a conventional army, with its own barracks and personnel - It would be better to get countries to give the UN first call on a certain number of their troops, for a specific period of time
- Permanent UN capability would mean that the UN could intervene much more quickly - usually takes between three months and a year to deploy a UN force
- Ronald Reagan once spoke approvingly of the idea of “a standing UN force – an army of conscience – that is fully equipped and prepared to carve out human sanctuaries through force”
Item 7: "Asia's Weakness in the Global Economy" by Andrew Sheng
- Japan export-led manufacturing strategy was successfully imitated throughout East Asia and in the famous flying geese formation, the four Dragon economies (Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore) followed by four Tigers (Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia) rapidly formed the global supply chain
- South Asia went a slightly different path - Heavily influenced by Fabian socialist philosophy, the region adopted a protected import-substitution strategy, so that its manufacturing prowess could not compete with East Asia - But India was able to find a market niche in IT services, exploiting its large human talent in science and mathematics in knowledge-based work
- Asian corporate and economic strategy had a fundamental flaw - financial sectors were not well developed - led to the Asian crisis and also the global imbalance
- Global supply chain is a network and the Asian and current financial crises are in effect network crises
- Metcalfe's Law states that the value of the network is exponentially related to the number of users - in search of scale, Asian firms have expanded at almost any cost, very often through high leverage, incurring huge risks
- Value chains - three key parts — the manufacturing, the distribution and the trading side - as their production become commoditized, the value chain or profit lies more in the trading and distribution side
- Asian companies have not yet established world-class trading companies - reason is that the trading side is the most knowledge intensive and individualistic of business - no Asian houses have successfully established investment banks or made consistently large profits in proprietary trading on a global scale
Item 8: "Asia Keeps the West's Betrayed Faith" by Kishore Mahbubani and William Weld
- Asian economies only began to perform well when they accepted and implemented Adam Smith’s theories of free-market economics
- Asians have retained their faith in western theories on economics, but have progressively lost faith in western practices of economic management
- Amartya Sen - the invisible hand of the marketplace has to be balanced by an emphasis on the visible hand of good governance
- Asia-Pacific region is exploding with new FTAs - largest in the world will be the one between the 1.2bn people of China and the 500m of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - has already been signed and ratified, and comes into force in 2010 - recent study by the Asian Development Bank notes that there are about 20 cross-regional FTAs at different stages of implementation, which have significantly improved economic welfare
- The current phase of globalisation was generated by the west, to be sure, but now we may witness the Asianisation of globalisation
- agreement on a framework for a future legally binding treaty on reducing strategic offensive arms - reaffirmation of the interrelationship between these weapons and missile defense
- resume military-to-military contacts between Russia and the United States - rebuilding mutual trust
- danger that the new relationship could be mired in inertia and routine
Item 2: "Will the US- Japan Alliance Survive" by Joseph Nye
- with the Japanese experiencing a period of domestic political uncertainty, and North Korea's nuclear tests and missile launches increasing their anxiety, will Japan reverse its long-standing decision not to seek a national nuclear-deterrent capability?
- 1996 - the Clinton-Hashimoto Declaration stated that the US-Japan security alliance was the foundation for stability that would allow growing prosperity in post-Cold War East Asia
- the alliance faces three major challenges:
i. North Korea - violated their agreements, knowing that China, the country with the greatest potential leverage, is most concerned about regime collapse in North Korea, and thus the threat of chaos on its borders - Japanese fear that the credibility of American extended deterrence will be weakened if the US decreases its nuclear forces to parity with China - a mistake, however, to believe that extended deterrence depends on parity in numbers of nuclear weapons - best guarantee of American extended deterrence over Japan remains the presence of nearly 50,000 American troops
ii. Dramatic rise of China's economy - Japan afraid of being passed-over - little prospect of such a reversal because China poses a potential threat, whereas Japan does not, and that the US shares democratic values with Japan, and China is not a democracy
iii. New set of transnational challenges to vital interests, such as pandemics, terrorism, and human outflows from failed states
Item 3: "Africa's New Path" by Fareed Zakaria
- In 2007, before the economic crisis hit, 37 countries on the continent were growing at 4 percent a year or more, and 34 countries there are classified by Freedom House as "free" or "partly free."
- OECD reports that, in a first, Africa gets more money from investors than from foreign aid
- Paul Kagamen paints an intriguing picture of what a more hopeful African future might look like—driven by capitalism, pride, indigenous traditions, and a prickly nationalism that insists on finding its own path to success
Item 4: "The Ten Commandments for Ambitious Policy Wonks" by Stephen Walt
i. Thou Shalt Not Question U.S. Membership in NATO
ii. Thou Shalt Oppose the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
iii. Thou Shalt Not Question the Need for a Nuclear Deterrent
iv. Thou Shalt Not Question the Desirability of American Primacy
v. Thou Shalt Not Call For an Accommodation with Cuba (or North Korea, or Iran, or….)
vi. Thou Shalt Not Criticize the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, IISS, Brookings, or other major foreign policy institution
vii. Thou Shalt Not Take the Armed Forces’ Name in Vain
viii. Thou Shalt Acknowledge the Importance of Human Rights, Democracy, and Other American “Values”
ix. Thou Shalt Not Question the Right of the United States to Intervene in Other Countries
x. Thou Shalt Not Favor Negotiating with “Terrorists”
Item 5: "It's All in the Low Enriched Uranium" by Mohamed ElBaradei
- The 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, is in disarray:
i. The five main nuclear-weapon states have not taken seriously their NPT obligation to work for nuclear disarmament
ii. Nothing to stop countries that sign the NPT from simply walking out after declaring that “extraordinary events” have jeopardized their supreme interests
iii. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is supposed to police the non-proliferation system, is shamefully underfunded
iv. Export controls have failed to prevent the spread of sensitive nuclear technology
v. The international community, spearheaded by the United Nations Security Council, has more often than not been paralyzed in the face of challenges to international security
- To end proliferation of nuclear weapons:
i. Bringing into force the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
ii. Negotiating a verifiable treaty to end production of fissile material for use in weapons
iii. Radically improving the physical security of nuclear and radioactive materials (which is vital to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists)
iv. Strengthening the IAEA
v. Establishing an IAEA bank of low-enriched uranium to guarantee supplies to countries that need nuclear fuel for their power reactors
Item 6: "Why the World Needs a United Nations Army" by Gideon Rachman
- Ronald Reagan once asked Mikhail Gorbachev to imagine that there was “suddenly a threat to this world from some other species, from another planet”. The late American president speculated that this would ensure “we would forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries”
- An extraordinary international flotilla is patrolling the waters off Somalia, in an effort to stop attacks on the 30,000 ships that pass through the Gulf of Aden every year - US, China, Iran and Japan are policing this crucial international waterway
- Growing demand for international peacekeeping forces means that it is time finally to bite the bullet and give the UN a permanent, standing military capacity
- Such a force need not be a conventional army, with its own barracks and personnel - It would be better to get countries to give the UN first call on a certain number of their troops, for a specific period of time
- Permanent UN capability would mean that the UN could intervene much more quickly - usually takes between three months and a year to deploy a UN force
- Ronald Reagan once spoke approvingly of the idea of “a standing UN force – an army of conscience – that is fully equipped and prepared to carve out human sanctuaries through force”
Item 7: "Asia's Weakness in the Global Economy" by Andrew Sheng
- Japan export-led manufacturing strategy was successfully imitated throughout East Asia and in the famous flying geese formation, the four Dragon economies (Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore) followed by four Tigers (Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia) rapidly formed the global supply chain
- South Asia went a slightly different path - Heavily influenced by Fabian socialist philosophy, the region adopted a protected import-substitution strategy, so that its manufacturing prowess could not compete with East Asia - But India was able to find a market niche in IT services, exploiting its large human talent in science and mathematics in knowledge-based work
- Asian corporate and economic strategy had a fundamental flaw - financial sectors were not well developed - led to the Asian crisis and also the global imbalance
- Global supply chain is a network and the Asian and current financial crises are in effect network crises
- Metcalfe's Law states that the value of the network is exponentially related to the number of users - in search of scale, Asian firms have expanded at almost any cost, very often through high leverage, incurring huge risks
- Value chains - three key parts — the manufacturing, the distribution and the trading side - as their production become commoditized, the value chain or profit lies more in the trading and distribution side
- Asian companies have not yet established world-class trading companies - reason is that the trading side is the most knowledge intensive and individualistic of business - no Asian houses have successfully established investment banks or made consistently large profits in proprietary trading on a global scale
Item 8: "Asia Keeps the West's Betrayed Faith" by Kishore Mahbubani and William Weld
- Asian economies only began to perform well when they accepted and implemented Adam Smith’s theories of free-market economics
- Asians have retained their faith in western theories on economics, but have progressively lost faith in western practices of economic management
- Amartya Sen - the invisible hand of the marketplace has to be balanced by an emphasis on the visible hand of good governance
- Asia-Pacific region is exploding with new FTAs - largest in the world will be the one between the 1.2bn people of China and the 500m of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - has already been signed and ratified, and comes into force in 2010 - recent study by the Asian Development Bank notes that there are about 20 cross-regional FTAs at different stages of implementation, which have significantly improved economic welfare
- The current phase of globalisation was generated by the west, to be sure, but now we may witness the Asianisation of globalisation
08 July 2009
Eighth July Two Thousand Nine
Item 1: "Robert S. McNamara, Architect of a Futile War, Dies at 93" by Tim Weiner
- He was 93
- the most influential defense secretary of the 20th century
- Served Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968
- Half a million American soldiers went to war on his watch. More than 16,000 died; 42,000 more would fall in the seven years to come
- He had spent decades thinking through the lessons of the Vietnam war - The greatest of these was to know one’s enemy — and to “empathize with him... We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes,” as Mr. McNamara explained
- “What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?”
- McNamara's idea — a secret deal in which Kennedy offered to withdraw his missiles in Turkey if Khrushchev removed his warheads from Cuba — resolved the Cuban missile crisis
- Congress authorized the Vietnam war after Johnson contended that American warships had been attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 4, 1964 - The attack never happened
- his often aloof and occasionally arrogant conduct left him with few allies inside the Pentagon when the war began to go wrong
- he listed reasons America lost the Vietnam War: a failure to understand the enemy, a failure to see the limits of high-tech weapons, a failure to tell the truth to the American people and a failure to grasp the nature of the threat of communism
- “War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend,” he concluded. “Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.”
Item 2: "Obama's Style Trumps Substance, Again" by Stephen M. Walt
- Russia diapproves of the US because - Bush administration abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, invaded Iraq in 2003, pressed forward with plans for missile defenses in Eastern Europe, cultivated close ties with several post-Soviet republics in Central Asia, and pushed NATO to accelerate membership for Georgia and Ukraine in 2008
- US disapproves Russia because - Russian President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule, his use of Russia’s oil and gas exports as an instrument of leverage, his none-too-transparent effort to re-establish a sphere of influence around Russia’s borders, and Moscow’s reluctance to help stop the Iranian nuclear programs
- Obama and his foreign-policy team understood that the United States could not continue to challenge Russia’s sensitivities on missile defense, NATO membership for Ukraine, etc., and still expect to get Russian help vis-à-vis Iran, North Korea, or Afghanistan
- Obama - “the arc of history shows us that governments which serve their own people survive and thrive; governments which serve only their own power do not.”
Item 3: "Oil Prices Need Government Supervision" by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy
- For two years the price of oil has been dangerously volatile, seemingly defying the accepted rules of economics. First it rose by more than $80 a barrel, then fell rapidly by more than $100 before doubling to its current level of around $70. In that time, however, there has been no serious interruption of supply.
- windfalls from brief price surges are offset by the consequent difficulties of planning national budgets and investment strategies
- International Energy Agency - cut its long-term forecast of oil consumption by almost a quarter
- We therefore call upon the International Organization of Securities Regulators to consider improving transparency and supervision of the oil futures markets in order to reduce damaging speculation
Item 4: "My Message to G8 Leaders" by Ban Ki-moon
- The last two years have witnessed a cascade of interconnected crises: financial panic, rising food and oil prices, climate shocks, a flu pandemic, and more
- G8 and other major emitters of greenhouse gases must intensify their work to seal a deal at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December
- G8 should take specific steps needed to honour long-standing but unfulfilled pledges of support to poor countries to help them achieve the millennium development goals
- G8 should focus urgent attention on the intensifying global hunger crisis - the world's hungry now number one billion
Item 5: "Seven Ways to Build a Cleaner Planet" by Tony Blair
- Breaking the Climate Deadlock project, a strategic partnership between my office and The Climate Group, shows how major reductions even by 2020 are achievable if we focus action on certain key technologies, deploy policies that have been proven to work, and invest now in developing those future technologies that will take time to mature
- 70 per cent of the reductions needed by 2020 can be achieved by investing in three areas: increasing energy efficiency, reducing deforestation, and use of lower-carbon energy sources
- Implementing just seven proven policies - renewable energy standards (say, feed-in tariffs or renewable portfolio standards); industry efficiency measures; building codes; vehicle efficiency standards; fuel carbon content standards; appliance standards, and policies for reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation - can deliver these reductions
Item 6: "Spiegel Interview with Henry Kissinger" by Der Spiegel
- The map of Europe which emerged from the Treaty of Versailles is, more or less, the map of Europe that exists today
- Any international system must have two key elements for it to work:
i. A certain equilibrium of power that makes overthrowing the system difficult and costly.
ii. A sense of legitimacy.
- The American view was that peace is the normal condition among states. To ensure lasting peace, an international system must be organized on the basis of domestic institutions everywhere, which reflect the will of the people, and that will of the people is considered always to be against war. Unfortunately, there is no historic evidence that this is true.
- Before World War I, Germany faced three major countries on its borders: Russia, France, and Britain. After Versailles, Germany faced a collection of smaller states on its eastern borders, against each of which it had a huge grievance but none of which was capable of resisting Germany alone
- Cynics treat values as equivalent and instrumental. Statesmen base practical decisions on moral convictions.
- The outcome can only be a two-state solution, and there seems to be substantial agreement on the borders of such a state
- I do not see any conflicts between such major countries, China, Russia, India, and the U.S., which will justify a military solution
- The relationship of China with the rest of the world is a lot more important in historic terms
- He was 93
- the most influential defense secretary of the 20th century
- Served Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968
- Half a million American soldiers went to war on his watch. More than 16,000 died; 42,000 more would fall in the seven years to come
- He had spent decades thinking through the lessons of the Vietnam war - The greatest of these was to know one’s enemy — and to “empathize with him... We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes,” as Mr. McNamara explained
- “What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?”
- McNamara's idea — a secret deal in which Kennedy offered to withdraw his missiles in Turkey if Khrushchev removed his warheads from Cuba — resolved the Cuban missile crisis
- Congress authorized the Vietnam war after Johnson contended that American warships had been attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 4, 1964 - The attack never happened
- his often aloof and occasionally arrogant conduct left him with few allies inside the Pentagon when the war began to go wrong
- he listed reasons America lost the Vietnam War: a failure to understand the enemy, a failure to see the limits of high-tech weapons, a failure to tell the truth to the American people and a failure to grasp the nature of the threat of communism
- “War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend,” he concluded. “Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.”
Item 2: "Obama's Style Trumps Substance, Again" by Stephen M. Walt
- Russia diapproves of the US because - Bush administration abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, invaded Iraq in 2003, pressed forward with plans for missile defenses in Eastern Europe, cultivated close ties with several post-Soviet republics in Central Asia, and pushed NATO to accelerate membership for Georgia and Ukraine in 2008
- US disapproves Russia because - Russian President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule, his use of Russia’s oil and gas exports as an instrument of leverage, his none-too-transparent effort to re-establish a sphere of influence around Russia’s borders, and Moscow’s reluctance to help stop the Iranian nuclear programs
- Obama and his foreign-policy team understood that the United States could not continue to challenge Russia’s sensitivities on missile defense, NATO membership for Ukraine, etc., and still expect to get Russian help vis-à-vis Iran, North Korea, or Afghanistan
- Obama - “the arc of history shows us that governments which serve their own people survive and thrive; governments which serve only their own power do not.”
Item 3: "Oil Prices Need Government Supervision" by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy
- For two years the price of oil has been dangerously volatile, seemingly defying the accepted rules of economics. First it rose by more than $80 a barrel, then fell rapidly by more than $100 before doubling to its current level of around $70. In that time, however, there has been no serious interruption of supply.
- windfalls from brief price surges are offset by the consequent difficulties of planning national budgets and investment strategies
- International Energy Agency - cut its long-term forecast of oil consumption by almost a quarter
- We therefore call upon the International Organization of Securities Regulators to consider improving transparency and supervision of the oil futures markets in order to reduce damaging speculation
Item 4: "My Message to G8 Leaders" by Ban Ki-moon
- The last two years have witnessed a cascade of interconnected crises: financial panic, rising food and oil prices, climate shocks, a flu pandemic, and more
- G8 and other major emitters of greenhouse gases must intensify their work to seal a deal at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December
- G8 should take specific steps needed to honour long-standing but unfulfilled pledges of support to poor countries to help them achieve the millennium development goals
- G8 should focus urgent attention on the intensifying global hunger crisis - the world's hungry now number one billion
Item 5: "Seven Ways to Build a Cleaner Planet" by Tony Blair
- Breaking the Climate Deadlock project, a strategic partnership between my office and The Climate Group, shows how major reductions even by 2020 are achievable if we focus action on certain key technologies, deploy policies that have been proven to work, and invest now in developing those future technologies that will take time to mature
- 70 per cent of the reductions needed by 2020 can be achieved by investing in three areas: increasing energy efficiency, reducing deforestation, and use of lower-carbon energy sources
- Implementing just seven proven policies - renewable energy standards (say, feed-in tariffs or renewable portfolio standards); industry efficiency measures; building codes; vehicle efficiency standards; fuel carbon content standards; appliance standards, and policies for reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation - can deliver these reductions
Item 6: "Spiegel Interview with Henry Kissinger" by Der Spiegel
- The map of Europe which emerged from the Treaty of Versailles is, more or less, the map of Europe that exists today
- Any international system must have two key elements for it to work:
i. A certain equilibrium of power that makes overthrowing the system difficult and costly.
ii. A sense of legitimacy.
- The American view was that peace is the normal condition among states. To ensure lasting peace, an international system must be organized on the basis of domestic institutions everywhere, which reflect the will of the people, and that will of the people is considered always to be against war. Unfortunately, there is no historic evidence that this is true.
- Before World War I, Germany faced three major countries on its borders: Russia, France, and Britain. After Versailles, Germany faced a collection of smaller states on its eastern borders, against each of which it had a huge grievance but none of which was capable of resisting Germany alone
- Cynics treat values as equivalent and instrumental. Statesmen base practical decisions on moral convictions.
- The outcome can only be a two-state solution, and there seems to be substantial agreement on the borders of such a state
- I do not see any conflicts between such major countries, China, Russia, India, and the U.S., which will justify a military solution
- The relationship of China with the rest of the world is a lot more important in historic terms
05 July 2009
Fifth July Two Thousand Nine
Malaysiana
- Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin - Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) to continue developing its human capital to mould highly skilled officers and personnel
- AH1N1 - As of yesterday, 35 new cases have been reported, 24 of which were imported, bringing the total number in the country to 326 - including its first “second generation local case”, a child of the 242nd case
- Four Perak Pakatan Rakyat assemblymen have rejected their appointment to the state assembly’s select committee - Nga Kor Ming (DAP state secretary and Taiping MP) said the appointments were done without the knowledge and approval of the four
- The United States Ambassador, James Keith, has started a blog.
- Tan Sri Dr Hamid Pawanteh - out-going Senate president - in politics for 31 years - medical doctor, former town council member, former Kangar MP, former Deputy Speaker, former Perlis Menteri Besar - after politics, business (power plants)
- Datuk Wong Foon Meng - Deputy Senate president will take over as head of the Dewan Negara,tenure limited to two terms only - also the MCA secretary-general
- Datuk Takiyuddin Hassan - Kelantan State Local Government, Tourism and Culture Committee chairman - anticipating 4.5 million tourist arrivals this year
- Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin - Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) to continue developing its human capital to mould highly skilled officers and personnel
- AH1N1 - As of yesterday, 35 new cases have been reported, 24 of which were imported, bringing the total number in the country to 326 - including its first “second generation local case”, a child of the 242nd case
- Four Perak Pakatan Rakyat assemblymen have rejected their appointment to the state assembly’s select committee - Nga Kor Ming (DAP state secretary and Taiping MP) said the appointments were done without the knowledge and approval of the four
- The United States Ambassador, James Keith, has started a blog.
- Tan Sri Dr Hamid Pawanteh - out-going Senate president - in politics for 31 years - medical doctor, former town council member, former Kangar MP, former Deputy Speaker, former Perlis Menteri Besar - after politics, business (power plants)
- Datuk Wong Foon Meng - Deputy Senate president will take over as head of the Dewan Negara,tenure limited to two terms only - also the MCA secretary-general
- Datuk Takiyuddin Hassan - Kelantan State Local Government, Tourism and Culture Committee chairman - anticipating 4.5 million tourist arrivals this year
Fourth July Two Thousand Nine
Item 1: "The Wall Isn't Falling" by Fareed Zakaria
- The three most powerful forces in the modern world are democracy, religion, and nationalism
- Iraq-based Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is Iranian, probably more revered in the entire Shia world than any other ayatollah, and he is opposed to the basic doctrine of velayat-e faqih that created the Islamic Republic of Iran - His own view is that clerics should not be involved in politics, which is why he has steered clear of any such role in Iraq
Item 2: "The Pitfalls fo the Public Option" by N. Gregory Mankiw
- Consumer choice and honest competition are indeed the foundation of a successful market system, but they are usually achieved without a public provider
- A market participant with a dominant position can influence prices in a way that a small, competitive player cannot
Item 3: "Iran and Beyond" by Gen. Wesley Clark
- revolution in Iran in 1979 - the military as an institution dissolved and starting with or indicated by 5,000 Iranian air force cadets who just refused to follow orders and basically wouldn't support the government and basically let it collapse
Item 4: "Africa and the International Court" by Kofi Annan
- International Criminal Court - 108 states, including 30 African countries, representing the largest regional bloc among the member states - Five of the court’s 18 judges are African
- African opponents of the international court argue that it is fixated on Africa because its four cases so far all concern alleged crimes against African victims
- The I.C.C., as a court of last resort, acts only when national justice systems are unwilling or unable to do so
Item 5: "Russia Must Re-focus with Post-Imperial Eyes" by Zbigniew Brzezinski
- three central goals - first, to advance US-Russian co-operation in areas where our interests coincide - second, to emphasise the mutual benefits in handling disagreements between the two countries within internationally respected “rules of the game” - third, to help shape a geopolitical context in which Russia becomes increasingly conscious of its own interest in eventually becoming a genuinely post-imperial partner of the Euro-Atlantic community
- To the Russian leadership, the two long-term challenges to its power come from the US and China - Both countries would suffer grievously, while Russia would greatly benefit, if a US-Iranian crisis triggered a surge in energy prices
Item 6: "Just Do It" by Thomas L. Friedman
- The two greatest environmental presidents in American history were Teddy Roosevelt, who created our national park system, and Richard Nixon, whose administration gave us the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency - George Bush Sr. signed the 1993 Rio Treaty, to preserve biodiversity
- House cap-and-trade energy bill - goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020
Item 7: "That '30s Show" by Paul Krugman
- Since the recession began, the U.S. economy has lost 6 ½ million jobs - take into account the 100,000-plus new jobs that we need each month just to keep up with a growing population, we’re about 8 ½ million jobs in the hole - the Obama stimulus plan aims to create 3 ½ million jobs by late next year
- Right now the risks associated with additional debt are much less than the risks associated with failing to give the economy adequate support
- The three most powerful forces in the modern world are democracy, religion, and nationalism
- Iraq-based Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is Iranian, probably more revered in the entire Shia world than any other ayatollah, and he is opposed to the basic doctrine of velayat-e faqih that created the Islamic Republic of Iran - His own view is that clerics should not be involved in politics, which is why he has steered clear of any such role in Iraq
Item 2: "The Pitfalls fo the Public Option" by N. Gregory Mankiw
- Consumer choice and honest competition are indeed the foundation of a successful market system, but they are usually achieved without a public provider
- A market participant with a dominant position can influence prices in a way that a small, competitive player cannot
Item 3: "Iran and Beyond" by Gen. Wesley Clark
- revolution in Iran in 1979 - the military as an institution dissolved and starting with or indicated by 5,000 Iranian air force cadets who just refused to follow orders and basically wouldn't support the government and basically let it collapse
Item 4: "Africa and the International Court" by Kofi Annan
- International Criminal Court - 108 states, including 30 African countries, representing the largest regional bloc among the member states - Five of the court’s 18 judges are African
- African opponents of the international court argue that it is fixated on Africa because its four cases so far all concern alleged crimes against African victims
- The I.C.C., as a court of last resort, acts only when national justice systems are unwilling or unable to do so
Item 5: "Russia Must Re-focus with Post-Imperial Eyes" by Zbigniew Brzezinski
- three central goals - first, to advance US-Russian co-operation in areas where our interests coincide - second, to emphasise the mutual benefits in handling disagreements between the two countries within internationally respected “rules of the game” - third, to help shape a geopolitical context in which Russia becomes increasingly conscious of its own interest in eventually becoming a genuinely post-imperial partner of the Euro-Atlantic community
- To the Russian leadership, the two long-term challenges to its power come from the US and China - Both countries would suffer grievously, while Russia would greatly benefit, if a US-Iranian crisis triggered a surge in energy prices
Item 6: "Just Do It" by Thomas L. Friedman
- The two greatest environmental presidents in American history were Teddy Roosevelt, who created our national park system, and Richard Nixon, whose administration gave us the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency - George Bush Sr. signed the 1993 Rio Treaty, to preserve biodiversity
- House cap-and-trade energy bill - goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020
Item 7: "That '30s Show" by Paul Krugman
- Since the recession began, the U.S. economy has lost 6 ½ million jobs - take into account the 100,000-plus new jobs that we need each month just to keep up with a growing population, we’re about 8 ½ million jobs in the hole - the Obama stimulus plan aims to create 3 ½ million jobs by late next year
- Right now the risks associated with additional debt are much less than the risks associated with failing to give the economy adequate support
10 May 2009
Of Creating Your Own Budget
Citizens of the World,
You think governing is easy? Try creating your own budget (for Australia, at least).
World Facts and Figures:
Item 1: "Out of Africa" by Francis Fukuyama
- Sub-Saharan Africa's fundamental problem not as one of resources, human or natural, or as a matter of geography, but, rather, as one of bad government.
- Natural resources, whether diamonds or oil or timber, have quickly turned into a curse, because they greatly raise the stakes of the political struggle
- A phenomenon like Nigeria, which took in some $300 billion in oil revenues over a generation and yet saw declining per capita income during that same period
- Dambisa Moyo - Were it not for the continued availability of concessional loans, she argues, African countries would be forced to get their acts together and meet international governance standards so as to be able to access global bond markets
- Civil society is ultimately a complement to strong institutions and not a substitute for them
Item 2: "The Threat Mongers Handbook" by Stephen Walt
- US spends about as much on national security than the rest of the world combined and nearly nine times more than the No. 2 power (China)
- How to Scare Your Fellow Citizens for Fun and Profit:
i. Emphasize that small decisions can mark the difference between victory or defeat.
ii. Everything is connected
iii. Emphasize threats that are inherently impossible to measure
iv. Portray allies as a liability rather than as an asset
v. Whenever possible, depict opponents as part of a strong and highly cohesive movement, and preferably one united by strong ideological convictions
vi. We must act now
vii. Always describe opponents as irrational, unalterably aggressive, and impossible to deter
viii. When it comes to national security, there is no such thing as opportunity costs
ix. Assume that opponents are able to do anything they say they want to do
x. When challenged, immediately question your critics' patriotism, credentials, or seriousness
Item 3: "Our Western Moment of Feminist Leadership is Over" by Naomi Wolf
- The core theory with which emerging feminists in more traditional and religious societies are working is far different from that of Western feminism - and, in some ways, far more profound and humane - family centred rather than self-centred, and that valued service to community rather than personal gratification
- Simone de Beauvoir, whose seminal book The Second Sex laid the groundwork for postwar Western feminism, was an existentialist who was neither a wife nor a mother nor a woman of faith - her work naturally posited female freedom in a secular, solitary and individualistic context
Item 4: "Indonesia as a Democracy Model" by S.P. Seth
- Hillary Clinton - If you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity and women's rights can coexist, go to Indonesia
Item 5: "Don't Forget About Foreign Aid" by Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell
- Hillary Clinton - the "three Ds" of U.S. foreign policy: development, defense and diplomacy
- Initiative for Global Development (IGD) -- an organization whose leadership council we co-chair. At the IGD National Summit in Washington, D.C., on May 6, business and government leaders will gather to advance new strategies for reducing global poverty
Item 6: "Unstable Trio Endangers the World" by Greg Sheridan
- Pakistan, Iran and North Korea are the three critical states, all likely to come to some sort of crisis in the next year or two
- The Pakistani military is designed for only one thing: fighting India - It is one of the most incompetent counter-insurgency forces in the world
- Iran is fired by three factors: a sense of historic destiny and opportunity; rampant nationalism; and authentic religious fervour
You think governing is easy? Try creating your own budget (for Australia, at least).
World Facts and Figures:
Item 1: "Out of Africa" by Francis Fukuyama
- Sub-Saharan Africa's fundamental problem not as one of resources, human or natural, or as a matter of geography, but, rather, as one of bad government.
- Natural resources, whether diamonds or oil or timber, have quickly turned into a curse, because they greatly raise the stakes of the political struggle
- A phenomenon like Nigeria, which took in some $300 billion in oil revenues over a generation and yet saw declining per capita income during that same period
- Dambisa Moyo - Were it not for the continued availability of concessional loans, she argues, African countries would be forced to get their acts together and meet international governance standards so as to be able to access global bond markets
- Civil society is ultimately a complement to strong institutions and not a substitute for them
Item 2: "The Threat Mongers Handbook" by Stephen Walt
- US spends about as much on national security than the rest of the world combined and nearly nine times more than the No. 2 power (China)
- How to Scare Your Fellow Citizens for Fun and Profit:
i. Emphasize that small decisions can mark the difference between victory or defeat.
ii. Everything is connected
iii. Emphasize threats that are inherently impossible to measure
iv. Portray allies as a liability rather than as an asset
v. Whenever possible, depict opponents as part of a strong and highly cohesive movement, and preferably one united by strong ideological convictions
vi. We must act now
vii. Always describe opponents as irrational, unalterably aggressive, and impossible to deter
viii. When it comes to national security, there is no such thing as opportunity costs
ix. Assume that opponents are able to do anything they say they want to do
x. When challenged, immediately question your critics' patriotism, credentials, or seriousness
Item 3: "Our Western Moment of Feminist Leadership is Over" by Naomi Wolf
- The core theory with which emerging feminists in more traditional and religious societies are working is far different from that of Western feminism - and, in some ways, far more profound and humane - family centred rather than self-centred, and that valued service to community rather than personal gratification
- Simone de Beauvoir, whose seminal book The Second Sex laid the groundwork for postwar Western feminism, was an existentialist who was neither a wife nor a mother nor a woman of faith - her work naturally posited female freedom in a secular, solitary and individualistic context
Item 4: "Indonesia as a Democracy Model" by S.P. Seth
- Hillary Clinton - If you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity and women's rights can coexist, go to Indonesia
Item 5: "Don't Forget About Foreign Aid" by Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell
- Hillary Clinton - the "three Ds" of U.S. foreign policy: development, defense and diplomacy
- Initiative for Global Development (IGD) -- an organization whose leadership council we co-chair. At the IGD National Summit in Washington, D.C., on May 6, business and government leaders will gather to advance new strategies for reducing global poverty
Item 6: "Unstable Trio Endangers the World" by Greg Sheridan
- Pakistan, Iran and North Korea are the three critical states, all likely to come to some sort of crisis in the next year or two
- The Pakistani military is designed for only one thing: fighting India - It is one of the most incompetent counter-insurgency forces in the world
- Iran is fired by three factors: a sense of historic destiny and opportunity; rampant nationalism; and authentic religious fervour
18 April 2009
Of Election Spending
Malaysia Facts and Figures of the Day
- Government spending on 5 recent by elections - total of RM33.4 million
i. Permatang Pauh - RM2.9 million
ii. Kuala Terengganu - RM12 million
iii. Bukit Gantang - RM7.6 million
iv. Batang Ai - RM5.4 million
v. Bukit Selambau - RM5.4 million
- Sukuk Simpanan Rakyat - began as a RM2.5 billion Islamic bond promising 5% returns anually (double the current fixed deposit rates) - another RM2.5 billion to be introduced soon
- PLUS Expressways Berhad (PLUS) has set up a RM54 million Traffic Monitoring Centre - main function of the centre is to collect and send out realtime traffic information to highway users
- Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Ismail Merican said 30% of Malaysians remained overweight and another 30% listed as obese based on the Asia Pacific Body Mass Index guidelines
- Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek, MCA Deputy President, has been accused of trying to cause instability among party members in Kapar by calling for secret meetings with eight branch chairmen
- Luo Zhi Liang, 47, of Miri, Sarawak died while waiting to collect a RM20,000 prize money at a 4-Digit outlet
- One of the key performance indicators (KPIs) for Singaporean Cabinet ministers is the real rate of growth of gross domestic product (GDP)
- Paloh (2003) which lost RM3.96 million, was the biggest flop in Malaysian movie history - Backed by RM4.1 million of taxpayers' money through Finas, the film directed by Adman Salleh could only recoup RM140,000 at the box office
- List of Malaysian movie flops
World Facts and Figures of the Day
Item 1: "Is China's Economy Strong Enough to Save the World" by Simon Elegant
- Retail sales are still growing at a robust 16% annual rate
- The stock market, which had plunged by some two-thirds from its peak in 2007, has clawed back 25% in the last few months
- Car sales in China have been "artificially boosted on a temporary basis by incentives" and so are unlikely to sustain their rise
- China's trade surplus rose 42% on an annualized basis to a record $19 billion last month, despite the fact that the country's exports are declining at double-digit rates. That's because its imports are dropping even faster
- "household savings are high (and their consumption low) because of structural factors" says Roubini in his report, citing such factors as the lack of adequate health care and unemployment benefits, poor rural infrastructure and public services, lack of a proper social security system, and underdeveloped credit markets for mortgage and consumer finance
- Domestic consumption accounts for about one-third of China's GDP, compared with around 70% in the U.S.
- In the months ahead, China's economy will instead be driven by the government's $585 billion stimulus spending program and easy credit
Item 2: "Anarchy on Land Means Piracy at Sea" by Robert D. Kaplan
- Somalia is a failed state and has the longest coastline in mainland Africa, so piracy flourishes nearby
- Fernand Braudel called piracy a “secondary form of war,” that, like insurgencies on land, tends to increase in the lulls between conflicts among great states or empires
- These pirates are fearless because they have grown up in a culture where nobody expects to live long
- The challenge ahead for the United States is not only dealing with the rise of Chinese naval power, but also in handling more unconventional risks that will require a more scrappy, street-fighting Navy
Item 3: "Which Globalisation will Survive" by Joseph Nye
- The world economy will shrink this year for the first time since 1945
- Globalization has several dimensions, and though economists all too often portray it and the world economy as being one and the same, other forms of globalization also have significant effects
- The oldest form of globalization is environmental - the first smallpox epidemic was recorded in Egypt in 1350 B.C. It reached China in A.D. 49, Europe after 700, the Americas in 1520 and Australia in 1789
- In the 20 years after HIV/AIDS was identified in the 1980s it killed 20 million people and infected another 40 million around the world. Some experts project that number doubling by 2010
- Military globalization, consisting of networks of interdependence in which force, or the threat of force, is employed - During the Cold War, the global strategic interdependence between the United States and the Soviet Union was acute and well recognized
- Social globalization consists in the spread of peoples, cultures, images and ideas.
Item 3: "Can the United States Put Pressure on Israel?: A User's Guide" by Stephen M. Walt
- Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Barack Obama have all publicly stated that the United States seeks a "two-state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- Instead of the current "special relationship" -- where the U.S. gives Israel generous and nearly-unconditional support -- the United States and Israel would have a more normal relationship, akin to U.S. relations with other democracies (where public criticism and overt pressure sometimes occurs)
- Usable sources of leverage that the United States could employ to nudge Israel away from the vision of “Greater Israel” and towards a genuine two-state solution:
i. Cut the aid package
ii. Change the rhetoric
iii. Support a U.N. Resolution Condemning the Occupation
iv. Downgrade existing arrangements for “strategic cooperation.”
v. Reduce U.S. purchases of Israeli military equipment
vi. Get tough with private organizations that support settlement activity
vii. Place more limits on U.S. loan guarantees
viii. Encourage other U.S. allies to use their influence too
- Government spending on 5 recent by elections - total of RM33.4 million
i. Permatang Pauh - RM2.9 million
ii. Kuala Terengganu - RM12 million
iii. Bukit Gantang - RM7.6 million
iv. Batang Ai - RM5.4 million
v. Bukit Selambau - RM5.4 million
- Sukuk Simpanan Rakyat - began as a RM2.5 billion Islamic bond promising 5% returns anually (double the current fixed deposit rates) - another RM2.5 billion to be introduced soon
- PLUS Expressways Berhad (PLUS) has set up a RM54 million Traffic Monitoring Centre - main function of the centre is to collect and send out realtime traffic information to highway users
- Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Ismail Merican said 30% of Malaysians remained overweight and another 30% listed as obese based on the Asia Pacific Body Mass Index guidelines
- Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek, MCA Deputy President, has been accused of trying to cause instability among party members in Kapar by calling for secret meetings with eight branch chairmen
- Luo Zhi Liang, 47, of Miri, Sarawak died while waiting to collect a RM20,000 prize money at a 4-Digit outlet
- One of the key performance indicators (KPIs) for Singaporean Cabinet ministers is the real rate of growth of gross domestic product (GDP)
- Paloh (2003) which lost RM3.96 million, was the biggest flop in Malaysian movie history - Backed by RM4.1 million of taxpayers' money through Finas, the film directed by Adman Salleh could only recoup RM140,000 at the box office
- List of Malaysian movie flops
World Facts and Figures of the Day
Item 1: "Is China's Economy Strong Enough to Save the World" by Simon Elegant
- Retail sales are still growing at a robust 16% annual rate
- The stock market, which had plunged by some two-thirds from its peak in 2007, has clawed back 25% in the last few months
- Car sales in China have been "artificially boosted on a temporary basis by incentives" and so are unlikely to sustain their rise
- China's trade surplus rose 42% on an annualized basis to a record $19 billion last month, despite the fact that the country's exports are declining at double-digit rates. That's because its imports are dropping even faster
- "household savings are high (and their consumption low) because of structural factors" says Roubini in his report, citing such factors as the lack of adequate health care and unemployment benefits, poor rural infrastructure and public services, lack of a proper social security system, and underdeveloped credit markets for mortgage and consumer finance
- Domestic consumption accounts for about one-third of China's GDP, compared with around 70% in the U.S.
- In the months ahead, China's economy will instead be driven by the government's $585 billion stimulus spending program and easy credit
Item 2: "Anarchy on Land Means Piracy at Sea" by Robert D. Kaplan
- Somalia is a failed state and has the longest coastline in mainland Africa, so piracy flourishes nearby
- Fernand Braudel called piracy a “secondary form of war,” that, like insurgencies on land, tends to increase in the lulls between conflicts among great states or empires
- These pirates are fearless because they have grown up in a culture where nobody expects to live long
- The challenge ahead for the United States is not only dealing with the rise of Chinese naval power, but also in handling more unconventional risks that will require a more scrappy, street-fighting Navy
Item 3: "Which Globalisation will Survive" by Joseph Nye
- The world economy will shrink this year for the first time since 1945
- Globalization has several dimensions, and though economists all too often portray it and the world economy as being one and the same, other forms of globalization also have significant effects
- The oldest form of globalization is environmental - the first smallpox epidemic was recorded in Egypt in 1350 B.C. It reached China in A.D. 49, Europe after 700, the Americas in 1520 and Australia in 1789
- In the 20 years after HIV/AIDS was identified in the 1980s it killed 20 million people and infected another 40 million around the world. Some experts project that number doubling by 2010
- Military globalization, consisting of networks of interdependence in which force, or the threat of force, is employed - During the Cold War, the global strategic interdependence between the United States and the Soviet Union was acute and well recognized
- Social globalization consists in the spread of peoples, cultures, images and ideas.
Item 3: "Can the United States Put Pressure on Israel?: A User's Guide" by Stephen M. Walt
- Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Barack Obama have all publicly stated that the United States seeks a "two-state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- Instead of the current "special relationship" -- where the U.S. gives Israel generous and nearly-unconditional support -- the United States and Israel would have a more normal relationship, akin to U.S. relations with other democracies (where public criticism and overt pressure sometimes occurs)
- Usable sources of leverage that the United States could employ to nudge Israel away from the vision of “Greater Israel” and towards a genuine two-state solution:
i. Cut the aid package
ii. Change the rhetoric
iii. Support a U.N. Resolution Condemning the Occupation
iv. Downgrade existing arrangements for “strategic cooperation.”
v. Reduce U.S. purchases of Israeli military equipment
vi. Get tough with private organizations that support settlement activity
vii. Place more limits on U.S. loan guarantees
viii. Encourage other U.S. allies to use their influence too
28 March 2009
Of Troubles and Myths
Citizens of the World,
Facts and Figures of the World
Item 1: "The Trouble with Subsidies" by Fareed Zakaria
- Since the financial crisis began, countries around the world have proposed or implemented 78 trade measures. Of these, 66 turn out to be new restrictions on trade. For example, China has banned outright various European goods
- Rich countries tend not to raise tariffs, because they do protectionism another way: by subsidizing domestic companies
- Worldwide governments are providing $48 billion in direct subsidies to carmakers
- The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that the "buy American" provision will result in an increased domestic production of about 0.5 million metric tons of steel every year - boost in production will translate into 1,000 jobs, which in a labor force of 140 million is insignificant
Item 2: "The Myths of the Recession" by Barrett Sheridan
i. The Credit Crisis Is Over - Globally, banks have already absorbed about $1 trillion in losses on mortgages and other bad debt holdings according to Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist of Goldman Sachs - expects another $1.1 trillion in losses
ii. All Industries Are Suffering
iii. The Dollar Will Collapse - climbed 25 percent against the euro and 41 percent against the pound since last year's lows - Gold has fallen back to about $900 an ounce, and investors are pouring money into U.S. Treasuries
iv. Credit Cards Are Killing Us - While aggregate credit-card debt has grown phenomenally in the United States since 1999, as a percentage of income it's stayed nearly level, hovering at about 9%
v. Here Comes Protectionism - Western countries would have to tear up the entire WTO rulebook for protectionism on the scale of the 1930s to take hold
Facts and Figures of the World
Item 1: "The Trouble with Subsidies" by Fareed Zakaria
- Since the financial crisis began, countries around the world have proposed or implemented 78 trade measures. Of these, 66 turn out to be new restrictions on trade. For example, China has banned outright various European goods
- Rich countries tend not to raise tariffs, because they do protectionism another way: by subsidizing domestic companies
- Worldwide governments are providing $48 billion in direct subsidies to carmakers
- The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that the "buy American" provision will result in an increased domestic production of about 0.5 million metric tons of steel every year - boost in production will translate into 1,000 jobs, which in a labor force of 140 million is insignificant
Item 2: "The Myths of the Recession" by Barrett Sheridan
i. The Credit Crisis Is Over - Globally, banks have already absorbed about $1 trillion in losses on mortgages and other bad debt holdings according to Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist of Goldman Sachs - expects another $1.1 trillion in losses
ii. All Industries Are Suffering
iii. The Dollar Will Collapse - climbed 25 percent against the euro and 41 percent against the pound since last year's lows - Gold has fallen back to about $900 an ounce, and investors are pouring money into U.S. Treasuries
iv. Credit Cards Are Killing Us - While aggregate credit-card debt has grown phenomenally in the United States since 1999, as a percentage of income it's stayed nearly level, hovering at about 9%
v. Here Comes Protectionism - Western countries would have to tear up the entire WTO rulebook for protectionism on the scale of the 1930s to take hold
17 March 2009
Of Muhyiddin's Coup de Grace
Citizens of the World,
Kudos to Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin's coup the grace in his path to being the Deputy Prime Minister. This is assuming, of course, that he played a role in Dato's Seri Ali Rustam being barred from running for UMNO's deputy presidency. If it is true that he played a role, honestly, it was simply a brilliant political move. It was just so unexpected and unthinkable.
The allegations may be true. But to actually bring it up to the surface through Lembaga Disiplin UMNO was just...awesome. It is one of the few remaining credible body left in UMNO. Check that. It may be the only credible body left in UMNO. Thus, its decisions are accepted not just by UMNO members, but the general public as well.
Kudos to Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin's coup the grace in his path to being the Deputy Prime Minister. This is assuming, of course, that he played a role in Dato's Seri Ali Rustam being barred from running for UMNO's deputy presidency. If it is true that he played a role, honestly, it was simply a brilliant political move. It was just so unexpected and unthinkable.
The allegations may be true. But to actually bring it up to the surface through Lembaga Disiplin UMNO was just...awesome. It is one of the few remaining credible body left in UMNO. Check that. It may be the only credible body left in UMNO. Thus, its decisions are accepted not just by UMNO members, but the general public as well.
16 March 2009
Of Nasli Lemak Antarabangsa Kampung Bharu
Citizens of the World,
Editorial
Had lunch at the famous Nasi Lemak Antarabangsa Kampung Bharu, Ampang Park branch. Compared to the original stall, the new branch(es) are much cleaner and well maintained. It's a success story just waiting to be told.
Malaysia Facts and Figures of the Day:
- With 338 delegates, Johor has the largest delegation to the Umno general assembly next weekend with Johor Umno candidates vying for 31 positions in the party elections
- Selangor Exco Asset Declarations:
i. Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim - depends on his RM47,222 monthly salary to support his family of five, no car or house loans to service
ii. Bukit Lanjan assemblyman Elizabeth Wong - no dependants, or car or house loans - credit card bills amounting to RM16,811.69 and pays RM2,000 a month for the credit card bills, earns RM17,722.08 a month as an assemblyman and exco member
- Wanita UMNO members - 1.3 million
- the ringtone on Datuk Seri Shahrizat Jalil’s handphone has changed from the 60s pop song, Guantanamera, to a nasyid tune
- Datuk Seri Shahrizat Jalil - "If I took over in June, the wing would be left without a No 2 because the Constitution does not provide for an acting deputy Wanita chief"
- Of the 65 Umno Youth contenders, at least six of them are sons of former or serving leaders
- RM50 million - Government allocation to Chinese primary schools that need immediate treatment for termite problems
- Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim - Petaling Jaya, Kajang and Klang will get a RM10 billion makeover spanning five to 10 years
- 1,480 people failed to repay about RM23 million in study loans given to them by the Social Security Organisation
- Director-general of Labour Department Datuk Ismail Abdul Rahim said there were another 62,700 jobs available and retrenched workers were advised to register with the department or at Jobs-Malaysia.gov.my to be re-employed
- Public Complaints Bureau (PCB) receives more than 3,000 complaints from the public every month. And, its problem solving rate is an impressive 80%
Editorial
Had lunch at the famous Nasi Lemak Antarabangsa Kampung Bharu, Ampang Park branch. Compared to the original stall, the new branch(es) are much cleaner and well maintained. It's a success story just waiting to be told.
Malaysia Facts and Figures of the Day:
- With 338 delegates, Johor has the largest delegation to the Umno general assembly next weekend with Johor Umno candidates vying for 31 positions in the party elections
- Selangor Exco Asset Declarations:
i. Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim - depends on his RM47,222 monthly salary to support his family of five, no car or house loans to service
ii. Bukit Lanjan assemblyman Elizabeth Wong - no dependants, or car or house loans - credit card bills amounting to RM16,811.69 and pays RM2,000 a month for the credit card bills, earns RM17,722.08 a month as an assemblyman and exco member
- Wanita UMNO members - 1.3 million
- the ringtone on Datuk Seri Shahrizat Jalil’s handphone has changed from the 60s pop song, Guantanamera, to a nasyid tune
- Datuk Seri Shahrizat Jalil - "If I took over in June, the wing would be left without a No 2 because the Constitution does not provide for an acting deputy Wanita chief"
- Of the 65 Umno Youth contenders, at least six of them are sons of former or serving leaders
- RM50 million - Government allocation to Chinese primary schools that need immediate treatment for termite problems
- Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim - Petaling Jaya, Kajang and Klang will get a RM10 billion makeover spanning five to 10 years
- 1,480 people failed to repay about RM23 million in study loans given to them by the Social Security Organisation
- Director-general of Labour Department Datuk Ismail Abdul Rahim said there were another 62,700 jobs available and retrenched workers were advised to register with the department or at Jobs-Malaysia.gov.my to be re-employed
- Public Complaints Bureau (PCB) receives more than 3,000 complaints from the public every month. And, its problem solving rate is an impressive 80%
14 March 2009
Of Zaiton Sameon the Movie
Citizens of the World,
Editorial
Worthy of a legend.
Malaysia Facts and Figures of the Day
- Malaysian Examinations Syndicate (MES) has to go through 16 procedures before the release of the STPM results while for the SPM, there are 29 procedures
- Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein - ministry had spent over RM3 billion since the introduction of the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English (PPSMI) policy in 2003 - RM2.4 billion was spent on ICT, RM3.7 million on teacher training and RM6.1 million on teaching incentives
- Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak - unemployment rate expected to rise from 3.7% in 2008 to 4.5% in 2009
- Selangor exco asset declarations:
i. Teresa Kok - earns RM32,830.67 a month, pays about RM2,000 a month for two properties valued at RM320,000
ii. Dr. Hassan Ali - two wives, monthly remuneration of RM17,722.08, services a loan for a RM296,565 house, drives a car worth RM151,669.85
iii. Ronnie Liu - earns RM20,727.08, house valued at RM60,000, a piece of land worth RM200,000
- Last week earlier, the Malaysian Anti-Cor- ruption Commission (MACC) detained Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said’s political secretary for a few hours after he was found with RM70,000 in his car - had told her that the money was to pay some bills for the election machinery such as for rooms, food and fare
- KL International Airport’s new Low Cost Carrier Terminal - RM2 billion project, spread over 150,000 sq metres (bigger than main terminal), 1.5km from the main terminal, able to handle 45 million passengers yearly, connected to the main terminal via an extended Express Rail Link (ERL) and a new side road, operational in the 3Q 2011,
- Tourism Ministry secretary-general Datuk Dr Ong Hong Peng - foreign tourists expected to decline by 9% to 20 million in 2009 from 22.05 million in 2008
- Compare prices at Malaysian hypermarkets.
- Former Perak menteri besar Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin - "I was a millionaire even before I became a wakil rakyat"
- Malaysia’s industrial production index (IPI) plunged 20.2% in January 2009 from 2008 as output from manufacturing, electricity and mining sectors contracted
- Maxis plans to launch the iPhone 3G on 20 March 2009
World Facts and Figures of the Day
i. "The Future of Human Beings is What Matters" by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
- I fought and lost four elections before being elected president of the republic in 2002
ii. "Obama's Aretha Franklin Doctrine" by Gideon Rachman
- The Queen of Soul literally spells out an idea central to Mr Obama’s approach to the world: “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”
- The Russians are still acutely sensitive to any suggestion that Americans are looking down on them. When Michael Dell, the computer entrepreneur, recently asked Vladimir Putin how outsiders could help Russia, the Russian prime minister responded: “We don’t need any help. We are not cripples.”
Editorial
Worthy of a legend.
Malaysia Facts and Figures of the Day
- Malaysian Examinations Syndicate (MES) has to go through 16 procedures before the release of the STPM results while for the SPM, there are 29 procedures
- Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein - ministry had spent over RM3 billion since the introduction of the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English (PPSMI) policy in 2003 - RM2.4 billion was spent on ICT, RM3.7 million on teacher training and RM6.1 million on teaching incentives
- Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak - unemployment rate expected to rise from 3.7% in 2008 to 4.5% in 2009
- Selangor exco asset declarations:
i. Teresa Kok - earns RM32,830.67 a month, pays about RM2,000 a month for two properties valued at RM320,000
ii. Dr. Hassan Ali - two wives, monthly remuneration of RM17,722.08, services a loan for a RM296,565 house, drives a car worth RM151,669.85
iii. Ronnie Liu - earns RM20,727.08, house valued at RM60,000, a piece of land worth RM200,000
- Last week earlier, the Malaysian Anti-Cor- ruption Commission (MACC) detained Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said’s political secretary for a few hours after he was found with RM70,000 in his car - had told her that the money was to pay some bills for the election machinery such as for rooms, food and fare
- KL International Airport’s new Low Cost Carrier Terminal - RM2 billion project, spread over 150,000 sq metres (bigger than main terminal), 1.5km from the main terminal, able to handle 45 million passengers yearly, connected to the main terminal via an extended Express Rail Link (ERL) and a new side road, operational in the 3Q 2011,
- Tourism Ministry secretary-general Datuk Dr Ong Hong Peng - foreign tourists expected to decline by 9% to 20 million in 2009 from 22.05 million in 2008
- Compare prices at Malaysian hypermarkets.
- Former Perak menteri besar Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin - "I was a millionaire even before I became a wakil rakyat"
- Malaysia’s industrial production index (IPI) plunged 20.2% in January 2009 from 2008 as output from manufacturing, electricity and mining sectors contracted
- Maxis plans to launch the iPhone 3G on 20 March 2009
World Facts and Figures of the Day
i. "The Future of Human Beings is What Matters" by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
- I fought and lost four elections before being elected president of the republic in 2002
ii. "Obama's Aretha Franklin Doctrine" by Gideon Rachman
- The Queen of Soul literally spells out an idea central to Mr Obama’s approach to the world: “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”
- The Russians are still acutely sensitive to any suggestion that Americans are looking down on them. When Michael Dell, the computer entrepreneur, recently asked Vladimir Putin how outsiders could help Russia, the Russian prime minister responded: “We don’t need any help. We are not cripples.”
13 March 2009
Of You Spin Me Round
Citizens of the world,
Editorial
Ah, the joy of 80s music.
Malaysia Facts and Figures of the Day
- Najib's goal for a K-economy - increase the service sector to 70% of the gross domestic product from 54% - Manufactured exports now account for 72.5% of total exports against 14.8% for services
- The price of disciplining Malaysian kids at school? RM206,500
- Services Sector Capacity Development Fund - RM100 million for capacity building, mergers and acquisition as well as productivity improvement
- 89.1% of 178,751 candidates opted to answer the Additional Mathematics Paper 1 fully in English
- Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen - RM129 million out of the RM205 million the ministry received from the mini Budget will be used to upgrade facilities at old folks’ homes, orphanages and welfare organisations
- Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim - RM349,134 had been spent on former Mentri Besar Khir Toyo’s overseas trips to 21 destinations from 2001 to January 2008 - destinations include Guangzhou, Kunming, Osaka, Fukuoka, London, Bangkok, Dubai, Beijing, Amsterdam, Milan, Venice, Paris, Geneva, Toronto, Los Angeles, Seoul, Chicago, Stuttgart, Shanghai, Tokyo, Perth, Seoul and Taipei.
- Kuala Kubu Baru assemblyman Wong Koon Mun - “In the previous state assembly, the Mentri Besar had stated that the Selangor government would raise RM150 million per annum from the sale of sand. However, the figure was reduced to RM50 million in this sitting,”
- Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam - doubling of the levy on foreign workers to RM1,200 - Currently, there are 2.2 million legal foreign workers, with another million illegal foreign workers
- "To My Friend in Gaza" project - "PO Box 1000"
- In 2008, the Kota Baru Municipal Council (MPKB) detained 868 couples and 185 individuals for the two offences and collected some RM50,000 in fines
- The top 20 government-linked companies have outperformed the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index by a compounded annual rate of 4.8% in the past five years
Editorial
Ah, the joy of 80s music.
Malaysia Facts and Figures of the Day
- Najib's goal for a K-economy - increase the service sector to 70% of the gross domestic product from 54% - Manufactured exports now account for 72.5% of total exports against 14.8% for services
- The price of disciplining Malaysian kids at school? RM206,500
- Services Sector Capacity Development Fund - RM100 million for capacity building, mergers and acquisition as well as productivity improvement
- 89.1% of 178,751 candidates opted to answer the Additional Mathematics Paper 1 fully in English
- Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen - RM129 million out of the RM205 million the ministry received from the mini Budget will be used to upgrade facilities at old folks’ homes, orphanages and welfare organisations
- Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim - RM349,134 had been spent on former Mentri Besar Khir Toyo’s overseas trips to 21 destinations from 2001 to January 2008 - destinations include Guangzhou, Kunming, Osaka, Fukuoka, London, Bangkok, Dubai, Beijing, Amsterdam, Milan, Venice, Paris, Geneva, Toronto, Los Angeles, Seoul, Chicago, Stuttgart, Shanghai, Tokyo, Perth, Seoul and Taipei.
- Kuala Kubu Baru assemblyman Wong Koon Mun - “In the previous state assembly, the Mentri Besar had stated that the Selangor government would raise RM150 million per annum from the sale of sand. However, the figure was reduced to RM50 million in this sitting,”
- Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam - doubling of the levy on foreign workers to RM1,200 - Currently, there are 2.2 million legal foreign workers, with another million illegal foreign workers
- "To My Friend in Gaza" project - "PO Box 1000"
- In 2008, the Kota Baru Municipal Council (MPKB) detained 868 couples and 185 individuals for the two offences and collected some RM50,000 in fines
- The top 20 government-linked companies have outperformed the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index by a compounded annual rate of 4.8% in the past five years
09 March 2009
Of Malaysia Facts and Figures of the Day
Fellow citizens of the world,
It's been a while.
What is it like to be a blind person in Malaysia? Check out Yam TW's blog at My Blind Sight. Godspeed, sir.
Editorial
Introducing Malaysia Facts and Figures of the Day:
- Government had so far spent RM70 million on the TV 1 and TV 2 digitalisation project - cost could come up to between RM1 billion and RM1.5 billion by the time it is completed in 2015 - TV viewers would have to buy special decoders (worth RM300) to watch programmes when digital programming replaced the current analogue system - no policy at present to subsidise the price of decoders or give them for free to the lower-income group - “We have to do away with filtering and censoring and head towards self-censorship by letting the people decide"
- 2,000 people marched to hand over a memorandum to the King asking for the return of Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction for Mathematics and Science
- Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority (Fama) is targetting 5,000 agro-based entrepreneurs by 2010 (currently, there are 2,900 agro-entrpeneurs) - under incentive programme, provide them with up to over RM100,000 worth of equipment
- Perak state government has allocated an additional RM13 million in development funds for 100 orang asli villages in Batang Padang = RM10 million to build new infrastructure and facilities + RM1 million to upgrade the Pos Bersih village clinic + RM2 million to buy farming equipment for orang asli wanting to venture into agriculture - RM6 million had already been allocated to the Orang Asli Affairs Department to help the community under the Ninth Malaysia Plan
- Based on Article 16(6) of the Perak State Constitution, only the Mentri Besar has the right to appear before the Sultan to seek His Royal Highness’ consent to dissolve the state assembly
- All Pakatan assemblymen have been told not to co-operate with the police unless the police are also investigated under Section 124 of the Penal Code (obstructing of elected representatives from carrying out their duties), said Perak DAP chief Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham
- 94 foreign women, mostly from Asean countries, have been placed at the shelter for trafficked women since its establishment in March 2008 - under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, the ministry had set aside an allocation to build several shelter homes nationwide to provide safe havens for the victims
- Female civil servants with the Selangor Government are now entitled to 90 days maternity leave starting this year - Husbands whose wives gave birth will also enjoy a 14-day paternity leave, up from a week previously - Female staff whose husbands pass away, will also get 30 days’ leave, compared to three days emergency leave in the past
- Selangor would use its over RM50 million revenue from sand mining to fund various “people-centred’ activities and welfare programmes
- Selangor had identified about 40 villages to be headed by Indians and their appointment would be made April 2009
- DAP’s target for 30% of women to be involved in politics is still lagging behind with only more than 10% involved, said Penang DAP chairman Chow Kon Yeow
- Penang DAP had been giving away 1,000 stalks of flowers in conjunction with International Women’s Day each year since 2000 but decided to increase the number to 10,000 stalks this year
- 30 people have died from dengue in January to February 2009 - more than double the 12 deaths recorded between January 1 and March 3 2008
- Ministry of Health would speed up the employment of contract doctors to help ease the shortage in hospitals and health clinics nationwide - 53% of the positions had yet to be filled
- 15 Chinese associations here have called on the Government to allow AirAsia to fly direct between Singapore and Langkawi to help the resort island weather the current economic storm - business has been dropping by at least 30% so far this year - currently, only SilkAir provided direct flights between Singapore and Langkawi - Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes said the low-cost carrier would only need a month to start daily flights
- Tourism Malaysia is exploring programmes to woo more tourists from Pakistan - Last year, 68,000 Pakistanis visited Malaysia
- More than 70,000 Bangladeshi workers are expected to arrive here soon to work in the plantation, construction and services sectors, said the Bangladesh High Commission labour counsellor Talat Mahmud Khan - arrival of the latest batch would swell the number of Bangladeshi workers to almost 500,000 - On the social impact of the Bangladeshi workers on Malaysian society, he said there was not much impact as the workers were confined mostly to their workplaces and seldom ventured outside - “However, considering the huge Bangladeshi population in Malaysia, a few Bangladeshi youths may get involved with local girls, but this is very rare,”
- All programmes to close the digital divide must be completed by 2010, said Energy, Water and Communications Ministry Deputy Minister Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum - One of them was the RM600 million Universal Service Programme (USP) focusing on increasing communications infrastructure in the rural areas nationwide - target is to have 46 centres before 2010
- Government had given an assurance that all areas within a 15km radius of a small town would have better infrastructure by 2016
- Kedah will award logging concessions only through the open tender system - Via the open tender system, the state government derived revenue of up to RM16.3 million for 1,000 ha compared to between RM3 million and RM4.5 million under the negotiated tender system - Tenders would be open soon for some 2,400 ha
- Stamp duty rate introduced under the last Budget - it would cost 0.5% of the value of the contract sum as compared to previous stamping rate of RM10 per book contract - revision has increased the financial burden of developers and others in the related sectors
- The Chinese residents of Kuchai Brem Park Condominium, comprising 98% of the population, donated over RM2,600 to businessman Ruslee Mokhtar, 45, and his 35-year-old wife Rozita Abdul Malik, whose son Muhammad Aiman Izzat Ruslee, 10, drowned in the condominium pool
- Mini Estate Sejahtera project involving 98 ha in Kampung Sungai Laba, Pulau Sebatik - benefit some 33 hardcore poor families - Houses for them will be built at a cost of RM3 million and completed in 18 months - Each family will be allocated 3 ha of oil palm as part of the government’s efforts to eradicate poverty
- So far, only 50% of the 380 JPs in Selangor had re-registered themselves with the state JP council office
- Kota Batam Islamic Religious Affairs officer said that Malaysian and Singaporean men have been going to Batam to marry the local women there using unqualified “jurunikah” (marriage official), charging a fee of RM3,000.
Articles
Item 1: "Netanyahu's Middle East Outlook" interview with Lally Weymouth
Wisdom:
- I propose a [new] way, which I believe can achieve progress: to continue political talks and at the same time advance the economic development that has begun and also strengthen the Palestinian security forces.
- Hamas is incompatible with peace.
- I will continue the talks for peace with the Palestinians immediately, and I do not condition them in any way on the Iranian outcome
Item 2: "U.N. Peacekeeping Efforts Stretched into Thin Blue Line" by John J. Meltzer
Wisdom:
- eighteen separate deployments — the largest being in the Democratic Congo and Darfur
- After gaining a mandate, the Council must look to developed countries to pay for the operation while developing countries generally send troops - chief contributors being Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Nigeria and Nepal
- Costs for the 18 missions come to over US$7 billion annually
It's been a while.
What is it like to be a blind person in Malaysia? Check out Yam TW's blog at My Blind Sight. Godspeed, sir.
Editorial
Introducing Malaysia Facts and Figures of the Day:
- Government had so far spent RM70 million on the TV 1 and TV 2 digitalisation project - cost could come up to between RM1 billion and RM1.5 billion by the time it is completed in 2015 - TV viewers would have to buy special decoders (worth RM300) to watch programmes when digital programming replaced the current analogue system - no policy at present to subsidise the price of decoders or give them for free to the lower-income group - “We have to do away with filtering and censoring and head towards self-censorship by letting the people decide"
- 2,000 people marched to hand over a memorandum to the King asking for the return of Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction for Mathematics and Science
- Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority (Fama) is targetting 5,000 agro-based entrepreneurs by 2010 (currently, there are 2,900 agro-entrpeneurs) - under incentive programme, provide them with up to over RM100,000 worth of equipment
- Perak state government has allocated an additional RM13 million in development funds for 100 orang asli villages in Batang Padang = RM10 million to build new infrastructure and facilities + RM1 million to upgrade the Pos Bersih village clinic + RM2 million to buy farming equipment for orang asli wanting to venture into agriculture - RM6 million had already been allocated to the Orang Asli Affairs Department to help the community under the Ninth Malaysia Plan
- Based on Article 16(6) of the Perak State Constitution, only the Mentri Besar has the right to appear before the Sultan to seek His Royal Highness’ consent to dissolve the state assembly
- All Pakatan assemblymen have been told not to co-operate with the police unless the police are also investigated under Section 124 of the Penal Code (obstructing of elected representatives from carrying out their duties), said Perak DAP chief Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham
- 94 foreign women, mostly from Asean countries, have been placed at the shelter for trafficked women since its establishment in March 2008 - under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, the ministry had set aside an allocation to build several shelter homes nationwide to provide safe havens for the victims
- Female civil servants with the Selangor Government are now entitled to 90 days maternity leave starting this year - Husbands whose wives gave birth will also enjoy a 14-day paternity leave, up from a week previously - Female staff whose husbands pass away, will also get 30 days’ leave, compared to three days emergency leave in the past
- Selangor would use its over RM50 million revenue from sand mining to fund various “people-centred’ activities and welfare programmes
- Selangor had identified about 40 villages to be headed by Indians and their appointment would be made April 2009
- DAP’s target for 30% of women to be involved in politics is still lagging behind with only more than 10% involved, said Penang DAP chairman Chow Kon Yeow
- Penang DAP had been giving away 1,000 stalks of flowers in conjunction with International Women’s Day each year since 2000 but decided to increase the number to 10,000 stalks this year
- 30 people have died from dengue in January to February 2009 - more than double the 12 deaths recorded between January 1 and March 3 2008
- Ministry of Health would speed up the employment of contract doctors to help ease the shortage in hospitals and health clinics nationwide - 53% of the positions had yet to be filled
- 15 Chinese associations here have called on the Government to allow AirAsia to fly direct between Singapore and Langkawi to help the resort island weather the current economic storm - business has been dropping by at least 30% so far this year - currently, only SilkAir provided direct flights between Singapore and Langkawi - Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes said the low-cost carrier would only need a month to start daily flights
- Tourism Malaysia is exploring programmes to woo more tourists from Pakistan - Last year, 68,000 Pakistanis visited Malaysia
- More than 70,000 Bangladeshi workers are expected to arrive here soon to work in the plantation, construction and services sectors, said the Bangladesh High Commission labour counsellor Talat Mahmud Khan - arrival of the latest batch would swell the number of Bangladeshi workers to almost 500,000 - On the social impact of the Bangladeshi workers on Malaysian society, he said there was not much impact as the workers were confined mostly to their workplaces and seldom ventured outside - “However, considering the huge Bangladeshi population in Malaysia, a few Bangladeshi youths may get involved with local girls, but this is very rare,”
- All programmes to close the digital divide must be completed by 2010, said Energy, Water and Communications Ministry Deputy Minister Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum - One of them was the RM600 million Universal Service Programme (USP) focusing on increasing communications infrastructure in the rural areas nationwide - target is to have 46 centres before 2010
- Government had given an assurance that all areas within a 15km radius of a small town would have better infrastructure by 2016
- Kedah will award logging concessions only through the open tender system - Via the open tender system, the state government derived revenue of up to RM16.3 million for 1,000 ha compared to between RM3 million and RM4.5 million under the negotiated tender system - Tenders would be open soon for some 2,400 ha
- Stamp duty rate introduced under the last Budget - it would cost 0.5% of the value of the contract sum as compared to previous stamping rate of RM10 per book contract - revision has increased the financial burden of developers and others in the related sectors
- The Chinese residents of Kuchai Brem Park Condominium, comprising 98% of the population, donated over RM2,600 to businessman Ruslee Mokhtar, 45, and his 35-year-old wife Rozita Abdul Malik, whose son Muhammad Aiman Izzat Ruslee, 10, drowned in the condominium pool
- Mini Estate Sejahtera project involving 98 ha in Kampung Sungai Laba, Pulau Sebatik - benefit some 33 hardcore poor families - Houses for them will be built at a cost of RM3 million and completed in 18 months - Each family will be allocated 3 ha of oil palm as part of the government’s efforts to eradicate poverty
- So far, only 50% of the 380 JPs in Selangor had re-registered themselves with the state JP council office
- Kota Batam Islamic Religious Affairs officer said that Malaysian and Singaporean men have been going to Batam to marry the local women there using unqualified “jurunikah” (marriage official), charging a fee of RM3,000.
Articles
Item 1: "Netanyahu's Middle East Outlook" interview with Lally Weymouth
Wisdom:
- I propose a [new] way, which I believe can achieve progress: to continue political talks and at the same time advance the economic development that has begun and also strengthen the Palestinian security forces.
- Hamas is incompatible with peace.
- I will continue the talks for peace with the Palestinians immediately, and I do not condition them in any way on the Iranian outcome
Item 2: "U.N. Peacekeeping Efforts Stretched into Thin Blue Line" by John J. Meltzer
Wisdom:
- eighteen separate deployments — the largest being in the Democratic Congo and Darfur
- After gaining a mandate, the Council must look to developed countries to pay for the operation while developing countries generally send troops - chief contributors being Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Nigeria and Nepal
- Costs for the 18 missions come to over US$7 billion annually
09 February 2009
Of the Fire of Oz
Citizens of the World,
"A Nation in Mourning" reads The Australian headline.
It saddens me to see the bush fires in Australia. When I was there, it occurred rather frequently although it wasn't this bad. More than a hundred have perished, and the final tally is yet to be confirmed as 31 fires are still ravaging the outback. The loss of lives not forgotten, seeing the beautiful bush reduced to ashes is devastating. I pray that this ends soon.
Item 1: "Jimmy Carter on the Middle East" by Storer H. Rowley
Wisdom:
- I was also hoping, without much expectation, that we would have a Mideast envoy this time that would look at both sides of the issue, and not just represent the Israeli side, and we have that in George Mitchell
- I've also gotten to know for the first time the top leaders in Hamas, both those who are in the politburo, those are the ultimate leaders, and also those who govern the Gaza area
- (Hamas) would accept any agreement that's negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians if it's submitted to a referendum in the West Bank and Gaza, and the Palestinians approve it - they would accept Israel's right to exist if that's in the agreement and so forth
- There's no way in the world that you can ever have peace in the Middle East without Hamas being deeply involved
Item 2: "Keynes Can't Help Us Now" by Niall Ferguson
Wisdom:
- Keynesian "multiplier effect" -- which holds that a dollar spent by the government begets more than a dollar's worth of additional economic output
- Western world is suffering a crisis of excessive indebtedness - household debt has reached 141% of disposable income in the United States and 177% in Britain - best-known names in American and European finance have liabilities 40, 60 or even 100 times the amount of their capital
- It will not be so easy for us to inflate away our debts - deflationary pressures unleashed by the financial crisis are too strong - consumer prices in the U.S. have been falling for three consecutive months
- What can be done:
i. Banks that are de facto insolvent need to be restructured, not nationalized
ii. Generalized conversion of American mortgages to lower interest rates and longer maturities
Item 3: "Shifting Horizons" by Gideon Rachman
Wisdom:
- Six themes emerge from writings of those who will shape foreign policy:
i. The war on terror needs to be reconsidered.
ii. The US must rethink its ideas both about power and about threats.
iii. America should intervene to prevent humanitarian disasters.
iv. Belief in the UN is firm.
v. Diplomacy is back in fashion.
vi. Old Europe is back too.
Item 4: "More than Aid Money, Africa Needs Enterprise" by Jakaya Kikwete and Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Wisdom:
- Africa starting points for development:
i. small- and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs) offer the best opportunities for growth and employment - provide investment loans
ii. scale up market-based clean energy production in Africa - access to finance as well as advisory services, skills training, and support a good regulatory environment for small-scale energy production
iii. youth and employment - provide a new and innovative environment for young entrepreneurs, targeted risk capital, skills training, and advisory services
Item 5: "The Iranian Revolution was the Ultimate Passion Play" by Karen Armstrong
Wisdom:
- Shiaism is based on a passionate yearning for a divinely decreed justice that is never fully realised but remains a transcendent imperative
- Khomeini - Standing in his pulpit, with the Koran in one hand and the 1906 Constitution in the other, he repeatedly declared that the Shah had violated both by his dismissal of parliament, his wicked suppression of all opposition, his illegal use of torture, his callous neglect of the poor, and his craven subservience to the United States
Item 6: "Iran: A Nation Still Haunted by its Bloody past" by Robert Fisk
Wisdom:
- I padded round (the Shah of Iran's) libraries; leather-bound volumes of Voltaire, Verlaine, Flaubert, Plutarch, Goebbels, Shakespeare, Charles de Gaulle, Churchill and Coleridge. Abba Eban's My People was dedicated by the author to "His Imperial Majesty, the Shah of Shahs"
- Iran had become a necrocracy
- They had not forgotten how the CIA and MI6 destroyed Mohammed Mossadeq's democratically elected government in a coup in 1953 - Operation Ajax, the Americans called it (the British chose the more prosaic Operation Boot)
- Abolhassan Bani-Sadr became Iran's first elected president in 1979, but failed to maintain his authority against Ayatollah Khomeini. After 17 months he was impeached and fled to France where he still lives
"A Nation in Mourning" reads The Australian headline.
It saddens me to see the bush fires in Australia. When I was there, it occurred rather frequently although it wasn't this bad. More than a hundred have perished, and the final tally is yet to be confirmed as 31 fires are still ravaging the outback. The loss of lives not forgotten, seeing the beautiful bush reduced to ashes is devastating. I pray that this ends soon.
Item 1: "Jimmy Carter on the Middle East" by Storer H. Rowley
Wisdom:
- I was also hoping, without much expectation, that we would have a Mideast envoy this time that would look at both sides of the issue, and not just represent the Israeli side, and we have that in George Mitchell
- I've also gotten to know for the first time the top leaders in Hamas, both those who are in the politburo, those are the ultimate leaders, and also those who govern the Gaza area
- (Hamas) would accept any agreement that's negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians if it's submitted to a referendum in the West Bank and Gaza, and the Palestinians approve it - they would accept Israel's right to exist if that's in the agreement and so forth
- There's no way in the world that you can ever have peace in the Middle East without Hamas being deeply involved
Item 2: "Keynes Can't Help Us Now" by Niall Ferguson
Wisdom:
- Keynesian "multiplier effect" -- which holds that a dollar spent by the government begets more than a dollar's worth of additional economic output
- Western world is suffering a crisis of excessive indebtedness - household debt has reached 141% of disposable income in the United States and 177% in Britain - best-known names in American and European finance have liabilities 40, 60 or even 100 times the amount of their capital
- It will not be so easy for us to inflate away our debts - deflationary pressures unleashed by the financial crisis are too strong - consumer prices in the U.S. have been falling for three consecutive months
- What can be done:
i. Banks that are de facto insolvent need to be restructured, not nationalized
ii. Generalized conversion of American mortgages to lower interest rates and longer maturities
Item 3: "Shifting Horizons" by Gideon Rachman
Wisdom:
- Six themes emerge from writings of those who will shape foreign policy:
i. The war on terror needs to be reconsidered.
ii. The US must rethink its ideas both about power and about threats.
iii. America should intervene to prevent humanitarian disasters.
iv. Belief in the UN is firm.
v. Diplomacy is back in fashion.
vi. Old Europe is back too.
Item 4: "More than Aid Money, Africa Needs Enterprise" by Jakaya Kikwete and Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Wisdom:
- Africa starting points for development:
i. small- and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs) offer the best opportunities for growth and employment - provide investment loans
ii. scale up market-based clean energy production in Africa - access to finance as well as advisory services, skills training, and support a good regulatory environment for small-scale energy production
iii. youth and employment - provide a new and innovative environment for young entrepreneurs, targeted risk capital, skills training, and advisory services
Item 5: "The Iranian Revolution was the Ultimate Passion Play" by Karen Armstrong
Wisdom:
- Shiaism is based on a passionate yearning for a divinely decreed justice that is never fully realised but remains a transcendent imperative
- Khomeini - Standing in his pulpit, with the Koran in one hand and the 1906 Constitution in the other, he repeatedly declared that the Shah had violated both by his dismissal of parliament, his wicked suppression of all opposition, his illegal use of torture, his callous neglect of the poor, and his craven subservience to the United States
Item 6: "Iran: A Nation Still Haunted by its Bloody past" by Robert Fisk
Wisdom:
- I padded round (the Shah of Iran's) libraries; leather-bound volumes of Voltaire, Verlaine, Flaubert, Plutarch, Goebbels, Shakespeare, Charles de Gaulle, Churchill and Coleridge. Abba Eban's My People was dedicated by the author to "His Imperial Majesty, the Shah of Shahs"
- Iran had become a necrocracy
- They had not forgotten how the CIA and MI6 destroyed Mohammed Mossadeq's democratically elected government in a coup in 1953 - Operation Ajax, the Americans called it (the British chose the more prosaic Operation Boot)
- Abolhassan Bani-Sadr became Iran's first elected president in 1979, but failed to maintain his authority against Ayatollah Khomeini. After 17 months he was impeached and fled to France where he still lives
02 February 2009
Of Pushtun Quagmire
Citizens of the World,
Item 1: "How al-Arabiya Got the Obama Interview" by Scott Macleod
Wisdom:
- As Melhem remembers it, "This man says, 'My name is so-and-so, and I'm either going to make your day or ruin your day. Would you like to chat with the President about 5 p.m. today?' I joked, 'I guess I can accommodate the President.'
- "There we were, two blues fanatics, sitting there talking about Muddy Waters,"
Item 2: "School Reform that Works" by Bill Gates
Wisdom:
- 2009 Annual Letter from Bill Gates
- Every year, 1 million kids drop out of high school. Only 71 percent of kids graduate from high school within four years
- we have made over $2 billion in grants - hope was that after a few years they would operate at the same cost per student as before, but they would have become much more effective
- The difficulty of the problem does not make it any less important to solve
Item 3: "The Game Changer" by George Soros
Wisdom:
- Lehman Brothers, the US investment bank, was allowed to go into bankruptcy without proper preparation. It was a game-changing event with catastrophic consequences
- Price of credit default swaps, a form of insurance against companies defaulting on debt, went through the roof as investors took cover
- Lehman was one of the main market-makers in commercial paper and a large issuer of these short-term obligations to boot - a run on money market funds was in full swing
- Credit default swaps played a critical role in Lehman’s demise:
i. There is an asymmetry in the risk/reward ratio between being long or short in the stock market - one can be more patient being long and wrong than being short and wrong - asymmetry serves to discourage the short-selling of stocks
ii. CDS market offers a convenient way of shorting bonds - Going short on bonds by buying a CDS contract carries limited risk but unlimited profit potential; by contrast, selling credit default swaps offers limited profits but practically unlimited risks
iii. Reflexivity - mispricing of financial instruments can affect the fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect
- Proper role of short-selling - gives markets greater depth and continuity, making them more resilient
- Credit default swaps - prevailing view is that they ought to be traded on regulated exchanges - they are toxic and should be used only by prescription
- Strength of the dollar was due not to people choosing to hold dollars but to their inability to maintain or roll over their dollar obligations
- Strength of the dollar, like the fever associated with sickness, was a measure of the disruption of the financial system
Item 4: "Time to Put Middle Class Front and Center" by Joe Biden
Taskforce for the Middle Class
Item 5: "The Case for Drilling in ANWR" by Sarah Palin
Wisdom:
- There is potential for prices to rebound as OPEC asserts its market power and as Russia disrupts needed natural gas to Europe for the second time in three years
- ANWR represents a huge, secure domestic supply that could help satisfy U.S. demand for more than 25 years
Item 6: "Obama's Oratory: Recalling the Sway of Sukarno" by Al Makin
Wisdom:
- Sukarno - "Mentally I talked with Thomas Jefferson, with whom I feel friendly and close because he told me all about the Declaration of Independence he wrote in 1776. I discussed George Washington's problems with him. I relived Paul Revere's ride. I deliberately looked for mistakes in the life of Abraham Lincoln so I could argue the points with him"
Item 7: "The Power of a Declaration" by Amartya Sen
Wisdom:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights made its contribution to practical reason and global politics in four distinct ways:
i. Human rights do not depend on legislation for recognition
ii. Instruments that can be used to pursue the ethics of human rights
iii. Included political, social and economic rights in various forms
iv. Universal coverage
Item 8: "An Open Letter -- From Pakistan -- to President Obama" by Imran Khan
Wisdom:
- First and foremost policy objective should be to restore the peace - can only be achieved through a serious and sustained dialogue with the militants and mitigation of their genuine grievances under the ambit of our constitution and law
- Pushtun quagmire
Item 1: "How al-Arabiya Got the Obama Interview" by Scott Macleod
Wisdom:
- As Melhem remembers it, "This man says, 'My name is so-and-so, and I'm either going to make your day or ruin your day. Would you like to chat with the President about 5 p.m. today?' I joked, 'I guess I can accommodate the President.'
- "There we were, two blues fanatics, sitting there talking about Muddy Waters,"
Item 2: "School Reform that Works" by Bill Gates
Wisdom:
- 2009 Annual Letter from Bill Gates
- Every year, 1 million kids drop out of high school. Only 71 percent of kids graduate from high school within four years
- we have made over $2 billion in grants - hope was that after a few years they would operate at the same cost per student as before, but they would have become much more effective
- The difficulty of the problem does not make it any less important to solve
Item 3: "The Game Changer" by George Soros
Wisdom:
- Lehman Brothers, the US investment bank, was allowed to go into bankruptcy without proper preparation. It was a game-changing event with catastrophic consequences
- Price of credit default swaps, a form of insurance against companies defaulting on debt, went through the roof as investors took cover
- Lehman was one of the main market-makers in commercial paper and a large issuer of these short-term obligations to boot - a run on money market funds was in full swing
- Credit default swaps played a critical role in Lehman’s demise:
i. There is an asymmetry in the risk/reward ratio between being long or short in the stock market - one can be more patient being long and wrong than being short and wrong - asymmetry serves to discourage the short-selling of stocks
ii. CDS market offers a convenient way of shorting bonds - Going short on bonds by buying a CDS contract carries limited risk but unlimited profit potential; by contrast, selling credit default swaps offers limited profits but practically unlimited risks
iii. Reflexivity - mispricing of financial instruments can affect the fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect
- Proper role of short-selling - gives markets greater depth and continuity, making them more resilient
- Credit default swaps - prevailing view is that they ought to be traded on regulated exchanges - they are toxic and should be used only by prescription
- Strength of the dollar was due not to people choosing to hold dollars but to their inability to maintain or roll over their dollar obligations
- Strength of the dollar, like the fever associated with sickness, was a measure of the disruption of the financial system
Item 4: "Time to Put Middle Class Front and Center" by Joe Biden
Taskforce for the Middle Class
Item 5: "The Case for Drilling in ANWR" by Sarah Palin
Wisdom:
- There is potential for prices to rebound as OPEC asserts its market power and as Russia disrupts needed natural gas to Europe for the second time in three years
- ANWR represents a huge, secure domestic supply that could help satisfy U.S. demand for more than 25 years
Item 6: "Obama's Oratory: Recalling the Sway of Sukarno" by Al Makin
Wisdom:
- Sukarno - "Mentally I talked with Thomas Jefferson, with whom I feel friendly and close because he told me all about the Declaration of Independence he wrote in 1776. I discussed George Washington's problems with him. I relived Paul Revere's ride. I deliberately looked for mistakes in the life of Abraham Lincoln so I could argue the points with him"
Item 7: "The Power of a Declaration" by Amartya Sen
Wisdom:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights made its contribution to practical reason and global politics in four distinct ways:
i. Human rights do not depend on legislation for recognition
ii. Instruments that can be used to pursue the ethics of human rights
iii. Included political, social and economic rights in various forms
iv. Universal coverage
Item 8: "An Open Letter -- From Pakistan -- to President Obama" by Imran Khan
Wisdom:
- First and foremost policy objective should be to restore the peace - can only be achieved through a serious and sustained dialogue with the militants and mitigation of their genuine grievances under the ambit of our constitution and law
- Pushtun quagmire
28 January 2009
On Unemployment
Citizens of the World,
Editorial:
By the end of this year, God forbid, we could see 50 million jobs lost worldwide, according to the International Labour Organisation. Here, more than 10,000 Malaysians have already lost their job since the start of 2009. That's about 357 people losing their jobs everyday this month. Now times that by the number of family members each of them has to feed. Even the thought of it makes me thankful for every grain of rice I had for dinner. I know that the government have their plans to mitigate this, and hopefully it plays out well. If not an issue of governance, it's an issue of faith to maintain full employment.
Item 1: "Rewriting the Rule Book for 21st Century Capitalism" by Jeffrey Sachs
Wisdom:
- Two core truths of sustainable development: that technological overhaul lies at the core of the challenge, and that such an overhaul requires a public-private partnership for success
- Free-market ideology is an anachronism in an era of climate change, water stress, food scarcity and energy insecurity
Item 2: "Interview of the President" by Hisham Melhem
Wisdom:
- All too often the United States starts by dictating -- in the past on some of these issues -- and we don't always know all the factors that are involved
- Israel is a strong ally of the United States. They will not stop being a strong ally of the United States. And I will continue to believe that Israel's security is paramount
- I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries
- I do think that it is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but where there are potential avenues for progress.
Item 3: "Is this the End of Warren Buffett" by Doug Kass
Wisdom:
- (Buffett) seems to view Berkshire's intrinsic value as the sum of its investments per share plus approximately 12 times pretax profits, excluding all income from investments
- Derivatives (massive short put positions), Buffett's refusal to sell and his apparent lack of recognition that investment moats no longer exist in some of his largest investments (especially in banking), I now feel that Berkshire's valuation will steadily suffer
Item 4: "George Mitchell and the Middle East" by Gerry Adams
Wisdom:
- Mitchell Principles:
i. To democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving political issues
ii. To the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations
iii. To agree that such disarmament must be verifiable to the satisfaction of an independent commission
iv. To renounce for themselves, and to oppose any effort by others, to use force, or threaten to use force, to influence the course or the outcome of all-party negotiations
v. To agree to abide by the terms of any agreement reached in all-party negotiations and to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree
vi. To urge that "punishment" killings and beatings stop and to take effective steps to prevent such actions.
- He patiently plotted a course through all of this. He brought to the process a legislative and judicial experience that saw the negotiations format changed from one of large cumbersome meetings to one of smaller groups of negotiators, usually involving the leader and deputy leader of the parties. This provided for a greater focus on the detail of the issues, and it facilitated a more workable and productive arrangement
- George spent a great deal of his time in side meetings with the parties
- In a peace process, the goal must be an inclusive agreement that is acceptable to all sides, is doable, deliverable and sustainable. That means enemies and opponents creating space for each other. It means engaging in real conversations and seeking real solutions. It means accepting that dialogue is crucial and that means recognising the right of the Palestinian people to choose their own leaders, their own representatives.
Item 5: "No Room for Israel Under America's Umbrella" by Max Boot
Wisdom:
- Obama team may consider extending the US nuclear umbrella to Israel in the event that Iran goes nuclear
- It is not clear what purpose a US nuclear threat would serve, since Israel has its own nuclear arsenal, estimated to contain 100-200 warheads
- During the cold war the two superpowers came perilously close to nuclear conflict on at least two occasions; not only during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis but also during Nato’s 1983 “Able Archer” exercise, which some in the Kremlin misread as preparations for an actual first strike
Item 6: "Partnering with Pakistan" by Asif Ali Zardari
Wisdom:
- Special envoy to Southwest Asia - Richard Holbrooke
- Pakistan has repeatedly been identified as the most critical external problem facing the new administration
- Abandonment of Afghanistan and Pakistan after the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s set the stage for the era of terrorism that we are enduring
- Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act - $1.5 billion annual commitment to social progress
- Water crisis in Pakistan is directly linked to relations with India
Item 7: "Democracy...Its Constraints" by Ignas Kleden
Wisdom:
- To assume that democratic principles and values are particular depending on where they are implemented, is highly risky
- 1959 - President Sukarno declared so-called "Guided Democracy" - supposed to be a better fit for the Indonesian character, which, it was claimed, was incompatible with liberal democracy
- President Soeharto, during the New Order administration, introduced the concept of Pancasila Democracy - Indonesia democracy should be in line with the five principles of Pancasila
- Of the 550 members of parliament, there are no more than 40 percent who are able to engage in substantial debates about the issues under discussion. The re-maining 60 percent can only be involved in the debates about their parties' position, but can offer no contribution whatsoever to the substance of the debate
Item 8: "The Stimulus is a Fiscal Straitjacket" by Jeffrey Sachs
Wisdom:
- US debate over the fiscal stimulus is remarkable in its neglect of the medium term
- 2008 stimulus package of $100bn in tax rebates was rushed into effect - had little stimulus effect - largely saved or used to pay down credit card debt, rather than spent
- US federal tax system collects about 18 per cent of gross national product, while the total of just five categories of public spending – Social Security (retirement and disability), health (Medicare, Medicaid), veterans’ benefits, defence and homeland security and interest payments – eat up about 18 per cent of GNP
Item 9: "A Measure Remodelled" by Joh Thornbill
Wisdom:
- Singapore – an open economy and a bellwether for global trade
- Commonly used indicator, gross domestic product, is an imperfect yardstick of economic activity
- A 24-member commission of prominent economists led by Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, both Nobel prize winners, is due to report in April on ways of improving our economic bookkeeping
- Income = household consumption + investment (business, household and government) + government consumption (of goods and services) + (net trade = exports – imports)
Item 10: "Give Us Bangs for our Bailout Bucks" by Joseph Stiglitz
Wisdom:
- finance is the lifeblood of any economy
- strong stimulus is one that delivers a big bang for the buck – and quickly
- first focus should be on preventing further spending cutbacks; with states and localities limited to spending what they receive in revenues, and with tax revenues falling precipitously, making up for this shortfall is the natural place to begin
- spending should have as positive a long-run impact as possible - it creates an asset
- There was a trickle-down strategy: throwing money at the banks would trickle down to the rest of the economy. A trickle-up strategy, to prevent foreclosures, would almost surely have been far more successful
Editorial:
By the end of this year, God forbid, we could see 50 million jobs lost worldwide, according to the International Labour Organisation. Here, more than 10,000 Malaysians have already lost their job since the start of 2009. That's about 357 people losing their jobs everyday this month. Now times that by the number of family members each of them has to feed. Even the thought of it makes me thankful for every grain of rice I had for dinner. I know that the government have their plans to mitigate this, and hopefully it plays out well. If not an issue of governance, it's an issue of faith to maintain full employment.
Item 1: "Rewriting the Rule Book for 21st Century Capitalism" by Jeffrey Sachs
Wisdom:
- Two core truths of sustainable development: that technological overhaul lies at the core of the challenge, and that such an overhaul requires a public-private partnership for success
- Free-market ideology is an anachronism in an era of climate change, water stress, food scarcity and energy insecurity
Item 2: "Interview of the President" by Hisham Melhem
Wisdom:
- All too often the United States starts by dictating -- in the past on some of these issues -- and we don't always know all the factors that are involved
- Israel is a strong ally of the United States. They will not stop being a strong ally of the United States. And I will continue to believe that Israel's security is paramount
- I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries
- I do think that it is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but where there are potential avenues for progress.
Item 3: "Is this the End of Warren Buffett" by Doug Kass
Wisdom:
- (Buffett) seems to view Berkshire's intrinsic value as the sum of its investments per share plus approximately 12 times pretax profits, excluding all income from investments
- Derivatives (massive short put positions), Buffett's refusal to sell and his apparent lack of recognition that investment moats no longer exist in some of his largest investments (especially in banking), I now feel that Berkshire's valuation will steadily suffer
Item 4: "George Mitchell and the Middle East" by Gerry Adams
Wisdom:
- Mitchell Principles:
i. To democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving political issues
ii. To the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations
iii. To agree that such disarmament must be verifiable to the satisfaction of an independent commission
iv. To renounce for themselves, and to oppose any effort by others, to use force, or threaten to use force, to influence the course or the outcome of all-party negotiations
v. To agree to abide by the terms of any agreement reached in all-party negotiations and to resort to democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree
vi. To urge that "punishment" killings and beatings stop and to take effective steps to prevent such actions.
- He patiently plotted a course through all of this. He brought to the process a legislative and judicial experience that saw the negotiations format changed from one of large cumbersome meetings to one of smaller groups of negotiators, usually involving the leader and deputy leader of the parties. This provided for a greater focus on the detail of the issues, and it facilitated a more workable and productive arrangement
- George spent a great deal of his time in side meetings with the parties
- In a peace process, the goal must be an inclusive agreement that is acceptable to all sides, is doable, deliverable and sustainable. That means enemies and opponents creating space for each other. It means engaging in real conversations and seeking real solutions. It means accepting that dialogue is crucial and that means recognising the right of the Palestinian people to choose their own leaders, their own representatives.
Item 5: "No Room for Israel Under America's Umbrella" by Max Boot
Wisdom:
- Obama team may consider extending the US nuclear umbrella to Israel in the event that Iran goes nuclear
- It is not clear what purpose a US nuclear threat would serve, since Israel has its own nuclear arsenal, estimated to contain 100-200 warheads
- During the cold war the two superpowers came perilously close to nuclear conflict on at least two occasions; not only during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis but also during Nato’s 1983 “Able Archer” exercise, which some in the Kremlin misread as preparations for an actual first strike
Item 6: "Partnering with Pakistan" by Asif Ali Zardari
Wisdom:
- Special envoy to Southwest Asia - Richard Holbrooke
- Pakistan has repeatedly been identified as the most critical external problem facing the new administration
- Abandonment of Afghanistan and Pakistan after the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s set the stage for the era of terrorism that we are enduring
- Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act - $1.5 billion annual commitment to social progress
- Water crisis in Pakistan is directly linked to relations with India
Item 7: "Democracy...Its Constraints" by Ignas Kleden
Wisdom:
- To assume that democratic principles and values are particular depending on where they are implemented, is highly risky
- 1959 - President Sukarno declared so-called "Guided Democracy" - supposed to be a better fit for the Indonesian character, which, it was claimed, was incompatible with liberal democracy
- President Soeharto, during the New Order administration, introduced the concept of Pancasila Democracy - Indonesia democracy should be in line with the five principles of Pancasila
- Of the 550 members of parliament, there are no more than 40 percent who are able to engage in substantial debates about the issues under discussion. The re-maining 60 percent can only be involved in the debates about their parties' position, but can offer no contribution whatsoever to the substance of the debate
Item 8: "The Stimulus is a Fiscal Straitjacket" by Jeffrey Sachs
Wisdom:
- US debate over the fiscal stimulus is remarkable in its neglect of the medium term
- 2008 stimulus package of $100bn in tax rebates was rushed into effect - had little stimulus effect - largely saved or used to pay down credit card debt, rather than spent
- US federal tax system collects about 18 per cent of gross national product, while the total of just five categories of public spending – Social Security (retirement and disability), health (Medicare, Medicaid), veterans’ benefits, defence and homeland security and interest payments – eat up about 18 per cent of GNP
Item 9: "A Measure Remodelled" by Joh Thornbill
Wisdom:
- Singapore – an open economy and a bellwether for global trade
- Commonly used indicator, gross domestic product, is an imperfect yardstick of economic activity
- A 24-member commission of prominent economists led by Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, both Nobel prize winners, is due to report in April on ways of improving our economic bookkeeping
- Income = household consumption + investment (business, household and government) + government consumption (of goods and services) + (net trade = exports – imports)
Item 10: "Give Us Bangs for our Bailout Bucks" by Joseph Stiglitz
Wisdom:
- finance is the lifeblood of any economy
- strong stimulus is one that delivers a big bang for the buck – and quickly
- first focus should be on preventing further spending cutbacks; with states and localities limited to spending what they receive in revenues, and with tax revenues falling precipitously, making up for this shortfall is the natural place to begin
- spending should have as positive a long-run impact as possible - it creates an asset
- There was a trickle-down strategy: throwing money at the banks would trickle down to the rest of the economy. A trickle-up strategy, to prevent foreclosures, would almost surely have been far more successful
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