Jesse Stanchak
Posted Monday, Sept. 22, 2008, at 6:34 AM ET
After a whirlwind weekend of negotiations, the political dimensions of the Treasury Department's $700 billion mortgage bailout proposal are starting to take shape, even as the financial sector continues to shift dramatically. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today each lead with their latest analysis of how the Treasury Department's proposal will wind its way through Congress. The Wall Street Journal leads with the end of the era of investment banking, as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs opt to become holding companies.
Now that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson has presented members of Congress with an outline of his plan, Congress is weighing in with a few ideas of its own. While support for the concept of the buyout seems solid at the moment, the papers all say that Democrats and Republicans each have concerns they want addressed. The NYT focuses on high-ranking Democrats' desire to see greater industry regulation attached to the bill, up to and including regulating the salaries of executives whose companies participate in the buyout. Other concerns include increasing the programs' oversight requirements and perhaps including some sort of assistance for troubled homeowners. The WSJ says that the argument for housing aid adds a bitter twist to the debate, since "taxpayers are now both creditors and debtors in the housing mess." The LAT suggests the buyout may help homebuyers indirectly, even without any special aid for consumers.
House Republicans, meanwhile, want assurances that any profits made from the eventual sale of these distressed assets will be used to pay down the national debt, says the WP. Some Republicans continue to voice concern over the scope and cost of the package, but the papers all agree that the chances of anyone stalling the measure are slim. Paulson is quoted in all the papers asking Congress to pass his proposal without significant changes and saying he still hopes Congress will pass the bill before leaving for a recess on Friday.
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The WSJ explains that the conversion of the last two investment banks to commercial banking is meant to stabilize the financial titans and keep them from going the way of Lehman Bros. Becoming retail banks will mean that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will be able to use bank deposits as a cushion for their investments. In exchange, they will now face greater regulation, stricter debt limits. and, in all likelihood, lower profitability than they've seen in the past. The NYT calls the move, "a blunt acknowledgment that their model of finance and investing had become too risky."
Financial institutions are lobbying members of Congress at full tilt, reports the NYT. Some are pushing for an expanded bailout package that would go beyond just mortgages and allow the government to buy up "any financial instrument." The paper also says that several companies are especially interested in who will manage the government's new acquisitions, a contract that could easily be worth billions annually.
The NYT notes that the Asian markets' reaction to the weekend's developments were cautiously positive in early trading.
The WP fronts a man-on-the-street piece about local taxpayer resentment of the buyout plan.
The NYT goes inside with a piece on how the power of the Treasury secretary has grown over the last two years. The paper goes on to speculate about who will take over from Paulson after the next president takes office.
USAT off-leads with Pakistan saying it has declined the FBI's help in investigating the hotel bombing in Islamabad. The attack killed 53 people, including two Americans. Inside, the NYT examines the political implications of the attack.
Virginia's 13 electoral votes are in play for the first time in more than 40 years, a phenomenon that's made life easier for fundraisers from both parties. Virginians gave $25.3 million during the current election cycle, says the WP, up from $14.2 million during the 2004 campaign. Contributions to Democratic presidential candidates led donations to Republicans by about 5-to-3, with about 85 percent of all donations coming from northern-Virginia donors.
Of course, voting in Virginia has already begun for some people, according to USAT. Virginia is one of 34 states that have some type of early-voting program. The paper claims that more people will vote early this year than ever before, with one expert predicting that nearly one-third of the electorate will vote before Nov. 4.
The LAT fronts coverage of last night's Emmy Awards, in which Mad Men and 30 Rock won the top prizes.
The NYT fronts (and USAT teases) a farewell to Yankee Stadium
Monday, September 22, 2008
Wall Street at a Crossroads
Sunday, September 21, 2008
SPDC’s new target: Burmese citizens’ emails,SPDCの新しいターゲット: ビルマの市民の電子メール
BDD Saturday, September 20, 2008
Sources close to regime said that SPDC Science and Technology Minister U Thaung reportedly instructed IT department officials to create the data bank of Burmese citizens' email addresses worldwide. This is not a new instruction but he had in 2006. U Thaung was very interested in getting Burmese political activists’ email addresses since he became a minister of S&T.
政体の近くの源はビルマcitizens'のデータ・バンクを作成するようにSPDCの科学技術がU Thaungを伝えられるところによれば指示したそれに部門の役人世話すると言った; 世界的の電子メールアドレス。 これは新しい指示ではないが、彼は2006年に持っていた。 U Thaungはビルマの政治運動家の電子メールアドレスを得ることに非常に興味があった彼が科学技術の大臣になったので。
Burmese military officers who graduated in computer science from Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology were assigned in Cyber city which in near Mandalay to get more information from websites.
電子技術のモスクワの協会からのコンピュータ・サイエンスで卒業したビルマの軍当局者はCyber都市で近いマンダレイにウェブサイトからより多くの情報を入れるために割り当てられた。
That wasn't clear recent DDoS attack against Irrawaddy and DVB websites were from his ministry or other foreign based hackers. But insider said U Thaung’s pet projects has already developed the softwares that could hack the Burmese citizens’ email addresses to attack the different people and political activists to create more confusion within own citizens.
それはIrrawaddyに対してDDoSの明確ではない最近の攻撃ではなかったし、DVBのウェブサイトは彼の大臣か他の外国の基づいたハッカーからあった。 しかし部内者はU Thaungが持論既に異なった人々を攻撃するためにビルマの市民の電子メールアドレスを切り刻むことができ、より多くの混乱をの内の作成する政治運動家が市民を所有するソフトウェアを開発してしまったことを言った。
Sources said that others should not under estimate the senior general Than Shwe’s psychological warfare tactics, he could use his tactics to create more confusion and get more upper hand for SPDC.
源は他が見積もりの下で年長大将のThanShwe心理戦争べきではないと言った-作戦、彼はより多くの混乱を作成し、SPDCのためのもっと優勢であるのに彼の作戦を使用できる。
Now regime has extended new political battle through cyber warfare against the independent media from urban warfare against Buddhist monks, NLD, 88 generation groups and rest of the citizens, and other rural suppression against the ethnics.
今度は政体は市民の僧侶に対して市街戦からの独立メディアに対してcyber戦いによって新しい政治戦いを、NLD、88の世代別グループおよび残り、およびethnicsに対して他の田園抑制拡張してしまった。
Main Target for this time is private citizens’ emails to use as a tool to attack the political activists and others. Nobody knows regime would target Western security agencies and government websites.
この時間の主要なターゲットは政治運動家および他を攻撃するのに用具として使用するべき一般市民の電子メールである。 政体が西部の警備機関および政府のウェブサイトを目標とすることをだれも知らない。
During the crisis, Japan has feels like an island of calm
By Martin Fackler
Sunday, September 21, 2008
TOKYO: Wall Street may be suffering the worst financial storm since the Great Depression, but Japan has felt like an island of Zen-like calm.
The world's second-largest economy after the United States has often seemed to be marching to its own drummer, sometimes to disastrous effect. But rarely has the disconnect been as stark as during the current crisis.
While European and American financial titans have teetered and collapsed, giant Japanese banking groups have stood relatively unscathed. The growing global credit crisis, which threatens companies and consumers elsewhere, has yet to appear here, where the problem for years has been that the nation's banks have too much cash, not too little.
And while the U.S. Federal Reserve seems to be shoring up the entire American financial sector, the last time the Japanese central bank intervened in markets, it did so in dollars instead of yen - to help international markets.
Indeed, television news gives the current upheaval, known here as "Lehman Shock," less coverage than more domestic issues like a tropical storm and a scandal over tainted rice. Even in the race for prime minister, the financial crisis has emerged as just one of a dozen issues, and usually not the top one.
Japan has been affected by the global economic downturn, with its economy contracting in the second quarter from the previous quarter. And its stock market gyrated and declined this week. But in an era dominated by globalization, where seemingly unrelated events can affect the lives of people half a world away, Tokyo has so far floated above the anguish gripping New York and London.
"The financial crisis looks like fire on a distant shore," said Atsushi Nakajima, chief economist at the research arm of Mizuho Financial Group. "Japan has remained very calm and peaceful."
Part of the reason is that Japan has already suffered its agonizing crisis. The 1980s bubble economy collapsed in the 1990s because banks were burdened with real estate-related bad loans, not unlike those that Washington is preparing to take over from banks.
In Japan, it took a "lost decade" to work through those debts. The Japanese became very cautious after the bitter experience of the cleanup, and one result is that they seem to have largely avoided the risky subprime loans that set off the U.S. financial crisis.
According to the International Monetary Fund, subprime-related losses at Japanese financial companies have totaled just $8 billion, out of global subprime-related losses that some say could total $1 trillion.
"Japan learned its lesson in the 1990s," said Akio Makabe, an economics professor at Shinshu University. "It was wise when Wall Street was foolish."
Of course, Wall Street's pains have been felt here. The stock market fell last week in volatile trading, with the benchmark Nikkei 225 index sliding 2.4 percent - largely the result of heavy sales by foreign investors. There are also bigger fears that slowdowns in the United States and China will end up hammering Japan's export-driven manufacturing sector.
There have also been small but telltale signs of rising risk aversion in credit markets. Japanese banks raised short-term interbank lending rates to foreign banks to 0.7 percent, from 0.5 percent, though they still use the lower rate among themselves. That contrasts with New York, where a benchmark interbank lending rate has tripled in recent days to about 3 percent.
Still, its relative detachment makes Japan an oddity in a world where globalization has seemed inevitable. Countries in Europe have also tried to find ways to be part of the global economy while staying apart from it, but to no avail. Other nations, like China, have bet their future on becoming enmeshed in it.
Japan's aloofness has its downside. For example, with its healthy banking system and abundance of capital, Japan would seem in an ideal position to help bail out the shell-shocked global economy, stepping in for the weakened United States and Europe.
Instead, Tokyo has kept a low profile throughout the crisis, other than joining a multinational effort by central banks to pump dollars into the global economy to keep it moving.
When asked during a debate of prime minister candidates Friday whether Japan could assert more leadership during the crisis, the leading candidate, former Foreign Minister Taro Aso, said he was "proud that Japan was not involved in that money game," referring to U.S. mortgage debt.
Economists and bankers say Japan is able to keep itself apart for a very simple reason: it has enough cash to finance its own needs.
The country has a $14 trillion pile of household savings, the product of decades of trade surpluses and frugal lifestyles. This has allowed Japan to finance its immense $8.1 trillion fiscal deficit and still have enough money left over to be the world's largest creditor nation for the last 17 years.
Last year, the country's net overseas assets - the sum of all Japanese investments abroad, minus what foreigners hold in Japan - reached a record ¥250 trillion, or $2.4 trillion.
That means that Japan's domestic economy has been largely insulated from global credit market turmoil because it does not borrow from those markets. At the same time, with so much money flowing out - usually into safer investments like U.S. Treasury bonds - stability in the United States clearly matters.
Still, Japan's corporate coffers are filled with cash from the nation's long economic recovery in the 2000s after the stagnant 1990s.
"Japan is clearly in a different place" from the rest of the world, said John Richards, head of Asia research at the Royal Bank of Scotland. "It doesn't need money."
This blessing has also been a curse to investors, economists say. Japan's wealth shields it from pressures to meet global standards of economic growth or corporate profitability. This is what allowed the nation to accept near zero growth rates in the 1990s and what allows the survival of Japanese corporate practices like valuing employees and clients over shareholders.
Asian Countries Ban Chinese Milk Products
By Peter Bachmann, on Sunday, 21 September 2008
Published in : The News, News September 2008
Several Asian countries, including Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, have banned Chinese dairy products after baby formula and fluid milk was found to be contaminated with melamine, a toxic chemical added to artificially increase the protein level.
Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Burma, Bangladesh as well as Hong Kong have banned Chinese dairy products, Asian media reports. Several food producers in Asia have also withdrawn products made with Chinese powder or fluid milk.
In the meantime, the Chinese government has asked its provinces to set up 24-hour hotlines to assist people that may have consumed melamine-contaminated milk from the three main dairy producers, Yili, Mengniu and Bright Dairy. Doctors are being told to provide free medical checks for babies that suffer kidney problems.
The European Union said no Chinese milk products have officially entered EU countries, but is warning that illegally distributed dairy products from China should not be consumed. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning not to buy dairy products from China over the Internet, and has started an information campaign in cities with a large Chinese population.
CHILD SOLDIERS IN BURMA, ビルマの子供の兵士
(photo: AP / David Longstreath)
http://irrawaddy.burmabloggers.net/?p=695
Sep,21,2008
Child soldiers and the China factor
子供の兵士および中国は考慮する
By Jo Becker
UNITED NATIONS, New York:
国際連合、ニューヨーク:
Myint Win was 11 years old when he was first recruited into Burma’s national army. He was picked up by soldiers while selling vegetables at a railway station and sent to a military training camp. He weighed only 70 pounds, or about 32 kilograms, and said that the guns were so heavy he could hardly lift them.
MyintWinは彼がビルマの国民の軍隊に最初に募集された11歳だった。 彼は兵士によって駅の野菜を販売している間取られ、軍事訓練のキャンプに差し向けられた。 彼は70ポンド、か約32キログラムだけ重量を量り、銃があった従って重い彼がほとんどそれらを持ち上げることができないと言った。
He was able to escape, but was recruited a second time at the age of 14. This time he tried to negotiate. “I’ll give you money,” he said to the lance corporal. The recruiter replied, “I don’t want your money.” Myin Win said, “I’ll call my mother and she can vouch for me.” The soldier told him, “I don’t want to see your mother or father and I don’t want money. I want you to join the army.”
彼は脱出して、しかし二回目14歳で募集できた。 今回彼は交渉することを試みた。 「私はお金を与える」、彼は陸士長に言った。 リクルーターは答えた、「私はほしいと思わないあなたのお金が」。 Myinの勝利は言った、「私は私の母を電話し、彼女は私のために保証してもいい」。 兵士は彼に言った、「私はあなたの母か父および私はお金がほしいと思わないことを見たいと思わない。 私は軍隊に加わってほしい。
Myin Win was sent to training again and, while still only 14, deployed into ethnic minority areas where he was ordered to burn down houses and capture civilians. “We were ordered that if we see anyone, including women and children, then we must approach and catch them and take them to our officers for interrogation,” he said. “If they try to run, shoot them.”
MyinWinは再度訓練に送られ、彼が家を燃やし、一般市民を捕獲するように命令された少数民族区域に、がまだ14だけ、配置された。 「女性を含んでだれでも、および子供、見れば私達近づかなければなり、それらをつかまえ、質問のための私達の役人に連れて行くために」、彼が言った私達は発注された。 「彼らが走ることを試みたらそれらを撃ちなさい。
Burma’s military regime may have the largest number of child soldiers in the world. Thousands of children serve in Burma’s national army, swept up in massive recruitment drives to offset high rates of desertion and a lack of willing volunteers. The United Nations Secretary General has identified the regime as one of the world’s worst perpetrators of child recruitment, citing it in six separate reports to the UN Security Council since 2002.
ビルマの軍の政体に世界の子供の兵士の最大数があるかもしれない。 たくさんの子供は脱走の高い比率を相殺するために大きい募集ドライブで掃除されるビルマの国民の軍隊で役立ち、決定の欠乏は自ら申し出る。 国際連合の事務総長は2002年以来の国連安全保障理事会に6つの別々のレポートのそれを引用している世界で子供の募集の最も悪い犯罪人の1人として政体を識別した。
Two years ago, the Security Council created a special working group specifically to address abuses against children in armed conflict. The group is empowered to recommend arms embargoes and other targeted sanctions against violators, like Burma, that repeatedly recruit and use child soldiers.
2年前に、安全保障理事会は武力紛争の子供に対して乱用に演説するために特別なワークグループをとりわけ作成した。 グループは繰り返し子供の兵士を募集し、使用する妨害者に対して武器禁輸および他の目標とされた認可を、ビルマのような推薦するために権限を与えられる。
But in Burma’s case, the Security Council has shamefully squandered its responsibility. After a formal review of Burma’s violations, the working group’s recent report fails even to acknowledge that Burma’s army recruits children. Far from considering well-justified sanctions, the working group repeatedly welcomed the regime’s “cooperation” with the UN.
しかしビルマの場合で、安全保障理事会は恥じて責任を浪費した。 ビルマの違反の形式的な検討の後で、ワークグループの最近のレポートは認めないビルマの軍隊が子供を募集すること。 よ正当化された認可の考慮どころか、ワークグループは繰り返し国連との政体の「協同」を歓迎した。
The approach to Burma is in stark contrast to the Security Council working group’s tough - and effective - approach to other perpetrators like Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Last year the Security Council threatened sanctions against the Tamil Tigers for the group’s use of child soldiers during Sri Lanka’s two-decade-long civil war, and gave a six-month deadline for action. It worked. Reports of child recruitment by the Tamil Tigers dropped from 1,090 in 2004 to 26 in the first six months of this year.
ビルマへのアプローチは安全保障理事会と全く対照的にある堅いワークグループ-有効-スリランカのLTTEのような他の犯罪人に近づけば。 グループのスリランカの2十年長い内戦の間の子供の兵士の使用のためのタミル人のトラに対する去年安全保障理事会の脅された認可は、行為のための6ヵ月の締切を与え。 それは働いた。 タミル人のトラによる子供の募集のレポートは2004年から今年の最初の6か月の26に1,090から落ちた。
In other cases, the Security Council has also obtained results. In Ivory Coast, it pushed government and rebel forces to adopt action plans to end child recruitment; the practice has now been abandoned in that country. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, it referred information on violations to sanctions committees and urged the arrest and prosecution of commanders responsible for child recruitment. Although some child recruitment continues in the country, an estimated 30,000 child soldiers have been released or demobilized since 2003.
それ以外の場合、安全保障理事会はまた結果を得た。 象牙海岸では、それは政府および子供の募集を終えるために活動計画を採用するように反乱軍を押した; 練習はその国で今断念されてしまった。 民主党のコンゴ共和国では、それは認可委員会に違反の情報を関係し、子供の募集に責任がある司令官の阻止そして実行をせき立てた。 子供の募集が国で続くが、推定30,000人の子供の兵士は2003年以来解放されるか、または復員していた。
So why is the Security Council giving Burma a free pass? In a word, China. A stalwart ally of Burma’s military regime, China tried to prevent the Security Council from discussing Burma’s record of violations against children. According to diplomats, China’s representatives (often backed by Russia and Indonesia) have consistently rejected all efforts to pressure Burma to address its use of child soldiers - including proposals for a more detailed action plan on the issue from Burma’s government, access by UN personnel to Burma’s territory to verify Burma’s claims that it has no child soldiers, or even a follow-up report on progress.
従ってビルマを与えているフリーパスである安全保障理事会はなぜか。 単語では、中国。 ビルマの軍の政体の頑丈な同盟国、中国は試みた子供に対して安全保障理事会がビルマの違反の記録を論議することを防ぐことを。 外交官に従って、中国の代表は(頻繁にロシアおよびインドネシア著支持される) -ビルマの政府からの問題のより詳しい活動計画、ビルマの領域へのアクセス演説するためにビルマに圧力をかけるためのすべての努力を、また更に進歩の追跡調査報告のための提案を含む…一貫して子供の兵士がないこと国連人員によって子供の兵士の使用にビルマの要求を確認する拒絶した。
Despite all eyes being on China during the recent Olympic Games, this obstructionist behavior provides another sad illustration of China’s failure to uphold basic human rights standards, including protections for some of the world’s most vulnerable children.
最近のオリンピック大会の間に中国であるすべての目にもかかわらずこの議事進行妨害者の行動は世界の最も傷つきやすい子供の何人かのための保護を含む基本的な人権の標準を、支える中国の失敗の別の悲しい実例を提供する。
One diplomat said, “China’s position was that we must build a relationship of trust with Burma, and to do that, we must accept whatever they say.” Including, apparently, the fiction that Burma has no child soldiers.
Without credible pressure from the Security Council, UN officials in Burma - already doing little to engage the military regime on its use of child soldiers - are unlikely to demand concrete action. And unfortunately for Myin Win and thousands like him, the regime has even less incentive to end the routine recruitment of children into its military ranks.
言われた1人の外交官は「中国位置私達がビルマとの信頼の関係を造らなければならないそれをするために、私達は」。の言うものは何でも受け入れなければならないことであり を含んでビルマに子供の兵士がないこと、外見上、フィクション。安全保障理事会からの確実な圧力なしで、ビルマの国連役人は-既に子供の兵士の使用の軍の政体を従事させるために少しする-具体的な行動を要求してまずない。 そして不運にもMyinWinおよびたくさんのために彼を、政体持っている軍の階級に子供の定期的な募集を終えるより少ない刺激を好みなさい。
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2008 at 2:26 am and is filed under News.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Food for None: Milk Powder and Rice Scandals
http://skybe4.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!35F7AC2D08A736AB!575.entry
September 21
"I hate them, I hate them," said Qu Chunli. "They're killing our children."
Her baby was fed Sanlu brand milk powder for the last eight months. In the hospital, he was diagnosed to have stones in his urinary tract, much to the family's outrage (NPR).
The Chinese are angry.
September 21
"I hate them, I hate them," said Qu Chunli. "They're killing our children."
Her baby was fed Sanlu brand milk powder for the last eight months. In the hospital, he was diagnosed to have stones in his urinary tract, much to the family's outrage (NPR).
The Chinese are angry.
And understandably so, 22 diary producers (Sanlu Group, Mengniu, Yili and Yashili etc) had cut low-protein milk powder with Melamine - a chemical used in plastics - to boost its perceived protein value. Ingested Melamine causes kidney stones and leads to kidney failure (USNews FAQ).
So far 18 people have been arrested, one city mayor sacked, diary products were recalled, investigators dispatched (Washington Post), and inspection exemptions granted to food producers were revoked (Xinhua Net).
Laudable but too late.
6,200 babies have kidney problems, 1,300 warded, 4 died (PressTV, Tehran), and hospitals are visited by hordes of overwrought families whose babies - precious because each family can only have one - are checked, scanned, prodded, probed and tested for kidney stones and Melamine poisoning. Also, consumers have lost confidence in Chinese food products. Starbucks pulled all milk products from their menu (Yahoo News), Singapore, Malaysia, Burma, Hong Kong and Japan banned imports of Chinese milk products (Voice of America) and foreign milk producers seize the opportunity to carve up and corner the Chinese milk powder market (Reuters).
As the Chinese grapple with the health and economic fallout from the milk powder scandal, Japan has its own food scandal. This time - yes, it's not the first time - a rice scandal.
Three small companies (Mikasa Foods, Ohta Industry and Asai Ltd) had cheaply bought pesticides- and mould-tainted rice from the government before selling them at higher prices to other food producers. The rice was used to feed patients and converted into rice wine (Flex News). The companies have apologised and Mikasa's president committed suicide (Flex News) - noble but pointless.
As much as the press, victims and "socially-conscious" folk rant and rave over these scandals, it will happen again. And again. And again.
Guess why.
Greed.
Need I say more?
Chinese Communist Party Card a License to Steal ,中国共産党カード盗む免許証
A baby who drank tainted milk powder receives an ultrasonic examination in a hospital on September 17 in Wuhan of Hubei Province, China. (China photos/Getty Images)
感染した粉乳を飲んだ赤ん坊は湖北省、中国のウーハンの9月17日に病院の超音波検査を受け取る。 (中国の写真かGettyのイメージ)
http://en.epochtimes.com/n2/opinion/ccp-melamine-corruption-4503.html
By D.J. McGuire
Sep 20, 2008 Share: Facebook Digg del.icio.us StumbleUpon
Related articles: Opinion > Thinking About China
The melamine dairy scandal is now an international crisis. The chemical that has now made over 6,000 babies ill on the mainland may have tainted milk in Taiwan , as well as Bangladesh, Yemen, Gabon, Burundi and Burma . Meanwhile, the cadres are admitting that more than one in five domestic milk producers have poisoned milk, including some given the Communist seal of approval after the last milk scandal in 2004.
今ではメラミン酪農場のスキャンダルは国際的な危機である。 本土で6,000人の赤ん坊に今病気に作ってしまった化学薬品はバングラデシュ、イエメン、ガボン、ブルンディおよびビルマと同様、台湾のミルクを、感染するかもしれない。 その間、幹部は2004年に最後のミルクのスキャンダルの後で共産主義の認可の印があるいくつかを含んで5人の国内ミルク生産業者に付き1人以上ミルクの毒したことを、是認している。
How could this happen? Well, one of the prime culprits (Sanlu) was run by Tian Wenhua. Wenhua had another job, too: "secretary of the corporation committee of the Communist Party."
これがいかに起こることができるか。 それで、主な被告人(Sanlu)の1つはTian Wenhuaによって動かされた。 Wenhuaに別の仕事が、余りにあった: " 共産主義Party."の株式会社委員会の秘書;
Can you say, "corruption?"
堕落言うことができるか。
One need not be a reader of this space to know that graft is endemic and widespread in the Chinese Communist regime. It is so bad that the Chinese Mafia (known as triads) and the Chinese Communist Party are becoming indistinguishable in many areas. What is not so well-known is why this has happened.
1つは接木が中国共産党員の政体で風土性そして広まっていることを知るこのスペースの読者である必要はない。 中国のマフィア(トライアドとして)ことは知られているとても悪いおよび中国共産党は多くの地域で識別不可能になっている。 従ってない何がこれがなぜが起こったかある有名。
A totalitarian regime like the Chinese Communist Party is difficult to maintain in a nation of over 1.3 billion people. Not even a determined and bloodthirsty group in Beijing can do it all by themselves. They need local enablers and enforcers in all of the regions and provinces. Moreover, they need something to keep said enablers and enforcers on their side.
中国共産党のような全体主義の政体は1.3十億人上のの国家で維持しにくい。 北京の断固としたな、流血のグループはそれをすべて独自ですることができる。 それらは地域および地域すべてでローカルenablersおよび執行者を必要とする。 さらに、それらは側面の言われたenablersそして執行者を保つことを何かを必要とする。
A start is making sure no public office can come without Communist Party membership; the regime has stuck to that for nearly sixty years. The real trick, however, came after Mao died, when Deng Xiaoping and his minions came up with the perfect alternative to socialism—corporatism.
開始は官公署が共産党会員なしに来ることができないことを確かめている; 政体はほぼ60年間それに付いた。 しかし秘訣は毛の後にとう小平および彼の子分が社会主義協調組合主義に完全な代わりとかなったときに、死んだ来た。
Most economists and politicians ignore corporatism as a model, but for the CCP, it was a godsend. The notion of "private" corporations and the state basically working cooperatively as one unit was the perfect beginning for what the cadres really wanted: the benefits of a private sector without losing government control. The cadres switched gears economically, shifting from labor-oriented mandates to business oriented mandates. In effect, the CCP itself became a super-corporation, with only Party members (or their children, other relatives, spouses, or mistresses) allowed to "own" businesses (those that refused to do the Party's bidding would suddenly find their "private" firms seized, while they themselves were jailed).
CCPのためのモデルが、それ天の恵みだったがのでほとんどの経済学者および政治家は協調組合主義を無視する。 "の概念; private" 1単位が完全な始めだったので株式会社および協力的に働く州基本的に幹部は実際にほしいと思ったものがのための: 負けた公共的支配のない民間部門の利点。 幹部のスイッチギヤ経済的に、労働方向づけられた命令から業務用の命令に移る。 事実上、CCP自体は"に許可されて党員が極度株式会社に、(か彼らの子供、他の親類、配偶者、または主婦だけ)なった; own" ビジネス(Party'をすることを断ったそれら; sの値をつけることは突然"を見つける; private" 彼らは自身拘留されたが)握られる会社。
Corporatism was prominent in much of the 19th century, but largely collapsed when it became clear that a corporate-controlled regime had trouble regulating the practices of the puppeteers. For the CCP, however, no such concerns are necessary. In fact, the more corrupt the "private" firms are, the more dependent they are upon the CCP to survive. Thus, corruption is no longer an effect of the Communist regime; it has become an instrument of the Communist regime.
協調組合主義は団体管理された政体に悩みが人形遺いの練習を調整することをあったことは明確になったときに19世紀の多くで顕著、主として倒れられてだったが。 しかしCCPのためにそのような心配は必要ではない。 実際は、多くは"を買収する; private" 会社はある、より依存している存続するCCPに。 従って、堕落はもはや共産主義の政体の効果ではない; それは共産主義の政体の器械になった。
That instrument is hardly limited to bad corporate actors. Local cadres have been using the Party card for decades to acquire ill-gotten gains at the expense of their own people, all the while proclaiming loyalty to the Beijing crew. In response, Beijing has no choice but to back their local malefactors, so long as the problem isn't so widespread as to risk a revolt —as the milk scandal is now.
その器械は悪い団体俳優にほとんど限られない。 ローカル幹部は長年に渡って自身の人々を犠牲にして不正利得を得るのに北京のずっと乗組員に忠誠を宣言する党カードをその間ずっと使用している。 それに答えて、北京に選択がローカル犯罪人を支持するために、限り問題isn'ない; 危険に関して広まったtそう反乱-ミルクのスキャンダルとして…今ある。
Perhaps if the democratic world has a better understanding of its own economic history, it would be able to spot the signs of corrupt corporatism, and steer clear of the Pollyanaish nonsense that surrounds the "engagement" viewpoint. With any luck, the reality of the regime's depravity and deceitfulness would open people's eyes about the cadres' Korean colony, their overall foreign policy, and the Long Arm of Lawlessness. There would, at last, be the universal realization that the antics of the Chinese Communist Party are not the exceptions to the rules, but the rules themselves (for what it's worth, the message does seem to be clear among the Chinese people themselves).
多分民主的な世界に自身の経済史のよりよい理解があれば、それは不正な協調組合主義の印に斑点を付けられた"を囲むPollyanaishのナンセンスを避ける; engagement" 視点。 運を使って、regime'の現実; 悪変およびdeceitfulnessはpeople'を開ける; cadres'についての目; 無法の韓国のコロニー、全面的な外交政策および長い腕。 中国共産党のおどけが規則へ例外ではない、しかし規則自身があること、最後で、普遍的な認識(どんなit'のために; 価値は、メッセージ中国人自身間で明確ようである)。
There have simply been too many stories of graft, theft, land seizures, and other perfidy to just assume it all away as a series of isolated incidents. In fact, far from being able to fight corruption, the Chinese Communist Party is now dependent upon corruption, and cannot survive without it. From local cadres to Beijing leaders, from "private" thieves to their public-office-holding patrons, the Chinese Communist Party lives off its members' infinite and unchallenged license to steal (without getting caught).
接木、盗難、土地の握りおよびちょうど一連の隔離された事件としてそれをすべて仮定する他の背信の余りにも多くの物語が単にずっとある。 実際は、ずっと堕落を戦えるから中国共産党は堕落に今依存して、それなしで存続できない。 ローカル幹部から"からの北京のリーダーへの、; private" 彼らの公衆オフィス保有物のパトロンへの盗人はmembers'を離れて、中国共産党住んでいる; 盗む無限および問題にされていない免許証(捕まることなしで)。
It was once said that the Roman Empire survived as long as it did by offering the people "bread and circuses." The Communists are stealing the bread, so they have only "circuses." That is what fuels the radical nationalism and the demand for overseas appeasement and silence. In time, that will also fail, and the Chinese people will rise up and take their country back.
人々の"の提供によってした限りローマ帝国が存続したことが一度言われた; パンおよびcircuses." 共産主義者はパンを盗んでいる、従って"だけ有する; circuses." それは海外緩和および沈黙のための過激な国粋主義そして要求に燃料を供給するものがである。 時間では、それはまた失敗し、中国人は立上がり、彼らの国を取り戻す。
The only question is this: how many millions of dollars and people will be lost before then?
唯一の質問はこれである: 何何百万のドルおよび人々がそれ以前に失われるか。
D.J. McGuire is cofounder of the China e-Lobby and the author of Dragon in the Dark: How and Why Communist China Helps Our Enemies in the War on Terror.
D.J. McGuireは中国のeロビーの共同出資者および暗闇のドラゴンの著者である: いかに、そして共産主義の中国が対テロ戦争の私達の敵をなぜ助けるか。
Myanmar to destroy Chinese baby formula
YANGON: Myanmar will seize and destroy imported Chinese baby formula to safeguard against poisoning by the toxic chemical melamine, a senior health ministry official told AFP Saturday.
The health ministry said tracking down baby formula imported from neighbouring China was a priority and authorities have told child medical specialists to be alert for symptoms of poisoning.
“We are now planning to destroy imported baby milk formula from China. We are also recalling products in the markets,” said deputy director general Kyaw Nyunt Sein.
He said authorities were also working to seize baby formula smuggled from China, and planned to issue a warning about affected brands.
Chinese products are widely used in military-ruled Myanmar, which is under trade embargoes from numerous Western countries demanding democratic reform.
China said this week that milk powder contaminated with melamine, which is used in plastics, had made at least 6,200 babies ill nationwide and killed four over a period of many months.
Stores in mainland China and Hong Kong this week pulled hundreds of products from their shelves as the full extent of the contamination began to emerge, and Singapore and Malaysia suspended imports of Chinese milk and milk products.
Yili, Mengniu and Guangming - big brands consumed and trusted by hundreds of millions of Chinese - were affected by the recall after authorities checked their products and found traces of melamine.
Melamine added to milk and other food products gives the appearance of higher protein levels. afp
Burma brave
September 21, 2008
Burma brave
Under the Dragon celebrates the 'gentle generosity' of the natives of this brutally repressed South Asia nation
By AL PARKER, SUN MEDIA
UNDER THE DRAGON
By Rory Maclean
Palgrave/Tauris
Rory Maclean's Under the Dragon is the finest book you will ever read about Burma -- that tragically abused and heartbreakingly beautiful southeast Asian country.
Don't make the mistake of calling it Myanmar, the name imposed by the corrupt and brutal military tyrants who have terrorized and despoiled their own land and people since 1962.
As Canadian Maclean says in an opening note: "Because the Burmese people, who have scant say in the conduct of their lives, were not consulted about (the) alternation, I have retained the original name..."
Only four month ago, when cyclone Nargis ravaged Burma, killing 130,000 and displacing 2.4 million more, the world spotlight shone on that benighted land.
But the military regime pushed the light away, the world acquiesed and darkness again enveloped Burma.
Read Under the Dragon and you will curse that darkness. And you will curse anyone who could help the starving, enslaved Burmese people and doesn't.
Maclean's book, republished in a new trade paperback this month, originally appeared in 1998. A decade later, it is still the freshest, most relevant, insightful and painfully revealing book you will find on the Burmese tragedy.
Ostensibly searching for the origins of a century-old basket, Maclean and his wife Katrin tracked across Burma on foot, jeep, bus and train, eschewing tourist comforts and privileges to live among the people of Burma.
Maclean tells their collective story by weaving together individual lives like the strands of a basket-- from Ni Ni, the poor girl with sensitive hands who survived the serfdom of forced labour and brothels, to the state censor who became a free-speech activist, from Kalashnikov-toting teenagers in mountain militias to "the Lady" -- Aung San Suu Kyi -- the Nobel Prize-winning heroine who is the hope and heart of her people and who has, as a result, spent most of the past two decades under house arrest, harassed and vilified by the military junta.
And that's what Maclean calls "the central dichotomy of Burma: that the gentle generosity of the people -- the constant offers to share food, to give us presents and pay our bus fare -- was at odds with the grasping brutality of authority."
It's a dichotomy that has not been reconciled to this day, but one that is overcome by the words Maclean sees on the T-shirt of one of the Lady's supporters as the author talks to her: "Fear is a habit; I am not afraid."
Maclean is the right person to tell Burma's story. He's a staggeringly wonderful writer and also one of the bravest men I know, truly brave because he sees the mortal threats before him, fears them, and still moves forward.
Like Burma's finest, he will not let fear be a habit. Buy Under the Dragon and you can help kick the habit.
---
Also republished this month is Maclean's Next Exit Magic Kingdom: Florida Accidentally. Its dark humour and wry eccentricity stands in sharp contrast to the melancholy sonata of Under the Dragon, but Next Exit is just as deftly written and richly detailed as Maclean's Burma masterpiece.
One year after Myanmar protests, Suu Kyi faces junta alone
BANGKOK (AFP) — One year after Myanmar's brutal crackdown on protests led by Buddhist monks, the world remains divided on how to handle the regime, leaving democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi alone against the generals.
With the United Nations powerless to extract reforms from the military regime, the 63-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has used sometimes desperate measures to make her own silent protests heard.
Aung San Suu Kyi, confined to house arrest for most of the last 19 years, refused to meet UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari last month and began turning away her daily food deliveries until her thin body was so weakened that her doctor had to place her on a drip.
Just one year ago on September 22, Aung San Suu Kyi stepped out of her house, tearfully greeting Buddhist monks protesting against the military, which has ruled this poor nation since 1962.
In the days that followed, more than 100,000 people took to the streets until security forces launched a crackdown on September 26. The UN estimates 31 people were killed, 74 were missing, and thousands arrested.
Under global pressure, particularly from neighbouring China, the regime made a few concessions, notably appointing a liaison officer in October to coordinate contacts with Aung San Suu Kyi.
Just one month later, she made known her desire for higher-level talks, which never materialised.
UN efforts to launch a dialogue with her National League for Democracy (NLD) as well as ethnic leaders are now at a stalemate, while Myanmar currently holds more political prisoners -- over 2,000, according to Amnesty International -- than it did before the "Saffron Revolution."
"I don't think the military is prepared to work with Aung San Suu Kyi -- they see her as a threat, so they'd rather not cooperate with her," said Myanmar analyst Aung Naing Oo, an exile living in Thailand.
The international community remains divided on Myanmar, with Western nations tightening sanctions and issuing statements to express their outrage.
But China, Russia, India and other Asian countries refuse to confront the regime, in the name of "non-interference."
"You have to wonder if the events in Tibet didn't force China to reconsider," one Western diplomat said, noting that Beijing is "much less inclined to exert pressure today on Myanmar."
India has taken a "pragmatic" approach, the diplomat said, since it has "everything to gain from good cooperation" -- not just access to Myanmar's increasingly important natural gas fields, but also help in combating insurgents on their common border.
And Russia's return to the global stage has allowed it to make clear that regarding Myanmar, "it's no longer the West that makes the law."
In May, junta leader Than Shwe, 75, didn't hesitate to push through a new constitution favorable to the military -- even as the nation was reeling from a cyclone that left more than 138,000 dead or missing and 2.4 million in need of aid.
Two long weeks passed before the junta agreed to a minimal level of cooperation with the UN and other aid agencies. Gambari's efforts to extend this humanitarian cooperation into the political arena have yielded no tangible results.
One year after the protests, the anger felt by much of the population has been replaced by resignation.
"The military is firmly in charge (and) the NLD doesn't have many cards to play," said John Virgoe, of the International Crisis Group.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Climate change's various faces
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/climate-changes-various-faces/1276079.aspx
SUNITA NARAIN
18/09/2008 10:49:00 AM
For the past 16 years the first intergovernmental negotiation took place in Washington DC in early 1991 the world has been haggling about what it knows about climate change but does not want to accept. It has been desperately seeking every excuse not to act, even as science has confirmed and reconfirmed the fact that climate change is real, it is related to carbon dioxide and other emissions, the emissions are related to economic growth and wealth in the world. In other words, it is human made and it can devastate the world as we know it.
The fact is that science is not just certain but unequivocal that climate change and its devastation are now inevitable. But along with understanding the still obtuse science we must begin to put a human face to the climate change that is beginning all around us. We must see climate change in the faces of the millions who have lost their homes in the Sidr or Nargis cyclones, which ripped through Bangladesh and then Myanmar. After all, science has clearly established that intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones will increase as the Earth heats up. We need to see climate change in the faces of those who lost everything in the floods caused by intense rainfall events. We need to know that the thousands of people who died in these events did so, because the rich have failed to contain emissions necessary for their growth.
When I say this, I know, climate-sceptics and purist-scientists will combine to argue that it is difficult to prove cause and effect. After all we cannot say that this cyclone in Bangladesh is related to climate change. It is a natural disaster, not a human-made crime. Climate complexity is clearly at the edge of chaos here. When the world is unequally divided between the polluters and the victims, clearly prevarication and denial will be the name of the game.
As the call for action is becoming more strident and urgent (as it must), the world is looking for small answers and petty responses. On the one hand, there is a well-orchestrated media and civil society campaign to paint the Chinese and Indian as the dirty villains on the block. If they ''cry'' about their need to develop, the response is to tell them that they are most vulnerable.
We cannot afford to waste time in the blame-game. Even if in the past, the western world created the problem, you must in your interest take the lead in reparations.
The west's hysteria is growing. But so is their inaction. The irony is that these countries had agreed in 1997 to make a small cut in their gargantuan emissions, in the interest of us all. These emission cuts were nowhere close to what was needed, then or now to avert climate change. The fact (which is mostly unsaid) is that these countries have done nothing to contain emissions. Between 1990 and 2005, when they agreed to cut emissions, rich country emissions have gone up by 11 per cent; emissions from the growth-related energy sector increased by 15 per cent. They have let us all down.
It is the world's need for energy that is the cause of climate pain. The fact also is that after years of talk no country has been able to de-link its growth with the growth of carbon dioxide emissions. No country has shown how to build a low-carbon economy.
This then is the challenge. The proportion of new renewable energy wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels comprises just about 1 per cent of the world's primary energy supply. It is misleading to say that renewable sources add more electricity than nuclear power. It is old renewable hydroelectric power which makes the world light up.
What is tragic is that the world is hiding behind the poverty of its people to fudge its climate maths.
What then is the way ahead?
The rich world must reduce emissions drastically. There is a stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, built up over centuries in the process of creating nations wealth. It is a natural debt. This has already made climate unstable. Poorer nations will now add to this stock through their drive for economic growth. But that is not an excuse for the rich world not to take on tough and deep-binding emission reduction
targets. The principle has to be, they must reduce so we can grow.
The second part of this agreement is that poor and emerging rich countries's engagement will not be legally binding but based on national targets and programs. The question is to find low-carbon growth strategies for emerging countries, without compromising their right to develop.
Sunita Narain is the director of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi. This is an edited extract of the K.R.Narayanan Oration ''Why environment needs equity: Learning from the environmentalism of the poor to build our common future'', she delivered at the Australian National University on Tuesday night.
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Myanmar gives labour activist hard labour
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Myanmar's junta has given two years' hard labour to an activist who helped people, including child soldiers, file complaints about forced labour, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Friday.
The case against Thet Way has become a barometer of whether the former Burma's ruling generals are serious about stamping out forced labour, which in some cases means carrying military supplies through guerrilla conflict zones, rights groups say.
The Geneva-based ILO said it was "concerned and disappointed" at the sentence, the maximum permissible under the law. It added that it had been in contact with the military government about the case "at a senior level".
"The ILO cannot but consider that the sentence imposed is related to Thet Way's role in complaining on forced labour practices," the United Nations agency said in a statement.
Under a deal reached between the ILO and Myanmar last year, anybody making or supporting those making complaints about forced labour should be immune from prosecution.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962.
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved
Friday, September 19, 2008
Burmese Focus On Survival, Many No Longer Look To U.S. For Help
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pj-burns/burmese-focus-on-survival_b_127659.html
Posted September 19, 2008 | 08:26 AM (EST) BIO Become a Fan Get Email Alerts Bloggers' Index
Burmese Focus On Survival, Many No Longer Look To U.S. For Help
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If you want to discuss politics in Myanmar (also known as Burma), even far-away American politics, you don't meet in a popular restaurant for a chat over lunch. You wouldn't pick up a phone and call a friend for an engaging discussion. If you did, you would probably find yourself being followed, monitored and, if you kept it up, arrested and thrown in prison for four to seven years. To discuss politics in Myanmar is risky business. It is mostly done outdoors, at night, sitting at low tables, on tiny stools at street corner tea shops. This is where people gather to talk about politics and any other issue that you might not want overheard by the wrong person - namely a government informer. Tea shop proprietors set up large speakers that blare heavy metal and hip hop tunes - the perfect din to conceal any questionable conversations. This is the reality of living in Myanmar, where it is believed one in five "citizens" is informing for military intelligence or M.I. as it is ubiquitously known.
Usually these closely-guarded conversations focus around local, national and personal questions. Who is M.I. and who is not? What sort of power structure shifts might be stirring among the countries ruling generals? Which underground market has the cheapest gas this week? A trio huddled around a tea shop table might be trying to distinguish rumor from fact. Are rebels in Shan State really beating back Burmese forces? Are the monks really organizing for another round of protests next month? Is Aung San Suu Kyi really on a hunger strike? Is your brother really still in prison? Was General Than Shwe really secreted out to Singapore for another emergency surgery? Is electricity really going to be out the rest of the week? These are the sort of issues that are most often discussed at the tea shops - after they've finished, discussing the international soccer leagues, of course. American politics doesn't much raise an eyebrow here as it once had. However, if there is a little extra time and another pot of tea to finish or a couple extra cheroots to smoke, a few people might make time to discuss America's latest presidential election circus that has permeated even this oft-forgotten corner of the world.
Myanmar has been so closed off from the outside world for so long that international news reports on television often seem more like a Hollywood movie than actual events occurring "outside", somewhere in the world. The local street-side tea shops receive nightly reports from government-scripted MRTV, but few people listen. A traditionally dressed young woman literally reads the news from the state run newspaper. Perhaps this is to demonstrate that any errors in the reporting are not her fault. Maybe she does not want to inadvertently let slip any subtle suggestions that the news is anything but factual. She reports each night that the country is enjoying record-breaking rice yields thanks to the oversight of such-and-such a general and his flawless ministry. The news of the bumper crop doesn't seem to jibe with the high cost of rice and the hungry kids on the streets. But this is all the news on MRTV that is fit to report. They would superficially cover the American election, highlighting the candidates, their wives and the media circus. They might be quick to report any glaring scandals of corruption, but more often than not they merely gloss over the real political issues. The people don't seem to mind. They have far more important things to worry about than the American presidential election.
Most people are aware of the two candidates' names. Most know that McCain was in a Vietnam prison and that Obama is the black one. They are impressed with the former and too-quick to dismiss the latter. In Myanmar society, the dark-skinned are still disadvantaged. Darker-skinned Indians mostly comprise the labor force and are often discriminated against by Myanmar's elite and middle classes. For Myanmar people, it is difficult to take Obama seriously as a candidate. One man asks "why would you want a black man for your leader". I try to explain that we don't care about race anymore. We look to the substance of the candidate. I believe this, but I can tell he knows there is more to it than that. After a moment, I admit to him what he's already heard, that we have places in America where people would never vote for a black man. But I add quickly, they are becoming fewer and fewer. I remind him that Obama went to Harvard. This he knows and he admits he is very impressed as "Harvard is a very good school."
As for McCain, his Vietnam legacy is less known than Obama's race, but those who do know McCain's story are very impressed by it. Myanmar people have a long torturous history that would compel them to be impressed by the story of a man held in a cage by enemies, only to survive and become a "big man" himself, even more powerful than his captors. This is the story they hope will come to be for their own national hero, Aung San Suu Kyi. They can appreciate McCain's story far better than any American voter. Yet in reality they don't have a vote of any kind, so they don't bother speculating much. No one I spoke with realized that McCain had been to Myanmar in 1995. This is probably because he was there to visit with democratic icon Aung San Suu Kyi and the government wouldn't likely broadcast that information on MRTV.
McCain in fact has been by far the most outspoken for Myanmar. In 2003, he called for then Secretary of State Colin Powell to boycott a trip to the region and encourage Myanmar's neighbors to increase pressure on the regime to hand over power to the democratically elected party that won elections in 1990. He has since called for increased international sanctions.
His wife Cindy is an even more out-spoken critic of the regime. In June she vowed to make human rights in Myanmar an issue if she were to become first lady. She then went on to call the ruling junta "a terrible group of people" who rape and starve their own people. She may be right, but this sort of name-calling is exactly what has forced the paranoid junta to dig in and cling to empirical, iron-fisted control of the country. This sort of threatening language is what has made them ignore outside pressures and violently maintain their hold on power. They have positioned themselves, uniquely protected by both China and India. They also maintain a valuable economic lifeline with their ASEAN neighbors. The threat of further sanctions by John McCain and the acerbic, albeit accurate, name-calling by Cindy is easily dismissed by the ruling junta. Until China, India or ASEAN starts making threats, they are sitting pretty.
Here might be Obama's opportunity to try a new tack. Throughout the presidential race he has been the candidate who has said that he will engage rogue states, not just shut them out of the game. He has said that he will "not only work with countries we like but also with those we don't". Engagement with the Myanmar junta might be the first step toward real change. After all it is worth a whole-hearted try, nothing else has worked for the last forty years.
The citizens have given up on the idea that the US or the UN will come to liberate them like they did for Iraq. Even with their sparse news, they eventually came to see that the US never went there to liberate. This is a popular topic because Myanmar people love to make analogies. In 2003, when the US invaded Iraq, many Myanmar people were elated. They heard George Bush say that we were invading to rid the peace loving people of Iraq of a terrible dictator. The Myanmar people took note, saying, "that's us, too!" When it was decided that Saddam had to go because he killed his own people, they nodded their heads in approval, knowing their leader had done the same. If Iraq was due for regime change, Myanmar clearly had to be very close to next-on-the-list. Then lots and lots of time went by and they saw what was happening in Iraq, or rather what was not happening. There was no blossoming of democracy. The tea shop scuttlebutt spun around rumors of "Americans getting richer and Iraqis not getting any freer". Slowly they began to realize that no one was coming to liberate them. There would be no regime change. Unless they made a public, international demand for it.
In September of 2007, Buddhist monks and university students took to the streets en masse. The people joined them until the streets were filled with hundreds of thousands of citizens screaming Doyay! Screaming for democracy. Then the troops came. Just like in 1988, a bloody stamp down on these protesters put a brutal end to their uprising almost as quickly as it had emerged. On day three of the riots, a man approached me and asked where was the UN? Where was the USA? Didn't they see all this on the news? I didn't know how to answer him. I held his desperate eyes and all I could think to say was, "You already know." His shoulders fell and I saw the hunger and hope fade from his eyes. He said, "They won't come will they?" I shook my head. "They don't care do they?" I shook my head again. Finally he looked up the street at the crowd of his people facing the soldiers and then back to me and he said, "We are all alone, aren't we?" I nodded my head. He already knew the answers to all these questions, he just hadn't admitted it until that moment.
For others the realization came later - in May after Cyclone Nargis devastated Yangon and eviscerated most of the Aywerwaddy Delta in the south killing 100,000 or more. As international aid agencies clashed with the government, French and American war ships closed in with humanitarian aid. The desperately paranoid junta government feared it might be a prelude to an invasion and warned them away. The people watched intently wondering if this might be the beginning of the end of their oppressive rulers. In a tea shop, of course, a man asked me if the ships had medical supplies or bullets? His question was hopeful for either. I admitted that I didn't know. Either way, he said, they would do some good. As it turned out the ships were filled with both, but they dropped off their medical supplies and turned and headed away. Everyone knew at that point, if they didn't already know, that there would be no invasion, no liberation, no Doyay!
So now that the US election cycle has come once again, they are understandably tuned out. For most of them, they have only a romanticized idea of what democracy is anyway. When they talk about democracy, they speak with almost a religious zeal. As if with Democracy (always capitalized) the skies will part and salvation will rain down over all. When asked about specific policies or programs, they shrug and dismiss it. "Democracy" will handle all that.
A friend of mine, "Mying Htun," told me that most Myanmar people didn't have any idea what real democracy was. They didn't understand what it really entails. He was well traveled and spent years in Australia. He knew what an active, living democracy looked like. We sat at his restaurant before opening, countless wait staff bustling about. Mying Htun gestured at them, "If they were given a vote tomorrow, you know who they would vote for?" I didn't know. "Neither do they. They would come and ask me who I wanted them to vote for."
He went on to explain that they have never known anything but a strong leader telling them what to do. To all of a sudden ask them what they wanted, was expecting too much. He told me that if McCain and Obama were running for "leader" in Myanmar, McCain would win easily. I asked why and he said, "You name it!" He's been in a military prison. He's angry and mean. He a tough soldier. He's not black. I let the last one go, but noted that many of those qualities sounded a great deal like their current leader.
Myint Htun laughed at that notion and nodded his head. He supposed that was true. "Give us a choice and we will choose a strong, iron-fist leader again." I pushed a little further, "A leader like Obama might offer something new. A new way to unify all the different groups. Move together and then move beyond," I delicately suggested. "Yeah, but he's black. We'd never vote for him." Simple as that. End of discussion. I was left wondering if Myint Htun was talking about his country or mine.
This week OffTheBus is publishing a variety of stories that cover the presidential election from an international perspective.
A Living Legend
(Photo courtesy: AFP)
http://www.mysinchew.com/node/15946?tid=10
Aung San Suu Kyii is a democracy icon in the non-violent mould of Mahatma Gandhi.
Nyo Ohn Myint still remembers the moment, 20 years ago, when the legend of Aung San Suu Kyi began. He was there when she gave a stirring speech and became the symbol of hope for a country under the oppressive grip of military rule since 1962.
The then history teacher at Rangoon University was in a convoy of five vehicles that had taken Suu Kyi, on the morning of Aug 26, 1988, from her colonial-era home in the Burmese city to a public meeting in front of the great, gold-topped Shwedagon pagoda.
It was slow going, Nyo Ohn Myint, then 25, recalls. They had taken an hour to cover the three-mile distance. And that first major public appearance for Suu Kyi gained significance in the wake of the brutal crackdown over two weeks before when Burmese troops had shot to death some 3,000 unarmed people protesting against the military dictatorship. That August 8 protest drew hundreds of thousands of people, the largest crowds since anti-government demonstrations had begun earlier that year.
The crowds had swelled to nearly 500,000 to hear Suu Kyi, then 43, who was only known as the daughter of Burma’s independence hero, general Aung San, and an occasional visitor to the country from Oxford where she was living with her British academic husband and raising a family. Nyo Ohn Myint stood on a side stage and watched Suu Kyi establish her political credentials in Burmese.
"It is also true of the Burmese democracy movement: it is likely to lose its momentum if she is not in the scene."
That day she emerged “as the person who could lead our country,”’ the former confidant of Suu Kyi said during a telephone interview from the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. “She impressed the crowds and was totally committed to take on the political challenge of dealing with the military regime.”
Other student activists who were in the vanguard of the 1988 anti-government protests feel likewise about Suu Kyi’s debut on Burma’s political landscape. “She gave people hope with her speech,” says Myint Myint San, then a 22-year-old final year botany student at Rangoon University. “She did a tremendous job to help people understand what democracy means. And she dared to speak to the army and confront (then dictator) general Ne Win.”
In the days that followed, the tapes of her speech were in high demand. “People kept playing it again and again,” Myint Myint San told IPS. “People began to talk of Burma getting its second independence after we got our first when the British (colonisers) left (in 1948).”
It was a dramatic turn of events for a woman who had come home in March 1988 to care of her sick mother and with no thought of political activism on her mind. “When I returned home to Burma in 1988 to nurse my sick mother, I was planning on starting a chain of libraries in my father’s name. A life of politics held no attraction to me,” she said in a 1995 interview with Vanity Fair. “But the people of my country were demanding for democracy, and as my father’s daughter, I felt I had a duty to get involved.”
Yet, two decades later, the hope for a new Burmese independence — free of military oppression — appears remote. The junta remains firmly in control, with a tighter grip on the political landscape than in 1988. And Suu Kyi’s democratic mission has been forced to the margins.
But that has not diminished Suu Kyi’s stature as a democracy icon in the non-violent mould of Mahatma Gandhi. It has come at great personal sacrifice, though, given the over 13 of the past 19 years she has spent under house arrest, and the harsh limits the junta placed on her meetings with supporters and family members.
She was vindicated in 1990 when a new party she led, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won with a huge majority at a parliamentary election that the junta refused to recognise. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace prize, the first among 40-odd international awards she has won. And in the years since, international attempts to nudge Burma towards political reform have had to turn to the charismatic Suu Kyi — detained or free— to ensure credibility and public support.
“She has become the rallying point for the democracy movement in Burma. She has contributed tremendously to the growth of democratic culture in the past 20 years,” says Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese political analyst living in exile in Thailand. “Her struggle has put Burma’s political problems and its suffering on the world map.”
Take her out of the picture and the NLD will be nothing, he explains in an interview. “It is also true of the Burmese democracy movement: it is likely to lose its momentum if she is not in the scene.”
Her two decades in Rangoon have also helped build bridges between the majority Burmese community and the Southeast Asian country’s many ethnic communities, 17 of which had rebel movements fighting separatist campaigns against the Burmese troops. Leaders of these ethnic communities have confirmed that reconciliation between the majority Burmese and non-Burmese minorities is possible through dialogue with Suu Kyi.
They relate to her views of a democratic Burma that she has articulated over the years in her speeches and writings. “When we ask for democracy, all we are asking is that our people should be allowed to live in tranquility, under the rule of law, protected by institutions which will guarantee our rights, the rights that will enable us to maintain our human dignity, to heal the long festering wounds and to allow love and courage to flourish,” she is once reported to have said. “Is that such a very unreasonable demand?” (By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR In Bangkok/ IPS Asia-Pacific/ AsiaNews)
MySinchew 2008.09.20
Credentials Committee of the UN to decide on Burma
http://www.mizzima.com/news/world/1066-credentials-committee-of-the-un-to-decide-on-burma.html
Solomon
Friday, 19 September 2008 23:24
New Delhi - Burmese opposition groups in exile said the first step towards challenging the ruling military junta's membership of the United Nations has proceeded smoothly, as the World Body chief has admitted their petition to the General Assembly.
"The UN General Secretary has conveyed the message and admitted our petition to the General Assembly. There has been no rejection. So the first step is successful," said Myo Win, Joint General Secretary (2) of the National Council of the Union of Burma, an umbrella Burmese group that led the campaign.
"The General Assembly has accepted the petition and it will be discussed by the Credentials Committee," he added.
Burmese opposition groups in exile, including the NCUB, Members of Parliamentary Union (MPU), and International Burmese Monks Organisation or Sasana Moli on September 9, submitted a petition challenging the credentials of the Burmese junta at the world body.
The 63rd UN General Assembly, which began its session on September 16, has appointed a nine-member Credentials Committee which includes Botswana, China, Cyprus, United States, Russia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Mozambique and Saint Kitts, and Nevis on the opening day of the session.
The credential challenge will be first reviewed and discussed by the committee before taking a decision on it. Only if the committee decides to put it forward, will it be submitted to the General Assembly for a final decision.
Myo Win said, "Most of the members from the Credential Committee are in solidarity with us, except a few countries, so we are optimistic."
"But we know China and Russia will oppose the petition in the committee but there is no provision for the use of veto power," said Myo Win.
Burma became a UN member state in 1948 and from 1961 to 1971, U Thant, a Burmese diplomat served as the third General Secretary.
Burma enjoyed a brief period of parliamentary democracy following its independence from British rule in the period 1948 to 1962. But in March 1962, the military led by former General Newin grabbed power in a coup and transformed the country into a socialist state.
But in 1988, Burmese people rejected the socialist form of governance and ousted Newin and his one party system in a mass protest. But the legacy of the military went on when the current batch of generals assumed power in a coup in September 1988.
The junta in 1990 held general elections, where detained opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi led National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory. However, the junta refused to hand over power and continued to rule the country with an iron grip.
The Burmese opposition groups in exile, which have launched the credential challenge to oust the junta at the UN, argue that as the generals have been forcibly retaining power and have ruled the country illegally, therefore the UN should review its credential.
"We also hope that this campaign will highlight the sufferings of the people of Burma," Myo Win said.
Burma opposition offered guns by IslamistsDaniel Pedersen in Mae Sot, Thailand
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24374934-401,00.html
September 20, 2008 03:18am
ISLAMIC fundamentalists have offered weapons to Burma's opposition groups with which to fight the ruling military junta.
And the resistance groups - which feel they have been left high and dry by the international community - are seriously considering the offer.
Former students, who were forced to flee Rangoon after pro-democracy protests in 1988 were violently put down, are said to be discussing the offer in the Thai border town of Mae Sot.
They know accepting arms from a group linked to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could polarise the West against them and damage their revolution.
But there are no other offers of weapons to fight the military regime, which is officially known as the State Peace Development Council.
Members of the resistance inside Burma want guns and don't care where they come from.
They have decided fighting is the only way to freedom and are compiling an arms shopping list.
The prospect of a holy war developing in Burma is likely to be greeted with trepidation by neighbouring states including China, which is one of the military junta's prime supporters.
Thailand already has a grinding Muslim insurgency in its deep south, fed by militant Islamists operating out of northern Malaysia.
Meanwhile, the Karen National Liberation Army, which has waged a war of independence in Burma since 1949, has expressed dismay at the offer of guns from religious zealots.
"We are fighting an honourable war to free our people from oppression and want absolutely nothing to do with terrorists," says the KNLA's Colonel Nerdah Mya. "We don't do deals with the devil."
Concerns for Burma as milk formula scandal widens
Updated Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:13pm AEST
In China, there's growing anger at new reports that the company at the centre of the tainted milk formula scandal knew of the contamination three years ago. More than six thousand babies have fallen sick after drinking the formula, four have died and more than 150 are ill with kidney failure. Local officials have confirmed there are 22-other producers of the tainted formula and two of those have been exporting it to countries including Burma.
Presenter: Sonia Randhawa
Speakers: Monique Skidmore, medical anthropologist; Shantha Bloemen UNICEF.
The Generals Go Cyber?
By AUNG ZAWArticle
Burma's military junta has so successfully suppressed the media that Internet sites based outside the country are one of the few remaining sources of reliable news for Burmese people. Now it appears not even those sites are safe. Shortly before yesterday's anniversary of the 1988 pro-democracy uprising and last year's Buddhist-monk-led Saffron Revolution, the Web sites of my newspaper, The Irrawaddy, and other Burmese news portals came under cyber attack. I am not alone in believing that the junta is behind the attack, just as it was behind the shutdown of Internet access in Burma during last year's uprising.
On Tuesday, we received reports from our stringers and regular readers that Internet connections in Burma were running slowly. The number of these reports suggested a concerted effort to prevent information from going in or out of the country in the run-up to yesterday's important anniversary. The next day, our colleagues and subscribers in the United States, Japan and Malaysia notified our Thailand-based office that they were unable to access our Web site, www.irrawaddy.org.
A few hours later, inet, the largest Internet host server in Thailand and the primary host of our site, confirmed our site had been under a "distributed denial of service" attack since 5 p.m. that day. Someone had managed to freeze our site by bombarding us with so much traffic that our server couldn't cope. Inet finally decided to shut down our server.
The attackers also targeted our "mirror site," which handles overflow traffic whenever our primary host is unavailable. Singlehop, the server for our mirror site, told us the attack was forcing it to shut down our site, too. The company told us the attack had been "very sophisticated." The attacks on both our primary and our mirror sites are continuing.
Nor are we alone. Fellow exile news agencies Democratic Voice of Burma and New Era were also disabled in similar attacks. We have been forced to publish our daily news via a temporary blog we've created, theirrawaddy.blogspot.com.
The attack on our Web sites is persistent and believed to be manually launched from various locations, which according to our Web hosts means it's the work of a large group of hackers. Cyber criminals, widely dispersed around the globe, can be bought for as little as $500 a day. We've been able to trace one source of the current attack to a computer connecting to the Internet in the Netherlands. Burma may have local cyber criminals too. In recent years the regime has sent students -- mostly from the army -- to Russia for study that many believe includes training in cyber warfare.
As for the motive, that's not a mystery either. Exiled media groups like the journalists at The Irrawaddy, bloggers, reporters inside Burma and citizen journalists played major roles last September in highlighting the brutal suppression of the monks and their supporters in the streets of Rangoon. Live images, eyewitness reports, updates and photographs landed on our desks every few seconds.
Through us and others like us, the outside world was able to witness the terror of the Burmese regime on television and on the Internet. And so the military regime struck back. On Sept. 27 last year, all connections to the Internet inside Burma were closed down for four days as the authorities tried to conceal their crimes.
This latest act of apparent sabotage comes in a broader climate of Internet and media repression. In Burma, some Internet cafes require users to provide identification before logging on so the government can track Internet usage. In other cafes, informers observe students playing video games and Buddhist monks complain they are treated like criminals if they ask to use the Internet.
Meantime, reporters, editors and publishers based in Rangoon are under increasing pressure. Earlier this month, police apprehended a group of reporters and charged them with working for The Irrawaddy, though they were not. Our stringers say they are nervous, though fortunately they remain undetected. My friend, a foreign journalist who recently left Burma, said that the mood was very tense. "It is hard for our Burmese colleagues to report," she said. "But they are very brave."
In this increasing climate of fear where Internet users are frequently suspected of working for exiled media, people in Burma are naturally afraid to communicate. The Internet is one of the few remaining opportunities they have to do so, especially with the outside world.
Over the past 20 years, the battle between Burma's regime and pro-democratic forces has shifted from the streets to the jungle and now to the computer. The generals will not give in; rather, they will equip themselves and become more sophisticated. The attack on our site appears to be a sign of this trend.
However, the junta is mistaken if it thinks we will give up. We at The Irrawaddy have to build stronger firewalls and more effective systems to prevent future attacks. Ultimately, the flow of information is unstoppable. The Burmese regime's cyber criminals cannot penetrate the strongest firewall of all -- the spirit of desire for change.
Mr. Aung Zaw is founder and editor of The Irrawaddy magazine.
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Global Economic Collapse and the Original Vision of Adam Smith (Part 3 of 3)
POSTED September 18, 1:13 PM
Judah Freed - Political Issues Examiner
Adam Smith.Few people today realize that Adam Smith actually was a social progressive. “Civil government,” he wrote, “so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor.”
Adam Smith envisioned wealth and power distributed throughout society, benefiting everyone. Yet he did not imagine "a nation of shopkeepers," as some say dismissively, for he actively promoted manufacturing.
Adam Smith favored small business and small government. He saw monopolies as enemies of free enterprise and fair markets. He labeled trade associations as conspiracies to raise prices.
Unfair and fraudulent market practices deserve regulation, Smith said. This point is especially telling today, for those touting deregulation in Smith's name actually are betraying the vision of their idol.
In fact, Smith heartily endorsed clear laws governing commerce along with sanctions against outlaw enterprises and nations. He favored both spontaneous market sanctions by consumers as well as government-backed law enforcement with corrective actions ending in force as a last resort.
Any modern corporation lacking sympathy for its customers and the general public violates the morality of Adam Smith. He’d decry the inhumane techno-capitalism now being malpracticed in his name. At the dawn of the Industrial Age, he wrote, “The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster.”
If Adam Smith’s ideas and ideals had been heeded since his time, capitalist economies today may not suffer from the ruinous boom-and-bust “business cycle” that Marx criticized so effectively. If Adam Smith had been heeded for carefully, I contend, we might not be facing global economic collapse today.
Why is Adam Smith so misunderstood?
Unlike other utopian thinkers who first mapped out a vision for an ideal world and then presented a compass to navigate their imagined terrain, Adam Smith published his moral compass first, and only 20 years later did he offer a map for his utopia. We have misread his map because we have forgotten his compass. This is how we’ve lost our way.
You are free to disagree with me on this, of course, but I blame free-market economist Milton Friedman and his followers for misleading us away from the ideals and principles of regulated capitalism as Adam Smith intended.
Unlike ethical self-reliance libertarians (my term) who balance personal and social responsibility, most free-market capitalists today share the exploitive utilitarian values of libertine libertarians (also my term) who want to enjoy all the pleasures of economic freedom without any social responsibility or personal accountability.
In my judgement, the rampant greed of libertine libertarians is what got us into the mess we're in today. Unlike Gordon Gekko in the film, Wall Street, I contends that greed is not good. Heeding the grounded wisdom of self-reliance libertarians like Karl Hess may have spared us from our current woes.
In reaction to the abuses of free-market capitalism, some favor socialism to close the unjust and widening gap between rich and poor. They want the state to control the economy and redistribute all wealth “equally.” We're seeing a step in that direction with the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I agree we need a safety net for those unable to care for themselves. However, I challenge the tendency of codependent welfare states to rob people of incentives to achieve their highest potential and practice mindful self rule. I'm against any form of Big Government, no matter what political party or economic philosophy is behind it. This is why I urge us to beware of any and all messianic leaders promising to save us in trade for the power to make decisions on our behalf.
As we face a global economic collapse inthe coming years, as we look for sane solutions, we might need to create an entirely new economic model. If this becomes a necessity, Adam Smith himself would remind us that democracy and capitalism are not the same thing and that commerce is older than capitalism.
If we use common sense to develop a stable international economic system that fairly empowers people to sustain themselves and their families, so they can prosper in ways that benefit everyone, that system will make global sense.
NOTE: Portions of this column were adapted from my book, Global Sense.
Global Economic Collapse and the Original Vision of Adam Smith (Part 1 of 3)
Adam Smith
POSTED September 18, 12:03 PM
Judah Freed - Political Issues Examiner
Adam SmithAs the world catapults into what could be the worse financial crisis since the Great Depression, we're seeing the results of free-market capitalism run amuck. Please observe the irony here. Today's crisis is a direct result of unreasonably deregulating financial markets in the holy name Adam Smith. Yet such policies are contrary to what Adam Smith himself envisioned.
Before we look at Smith in the 18th century, but let's first turn our attention to more recent history.
In response to the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress established the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) along with related regulatory agencies. Their job was to prevent the kind of wild financial speculation and greedy fraud that led to the Wall Street crash of 1929. The crash wiped out fortunes among the upper class while plunging the middle and lower classes into desperation.
Secured by this regulatory regime, the U.S. economy boomed after World War II. As prosperity grew, a parallel desire for deregulation grew under both Republican and Democratic administrations. This drive peaked in the administration of George W. Bush, who effectively gutted the SEC, the Commerce Department and other watchdog agencies while sinking the nation to debt by borrowing hundreds of billions to fund foreign wars. In a nutshell, the regulators were deprived of the funding and manpower to do their jobs effectively.
The lack of any real government regulation and oversight, consequently, allowed massive lending to millions of unqualified home buyers, which led to the sub-prime U.S. mortgage market collapse.
The reckless lending was based on the false belief that real estate prices would rise forever, that homeowner equity would keep increasing without limit. People with low or erratic incomes were unduly reassured by lenders that they could expect to refinance or sell their homes at a profit before their huge balloon payments were due.
Mounting foreclosures since last year have provided a harsh reality check. The fantasy bubble has popped.
Let's look at basic economics. A foreclosed mortgage is worth only a fraction of its original market value. In communities with numerous foreclosures, the resulting drop in property values means homeowners find themselves owing more than their house is worth on the open market. They are "upside down" in their houses, which induces them to try selling their homes, which further reduces property values. This directly and indirectly leads to more foreclosures.
Companies holding foreclosed mortgages suddenly find themselves holding worthless scraps of paper. Well, actually, we're talking about digital entries in electronic ledgers, but you get the idea. Organizations that invested in securities based on sub-prime loans to high-risk borrowers, naturally, are the hardest hit. The resulting chain-reaction is what led to today economic crisis.
The failure of the sub-prime mortgage market has now spread to all major financial houses in the U.S. and overseas that had any substantial stake in sub-prime investment instruments. The financial failures of overextended lenders, such as Countrywide, have recently led to the government takeover or nationalization of the two largest U.S. lenders and mortgage investors, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The takeover largely was necessary due to lax government supervision of these semi-private institutions.
Despite the U.S. government subsidizing the sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan last March and the government bailout this week of American International Group (AIG), we're now seeing the failure or threatened failure of such Wall Street giants as Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. These are merely the top names on a long list.
Because of increasing global interdependence, U.S. banking failures are the catalyst for a wider financial crisis internationally. The uncertainty inherent in this crisis is inducing precipitous stock market drops from a lack of investors confidence, causing otherwise healthy companies to lose their capitalization overnight.
A five percent drop in overall stock values on Wall Street means billions in funding evaporating into thin air. These are funds that could have gone for such things as creating jobs or converting to alternative energy sources. Instead of wealth spreading from the top tier throughout society (the trickled down economic theory), fear and privation now is spreading from top to bottom.
Don't be deceived into thinking these abstract ideas will have no concrete effect on you. Within the next few months and years, what seems like only scary or confusing headlines today will adversely effect you and everyone else on the planet.
And this brings us back to Adam Smith. (Go to Part 2.)
Global Economic Collapse and the Original Vision of Adam Smith (Part 2 of 3)
POSTED September 18, 12:25 PM
Judah Freed - Political Issues Examiner
Adam SmithTo place today's financial crisis into context, we need to look afresh at the ideas of Adam Smith, a leader of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment movement. Adam Smith is credited with conceiving modern capitalism.
In 1759, Adam Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Morality, he wrote, requires an act of imagination. Put yourself in the shoes of another person to act as they would act. Promoting empathy, the Golden Rule, Smith called it “sympathy.” He said morality must be guided by sympathy, yet emotions must be ruled by reason.
In 1776, three months after Paine published Common Sense, Adam Smith published the first of his five volumes in The Wealth of Nations. Like a one-two punch, after Paine’s essay had turned politics on its head, Adam Smith’s essay turned economics on its head.
Since the 1500s, European mercantilism had defined national wealth as gold bullion in state treasuries. Mercantile states earned gold by manufacturing and exporting merchandise, taxing imports, and selling off the natural resources or agricultural products of their colonies. This is why Europeans invaded and plundered the Americas, Africa and Asia.
Adam Smith instead said national wealth lay in the commerce of its people. He figured national wealth as the total value of all the goods the people consume daily. The wealth of nations relies on buying and selling goods.
Therefore, Smith said, the consumption of goods and services is an economic necessity. Capitalism is consumerism. Indeed, consumer spending comprises two-thirds of the U.S. economy today and about the same in the European Union and Japan.
Smith also favored ending hereditary occupations, where a son did the same job as his father. To accelerate the shift, he proposed the division of labor in factories, a clever idea that gave rise to mass production and the assembly line. Sadly, Adam Smith unduly discounted the value of labor, which later would upset Karl Marx and other critics, helping them draw ardent followers.
If we have the freedom to earn our daily bread as we wish, as Adam Smith proposed, if no king or dictator commands the economy, how does the grain get to market?
In Smith’s laissez faire utopia, the “invisible hand” of enlightened self interest, guided by moral sympathy, directs all commercial affairs, so all prosper. “Every man [or woman], as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man or order of men... It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
Now you know the basic theory. What is the practical reality? (Go to Part 3.)
NOTE: Portions of this column are from my book, Global Sense.
Japan injects an extra $24B into its financial system
TOKYO (AP) — Japan's central bank infused money markets for the third day in a row, pumping another $23.8 billion to sustain domestic liquidity amid the deepening U.S. financial crisis.
With its sixth injection this week, the Bank of Japan has added a total of $76.1 billion since the bankruptcy filing and sale, respectively, of Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch, two Wall Street giants.
The central bank has worked closely with U.S. and European counterparts, who have also flooded money markets with cash to ensure smooth lending among banks.
While the Bank of Japan has been quick to provide extra liquidity, it decided Wednesday to stay put on monetary policy and kept its key interest rate unchanged at 0.5%.
In a statement, the bank stuck with its description of economic growth as "sluggish against the backdrop of high energy and materials prices and weaker growth in exports."
Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa reiterated that the lethargy will persist for the time being but the economy is likely to "return onto a sustainable growth path with price stability."
He also downplayed the impact of the recent turmoil on Japan's financial system and praised the Federal Reserve's $85 billion bailout of troubled insurer American International Group.
The Fed's rescue of AIG was the "right decision" and would help restore investor confidence after recent shake-ups on Wall Street.
Shirakawa acknowledged that Lehman's collapse would hurt Japanese banks, among the U.S. investment firm's biggest creditors. He added, however, that affected institutions should have ample funds to cover losses.
"I am not concerned that the recent events will destabilize the financial system in Japan," he said.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Japan PM front-runner says no date for general election Fri Sep 19, 12:45 AM ET
Taro Aso, a candidate of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader race and former foreign minister speaks before the press with other four candidates in Tokyo while former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba (L) looks on. Aso, the front-runner to become Japan's next prime minister, said unabashedly Friday he was a hawk.
(AFP/Yoshikazu Tsuno)
TOKYO (AFP) - Taro Aso, the front-runner to be Japan's next prime minister, said Friday that no date had been set for a general election amid reports it could come as soon as next month.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party votes Monday for a replacement for unpopular Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.
The Asahi Shimbun and other newspapers said the ruling party hoped to call a general election on October 26 to seize on the initial popularity of the new prime minister.
"It almost sounds like the Asahi newspaper has the right to dismiss the parliament" for an election, Aso, an outspoken former foreign minister, told a debate with his rivals at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.
"I don't think anyone has talked about October 26 so ... if you report this to your head office, I feel you would be making a mistake," Aso said.
Japan's opposition has been hoping for a landmark election victory against the Liberal Democrats, who have been in power for all but 10 months since 1955.
North Korea Pledges to Restart Nuclear Reactor
By Kurt Achin
Seoul
19 September 2008
A senior North Korean official says his country is beginning to restore a disabled nuclear facility capable of producing weapons material. Pyongyang says the United States has not fulfilled obligations under a multinational agreement to get rid of the North's nuclear weapons. VOA's Kurt Achin reports from Seoul.
North Korean diplomat Hyun Hak Bong announced his country's intentions Friday following a meeting with a South Korean counterpart in North-South border village of Panmunjeom.
Hyun says the process of disabling North Korea's main nuclear facility has been stopped, and the process of restoring it is now ongoing.
In this 27 Jun 2008 file photo provided by China's Xinhua News Agency, ruins of Yongbyon nuclear complex's cooling tower are seen
North Korea agreed last year to fully disable its nuclear facility at Yongbyon as part of a broader multinational deal aimed at ending its nuclear programs altogether. In a separate phase of the deal, North Korea provided a nuclear declaration to its negotiating partners - South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the United States.
The six-nation process hit a wall in August, when the United States decided not to remove North Korea from a State Department list it accuses of sponsoring terrorism. Washington says its promise to do that was contingent on North Korea committing to steps for proving that its nuclear declaration is accurate.
Hyun, the North's envoy, disagrees.
Hyun says the verification issue is a separate issue from Pyongyang's removal from the terrorism list. He accuses the United States of imposing a one-sided condition that is not part of the agreement.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, speaking Friday to journalists in Seoul, agreed with U.S. officials that verifying North Korea's declaration was always part of the deal.
Yu says all parties in the six nation talks understood that the North Korean declaration and its verification were intertwined. He says removing Pyongyang from terrorism list does not necessarily require the verification process to be completed - just that North Korea agree on the principles for carrying it out. North Korea, says Yu, fully understands that.
Yu suggested the North may be threatening the restoration of its Yongbyon facility as a means of gaining diplomatic leverage.
North Korea demolished the facility's cooling tower earlier this year in a carefully choreographed public demonstration it was disabling Yongbyon. Analysts say it would take months - possibly years - to fully resume the reactor's operations.
Asia Stocks Roar Back
By Michael Schuman Friday, Sep. 19, 2008
Asian stock markets posted sharp gains Sept. 19 as investors grew more confident that stepped-up government efforts to contain the damage caused by the U.S. credit crunch would be effective. Japan's benchmark Nikkei index was up 3.8%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng 9.6% and the Shanghai stock index shot up 9.5%, recovering some of the steep losses suffered earlier in the week.
Sentiment was boosted by a 3.9% jump in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and by reports that the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve are discussing a massive plan to purchase soured mortgages from American financial institutions. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said after a late-night meeting in Washington that the plan, the details of which are still being worked out, is "aimed right at the heart of this problem." Markets also got a boost from the Sept. 18 announcement that the world's major central banks would inject $180 billion into global financial markets.
At the same time, Asian governments are beginning to independently take direct action to stabilize their reeling stock markets. China on Sept. 18 said it would waive government taxes on some share transactions to stimulate trading. Chinese government agencies are also trying to put a floor under the market by purchasing shares in publicly listed Chinese companies. Meanwhile, Taiwan's government indicated that a state-controlled fund would be willing to shore up Taiwan company stocks via share purchases.
The moves will boost confidence in the short term, but investors remain jittery, says Tai Hui, regional head of economic research for Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore. "It's not that the financial turmoil is getting any better," he says.
The big Sept. 19 gains were driven to some extent by bargain hunting. After tumbling about 45% from highs reached late last year, Asian stocks now trade at roughly 10 times 2008 earnings — which means they're relatively cheap. Although Asia's economic growth is expected to slow over the next 12 months, the region's financial systems and economies are still fundamentally sound, analysts say. Banks in Asia haven't experienced the dangerous losses on property and mortgages that are devastating their U.S. counterparts. To some, like Hugh Young, managing director at Aberdeen Asset Management Asia in Singapore, the sell-off is providing a buying opportunity. Young's been trolling the markets for solid blue chips and conservative banks with strong balance sheets. "Now's the time to be buying — slowly," he says. "If people are selling because they need the cash, that's what we like."
However, analysts warn that the markets aren't immune from further bad news and the uncertainty level is still high. Goldman Sachs in a note to investors this week said that Asian stocks are "getting interestingly cheap" but analysts "certainly do not pretend to have any real clarity on the near-term market outlook." The investment bank said "for now, most investors in Asia will continue to focus more on cutting risk and hedging positions rather than putting on substantial new risk." The wild ride in Asian markets isn't over.
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