Thanks for that outline Stuart, my comments are merely stabs in the dark on supposition whilst enjoying a free dig at Wall St crooks, yours are those of someone there.
I wonder the degree to which science teachers in Malaysia dare not teach their subject honestly. In countries where there is no risk of persecution due to godlessness statistics seem to show that an understanding of evolutionary biology and modern genetics tends to cause atheism. It isn’t total – there are a few who hold apparently contradictory views simultaneously – but not many.
It would seem that at the very least, acceptance of the evidence that man is an evolved animal would require a “non-standard” form of belief. What peril does this put an ordinary science teacher at should he or she chose to present the evidence for evolution as it is?
The conflict here amongst people from Myanmar seems to reflect the cultural conflict going on there. Democracy is possible only where (and when) very nearly everybody accepts majority rule. If that is not the case, the choice is between creating divisions within which majority rule is possible, or rule by violence. Myanmar has tried the latter with little success. What now? Are there too many people that would reject the outcome of elections? Would a complete break-up merely spawn a clutch of warring failed states? A federation is the kind of compromise which may work. Does ASSK have the constitutional talents and the energy of a Bismarck to make it work?
It’s not that the bankers in SP are any more or less corrupt than their counterparts on Wall Street or The City (they’re by and large the same people and firms in the guise of ‘expats’ anyway). It’s more about the SP government making it crystal clear on whose terms they are there. Those terms are exceedingly attractive for both parties. The SP government gives them everything they need to make money – such as some of the lowest tax rates in the world; a compliant, skilled and largely satisfied workforce; world-class infrastructure; a veneer of transparency; a stiff regulatory regime; and an authoritarian government that won’t put brook any nonsense from the lefty brigade. In return, everyone must shut up and fit in with the system, which is heavily weighted in favour of the ruling elite and associated interests but doesn’t leave anyone destitute either. By and large, the system has worked because there has been no mass disenfranchised group – such as in Thailand, for example, where “Thai-style democracy” has stiffed the majority rural community no end. It’s true that they treat their filipina maids like shit, but they don’t vote and have to bugger off home so nobody cares. Everybody else is more or less taken care of as long as they agree to take care of the system that takes care of them. The champagne liberals who wish to bleed over their consciences are tolerated as long as they do it over an after-dinner mint and don’t screw it up for everybody else. I moaned for some time until I heard my lucrative expat package was up for review…and then I shut up.
So are expat bankers corrupt? Possibly and probably, if toeing the line in a perfectly legal but democratically-challenged system can be considered corrupt. Are they perceived as being corrupt? No, because in SP there is no mass disenfranchised group to perceive it. In the U.S they are most definitely perceived to be corrupt, because their greed is blamed for the mess in which many US homeowners and taxpayers now find themselves. In SP, though, everyone is pretty much doing ok. The bleating about democracy is over a principle.
To negotiate floods successfully, it is necessary to negotiate first people in all walks of life to obtain a comprehensive, workable city plan that leaves nothing out.
A couple of Saturdays ago I went out to Shawnee with a Kachin student attending the University of Oklahoma to a stomp dance the Shawnee Indian Education program was putting on (for those unfamiliar with stomp dances, this is adequate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stomp_dance ). We were about to leave when he got a phone call. He laughed and said it was a Chinese number. He answered it and afterward told me that even though the number was Chinese, it was actually from a friend of his in Myitkyina. Apparently everybody in there has a Chinese cell phone. His friend was calling to tell him that the electricity in Myitkyina was back on.
you don’t need to be intelligent to call someone by any name, including racist, bigot and whatsoever. and by being called a racist, etc. alone doesn’t prove anything so. they are just puerile and unintelligent if not stupid act of the caller himself.
you may call magh/mug to any other people, that is your own language. the Rakhines, unless in south asia, don’t understand it. Interestingly in Tripura State of India, there are thousands of Magh or Mog people, and they are indigenous people of Burma. the Chittagonian bengali muslims have been calling Mug to any Buddhist people since time immemorial, They call the bengali speaking Barua Buddhists as Bhuiyan Mog/Magh.
for all these reasons I’ve every doubt about your identity – you must be a Bengali from Chittagong and not even a Musllim from Burma.
Many Rakhines feel proud to identify themselves as Magh – people in India already write and use the name as indigenous people to India’s Tripura State.
On changes in the media landscape: not only greater access to foreign websites, but possibly a new deal which would possibly increase the number of broadband users (although I suspect China is exporting more than just broadband tech – likely broadband management tech as well)
Loving own country and protecting it from thuggish thieves
does not make one a racist. It is you who have a dark agenda
trying to steal our land beggin Saudi and OIC’s Petro Dollars.
It is alike burglars calling the hosts for not being hospitable!
Perhaps the problem with Occupy Singapore is that financial institutions there, unlike Wall St, have not been perceived to be involved in flagrant fraud, corruption, bribing politicians, owning the so-called regulators, theft and seeking taxpayer bailouts to support their obscene bonus schemes when their Ponzi models fail.
One needs consider, is it that bankers in Singapore are inherently honest or is that they just haven’t been able to corrupt the entire system? Also is Occupy Wall St protesting against banker fraud & greed located in the wrong place as Washington is where all their avarice was given free reign after sizable campaign donations and where every second official once worked for Goldman Sachs?
It seems Khun Vichai just cannot help himself with his attacks on Thailand’s first female PM. Reading between the lines is a reluctance on Khun Vichai to assess Yingluck as PM based on factors other than her gender. Perhaps he is not being deliberately sexist but I seem to detect at a meta-level there is some latent sexism (would Khun Vichai mention Ahbisit’s hairdo in his favorable assessment – note I am not using biased – of the previous government)?
However, there is one minor point that Khun Vichai has overlooked in relation to water levels in Thailand’s dams. EGAT is probably as equally as important as the Royal Irrigation Department in assessing whether water levels should be realised in dams or at least those with a multi-purpose of providing both water for irrigation and electricity. There are also some minor inconveniences in any hydrological assessment of flooding and they partly relate to what hyopthesis – 1 million years, 100,000 years, 1,000 years or 100 years hydrologists utilize. Even the most sophisticated modeling exercises are sometimes wide of the mark or at least that is what I was told by hydrologists when I spent a stint at the Mekong River Commission.
All that aside I think Khun Vichai would enhance his credibility if he was a little more empathetic to people who have been severely impacted upon by Thailand’s floods, irrespetive as to whether they live in Thailand or upcountry or other regions of Thailand AND also as pointed out by others a little more factual with his critiques of the incumbent regime.
Vichai, your creative game-play with words is a matter for you – far be it from me to critique others’ style or choice of amusement. Your creative approach to facts – along with context/chronology – is another matter and you seem impervious to verifiable information already made available to you (at http://www.newmandala.org/2011/10/25/managing-people-harder-than-managing-water/).
But, from some sensible points made in your c2 comment, it seems you’ve now reverted to established form and are set to continue with it – little point therefore in pointing out again what you’ve already chosen to ignore. Except maybe this – that it was the law-unto-themselves Thai military who cold-shouldered the US carrier fleet. But somehow I doubt you’ll be pursuing that point in your drum-beat posting.
” . . . the catastrophic flooding occurred so soon after a change in the government . . .” (SteveCM #22)
But the Thai Agriculture Minister (who was a carry over from Abhisit’s government), whose credentials (not hairdo though) for water management are impeccable, had or should have known since June2011 that a very dangerous water build-up at the dams and the unrelenting monsoon rains. Surely when Yingluck held her first cabinet meeeting, the danger or the threat of the build-up to the Great Flood should have been raised? And when they created the FROC, do they have any clue or idea at all about the massive scale of the monster flood they are dealing with and must therefore PLAN accordingly . . . instead of running around doing the stupid motions of being busy and . . . concerned? Surely by that time the Thai Agriculture Minister should have apprised Yingluck personally about the monster flood so that appropriate response(s) could be made.
Even USA had already known, through their satellites, that Thailand will be facing the Great Flood and had sent their US Aircraft Carrier(s) to bring disaster succor . . . but had been ignored by Yingluck’s government because of . . . incompetence.
I dub thee Yingluck . . . ‘presidentially’ incompetent with impeccable hairdo, of course!
b. Call yourself whatever turns you on, but usurping the term Arakanese Muslim and inventing Rohingya ID for yourselves wouldn’t make you an indigenous race.
c. Your ignorance shows. Really bad, though you obviously didn’t have a clue.
– Sittwe, Yangon, Myanmar and Yakhine happen to be the original names in the Burmese language. Akyab, Rangoon, Burma and Arakan are their respective English terms. You obviously never knew their real names before, only in English. More well known examples are M├╝nchen and Munich, Mumbai and Bombay, Beijing and Peking. Comprende?
– Mon and Talaing are synonymous, Talaing is an older term.
-The Rakhine have always been Rakhine, only the Burmese lost the r sound whereas their cousins whom they call Yakhine speak an older dialect and have retained it.
If they are Mog to you, you damn well are Bengali Khawtaw Kalar to us. That’s totally non-racist and non-abusive in contrast with Khway Kalar, I can assure you. Do you even speak a word of Arakanese/Burmese?
Who are you kidding, ‘myanmar’ is more inclusive than ‘burma’? Doesn’t make a blind bit of difference.
Ask the ethnic peoples if the name matters more than the way they’ve been treated so far, if the name change really made them feel more inclusive since the country has always been officially Myanmar in the Burmese language from 11th C Bagan onwards. Burma and Burmese are English terms. Changing from Burma to Myanmar is just like changing from Germany to Deutschland. A cosmetic change that may fool only ignorant folk. Neo-Nazis and skinheads my foot.
The cynic would say perhaps they planned a trade off between the dam and the pipeline, fully aware that resuming hostilities in Kachin State would disrupt the dam project but wouldn’t matter if they were going to ditch it so they could ingratiate themselves with the West and incidentally the Burmese public. China can have the more crucial pipeline constructed, and the generals won’t need to fight on two fronts either as they keep the peace with the Chinese trained UWSA.
The US allies in WWII status of the Baptist Kachin, like the Karen’s loyalty to the British, has so far proved to be more of a liability than a blessing.
It’s a grim picture for the people that Ohn paints, but I’m afraid it’s a realistic one. The new world order ├а la Messrs Bush & Obama beckons, and some might say it’s better to have their problems than our current ones, like it’s better to be exploited than not exploited. Best to live in a fool’s paradise than in unmitigated hell I guess.
Wow! It’s unbelievable. All the ugly faces of ultra racists have been exposed. Mr. Racists and Bigots are still hyper active and keep showing their hatred.
Moe Aung #74,
You’ve written so many pieces with different IDs attaching Rohingya although no Rohingya have been writing there any longer. By the way, why you’re so eeked off by our name “Rohingya”? If you have to right to change your name from Mog to Rakhain to Yak-khine, don’t we have the right to call ourselves with whatever name we like? Or you consider yourself above law?
Can you tell me the following as why?:
-Akyab to Sittwe
-Rangoo to Yangon
-Burma to Myanmar
-Talaing to Mon
-Mog to Rakhain to Yak-khine
Who gave you the right to call us “Chittagonian Bangali”? Can you call whatever you like to call us? If you do, can I name you call you bastard? Think about it and let me know.
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Taking to the tweets in Singapore
Thanks for that outline Stuart, my comments are merely stabs in the dark on supposition whilst enjoying a free dig at Wall St crooks, yours are those of someone there.
Apostasy in Malaysia: The hidden view
I wonder the degree to which science teachers in Malaysia dare not teach their subject honestly. In countries where there is no risk of persecution due to godlessness statistics seem to show that an understanding of evolutionary biology and modern genetics tends to cause atheism. It isn’t total – there are a few who hold apparently contradictory views simultaneously – but not many.
It would seem that at the very least, acceptance of the evidence that man is an evolved animal would require a “non-standard” form of belief. What peril does this put an ordinary science teacher at should he or she chose to present the evidence for evolution as it is?
BBC under fire on Rohingyas
The conflict here amongst people from Myanmar seems to reflect the cultural conflict going on there. Democracy is possible only where (and when) very nearly everybody accepts majority rule. If that is not the case, the choice is between creating divisions within which majority rule is possible, or rule by violence. Myanmar has tried the latter with little success. What now? Are there too many people that would reject the outcome of elections? Would a complete break-up merely spawn a clutch of warring failed states? A federation is the kind of compromise which may work. Does ASSK have the constitutional talents and the energy of a Bismarck to make it work?
Taking to the tweets in Singapore
Mr Damage
It’s not that the bankers in SP are any more or less corrupt than their counterparts on Wall Street or The City (they’re by and large the same people and firms in the guise of ‘expats’ anyway). It’s more about the SP government making it crystal clear on whose terms they are there. Those terms are exceedingly attractive for both parties. The SP government gives them everything they need to make money – such as some of the lowest tax rates in the world; a compliant, skilled and largely satisfied workforce; world-class infrastructure; a veneer of transparency; a stiff regulatory regime; and an authoritarian government that won’t put brook any nonsense from the lefty brigade. In return, everyone must shut up and fit in with the system, which is heavily weighted in favour of the ruling elite and associated interests but doesn’t leave anyone destitute either. By and large, the system has worked because there has been no mass disenfranchised group – such as in Thailand, for example, where “Thai-style democracy” has stiffed the majority rural community no end. It’s true that they treat their filipina maids like shit, but they don’t vote and have to bugger off home so nobody cares. Everybody else is more or less taken care of as long as they agree to take care of the system that takes care of them. The champagne liberals who wish to bleed over their consciences are tolerated as long as they do it over an after-dinner mint and don’t screw it up for everybody else. I moaned for some time until I heard my lucrative expat package was up for review…and then I shut up.
So are expat bankers corrupt? Possibly and probably, if toeing the line in a perfectly legal but democratically-challenged system can be considered corrupt. Are they perceived as being corrupt? No, because in SP there is no mass disenfranchised group to perceive it. In the U.S they are most definitely perceived to be corrupt, because their greed is blamed for the mess in which many US homeowners and taxpayers now find themselves. In SP, though, everyone is pretty much doing ok. The bleating about democracy is over a principle.
Royal politics and the floods
Oh, Thai people, how much longer will you allow yourselves to be exploited?
Negotiating the flood
To negotiate floods successfully, it is necessary to negotiate first people in all walks of life to obtain a comprehensive, workable city plan that leaves nothing out.
Mobile telephony in Burma
A couple of Saturdays ago I went out to Shawnee with a Kachin student attending the University of Oklahoma to a stomp dance the Shawnee Indian Education program was putting on (for those unfamiliar with stomp dances, this is adequate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stomp_dance ). We were about to leave when he got a phone call. He laughed and said it was a Chinese number. He answered it and afterward told me that even though the number was Chinese, it was actually from a friend of his in Myitkyina. Apparently everybody in there has a Chinese cell phone. His friend was calling to tell him that the electricity in Myitkyina was back on.
BBC under fire on Rohingyas
shah arkani
you don’t need to be intelligent to call someone by any name, including racist, bigot and whatsoever. and by being called a racist, etc. alone doesn’t prove anything so. they are just puerile and unintelligent if not stupid act of the caller himself.
you may call magh/mug to any other people, that is your own language. the Rakhines, unless in south asia, don’t understand it. Interestingly in Tripura State of India, there are thousands of Magh or Mog people, and they are indigenous people of Burma. the Chittagonian bengali muslims have been calling Mug to any Buddhist people since time immemorial, They call the bengali speaking Barua Buddhists as Bhuiyan Mog/Magh.
for all these reasons I’ve every doubt about your identity – you must be a Bengali from Chittagong and not even a Musllim from Burma.
Many Rakhines feel proud to identify themselves as Magh – people in India already write and use the name as indigenous people to India’s Tripura State.
Thanks
Media, politics, Burma
http://www.i-policy.org/2011/11/new-deal-could-double-internet-access-in-heavily-censored-burma.html
On changes in the media landscape: not only greater access to foreign websites, but possibly a new deal which would possibly increase the number of broadband users (although I suspect China is exporting more than just broadband tech – likely broadband management tech as well)
BBC under fire on Rohingyas
@”Shah Arkani”
Loving own country and protecting it from thuggish thieves
does not make one a racist. It is you who have a dark agenda
trying to steal our land beggin Saudi and OIC’s Petro Dollars.
It is alike burglars calling the hosts for not being hospitable!
Taking to the tweets in Singapore
Perhaps the problem with Occupy Singapore is that financial institutions there, unlike Wall St, have not been perceived to be involved in flagrant fraud, corruption, bribing politicians, owning the so-called regulators, theft and seeking taxpayer bailouts to support their obscene bonus schemes when their Ponzi models fail.
One needs consider, is it that bankers in Singapore are inherently honest or is that they just haven’t been able to corrupt the entire system? Also is Occupy Wall St protesting against banker fraud & greed located in the wrong place as Washington is where all their avarice was given free reign after sizable campaign donations and where every second official once worked for Goldman Sachs?
The toll of flooding on lives and politics
It seems Khun Vichai just cannot help himself with his attacks on Thailand’s first female PM. Reading between the lines is a reluctance on Khun Vichai to assess Yingluck as PM based on factors other than her gender. Perhaps he is not being deliberately sexist but I seem to detect at a meta-level there is some latent sexism (would Khun Vichai mention Ahbisit’s hairdo in his favorable assessment – note I am not using biased – of the previous government)?
However, there is one minor point that Khun Vichai has overlooked in relation to water levels in Thailand’s dams. EGAT is probably as equally as important as the Royal Irrigation Department in assessing whether water levels should be realised in dams or at least those with a multi-purpose of providing both water for irrigation and electricity. There are also some minor inconveniences in any hydrological assessment of flooding and they partly relate to what hyopthesis – 1 million years, 100,000 years, 1,000 years or 100 years hydrologists utilize. Even the most sophisticated modeling exercises are sometimes wide of the mark or at least that is what I was told by hydrologists when I spent a stint at the Mekong River Commission.
All that aside I think Khun Vichai would enhance his credibility if he was a little more empathetic to people who have been severely impacted upon by Thailand’s floods, irrespetive as to whether they live in Thailand or upcountry or other regions of Thailand AND also as pointed out by others a little more factual with his critiques of the incumbent regime.
The toll of flooding on lives and politics
Vichai, your creative game-play with words is a matter for you – far be it from me to critique others’ style or choice of amusement. Your creative approach to facts – along with context/chronology – is another matter and you seem impervious to verifiable information already made available to you (at http://www.newmandala.org/2011/10/25/managing-people-harder-than-managing-water/).
But, from some sensible points made in your c2 comment, it seems you’ve now reverted to established form and are set to continue with it – little point therefore in pointing out again what you’ve already chosen to ignore. Except maybe this – that it was the law-unto-themselves Thai military who cold-shouldered the US carrier fleet. But somehow I doubt you’ll be pursuing that point in your drum-beat posting.
The toll of flooding on lives and politics
” . . . the catastrophic flooding occurred so soon after a change in the government . . .” (SteveCM #22)
But the Thai Agriculture Minister (who was a carry over from Abhisit’s government), whose credentials (not hairdo though) for water management are impeccable, had or should have known since June2011 that a very dangerous water build-up at the dams and the unrelenting monsoon rains. Surely when Yingluck held her first cabinet meeeting, the danger or the threat of the build-up to the Great Flood should have been raised? And when they created the FROC, do they have any clue or idea at all about the massive scale of the monster flood they are dealing with and must therefore PLAN accordingly . . . instead of running around doing the stupid motions of being busy and . . . concerned? Surely by that time the Thai Agriculture Minister should have apprised Yingluck personally about the monster flood so that appropriate response(s) could be made.
Even USA had already known, through their satellites, that Thailand will be facing the Great Flood and had sent their US Aircraft Carrier(s) to bring disaster succor . . . but had been ignored by Yingluck’s government because of . . . incompetence.
I dub thee Yingluck . . . ‘presidentially’ incompetent with impeccable hairdo, of course!
BBC under fire on Rohingyas
Shah Arkani #77,
a. Never needed a different ID.
b. Call yourself whatever turns you on, but usurping the term Arakanese Muslim and inventing Rohingya ID for yourselves wouldn’t make you an indigenous race.
c. Your ignorance shows. Really bad, though you obviously didn’t have a clue.
– Sittwe, Yangon, Myanmar and Yakhine happen to be the original names in the Burmese language. Akyab, Rangoon, Burma and Arakan are their respective English terms. You obviously never knew their real names before, only in English. More well known examples are M├╝nchen and Munich, Mumbai and Bombay, Beijing and Peking. Comprende?
– Mon and Talaing are synonymous, Talaing is an older term.
-The Rakhine have always been Rakhine, only the Burmese lost the r sound whereas their cousins whom they call Yakhine speak an older dialect and have retained it.
If they are Mog to you, you damn well are Bengali Khawtaw Kalar to us. That’s totally non-racist and non-abusive in contrast with Khway Kalar, I can assure you. Do you even speak a word of Arakanese/Burmese?
Media, politics, Burma
aggadassavin,
Who are you kidding, ‘myanmar’ is more inclusive than ‘burma’? Doesn’t make a blind bit of difference.
Ask the ethnic peoples if the name matters more than the way they’ve been treated so far, if the name change really made them feel more inclusive since the country has always been officially Myanmar in the Burmese language from 11th C Bagan onwards. Burma and Burmese are English terms. Changing from Burma to Myanmar is just like changing from Germany to Deutschland. A cosmetic change that may fool only ignorant folk. Neo-Nazis and skinheads my foot.
Media, politics, Burma
RY,
The cynic would say perhaps they planned a trade off between the dam and the pipeline, fully aware that resuming hostilities in Kachin State would disrupt the dam project but wouldn’t matter if they were going to ditch it so they could ingratiate themselves with the West and incidentally the Burmese public. China can have the more crucial pipeline constructed, and the generals won’t need to fight on two fronts either as they keep the peace with the Chinese trained UWSA.
The US allies in WWII status of the Baptist Kachin, like the Karen’s loyalty to the British, has so far proved to be more of a liability than a blessing.
Making sense of Burma today
It’s a grim picture for the people that Ohn paints, but I’m afraid it’s a realistic one. The new world order ├а la Messrs Bush & Obama beckons, and some might say it’s better to have their problems than our current ones, like it’s better to be exploited than not exploited. Best to live in a fool’s paradise than in unmitigated hell I guess.
BBC under fire on Rohingyas
Wow! It’s unbelievable. All the ugly faces of ultra racists have been exposed. Mr. Racists and Bigots are still hyper active and keep showing their hatred.
Moe Aung #74,
You’ve written so many pieces with different IDs attaching Rohingya although no Rohingya have been writing there any longer. By the way, why you’re so eeked off by our name “Rohingya”? If you have to right to change your name from Mog to Rakhain to Yak-khine, don’t we have the right to call ourselves with whatever name we like? Or you consider yourself above law?
Can you tell me the following as why?:
-Akyab to Sittwe
-Rangoo to Yangon
-Burma to Myanmar
-Talaing to Mon
-Mog to Rakhain to Yak-khine
Who gave you the right to call us “Chittagonian Bangali”? Can you call whatever you like to call us? If you do, can I name you call you bastard? Think about it and let me know.
Democracy survey in Malaysia
You bet … Watch for the news release, which will be sent to regional media outlets. And keep an eye on local sites that covered the Survey.