Lance, good with numbers, but convert/compare to %BNP per capita for a meaningful comparison.
Luxembourg and Norway are ultra rich countries.
Your comparison is misleading to say the least, AND Norway do not put mentally ill people in jail for perceived insults to their royalty.
State-sanctioned murder, and as the commentator states; there is absolutely no scientific basis behind this practice that could possibly come close to justifying the actions of the Indonesian Government. An extra 14 deaths to add to the count.
If they really wanted to reduce the body count from drug abuse, then they should firstly minimise the harms associated with hard drug use.
Education, treatment, needle exchange programmes, etc. are all effective tried and tested methods of reducing drug harm and deaths. There is even evidence — as shown by the case of Portugal — to suggest that focussing on harm reduction and treating personal drug use as a public health issue, rather than a criminal one, actually reduces the number of drug addicts.
However, Indonesia’s maintenance of its ‘zero tolerance’ approach appears to ignore the prevailing logic. Shooting dead death row prisoners, regardless of the credentials of the judicial procedures followed, will only serve to harm addicts disproportionately. It only reinforces the perception that the police are not there to treat any drug problems, just attempt to clean up the symptoms.
Meanwhile, the suppliers and cartels have mitigated the risk of seizures through the sheer economics of the venture. There too will always be victims unfortunate enough to be caught in their web as mules who will take the bullet for them.
The apparent 50 deaths per day that necessitated the onset of this latest ’emergency’ were undoubtedly avoidable. It is a feature of the state’s systematic failings in providing welfare, and not a failure in the state’s ability to directly take away life by firing squad — a panicked and misguided response.
Both the police and pushers have blood their hands.
Hawkins in his first edition of “Brief History of time” had grace to point out that sum understanding if the way of the universe by the “scientists” is (where is the blooming universe expending to?) not even marginally differebpnt from that proverbial Hindoo woman in the back of the audience of Russell (globe supported by four elephants stangpding on turtle all the way down).
It would be good if some one kindly explain where the hell is this growth thingy leading to. Although one sees everything destructed to smitheerings and toxin every second.
It is well known among local that the well water are contaminated with Pb (Lead) beyond safe level 95% of well.
Have the water #1 drink while in Myanmar got to him?
Forgetting the original historical and still ongoing iniquity aside, sweeping away the recent Western Policy on Myanmar, that result in this government complete reliance on China and yes don’t forget the association with the N Korean make one wonder
How soon one forget the West has done many fold overall more harm than the East?Chinese?
The world over, people who cannot think all the way through but still think themselves so “academic” become easy and evangelical recruits for any manipulators for their own benefit. The only difference between themselves and the ISIS recruit is that they do not know how or dare to shoot yet with bigger consequences.
The costs and benefits of large dams are often unevenly distributed. The rural poor close to the dam sites are often hit the hardest by the impacts of dams due to decline or loss of traditional livelihoods, restricted access to natural resources (including water and land), forced resettlement and inadequate compensation. Sometimes they don’t even have access to electricity despite living next to the dams, e.g. there are many local people at the Kamchay dam who do not have access to electricity. The electricity is often transported far away to cities. The dams’ main purpose is usually electricity generation, irrigation is often not a target. Usually, dams do not improve local people’s water supply or water access.
No one likes bullies, even if you are afraid of them, but Chinese want to be “liked” (even admired!) so they are ├╝bersensitive about any kind of criticism, claiming to be “victims” of Western colonialism and prejudice, while at the same time treating poor countries in their periphery like takeaway kitchens for natural resources (to be exploited for Chinese needs) and populated by inferior “barbarians”, who need to be “civilised and colonised” by the superior Chinese. Arrogant and hypocritical behaviour, I must say!
China is wasting time and money building such land in the middle of nowhere. In terms of practicality and on an engineering standpoint, this is not worth their efforts and won’t work! Believe me, they will get tired and abandon their dreamed project! We are simply overreacting, IMO.
China is enacting a land grab of islands which in no way can it have any claims over. It is domination and control by economic means in Africa and Northern Burma. This neo-liberalism with Chinese characteristics AND a powerful State is an existential threat to people in ASEAN who are powerless to stop it
I’m afraid statistics however desirable in policy formulation, implementation and outcome measurement seems like a Western obsession – anything and everything under the sun that can be counted or measured will be counted and measured, but it’s likely to catch on.
Perhaps that’s why the ‘feel good factor’ (in an other worldly way the Burmese seek and find with their meritorious deeds certainly measured in their individual or group donations of time and money and invested in this life) seems so elusive the world over despite government statistics making the claim of its sighting on a regular basis. This phenomenon too will come. Lies, damned lies and statistics, eh?
Thank you for this incredibly insightful analysis from a ‘rank outsider’ as it were.
Self reliance is after all at the heart of the Buddhist concept of emancipation where individual effort or shaping one’s own karma has to be the main vehicle and absolution plays no part although atonement does. A society which at the same time venerates teachers of both secular knowledge and Buddhist philosophy, which values and allocates merit on community and mutual aid.
Also true when people are so used to governmental neglect of their welfare for so long the thought of entitlement does not even enter their minds. They know it’s entirely down to them.
Regardless of the class divide the ‘eye of the needle’ looms large in the Burmese Buddhist mind, the filthy rich not exempt to whom charity is almost inherent if not philanthropy.
And just as their work and social circles are not compartmentalised as in some Western cultures, their social and political consciousness cannot be strictly separated.
And yes, they will buy into Ma Ba Tha’s rhetoric and lend their support but in the majority case it is unlikely to translate to withdrawing support for ASSK/NLD. Quite on the contrary. Most people do realise this is a desperate smear campaign and scaremongering the regime is resorting to.
“Muslim’s don’t value life in the same way that we do” of course stems from the custom of halal which the Buddhist abhors even when practised out of sight, certainly not out of mind.
‘To him (the Burmese) men are men, and animals are animals, and men are far the higher. But he does not deduce from this that man’s superiority gives him permission to ill-treat or kill animals. It is just the reverse. It is because man is so much higher than the animal that he can and must observe towards animals the very greatest care, feel for them the very greatest compassion, be good to them in every way he can. The Burmese’s motto should be noblesse oblige. He knows the meaning, he knows not the words.’
These Chinese dams are not built for supplying drinking water to the local population. 90% of the electricity goes to China. Just go ask the people who live there what benefits they get.
By the way, I was born in Burma and I have drawn water from a well and “humped it on my back” many times!
THAYER SCUDDER, the world’s leading authority on the impact of dams on poor people, has changed his mind about dams.
A frequent consultant on large dam projects, Mr. Scudder held out hope through most of his 58-year career that the poverty relief delivered by a properly constructed and managed dam would outweigh the social and environmental damage it caused. Now, at age 84, he has concluded that large dams not only aren’t worth their cost, but that many currently under construction “will have disastrous environmental and socio-economic consequences,” as he wrote in a recent email. New York Times AUG. 22, 2014: “Large Dams Just Aren’t Worth the Cost”
First, in most of the cases the electricity does not go the poorest that are affected by the hydro-power dams. Actually, the article is about how the poorest suffers from some of these developments. Please read the article more carefully – there is no talk about “bloody” hippos in it.
Second, there are different ways of producing electricity – some more are social sustainable than others.
Thirdly, I am not sure that the lifestyle that we are used are sustainable over the next millennium.
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Why I speak out against the Thai Monarchy
Lance, good with numbers, but convert/compare to %BNP per capita for a meaningful comparison.
Luxembourg and Norway are ultra rich countries.
Your comparison is misleading to say the least, AND Norway do not put mentally ill people in jail for perceived insults to their royalty.
The high price of Chinese hydropower
Rob the poor and fed the rich. Usual pattern.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2014/aug/27/do-dams-destroy-rivers
Flawed justice on death row
State-sanctioned murder, and as the commentator states; there is absolutely no scientific basis behind this practice that could possibly come close to justifying the actions of the Indonesian Government. An extra 14 deaths to add to the count.
If they really wanted to reduce the body count from drug abuse, then they should firstly minimise the harms associated with hard drug use.
Education, treatment, needle exchange programmes, etc. are all effective tried and tested methods of reducing drug harm and deaths. There is even evidence — as shown by the case of Portugal — to suggest that focussing on harm reduction and treating personal drug use as a public health issue, rather than a criminal one, actually reduces the number of drug addicts.
However, Indonesia’s maintenance of its ‘zero tolerance’ approach appears to ignore the prevailing logic. Shooting dead death row prisoners, regardless of the credentials of the judicial procedures followed, will only serve to harm addicts disproportionately. It only reinforces the perception that the police are not there to treat any drug problems, just attempt to clean up the symptoms.
Meanwhile, the suppliers and cartels have mitigated the risk of seizures through the sheer economics of the venture. There too will always be victims unfortunate enough to be caught in their web as mules who will take the bullet for them.
The apparent 50 deaths per day that necessitated the onset of this latest ’emergency’ were undoubtedly avoidable. It is a feature of the state’s systematic failings in providing welfare, and not a failure in the state’s ability to directly take away life by firing squad — a panicked and misguided response.
Both the police and pushers have blood their hands.
The high price of Chinese hydropower
“Growth” is the sixties the of word.
Hawkins in his first edition of “Brief History of time” had grace to point out that sum understanding if the way of the universe by the “scientists” is (where is the blooming universe expending to?) not even marginally differebpnt from that proverbial Hindoo woman in the back of the audience of Russell (globe supported by four elephants stangpding on turtle all the way down).
It would be good if some one kindly explain where the hell is this growth thingy leading to. Although one sees everything destructed to smitheerings and toxin every second.
The high price of Chinese hydropower
This topic must be tailor made for #!.
The avowed Sino-phobiac.
It is well known among local that the well water are contaminated with Pb (Lead) beyond safe level 95% of well.
Have the water #1 drink while in Myanmar got to him?
Forgetting the original historical and still ongoing iniquity aside, sweeping away the recent Western Policy on Myanmar, that result in this government complete reliance on China and yes don’t forget the association with the N Korean make one wonder
How soon one forget the West has done many fold overall more harm than the East?Chinese?
The high price of Chinese hydropower
The world over, people who cannot think all the way through but still think themselves so “academic” become easy and evangelical recruits for any manipulators for their own benefit. The only difference between themselves and the ISIS recruit is that they do not know how or dare to shoot yet with bigger consequences.
The high price of Chinese hydropower
The costs and benefits of large dams are often unevenly distributed. The rural poor close to the dam sites are often hit the hardest by the impacts of dams due to decline or loss of traditional livelihoods, restricted access to natural resources (including water and land), forced resettlement and inadequate compensation. Sometimes they don’t even have access to electricity despite living next to the dams, e.g. there are many local people at the Kamchay dam who do not have access to electricity. The electricity is often transported far away to cities. The dams’ main purpose is usually electricity generation, irrigation is often not a target. Usually, dams do not improve local people’s water supply or water access.
Dissent and dictatorship in Thailand
‘Thailand is now a country where a young mother will sleep more than 10,000 nights behind bars for insulting the king.’
Shouldn’t this read ‘allegedly’?
Wave of rhetoric on South China Sea sets dangerous tone
No one likes bullies, even if you are afraid of them, but Chinese want to be “liked” (even admired!) so they are ├╝bersensitive about any kind of criticism, claiming to be “victims” of Western colonialism and prejudice, while at the same time treating poor countries in their periphery like takeaway kitchens for natural resources (to be exploited for Chinese needs) and populated by inferior “barbarians”, who need to be “civilised and colonised” by the superior Chinese. Arrogant and hypocritical behaviour, I must say!
Wave of rhetoric on South China Sea sets dangerous tone
China is wasting time and money building such land in the middle of nowhere. In terms of practicality and on an engineering standpoint, this is not worth their efforts and won’t work! Believe me, they will get tired and abandon their dreamed project! We are simply overreacting, IMO.
Wave of rhetoric on South China Sea sets dangerous tone
China is enacting a land grab of islands which in no way can it have any claims over. It is domination and control by economic means in Africa and Northern Burma. This neo-liberalism with Chinese characteristics AND a powerful State is an existential threat to people in ASEAN who are powerless to stop it
The limits of big ‘P’ politics in Myanmar’s elections
I’m afraid statistics however desirable in policy formulation, implementation and outcome measurement seems like a Western obsession – anything and everything under the sun that can be counted or measured will be counted and measured, but it’s likely to catch on.
Perhaps that’s why the ‘feel good factor’ (in an other worldly way the Burmese seek and find with their meritorious deeds certainly measured in their individual or group donations of time and money and invested in this life) seems so elusive the world over despite government statistics making the claim of its sighting on a regular basis. This phenomenon too will come. Lies, damned lies and statistics, eh?
Myanmar Law Reports
Dear Ko Hein
This is Iftikhar Ahmad. I work on Labour Laws. Is it possible for you to get me a copy of labour laws in Myanmar.
Thanks
Searching for Singapore’s soul
I am sure Greg did, and I concur with him.
As they say in Kazakhstan:
“If it ain’t fix it, don’t broke….”
The high price of Chinese hydropower
Well said, Marayu. All chained to China and boo to Burma, except while Natpyidaw dazzles the rest of the country blinks in the dark.
The Chinese assault on their major rivers has spilled over the border to Burma’s rivers in their insatiable appetite for growth.
The limits of big ‘P’ politics in Myanmar’s elections
Thank you for this incredibly insightful analysis from a ‘rank outsider’ as it were.
Self reliance is after all at the heart of the Buddhist concept of emancipation where individual effort or shaping one’s own karma has to be the main vehicle and absolution plays no part although atonement does. A society which at the same time venerates teachers of both secular knowledge and Buddhist philosophy, which values and allocates merit on community and mutual aid.
Also true when people are so used to governmental neglect of their welfare for so long the thought of entitlement does not even enter their minds. They know it’s entirely down to them.
Regardless of the class divide the ‘eye of the needle’ looms large in the Burmese Buddhist mind, the filthy rich not exempt to whom charity is almost inherent if not philanthropy.
And just as their work and social circles are not compartmentalised as in some Western cultures, their social and political consciousness cannot be strictly separated.
And yes, they will buy into Ma Ba Tha’s rhetoric and lend their support but in the majority case it is unlikely to translate to withdrawing support for ASSK/NLD. Quite on the contrary. Most people do realise this is a desperate smear campaign and scaremongering the regime is resorting to.
“Muslim’s don’t value life in the same way that we do” of course stems from the custom of halal which the Buddhist abhors even when practised out of sight, certainly not out of mind.
E.F. Schumacher in his book Small Is Beautiful quoted –
As H. Fielding Hall reported from Burma:
‘To him (the Burmese) men are men, and animals are animals, and men are far the higher. But he does not deduce from this that man’s superiority gives him permission to ill-treat or kill animals. It is just the reverse. It is because man is so much higher than the animal that he can and must observe towards animals the very greatest care, feel for them the very greatest compassion, be good to them in every way he can. The Burmese’s motto should be noblesse oblige. He knows the meaning, he knows not the words.’
The high price of Chinese hydropower
These Chinese dams are not built for supplying drinking water to the local population. 90% of the electricity goes to China. Just go ask the people who live there what benefits they get.
By the way, I was born in Burma and I have drawn water from a well and “humped it on my back” many times!
Searching for Singapore’s soul
did you even read the article?
The high price of Chinese hydropower
Laudable sentiment no doubt. Small-scale hydro-power projects certainly look more attractive in many aspects than large dams.
“Damn the dam”, they say… and it’s not for nothing. There may be too high a price to pay for the outlay of the electricity generated.
THAYER SCUDDER, the world’s leading authority on the impact of dams on poor people, has changed his mind about dams.
A frequent consultant on large dam projects, Mr. Scudder held out hope through most of his 58-year career that the poverty relief delivered by a properly constructed and managed dam would outweigh the social and environmental damage it caused. Now, at age 84, he has concluded that large dams not only aren’t worth their cost, but that many currently under construction “will have disastrous environmental and socio-economic consequences,” as he wrote in a recent email. New York Times AUG. 22, 2014: “Large Dams Just Aren’t Worth the Cost”
The high price of Chinese hydropower
@ Jake
First, in most of the cases the electricity does not go the poorest that are affected by the hydro-power dams. Actually, the article is about how the poorest suffers from some of these developments. Please read the article more carefully – there is no talk about “bloody” hippos in it.
Second, there are different ways of producing electricity – some more are social sustainable than others.
Thirdly, I am not sure that the lifestyle that we are used are sustainable over the next millennium.