Monday 30 December 2013

Chuck Palahniuk

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."

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Claud Cockburn

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Never believe anything until it has been officially denied."

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Hermann Hesse

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane."

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Jeff Marder

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police."

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Kevin Rose

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"I don't care what it is, when it has an LCD screen, it makes it better."

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Indira Gandhi

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition."

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Hasidic Saying

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength."

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George Burns

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples."

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Sunday 29 December 2013

Edward Teller

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution."

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Robertson Davies

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past."

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Michael Crichton

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world."

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Saki

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation."

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Doctor Who

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."

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Alan Woods

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Blame someone else and get on with your life."

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Diana Spencer

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you."

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Rebecca Beard

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The past is finished. There is nothing to be gained by going over it. Whatever it gave us in the experiences it brought us was something we had to know."

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Meg Cabot

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"No matter how nice the company one might be with, however, it is never pleasant to have a rifle pointed at one's back."

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Jerry Frankhauser

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Affirmations are like prescriptions for certain aspects of yourself you want to change."

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Saturday 28 December 2013

Sir Francis Bacon

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."

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Thomas H. Huxley

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors."

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Ellen DeGeneres

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"I gotta work out. I keep saying it all the time. I keep saying I gotta start working out. It's been about two months since I've worked out. And I just don't have the time. Which uh..is odd. Because I have the time to go out to dinner. And uh..and watch tv. And get a bone density test. And uh.. try to figure out what my phone number spells in words."

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Alfred North Whitehead

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer."

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Julie A., M.A. Ross and Judy Corcoran

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"When a problem can�t be solved, an attitude of acceptance makes room in your mind and heart for solutions to the problems that do need to be solved."

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Joseph Addison

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer."

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Alexander Pope

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Be not the first by whom the new are tried,/ Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

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Christina Petrowsky

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Autumn is the bite of the harvest apple."

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Friday 27 December 2013

John A. Wheeler

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day."

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Alexandre Dumas

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest."

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J. K. Rowling

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

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Stephanie Klein

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"I'd heard it all the time, 'Live in the moment.' But if I did that, I'd weigh more than a dump truck. Losing weight wasn't about the moment at all; it was about having faith in the future. It was about knowing there would be another meal in a few hours."

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Ruth Benedict

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good."

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Marie Ebner von Eschenbach

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Fear not those who argue but those who dodge."

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Thursday 26 December 2013

Cap in hand

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

If you go cap in hand, you humbly ask someone for something like forgiveness or money.




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Mark Twain

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

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Chris Rapier

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"I hate life, I hate death and everything in between just doesn't interest me."

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Burt Bacharach

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of."

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Woody Allen

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"The government is unresponsive to the needs of the little man. Under 5'7", it is impossible to get your congressman on the phone."

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David Frost

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"He's turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he's miserable and depressed."

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John Green

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Breaking up isn�t something that gets done to you; it�s something that happens with you."

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Steven Conrad

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"You gotta dream? You gotta protect it. People can't do somethin' themselves, they wanna tell you you can't do it. If you want somethin', go get it, period."

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Stephen King

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"You must not come lightly to the blank page."

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Jean Paul Richter

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations."

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Wednesday 25 December 2013

James Thurber

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward."

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Willa Cather

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young."

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Blaise Pascal

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed."

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Terri Minsky

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"It's very strange when the life you never had flashes before your eyes."

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Henry Moore

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"One never knows what each day is going to bring. The important thing is to be open and ready for it."

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Anonymous

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Our land is more valuable than your money. As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men and animals; therefore, we cannot sell this land. It was put here for us by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us."

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John Lilly

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true."

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Tuesday 24 December 2013

Dorothy Parker

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true."

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Bob Hope

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy."

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Voltaire

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"The secret of being a bore is to tell everything."

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Jack London

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Man always gets less than he demands from life."

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Jeph Jacques

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"There are two ways to pass a hurdle: leaping over or plowing through... There needs to be a monster truck option."

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Thomas Paine

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly."

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works."

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Mark Twain

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."

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James A. Garfield

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck."

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Monday 23 December 2013

G. K. Chesterton

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."

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Robert Benchley

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing."

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Ronald Reagan

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born."

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Solomon Short

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."

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Barack Obama

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"That is the American story. People, just like you, following their passions, determined to meet the times on their own terms. They weren't doing it for the money. Their titles weren't fancy. But they changed the course of history and so can you."

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Laura Moncur

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"I�ve decided that the key to happiness is low expectations."

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Robert J. Sawyer

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"How do you define God? Like this. A God I could understand, at least potentially, was infinitely more interesting and relevant than one that defied comprehension."

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H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"You can't help someone get up a hill without getting closer to the top yourself."

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Albert Einstein

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor."

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Sunday 22 December 2013

John Kenneth Galbraith

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."

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Thomas Sowell

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good."

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Franklin D. Roosevelt

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward."

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Epictetus

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase."

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Ann Radcliffe

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"When one can hear people moving, one does not so much mind, about one's fears."

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Randy K. Milholland

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"I guess that's how death works. It doesn't matter if we're ready or not. It just happens."

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Andre Maurois

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment."

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Saturday 21 December 2013

Sir Winston Churchill

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

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Alfred Hitchcock

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man."

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Sir William Bragg

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday."

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Louis Pasteur

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science."

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Og Mandino

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars."

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George Eliot

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Be courteous, be obliging, but don't give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade."

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Gloria Swanson

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Never say never, for if you live long enough, chances are you will not be able to abide by its restrictions. Never is a long, undependable time, and life is too full of rich possibilities to have restrictions placed upon it."

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Haddon W. Robinson

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"What worries you masters you."

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Friday 20 December 2013

Russell Baker

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"People who say you're just as old as you feel are all wrong, fortunately."

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Jay Leno

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"The reason there are two senators for each state is so that one can be the designated driver."

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Samuel Johnson

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it."

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Evan Esar

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a rich widow."

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Seneca

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift."

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Johann K. Lavater

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Never tell evil of a man, if you do not know it for certainty, and if you know it for a certainty, then ask yourself, 'Why should I tell it?'"

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Spanish Proverb

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Take hold lightly; let go lightly. This is one of the great secrets of felicity in love."

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Thursday 19 December 2013

Jerome K. Jerome

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do."

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Robert Orben

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"Sometimes I get the feeling the whole world is against me, but deep down I know that's not true. Some smaller countries are neutral."

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Josh Billings

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment."

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John Maynard Keynes

Nguồn tin: tieng anh vui

"I do not know which makes a man more conservative�to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past."

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Allan Heinberg

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"I admit it's tempting to wish for the perfect boss, or the perfect parent, or the perfect outfit, but maybe the best any of us can do is not quit. Play the hand we've been given and accessorize the outfit we've got."

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Samuel Johnson

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters."

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Henry L. Stimson

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust."

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Jacob Braude

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Always behave like a duck - keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath."

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Wednesday 18 December 2013

Bangladesh: The campaign trail

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



“A COUP by instalments” is how a European diplomat describes efforts by Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister, to extend her rule. The main opposition is to boycott a parliamentary election on January 5th. So Sheikh Hasina’s party, the Awami League, is assured of victory. Legitimacy is another matter.


More than 100 people have died in political violence in the run-up to the vote. The latest deaths came after the execution on December 12th of Abdul Quader Mollah, a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party. He was convicted, by a popular but deeply flawed tribunal, of war crimes during the bloody secession from Pakistan in 1971. On December 16th Bangladesh celebrated Victory Day, the end of the war. But hopes that Bangladesh might come to terms with its violent birth without spilling more blood have evaporated.


Sheikh Hasina’s unpopular government has lost control of large parts of the country. The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Sheikh Hasina’s nemesis, Khaleda Zia, conducts its politics in the streets. It has been calling one general strike after the other, crippling the transport system and the economy. Its ally, Jamaat, is fighting for its sheer survival. Its hooligans, known for punishing political foes by cutting their tendons, now engage in outright murder. The security forces have responded with live fire. On December 16th they killed five Jamaat supporters in Satkhira, a district that, like many Jamaat strongholds, borders India. In the north, members of Jamaat’s youth wing have burned down homes and shops owned by members of the Hindu minority. League cadres have fled the countryside to the capital, Dhaka.


People close to the prime minister say she is determined to see death sentences carried out on the entire Jamaat leadership. Few credit the judiciary with independence. Foreign notables such as the UN’s secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and America’s secretary of state, John Kerry, have asked Sheikh Hasina to stop the executions. But compromise is not her style.


She won a landslide election victory five years ago. In 2011 the constitution was amended to get rid of a provision, introduced in 1996 because of the chronic mutual distrust between the two big parties and their leaders, for neutral caretaker administrations to oversee elections. Sheikh Hasina did not deliberately set out to become an absolute ruler. But that is a likely consequence of the amendment. Ever since, the government has weighed the pros and cons of an uncontested election.


The biggest disadvantage is that the poll will be an obvious sham. Of 300 elected parliamentary seats, 154 will be uncontested. The BNP and 17 of its small allies are joining the boycott. The government has detained in hospital and seems poised to exile Mohammad Hossain Ershad, a former dictator and the leader of Jatiyo, the third-largest party, for its boycott. The next-biggest party, Jamaat, has been banned from taking part on the ground that its overtly religious charter breaches Bangladesh’s secular constitution.


At least the League will win. Whatever happens on January 5th, there will be enough MPs for parliament to swear in Sheikh Hasina as prime minister. The result may lack legitimacy at home and abroad. Yet India, Bangladesh’s giant neighbour and the only foreign power that could have swayed the decision to go ahead with a vote, chose not to intervene.


However, India’s decision to give its implicit backing to an election with a predetermined result (a concept pioneered by Mr Ershad in the 1980s) may prove short-sighted. Anti-Indian sentiment in Bangladesh has already surged. And as conflict worsens, India’s ally, the League, risks being seen as anti-Islamic. Backing Sheikh Hasina’s power grab is likely to give India the opposite of what it wants: a more radical and less secular Bangladesh.


The army is not keen to step in, as it did to back an unelected “technocratic” administration that ruled for two years from January 2007, after Mrs Zia tried to hijack an election. Nor will foreign powers tacitly back a coup as they did then. So fighting could drag on for months. Eventually, as even some League politicians concede, a proper poll will have to be held. According to an opinion poll, only 30% of Bangladeshis want the generals to take over. And remarkably, if they did and held another election, only one-third would want the two “battling Begums” barred from politics. Badly as they serve their country, it cannot seem to do without them.





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Saving Indonesia’s fisheries: Plenty more fish in the sea?

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


What’s the catch?


HE LEARNED to fish the turquoise-coloured seas of the Alor archipelago in eastern Indonesia from his father. But it is not a vocation Samsul Osman wants for his own four children. He says that these days traditional fishermen like himself must paddle their outrigger canoes far out to sea for a catch of skipjack tuna that sells for about 60,000 rupiah (about $5). Sometimes his family goes hungry. The other fishermen sitting cross-legged on the white sand at Alila Timur, where traders come to buy tuna to sell at the markets of Kalabahi, the islands’ sleepy capital, nod their heads. Fish stocks are dwindling.


Alor is at the centre of the “coral triangle”, 6m square kilometres of the most biodiverse oceans on earth. These waters contain two-thirds of the world’s coral species, and twice the number of species of reef fish found anywhere else (more than 3,000). New species are still being discovered by scientists in Indonesia, such as, recently, H emiscyllium Halmahera, a “walking” shark. But climate change and warming oceans, overfishing and destructive fishing practices, along with pollution from coastal communities and industries, threaten the fragile ecosystems that support underwater life, as well as millions of traditional fishermen like Mr Osman.


Yet, besides the huge intrinsic value of the oceans to the planet, there is a compelling economic case for conserving them. Indonesia’s seas are vitally important for its own food security, and for the livelihoods of the 60m people that live close to its 95,000km (59,000-mile) coastline. Indonesia’s fisheries ministry wants to boost fish production to 20m tonnes in 2014, an increase of 14% over 2013. Fisheries exports, mostly to America, Asia and Europe, are a growing source of foreign exchange, worth $3.9 billion in 2012.


Such commercial pressures mean that simply telling governments to restrict fishing does not work. According to Lida Pet-Soede of the WWF, a conservation NGO, governments are more susceptible to the economic case for conservation: that fisheries will be sustainable only if big parts of the ocean are protected. And some do seem to be listening. In 2007 Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, asked the leaders of the five other coral-triangle countries (Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste) to join a regional conservation initiative. Two years later they agreed on an “action plan” to manage their resources by, among other things, establishing marine protected areas (MPAs). The initiative has financial support from the American and Australian governments and from multilateral donors, such as the Asian Development Bank.



So far Indonesia itself has established MPAs covering some 16m hectares (see map). By 2020 it plans to increase protected areas to 20m hectares, or about 10% of its total waters, covering a range of coastal and marine ecosystems, from deep waters and coral reefs to the mangroves and seagrasses where fish spawn. This is only a small step towards the 30% of the world’s oceans that scientists say must be protected to forestall a collapse in fisheries. But the protection of even 10% of Indonesia’s waters would be a big achievement.


The trouble is that Indonesia’s MPAs often seem to exist only on paper. A recent study by the World Resources Institute, a think-tank in Washington, rated only three of Indonesia’s 170-odd MPAs as “effective”. Sometimes the designs are flawed, with too few restrictions on fisheries. But more often the rules are flouted.


Moreover, the problems with Indonesia’s MPAs frequently originate far inland. Widespread deforestation of watersheds, for example, has increased the run-off of sediments and nutrients that impede coral growth by suffocating reefs or making them overgrown with algae. Sickly, stunted reefs are more vulnerable to ocean acidification and coral “bleaching” linked to carbon emissions and global warming.


Alor unto itself


Simeon Thobias Pally, Alor’s elected leader, approved a 400,083-hectare MPA in 2009. Sites are set aside as “no-take” zones so that fish can reproduce and their numbers recover. But frequent changes in personnel and turf wars between the national and local governments, as well as between the fisheries and forestry ministries, have all hampered implementation. Rahmin Amahala, the head of fisheries in Alor, hopes that the formal launch of the MPA, which has long been stalled, will mean more resources, which are sorely needed. At present the coastal police force has only two speedboats—and one of them is broken. Without patrols, it is impossible to catch the fishermen who are responsible for the illegal blast-fishing that has razed many of the islands’ coral reefs, let alone to enforce rules on sea zoning and fishing gear.


As the traders at Alila Timur cart off buckets brimming with freshly caught tuna, Mr Osman and his fellow fishermen are venting their frustration. They say they are grateful for the fish here, and understand that fish must reproduce so that stocks are replenished. But it is becoming harder to make a living as more boats arrive from already denuded waters to the west. “We cannot hide our anger any longer,” says one.





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North Korean intrigue: The execution of power

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


Daddy, you’ve been on our mind


JANG SUNG TAEK, the uncle and political guardian to Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s young dictator, had been in disgrace before. By some accounts, he fell out of favour with all three of the country’s hereditary ruling Kims. Purged and banished to a steel mill around 1978, and quietly cast out again in 2003-04, Mr Jang twice returned to big party jobs. This time he is gone for good, executed for “such an unpardonable thrice-cursed treason” as opposing Mr Kim’s succession and planning a coup.


The haste with which the execution was carried out, immediately after the verdict on December 12th, suggests Mr Jang posed a real political threat. So did the rush to erase hundreds of state news reports about him, and Mr Kim’s absence during the purge in his distant summer retreat.


But Park Hyeong-jung, director of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government think-tank in Seoul, thinks the idea of a threat “basically nonsense”. It is not surprising that the young Mr Kim would rid himself of his regent. Since succeeding his father, Kim Jong Il, the second anniversary of whose death was marked this week, he has shuffled or removed about 100 senior officials. Of the seven men who escorted Kim’s hearse, only two (both in their 80s) remain in power.


For the official press to reveal (or invent) disloyalty such as Mr Jang’s is highly unusual. But whereas a one-off disposal can be concealed, a widespread purge is trickier to hide. The official charge sheet attacked Mr Jang’s “faction” and Mr Park reckons it was also aimed at the 3,000-odd people once under his patronage. A broader purge suits two groups Mr Park thinks abetted his fall: the army; and the Organisation and Guidance Department, a “party within the party” (positions are hereditary too) that long kept the Kims’ relatives, like Mr Jang, in check.


Mr Kim’s right-hand man, Mr Jang was in charge of public security as well as business with China, and controlled some of the state’s biggest trading companies. Power in the regime is a zero-sum game, says Mr Park. State entities compete in resource acquisition and dealmaking to get hold of foreign currency. Mr Jang was accused of making “a little kingdom” of his department, the party’s administrative arm, and saddling the country with huge debts.


The indictment also suggests that he was “too close to the Chinese”, says Adam Cathcart, a historian at the University of Leeds. The charges include selling off resources cheaply and leasing land, including the Rason special economic zone, for 50 years to China. So Mr Jang’s exit is likely to harm cross-border business. He was the chief backer of Rason and two other zones on North Korean islands, leased to China, at the mouth of the Yalu river. Lee Kum-ryong, a defector who works for Free North Korea Radio, says that when he visited the offices of North Korean businessmen in Beijing after Mr Jang’s fall, he was met only by Mr Kim’s goons, come to “arrest” them; the staff had already fled. A widespread and indiscriminate purge could prompt defections, says Mr Cathcart.


In so far as it is possible for a dynastic tyranny in the grip of a reign of terror, North Korea has been keen to convey a business-as-usual image. A senior official claimed that Mr Jang’s removal would not alter economic policy “at all”—indeed, that it would quicken progress. On the day the purge was made public, the state press reported that Chinese investors had signed a contract to build a high-speed railway and highway connecting the two border cities of Sinuiji and Kaesong. And on the day of the execution, North Korea suggested talks with the South on improving the jointly run Kaesong industrial complex.


Though China’s foreign ministry has said the political purge is the North’s own “internal affair”, Shi Yinhong of Renmin University in Beijing believes it is worried: the two countries’ sole functioning joint economic zone, at Rason, is now “threatened”. Two weeks before Mr Jang’s downfall, North Korea announced it would build 13 new economic zones with its own financing and under its sole sovereignty.


The wording of the indictment is fuzzy enough to suggest this is not a total reset of the relationship, says Mr Cathcart, even if Mr Kim replaces the North Korean ambassador to Beijing, who was seen as one of Mr Jang’s men. China remains North Korea’s biggest source of fuel, food—and foreign exchange. The battle in Pyongyang for the fruits of that relationship has not ended with Mr Jang’s death.





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Japan’s national-security strategy: Island defence

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


IT IS certainly timely. Japan’s cabinet this week approved the country’s first-ever national-security strategy. This comes just weeks after China declared a new air-defence information zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, covering the disputed islands that Japan calls the Senkakus and China the Diaoyus. This has heightened already acute tensions over the islands, and the new strategy amounts to a distinct hardening of Japan’s defence posture.


The strategy argues that Japan needs to make a more “proactive contribution to peace”—ie, to contribute more to its military alliance with America, despite its pacifist constitution. It refers not just in general to “complex and grave national-security challenges”, but specifically to China’s “attempts to change the status quo by coercion”, and to the need to be able to “recapture and secure without delay” remote islands that have been invaded. America condemned China’s announcement of the ADIZ. But it did not publicly call for the zone to be rescinded. This played on fears in Japan that America might not honour its assurances that the security guarantee covers the tiny, uninhabited Senkakus.


The strategy amounts to a plan for a five-year military build-up. Spending will increase to ¥24.7 trillion ($240 billion), an increase of about 5% over the previous five-year plan. The number of personnel in the Self Defence Forces (SDF), as the army is known, will remain the same. The new money will buy hardware.


The new kit is intended to strengthen Japan’s control of the sea and air around the disputed territory: seven more destroyers (making 54 in all), for example, and six more submarines (making 22). A second unit of 20 F-15 fighter jets will be deployed on Okinawa, near the islets, along with early-warning aircraft, and the SDF will add unmanned drones to its air force. And Japan will for the first time form its own version of America’s Marine Corps.


The document, which Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, calls “historic”, promises that Japan will respond “calmly and resolutely to the rapid expansion and step-up of China’s maritime and air activities”. It also fingers North Korea as a “grave and imminent threat”. It calls for the cultivation of “love of country” in Japan, and for “expanding security education” in universities. Controversially, it also promises to review Japan’s self-imposed ban on arms exports, blamed for keeping costs high by obliging the local defence industry to produce in relatively small quantities.


One important omission, however, showed restraint. Many politicians from Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party have been advocating a “first-strike” capability against missile bases, to prevent a possible North Korean attack. Japan will not yet take this step, which would alarm Japan’s neighbours—notably China and South Korea—more than anything else in the strategy. But though this looks like a five-year plan, it is subject to redefinition each year. The idea of building a first-strike-capable force is still on the table for 2014, according to a government official.


When the strategy was first published, China’s foreign ministry accused it of “hyping the China threat”. It was further incensed by remarks made by Mr Abe at a summit in Tokyo with leaders from South-East Asia on December 13th-14th. He suggested that his guests, four of whose countries have territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, should consider the ADIZ a matter of concern for the entire region. China’s foreign ministry accused Japan of “malicious slander”. Especially galling was that the South-East Asians probably thought Mr Abe was right.





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The Philippines and Typhoon Haiyan: The winds of change

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


A roof over one’s head


COSTA BRAVA, a coastal settlement in Tacloban, may have been tempting fate with its name. It is flanked by the open sea on one side and by a bay on the other. When a wall of water from typhoon Haiyan hit it soon after dawn on November 8th the destruction was quick and devastating. This was one of the poorest parts of town, and the flimsy shacks and jerry-built houses offered little resistance. Costa Brava was literally flattened. One of the few remaining residents, known as Mr Butz, estimates that almost half of the people here lost their lives that morning. They had been advised to leave, but many made their own disastrous misjudgments about the severity of the storm and stayed. Mr Butz himself lost four children.


A month after Haiyan, the other worst-affected coastal areas remain desolate. Much of the land around Tacloban, the town that bore the brunt of the storm surge, resembles old photographs of a first-world-war battlefield: hundreds of broken trees; craters of mud and debris where houses once stood; upended cars and vans. Although most of the bodies have now been cleared away, corpses are still being discovered. The death toll in Tacloban itself is now thought to be about 2,500. Overall, the figure stands at about 6,000, with a further 1,800 or so missing.



Yet even after this hammering, Tacloban shows signs of recovery. Electricity has been restored to parts of town. The number registered at official evacuation centres has fallen rapidly to just 18,000 (out of an original population of about 220,000) and street-markets are trading again. The roads are largely clear of debris.


Much of this is because of the rapid influx of foreign aid. In the days after Haiyan struck, civil administration broke down and looting was widespread. But now a formidable logistical pipeline covers basic needs. In total across the country about 3m people still need emergency food aid, but that is being distributed well, as are rice seeds for the coming planting season. Few signs of malnutrition and no outbreaks of the diseases, such as tetanus, that can often follow such disasters have been recorded.


Indeed, the city authorities are already as concerned with preventing future disasters as they are with mopping up after this one. Many have paid tribute to Filipinos’ resilience in adversity, but the task now, argues Tecson John Lim, a senior city official in Tacloban, is to “rebuild a better city”. Most important, he wants to stop the construction of new homes within 40 metres of the seashore. This could mean the end of places like Costa Brava.


Many fishermen will be loth to leave their coastal homes. But the authorities hope the scale of the disaster may persuade them to move to new settlements, such as one being built inland, 8km (5 miles) up the coast. Tacloban has asked the central government for 18.5 billion pesos ($426m) for such works. But the city is governed by a different political party from that of President Benigno Aquino, and officials in Tacloban fear this may influence the disbursement of funds. Such political differences have undoubtedly blemished the national relief effort.


But the emergency-relief operation itself may have sown some seeds of a better future for the city, if the momentum can be maintained. The UN Population Fund, for example, has been running an outreach campaign to attract pregnant and breast-feeding women to its mobile clinics for advice and monitoring. On December 13th, for example, 470 women came, far more than normally attend any sort of health centre. From this, one doctor hopes, Tacloban’s mothers may learn the benefits of seeking medical help, so that the murderous Haiyan will have brought at least one fortuitous, lasting benefit.





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Doctor's family 'can probe death'

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Anonymous

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"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."

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Hesketh Pearson

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"Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted."

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Alvin Toffler

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"Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it."

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John Cage

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"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry."

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Joss Whedon

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"I'm well aware when they fired the starting gun I was halfway down the track, but I still ran as fast as I could for 25 years."

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Hugh Macleod

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"Nobody can tell you if what you're doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is."

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Winifred Holtby

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"The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing."

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Israel Salanter

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"Promote yourself, but do not demote another."

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Tuesday 17 December 2013

Daniel Webster

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"The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it."

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Bertrand Russell

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"Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality."

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Bill Vaughan

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"We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics."

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Unknown

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"All power corrupts, but we need the electricity."

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Chuck Palahniuk

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"Who you are moment to moment is just a story."

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Glenn Doman

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"The human brain is unique in that it is the only container of which it can be said that the more you put into it, the more it will hold."

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John Milton

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"He who reigns within himself and rules his passions, desires, and fears is more than a king. "

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Florence Shinn

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"The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy."

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Monday 16 December 2013

National Lampoon

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"Fall not in love, therefore; it will stick to your face."

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Robertson Davies

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"To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser."

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Thomas Carlyle

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"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."

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Edward Teller

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"A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective."

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Jimmy Wales

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"Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks."

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William Shakespeare

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"Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them."

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Baltasar Gracian

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"Know how to ask. There is nothing more difficult for some people, nor for others, easier."

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Truman Capote

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"Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act."

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Sunday 15 December 2013

Beam up

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Teleport, transport

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Elbert Hubbard

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"Life is just one damned thing after another."

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David Brin

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"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power."

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Stephen Jay Gould

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"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question."

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Dave Kellett

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"The English language was carefully, carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes and a German dictionary."

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Samuel Richardson

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"Good men must be affectionate men."

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Lois McMaster Bujold

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"I am who I choose to be. I always have been what I chose�though not always what I pleased."

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Christina Rossetti

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"Better by far you should forget and smile than you should remember and be sad."

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Voltaire

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"Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy."

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Saturday 14 December 2013

J. K. Rowling

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"There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other."

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Carl Schurz

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"Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny."

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Publilius Syrus

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"We simply rob ourselves when we make presents to the dead."

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Napoleon Bonaparte

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"[Medicine is] a collection of uncertain prescriptions the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind."

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Chantal Saperstein

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"All marriages are mixed marriages."

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Rita Rudner

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"I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life."

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Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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"We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."

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David M. Ogilvy

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"The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible."

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Friday 13 December 2013

Maurice Sendak

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"There must be more to life than having everything."

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Niels Bohr

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"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

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Mark Twain

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"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

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Sir William Osler

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"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism."

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Dorothy Draper

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"Eating is really one of your indoor sports. You play three times a day, and it's well worth while to make the game as pleasant as possible."

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Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

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"We hold in our hands, the most precious gift of all: Freedom. The freedom to express our art. Our love. The freedom to be who we want to be. We are not going to give that freedom away and no one shall take it from us!"

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Oprah Winfrey

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"You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once."

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity."

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Thursday 12 December 2013

Singapore: Trouble in Little India

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


They partied like it was 1969


THEIR impeccable city is supposed to be so law-abiding that policemen are rarely seen on patrol. Imagine the shock, then, when Singaporeans woke up on December 9th to learn of running street battles in the city centre the night before. Singapore had not seen a riot since 1969.


The trouble started when an apparently drunk construction worker from south India, Sakthivel Kumaravelu, was turfed off a crowded bus after making a scene. Next, the bus driver turned a corner and heard a loud thud. Mr Kumaravelu was under the wheel of his bus. He died instantly.


It happened in Little India, a city quarter where thousands of South Asian migrant workers gather every Sunday, often their only day off, before being bused back to dormitories on the fringes of the island. Very soon after the accident as many as 400 workers had massed and proceeded through the streets as a rampaging mob for about two hours. In clashes with police, 27 officers were injured, along with firefighters and paramedics. Police cars were overturned, and an ambulance was set ablaze.


Riot police and a contingent of Gurkha soldiers put an end to things. Some 27 migrant workers have so far been arrested and charged over the riot, with thousands more interviewed. Those convicted could face as long as seven years in jail, as well as a caning.


Booze seems to have fuelled the affray, and as a stopgap a ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol in Little India will apply this weekend. But alcohol alone would not have turned hundreds of usually peaceful workers into a belligerent mob.


The prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, promises a committee to look into the reasons for the riot. It will need to look at the sometimes dire state of migrant workers’ rights and working conditions as a contributing factor. Singapore relies heavily on cheap migrant labour, with about 350,000 workers in the booming construction industry alone. The rules are strict (no marrying Singaporeans, for instance). The work is sometimes dangerous, and workers can be poorly paid or fleeced by unscrupulous agents.


Singapore’s huge influx of migrant workers is a hot political issue. Singaporeans complain that they are taking local jobs. In response, the government has ordered companies to hire fewer foreigners. This riot will doubtless feed into that debate. Mr Lee has already appealed for people not to let the event “tarnish our views of the foreign-worker community here.”





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Thailand’s political crisis: Deadlock

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



BY MID-AFTERNOON on December 9th the leader of Thailand’s would-be revolution, Suthep Thaugsuban, was celebrating the capture of Bangkok’s government district from atop a makeshift stage. Before him the prime minister’s office stood closed and empty, surrounded by over 100,000 of his devoted followers. Just a handful of soldiers were left to guard the perimeter gates. After a month of mounting protests, Mr Suthep had asked for a big turnout for one last push to oust the government—and he got it.


Mr Suthep refers to the government as the “Thaksin regime”. The prime minister is Yingluck Shinawatra, but the power behind her is Thaksin Shinawatra, her elder brother, who was ousted as prime minister in 2006 in an army coup. Since Ms Ying


luck came to office in a landslide in 2011, he has called the shots from self-imposed exile in Dubai. Yet now Ms Yingluck’s grip looks distinctly shaky. Even before the protesters seized the entire government district, she announced that she would dissolve parliament and call an election, for February 2nd; her hope was to persuade the anti-government protesters to go home. “Let the people decide the direction of the country and who the governing majority will be,” she said in a televised address on December 8th. It was not sufficient to appease the fiery Mr Suthep.


With the crowds at his back, Mr Suthep (pictured, above, at bottom-centre) insists that Ms Yingluck should not even stay on as caretaker prime minister until the election. He says that she and her government must resign to make way for his own “people’s council” of “decent men” who would draw up measures to wipe all influence of the Shinawatra clan from Thai politics. Some of Mr Suthep’s street-fighting men even want Ms Yingluck to leave the country altogether, joining her brother in exile. (He faces two years in prison for corruption and abuse of power should he return.) Mr Suthep has invited all in the civil service to work with him to set up, in effect, an alternative government. All his “orders” (as he calls them) and demands amount to little less than an attempted coup.


Ms Yingluck insists that she will remain in office until the election. But Mr Suthep’s uncompromising ferocity has plainly rattled her. She is a relative novice in the turbulent world of Thai politics, never having held public office before being picked by her brother to lead his Pheu Thai party to victory in the 2011 elections. In a speech on December 10th she seemed almost tearful as she defended both herself and her family, saying plaintively that she had “backed down to the point where I don’t know how to back down any further.”


Yet if Ms Yingluck is going wobbly, her core “red shirt” supporters, those thousands of activists loyal to Mr Thaksin, certainly are not. They have vowed to defend the democratically elected government. There are plans, should Ms Yingluck fall, to move the government to the red-shirt heartlands in the north and north-east as a counterweight to Mr Suthep’s insurrection in the capital and the south. That would further entrench the bitter divisions between the two parts of the country, divisions that some argue have now made Thailand virtually ungovernable.


But if Ms Yingluck can make it through to next year, she knows that she has a good chance of winning a fresh mandate at the polls. Indeed, a chief reason why Mr Suthep and his allies do not accept an election as the way out of the impasse is that they would probably lose. After all, the Pheu Thai party and its earlier incarnations, all led by Mr Thaksin or his retainers, have won the last five general elections, the latest by a big margin. For however vast the anti-government crowds are in Bangkok and certain southern Thai cities, out in the populous rural north and north-east it is a different story. There Mr Thaksin and his party long ago captured the votes of millions of relatively poor rice farmers, and they have been stacking up the parliamentary majorities ever since.


By contrast, the opposition Democrat Party to which Mr Suthep belongs has a dismal record at the polls. His people try to argue that somehow all the victories of the Thaksin parties have been bought, with “bribes” of lavish public spending on rice farmers, among others. Yet precious little evidence suggests the elections were systematically rigged.


Much now hangs on how the Democrats respond to Ms Yingluck’s call for an election. Their MPs resigned en masse on December 8th to join the protests (eight of their number, including Mr Suthep, had already done so a month earlier, in order to lead the demonstrations). The Democrats claim that parliament has abused its power and is now illegitimate, for instance because it attempted to introduce a fully elected senate, as well as an amnesty bill designed chiefly to allow Mr Thaksin back. Now they have to decide whether to throw in their lot with the protesters completely, or to contest the election.


One senior Democrat (and former foreign minister), Kasit Piromya, argues that the party “cannot avoid the election, as a democratic party”. Others may not agree; after all, the party has boycotted an election before, in 2006. If the Democrats do not take part, it would doubtless undermine the credibility of their opponents’ victory. But it would deal yet another blow to democracy in Thailand, already in a precarious state.





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Japan: Potent protests

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


IN A country that thinks ill of its political classes, support for Shinzo Abe has remained uncannily high since he came to office a year ago in his second stint as Japan’s prime minister. People approve of him, especially his strategy of dragging the economy out of deflation and low growth. But on December 6th the government rammed through the Diet an unpopular law that greatly increases the penalties for leaking (widely defined) state secrets. The cabinet’s approval ratings tumbled. Mr Abe, who fell from power in 2007 after a series of blunders, has for the first time lost some of his shine since his comeback.


The final vote on the bill in the Diet’s upper house came just after China declared a new air-defence zone in the East China Sea covering uninhabited islands controlled by Japan. That bolstered Mr Abe’s argument that Japan needs stricter rules on secrecy to strengthen national security. America, its chief ally, has long complained that Japanese officials and servicemen let slip too much secret information. Punishments for leaking important state secrets will be increased, from a year in prison now to a maximum of ten years. Public opposition has been fierce, from freedom-of-information advocates to newspapers fearing being muzzled.


The government of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) strong-armed the bill through the session of the diet that has just ended, including by sacking opposition heads of committees. It all but dispensed with public consultation. The Japan Restoration Party, which had co-sponsored the bill, abstained from voting as a protest against the haste. Another co-sponsor, Your Party, looks in danger of splitting over the bill (though intraparty tensions had been building before it).


In several polls Mr Abe’s ratings have tumbled by around ten percentage points since a month ago, to below 50%. They remain relatively high for a Japanese prime minister, but a further fall could spell trouble. With the law safely passed, Mr Abe this week admitted that he should have explained its contents more carefully. The law does not come into effect for another year. The government hopes opposition will die down. Most of the public, it reckons, accepts the need to strengthen national security in an increasingly tense region.


Yet opposition comes not only from left-leaning groups but also from the mainstream. An association of doctors and dentists—staunchly conservative folk—banded together to hold a press conference to protest against the bill on December 5th. A group of 31 academics calls it “the largest-ever danger to democracy in post-war Japan”. Over 250 film-makers, actors and writers, including Hayao Miyazaki, a celebrated animator, have come together over the law. Four-fifths of Japanese polled by Kyodo, a news agency, say they want the draconian law revised or scrapped.


Had it wanted to, the government could have done much more to dampen criticism. It took until the final stages of the bill’s passage for the government to promise any independent oversight of what may be ruled to be a state secret. Ministers disagreed in public over the scope of the definition of secrecy, causing further alarm. A set of guidelines was proposed on how journalists could report without running foul of the law—and then the idea was retracted. The LDP’s secretary-general, Shigeru Ishiba, made matters worse when in a blog he compared protesters to terrorists.


For now Mr Abe is likely to tack swiftly back to emphasise his economic agenda. But he also has plans next year to nudge Japan away from its post-war pacifist stance, with a reinterpretation of the constitution to allow the armed forces to come to the aid of allies under attack. Beyond that, Mr Abe’s most cherished wish remains to rewrite the liberal constitution which America wrote for Japan in 1946 in favour of something a lot more conservative and backward-looking. Like his illiberal secrecy law, any such moves may do little for his popularity.





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Indian politics: Sweeping up

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



TAKE Arvind Kejriwal’s talk of “revolution” seriously. Back in June, crammed with this correspondent into a tiny Suzuki car in east Delhi, he predicted electoral triumph for his Aam Aadmi (“common man”) anti-graft volunteers. It sounded fanciful at the time. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is just a few months old. Even as recently as late November Delhi’s chief minister for the past 15 years, Sheila Dikshit, was roundly dismissing Mr Kejriwal as an irrelevance.


No longer. Thanks to Mr Kejriwal, Mrs Dikshit is out on her ear this week. Results from elections in five states delivered mostly misery for the ruling Congress party. In the national capital region (in effect a state) the AAP annihilated it. Mr Kejriwal himself toppled Mrs Dikshit in a constituency that she thought was cast-iron, crammed as it is with babus (civil servants) and presumed staunch Congress loyalists. Across Delhi Congress won just eight of 70 assembly seats, its worst-ever result.


The AAP, with a broom as its party symbol, swept to 28 seats, a stunning debut for a group of political amateurs. They had raised funds with text messages sent to millions who had earlier backed the anti-corruption protests of Anna Hazare, a Gandhian activist. In Delhi 120,000 unpaid volunteers knocked on doors to discuss inflation and graft. Two populist promises, to halve household electricity bills and provide 700 litres of free water, went down well. Word also spread in old-fashioned ways: every motorised rickshaw in the city seemed to carry a poster of a broom.


For now Delhi, a city of 16m and India’s wealthiest, lacks a government. The AAP squeezed in second behind the established Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which got 32 seats, just short of a majority. Neither is ready to form a minority administration, nor to cut a power-sharing deal, with a national election only a few months away (by May at the latest). So Delhi will probably need to vote again next year.


Can Mr Kejriwal’s revolution break out beyond the capital? He has the ambition. He has studied Barack Obama’s internet fund-raising, the appeal of a populist ex-cricketer, Imran Khan, to young Pakistanis, and how Arab spring protesters communicated through social media. But he is also aware how difficult it is to turn a protest movement into a political one. The charisma of Mr Hazare, for example, would have been a huge asset for the party. But he keeps his distance, calling all politics irredeemably filthy.


The limits to the AAP’s potential are clear enough. Average incomes in Delhi are three times the national level, hinting at how the capital’s common folk have different worries to poorer rural ones. Mr Kejriwal could do well in India’s Hindi-speaking centre and north, notably in his native Haryana state, next to Delhi. But farther afield fewer would recognise him, despite his claim to have a network of offices in “every nook and corner” of the country.


Delhi is also unusual in that the fragmentation of politics seen in other states has come late to the capital region. It has never before had a party to garner non-Congress, non-BJP votes. Many other states have big third parties that dominate locally without securing a wider appeal. That leaves less space for newcomers such as the AAP to fill.


Yet the AAP will be relevant. The BJP expects to win the coming general election, but it needs strong support from middle-class city-dwellers who are most frustrated with Congress over corruption, a slowing economy and inflation. A strong showing for Mr Kejriwal complicates things. In Delhi the BJP would have won handsomely had it not been for the new party. Earlier polls suggested that many Aam Aadmi supporters would switch to the BJP for the national vote, but at the time it was assumed that the new party was not ready for a national push. After this week’s events, who knows what is possible?





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Banyan: Crying uncle

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



A MYSTERY solved! It has long baffled North Korea’s leaders that vinalon, a wonderful textile their country makes from anthracite and limestone, does not dominate world markets—it is, indeed, used in no other country. Invented by a Korean who defected to the North in 1950, it is a triumph of juche, the official creed of self-reliance. But it has lost out to other products such as nylon. Foreigners, ever bent on doing North Korea down, claim this is because vinalon is stiff, resistant to dyes, of lower quality and more expensive.


In fact, it turns out that vinalon’s chances were wrecked by a political conspiracy at home. North Korea’s official news agency this week revealed that, “by throwing the state financial-management system into confusion” and other acts of treachery, the “Jang group” of evildoers, who have now met their comeuppance, made it impossible to develop juche vinalon as the country’s two great late leaders, Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il, had ordered. The gang had similarly sabotaged juche fertiliser and juche iron. The group was led by Jang Sung Taek, who cloaked his wicked intentions in the most deceptive of disguises: as the uncle by marriage and mentor to North Korea’s young dictator, Kim Jong Un.


The purge of Mr Jang is extraordinary. Take his seniority. Experts quarrel about how important he truly was, and exactly when he started to fall from grace. But he is married to Kim Kyong Hui, the sister of Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s father and predecessor. The couple were both Politburo members and had the rank of generals in the army. And most observers agree that Mr Jang was central to securing the succession for Kim Jong Un, whose father elevated him above his elder brothers not long before his death in 2011. Aidan Foster-Carter, an analyst of North Korea at Leeds University, notes that, at his brother-in-law’s funeral, Mr Jang was beside the hearse, right behind the new leader.


A second surprise is the range of sins he is accused of: “such anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts as gnawing at the unity and cohesion of the party”; selling natural resources too cheaply; womanising; being “wined and dined at back parlours of deluxe restaurants”; taking drugs; squandering foreign currency in casinos. This hints at North Korea as it really is: a country racked by poverty and hunger, with a serious problem of methamphetamine abuse, ruled by a thoroughly corrupt, self-indulgent and despotic elite. But it is perhaps the first time that North Korea’s state media have approximated the truth. Most North Koreans must be surprised to learn that a man so close to the pinnacle of power was such a bad egg.


This leads to a third remarkable feature of the purge: the publicity surrounding it in North Korea’s own press. The story first leaked abroad, through South Korea’s spy agency, which reported that Mr Jang was in trouble and that two of his aides had been executed. Then Mr Jang started disappearing from North Korean television clips—airbrushed from where he had stood at Mr Kim’s shoulder. Soon afterwards the purge made the front pages and television news in North Korea, with scenes of the moment of his detention, at an enlarged meeting of the Politburo, where he was yanked from his seat in front of his comrades. China has more experience of this kind of theatre, from the vilification campaigns of the Cultural Revolution to the juicy trial this year of Bo Xilai, a former Politburo member. North Korea, in contrast, has nearly always dispatched its disgraced cadres into silent oblivion.


All sorts of explanations have been offered for Mr Jang’s downfall. Jang Jin-sung, a former North Korean propaganda official who defected to South Korea in 2004, thinks it unlikely that Kim Jong Un ordered his sacking. He suspects a hardline faction resentful of the uncle’s influence. The South Korean press has speculated, rather wildly, that he sought to overthrow Kim Jong Un and have him replaced by an elder brother, Kim Jong Nam.


Whatever it was that prompted the purge, its effect has been to consolidate the callow Mr Kim’s position. This is hardly good news. He has already established a record abroad of provocative belligerence, through tests of missiles and of a nuclear bomb. Some of his regime’s policies make no sense. For example, a small but fast-growing tourist industry will hardly be helped by the detention of Merrill Newman, an octogenarian American veteran of the Korean war, who was on a visit back to the country. He was released this month after making a forced confession of past crimes.


So Mr Jang, though hardly an attractive figure, may actually be missed. He had a reputation as a pragmatist. He is credited with coming up with the ghastly if lucrative policy of turning North Korean diplomats into smugglers of drugs and counterfeit money to earn hard currency. More conventionally, he is said to have been an advocate of the sort of reforms that China promotes, through the opening of more special economic zones. He is said to have had ties to Chinese officials (selling them resources too cheaply, perhaps). His departure may thus mark a decline in Chinese influence. Since Western policy in North Korea these days boils down to the hope that China will persuade its ally to ditch its nuclear programme, that is hardly good news either. Kim Jong Un now presides over a country even more isolated than when either his father or his grandfather ruled.


Mourning a tousle-haired psycho-killer


It was hard to imagine that the outside world might ever miss Kim Jong Il. He presided over devastating famine at home, countless provocations abroad and a nuclear programme banned by the United Nations. Yet in his brinkmanship and chicanery he did, unlike his son, seem to know what he was doing; indeed, he was almost predictable. As his compatriots mark the second anniversary of his death on December 17th with the usual histrionic pageantry, tinges of regret may be felt in foreign capitals as well.





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