Monday 29 September 2014

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

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"When you get angry at your ex, only about 10 percent of your anger can be attributed to the current situation. The other 90 percent comes from your past experiences with your ex, as well as those with your parents, caregivers, and other significant people in your past. The current situation has simply triggered your past anger and allowed it to resurface. It�s been said that if you�re hysterical, the cause is probably historical."

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Oprah Winfrey

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"My constant prayer for myself is to be used in service for the greater good."

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Lucille Ball

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world."

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Marion Parker

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"Be kind - Remember every one you meet is fighting a battle - everybody's lonesome."

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Napoleon Bonaparte

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"Victory belongs to the most persevering."

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Sunday 28 September 2014

Randy K. Milholland

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"It hurts to find out that what you wanted doesn't match what you dreamed it would be."

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Sophocles

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"Ignorant men don't know what good they hold in their hands until they've flung it away."

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Demosthenes

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"Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master."

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Dorothy L. Sayers

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"A human being must have occupation if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world."

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Saturday 27 September 2014

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Maybe it was only a second of your time, but you need to treasure life, every second."

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Kathleen Norris

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"If we are lucky, we can give in and rest without feeling guilty. We can stop doing and concentrate on being."

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Lois McMaster Bujold

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all."

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Friday 26 September 2014

Marcel Proust

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill in the gap."

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Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"When you meet your antagonist, do everything in a mild and agreeable manner. Let your courage be as keen, but at the same time as polished, as your sword."

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Paul Goodman

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"Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity."

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Pythagoras

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few."

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Thursday 25 September 2014

Barack Obama

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"We are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight."

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Lynn Johnston

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"On a lazy Saturday morning when you're lying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, there is a space where fantasy and reality become one. Are you awake, or are you dreaming? You see people and things; some are familiar; some are strange. You talk, you feel, but you move without walking; you fly without wings. Your mind and your body exist, but on separate planes. Time stands still. For me, this is the feeling I have when ideas come."

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Etty Hillesum

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies."

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Clarence Thomas

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot."

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Wednesday 24 September 2014

Elizabeth Aston

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Concern for someone else was a good remedy for taking the mind off one's own troubles."

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Steve Jobs

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance."

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Pamela Ribon

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"It's sad when our daddies die. Makes us one less person inside."

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Leonardo da Vinci

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"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand."

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Tuesday 23 September 2014

Randy Pausch

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"It's not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed, it is the things we do not."

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Audre Lorde

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Revolution is not a onetime event."

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John Heywood

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"A man may well bring a horse to the water but he cannot make him drink."

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Aphra Behn

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Variety is the soul of pleasure."

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Monday 22 September 2014

Drop behind

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

Move towards the back, not keep up

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Jane Goodall

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"If you really want something, and really work hard, and take advantage of opportunities, and never give up, you will find a way."

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Brendan Gill

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious."

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Albert Einstein

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."

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William Blake

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's."

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Sunday 21 September 2014

Pearl Buck

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness."

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Katherine Mansfield

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with... the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun."

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Michele Shea

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Creativity is...seeing something that doesn't exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God."

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Sharon Gold

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Throw out an alarming alarm clock. If the ring is loud and strident, you're waking up to instant stress. You shouldn't be bullied out of bed, just reminded that it's time to start your day."

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Saturday 20 September 2014

John Adams

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."

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Real Live Preacher

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Some things you do because you want to. Some things you do because of the needs of others in your family."

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John F. Kennedy

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence."

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Seneca

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body."

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Friday 19 September 2014

John Muir

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

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Victor Hugo

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!"

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Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Funny business, a woman's career: the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted."

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Oliver Wendell Holmes

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them."

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Thursday 18 September 2014

South Asia and China: Xi Jinping’s progression

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



ON HIS tour of South Asia this week, President Xi Jinping of China went out of his way to be reassuring. In Male, the cramped capital of the Maldives, he spoke of his dream of a “maritime Silk Road” to increase trade across the Indian Ocean. He proffered gifts: funds for a big road bridge and a promise to operate the tourist airport. For such a tiny country, the first visit in four decades by a Chinese leader should boost tourist numbers. As it is, Chinese make up a third of holidaymakers.


In Sri Lanka, the next stop, Mr Xi was met with state-orchestrated adoration. In Colombo, the capital, on September 16th, a crowd of schoolchildren greeted him waving Chinese flags and sparkly pompoms, along with a troupe of 40 decorated elephants (the Chinese president had let it be known that they are his favourite animal). The ruling family of President Mahinda Rajapaksa enjoys close commercial, diplomatic and defence ties with China. Now the hope is for people-to-people ones. Mr Xi did not indulge in one of the casinos in Colombo designed to lure 24-hour-a-day Chinese gamblers on charter flights, but he pledged a steady flow of businessmen who might. And as a gesture to emphasise China’s infrastructure push, Mr Xi and 200 drummers went along to the site of a landfill island off Colombo which the Chinese will turn into a commercial town at a cost of $1.3 billion, right by a new Chinese port.


That comes on top of an existing Chinese-built port at Hambantota, the Rajapaksa heartland in southern Sri Lanka. Other Chinese-backed infrastructure projects are intended to help Sri Lanka become a regional trading hub. But what happens if—when, say some—the loans that fund these projects are not repaid? Some Sri Lankans worry that Chinese state-backed firms will take over sizeable tracts of land and control strategic assets; it is only a small step from there for China to be meddling in Sri Lankan affairs. Mr Xi bats away the possibility. He has written reassuring letters in various corners of the South Asian press this week, pointing to the sacred Chinese principle of non-interference in internal affairs.


Some in India watch warily. Its diplomats are concerned whenever China swans about in their backyard. When Mr Xi scrapped his plan to visit Pakistan because of political upheaval there, Indians were relieved. Yet when Mr Xi arrived in India, Narendra Modi, the prime minister, seemed determined to banish suspicion and rivalry in favour of material progress in Sino-Indian exchanges. The relationship between the two men will prove the most important in the region. At home, each leader is confident in his power and expects to remain in office for a long time.


Mr Modi, fond of performances, courted his visitor in Ahmedabad, the biggest city in his home state of Gujarat, with a riverside dinner of 150 vegetarian dishes to celebrate his birthday on September 17th. The development-minded prime minister is looking for foreign capital and technology to boost India’s economy. China’s stock of direct investment of $400m in India is derisory—less than that of Belgium. Talk fills the Indian press of a 250-fold increase, to $100 billion in just a few years. That may be as likely as building a snowman in the Rann of Kutch, but Mr Modi hopes for $20 billion over five years. Mr Xi pledged that Chinese firms would invest in business parks in Gujarat, and corporate leaders announced deals of a few billion dollars. Now comes the task of turning headlines into facts on the ground.


Both sides know that old points of friction are never far away. Bilateral trade, worth nearly $70 billion a year, is less encouraging than it looks. There is a sharp imbalance, since India imports valuable Chinese manufactured goods and exports mainly a few raw materials. India wants China to open up more of its sectors, especially information technology, services and pharmaceuticals.


And then there is public animosity towards China, mainly over a long, disputed border. A poll earlier this year by the Pew Research Centre found that 56% of Indians who were asked considered China a “major threat”. Only Pakistan was a bigger one. When he was in opposition, such animosity was stoked as much by Mr Modi as by anyone.


Attitudes will shift only if China and India fix bitter disagreements, notably over their border. Though swift progress on that is unlikely, measures to manage the discord are possible. As if to prove the need, this week a Chinese incursion was reported into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir involving hundreds of Chinese soldiers. Once Mr Modi would have huffed angrily about that. This time, both men called for the border to be demarcated at last.


Mr Xi’s visit will lift the bilateral mood. Mr Modi spoke this week of increasing tourist and other travel between two giants that remain atrociously served by transport links. He harked back to shared Buddhist ties and centuries-old pilgrimages by Chinese monks, including to Gujarat. To get more students and tourists flowing between the world’s two most-populous countries should surely be possible. Easier, certainly, than fixing that border.





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Tuesday 16 September 2014

Erica Eisdorfer

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"I felt despair. Though it seems to me now there's two kinds of it: the sort that causes a person to surrender and then the sort I had which made me take risks and make plans."

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Irma Kurtz

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Givers have to set limits because takers rarely do."

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Dwight D. Eisenhower

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog."

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Clare Booth Luce

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount."

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Monday 15 September 2014

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

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Any time and energy you spend hating and being angry at your ex will ultimately take a toll on you without effecting any positive changes in your ex or your relationship."

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Washington Irving

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power."

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Max Frisch

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Time does not change us. It just unfolds us."

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Unknown

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Whoever does not love his work cannot hope that it will please others."

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Sunday 14 September 2014

J. K. Rowling

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to form of mental agoraphobia and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters, they are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude through our own apathy."

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Abraham Lincoln

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

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Cicero

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Reason should direct and appetite obey."

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Anais Nin

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

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Saturday 13 September 2014

Thomas Paine

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

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Kahlil Gibran

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of the people's wrath."

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Virgil

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"They can conquer who believe they can."

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William Ellery Channing

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict."

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Friday 12 September 2014

Jane Austen

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere."

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Maryanne Radmacher-Hershey

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"May your walls know joy; May every room hold laughter and every window open to great possibility."

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Don Snyder

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Let us hope that we are all preceded in this world by a love story."

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David Lloyd George

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."

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Thursday 11 September 2014

Floods in India and Pakistan: Down the river

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com




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New Zealand’s politics: Key asset

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


John Key, bloke


ON THE billboards of every National Party candidate in New Zealand’s general election on September 20th looms a second face: John Key’s. No one can miss the point that the prime minister is the party’s main asset.


With his one-of-us manner, free of airs or graces, Mr Key is a rare incumbent who is popular—more so, indeed, than his National Party or any other leader. In an opinion poll taken between August 30th and September 3rd, 48% of those asked approved of him, compared with the Labour leader, David Cunliffe, who polled just 14%. If National wins, it will be Mr Key’s third term as prime minister.


The centre-right National Party is running on its record of solid economic growth, sound finances and completing free-trade agreements supposed to help smaller businesses. It promises modest tax cuts—though not immediately—for low- and middle-income New Zealanders. Its welfare policies for children in need and its assistance for first-time homebuyers are decidedly centrist.


The Labour Party plans to introduce a capital-gains tax on property, but not on the family home. It is concerned about growing inequality and has ideas for boosting the savings rate. But earlier infighting did not help Labour’s image. As for Mr Cunliffe, he earned barroom derision for his apology for “being a man” (on the basis that males are responsible for most sexual abuse and violence at home).


Even so, National is not home and dry. Last month a book, “Dirty Politics”, threatened to derail its campaign. Based on hacked e-mails from a blogger with links to the National Party, it alleged a dirty-tricks operation run out of the prime minister’s office. Judith Collins, the justice minister, was implicated and had to resign. Separately, Kim Dotcom, an internet entrepreneur or hacker (take your pick) who is wanted in America on copyright charges, is financing a political party and, assisted by Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, promises to drop a bombshell before the election that will harm National.


Even without such distractions, the National Party is unlikely to win enough seats to govern alone. Since the introduction of a mixed-member proportional voting system in 1996, no party has managed that. This time, eight parties have a chance of being represented in Parliament. Winston Peters, of the populist NZ First, has played kingmaker in the past. He is likely to support the party with the biggest vote. As The Economist went to press the Greens, Labour’s natural ally, were considering support for the National Party, so badly is Labour faring.





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Banyan: Too much on

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



WHEN an election commission of questionable independence capriciously calls off elections, you would expect its democratic critics to be up in arms. On September 7th Myanmar’s Union Election Commission announced that it was cancelling 35 by-elections expected later this year. Thirty-five vacant seats make up quite a chunk of parliament, which has 440 seats in the lower house and 224 in the upper one. Yet the reaction was muted. Some opposition politicians—and even representatives of the government’s Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)—voiced protests, yet their hearts seemed not to be in it. To a political class with so much on its plate, the issue of by-elections seemed a distraction they could do without.


This, in fact, was more or less the official reason given for the cancellation. The commission’s head pointed to the burdens on Myanmar of being this year’s chair of ASEAN, the ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations. In November the country will host a summit of ASEAN members plus America, China, India, Russia and others. He also mentioned preparations for the general election expected late next year. The main opposition, the National League for Democracy (NLD), boycotted the previous poll in 2010, so this may be the first genuine electoral competition for national power after half a century of military rule.


It is only three years since Myanmar embarked on its experiment with democratic reform led by the president, Thein Sein, a former general. In the 12 months bookended by the East Asia Summit and the election, the country has a lot to get through: putting in place a process that might end more than six decades of warfare between the state and a plethora of ethnic insurgencies; agreeing on whether and how to change the constitution, which gives the army a veto on change and bars the country’s most popular politician, the NLD’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from the presidency; deciding whether to switch from a first-past-the-post system to one of proportional representation; implementing the economic reforms the country needs if its poor majority are to feel that political change will actually make their lives better; and coping with a worrying rise in discrimination and violence directed at Muslims by the Buddhist majority.


Nobody thinks a national peace agreement can be reached in the next year. But those involved do feel the country is tantalisingly close to an historic first stage—converting a series of bilateral ceasefire agreements into a national one involving 16 armed groups. Some insurgent groups, such as the one fighting for the ethnic-Kachin minority, have yet to sign any ceasefire. The target date for a national one keeps slipping. In early August, Soe Thane, a minister in the president’s office, expected it to be signed in September. This month a colleague predicted November. A ceasefire would pave the way for a national political dialogue aimed at reaching a lasting peace settlement. The hope is that it could be sufficiently entrenched by late next year to survive the election.


That election may now have the effect of disappointing everyone. It seems most unlikely that the constitution will be changed before it. Imposed on the country in a rigged referendum in 2008, it is designed by the generals to be resilient. Besides barring from the highest office those, like Miss Suu Kyi, who are related to foreigners, it also guarantees the army 25% of parliamentary seats and makes constitutional change dependent on a parliamentary majority of, oddly enough, over 75%. A parliamentary committee has ruled against lifting the ban on Miss Suu Kyi. The president is in any case elected indirectly. The NLD would have to contest the parliamentary election without being able to promise that its icon would become the country’s leader.


Even lowering the “threshold” for constitutional change or reducing army clout now seems unlikely. Besides having to compete without its biggest attraction and counter the usual electoral tricks of incumbent governments, the NLD faces an arithmetical challenge: to win more than half the parliamentary seats, it will need more than two-thirds of those contested. Since, in some areas, regional and ethnic parties will do well, that will be tough. But the ethnic parties will be dissatisfied, too, as their lack of national appeal will give them little say in parliament. Some fear that the election may intensify ethnic conflict just when an end to it seemed in sight; and that populist campaign language may cause more trouble for Muslims, especially the 800,000 or so Rohingyas in the strife-scarred western state of Rakhine.


As for the USDP, it is likely to find, as it did in the by-elections in 2012 that swept the NLD and Miss Suu Kyi into parliament in a landslide, that it is still not very popular. This may explain its interest in proportional representation. Adopting a new voting system without a constitutional amendment would be a travesty. That does not rule it out. But it would almost certainly mean delaying the election as new boundaries are drawn.


Capacity constraints


Amid such political uncertainty, it is not surprising that the bonanza of foreign investment some hoped for when Myanmar, Asia’s last frontier, opened its doors has not really materialised. An even bigger problem, however, may be a lack of capacity in all branches of government. This is an administration that only last month discovered, thanks to the first census in over 30 years, that its country had 9m fewer people than the 60m it thought. Laws pile up in a parliament with little time to read them.


Against this backdrop, even some of those who campaigned hardest to end military dictatorship in Myanmar find themselves dreading an election that is supposed to mark the definitive step to a new pluralist era. Sharpening the irony, it is the former and serving generals who resist any tampering with the constitution who may have the biggest stake in the election. It may enable them to bolster their legitimacy—albeit marginally in such a flawed vote—without sacrificing their veto on democracy.





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Thailand after the coup: Uniform reaction

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



THE senior officers who seized power in a coup in May are stepping up their campaign to establish what they call “true democracy”. In late July the junta appointed a parliament stuffed with cronies and officers from the Queen’s Guard regiment. Now General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the coup leader and prime minister (pictured, above), has formed a cabinet made up of the junta and former officers plus a few senior bureaucrats. The election commission has been called upon to appoint a group of people to write a new constitution. It has also, of all institutions, been asked to come up with ideas for preventing populist parties from winning office in future.


The streets of Bangkok, the capital, are calm; indeed many residents were relieved when the army stepped in to end months of debilitating confrontation between the government of the then prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, and her opponents on the streets. Still, the junta refuses to lift martial law. Meanwhile, the officers who in 2006 ousted Ms Yingluck’s billionaire brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, have made their comeback.


A former army chief, Prawit Wongsuwan, is a deputy prime minister. Anupong Paochinda, who preceded General Prayuth as army chief, is interior minister. Tanasak Patimapragorn, the Thai army’s chief of defence forces, is the new foreign minister and the contact for Western governments—who remain unsure how to deal with a country now run by soldiers.


The consensus among most seasoned observers is that the latest spell of army rule will blow over like the last one, which was soon followed by civilian rule and then fresh elections (which Ms Yingluck won in a landslide). Pro-establishment newspapers report that the new government’s term is just a year. But what if, instead, the generals’ “road map to democracy” intends to put an end to electoral democracy altogether, recast Thai society, and establish a long-term rule of “moral people” who are not chosen through the ballot box? Their sense of purpose plays into fears of such a possibility.


The junta’s moral underpinning is a brand of puritanical paternalism. A clean-up is in full swing intended to purge the informal economy of unregistered labour, smuggling, prostitution, gambling and drug-dealing. There is also a sense that the generals feel the need to play Mr Thaksin’s populist game. The last government’s scheme to subsidise rice was financially disastrous. Yet the junta has insisted that the farmers should be paid off, so boosting incomes in the poor countryside. A planned rise in the consumption tax has been frozen, and fuel prices have been sharply cut. Entry to cinemas showing patriotic films (or the World Cup) has been made free of charge. And to much surprise the generals, guarantors of the monied establishment, are considering a tax on land and inherited wealth.


The junta’s many difficulties may explain all this populism. The economy has stopped growing because exports are stagnant, consumption is sluggish and investment and tourism figures have declined. Bangkok’s main international airport is the only one in Asia with falling passenger numbers. The government insists that Thailand remains one of the best places to do business, with reliable electricity, an industrial base and educated workers. Yet even it can see that some of the country’s magic has been lost.


There will now be much emphasis on investment in infrastructure. The generals love railways as much as any planners. They have earmarked $23 billion for rail links to China that are unlikely to pay for themselves. Thailand does not have much in the way of bulk goods that need to be transported by rail. Meanwhile, passengers have been shunning railways for decades because fuel is cheap and the road network good.


What lies ahead? For now, managing expectations downwards so far as the economy is concerned seems a sensible precaution. Much depends on the health of the ageing King Bhumibol Adulyadej. His demise could well entrench the junta and prolong its illiberalism. The junta has already seized on the king’s long-held notions of a “sufficiency economy”, which in essence is a call for everybody from the rural poor upwards to take their place in a social hierarchy overseen by the king’s benevolence. Arch-royalists are telling people that in a sufficiency economy the correct measure of your standard of living is happiness, not income.


Superstition is never far away. The prime minister has complained that anti-coup groups have resorted to the use of black magic against him. For all that the generals are out to smash the movement that Mr Thaksin created and runs from self-imposed exile, they are handling the task delicately. A court has delayed a ruling on whether Ms Yingluck will face charges over her messed-up rice policy. When it feels more confident, the junta may deal with the Shinawatras more harshly.


Ordinary Thais may sense a greater threat. Human-rights groups fear that military courts, last seen in the 1970s, might be set up in Thailand’s restive south, scene of a rumbling Islamist insurgency. And the generally kid-glove treatment of the political classes since the coup sits uncomfortably with reports of the disappearance and even torture of anti-coup activists. A better sense of the new direction will come with details of the constitution. Its contents are not yet openly discussed.





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The Andaman Islands: From outpost to springboard

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


Barrack room banyan


EXPLORE the palm-fringed bays of Port Blair, the capital of the Indian-owned Andaman and Nicobar islands, and intriguing sights appear. On one islet are the ghostly remains of a Victorian-era British settlement, its barracks, ballroom and Presbyterian church strangled by monstrous banyan trees. On another shore sits the headquarters of India’s only three-service—army, air and navy—military command. At a nearby wharf warships form a line, white ensigns flapping. A dry dock lies moored out in the harbour as a frigate steams out into the Bay of Bengal.


India had long neglected its island outpost close to mainland South-East Asia. Populated for thousands of years by indigenous tribes, the Andamans were used as a penal colony by the British until the Japanese invasion in 1942. After independence, India treated the Andamans as a remote backwater, too costly to supply or defend. The country’s military planners mostly faced west, to Pakistan.


Attitudes are changing. India increasingly looks east, whether hoping for trade or fretting about China’s military heft. In the Himalayas China has built roads, railways and other infrastructure along a 3,380-kilometre (2,100-mile) disputed border. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, says his country must build up there too. He will discuss the border with Xi Jinping, China’s president, who will visit India for three days from September 17th. Whatever progress he might make, India is at a strategic disadvantage in the Himalayas, since China looks down on it from the high Tibetan plateau. To compensate, Indian strategists seek advantages elsewhere.



That means bolstering strength at sea. A rising share of India’s growing military budget is being passed to the Indian navy. Three years ago it got just $4.2 billion; this year it has $6.2 billion, or nearly a fifth of total military spending. The navy is reportedly moving vessels and men from its western to its eastern command, which is said to include five guided-missile destroyers, three stealth frigates and a nuclear submarine. An aircraft-carrier is to come later. In the Andaman command a fleet of 15 vessels will expand to 32 in eight years. The army presence will also double, to 6,000.


Those in charge in Port Blair are natural disciples of those late-19th-century strategists who argued that geography and sea power are destiny. To such Indians, the 572 mostly uninhabited islands are an anchor for India’s broad commercial, diplomatic and military strategy of reaching out east. “It is geography,” says Ajay Singh, a former tank commander who governs the Andamans on behalf of India’s president. He pores over charts showing the islands stretching as a 750km-long chain above the entrance to the Malacca Strait, which connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The strait is one of the world’s busiest sea routes, with more than 1,000 ships running through it each week. It is vital to the Asian economic miracle centred on China.


Hawks in Delhi who are suspicious of Chinese long-term aims say bluntly that India and its friends will acquire some sway over China only once the Andamans are treated as a “chokepoint”, a place to disrupt Chinese trade in the event of any future confrontation. Four-fifths of Chinese oil imports go through the strait. Chinese naval strategists warn of Indian designs to drop an “iron curtain” there.


But that is all to get ahead of reality. When Mr Xi is in Delhi, Mr Modi will praise growing trade and other ties with China. Besides, says Jeff Smith, an expert on Sino-Indian relations, for all the Andamans’ potential as a powerful base, India’s military expansion has much that is ad hoc about it. There are, he says, still no clear, formal proposals on how to beef up the military presence there.


Certainly, activity on the islands is growing. An air base that opened two years ago in Campbell Bay, Great Nicobar, has taken Indian military aircraft 300km closer than before to the Malacca Strait. Other airstrips are reportedly being built or lengthened to handle big aircraft, including the Hercules transport plane. Airfields for helicopters will follow. The navy wants to deploy drones to track passing ships. New coastguard stations serve a similar purpose. Regular naval exercises with neighbours are interspersed with big international training manoeuvres hosted in the Andamans and named “Millan”. The most recent involved 17 navies in a disaster-relief exercise meant to mark a decade after the 2004 Asian tsunami.


Such expansion, however, lacks clear purpose. The Andamans have a population of 400,000 and can support a large military presence only with difficulty. Communications are poor—at least until a long-promised submarine cable from the mainland arrives. And the economy is dependent on money and goods from mainland India. Mr Singh argues that for the Andamans to become robust, their economy must first develop.


For that, he wants a big boost to tourism, including direct flights from Phuket in Thailand, only 45 minutes’ flying time away. Fisheries should also grow. One businessman in Port Blair shows off a haul of several dozen carcasses of huge yellowfin tuna. Yet real development faces all sorts of hurdles. They include a lack of available land because of strict—and certainly necessary—protection for indigenous tribal groups and valuable rainforest. India may yet develop the islands into a big military asset, but it has to balance the interests of civilians, too. It is going to be a slow boat.





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Ann Richards

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"The public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you're not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self-examination to say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm just like you. They don't ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest, and show a modicum of good sense."

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Edith Wharton

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"Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive."

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Hazrat Inayat Khan

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"The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels."

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Saint Francis of Assisi

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"Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith."

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Wednesday 10 September 2014

Reverend Sean Parker Dennison

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"The key to non-anxious sermon-writing is that it�s not about me. It�s about the congregation. I honor the fact that the listeners bring more to the sermon than I do. I remind myself of the hundreds of times someone says, 'I loved how you said�' and then tell me things that they heard that were nowhere in my text and that I never said. But they heard what they needed to hear."

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Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

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"We cannot destroy kindred: Our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break."

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."

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Benjamin Disraeli

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"Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error."

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Tuesday 9 September 2014

Sydney J. Harris

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"An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run."

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Anonymous

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"Any piece of clothing can be sexy with a quietly passionate woman inside it."

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Mahatma Gandhi

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"I want freedom for the full expression of my personality."

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Thomas Carlyle

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"Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness."

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Monday 8 September 2014

Norman Vincent Peale

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"Think enthusiastically about everything; but especially about your job. If you do, you'll put a touch of glory in your life. If you love your job with enthusiasm, you'll shake it to pieces. You'll love it into greatness."

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George Burns

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"I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate."

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Edgar Watson Howe

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"If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you're old."

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William Ernest Hocking

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"We cannot swing up on a rope that is attached only to our own belt."

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Friday 5 September 2014

Holly Lisle

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"Actions have consequences...first rule of life. And the second rule is this - you are the only one responsible for your own actions."

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Jeff Melvoin

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"It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it."

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Aaron Copland

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"Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness."

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Robert Henri

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"Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them."

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Thursday 4 September 2014

Politics in Pakistan: Army in the middle

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



SEIZING control of the state-controlled broadcaster used to be the prelude to military dictatorship in coup-prone Pakistan. The headquarters of the Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) in the heart of Islamabad was one of the first buildings to be taken over by soldiers in 1999 when General Pervez Musharraf ousted Nawaz Sharif, the country’s then-prime minister who was re-elected in a landslide victory last year. The sight of troops piling back into that same office block on September 1st (see picture) aroused feelings of déjà vu. This time the soldiers entered PTV only to remove protesters who had forced the channel off air. Even so, those who hoped Mr Sharif’s return to power would spell an end to military meddling have reason to be worried. The generals are again circling ominously around him.


The demonstrators at PTV were largely made up of supporters of Tahir ul Qadri, a Muslim cleric with a large religious support base, and of Imran Khan, a famous cricket-player-turned politician. Mr Khan and Mr Qadri have been holding supposedly separate demonstrations in the heart of the capital since mid-August in an attempt to force out the government. Mr Khan has demanded the sacking of Mr Sharif, and a rerun of last year’s election. He claims he was robbed of victory, although no independent election observers seem to agree with him.


The two men’s combined crowds have been modest by Pakistani standards. Numbers have peaked at around 50,000 on carnival-like nights of music and speeches, but fell far below that during a recent rise in tension. The aim of the assault on PTV appeared to be to stir up confrontation in the hope that this would tempt the army to step in and remove Mr Sharif. Mr Khan, with his fondness for cricketing references, had promised his supporters that a “third umpire” will come and send Mr Sharif back to the pavilion. Banners lauding the army surround Mr Qadri’s encampment. While thugs have struck police officers with bamboo staffs, soldiers have been treated respectfully.


On August 28th the army did come out to umpire: Mr Khan and Mr Qadri were invited to a midnight discussion with the army chief, Raheel Sharif, who offered to act as a mediator between them and the government. (He had also been holding talks with Mr Sharif, who is not a relative.) On August 30th Mr Khan and Mr Qadri told followers to storm the prime minister’s official residence, prompting violent clashes with police. The following day the army told the government not to use force against the protesters. When military personnel asked them to stop smashing cameras and leave the PTV building, the 200 stick-wielding rioters swiftly complied.


The generals certainly have motives to weaken or even destroy Mr Sharif, who has a big parliamentary majority. The prime minister has made no secret of his desire to impose civilian control over the army. He also wants to transform hostile relations with India, a policy the army opposes. Furthermore, a government source says that the generals are angry because Mr Sharif reneged on what they allege was a secret deal to let Mr Musharraf slip abroad to avoid being found guilty of treason in an ongoing trial. Lastly, the government has been at odds with the army over Geo, a television station. In April the army demanded that Geo be closed down after it accused the chief of its intelligence wing of ordering the assassination of one of the station’s journalists. Geo later apologised to the army for its reporting. Now come reports from some of the prime minister’s aides that the army has already made a grab for the portfolios of foreign and defence policy, and that Mr Sharif has ceded some authority in these areas.


That is an infringement of the prime minister’s power. But it is not exactly a coup. The protesters’ efforts to draw the army further in have not worked; Mr Khan has been stung by allegations he has been dancing to the army’s tune and appears to have given up his street-fighting approach. And the signs are that even the generals appear to recognise that a military takeover would be bad for the army itself. The last time around, under Mr Musharraf, it was not up to the task. That is why, since Mr Musharraf’s ousting in 2008, the army has been trying to avoid taking overt control of politics. It worries that American financial assistance would be jeopardised by a coup. It has little interest in prolonging the turmoil on the streets of Islamabad at a time when it is engaged in a long-delayed assault on the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas of North Waziristan.


The army also happens to support a few of Mr Sharif’s policies, including his efforts to wean the country off expensive energy imports. The generals back his efforts to boost economic growth, not just to pay the nation’s civilian bills but also its huge military ones.


It is uncertain how much of a role, if any, the army played in fomenting the recent protests. Kamran Bokhari of Stratfor, an American security-analysis company, says Pakistan has a vast number of retired generals, who claim to speak for “the army” but who are in fact far removed from the real power around General Sharif and corps commanders. “There is no one script,” says Mr Bokhari.


There are still politicians who want a greater army role in politics, but those who oppose interference have grown in strength in recent years. At a special joint session of parliament on September 2nd many spoke out in defence of democracy and against the unruly demonstrators outside the building. Pro-democracy voices also include some of the private news channels that have proliferated since 2002.


The army is still by far the strongest institution that Pakistan has. But political power has become much more diffuse than it was on that night 15 years ago when the army needed only to seize control of one television station to take command of the entire country.





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