Friday 31 October 2014

L. M. Montgomery

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Folks that has brought up children know that there's no hard and fast method in the world that'll suit every child. But them as never have think it's all as plain and easy as Rule of Three�just set your three terms down so fashion, and the sum'll work out correct."

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Ken Rockwell

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want."

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Dorothy L. Sayers

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The worst sin - perhaps the only sin - passion can commit, is to be joyless."

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Amy Lowell

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in."

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Thursday 30 October 2014

Randy K. Milholland

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Why do we have to wait for special moments to say nice things or tell people we care about them?"

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Jawaharlal Nehru

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The only alternative to coexistence is codestruction."

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Jim Bishop

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"Nothing is as far away as one minute ago."

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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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Wednesday 29 October 2014

Emil Zatopek

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"One day the factory sports coach, who was very strict, pointed at four boys, including me, and ordered us to run in a race. I protested that I was weak and not fit to run, but the coach sent me for a physical examination and the doctor said that I was perfectly well. So I had to run, and when I got started I felt I wanted to win. But I only came in second. That was the way it started."

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Henry Miller

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?"

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John Stuart Mill

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests."

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Beverly Sills

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."

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Tuesday 28 October 2014

Shirley Trusty Corey

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The arts must be considered an essential element of education... They are tools for living life reflectively, joyfully and with the ability to shape the future."

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John Lancaster Spalding

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is."

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Matthew Arnold

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next."

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Mickey Rooney

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"You always pass failure on the way to success."

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Monday 27 October 2014

Barbara Hall

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"See, that's all you're thinking about, is winning. You're confirming your sense of self- worth through outward reward instead of through inner appreciation."

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Eleanor Roosevelt

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

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Sir Walter Raleigh

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Remember, that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will neither last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all; for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied."

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Daniel J. Boorstin

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."

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Sunday 26 October 2014

10 Smartphone stronger power prices

Intense competition and the speed of technological upgrading so fast made products smartphones to lower their prices to attract customers.

Intense competition and the speed of technological upgrading so fast made products smartphones to lower their prices to attract customers.

Not only compete on the high-end smartphone segment, the low-cost smartphone segment 4 million or more is also very active with a range of attractive products.

Advanced phone ever storm on Apple's market at the moment about 3 years ago now find themselves a foothold in the segment for cheap products. "Apples with" now is the biggest brand in the world of the United States. Although every upgrade from  the iPhone 4 onto S 4G is not considered a "great leap" as the first generation iPhone to a third generation, there is enough compelling features to "seduce" users to upgrade . With the new software is version 7.2 iOS iPhone, the iPhone is a wonderful step forward that can run thousands of interesting applications and perform other functions with, such as MMS.

10 Smartphone sharply discounted power - 1

Iphone dropped from 2.5 million or more to help Apple achieve record sales

For Iphone 4 is considered to be significantly reduced this time, will create conditions for a large number of customers have access to the advanced technology products from Apple.

10 Smartphone sharply discounted power - 2

The mystery of Apple Iphone 3 help with production sold terribly in Vietnam

Return to the luxury and super powerful. Phone BlackBerry Z10 first to use the BlackBerry 10 operating system, with complete design touch. It almost goes against the traditional design of the BlackBerry device (not including a phone number with touchscreen Torch or Storm line). With terrible configuration, exquisite design attracted players to the loyal fans with Blackberry coming out this unexpected surprise. A phone BlackBerry Z10 with terrorist configuration Dual-core CPU and dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, 2GB RAM, 8-megapixel camera, the screen has HD resolution, screen 4.2 "up to 16GB of internal memory, language International multi-language.

10 Smartphone sharply discounted power - 3

BlackBerry Z10 discounted from 6.5 million 4,5tr version (001-002-003-004)

Design quite daring notably Phone Motorola HD 912 is considered quite striking. Motorola Smartphones are Americans trusted especially for the US Marines. Used Kevlar shell with gloss and durable, waterproof, dust-proof and bullet-proof military use

10. Smartphones power sharply reduced - 4

Motorola HD 912 Sapphire glass, shells with bulletproof Kevlar compound

Vibrant market return with Phone Samsung Galaxy S3: Specifications for full speed 1.5GHz quad-core chipset, and 2GB of RAM. Galaxy S III is supported connections including 4-band 2G and 3-band 3G with HSDPA and HSUPA 5.76 do14.4Mbps speed, Wi-Fi a / b / g / n, DLNA, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and microUSB port. and using 1500mAh capacity battery.

10 Smartphone sharply discounted power - 5

Phone Samsung Galaxy S3 chic

Referring to Samsung, we can not forget the first version of the Galaxy Note has made ​​a difference for a product using the technology Pen Pen. Phone Samsung Note I: Highlights: Quad-band GSM support and quad-band 3G, capacitive touchscreen Super AMOLED 5.3 "16 million color WXGA resolution CPU speed 1.4 GHz Cortex-A9 dual-core CPU, ...

10 Smartphone sharply discounted power - 6

Phone Samsung Galaxy Note I elegant and powerful

Phone Sky A900 - Smartphone Masterpieces of the Millennium class for a smartphone Snapdragon MSM8974 800, quad 2.3GHz, 3GB RAM, 32GB of internal memory, Full HD Monitor, Camera 13 '.

Sky A900 - Heaven smartphone fully functional convergence

Sky A890 phone - Smartphone Masterpieces of the Millennium class for a smartphone Snapdragon MSM8974 800, quad 2.3GHz, 3GB RAM, 32GB of internal memory, Full HD Monitor, Camera 13

Sky A890 - Soak the apricots ripe, perfect smartphone

Phone Sky A870 - race pace rivals challenge at hand: 1.7 GHZ Snapdragon chip, 2GB RAM, Camera 13 'Full HD screen. 16GB internal memory.

10. Smartphones power sharply reduced - 9

Sky A870 - Conquering challenges, challenge opponents, turn the impossible into possible ...?

But if the Smartphone has the sharpest display without mentioning Phone LG G2 and LG Gpro ownership LCD screen with True IPS + panel similar to the LG G technology features Zero Gap as touch panels and screens display was embedded into one, making the image displayed very realistic and touching surfing maneuvers on the screen for the user feels like I'm touching to see directly into the sensor layer.

10 Smartphone stronger power prices - 10

Powerful processor configurations outstanding: Operations perfect

LG Optimus G Pro  has Qualcomm Snapdragon chip heart is 600 with processor speeds up to 1.7GHz for you to unleash your technology experience on the LG Optimus G Pro. 2GB ram machine, quite similar to the current line of smartphones. 32 GB of internal memory and supports external SD memory card.

10 Smartphone stronger power prices - 11

LG Optimus G Pro battery up to 3100mAh

Hotline sales consultant to other cities in the province where the address of the customer transfer COD: Delivery, watch the hands, Falcon pleasant, collecting money immediately. Contact: 0968123789. Hotline Support Payments Consulting: Ms. Hau: 0934442290 - Mr. University: 01657055771

W. Somerset Maugham

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"We didn't think much in the air corps of a fellow who wangled a cushy job out of his C.O. by buttering him up. It was hard for me to believe that God thought much of a man who tried to wangle salvation by fulsome flattery. I should have thought the worship most pleasing to him was to do your best according to your lights."

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Gene McSweeney

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"We try to grab pieces of our lives as they speed past us. Photographs freeze those pieces and help us remember how we were. We don't know these lost people but if you look around, you'll find someone just like them."

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David McCullough

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love."

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Saturday 25 October 2014

Susan Rice

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Progress is the product of human agency. Things get better because we make them better. Things go wrong when we get too comfortable, when we fail to take risks or seize opportunities."

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Lawana Blackwell

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery."

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Stephen Vincent Benet

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom."

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Edward Everett Hale

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds - all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have."

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Friday 24 October 2014

Sara Zarr

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"In the end, I decide that the mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love. That the unfinished business between us. Because love, love is never finished. It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete."

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Jim Carrey

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"I would visualize things coming to me. It would just make me feel better. Visualization works if you work hard. That's the thing. You can't just visualize and go eat a sandwich."

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Andrew Lang

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"You can cover a great deal of country in books."

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Andrea Bocelli

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"All that counts in life is intention."

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Thursday 23 October 2014

Banyan: The enablers

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



NOT since Indira Gandhi has a prime minister of India been as dominant as Narendra Modi. His clout comes from the big electoral victory in May of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after a remarkably personalised campaign; from a hyperactive prime minister’s office that makes Mr Modi look presidential; and from an opposition Congress party in tatters. But even the mightiest cannot rule alone, and Mr Modi relies on two old allies, both crucial. One, Amit Shah, engineers the electoral victories that give Mr Modi his authority. The other, Arun Jaitley, must take that authority and out of it craft policies and decisions that will launch the economic recovery which Mr Modi has promised and by which he will be judged. These two men are Mr Modi’s enablers.


Now the BJP’s president, Mr Shah is a master of the dark political arts—indeed, his hooded eyes give him the air of a pantomime villain. He has served Mr Modi for nearly three decades. The pair collaborated in the state of Gujarat, where Mr Modi won three elections and ruled for a dozen years. Mr Shah had charge of ten state ministries, including home affairs.


Long an outsider in the urbane circles of Delhi’s national-level politics, Mr Shah is uncomfortable in English and rarely gives interviews. When he makes an exception, as he did after state-assembly elections this month in which the BJP seized control of Maharashtra and Haryana, he mostly uses the time to extol his boss. Of himself, he says merely: “Sometimes you get more credit than you deserve.” Mr Shah is too modest. He ran both state campaigns, just as he crafted the BJP general-election success in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh (UP). That victory was at the heart of Mr Modi’s national triumph in May.


Mr Modi stirs voters, but the alchemy of Mr Shah, who turned 50 this week, is to convert popularity into power. In UP the BJP’s share of the vote was 42%, compared with Congress’s 7.5%. That translated into 71 out of 80 of the national seats from the vast state, a golden return. Imbalances between vote share and seats are normal in first-past-the-post electoral systems, but achieving victory in India takes more skill and stamina elsewhere. Mr Shah makes minute analyses of millions-strong constituencies, imposing candidates and recruiting volunteers early, often from the Hindu-nationalist RSS organisation, where he and Mr Modi were once leaders. He tailors messages according to the audience. He has, variously, presented Mr Modi as a bringer of good economic times, a Hindu strongman and a figure of humble caste. Mr Shah has turned Hindus against Muslims (notoriously, he told Hindu Jats in UP to take electoral “revenge” following communal riots in late 2013). But he has also taken advantage of Shia Muslim antipathy towards Sunnis (in Lucknow, UP’s capital). Mr Modi’s campaigning certainly helps. He led 38 rallies in the recent state elections. Congress’s Rahul Gandhi showed up for only ten.


For all Mr Shah’s deftness, he also has a reputation as a bruiser. In 2010 he was charged over the kidnapping and murder by police (whom he oversaw) of a suspected extortionist, the man’s wife and a witness; he was also banned from Gujarat. The case remains in court. Another case, recently dropped though many details were uncontested, suggested that Mr Shah once ordered state employees to tail a female acquaintance of Mr Modi’s. Mr Shah is fiercely driven to serve his boss; it is unclear whether he cares for much else.


As for governing, Mr Modi now relies on a man who is as at ease at Delhi dinner parties as Mr Shah is uncomfortable. An urbane lawyer, Mr Jaitley holds a remarkable three cabinet posts—minister of finance, of defence and of corporate affairs. One MP recalls how in 2001 Mr Jaitley, a minister then, mentored Mr Modi, taking him to meet the capital’s power-brokers. Now Mr Modi is his boss, but as a newcomer to parliament—Mr Modi entered it for the first time in May—it helps that Mr Jaitley is a 14-year veteran of the upper house. The 61-year-old is also the prime minister’s best connection to the Delhi elite, chatting easily with politicians of all stripes and enjoying the cut-and-thrust of debate with newspaper editors. Unlike Mr Shah he lacks any electoral touch, failing even to get elected in Amritsar in May despite the BJP’s general landslide.


This month Mr Jaitley left hospital many kilos lighter following complications from an operation. He needs to be robust since no one in government, Mr Modi aside, has so many duties. As defence minister he bears some responsibility for India’s most aggressive posture in years towards Pakistan: exchanges of fire across the line of control in Kashmir have killed 19 people this month, a nasty escalation. But his biggest tasks are to overhaul India’s dysfunctional bureaucracy and to liberalise its economy. A few improvements are showing at last. Mr Jaitley is behind a flurry of initiatives in the past few days, including the appointment of a liberal chief economic adviser, Arvind Subramanian, tweaks to rules to make labour inspectors less despotic, moves to let the market set the price of diesel, and a push to overhaul subsidies for cooking gas that are the object of rampant abuse.


That is all welcome, but deeper changes are needed, certainly by March when Mr Jaitley delivers his first full budget. He says a priority is for parliament to amend the constitution to pass a national tax on goods and services that can raise revenues and foster a single market in a country riven by local protectionism. He also needs to rethink a muddled stance on liberalising global trade, make it easier for businesses to buy land and open up for more private investors.


For India, the grinding business of governing will count for far more than the showmanship on the campaign trail that Mr Modi evidently loves (this week he flitted to Kashmir, ahead of a state election there). And in the end, Mr Modi will be judged not by the accomplishments of the panto villain, but by the changes represented by his other enabler, the urbane Mr Jaitley. No point gathering political capital if you do not use it.





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Pakistan’s militants: Taliban tumult

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



FOR years Pakistan’s government and army put off confronting the Pakistani Taliban and their allied fanatics who had set up what was almost a state of their own in North Waziristan, the wildest of several tribal agencies on the country’s north-west frontier with Afghanistan. The reason for such reluctance was a belief that any attack on the militants would trigger savage reprisals. Imran Khan, a populist politician perhaps most responsible for discouraging military action, has countless times predicted a big “blowback” in the cities.


Yet since the army launched a belated offensive against the militants in North Waziristan on June 15th, the number of terrorist attacks across the rest of Pakistan has fallen by nearly 30%, according to a database maintained by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies in Islamabad, the capital. Deaths from terrorism are down by more than half compared with the same period in 2013.


Indeed, the widespread assumption is that Operation Zarb-e-Azb, named after a sword of Muhammad, has badly undermined Pakistan’s militants. Independent confirmation is impossible, but the army claims it has killed more than 1,100 terrorists in North Waziristan. (More implausibly, it also claims that its “precision” air strikes have killed precisely zero civilians.) Militants appear now to have lost what was once a secure sanctuary where fighters could be trained and suicide-bombers groomed for self-destruction. The army says that more than 40 of its soldiers have been killed in the course of capturing key towns in North Waziristan, notably Mir Ali and the agency’s capital, Miran Shah. The campaign adds to the steady progress Pakistan has made in recent years in restoring its writ over the tribal areas, nearly a third of which were controlled by militants in 2007-08, the army says.


Meanwhile, the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella organisation of militant groups officially known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), may have all but fallen apart. For that, perhaps, the United States is as much to thank as the army offensive. Nearly a year ago a CIA-operated drone managed to kill Hakimullah Mehsud, the long-haired tribesman who had run the group since 2009. His death sparked a bitter succession struggle, with the leadership eventually passing to Mullah Fazlullah, a militant who masterminded the Taliban’s takeover of his homeland of Swat, once a popular holiday destination, in early 2009.


Mr Fazlullah has since been unable to hold together an organisation traditionally ruled by members of the Mehsud tribe. For his own safety against government attacks, he moved to eastern Afghanistan, a choice that earned him disparagement among fellow jihadists. Meanwhile, disagreements grew over whether the movement should negotiate with the Pakistani government. To date four separate groups have split off from the original TTP, two later merging with each other. They have taken much of the TTP’s fighting force with them.


In September a group calling itself the Punjabi Taliban announced that it would abandon domestic terrorism in favour of preaching and waging war in Afghanistan instead. Some analysts took that as a sign that Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), has had some success in directing the energies of militants towards creating chaos elsewhere in the region.


A long-standing ISI policy of fighting only those seeking to topple the Pakistani state while tolerating or even supporting groups on Pakistani soil that restrict their violence to Afghanistan and India has long been a source of despair to Pakistan’s Western allies. They point out that, wherever they operate, militants with bases in Pakistan share ideas, fighters and often allegiances. Western spooks appear convinced that the Haqqani network, a particularly lethal Afghan insurgent group, received ample warning and even assistance from the ISI in making their escape from bases in North Waziristan before the launch of Zarb-e-Azb.


Sowing further discord among the jihadists is the excitement generated by the success of Islamic State (IS) in conquering swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. Leaflets praising IS and declaring Pakistan, Afghanistan and bits of India to be part of a caliphate have been circulated in Pakistan’s north-western city of Peshawar. This month six senior TTP leaders announced that they had declared their allegiance to IS’s “caliph”, Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi.


As for al-Qaeda, the terrorist group now in competition with IS for leadership of the global jihad movement, it is attempting to shore up its position in Pakistan, where American drones have killed many of its leaders. Last month the group announced a new franchise, called al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. However, its first big operation, an apparently overreaching plan to hijack a Pakistani frigate and attack American warships, came to naught after it was foiled by a guard.


Although the army’s battlefield success, splits in the TTP’s ranks and a tug-of-war between IS and al-Qaeda have reduced violence in Pakistan, hopes of this lasting are not high. Jihadist militancy has a record of evolving for the worse, and the especially loathsome tactics of Islamic State may inject a new radicalism into Pakistan’s already ferocious militant groups. And for as long as the army’s spy agency continues to regard some militants as helpful to its regional designs, then Pakistan is unlikely to be properly at peace.





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Indonesia’s new president: Taking the reins

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


Oh what joy it is to ride


EVERYONE loves a politician with a common touch—except that politician’s security detail. After Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, was inaugurated as Indonesia’s seventh president, he and his vice-president, Jusuf Kalla, rode through central Jakarta to the presidential palace in an open horse-drawn carriage, their wives following along behind. Tens of thousands of well-wishers lined the path, banners saluting “the people’s president”. As ever, he reached out to them. Only the security men in black suits failed to look elated.


More hard-bitten observers did not share the crowd’s optimism. They set the simple, almost innocent demeanour of this grass-roots politician against the ruthlessness of the old guard he beat. It is determined to fight hard to preserve its wealth and privilege—and parties sympathetic to his opponent in the presidential election, Prabowo Subianto, control the legislature. Such observers are writing Jokowi off as a decent man but a political naif.


Yet the demeanour masks canny political instincts. Since Jokowi’s victory in July, Mr Prabowo has attempted to frustrate him at every turn, starting by claiming spuriously that the election had been stolen. Leading up to the inauguration, Mr Prabowo, a former son-in-law of Suharto, the late dictator, along with Aburizal Bakrie, a tycoon who heads Suharto’s former party, threatened to boycott the ceremony. But Jowoki ran rings around them by making them look petty. They attended the inauguration after all, and when Jokowi mentioned Mr Prabowo by name, the former special-forces general snapped to attention and saluted his new commander-in-chief. The battles with the old guard are only beginning. But Jokowi intends to appeal to ordinary Indonesians if the parliament obstructs attempts to transform both the country’s corrupt, grasping politics and the lives of ordinary Indonesians. A common touch can pack a punch.


Jokowi promises to “move together to work, work and work.” He wants to offer free health care and 12 years of schooling to every Indonesian. More tourism across the archipelago can generate jobs. He says ports are in urgent need of improvement. And he thinks a little investment directed at 20m Indonesians dependent on small-scale fisheries would go a long way. Above all, he must cut the fuel subsidies that consume a fifth of the budget, redirecting the savings to education and the like. Falling oil prices give him the opportunity.


But first he needs a cabinet, and despite repeated assurances that one was imminent, as The Economist went to press its line-up had yet to be announced. Partly, the delay was because in the Javanese political way, nothing is brisk—even Suharto took forever over his cabinets. Partly, the new president has been trying to chop and change an unwieldy number of ministries: some want a new ministry for maritime affairs and port works, for instance.


But mainly, Jokowi has to balance a desire for a technocratic government in key areas such as finance and resources with the many demands for seats coming from his Indonesian Party of Democratic Struggle, the PDI-P. Its matriarch is Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia’s founder, and room will presumably be found for her daughter. Not all potential cabinet appointees are placemen or hacks. But the names of several have been cause for concern when brought to the anti-corruption commission, charged with vetting a new cabinet—another source of delay.





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Malaysia and Singapore: Milking it

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


A ROSY dusk settles on the Johor Strait, separating Singapore from Malaysia. A line of cars stretches along the causeway, waiting for Singapore’s border guards to search them for booze and cigarettes. The queues are not always like this, says a Malaysian in a shared taxi: “Sometimes they’re much worse”.


Some 60,000 vehicles use the causeway between Singapore and Johor Bahru, its scruffy Malaysian neighbour, each day. Lately, drivers are paying more for the privilege. Since August tit-for-tat toll rises have meant a fivefold increase in the price of a return journey by car. The tiff began when Malaysia, which still charges much less than Singapore, raised its toll in response to Singaporean plans to raise a tax on foreign vehicles. It is a distraction from a project supposed to bind the countries more closely.


Malaysia has poured money and effort into Iskandar, a special economic zone three times the size of Singapore that sprawls across the southern state of Johor. The government hopes to snag a little more of the magic dust that has made Singapore South-East Asia’s richest nation. Through corporate sweeteners and a hotch-potch of public projects, authorities want Iskandar’s population to increase from 1.3m in 2005 to 3m by 2025.


Rich Singaporeans, for their part, have been happy to have a new place to park their cash. Until recently, Iskandar’s cheap condominiums seemed like good bets when Singapore’s own property prices were shooting up. Singapore hopes factories can move to Johor, freeing up space and resources for higher-value businesses. Meanwhile, Malaysians commuting daily from Johor can still perform essential work in Singapore—in hotels and shops, for instance—without greatly straining public services.


The Iskandar plan started brightly, with some $40 billion of private money, according to local bigwigs. Legoland Malaysia, which opened in 2012, anchors a busy entertainment district; an outpost of Marlborough College, a posh British school, has helped launch a much-vaunted educational cluster. Though retaining the some of the air of a frontier town, Johor Bahru is scrubbing up.


Yet early optimism is fading. Housebuilding appears to have raced ahead of job creation, and a housing glut looms. Not all Johoreans are happy with the suspension of corporate-ownership rules that elsewhere favour the ethnic-Malay majority. A battering in last year’s general election has made it harder for the Barisan Nasional, Malaysia’s ruling coalition, to ignore their concerns. Singapore hints that foot-dragging is slowing down plans for a cross-strait rail link. Chaotic leadership is one explanation for Malaysia’s decision to push up its toll charges, says Greg Lopez at Murdoch University in Perth—which was bound to prompt Singapore to retaliate.


Malaysia has most to lose from the tit-for-tat. Road links with Singapore bring in roughly half the country’s foreign visitors, with Singaporeans coming for cheap shopping and fuel. Also, higher tolls hurt Malaysians more. Now lawmakers in Johor are threatening an additional levy just for drivers of Singaporean cars. At present the costs are manageable, says a cabbie approaching the causeway. “But what will happen next year?”





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Japanese politics: Sukyandaru

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com


Yuko Obuchi’s sun sinks


TO LOSE one minister may be counted a misfortune. To lose two on the same day makes the prime minister look careless. On October 20th Japan’s recently appointed trade and industry minister, Yuko Obuchi, and justice minister, Midori Matsushima, resigned from the cabinet following small infringements of political-funding rules. It is a blow to Shinzo Abe’s efforts to boost the standing of women in Japan. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is making hay, and other government ministers have had to deny wrongdoing. It adds up to the first biggish wobble for Mr Abe’s government since he returned to office in December 2012.


Perhaps the administration’s absence of money scandals until now is the surprising thing. Financial wrongdoing used to be a regular fixture of Japan’s political scene. It was only a couple of decades ago when politicians might be caught hiding gold bars and bundles of cash from bribes at home. More recently, in December 2009, when Yukio Hatoyama was the DPJ’s first prime minister, he was found to have included dead and false contributors on his list of campaign donors. Most of his money had actually come from his mum, heir to an industrial fortune.


The infractions committed by Ms Obuchi and by Ms Matsushima are trivial. The latter’s misstep was to hand out to her supporters thousands of paper fans with her image printed on them; they were worth roughly ¥80 (75 cents) each. That broke the law on giving valuable items to followers. Now, as political mementoes, they change hands online at around ¥10,000 apiece.


Ms Obuchi’s office helped pay for supporters from her constituency to make theatre trips to Tokyo. Japan’s rules on the permitted use of campaign money are at once strict and vague, but Ms Obuchi, who has often been mentioned as a future prime minister, was careless. She took over her parliamentary seat, at the age of 26, from her father, Keizo Obuchi, who suffered a stroke in 2000 while he was prime minister and died some weeks later. Political types say that so-called “hereditary” members in safe Diet seats—and there are many—often fail to ensure that their constituency headquarters are run properly.


The DPJ wants to uncover more scandals. Mr Abe’s new defence minister, Akinori Eto, had to amend his political-funds report because it recorded potentially improper donations. The farm minister, Koya Nishikawa, has been questioned over donations from a fraudulent agricultural firm. And the labour minister, Yasuhisa Shiozaki, has come under scrutiny for allegedly using his influence to secure permission for a nursing home in his constituency. All three reject the allegations. An Abe adviser warns that, in turn, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) may start digging into the finances of opposition figures.


Meanwhile, the prime minister’s cherished project of boosting the role of women in the economy is in trouble. In naming five women to his cabinet last month, Mr Abe made a splash: only one previous cabinet had as many. Yet he picked unwisely. Now, says Yukiko Tokai, a lobbyist, Japanese companies can more easily resist bringing women into the boardroom. Only 2% of directors are women.


As for the three women left in the cabinet, at least two are vulnerable to attack because of their connections to Japan’s far right. Last month the office of Sanae Takaichi, the minister for internal affairs, struggled to explain why she appeared in photographs alongside a neo-Nazi. Soon afterwards another photograph emerged, of Eriko Yamatani, the minister for public safety and the overseer of the country’s police, posing with members of Zaitokukai, an ultra-right-wing group which leads rallies against ethnic-Korean residents.


To replace the fallen ministers, Mr Abe has appointed two experienced politicians. The new trade and industry minister is Yoichi Miyazawa. On his third day in office he faced questions over political funds spent by his local support group in a fetish-themed bar in Hiroshima; he did not go himself, he said. The new justice minister is a woman, Yoko Kamikawa, who was previously minister for gender equality. The government will now try to move on to weightier subjects, such as a coming decision on whether to raise further a tax on consumption aimed at shoring up the public finances. If attention and energies are consumed by further scandal, such tasks will only grow harder.





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Talk a mile a minute

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

If someone talks a mile a minute, they speak very fast.




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Robert Bringle

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"Envy can be a positive motivator. Let it inspire you to work harder for what you want."

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Martin Luther King Jr.

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"All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."

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Latin Proverb

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"It is the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not to skin it."

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Woodrow Wilson

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"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand."

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Wednesday 22 October 2014

Oprah Winfrey

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"I believe that one of life's greatest risks is never daring to risk."

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Simone de Beauvoir

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"It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living."

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Al Batt

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"The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it."

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Benjamin Franklin

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"Wish not so much to live long as to live well."

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Tuesday 21 October 2014

Too clever by half

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If someone is too clever by half, they are very confident and smug about how clever they are in a way that annoys peopl.




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Sholem Asch

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"Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence."

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Ethel Barrett

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"We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do."

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Bob Newhart

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"All I can say about life is, Oh God, enjoy it!"

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Epicurus

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"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

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Monday 20 October 2014

Jennifer Hudson

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"You have to want weight-loss success so badly that no mountain, river, or ocean could keep you from reaching your goals. If you have that drive, passion, and commitment, there is no way you won�t get there."

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John Green

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"If the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it."

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Mother Teresa

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"God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try."

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Chinese Proverb

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"Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve."

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General Douglas MacArthur

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"There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity."

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Sunday 19 October 2014

Chuck Palahniuk

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"The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend."

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Albert Schweitzer

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"Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity."

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Horace Mann

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"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

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Phyllis Mcginley

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"A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away."

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Saturday 18 October 2014

Dust off

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Prepare something for use that hasn't been used for a while

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Dust down

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Prepare something for use that hasn't been used for a while

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Ellen DeGeneres

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"You have to have funny faces and words, you can't just have words. It is a powerful thing, and I think that's why it's hard for people to imagine that women can do that, be that powerful."

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Olga Ilyin

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"It had only been my repeated experience that when you said to life calmly and firmly... 'I trust you; do what you must,' life had an uncanny way of responding to your need."

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Joseph Chilton Pearce

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"We must accept that this creative pulse within us is God's creative pulse itself."

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Friday 17 October 2014

Barack Obama

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you. I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause."

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Florida Scott-Maxwell

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"You need only claim the event of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality."

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Alice Roosevelt Longworth

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"I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches."

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Malcolm X

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"Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American."

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Thursday 16 October 2014

Banyan: Joko, we’re not in Solo any more

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



LATE last year Joko Widodo, then governor of Jakarta, Indonesia’s vast and messy capital, took Banyan with him on one of his daily blusukan or “spot-check” inspections of the city—to Benhil, a dilapidated market. We were joined by a flock of local press and hangers-on, but only three security guards. On October 13th Jokowi, as he is known, took another visitor, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, to another Jakarta market, Tanah Abang. Not only does Jokowi, now president-elect, keep better company these days; he is also trailed by a security detail numbering dozens, including snipers. At Benhil, he chatted at length with stallholders in his direct, unassuming way; at Tanah Abang he and Mr Zuckerberg lasted barely quarter of an hour.


That it will be harder to drop in on ordinary Indonesians and chew the fat seems a small price to pay for the highest office in the land. But Jokowi, who will be inaugurated as Indonesia’s seventh president on October 20th, says he intends to govern the country as he did Jakarta, and before that Solo, the town in central Java where he was first elected mayor in 2005. That is, he wants to retain his contacts with the people who elected him, and use his personal popularity to sweep political obstacles aside.


Adapting this approach to leading a country of 250m people, however, will not be easy. Foreign policy, for example, does not lend itself to blusukan, and in his first month in office Jokowi will be plunged into a whirlwind of summitry in China, Myanmar and Australia (which he may duck out of). And even at home, political troubles have been piling up since he won the presidential election in July. Jokowi, the little man, the first from outside the metropolitan elite to lead the country, takes office looking less like the vanguard of a triumphant reformist army and more like the leader of a beleaguered opposition.


The most obvious problem is that he lacks a parliamentary majority. A “red-and-white” coalition of parties marshalled by Prabowo Subianto, the presidential candidate whom Jokowi defeated in July, controls the new parliament convened on October 1st as it did the outgoing one. Jokowi has disdained the horse-trading that presidents use to buy parliamentary support, typically by offering cabinet posts for votes. Well, almost: he has retreated from his hope of a cabinet stacked with independent technocrats. But he still intends to give “professionals” fully 18 seats out of 34. The remaining 16 are barely enough to satisfy his own Indonesian Party of Democratic Struggle, the PDI-P, and its coalition, let alone to win over the opposition. The cabinet will be scrutinised for evidence of whether Jokowi really is his own man.


The red-and-whites have already done mischief. They have overturned the practice of giving the parliamentary speakership to the largest party—the PDI-P in this case—in favour of a vote, which the red-and-whites won. More egregiously, they passed a bill to abolish direct elections for hundreds of local posts (such as mayor of Solo and governor of Jakarta) and to have the jobs filled by indirect elections in local legislatures instead. Since the red-and-whites control 31 out of 34 provinces, and Indonesian government is highly decentralised, this would enormously complicate the president’s job. It would also represent the old establishment’s revenge on reforms that allowed outsiders such as Jokowi to rise to the top. It might make him the first and last president from outside the elite. His outgoing predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, overturned the new law by presidential decree. But his veto still has to be ratified by a vote in the new parliament.


It is not just the opposition Jokowi has to worry about. He also has to keep the PDI-P happy, which means deferring to its leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of the country’s founder and a former president herself. That complicates, for example, efforts to patch things up with Mr Yudhoyono and his Democrat Party. She has never forgiven him for replacing her as president. Jokowi’s vice-president, Jusuf Kalla, who returns to a job he held under Mr Yudhoyono in 2004-09, is a veteran political operator. But having an influential and capable deputy may well turn out to be a mixed blessing.


The third big difficulty is that Jokowi assumes the presidency at a time when the economy is slowing, the outlook is clouded and it appears harder than it has for some time to fulfil his long-held mission. He wants to show that democracy is capable of working as an economic proposition in producing leaders who can improve the lives of the poor Indonesians who elected them. To have the money to do that, he needs to cut the fuel subsidies that consume about one-fifth of the government’s budget. Despite the recent fall in the oil price, this still means sharply higher fuel costs for consumers, and hence demands for higher than usual settlements in the minimum-wage negotiations due in the coming months. Parliamentary weakness will make it harder for Jokowi to resist populist pressures.


Power to the people


Jokowi’s enduring popularity, however, remains a great advantage. His strategy is to use it to embarrass the politicians into doing his bidding, and to intervene directly to remove blockages to progress—in the landownership wrangles, for example, that can delay the big infrastructure projects Indonesia so badly needs. And Jokowi did not become the first Indonesian since independence in 1945 to rise from nowhere to the presidency without also acquiring some skills in close-quarter political fighting. Both within the PDI-P and in dealing with the parliamentary majority, he will need them. The red-and-whites have promised to use their power “to investigate and to obstruct”. But under the Indonesian constitution, the executive branch also has considerable power. The red-and-whites’ hope, for example, to neuter the anti-corruption commission, the KPK, will be impossible to realise so long as Jokowi stands firm. He may lead the opposition, but he does so with the power of the presidency.





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Remaking India: Yes, prime minister

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



THOSE who hoped that Narendra Modi would prove a busy liberal reformer as prime minister have so far been disappointed. But that, says Gurcharan Das, a writer and former businessman who now advises the government, is to judge the man by the wrong measure. Rather than being mad about markets, he says, Mr Modi is a strong-willed moderniser, a man who thinks a capable bureaucracy can fix much of what ails India. It is the lesson of Mr Modi’s running of Gujarat, where he relied heavily on his civil service and got public-sector firms to flourish.


But the bureaucracy is very far from capable. Lant Pritchett of Harvard University has described India as a “flailing state” thanks to its rotten administration. Bureaucrats are incompetent and corrupt when they are not simply absent. India struggles to implement even well-found policy. India’s head, in Mr Pritchett’s metaphor, is not reliably connected to its limbs.


Mr Modi appears bent on changing that. In office for only five months, he spends a lot of time with civil servants, preferring to meet them instead of ministers. He and they have been looking for fixes, such as shifting the paperwork needed to open a business onto the internet, or freeing firms from petty inspections. Meetings are said to have a corporate air, with Mr Modi as chief executive. Dates for specific targets—the “deliverables” of corporate jargon—are set. Resistant bureaucrats are transferred. On October 16th Mr Modi announced a big reshuffle, with a liberal reformer from Rajasthan becoming the finance ministry’s top bureaucrat.


Mr Modi presses his civil servants to think big. In August he called for 75m more Indian households to have bank accounts by February. The scheme, called Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, involves state banks and could prove transformational if households get in the habit of using their accounts rather than keeping cash under the mattress. Officials say over 55m new accounts have been opened and nearly $700m deposited. The aim is to increase access to banking in a country where two-fifths of households lack it.


An obvious opportunity is for such new accounts to serve as conduits for the government to distribute welfare as cash rather than, as at present, to supply the needy with wasteful subsidies in kind. It helps that Mr Modi, though once a sceptic, is now an enthusiast for India’s most modernising effort by a mile: Aadhaar, the unique-identity scheme, in which biometric data are to be recorded to create a digital identity for every Indian. This can now be used, say, to open a bank account or get a passport. Some 690m people are enrolled in Aadhaar, the world’s biggest biometric database. The target for next year is 1 billion out of India’s 1.2 billion citizens.


The prime minister’s chief civil servant for e-government, Ram Sewak Sharma, spells out what might follow once Indians have digital identities. Last year in Jharkhand state in eastern India Mr Sharma installed a system to track the daily attendance of nearly 14,000 officials. Each day at the office they log in and out by scanning a fingerprint or iris. The data is then published live, online. Taxpayers can even see which civil servants are at work or not.


Mr Modi has pressed Mr Sharma to do the same for the central government in Delhi. This month Mr Sharma rolled out a website, attendance.gov.in, for 149 departments and 51,000 national civil servants. The effect may seem Big Brotherish, but truancy in the civil service is appalling, and such monitoring is bound to boost attendance and productivity. In time every hospital, state school, court and government office could have the tracking system.


Both Mr Sharma and his boss think technology can do a lot to lessen rampant corruption. Much of it is in programmes for subsidised food and fuel, which cost the government $41 billion a year. Digital monitoring would certainly bring efficiencies. Again in a test in Jharkhand, ration shops and individuals who get cheap wheat, rice, salt and oil are now being monitored using Aadhaar identities. For example, each time somebody picks up a 35-kilo ration of rice, they digitally scan their fingerprint and record the transaction. Better management of stock and reduced theft should lower “leakage” rates that touch 50% in places.


Measurably better performance is what excites Mr Modi. He says a more welcoming bureaucracy—even, if you can imagine it, in visa offices—will encourage investors. The prime minister wants India to be among the top 50 in the World Bank’s “ease of doing business” index. It is currently 134th. (The other obstacles, however, remain formidable and include unreformed courts and land laws.)


Next, a commission will report on restructuring the huge and lumbering Indian Railways. Another will look at how to modernise the Food Corporation, which sits on much of Indian agriculture. Reformers still call for more space for private actors, which would entail a host of structural reforms and liberalisations. But Mr Modi is more likely first to order state-run bodies to be run better. Similarly, he is reluctant to sell Air India, the national carrier, hoping to turn it around under state control.


Can the modernising Mr Modi become a more liberal economic figure, too? If the bureaucracy works better, implementing market reforms later may prove easier. Perhaps, too, the prime minister will prove to be bolder now that state elections in Maharashtra and Haryana are over, with the results due on October 19th. After long years in opposition in those states, Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party looks set to win them. It currently controls only five of 30 state governments—not enough for the ambitions of a moderniser or a reformer.





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Illiberalism in South Korea: Insult to injury

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



NOT since 1993 had a Japanese journalist been investigated in South Korea. But this time it was not classified military intelligence that was allegedly divulged—but hearsay. On October 8th prosecutors charged Tatsuya Kato, until recently the Seoul bureau chief of the Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese right-wing daily, with defaming the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye. Mr Kato is currently banned from leaving the country.


The source of the upset is an article which the Sankei published online on August 3rd. It speculated on the whereabouts of Ms Park on the day a ferry sank in April, claiming 304 lives. Many blame the deaths on a botched rescue operation. Rumours have spread that at the time Ms Park was out of contact for seven hours. Citing the Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s biggest daily, that mentioned but rather ridiculed the gossip, as well as reports circulating among stockbroking houses, Mr Kato suggested she was rumoured to have vanished for a tryst with a divorced man. The president’s office staunchly denies this.


Some Japanese say the case has targeted Mr Kato because the Sankei is the standard-bearer of Japan’s irksome historical revisionism. Ithas for years campaigned to reverse an apology from Japan over the forcing of Korean women into wartime brothels. Dokdo Saranghoe, a South Korean civic group that defends islets claimed by Japan as South Korean territory, was one of three groups that lodged a complaint about the article on grounds of libel.


The affair will do little to help strained bilateral relations. Few South Koreans have any sympathy for the Sankei, but that is precisely why Mr Kato is “the perfect scapegoat”, says Oh Chang-ik of Citizens’ Solidarity for Human Rights, a liberal lobby in South Korea. He says the case is an attempt to cow South Korea’s domestic press. Prosecutors have already searched the home of a reporter at NewsPro, a South Korean outlet that translates foreign news, including articles from the Sankei.


Defamation lawsuits have been used before by the country’s presidents, conservative and liberal. In 2011 a host on a South Korean podcast that lampooned the then president, Lee Myung-bak, was sentenced to a year in prison for spreading false rumours about him, alleging past involvement in stock fraud. In 2003, when he was president, the late Roh Moo-hyun filed a lawsuit against four South Korean dailies for linking him to dodgy property deals.


To some, this is heavy-handed. South Korea enjoys a thriving civil society and competitive elections. Yet its libel law is strict. Truth is no defence against spending time in prison (punitive damages are unknown in the South Korean system). Instead, the public interest needs to be proved. Both the Sankei and Reporters without Borders, a Paris-based watchdog, say Mr Kato’s article met that standard.


Last month Ms Park said insulting the leader had “crossed the line”. Prosecutors swiftly set up a team to monitor the web for falsehoods or defamations. For Cho Guk of Seoul National University this is a depressing return to tendencies associated with the dictatorship of Ms Park’s late father, Park Chung-hee, a military strongman. Two crimes were notorious then: criticising the leader and spreading false rumours.


The crackdown on rumours has prompted some 1m South Koreans to ditch local chat apps within a week—including KakaoTalk, the country’s biggest—for Telegram, an encrypted service based in Berlin. This week KakaoTalk said it would stop honouring warrants from prosecutors (who have denied they monitor private conversations). Reporters without Borders ranks the level of surveillance of South Korea’s internet as similar to that of Egypt and Thailand. Last year censors deleted or blocked over 80,000 web pages, for pornography or gambling, but North Korean sites, along with those of sympathisers of North Korea, are also blocked under the National Security Law, a cold-war legacy. That law was once abused to silence critics, and it continues to rankle. But now the defamation law has become the government’s tool of choice, says Mr Cho.


Last year the UN’s free-speech envoy said many South Korean suits are filed to punish statements that are true or in the public interest. As the Sankei case rumbles on, South Korean media with reservations about Mr Kato’s harsh treatment may censor themselves. In private, journalists admit that writing anything positive about Japan is almost impossible in the current climate.


President Park says that by insulting her, the likes of Mr Kato insult her nation. Her nation might wonder whether the greater insult was to its hard-won democracy.





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Japan’s economy: Consumptive

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WAS the decision to raise a key tax this year a big mistake? For years, the political consensus has been that Japan’s consumption (ie, value-added) tax needs to go up in order to control a ballooning public debt. In April the government of Shinzo Abe carried out a decision made by the previous government and lifted the tax from 5% to 8%. That is still low by developed-country standards, but it seems to have inflicted more pain than most predicted. Reports from Tokyo’s brothel districts to the country’s rural regions suggest the move has hurt an already limp recovery.


The last time politicians dared raise the consumption tax was back in 1997. It helped push a recovering economy back into recession. Then, however, the move coincided with a financial storm in Asia and a bad-loans crisis at home. This time, politicians seemed surer that people would soon head back to the shops. Yet the fall in household demand has proven even sharper than in 1997 (see chart), and a recession is again on the cards. The economy shrank by an annualised 7.1% in the second quarter of the year. Economists are growing nervous about Japan’s third-quarter GDP, to be published on November 17th.


To add to concerns, the government intends to raise the consumption tax again, to 10% in October 2015. Towards the end of this year, Mr Abe must decide whether to go ahead with that plan or postpone it on the grounds of a weak economy. The dilemma has set off a battle inside his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and among his close advisers. On the one hand, opponents of tax rises say their dire predictions have come true. And many in the LDP worry that another unpopular increase could spell trouble in local elections in the spring. On the other hand, for a country with gross public borrowing at close to 240% of GDP, fiscal rectitude is paramount. The finance ministry has long advocated a higher consumption tax.


Probably, the prime minister will stop short of defying the powerful ministry. A loss of political nerve might raise doubts about Mr Abe’s commitment to his broader economic programme, which is intended to impress with its boldness. Further, says Robert Feldman of Morgan Stanley in Tokyo, it should be easier to take steps to guard against an economic slump than to counter the risk of a bond-market crisis.


Politicians arguing against a second tax rise will not be left empty-handed should the finance ministry get its way. In parallel with the April increase, the government spent an extra ¥5.5 trillion ($51.4 billion) in a bid to offset its effects. That spending, mostly on public works, was not wholly successful. A shortage of workers in the construction industry meant delays to projects and to money reaching people’s pockets. Next time, then, the government maybe obliged to spend more. The Bank of Japan may also come under pressure to embark on a second round of unconventional monetary policy in the form of quantitative easing.


Nearly seven-tenths of those surveyed oppose another rise in the consumption tax. Women, many of whom still hold the purse strings in Japan, are especially against. (Ordinary people also grumble that Mr Abe has promised businesses cuts in their taxation.) The government is now thinking about marking basic foodstuffs and other necessities for a lower rate of consumption tax. But the tax will continue to be the government’s big headache.





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Correction

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