Sheryl Crow

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"It's not having what you want/ It's wanting what you've got."

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Donald H. Rumsfeld

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"If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much."

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved."

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Theodor Herzl

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"[The body is] a marvelous machine...a chemical laboratory, a power-house. Every movement, voluntary or involuntary, full of secrets and marvels!"

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Jennifer Hudson

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"When someone wants to lose weight, they will do whatever it takes. They can�t do it for anyone else but themselves. It has to be for them alone. Without that understanding, they will fail."

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Rick Pitino

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"When you build bridges you can keep crossing them."

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Calvin Coolidge

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"I have never been hurt by anything I didn't say."

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Dwight D. Eisenhower

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"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."

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Banyan: The centenary delusion

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

ANNIVERSARIES may be no more than chronological accidents, but they can be hard to ignore. That 2014 marked 100 years since the start of the first world war provoked sombre commemorations in the countries that lost millions of lives in the conflict. It also caused some to compare its causes to worrisome strategic tensions today, especially in Asia. The parallels between Europe in the early years of the 20th century and Asia a hundred years on were too many to ignore; haunting enough, indeed, to prompt worries about the possibility of another global confrontation. The turn of the year will not end this vogue for historical analogy, though attention may turn as much to the differences as to the similarities. As Joseph Nye, a political scientist at Harvard University has pointed out, “war is never inevitable, though the belief that it is can become one of its causes.”

Of statesmen who have made the comparison in their public pronouncements, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, probably carried the most weight. Talking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2014, Mr Abe said that China and Japan were in “a similar situation” to that of Germany and Britain a century ago. Since his country was (and is) engaged in a tense stand-off with China over the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands, this was an alarming remark. It suggested that a minor territorial squabble in 2014, like an act of terrorism in the Balkans in 1914, might spark a global conflict. America, after all, has repeatedly affirmed that its security guarantee to Japan extends to these uninhabited islets.

In fact, the point Mr Abe seemed to be making was not so much about growing military rivalry in the region. Rather he was proposing a commonly made salutary argument: that those who think war is impossible between China and Japan because they are so intertwined economically overlook the way a previous wave of fast-growing trade and globalisation ended. Before the first world war, Britain and Germany were each other’s biggest single trading partners.

Mr Abe, however, must also have had in mind the comparison often drawn between the emergence of China as a global power in this century and the rise of Germany (and indeed Japan) a century ago. Just as Germany bridled at Britain’s global pre-eminence, so China no longer seems content to follow the rules of a world order set and enforced, in its view, by America. Like Germany, it knows it must bide its time as it is militarily no match for the superpower. Deng Xiaoping’s doctrine of strategic patience echoed that of Wilhelmine Germany. In her enthralling account of the causes of the first world war (“The War that Ended Peace”) Margaret MacMillan quotes a German chancellor: “in view of our naval inferiority, we must operate so carefully, like the caterpillar before it has grown into a butterfly.”

Germany then, like China now, saw itself as in danger of strategic encirclement by countries resentful of its economic and military prowess. What it portrayed as a defensive naval build-up appeared aggressive to other countries, and it was suspicious of its international rivals. Similarly, Americans think of their strategic “pivot” to Asia as stability-enhancing reassurance to their allies in the face of growing Chinese power—nothing more than a shoring-up of America’s existing position in the region. But it smacks to China of hostile “containment”. The climate of strategic uncertainty is manifest across Asia in increased defence outlays. Military spending is rising fast and now exceeds Europe’s. But the region suffers the sort of complacency many in Europe felt in 1914: large-scale war is simply unthinkable.

The early 1900s, like now, were a period of fast-expanding communications and mass media. Public opinion began to play an important part in forming foreign policy in many European countries. Politicians would try to manipulate it to score diplomatic points; and then find themselves hostage to it. In the smartphone era, those pressures have increased enormously.

Today has no equivalent of the rival system of alliances that led so swiftly to escalation in July 1914, as countries marched towards the edge of the cliff like “The Sleepwalkers” (the title of another fine book about the period, by Christopher Clark). But America now, in backing Japan and the Philippines over their disputes with China, is facing a dilemma that confronted big powers then: stand by smaller allies and risk encouraging reckless behaviour, as Russia felt it had to in Serbia; or abandon them and lose credibility and prestige? Nor, these days, are armies afforded as much power as they once had over essentially political decisions. But it is still true that military strategies have their own momentum and that in war, as in business, there can be a first-mover advantage; it may be better to take the offensive.

Never say never again

For all these similarities, two striking differences distinguish the present day from the pre-war era. The first is the knowledge of just how destructive and catastrophic war can be. That is a consequence in part of the nightmares the world endured in two world wars. In 1914 few imagined how long war would last, how much property it would destroy and how many millions would die. It is also a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction. The cold war may be over but the world knows it has the capacity to annihilate itself many times over.

Second, in 1914, although peace movements were active, many thought a big war, after several near-misses over crises in the Balkans and Morocco, was inevitable. Some even welcomed this. Ms MacMillan quotes Hilaire Belloc, a jolly British poet: “How I long for the Great War! It will sweep Europe like a broom.” In Asia today, however, nobody seriously argues the benefits of large-scale conflict. That is partly why so many are sanguine about the chances of China’s rise being a peaceful one. But, to adapt Mr Nye, peace is not inevitable, and if historical analogies serve any purpose, it is to remind us how fragile it can be.

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Myanmar’s Kachins: Eager mindsets

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

IN THE town of Mai Maw, near Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state in northern Myanmar, a local Baptist minister enthuses about his plans. Most importantly, says La La Hkawng Dau, known to all simply as Jack, he wants to reopen a long-closed school. Given that most of Myanmar’s vastly overcrowded schools have fallen into utter disrepair after decades of neglect, the authorities might be expected to welcome this. In Myanmar, however, it would be, as Jack acknowledges, “illegal”, or even subversive.

Myanmar’s excellent mission schools, such as Jack’s in Mai Maw, were all closed by the country’s military rulers soon after they seized power in 1962. Government-run schools opened in their stead, but their purpose was more political than educational. Thus in Kachin state, apart from in the few areas under the control of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the armed wing of the Kachins’ main political organisation, these schools are used by the majority ethnic-Burman government to exercise ideological control over the minority Kachins, with whom they have been at war, on and off, since 1961. All classes are in Burmese rather than the local Kachin language, history chronicles only the triumphs of ancient Burmese kings, and the sole religion that the overwhelmingly Christian children study is Buddhism. Jack wants to reverse this campaign of “Burmanisation”. At his school, he insists, Kachin children will be taught in Kachin, learn English and study Christianity.

Jack says that if he does not act now, “our future Kachin generations will be lost”. Despite the risk of running foul of the law, he now thinks he can open his school because “we feel a bit freer”. In many parts of the country people are taking advantage of a new tolerance that has been ushered in by the government of President Thein Sein since he took office in 2011. The momentum of reform has slowed now, much to the frustration of Myanmar’s most prominent opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and many Burmese. Indeed, some argue that the reform programme is stuck altogether. But enough has already been accomplished, it seems, to allow people at a local level, for the first time in generations, to imagine and plan new lives. And they are testing the limits of what is possible with less fear than before.

These are the baby steps of freedom, lamentably small for those who were expecting the advance to be much quicker, but still significant for those who are taking them. Jack, for instance, has been encouraged by the fact that a few Baptist schools have already reopened for the Kachin, and so far there have been no reprisals.

Such progress is striking in Kachin state; the KIA is the only large ethnic militia not to have signed a ceasefire with Mr Thein Sein’s government. Fighting, often very bloody, broke out again between the two sides in 2011, after a 17-year truce, and continues. In November the Burmese army shelled (unintentionally, it says) a KIA training school near Laiza, a small KIA-run enclave on the border with China, killing 23 cadets—the single deadliest attack in three years. Kachin leaders are gloomy about the prospects of a new ceasefire.

Yet, like Jack in Mai Maw, in Myitkyina itself there are many who are building a new Kachin culture and new Kachin businesses. In the city centre, a shop has recently opened selling T-shirts, mugs and key-rings emblazoned with the distinctive crossed-swords symbol of the KIA. Any public display of these was unthinkable only a year or so ago, inviting immediate retribution from the Burmese army.

Down by the Irrawaddy River, the Humanity Institute (HI) opened two years ago. Much as Jack hopes to save Kachin children from the clutches of the government, so the HI hopes to do the same for Kachin college students. Myitkyina University, which is run by the local government, is abysmal. HI, therefore, has been set up by Kachin businessmen and teachers to run what they hope will eventually become a new, separate university. Like almost everything else in Myanmar, HI will need a government licence in order to function. Nbyen Dan Hkung Awng, the director, applied for one in June 2012, but has heard nothing since. In the meantime, he says, he is “just going ahead anyway”.

Next door to HI lives one of the leading lights of the Kachin, Ja Seng Hkawn Maran. She and other Kachin businesspeople have formed a new company, the Kachin State Public Company Limited, to run utilities and other such businesses for the Kachin that had previously been ignored by the Burman-run state government. The company has revived two old hydroelectric plants, for instance, to alleviate Myitkyina’s shortage of electricity. This has been done in co-operation with the Burman-dominated state government—the enemy, so to speak. It is a novel private-public partnership.

Another project has been to revive the decrepit railway service from Mandalay to Myitkyina, previously the lifeline of Kachin state linking it to the rest of Myanmar. Under the Burman-run company that had previously managed it, says Ja Seng Hkawn Maran, the railway had been corrupt, slow, and unreliable. So her firm acquired a three-year contract from the state government to run an improved line that would bring tourists and restore pride in an obvious symbol of Kachin state. As the new brochure promises: “Services will be given by employees with eager mindsets different from [the] previous era”.

She has already trained 60 staff with fresh, eager mindsets for the new railway. But a month after agreeing to cede control, the state government has yet to do it. “So they are still not doing what they say,” Ja Seng Hkwan Maran complains (it is the same story with the power plants). “We are pushing at the door whenever we have a chance,” she says—although she admits she is unsure whether the Burman authorities really want to give the Kachins more autonomy. That question will test the sincerity of Mr Thein Sein’s reforms.

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Indonesia’s marine policy: Fishing trips

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

WITH over 13,000 islands, Indonesia is by far the world’s biggest archipelagic state, a nation shaped as much by the seas around it as by its land. Yet the new president, Joko Widodo, believes Indonesians have “for too long turned our backs” on the water. In his inaugural speech in October the head of state, widely known as Jokowi, expressed a desire to “be as great in the oceans as our ancestors were in the past”. A few weeks later, at an Asian summit in Myanmar, he went further. Indonesia should revive its maritime culture, develop its fishing industry, improve maritime links through things like better ferries and ports, and crack down on illegal fishing and other violations of sovereignty. Indeed, he said, Indonesia should be nothing less than a “world maritime axis” between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

For all Jokowi’s related talk of boosting naval and coastguard strength (Indonesia’s naval budget is smaller than Singapore’s), his new maritime policy is aimed squarely at increasing prosperity at home. Tens of millions of Indonesians live from fishing. Meanwhile, the country’s farthest-flung islands, particularly those in the east, suffer from the tyranny of distance; improving maritime linkages would cut high transport costs and boost investment and productivity, particularly in manufacturing.

The fisheries minister, Susi Pudjiastuti, complains that though Indonesia’s waters are much more extensive than Thailand’s, the country exports far fewer fish. To get a sense of why that is, consider the town of Muncar on the eastern edge of Java, separated by a narrow strait from Bali. It is home to one of Indonesia’s biggest fisheries. Muncar offers easy access to rich fishing grounds in both the Indian Ocean and the Java Sea. Nearly everyone in the town and in the surrounding villages lives off the sea. Some catch fish, others sell equipment and services to fishermen, and still others salt, can and process what the boats bring home. It is a little working fishery of the sort that has all but vanished from the developed world: small decorated wooden boats crowd the harbour; skippers and crew sit by dock repairing nets; and over the town hangs the eye-watering stench of rotted fish—cat heaven.

Small-scale fishermen like those in Muncar bring in the vast majority of Indonesia’s catch, but the cost of this charm is huge inefficiency. Few vessels have blast freezers, or have only small ones. Because the catch must be brought back to shore quickly, fishermen make frequent short trips rather than longer journeys which are more lucrative. Muncar port also lacks adequate cold-storage facilities, which means the catch spoils if it is not sold quickly. Many of the processors are what Abidin, who runs Muncar’s fish market, calls “home industries”: fishermen’s wives salting their husband’s catch, for instance.

Meanwhile, as small Indonesian vessels work inshore, well-funded foreign pirate fleets, often sailing under flags of convenience, plunder Indonesian fisheries further offshore. Precise data on illegal fishing is hard to come by, but some put the annual cost to Indonesia at $3 billion a year. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal Jokowi claimed that nine-tenths of 5,400 fishing boats in Indonesia’s waters each day are illegal. On December 5th a Vietnamese fishing boat illegally trawling in Indonesian waters was seized by the Indonesian navy off the Riau islands; after its crew were taken off, it was scuttled. On December 28th the navy blew up two Thai boats in the same area. Ms Susi says that the same fate may await 22 Chinese fishing vessels seized in early December. Jokowi says that the ship-sinking sends “a simple yet brief message” that Indonesia means business when it comes to illegal fishing.

But sending messages may prove the easy part. Other aspects will be harder and more costly. Corruption is rampant in Indonesia’s port and customs systems, and cannot be stamped out unless officials are paid more. Upgrading port infrastructure will also be expensive. Ms Susi says the administration plans to build 200 new small and medium-sized harbours and to upgrade many more. Jokowi has been wooing foreigners to invest in maritime infrastructure. He has little to show so far. But he is right that the sea road is a long-neglected path to his country’s prosperity.

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Elections in Sri Lanka: Down to the wire

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

THE plan seemed such a simple one. Mahinda Rajapaksa called an election in November expecting to breeze past a shambolic, divided opposition and take an unprecedented third term as Sri Lanka’s president. The poll, on January 8th, would be two years earlier than necessary. It would also be the first after a constitutional amendment in 2010 that abolished a two-term limit for presidents. Everything had appeared set for Mr Rajapaksa to remain in power.

Now his prospects look far less certain. The campaign has been marked by a series of defections by former allies who call him authoritarian and nepotistic (among relatives in important political jobs are a brother, Basil, who is in charge of running the economy; another brother, Gotabaya, who is defence secretary and a third, Chamal, who is parliamentary Speaker). Most striking was the exit of Maithripala Sirisena. He was both health minister in Mr Rajapaksa’s cabinet and general secretary of his Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). On November 21st he became the main opposition candidate. The president complains bitterly that Mr Sirisena dined with him only the night before.

Mr Sirisena, at 63, is six years younger than the president and has spent four decades in politics. In a country where a spell in jail is often a badge of pride, he can also point to 18 months behind bars (beating Mr Rajapaksa’s stint of three months). He appeals especially to rural voters: he calls himself a farmer, speaks only Sinhala and has said he would govern from the agricultural heartland of Polonnaruwa.

He is thus popular within the Sinhala Buddhist majority that was once solidly behind Mr Rajapaksa. Mr Sirisena promises sweeping changes within 100 days, including constitutional amendments; the end of corruption; energy security; even a “moral society” without drugs, liquor or cigarettes. He can point to support from prominent political figures, including a general who was defeated by Mr Rajapaksa in the last election in 2010. Mr Sirisena is backed by nearly 40 political parties and groups, notably the main opposition United National Party and some from the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance, of which the SLFP is a member. Of the alliance’s 161 parliamentarians, 23 have defected to his side. If others are included who have switched allegiances at provincial and local levels, the defection rate in this campaign has been among the highest seen in any election in Sri Lanka.

For Mr Rajapaksa, a heavy blow was the departure from the alliance of the Jathika Hela Urumaya, or National Heritage Party, which counts many saffron-robed Buddhist monks among its Sinhala nationalist members. On December 28th the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress also defected, saying Sri Lanka needed to be better governed. The Tamil National Alliance, an opposition group that is normally at odds with the Sinhala majority, says everyone should vote for Mr Sirisena. It accuses Mr Rajapaksa’s government of having been “particularly harmful to the well-being of the Tamil-speaking peoples of Sri Lanka”.

Mr Rajapaksa thus looks squeezed. Muslims and Tamils together make up nearly a quarter of the 21m-strong population. Muslims are furious at the Bodu Bala Sena, or “Buddhist Power Force”, which is avowedly anti-Muslim and supports the president’s re-election.

The president’s campaign promises include universal housing, development, industrial growth and jobs. He vows to defeat drug and other gangs. He also says he will not let anyone who fought the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a rebel organisation that was crushed in a military campaign by his government in 2009, “answer to any international judiciary or tribunal”. His ending of a long civil war that year, by defeating the Tigers, is still his strongest electoral asset; he has been flogging it heavily to everyone but the Tamil northerners (they are told instead to be grateful for better roads and railways). To stir nationalist support, he invokes conspiracy theories. Supposedly Mr Sirisena’s campaign is backed by the West who want to replace a strong leader with a “spineless puppet”, though no proof of Western meddling is ever offered.

Mr Sirisena’s rallies draw huge crowds—as do the president’s, even if most of Mr Rajapaksa’s supporters are ferried to them on public buses. With his frequent use of state-run media and official vehicles to help his campaign, Mr Rajapaksa looks increasingly jittery. His eldest son, Namal Rajapaksa, even invited Bollywood actors to add glitz to the re-election bid. All the signs are that this will be the closest presidential race yet.

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Air safety: Pressing on

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

ON DECEMBER 30th Indonesian officials said they had discovered debris and bodies from AirAsia flight QZ8501, which had vanished two days previously, floating in shallow seas near the south-west coast of Borneo. The airliner lost contact with air-traffic controllers while passing through rough weather on a short journey between the Indonesian city of Surabaya and Changi airport in Singapore. The plane was carrying 162 people, most of them Indonesians. As The Economist went to press, no survivors had been found.

The crash, most probably an accident, comes at the end of a particularly tragic year in South-East Asia’s aviation history. Search parties have not yet found the remains of Malaysia Airlines’ flight MH370, which plunged into the Indian Ocean nine months ago killing all 239 people on board. In September pro-Russian rebels shot down another Malaysia Airlines plane, MH17, over Ukraine, killing another 298.

These earlier calamities nibbled at South-East Asia’s popularity among tourists, especially among sightseers from China. But they have done little to dampen booming demand for air travel among South-East Asians themselves. The region is one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets. Its 50-odd carriers are awaiting delivery of 1,600 new planes, about the same number as are in their fleets today. Boeing, an American planemaker, thinks regional airlines will need to order more than 3,000 new aircraft over the next 20 years.

This growth partly reflects the rapid rise of South-East Asia’s middle classes, who are eager to shell out for more convenient ways to navigate the continent’s archipelagoes. It has been nudged along by the region’s governments, who have promised to liberalise aviation as part of plans for greater economic co-operation.

Yet it also reflects growing confidence in airline safety, despite recent disasters. In much of the region rutted roads and fickle seas are a far bigger worry. A recent study of 160 ferry accidents since 2000, costing nearly 17,000 lives, showed that Indonesia and the Philippines were among the most lethal places to board a boat (only Bangladeshi vessels were more deadly). Images of grieving families in Singapore and Surabaya have horrified Indonesians, and the world. But journeys are still safer in the skies.

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David Reisman

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"Look at all the sentences which seem true and question them."

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Ernest Hemingway

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"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."

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Nora Ephron

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"If pregnancy were a book, they would cut the last two chapters."

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Martha Graham

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"The body is a sacred garment."

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Wallace Stevens

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"The summer night is like a perfection of thought."

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Karl von Bonstetten

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"To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart - and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love."

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George Colman

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"Praise the bridge that carried you over."

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German Proverb

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"Never give advice unless asked."

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Danah Boyd

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"The things that make us safest from others make us least from ourselves."

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Anna Quindlen

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life."

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Bertha Calloway

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"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails."

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Dame Rose Macaulay

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"At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived."

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Larry Page

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The moments that we have with friends and family, the chances that we have to make a big difference in the world or even to make a small difference to the ones we love, all those wonderful chances that life gives us, life also takes away. It can happen fast and a whole lot sooner than you think."

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Thomas H. Huxley

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"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion... or you shall learn nothing."

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Robert Browning

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"Why comes temptation, but for man to meet and master and crouch beneath his foot, and so be pedestaled in triumph?"

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Sydney Smith

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"There is one piece of advice, in a life of study, which I think no one will object to; and that is, every now and then to be completely idle - to do nothing at all."

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Scott Westerfeld

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"The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side."

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Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

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"To grow mature is to separate more distinctly, to connect more closely."

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Ausonius

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"Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself."

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Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon

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"I'm a fan of laundry: the smell of fabric softener, the warm clothes in your hands. It's so good."

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Albert Schweitzer

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"Every patient carries her or his own doctor inside."

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Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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"He who would travel happily must travel light."

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Latvian Proverb

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"A smiling face is half the meal."

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Real Live Preacher

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"When someone allows you to bear his burdens, you have found deep friendship."

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Trieu Thi Trinh

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"My wish is to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. I will not resign myself..."

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John Wesley

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"Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can."

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George Sewell

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"Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt."

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Jeff Bezos

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"A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well."

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Grenville Kleiser

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"By constant self-discipline and self-control you can develop greatness of character."

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William Shakespeare

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"In peace there's nothing so becomes a man/ As modest stillness and humility;/ But when the blast of war blows in our ears,/ Then imitate the action of the tiger:/ Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood."

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Eric Hoffer

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"Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there."

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Mark Roberts

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"Don't waste too much time trying' to be a better man, ' cause you ain't never gonna be one without a good woman."

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Hugh Macleod

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"The best way to get approval is not to need it."

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Carl Jung

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"Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent."

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Sir Henry Taylor

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"The art of living easily as to money is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means."

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first-year scholarship at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

The priority deadline for scholarship applications is January 15, 2015. To be considered for a first-year scholarship, follow these easy steps:
Apply and be accepted for admission to UW-Stevens Point. You have to be admitted to the university to be considered for a scholarship.
Once accepted for admission, complete and turn in a UW-Stevens Point scholarship application.
Check out UW-Stevens Point scholarship requirements.

For detail information : New First-Year Student Scholarship List at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

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Christopher Reeve

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"Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean."

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Raymond Lindquist

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"Courage is the power to let go of the familiar."

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Saadi

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"Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become an enemy. And bring not all mischief you are able to upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend."

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Isabelle Eberhardt

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"The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character."

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Woodrow Wilson

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"Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation."

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Amy Vanderbilt

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"Do not speak of repulsive matters at table."

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Henry Miller

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"Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such."

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Lisa Alther

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"I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic."

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Oprah Winfrey

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"The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be."

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Walt Whitman

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"Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?"

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Hugh Elliott

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"It�s such a part of me, I assume Everyone can see it."

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Phyllis Theroux

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"To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart."

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Lord Chesterfield

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"The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet."

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J. K. Rowling

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"You will never truly know yourself or the strength of your relationships until both have been tested by adversity."

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Ken Rockwell

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"The camera's only job is to get out of the way of making photographs."

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"The only gift is a portion of thyself."

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Irving Berlin

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

"The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in this business. You've got to keep on working that talent. Someday I'll reach for it and it won't be there."

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Japan’s election: The Abe habit

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

Abe bats again

THE general election on December 14th cost ¥63 billion (over $500m), and came just two years after the previous one. So many Japanese could not see the point of it that only 52.7% of voters went to the polls—a post-war low. Yet for Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, the decision to call the election seems vindicated. Even though his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost three seats in the lower house of the Diet, to finish with 291 seats, that is not bad for an incumbent party in the midst of a recession with a leader whose popularity is falling. What is more, the LDP’s junior coalition partner, Komeito, more than made up for the loss by gaining seats. As a result the ruling coalition was returned with 326 out of 475 seats, one more than before dissolution in November. Crucially, it keeps its two-thirds majority, which will allow it to pass laws without the approval of the upper house, should the coalition lose its (slimmer) majority there in upper-house elections in 2016.

Mr Abe’s campaign slogan was that “There is no other way to economic recovery” than “Abenomics”, his vaunted programme, high on spin, of aggressive monetary easing to weaken the yen, boost the stockmarket and generate inflation; fiscal spending through huge budget deficits; and—though too little of this has been seen yet—structural change to boost the long-run rate of growth.

It is the job of the opposition to hold the government’s policies to account and to suggest alternatives, yet the Democratic Party of Japan was in no state to do either. It is a shadow of the force that broke the LDP’s long grip on power in 2009, promising to reshape Japanese politics but in the end governing hopelessly for three years. Though it picked up 11 seats this time, its total haul of 73 seats was miserable. At least its ineffectual leader, Banri Kaieda, lost his seat, giving younger modernisers a shot at rebuilding the broken party. For the time being, says Gerald Curtis of Columbia University, voters returned Mr Abe because they did not want Japan to go back to its recent pattern of revolving-door politics.

With a general election now not required for another four years, Mr Abe can claim to have consolidated his position within his party and in the country. He could become one of the longest-serving Japanese prime ministers. Mr Abe claims that he will now redouble his efforts to revive Japan’s economy and make ordinary people feel better off. The economic difficulties in Japan’s regions hung over the campaign. Even though the stockmarket has soared and the property market in Tokyo and other big cities is returning to health, household incomes have failed to keep pace with the early shoots of inflation. Household demand plummeted following a rise in the consumption tax in April, throwing the success of Abenomics into doubt. And Moody’s, a credit-rating agency, has just cut the government’s debt rating by a notch.

Yet perhaps the economy will improve in the coming months. Mr Abe has postponed the next rise in the consumption tax until April 2017. And now labour is tight in various sectors, from construction to exports. With unemployment at just 3.5%, it is reasonable to assume that wages might soon begin to rise. Mr Abe might get lucky.

The question is what he does with his luck. He says he will push on faster with a suite of structural reforms. Speaking before the election, Mr Abe promised progress in agriculture, health care, making the labour market more flexible, and liberalising the electricity market by separating transmission from generation. Notably, he said that a breakthrough with the United States in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade negotiations was imminent. That would send a powerful signal that Japan is serious about reform.

Yet for Mr Abe the right-wing nationalist, economics is not his chief passion, and economic strength matters mainly as a means, as he sees it, to restoring national pride and even recasting Japan’s historical narrative. Straight after his election victory the prime minister spoke of the LDP’s most “cherished wish” to rewrite the pacifist post-war constitution, imposed in 1946 by Japan’s American vanquishers. Amending the constitution requires a two-thirds vote from both houses of the Diet, as well as a majority in a national referendum. Mr Abe pledged this week to “deepen national understanding” of the need for Japan to pen its own document, including rewriting the stipulations on pacifism.

Such a drive would prove a huge distraction, and would be unlikely to succeed. The newly strengthened Komeito, backed by a large Buddhist organisation, has a strongly pacifist streak. Some of Mr Abe’s allies with even weirder views than his of Japan’s wartime history fared badly in the election. The hard-right Party for Future Generations, led by the 82-year old Shintaro Ishihara, a cantankerous former Tokyo governor, was all but wiped out. Meanwhile the pacifist Japanese Communist Party more than doubled its presence in the Diet, to 21 seats. Despite Mr Abe’s majority in the Diet, this (plus his falling ratings) will constrain his ability to carry out a project that most Japanese do not want. The hope is that he will swiftly grasp this.

Meanwhile, the legislative agenda will soon get back into gear in a special session of the Diet starting soon. Mr Abe’s cabinet will remain unchanged, following a bungled reshuffle in September. The budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year will be the first item on the agenda, including a supplementary spending package to boost the economy and help households suffering from the higher import costs from a weak yen.

After the budget, and crucial local elections in April, harder tasks loom. One will be to pass bills to implement a new ruling on collective-self defence to allow Japan to come to the aid of allies, notably America—a change expected to draw heated public opposition. Another controversial decision will be an attempt to restart more of the country’s nuclear-power stations. Two reactors at the Sendai plant in Satsumasendai in Kagoshima prefecture have already got backing from Japan’s nuclear regulator and from the local city assembly to restart. The next ones could be reactors at the Takahama plant in Fukui prefecture. Advisers of Mr Abe say that restarting nuclear plants will not be that great a challenge. But given the low public trust in nuclear power, each operation is likely to prove an energy-sapping battle, requiring local consensus.

Dispiritingly for reformists in the government, Mr Abe made little mention of his reform priorities during the campaign. His supporters argue that both the bureaucracy and many inside the LDP itself bitterly oppose structural reforms. But his victory strengthens his grip on both. He has no excuse not to forge ahead. The next three or four months will be pivotal for Mr Abe—and for Japan.

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Terrorism in Australia: A nightmare comes true

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

A city shocked

THE siege on December 15th in the Lindt Chocolate Café in Martin Place, in the heart of Sydney’s business district, was the first terrorist act in Australia based on a political message about Islam. The morning had started with regulars queuing for coffee on their way to work. Shortly before 10am the doors were locked from the inside. For the next 16 hours, a gunman held 17 staff and customers hostage, forcing them to display a black flag with an Islamic creed against the window. Some but not all managed to slip out. In the early hours of the following morning, police stormed the café, apparently responding to shots inside. In a heavy exchange of gunfire, the gunman and two hostages died.

For some time Australian authorities have warned of a possible terrorist event. Islam has been a fast-growing religion. The number of Muslims in the country grew by two-thirds in the decade to 2011. Muslims now account for just over 2% of the country’s population of 23m, many of them in the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. In a recent speech to journalists David Irvine, a former head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the country’s domestic spy agency, insisted that violent extremists comprise a tiny minority—“a few hundred aberrant souls”. ASIO and police, he claimed, have thwarted plans for “a number of mass-casualty attacks on our soil”. But his “recurring nightmare” had always been an attack by a “lone wolf”: someone who had failed to come “across our radar”.

As it happened, the gunman in the Sydney siege was well-known to the authorities—who nevertheless underestimated his danger to society. Man Haron Monis, aged 50, was born in Iran and moved to Australia after receiving political asylum more than a decade ago. Via a website, Mr Monis had recently announced his conversion from Shia to Sunni Islam. Greg Barton, a terrorism expert at Monash University in Melbourne, believes Mr Monis was attracted by the way Islamic State (IS), the jihadist group in Iraq and Syria, encourages lone-wolf attacks against Westerners. But he doubts that IS would have recruited such a lost, disturbed individual.

Mr Monis was facing charges of sexual and indecent assault, and of being an accessory to the murder of his former wife last year, for which he was out on bail. He had also been convicted of sending offensive letters to the families of Australian soldiers who had died in Afghanistan; a few days before the siege Australia’s High Court had refused his bid to appeal against the conviction. For many Australians absorbing the shock of the siege, questions may centre less on Mr Monis’s jihadism and more on how he was out on bail for his various charges, as well as how he had access to weapons.

The prime minister, Tony Abbott, says it will take time to find out exactly what happened at Martin Place, and why. Political debate is certain to be stirred about tough anti-terror laws that the conservative coalition government has passed, as well as about its hard approach towards asylum-seekers making for Australia by boat. The anti-terror laws expand ASIO’s powers, including its ability to demand access to computers, while journalists disclosing intelligence operations face up to ten years in prison. Constitutional and human-rights lawyers are uneasy over the laws. Others will question the impact of the siege on disaffected young Muslims, some of whom may see themselves as targets of the tougher security laws. But with Mr Monis’s refugee background, the Sydney siege is also likely to entrench some Australians in their views that asylum policy is bound up with security.

ASIO has identified about 60 Australians fighting with IS and Jabhat-al-Nusra, another extremist group, in Iraq and Syria; another 100 people in Australia are said to be supporting them and recruiting new fighters. Whether by a lone wolf or not, another attack in broad daylight is now a new worry for Sydneysiders.

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Pakistan: From the graveyard

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

“I AM not sure if Pakistan was created in the name of religion, but it is surely being destroyed in the name of religion.” So wrote a distraught former army officer on December 16th, as a terrorist attack, awful even by Pakistan’s grim standards, unfolded in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the north-west of the country, not far from the border with Afghanistan. Seven members of the Pakistani Taliban, speaking with the local Pushtu accent and dressed in the uniforms of the local paramilitary force, came from a graveyard and over the wall of a large, army-run school. They then moved through it, murdering children and teachers with guns and grenades. Three or four attackers are said to have blown themselves up.

At the latest count 141 victims have died, 132 of them children. Survivors told stories of children shot as they tried to duck behind desks and chairs. Some were reportedly killed after gunmen interrupted a first-aid training session in the school hall; others fell in the playground. Eyewitnesses spoke of children lined up and killed. So many injured arrived at the local hospital that it ran out of blood.

Nearly nine hours after the start of the assault, soldiers killed the last gunman. The country’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, rushed to Peshawar and spoke of both pain and resolve. “Such attacks are expected in the wake of a war, and the country should not lose its strength”, he said. The war he was referring to is Operation Zarb-e-Azb, which the army launched in the summer to clear the nearby tribal region of North Waziristan of Pakistani Taliban bases. On the evening of the outrage, ten air strikes were ordered in areas close to Peshawar, presumably on Taliban targets. Mr Sharif called an all-party meeting for December 17th, seeking to unite political parties behind a more forceful fight against the terrorists who have torn the country apart.

The Pakistani Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the attack. Whether intended as a grotesque gesture of compassion or not, they asserted that they had been communicating with the gunmen in the school, ordering them to kill only older children. The spokesman said that since “the army targets our families, we want them to feel our pain”. Revenge is clearly part of the motivation. Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, notes that tribal Pushtuns, which the assailants appear to have been, have endured years of bombing, displacement and army attacks. He now expects punitive attacks by Pakistan’s army, and, as a result, “we are going to have a never-ending war”.

The Taliban have a history of targeting the country’s pupils. In the four years to 2013, when their writ ran large, they destroyed over 1,000 schools and colleges in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In 2012 they shot a schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai, in the head as she was riding home on a school bus. She survived, going on to collect the Nobel peace prize on December 10th. Ahmed Rashid, an analyst of the Taliban, says the massacre in Peshawar was “symbolic of hatred for everything that Malala stands for”. As an attack on children of army officers, it was also intended to demoralise those serving in North Waziristan.

An umbrella group more formally known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Taliban look dangerous and desperate. Squeezed by the army, fractured into squabbling parts and without territory, they are striking mostly at civilians. In November a suicide bomber killed 60 local tourists leaving a daily ceremony on the border with India in Wagah in Punjab. Taliban leaders also worry that Sunni extremists are turning to favour a rival outfit recruiting in Pakistan, an offshoot of Islamic State (IS). Kamran Shafi, a retired army officer, says he fears the Taliban will increasingly mimic the savagery of IS in an effort to maintain its appeal among militants. But he also calls the latest attack a “seminal event”, after which most Pakistanis, disgusted with extremism, will unite at last to oppose the Taliban.

For now, at least, that hope may not turn out to be wholly vain. The immediate behaviour of one politician, Imran Khan, was telling. The cricketer turned religious conservative has been set on ousting Mr Sharif. He draws electoral support from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where his party rules, and his policy was never to criticise the Taliban. His position, dressed up as principle, was based partly on a calculation that a sizeable number of Pakistanis still think of the Taliban and other extremist groups as pious. Yet after the Pakistani Taliban murdered so many innocents, Mr Khan was moved to condemn “this inhuman act of utter barbarism”. He promised to join Mr Sharif’s all-party meeting. By remaining united, the political establishment has a hope of keeping the barbarism at bay.

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Randy Pausch

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"The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story."

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Brian Adams

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"Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success."

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Joseph Addison

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"True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions."

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W. Somerset Maugham

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"Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life."

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Lady Gaga

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"Sometimes in life you don't always feel like a winner, but that doesn't mean you're not a winner."

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Martin Luther King Jr.

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"Let no man pull you low enough to hate him."

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Allegra Kent

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"All we actually have is our body and its muscles that allow us to be under our own power."

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Harry S Truman

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"Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive. And don't ever apologize for anything."

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Cyberloafing

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Cyberloafing is spending time at work on the internet doing things that are not work-related, like checking personal emails and surfing the web.

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John Green

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"I�m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we�re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we�ll ever have, and I am in love with you."

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Kathryn L. Nelson

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"Passion is seldom the end of any story, for it cannot long endure if it is not soon supplemented with true affection and mutual respect."

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Senator Dianne Feinstein

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"Toughness doesn't have to come in a pinstriped suit."

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Thomas Fuller

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"Know most of the rooms of thy native country before thou goest over the threshold thereof."

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Frank Herbert

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"There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh."

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Lois McMaster Bujold

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"Never... ever suggest they don't have to pay you. What they pay for, they'll value. What they get for free, they'll take for granted, and then demand as a right. Hold them up for all the market will bear."

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Theodore Roethke

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"A mind too active is no mind at all."

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Mikhail Bakunin

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"The freedom of all is essential to my freedom."

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Maya Angelou

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"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'"

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Norman Maclean

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"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters."

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Maureen Dowd

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"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for."

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

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"Fostering a spirit of cooperation with your ex means laying down your weapons in the war of divorce in order to protect your children."

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Og Mandino

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

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Belle Livingstone

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"I looked always outside of myself to see what I could make the world give me instead of looking within myself to see what was there."

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Aaron Burr

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"Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done."

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India’s Jammu and Kashmir: Modi’s northern lights

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

ONCE a separatist, now a politician, Sajjad Lone says that pragmatism is gaining in popularity in the disputed and sometimes strife-torn Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. One example is that he stands a chance, just possibly, of being the next person to run the state, made up of the Hindu-majority, lowland region of Jammu and the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley in the mountains—with Muslims predominating overall. The third of five stages in a rolling state-assembly election took place this week. The whole thing wraps up on December 20th. A change of government is all but certain. Results may also reveal a profound realignment of loyalties.

From his garden in Handwara in North Kashmir, bathed in winter sunshine, Mr Lone says that Kashmiris “have become realistic in what is achievable” in terms of breaking away from India. He notes that those militants who call for boycotts and try to enforce them with violence are losing the battle. “I was in that camp, I know,” he says. He is probably right, despite four attacks on December 5th, soon after he spoke, by fighters who crossed over from Pakistani territory and killed 21 people. Voters seem undeterred. Turnout at the polls has been high, at around 60-70%. And by voting, say Kashmiris, they are not giving up dreams of independence, just seeking better government.

One big change would be if voters broke an old duopoly of political families, each with links to Congress, the national party currently in opposition in Delhi. The historically stronger family is the Abdullah dynasty and its National Conference. It will be walloped this month. Omar Abdullah, its genial third-generation incarnation as chief minister, has proved out of touch, his government mostly beyond his control. Violent clashes between youths and police each summer from 2008 to 2010 left him looking powerless; in 2010 alone police killed over 110 youngsters. Worsening corruption only deepened the public’s dismay at Mr Abdullah.

Then in September the chief minister spectacularly failed to show leadership as sudden floods hit Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital. Officials had allowed people to build in the Jhelum river’s flood channels, while badly maintained canal banks collapsed. Parts of the town remained under two storeys of water for nearly three weeks. Thousands of people have been displaced and many homes ruined. A muddy high-tide mark still runs around the walls of whole districts. Official recovery efforts were derisory, though the army gave out water and rescued some people. Mr Abdullah said the central government had held back recovery funds, but most Kashmiris pin the blame on him.

The other family, the Muftis, and their People’s Democratic Party, is looking better placed. One party candidate, Haseeb Drabu, an ex-banker who has a chance of becoming state finance minister, predicts a narrow victory for his party, which insists it is less corrupt, and emphasises development. It does not call for secession but for self-rule within India. Yet journalists and some businessmen in Srinagar say that the two family parties are much alike in that they do the bidding of the central government in Delhi, divvy up the spoils of office, and slide into corruption.

By himself, Mr Lone will not end the duopoly. At best his grouping will win one or two of the 87 constituencies. Yet his fortunes are tied to the surging Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Previously not a serious actor in the state, the BJP has run a lavish campaign. It talks of winning “44-plus” seats, and for a Hindu-nationalist party it is striking that it has found 32 Muslim candidates—though its best chances lie among 26 Hindu-dominated seats in Jammu. After huge success nationally in the spring, victories in the states of Maharashtra and Haryana in October, and polls pointing to its winning in concurrent state elections in Jharkhand, no one writes off Mr Modi.

The BJP’s strength is emboldening voters to ignore militants’ calls not to go to the polls. Some three-way contests, notably in Srinagar, will be tight. Kashmiri Pandits, a community of Hindu Brahmins who were forced out in the 1990s but who can vote as if they were living at their old addresses, will boost the party. An opponent grumbles that the BJP “spends money like water” on newspaper ads, posters and volunteers. In a rare appearance for a prime minister in Kashmir, Mr Modi told a Srinagar crowd on December 8th that jobs and prosperity were what he was about. He targets the many young voters, fed up that years of protests have held back the economy and harmed job prospects. Some hope for a flood of public funds from Delhi should the BJP win. Certainly, it has been canny in seeking allies. Mr Lone, who calls the prime minister a “man of humility”, would be the BJP’s figurehead in Kashmir, even though not a party member.

His party’s higher profile is already a victory for Mr Modi. Umar Farooq, the spiritual leader of Kashmir’s Muslims, says he worries the party is spreading communal discord, as voters in Jammu form a Hindu bloc and as Shia-Sunni rivalry grows in parts of Kashmir. He warns that Mr Modi promotes the “fundamental” idea that India must be a predominantly Hindu country. A common fear is that the BJP plans to settle hundreds of thousands of retired soldiers in the valley, or to build segregated colonies to house returning Pandits.

For now, however, the BJP’s priority appears to be to push aside Congress as the decisive outside party in Kashmir—and to become acceptable to Kashmiris in future elections. A journalist in Srinagar says the BJP is winning “the perception war” over Congress. Even ending up as a substantial opposition party in Kashmir may help the BJP show Muslim voters in other states, for example, in Bihar, West Bengal or Uttar Pradesh, that it is no bogeyman for Muslims. Kashmir, then, could prove a gateway to wider appeal in other parts of India.

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The Solomon Islands: Mark Three

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

WHEN the Solomon Islands made Manasseh Sogavare prime minister on December 9th, it was amid a heavy security presence of local and Australian police officers. This is the third stint in office for Mr Sogavare, a black belt in karate, and the first two ended badly. He has acquired a reputation as a nationalist. He talks of forging links with China, and also says he wants to work constructively with the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI, consisting of police and troops). That would make a change. His previous term saw the ejection of both an Australian High Commissioner and an Australian police chief.

The general election on November 19th was the first since RAMSI, created in 2003 at a time of civil conflict, was scaled right back last year. Unusually, most incumbent MPs were returned, though an exception was the outgoing prime minister. Also unusually, as many as 32 of the 50 elected MPs contested as independents, most calculating that remaining unaffiliated was the best way to avoid the constraints of a poorly drafted Political Parties Integrity Act, passed this year.

The new law, influenced by legislation in neighbouring Papua New Guinea, was aimed at lessening the influence of “grasshopper” politicians jumping from one side to the other in search of ministerial portfolios. It did not work. As at previous elections, the 2014 contest culminated in a contest between two loosely knit and personality-centred camps at the major hotels in the capital, Honiara. A former governor-general claims to have witnessed Mr Sogavare and his probable deputy, Matthew Wale, offering SI$500,000 ($67,000) to attract three floating MPs. In September an outgoing judge said that Solomon Islands needed an independent anti-corruption commission “more than any country on the planet”.

Governments rarely survive a full four-year term. One early indication of fragility in Mr Sogavare’s Democratic Coalition for Change was that, ahead of the prime ministerial election, its less reliable MPs were briefly shipped to a resort on the island of Mbike to avoid their being poached by the rival coalition. Gunshots were apparently fired on Mbike in an unsuccessful effort to disable the boat returning the MPs to the main island to vote in the election.

Mr Sogavare first entered parliament in 1997, shortly before five years of civil strife that brought the country close to bankruptcy. Militia groups orchestrated a coup in June 2000 and facilitated Mr Sogavare’s first installation as prime minister. He lost the post after the 2001 election. The next prime ministerial election, in 2006, triggered major riots in Honiara, culminating in the burning down of Chinatown and the collapse of an eight-day-old government. In its place, Mr Sogavare again took the top job. He immediately antagonised Australia by appointing a former militant as police chief and by smuggling a Fiji-born lawyer, Julian Moti, wanted in Australia for alleged child-sex offences, into the country to serve as attorney-general.

The events took place a time when Australian influence was in the ascendant. Today RAMSI is a scaled-back operation providing police assistance, run by a relatively junior foreign-service officer. It is far less influential. A full withdrawal is foreseen in 2017. Mr Sogavare, who has mellowed with age, may calculate that he risks more by antagonising Australia—which indirectly sparked instability in his last governing coalition—than he stands to gain with a more co-operative approach. Seeking an exit strategy from Solomon Islands, Australia may also be less perturbed by Mr Sogavare’s election than it was in 2006.

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Afghanistan: Old problems, new hope

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

MORE than 13 years after NATO launched its invasion of Afghanistan following the attacks of September 11th, its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) this week lowered the flag at its headquarters in Kabul, the capital. The ceremony brought to a formal end ISAF’s combat mission in Afghanistan. It was a moment for reflection on what went wrong and what went right for the West’s military intervention, and a moment also to consider what kind of future beckons for a country that has suffered nearly four decades of war and insurgency.

This week’s ceremony marked no dramatic change in the security landscape. Since a peak in 2011 of 140,000 foreign troops, over two-thirds of them American, the number has fallen steadily to 13,000. That is about the size of force that will stay on to “train, advise and assist” the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) for another year at least. It is pretty much what they have been doing since mid-2013, when the ANSF took the lead in fighting the Taliban in every province.

President Barack Obama has said that he wants all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016, but that plan could well change. He has recently reversed a short-sighted decision not to provide air support for the ANSF after the end of 2014. The “assist” bit of operation Resolute Support, as the new mission is called, had looked threadbare. Now NATO will continue to provide ground-attack, logistical and limited medical-evacuation support for Afghan forces until their own air force can fill the gap—at least a couple of years away. Special forces are also likely to carry out some counter-terrorism operations in partnership with the Afghans.

A chief reason for the rethink is that the violence generated by the Taliban insurgency remains uncomfortably high. Although the 340,000-strong Afghan forces are performing well, they are suffering heavy casualties. Over 4,600 have been killed in action this year, a 6.5% rise on 2013. The violence has not dropped off much with the end of this year’s traditional fighting season. The Taliban now appear to be concentrating on mounting terror attacks in cities, especially Kabul, which create news headlines and are aimed at forcing out foreign civilians and frightening investment away.

The war that was

Yet while the Taliban have very clearly not been defeated militarily, politically they have been routed. There was a good turnout in two rounds of the presidential election earlier this year—with nearly two-fifths of the votes cast by women—despite Taliban attempts at intimidation and disruption. The government of national unity which resulted after much wrangling and allegations of fraud is in the view of some a vindication of the West’s intervention, whatever its cost in money and lives.

Both President Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank technocrat, and Abdullah Abdullah, Mr Ghani’s former rival and now prime minister in all but name, are committed to breaking with the seedy legacy of Mr Ghani’s capricious predecessor, Hamid Karzai. How well they will work together remains uncertain (there is still haggling over cabinet posts). But they say they are united over an agenda that includes rooting out corruption, improving the still-awful state of basic services such as health care and criminal justice, re-emphasising women’s rights and attempting to reset relations with Pakistan.

A recent nationwide opinion poll gave Mr Ghani an 84% approval rating. Even in the south, where the Taliban holds greatest sway, 76% were satisfied with his performance. Mr Ghani has also transformed sentiment among foreign donors of the aid on which Afghanistan’s fragile economy depends. At an aid conference in London in early December, America’s secretary of state, John Kerry, described Mr Ghani’s reform programme as “an extraordinary moment of transformation”.

Mr Ghani’s approach is emblematic of a society that is a world away from the wretched, near-failed state that the country had become by 2001, following Soviet invasion and withdrawal, civil war and, from 1996, rule by the Taliban. Peter Thomsen, George H.W. Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan, has recently argued that whatever its mistakes, the American-led intervention reversed a slide into chaos and put an end to extremist tyranny and terrorist incubation.

Yet the mistakes also have to be acknowledged—and learned from. Perhaps the biggest was not starting the hard job of training a proper Afghan army until late-2009 rather than after the invasion, when relative calm prevailed for several years. However, when Taliban insurgents, with help from Pakistan, began returning in large numbers and the fighting intensified, it meant that more and more foreign troops were needed to prevent them from taking over large swathes of the country. That played into the Taliban narrative of foreign occupation. Much debate has taken place about how counter-insurgency campaigns should be conducted, but one thing is certain: to be effective, indigenous troops must be in the lead, supported by foreign forces—not the other way round.

The other great mistake was to underestimate the corrosive effects of Pakistan’s playing of a double game, appearing to make itself the West’s indispensable ally against jihadist terrorism—while providing the Afghan Taliban with sanctuary, training and money. The delusion that Pakistan was, for all its trickiness, basically “on our side” made it almost impossible to achieve a lasting victory against the Taliban.

Now co-operate

Much now depends on whether Pakistan, Afghanistan and America see the need to improve their fraught triangular relationship. Some change does appear to be taking place. Pakistan’s army, which still calls most of the shots in the country, is now led by a general, Raheel Sharif, who some say is a breath of fresh air (last month he was feted during a two-week stay in America). Unlike his predecessors, General Sharif appears to see jihadists, principally in the form of Pakistan’s own Taliban, as the country’s greatest threat, and has sought the help of the Americans in countering it.

In recent weeks an unprecedented upsurge in operations against militants has taken place on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Americans have been using drones to hammer Pakistani Taliban sanctuaries in Kunar in Afghanistan, while the Pakistanis have, for the first time, targeted the Haqqani network, responsible for plotting some of the most daring recent attacks on Kabul from its base in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area.

For his part, Mr Ghani is trying to acknowledge long-standing Pakistani concerns ignored by Mr Karzai. Confidence-building measures include an agreement to send Afghan officers for training in Pakistan, and a bilateral agreement on managing the border. Mr Ghani has also refused to blame Pakistan for recent militant attacks and is keen to agree on a programme to improve energy and transport links.

Little would boost Afghanistan’s prospects more than an end to Pakistan’s ultimately self-defeating meddling. It is far too soon to know whether Mr Ghani can succeed in his plan to establish something more constructive in the two countries’ relations, above all, persuading Pakistan to help bring the Afghan Taliban to the peace table. Should Mr Ghani be able to achieve that, it would certainly be time to talk about a new era.

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Education in Indonesia: School’s in

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com

WITH roughly 55m students, 3m teachers and more than 236,000 schools in 500 districts, Indonesia has the world’s fourth-largest education system. But the system does not work nearly as well as it should. The country’s new president, Joko Widodo, generally known as Jokowi, hopes to change that with help from his new education secretary, Anies Baswedan, a former university president and creator of a programme that sends graduates to teach in remote areas.

Like so much else in the sprawling archipelago, nothing is simple. Three separate ministries are involved. The education ministry oversees state primary, junior and secondary schools; the religious-affairs ministry has control of madrassas, or Islamic schools; and the president has now made the ministry for research and technology responsible for universities and polytechnics.

Since the 1970s Indonesia has boosted primary and junior-secondary enrolment rates dramatically. In the past decade it has narrowed the gap in school-completion rates between rich and poor students, and between those from rural and urban areas. Since 2009 it has allocated a fifth of its annual budget to education. Yet gains in education have a lot more scope. Whereas primary-enrolment rates in richer districts are close to 100%, in some poorer districts they remain below 60%. Nor are teachers evenly distributed. Mr Baswedan says that if a school is next to a main road, “I can guarantee it has more teachers than it needs. But if it’s two or three kilometres from that road, it won’t have enough.” Across the system enrolment declines markedly with age. Mr Baswedan says Indonesia has 170,000 primary schools, 40,000 junior-secondary schools and just 26,000 high schools.

Boosting educational quality, particularly relative to Indonesia’s neighbours, has been hard. Though average reading and maths scores on standardised PISA tests have improved since 2000, scores in science have declined—and scores in maths and reading have recently been slipping again. In the tests Indonesia markedly lags behind not just rich Singapore, but also Vietnam, whose GDP per capita is three-fifths its own.

The system lets Indonesians down. For every 100 students who enter school, only 25 will come out meeting minimum international standards in literacy and numeracy. In reading, maths and science, the average Indonesian 15-year-old is roughly four years behind the average Singaporean. The education system has also been racked by teacher shortages, and by repeated cheating scandals—including the selling of exam answers. All of these shortcomings matter not just in terms of stunted lives but also for the economy. A recent study from the Boston Consulting Group found that Indonesia faces a dire shortage of managerial talent—an alarming problem for a country with a growing services sector.

In the hope of improving things, a law was introduced in 2005 which required teacher certification. Yet a report this year from the World Bank finds that the certification made no big difference to how much students learned. What matters is how well teachers perform in the classroom, and encouraging students to think critically.

Mr Baswedan wants to start by improving the teachers. He believes they should be evaluated not only on how many hours a week they teach, but on how well their students perform. Almost certainly, teachers need better training. Of more than 400 teacher-training institutes in Indonesia, Mr Baswedan reckons that no more than a tenth are much good. The minister also wants to improve Indonesia’s vocational-training institutes, particularly those in agriculture and fisheries, as a way both to boost the country’s skilled-manufacturing workforce and to help those in rural areas dependent on farming and the sea.

In the presidential race earlier this year, Jokowi campaigned heavily on education. He wasted no time on one of his campaign promises, launching the “Indonesia Smart Card” in November. It provides school fees and stipends to 24m poor students across Indonesia, guaranteeing them 12 years of free education. But the scheme’s value will depend on how well Mr Baswedan can make his longer-term reforms work. Just stuffing more students into bad schools will be of little help to anyone.

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