GP in Concert: Superwoman, Iron Maiden & Irony, featuring Paradox
The Bullet suggested Apocalypse Now. This is one movie that put me to sleep and I donated it to an educational institute many years ago since a lot of people feel it is really a good movie. There are many other good war movies out there. I remember watching Saving Private Ryan before my enlistment. There was also Hamburger Hill in P.Tekong. But the insanity of war, the innocence of soldiers giving way to madness, the longest yard, all these are well conveyed in Apocalypse Now. I’m not sure if there were any iron maidens in the CIA, but I know how GP is likened to the iron maiden most of the time here.
Most of you must be Super(wo)man, you reckon, to do well. “It’s not easy to be me,” says Five For Fighting. You will need an iron will to drive yourselves through. Don’t really hope for the iron fist of Mr K because this is not a Mad World that I am trying to create. You should be more resilient than a Duracell Bunny. Don’t listen to the chiding on p15 of the Bullet when it reads, “When will you learn that you are not superwoman?” The daughter was only reminding her mother. You are not that old yet.
In life sometimes good advice come but you just didn’t take, as sung by Alanis Morissette. Isn’t it Ironic?
The paradox in life is that water is more important than diamonds, yet diamonds are more expensive than water. GP is like water and your other subjects are like diamonds that grace your certificates and blind the eyes of your future employers if you have lots of polished grade A diamonds.
A paradox has no answer. But fortunately for you the paradox of GP is a false paradox. As soon as you put in equal or more effort for GP, the comparison with water will no longer stand.
The power to change fate lies in your own hands.
Opinion, Attitude, Tone
I wonder why it’s such an odd day today! Yesterday when I ran this through with one class, my explanation was fine and it wasn’t garbled. Thankfully I am not alone and there is also a seasoned Chemistry teacher who equally garbled (I eavesdropped) her explanations only today. Correlation, not causation.
For those of you who have seen an early post here on Tone & Attitude, good for you. For those who have not, here’s it again with all your friends’ response: https://akbywerk2.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/what-is-the-authos-tone/
Here’s more from a foreign perspective: http://www.mshogue.com/AP/tone.htm
In response to queries in both classes today, I talked about how sarcasm is a big term (and easily used and misused in examination conditions where precision and accuracy are important). There are other terms that fall under the “sarcasm” branch of tone–and attitude. You can see in this other foreign institute how the two concepts are closely knitted (and I don’t think they had gone on and differentiate the two in detail):
http://ecr.lausd.k12.ca.us/staff/jfirestein/Tone%20Words.pdf
As I’ve said, sarcasm need not always be positive on the surface and negative underneath; it is not so clear cut some times. So it could be neutral on the surface and negative underneath. That’s where a critical take comes in. There is that critical feel–tone–to the last sentence of the paragraph in Passage B of AJC Prelim 2006 Paper 2: “Pity the young…inheritors of broken hopes…”
And “critical” falls under the Sarcasm family too! I think this example explains what El Camino Real High School and I are trying to say.
Look at imagery use as well besides denotations and connotations to derive the tone and attitude: are those negative images (“inheritors of broken hopes”)? Who wants to inherit something that is broken?
And as said, “pity” is used to show an unlevel power relation between two parties. “Pity” shows a distance in status as compared to “sympathise” (closer), as compared to “empathise” (closest so that you are in their shows and you can understand their feelings). So “pity” sets the writer of Passage B at a more aloof position, as if he is looking down on those “inheritors of broken dreams”. In this sense, there is sarcasm there because he is implying you inheritors could have prevented it from happening, but you didn’t when you so readily embrace all things Disney–or it’s your parents’ fault. But the attitude is actually more critical here (as derived from the tone of the words and phrases he used). Looking at the passage itself, fundamentally it is the capitalistic opportunistic businesses at fault. So he might opine (and I can’t believe I mess this word up in class too!) that the young are the witless party in the crime against culture and identity; he might opine that their parents are gutless collaborators, but he is surely of the opinion that the businesses are merciless and selfish organisms in the natural world.
Tone is simply a way of expressing our attitude, and from some one’s attitude, we can get a sense of his/her opinion towards an object: an event, a person, an issue.
Q: What is my tone, attitude and opinion here:
“Berkley, my competitor, is such a good speaker that if he could get his foot out of his mouth, his words will stink up the place and knock you out cold.”
A: The mocking tone of my utterance shows I am hostile towards Berkley; I feel that he is not a worthy competitor.
Dazzle@Just $18… a steal!
This was one brilliant concert which deserves a bigger stage! Too bad there’s no real post-concert party.
The concert’s one where I wished I was sitting alone and purely absorbing the waves of sound and flair, but where I was was as good as it got. I was just lucky to even get a ticket. Nevertheless, Cloudburst by the Choir as the opening act blasted me away though I was seated far away from the stage. The interactive element was totally unexpected and I was still dazed after an entire day of marking. I like the sound of raindrops. Very creative! The Indian Dance told a good story while the Malay Dance seriously made me want to pick up the routine: it’s that infectious! Facades by Dance Society was a marvellous narrative about women in society and I was enthralled by the abstractness of fluidity of the movements–the transition was fantastic and the ending showed the continuity of being.
I will be trying to find time to learn the guitar in the June holiday, and certainly the Guitar Ensemble did not kill off that resolution. The Harmonica Club did well with their classical piece on a humble instrument. At that point in time I was already a little hungry (the expensive food in 7-11 didn’t help fill my stomach), and Sukiyaki by the a cappella group didn’t help much either. I thought the beat-boxing was well synced with the Chinese Orchestra for the fusion-piece inspired by the African jungles and Chinese Orc (I guess the pun was intended). The sound of nature was well crafted by the meticulous musicians.
I wonder how it would sound like when Cloudburst meets the African-beat-boxing-Orc. It should be a knockout.
The final act (or so) belonged to the Symphonic Band and it did well in making me want to listen to 95.8FM with their Japanese Graffiti V, again a fusion-piece somewhat. The MCs did well in adopting a neutral tone as regards the role of these J-pop songs in World War II slightly before the pieces began, though I heard some sensitivity in the audience. For all that I could imagine, it would have been a Thunderous Cloudburst accompanying African Chinese Orc beat-boxing in WW2.
Great performances take you to a fantasy world described by the motions and sounds, and they have done so!
Goldfish & Slumdog
It was a marvellous performance at the Esplanade on Saturday and I heard it will be out on DVD! I think what moved me was the script, and of course the performance. Identity is a common theme, but there was so much relevance in everyone’s life that one ought to feel connected at one point in time or another during the play. My favourite moment was the scene where telephone calls rang fast and furiously and ended prematurely with yet another call just as the conversation hits the question: “What time?”
Ring, ring.
Your actions define who you are as much as your imagination and others’ opinions.
When there is gloom around you and you are too downcast to see yourself in the darkness, you’ll need a lantern. Some prefer a goldfish lantern. Perhaps that is very apt for the play, for the play is about the demons in all of us, about us, and a typical paper lantern would make it look very much like a Japanese horror show instead.
What came across as riveting were also the assertions made in the play: the stereotyped perception of Chinese, which is refreshingly bold. That much is true and it is fair deal actually, given that much emphasis has been placed even in academia in trying to unravel the make up of the Chinese culture. We have the notion of “face” even in linguistic studies, and hypocrisy is perhaps the misunderstood outcome of such an ethos.
And perhaps most Asians are very uptight about the representations of themselves; nothing but a perfect mirror (or one that enhances) will do.
March 14, 2009
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE IN INDIA
Of pride, poverty and prickly feelings
By Deep K. Datta-Ray, for The Straits Times
DESPITE its tremendous success at the box office and now having swept the Oscars, Slumdog Millionaire has not been enthusiastically received in India where the movie is set.
Instead, the film has sparked a controversy because it is set among the vast Indian underclass instead of the new and aspiring middle class or the super-rich.
The controversy however highlights a little examined and much deeper malaise than poverty scarring the modern Indian psyche. Indians are notoriously hypersensitive about how foreigners perceive them. The implications of this are profound for a world, especially Asians, whom Indians are eagerly courting.
Indians bristle at any slight, perceived or real and regardless of whether the assertions are based on fact. Anything that suggests – even remotely – criticism or casts Indians in a negative light or lampoons India raises nationalistic hackles. Shining too sharp a light on the many problems that continue to plague India leads to the critique being dismissed as either neocolonial racism or poverty- porn designed to titillate Western audiences. Indians are shrillest if the illuminating is being done by a foreigner.
Taking umbrage at foreigners is not a product of India’s rising economic and military power. Indeed it is a phenomenon as old as the modern nation-state. The father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, condemned the American journalist Katherine Mayo’s critique of India, Mother India, as a ‘gutter inspector’s report’.
The French director Louis Malle’s searing snapshot of 1960s Calcutta was banned. The Party, a 1970s film in which Peter Sellers blacked up to play an Indian, raised a storm of protest leading to the film being temporarily banned. When the noted Indian director Shekhar Kapoor’s Elizabeth did not win any Oscars, an Indian newspaper called it ‘Apartheid’. Most recently, the trite Hollywood film, The Guru, incensed Indian migrants in the United States.
Even the maestro Satyajit Ray didn’t escape. Prominent political and film personalities accused him of pandering to Western stereotypes with his sensitive portrayals of the changes that were inflicted on village life by the arrival of modernity in the form of a train.
At the centre of the present controversy is a movie which takes the viewer on a rapid-fire tour of the dirty underbelly of ‘India Shining’ – a label coined by politicians and eagerly embraced by the aspiring middle classes. Many of the scenes could be dismissed as being plainly gratuitous, designed to add ‘colour’. Practically every ugly cliche of Indian metropolitan life – lack of sanitation, child prostitution, religious bigotry and the endemic exploitation of servants – is packed into the movie.
No wonder wealthy Indians, whose only knowledge of poverty is what they see through the tinted windows of their air-conditioned Mercedes as they drive from one urban oasis to another, are fuming.
However, mixed in with the outrage is also a sense of achievement. Never mind that the film is British, as is its director. The cast is mainly Indian and A.R. Rahman, the Indian composer of the score, picked up an Oscar. Indians rejoiced. Despite smarting at the nature of the portrayal, Indians crave international recognition.
For all of India’s global pretensions – even if limited to economics and aimed at linking India to international commerce in technology, ideas and goods – Indians are still too quick to take offence.
Ultimately Slumdog is a story about hope and love. It is a fairy tale set in the grim world that is India. Indians need to assess the film as a film, not a social document. Like any work of art, the response to it is a matter of taste.
It can be faulted on many grounds and its buffet of miseries might be repetitive. Yet the film’s success indicates that it is undeniably compelling, even for Indians, as the controversy in India indicates.
But most of all, Slumdog is disturbing, not because of the stark poverty it portrays but because of the fierce and confused outbursts of nationalist pride it can generate in a country that is attempting to forge links with the rest of the world.
The writer is a commentator on Indian affairs.
***
Reminds me somewhat of Russell Peters where he made the effort to make fun of himself and his ethnicity first before digging at others. That should soothe some raw nerves.
Looking forward to Sunday’s performance for another level of intellectual entertainment!
Getting High on Cutie Pies, Utopia & Paranoia
It is such a coincidence that the CLDDS play talks about the same theme as I have been for the week. Wow! Technotopia!
Up next is Staje’s performance tomorrow. I wonder if it’s going to be too artsy. And next Sunday’s the Combined Concert which I am eagerly anticipating. I am a sucker for Chinese Orchestra.
I heard Sports CCA members are not too eager about supporting this production. And with one quarter of the school population involved in the performance, they need as much support from the community as we can offer. I think the tickets will be snapped up closer to the day. It might be catalystic if only the following Monday is a holiday. Perhaps opening up the event to the public via direct marketing would work wonders for the performance. Why the belief in “juche”?
In the same article that talks about “juche”–self-reliance–in TIME (Apr 2, 2009), I discovered that I was right all the while about “No.2”. In the Current Affairs Quiz with 0408, I quipped that “Kim Jong 2” is the wrong way of writing and saying his name, but I was too tired to defend my position when it was challenged by the majority that I was wrong. Now past the witching hour, I regained the faith in my brain again. “Kim Jong 2” looks like Ju-On 2 or King Kong 2 or Donkey Kong 2 and it can’t be right! But seriously, in Korean tradition, “Kim” is the surname and not “Kim Jong”, so it doesn’t make sense to refer to the son of Kim Il Sung as “Kim Jong 2” when the father’s surname is “Kim” and not “Kim Jong”: more appropriately it should be “Kim 2”. “Lil Kim” doesn’t sound right either.
More importantly in that article, in the eyes of a Western diplomat in North Korea, he believes the “juche” spirit is messing with everyone. “Up yours,” that is what he–and perhaps the majority too–thinks that psychology is referring to. And that is remarkably vulgar, which shows how disillusioned they have become over the decades. It isn’t protectionism, it isn’t self-reliance, but it is more like the North Koreans are toying with your tea and sympathy.
Perhaps the resentment has gone too deep, and that emotion mixes with the sentiments for China:
How China Is Capitalizing on the Economic Crisis
By Joshua Kurlantzick (Thursday, Apr 2, 2009) in TIME
Scan the bare figures and China appears to be on the skids. Exports are plummeting, experts are slashing growth forecasts and unemployment could rise to its highest level since 1949, the year the People’s Republic was founded. But if President Hu Jintao feels the heat, he isn’t letting anyone see him sweat. Despite the massive challenges Beijing faces, the Chinese leadership seems to regard 2009 much as Michael Corleone viewed the day of his godson’s baptism in The Godfather — this year, China settles all business.
Once shy of making major foreign investments, Beijing has gone on the prowl for resources and underpriced assets across the globe. Cash-rich Chinese companies, backed by soft loans from state banks and re-energized by lower labor costs as jobs dry up, are descending on Central Asia, Africa and even Western Europe to snap up assets. State mining company Chinalco has tabled a $19.5 billion bid for British-Australian resources giant Rio Tinto. Beijing has launched a fund to buy distressed assets worldwide, inked a deal with Brazil’s Petrobras and provided Russia with a $25 billion loan in exchange for a secure future stream of oil and gas. (Overall, Chinese enterprises are on track to invest double the amount abroad this year than in 2008.) And compared to the past, when Western stockholders expressed concerns about selling assets to China, today companies are just glad for the cash. China’s Export-Import Bank, for instance, has offered Rio a $20 billion loan if the deal (which is stalemated) goes through.
More ambitiously, against the backdrop of a weakened West, Beijing sees an opportunity to assert itself globally. China has promised to buy International Monetary Fund bonds to bolster the organization, provided it gets a greater say in the IMF, and it has called for the creation of a new international reserve currency to replace the greenback. Though this idea is unlikely to ever become reality, just by floating the possibility, Beijing is signaling to the world that it wants to be a major player.
Beijing is also taking political advantage of the global economic meltdown. Western countries are strikingly reticent these days about criticizing China’s human-rights abuses, not least, perhaps, because Beijing has, for the first time, started warning the West not to take for granted its massive investments in their currencies and bonds. Capitalizing on this grace period, China has shored up its ties to repressive states such as Iran by signing a $3 billion natural-gas deal, challenged American ships off the coast of China and cracked down hard in Tibet for the 50th anniversary of the 1959 uprising. Yet Beijing has largely avoided high-level censure. In Washington, the State Department released a statement on the repression in Tibet in the name of a spokesman, rather than in the name of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, thereby making the message far less consequential.
China’s leaders are using the crisis to point out what they regard as flaws in Western capitalism. On a visit to Europe in January, Premier Wen Jiabao called China a “great power” and then criticized “an unsustainable model” of development in the West that partnered a lack of savings and “blind pursuit of profit.” Vice President Xi Jinping, on a recent trip to Mexico, blasted his hosts for harping on China’s human-rights record, saying “there are a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country.”
But this strength-from-weakness strategy could hurt Beijing. Time abroad could distract China’s leaders from their pressing domestic problems — for all its sophistication, the Chinese Communist Party has failed to develop any effective local troubleshooters other than Wen. For years, moreover, Chinese nationalists have been calling for exactly a tougher line toward the West. Now, Beijing’s new aggressiveness overseas could embolden the nationalists — a trend that would alienate China’s neighbors.
Still, Beijing has won big playing this game before. During the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, China refused to devalue the yuan, which helped prevent a further run by speculators on Asian currencies. All the while, Beijing reminded other Asian governments of how the West had failed to come to their rescue. By the end of the crisis, China, previously viewed with suspicion by its Asian neighbors, had built a reputation as a benevolent regional power. During last month’s session of China’s National People’s Congress, President Hu said: “Challenge and opportunity always come together. Under certain conditions, one could be transformed into the other.” Right now, those conditions are breaking China’s way.
***
The last sentence there is quite ambiguous. It actually means that “those conditions are” cushioning China’s ‘ruffian’ ways such that people are less likely to react (due to current poor state of world affairs).
So that is basically the author’s attitude.
I suppose it’s tough to stay positive, don’t worry and be happy in such trying times however much of a Bob Marley you may be. Some turn to alternatives, their concept of utopia:
Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense
By Joe Klein (Thursday, Apr 2, 2009) in TIME
Correction Appended: April 16, 2009
For the past several years, I’ve been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life’s exit ramp. In this case, I mean the high-minded part literally. And so, a deal: give us drugs, after a certain age — say, 80 — all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver’s licenses. (I mean, can you imagine how terrifying a nation of decrepit, solipsistic 90-year-old boomers behind the wheel would be?) We’ll let you proceed with your lives — much of which will be spent paying for our retirement, in any case — without having to hear us complain about our every ache and reflux. We’ll be too busy exploring altered states of consciousness. I even have a slogan for the campaign: “Tune in, turn on, drop dead.”
A fantasy, I suppose. But, beneath the furious roil of the economic crisis, a national conversation has quietly begun about the irrationality of our drug laws. It is going on in state legislatures, like New York’s, where the draconian Rockefeller drug laws are up for review; in other states, from California to Massachusetts, various forms of marijuana decriminalization are being enacted. And it has reached the floor of Congress, where Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter have proposed a major prison-reform package, which would directly address drug-sentencing policy.
There are also more puckish signs of a zeitgeist shift. A few weeks ago, the White House decided to stage a forum in which the President would answer questions submitted by the public; 92,000 people responded — and most of them seemed obsessed with the legalization of marijuana. The two most popular questions about “green jobs and energy,” for example, were about pot. The President dismissed the outpouring — appropriately, I guess — as online ballot-stuffing and dismissed the legalization question with a simple: “No.”
This was a rare instance of Barack Obama reacting reflexively, without attempting to think creatively, about a serious policy question. He was, in fact, taking the traditional path of least resistance: an unexpected answer on marijuana would have launched a tabloid firestorm, diverting attention from the budget fight and all those bailouts. In fact, the default fate of any politician who publicly considers the legalization of marijuana is to be cast into the outer darkness. Such a person is assumed to be stoned all the time, unworthy of being taken seriously. Such a person would be lacerated by the assorted boozehounds and pill poppers of talk radio. The hypocrisy inherent in the American conversation about stimulants is staggering.
But there are big issues here, issues of economy and simple justice, especially on the sentencing side. As Webb pointed out in a cover story in Parade magazine, the U.S. is, by far, the most “criminal” country in the world, with 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all drug arrests are marijuana-related. That is an awful lot of money, most of it nonfederal, that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure — or simply returned to the public.
At the same time, there is an enormous potential windfall in the taxation of marijuana. It is estimated that pot is the largest cash crop in California, with annual revenues approaching $14 billion. A 10% pot tax would yield $1.4 billion in California alone. And that’s probably a fraction of the revenues that would be available — and of the economic impact, with thousands of new jobs in agriculture, packaging, marketing and advertising. A veritable marijuana economic-stimulus package!
So why not do it? There are serious moral arguments, both secular and religious. There are those who believe — with some good reason — that the accretion of legalized vices is debilitating, that we are a less virtuous society since gambling spilled out from Las Vegas to “riverboats” and state lotteries across the country. There is a medical argument, though not a very convincing one: alcohol is more dangerous in a variety of ways, including the tendency of some drunks to get violent. One could argue that the abuse of McDonald’s has a greater potential health-care cost than the abuse of marijuana. (Although it’s true that with legalization, those two might not be unrelated.) Obviously, marijuana can be abused. But the costs of criminalization have proved to be enormous, perhaps unsustainable. Would legalization be any worse?
In any case, the drug-reform discussion comes just at the right moment. We boomers are getting older every day. You’re not going to want us on the highways. Make us your best offer.
The original version of this article misstated a statistic concerning policing in the U.S. Marijuana accounts for 47% of all drug arrests, not all arrests.
***
Ethical reasoning can be pushed to the edge of irrationality when desperate times called for desparate measures expecting to get a quick-fix.
But I’ll turn to these cutie pies… aww… aren’t they sweet… Real cuteness (probably subjective) is becoming rarer these days.
Ruinous War
The longest war, the darkest war, a ruinous war. Sometimes it is not the enemy at the door, but the enemy within: weak leadership…
4 TIME articles and the essays & milestones gone by
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. (Oscar Wilde)
Reflecting on a central issue that arose due to the AWARE saga, it is perhaps not wise to discuss or study about anyone who acknowledges to be the third gender, which makes Wilde’s statement foreboding. With democracy comes certain freedom and people tear at people for people’s own sake: certain societal trends are deemed to be deviant by the mass, so for the good of society, the others would have to be subdued. Like Wilde, Ian McKellen embraces the other-gender and this post might run into problems if the mass ever decides to senselessly link fallaciously the purposes and the intentions.
(1) Celebrity: hardwork counts and instant fame and fortune is hardly the case…
Thursday, Mar. 19, 2009
Ian McKellen: The Player
By ALEX PERRY / CAPE TOWN
In a trailer on the edge of a film set beneath an underpass in downtown Cape Town, Ian McKellen, 69, is musing about fame and death, and what the papers will say when he goes. “ ’GANDALF DIES,’ I expect,” he says. The thought tickles him. Not the dying part. The part about being a classical actor and having billions of fans, most of whom are 12. “When you spend as long as I have doing beautiful work which is only seen by a few thousand people, to be involved in popular entertainment without lessening one’s standards … that’s fairly appealing,” he says. “You become part of the culture.” It’s not that McKellen ever shied away from fame. On the contrary, he sought it out “to publicise myself to people who might employ me.” You might say he overachieved. “Now it’s … well, it’s gone well beyond that.”
McKellen has been thought of as one of the world’s great actors for more than half his life. But in the last decade, he has also transformed himself from a strict stage thespian — highly rated, seen by very few — into a big screen star. This year, he can be seen on the stage around Britain as Estragon in Waiting for Godot, and on television in the U.S. and Britain opposite Jim Caviezel as the villainous No. 2 in a remake (partly shot in South Africa) of the 1960s British cult series, The Prisoner. He combines high art and mass appeal once more next year when filming begins on The Hobbit, a fourth movie adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, in which he will again appear as the great wizard Gandalf. McKellen claims no great strategy for combining critical and commercial success. “How am I expected to make sense of a career which has basically been about me enjoying myself and hoping people would come to see me too?” he asks. But the result, as The Prisoner’s producer Trevor Hopkins says, has been to grant him a position of which every actor dreams: “Ian’s really in a place to do whatever he wants to do.”
A long time ago, when a Hilton was a hotel and Big Brother was a character in a book, there was acting and the stage — and a generation of British actors to whom those were the only things that mattered. On any given night in the small provincial theaters of Britain of the 1960s, you might catch the likes of Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, Ben Kingsley, Vanessa Redgrave or Patrick Stewart plying their trade. All were born or grew up during World War II, many in northern English counties known for their booming diction, and all shared the same obsession. Says Stewart, 68: “All we wanted to do was be on the stage doing great plays with great actors. We spent years and years doing play after play.”
McKellen was a leading light in this group. Leaving Cambridge University in 1961 with no formal training in drama, he dove into British regional theater — and stayed for decades. “I took jobs other people would not,” he says. “I wanted to find out how to act. I learned on the job.” By the 1970s, McKellen and many of his contemporaries were often to be found in one place: at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in Stratford-upon-Avon, where the bard was born. There, in 1976, on a bare stage in a tin hut called The Other Place that could seat 150, McKellen and Dench gave two of the great stage performances of all time. “No interval, but straight through,” says Dench, 74, of their Macbeth. “And not a normal kind of production at all. Plain black costumes, all very simple in a very small, dark place. We all stood round an orange box.” The play was, as Dench says, “a breakthrough.” The minimalist production, directed by Trevor Nunn, spawned a thousand imitations. Of McKellen, Shakespearean scholar Bernice W. Kliman gushed: “No other actor has so well depicted the existential nausea of a man who has chosen evil.”
Fame, fortune and Hollywood should have followed. But little changed for McKellen. “I am an RSC sort of actor,” he says of his decision to stay in Stratford. “There is nothing more sinister or enlightening than that.” Besides, the RSC was in its golden age. The concentration of talent intensified with the arrival at Stratford of a new generation of actors including Kenneth Branagh, Jeremy Irons, Charles Dance and Sean Bean. By then, the veterans had developed an informal set of rules for themselves: Take the craft seriously (Dench: “deadly”). Don’t take yourself seriously (Stewart: “That’s death to creativity”). Never think you know it all (Dench: “Absolutely fatal”). And if the part was good and you were mindful that anything you did onscreen came from what you learned on stage, then by all means take a role on television or in film.
Many of them did — to both acclaim and fame. Kingsley took the lead, and an Oscar, for Gandhi in 1982. Stewart stepped into the uniform of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in 1987’s Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dench took the lead in a British sitcom, A Fine Romance, and then hit the big time in 1995, when she played M in the James Bond films, and four years later, when she won an Oscar for her eight minutes in Shakespeare in Love.
McKellen didn’t follow his friends to Hollywood at first. Though he left Stratford for London and Broadway — where he won a Tony Award in 1981 for his role as Salieri in Amadeus — he stuck with the theater. In 1988, he came out on BBC radio during a debate over a British law, Section 28, which restricted how schools approached homosexuality. He went on to cofound Stonewall, a gay and lesbian rights lobby group, and regularly leads marches and protests across Europe (joking to the crowds that they should call him “Serena” after he was knighted in 1991).
It was campaigning that finally introduced McKellen to the joys of mass appeal. “If you spend most of your time being a classical actor, you do feel you are not quite in touch with what is going on in the street,” he says. “The minute you talk about gay people, you are in touch, you are making a difference, you do really join the human race. It was very satisfying to me.”
Encouraged, McKellen decided to join the human race as an actor too. He still takes classical theater roles, touring the world as Peter Sorin in Chekhov’s The Seagull in 2007 and as King Lear in 2008. But he now also does blockbusters, investing Gandalf with impressive gravitas in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and reveling in superior evil as Magneto in the X-Men films. And, yes, television too: a 10-week part as an author in Coronation Street, Britain’s biggest soap; an Emmy-nominated turn as a hyper-homosexual version of himself in Ricky Gervais’ comedy series, Extras; and, of course, The Prisoner.
McKellen says celebrity has allowed him to finally relax as an actor. “The Lord of The Rings changed my life,” he says. “[Becoming a star] confirmed that all that hard work, getting good as an actor, had paid off. People now accept that I am what I always wanted to be.” The proof, says McKellen, is that he can afford to be “a bit cheeky” in the roles he chooses. What he means is that he can do precisely what he wants. And he’s achieved that by doing exactly as he pleases. Which, whenever the curtain does finally fall, wouldn’t be a bad obituary.
(2) Islam: an age of renaissance, a historical milestone in the making…
Thursday, Mar. 19, 2009
A Quiet Revolution Grows in the Muslim World
By Robin Wright
Three decades after Iran’s upheaval established Islamic clerical rule for the first time in 14 centuries, a quieter and more profound revolution is transforming the Muslim world. Dalia Ziada is a part of it.
When Ziada was 8, her mother told her to don a white party dress for a surprise celebration. It turned out to be a painful circumcision. But Ziada decided to fight back. The young Egyptian spent years arguing with her father and uncles against the genital mutilation of her sister and cousins, a campaign she eventually developed into a wider movement. She now champions everything from freedom of speech to women’s rights and political prisoners. To promote civil disobedience, Ziada last year translated into Arabic a comic-book history about Martin Luther King Jr. and distributed 2,000 copies from Morocco to Yemen.
Now 26, Ziada organized Cairo’s first human-rights film festival in November. The censorship board did not approve the films, so Ziada doorstopped its chairman at the elevator and rode up with him to plead her case. When the theater was suspiciously closed at the last minute, she rented a tourist boat on the Nile for opening night–waiting until it was offshore and beyond the arm of the law to start the movie.
Ziada shies away from little, including the grisly intimate details of her life. But she also wears a veil, a sign that her religious faith remains undimmed. “My ultimate interest,” she wrote in her first blog entry, “is to please Allah with all I am doing in my own life.”
That sentiment is echoed around the Muslim world. In many of the scores of countries that are predominantly Muslim, the latest generation of activists is redefining society in novel ways. This new soft revolution is distinct from three earlier waves of change–the Islamic revival of the 1970s, the rise of extremism in the 1980s and the growth of Muslim political parties in the 1990s.
Today’s revolution is more vibrantly Islamic than ever. Yet it is also decidedly antijihadist and ambivalent about Islamist political parties. Culturally, it is deeply conservative, but its goal is to adapt to the 21st century. Politically, it rejects secularism and Westernization but craves changes compatible with modern global trends. The soft revolution is more about groping for identity and direction than expressing piety. The new revolutionaries are synthesizing Koranic values with the ways of life spawned by the Internet, satellite television and Facebook. For them, Islam, you might say, is the path to change rather than the goal itself. “It’s a nonviolent revolution trying to mix modernity and religion,” Ziada says, honking as she makes her way through Cairo’s horrendous traffic for a meeting of one of the rights groups she works with.
The new Muslim activists, who take on diverse causes from one country to another, have emerged in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks and all that has happened since. Navtej Dhillon, director of the Brookings Institution’s Middle East Youth Initiative, says, “There’s a generation between the ages of 15 and 35 driving this soft revolution–like the baby boomers in the U.S.–who are defined by a common experience. It should have been a generation outward looking in a positive way, with more education, access to technology and aspirations for economic mobility.” Instead, he says, “it’s become hostage to post-9/11 politics.” Disillusioned with extremists who can destroy but who fail to construct alternatives that improve daily life, members of the post-9/11 generation are increasingly relying on Islamic values rather than on a religion-based ideology to advance their aims. And importantly, the soft revolution has generated a new self-confidence among Muslims and a sense that the answers to their problems lie within their own faith and community rather than in the outside world. The revolution is about reform in a conservative package.
Text-Messaging The Koran
The soft revolution is made concrete in hundreds of new schools from Turkey to Pakistan. Its themes echo in Palestinian hip-hop, Egyptian Facebook pages and the flurry of Koranic verses text-messaged between students. It is reflected in Bosnian streets honoring Muslim heroes and central Asian girls named after the holy city of Medina. Its role models are portrayed by action figures, each with one of the 99 attributes of God, in Kuwaiti comic books. It has even changed slang. Young Egyptians often now answer the telephone by saying “Salaam alaikum”–“Peace be upon you”–instead of “Hello.” Many add the tagline “bi izn Allah”–“if God permits”–when discussing everything from the weather to politics. “They think they’re getting a bonus with God,” muses Ziada.
Even in Saudi Arabia, the most rigid Muslim state, the soft revolution is transforming public discourse. Consider Ahmad al-Shugairi, who worked in his family business until a friend recruited him in 2002 for a television program called Yallah Shabab (Hey, Young People). Al-Shugairi ended up as the host. Although he never had formal religious training, al-Shugairi quickly became one of the most popular TV preachers, broadcast by satellite to an audience across the Middle East and watched on YouTube. “The show explained that you could be a good Muslim and yet enjoy life,” says Kaswara al-Khatib, a former producer of Yallah Shabab. “It used to be that you could be either devout or liberal, with no middle ground. The focus had been only on God’s punishment. We focused on God’s mercy.”
In 2005, al-Shugairi began a TV series called Thoughts during the holy month of Ramadan, focusing on the practical problems of contemporary Muslim life, from cleanliness to charity. Sometimes clad in jeans and at other times a white Saudi robe and headdress, he often speaks informally from a couch. “I’m not reinventing the wheel or the faith,” al-Shugairi explains in Jidda’s Andalus Café, which he opened for the young. “But there is a need for someone to talk common sense.”
Al-Shugairi’s own life mirrors the experimentation and evolution of many young Muslims. In the 1990s, he says, he bounced from “extreme pleasure” as a college student in California to “extreme belief.” The shock of Sept. 11, an attack whose perpetrators were mostly Saudi, steered him to the middle.
Traditional clerics deride al-Shugairi, 35, and other televangelists for preaching “easy Islam,” “yuppie Islam,” even “Western Islam.” But his message actually reflects a deepening conservatism in the Islamic world, even as activists use contemporary examples and modern technology to make their case. One of al-Shugairi’s programs on happiness focused on Elvis Presley, a man with fame, talent and fortune but who died young. Life without deep spirituality, al-Shugairi preaches, is empty.
The soft revolution’s voices are widening the Islamic political spectrum. Mostafa Nagar, 28, an Egyptian dentist, runs a blog called Waves in the Sea of Change, which is part of an Internet-based call for a renaissance in Islamic thinking. Yet Nagar belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamist movement in the Middle East. His blog launched a wave of challenges from within the Brotherhood to its proposed manifesto, which limits the political rights of women and Christians. Nagar called for dividing the religious and political wings of the movement, a nod to the separation of mosque and state, and pressed the party to run technocrats rather than clerics for positions of party leadership and public office.
When Nagar and his colleagues were urged to leave the Brotherhood, they decided to stay. “As a public party,” he says, “its decisions are relevant to the destiny of all Egyptians, so their thoughts should be open to all people.” And indeed, his blog–and other criticism from the movement’s youth wing–has caused the manifesto to be put on ice.
The flap underscores an emerging political trend. Since 9/11, polls have consistently shown that most Muslims do not want either an Iranian-style theocracy or a Western-style democracy. They want a blend, with clerics playing an advisory role in societies, not ruling them. As a consequence, Islamist parties are now under intense scrutiny. “Islamists, far from winning sweeping victories, are struggling to maintain even the modest gains they made earlier,” says a recent survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In Iraq’s recent elections, for example, secular parties solidly trumped the religious parties that had fared well four years ago.
Rethinking Tradition
Politics is not the only focus of the soft revolution. Its most fundamental impact, indeed, may be on the faith itself. In the shadows of Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara, Turkey, a team of 80 Turkish scholars has been meeting for the past three years to ponder Muslim traditions dating back 14 centuries. Known as the hadith, the traditions are based on the actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and dictate behavior on everything from the conduct of war to personal hygiene.
Later this year, the Turkish scholars are expected to publish six volumes that reject thousands of Islam’s most controversial practices, from stoning adulterers to honor killings. Some hadith, the scholars contend, are unsubstantiated; others were just invented to manipulate society. “There is one tradition which says ladies are religiously and rationally not complete and of lesser mind,” says Ismail Hakki Unal of Ankara University’s divinity school, a member of the commission. “We think this does not conform with the soul of the Koran. And when we look at the Prophet’s behavior toward ladies, we don’t think those insulting messages belong to him.” Another hadith insists that women be obedient to their husbands if they are to enter paradise. “Again, this is incompatible with the Prophet,” Unal says. “We think these are sentences put forth by men who were trying to impose their power over the ladies.”
The Hadith Project is only one of many such investigations into Islam’s role in the 21st century. This is perhaps the most intellectually active period for the faith since the height of Islamic scholarship in the Middle Ages. “There is more self-confidence in the Islamic world about dealing with reason, constitutionalism, science and other big issues that define modern society,” says Ibrahim Kalin of the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research in Ankara. “The West is no longer the only worldview to look up to. There are other ways of sharing the world and negotiating your place in it.”
Crucially, this latest wave of Islamic thought is not led only by men. Eman el-Marsafy is challenging one of the strictest male domains in the Muslim world–the mosque. For 14 centuries, women have largely been relegated to small side rooms for prayer and excluded from leadership. But el-Marsafy is one of hundreds of professional women who are memorizing the Koran and is even teaching at Cairo’s al-Sadiq Mosque. “We’re taking Islam to the new world,” el-Marsafy says. “We can do everything everyone else does. We want to move forward too.”
The young are in the vanguard. A graduate in business administration and a former banker, el-Marsafy donned the hijab when she was 26, despite fierce objections from her parents. (Her father was an Egyptian diplomat, her mother a society figure.) But last year, el-Marsafy’s mother, now in her 60s, began wearing the veil too. That is a common story. Forty years ago, Islamic dress was rare in Egypt. Today, more than 80% of women are estimated to wear the hijab, and many put it on only after their daughters did.
Piety alone is not the explanation for the change in dress. “The veil is the mask of Egyptian woman in a power struggle against the dictatorship of men,” says Nabil Abdel Fattah of Cairo’s al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and author of The Politics of Religion. “The veil gives women more power in a man’s world.” Ziada, the human-rights activist, says the hijab–her headscarves are in pinks, pastels, floral prints and plaids, not drab black–provides protective cover and legitimacy for her campaigns.
Waiting for Obama
The ferment in the Muslim world has a range of implications for President Barack Obama’s outreach to Islam. Gallup polls in Islamic societies show that large majorities both reject militants and have serious reservations about the West. “They’re saying, ‘There’s a plague on both your houses,'” says Richard Burkholder Jr., director of Gallup’s international polls. Many young Muslims are angry at the outside world’s support of corrupt and autocratic regimes despite pledges to push for democracy after 9/11. “Most of the young feel the West betrayed its promises,” says Dhillon, of the Brookings Institution. Muslims fume that a few perpetrators of violence have led the outside world to suspect a whole generation of supporting terrorism. “The only source of identity they have is being attacked,” Dhillon says. The post-9/11 generation has been further shaped by wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, all of which Washington played a direct or indirect role in.
Although he is the first U.S. President to have lived in the Muslim world and to have Muslim relatives and a Muslim middle name, Obama is likely to face skepticism even among those who welcomed his election. In an open letter on the day of his Inauguration, the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference appealed for a “new partnership” with the Obama Administration. “Throughout the globe, Muslims hunger for a new era of peace, concordance and tranquility,” wrote Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the conference. He then pointedly added, “We firmly believe that America, with your guidance, can help foster that peace, though real peace can only be shared–never imposed.”
That is the key. Gallup polls show that by huge margins, Muslims reject the notion that the U.S. genuinely wants to help them. The new Administration, with a fresh eye on the world, wants to bolster the position of the U.S. But “Obama will have a narrow window to act,” says Burkholder, “because the U.S. has failed so often in the past.”
Ask Naif al-Mutawa, a clinical psychologist from Kuwait. Al-Mutawa is the publisher of The 99, glossy comic books popular from Morocco to Indonesia, with 99 male and female superheroes, each imbued with godly qualities such as mercy, wisdom and tolerance. In a recent article for the Chicago Tribune, Obama’s hometown paper, al-Mutawa recounted a conversation with his father about his newborn son. Al-Mutawa’s grandfather had recently died, and he expected his father to ask him to keep the name in the family. Instead, his father suggested the child be named after Obama. “I was stunned,” al-Mutawa wrote. “Instead of asking me to hold on to the past, my conservative Arab Muslim father was asking me to make a bet on the future.”
But al-Mutawa opted against it. “I want to see results, not just hope, before naming my children after a leader,” he wrote. Such pragmatism is typical of the Muslim world’s soft revolutionaries. They believe that their own governments, the Islamist extremists and the outside world alike have all failed to provide a satisfying narrative that synthesizes Islam and modernity. So they are taking on the task themselves. The soft revolution’s combination of conservative symbols, like Islamic dress, with contemporary practices, like blogging, may confuse outsiders. But there are few social movements in the world today that are more important to understand.
(3) Poor Africa: an echo of the series of articles on foreign aid that we have read (but this book review carries a thought provoking last sentence)…
Thursday, Mar. 19, 2009
Dead Aid By Dambisa Moyo FSG; 188 pages
By Gilbert Cruz
Poor Africa. It’s both the literal and figurative meanings of that phrase that gall Dambisa Moyo. A Zambian-born, Harvard- and Oxford-educated economist who worked at Goldman Sachs for almost a decade, Moyo is particularly angry at the way overly solicitous Western financial aid has made Africa’s “poor poorer.” As she writes, “The notion that aid can alleviate systemic poverty … is a myth.” That $1 trillion-plus the U.S. has poured into Africa? Mostly useless. All that Bono-supported “glamour aid”? Somewhat insulting. The truth, Moyo argues, is that massive foreign aid encourages corruption and stifles the investment and free enterprise that can provide long-term stability. Her alternative solutions include widespread microfinancing and unfettered agricultural trade with the West. Africa could also use more foreign direct investment–which China regularly provides, despite howls over its deals with the continent’s more unsavory regimes. Still, Moyo notes, China’s “foray into Africa is all business”–there’s not a smidgen of pity involved. Which is the way it should be.
(4) Finally, my favourite quote of the week (by Nancy Gibbs in the same issue of TIME), yet another pun:
They’re So Sorry. The masters of the universe who caused this money mess can’t master a simple skill: apologizing
3 pieces of recent news and essays come and gone
http://app.mfa.gov.sg/pr/read_content.asp?View,12656,
Asean is like family, says Chinese ambassador
Far from sensing anxiety among the grouping’s members, the Asean envoy felt kinship during eight-nation tour
By Sim Chi Yin, Straits Times, May 6, 2009
BEIJING: – Military clashes between China and its South-east Asian neighbours are a thing of the Cold War past, Beijing’s recently appointed ambassador to Asean, Dr Xue Hanqin, declares.
Today, she maintains that China is no longer seen as a threat by its ‘brothers’ in the region. Since her appointment four months ago, she has visited eight out of the 10 Asean member states on her ‘warm-up’ whistle-stop tour. Asked whether she sensed any anxiety among the eight countries, she replies: ‘No, not at all.’
‘In my discussions with them (Asean countries’ officials), they did not mention ‘China is rising militarily and economically and we are worried’. That concern did not exist,’ she says.
Dr Xue was speaking to The Straits Times in Beijing last week in her first interview with a foreign newspaper.
What struck the personable diplomat during her visits was the warm atmosphere, a ‘feeling of being among family members’.
‘We felt very close. When we interact, no matter how different our points of view are, everyone feels very comfortable. And when we talk about issues of mutual interest, we easily reach agreement,’ says the diplomat, who studied law at Columbia University in New York.
Her views stand in stark contrast to the prevailing wisdom among analysts that on the whole, South-east Asia is divided – or at best ambivalent – about Beijing’s growing economic and security clout in its neighbourhood.
Traditional rival Vietnam and maritime states like Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia seem uneasy as they watch China’s navy make impressive advances. Beijing has lingering, clashing claims with these countries over the oil-rich Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
In still-impoverished mainland South- east Asia – Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar – Beijing is viewed as a generous and helpful neighbour, and a useful counterweight to American and Indian influence.
But its Maoist-era support for communist insurgencies across South-east Asia aside, China did come to blows with its neighbours over disputed South China Sea islands not too long ago. China and the Philippines clashed over Mischief Reef in 1995. China also fought Vietnam over the Spratlys in 1988 and the Paracels in 1974.
Temperatures rose again in the South China Sea barely two months ago, when five Chinese vessels harassed an American ocean surveillance ship near Hainan Island.
Shortly after that, Beijing sent its largest fisheries boat, the Yuzheng 311, to the disputed Spratly Islands to protest against the Philippines’ implementation of a law to claim part of the chain. Several more ships were reportedly deployed around the area last month.
While these incidents may seem worrying to Asean member countries, Dr Xue doubts the chances of China waging war to solve a conflict in the tumultuous South China Sea.
She reiterates Beijing’s line that China ultimately wants peace and stability in the region and dismisses the alarm over its recent moves in the South China Sea as an overreaction.
‘There are people who repeatedly play up the issue…The South China Sea issue did not just pop up today, right? Besides, there are people who keep linking China’s military growth to that dispute.’
But she adds in the same breath: ‘To have differences among neighbours is normal. Even brothers can have different opinions and fight over them. What more neighbours?
‘But that’s what family is about. When we need to solve concrete problems, we can all sit down and talk about it.’
In the coming years, this former Chinese ambassador to the Netherlands will no doubt chalk up many frequent flyer miles travelling from her Beijing base to South-east Asia for these types of talks and Asean meetings.
Dr Xue does not spell it out but as China and its South-east Asian neighbours become more economically integrated, Beijing is more eager to dish out ‘soft power’ carrots than fall back on sticks and guns. It hopes that such an approach will win China regional goodwill at the expense of the United States, observers believe.
Just last month, China held out its latest eye-catching gift to Asean: a US$10 billion (S$15 billion) fund for infrastructure construction and US$15 billion worth of credit over the next three to five years to help Asean countries cushion the blow of the global financial downturn.
Beijing pledged US$39.7 million of extra aid to the area’s poorest countries – Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
On Sunday, China, Japan and South Korea also ironed out the final details of an emergency US$120 billion liquidity fund to help 13 economies in the grouping known as Asean+3 to prevent capital flight. Beijing will put US$38.4 billion into the fund, known as the Chiang Mai Initiative.
Far heftier than the US$4 billion it offered during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, this latest basket of goodies was to have been unveiled by Premier Wen Jiabao at the East Asian Summit in Pattaya, Thailand, last month. Unfortunately, that was scuppered by protests. The gifts were later announced by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.
China – now the world’s third-largest economy – wants ‘to keep the momentum’ since it did not go to Pattaya ’empty-handed but with concrete plans’, says Dr Xue, who seems more candid than the typical Chinese official. ‘Any time Asean countries are prepared to reconvene a meeting, we are ready to participate.’
Thailand this week proposed that the summit be held in mid-June. An item high on China’s Pattaya agenda might then come to fruition: the inking of an investment agreement that would complete negotiations for the China-Asean Free Trade Agreement. Once the free trade zone is set up as early as next year, annual bilateral trade volumes could reach an estimated US$1.2 trillion.
China’s trade with Asean has more than doubled from US$105.9 billion in 2004 to US$231.1 billion last year, making the bloc Beijing’s fourth-largest trade partner, just behind the European Union, the US and Japan.
Dr Xue describes China’s rise and South-east Asia’s rapid economic development as mutually beneficial ‘blessings’. ‘The speed at which China-Asean ties have grown has taken even us by surprise,’ she says.
And as trade and investment open up new paths of cooperation, historical baggage is unlikely to be a roadblock, she argues, going beyond a prepared script she had handy.
China should not be taken to task for its support for Cambodia’s ultra-Maoist and deadly Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, she says. As for Vietnam, she notes that longstanding land and sea border problems have been solved one at a time through years of dialogue.
Both Hanoi and Beijing are now ‘forward-looking’, she says, asking rhetorically: ‘If the problems of the past are a burden, how can we possibly have such good bilateral relations?’
As for the oft-heard observation that China prefers to deal bilaterally with its smaller neighbours to push its own realpolitik interests, Dr Xue waves it off as a ‘sweeping’ accusation, pointing out that China has been a keen multilateral team player within Asean.
Indeed, she predicts that as an economic bloc, Asean may one day emerge as more globally important than the EU – if only because of its larger population.
But the road ahead is still ‘very long and very hard’. There is a lot more work to do, admits the ambassador whose Mandarin is peppered with pitch-perfect English.
Some of that work will fall on the 22 ambassadors to Asean appointed by countries this year, including the United Kingdom, Russia, Greece and Romania. Countering criticism that it had neglected South-east Asia for years, the US was the first off the blocks, naming Mr Scot Marciel its ambassador to the grouping in April last year.
Traditional bugbears like Myanmar may continue to trouble some of Asean’s partners, like the US which often criticises the grouping for not doing more to berate Naypyidaw for its political repression.
But while critics see China’s long-held policy to steer well clear of other countries’ domestic affairs as a cop-out, Dr Xue, an international law expert who is also the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s legal counsel, says it will remain the Chinese way.
‘From the perspective of international law, some scholars feel that the principle of non-interference with others’ domestic affairs is out of date. But it is most important. When dealing with people, we must respect their personality and rights. So, when dealing with a country and a nation, how can we not respect them?’
While some observers say Beijing should be able to use its leverage over its ally Naypyidaw, Dr Xue disagrees.
‘The Myanmar issue is Myanmar’s own…Even if anyone wants to talk to Myanmar, it should come from within the Asean family…No Asean country has asked us to put pressure on Myanmar. We are not in that kind of cooperation.’
With the Chinese government and companies working on ever more aid and investment projects across South-east Asia – in dam-building and mining in the Mekong region, for instance – it is perhaps inevitable that their footprint draws more flak.
Dr Xue notes wryly that some zealous critics seem eager to score Chinese companies on a host of environmental and labour standards, wherever they go in the world.
But without naming specific projects, she acknowledges there are some grounds for the grassroots grouses that are building up, sometimes against Chinese state-owned enterprises.
Her own assessment: ‘It’s not because these companies ‘go out into the world’ that they suddenly have a weak sense of (their social responsibility). It was already weak even at home.
‘If they don’t have the awareness within China, they can’t possibly have it when they go to Myanmar or the Philippines!’
She says: ‘So we need to work on them here, domestically. We’re also still a developing country. But we are very conscious (of the need to improve).’
But the feisty diplomat is quick to add: ‘Surely not only Chinese companies face such issues.
‘You mean other countries’ enterprises leave no such problems?’
ON ASEAN BECOMING MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE EU
‘I told my colleagues in Hua Hin, the other ambassadors, when Asean integration happens and when the China-Asean free trade area is established, in a way, it may have greater importance than the European Union. They stared at me with their eyes wide, asking: ‘Oh, why do you say that?’ What I meant was that the EU has integrated 27 countries through over 60 years of peace, stability, economic growth and social development. If Asean integration could bring about regional development and if just the China-Asean FTA alone came to fruition, how many people would that benefit? 1.9 billion people. The EU is 470 million.’
ON THE JOB OF ASEAN AMBASSADOR
‘In these past four months, I’ve been like a horse that hasn’t stopped running. It’s been very meaningful…
There are people who have asked me: ‘Hi Ambassador, what’s your role?’ It’s very simple. Four words – or eight, in Chinese: contact, communication, coordination and making policy recommendations.’
ON CHINA’S ‘EXAGGERATED’ MILITARY RISE
‘We’re modernising our military because we are starting from a low base. That’s why you’d feel it’s expanding quickly. If we compare our military spending and standard of militarisation with developed countries, there is still just no comparison – there’s a huge gap. So I feel that on this issue, sometimes people exaggerate a bit, but we understand. But we also make it clear that it’s not the case.’
Career diplomat and legal counsel
DR XUE HANQIN, 53, is China’s recently appointed ambassador to Asean.
Born in the eastern province of Shandong, she is a graduate of Beijing Foreign Studies University and has a doctorate from Columbia Law School in New York.
From 2003 to April last year, she was China’s ambassador to the Netherlands.
She has also worked as director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s department of treaty and law, and was a permanent representative to the United Nations-backed Organisation on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons based in The Hague.
An expert on international law, Dr Xue holds the concurrent position of legal counsel to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
She has a daughter, who is attending university.
***
http://www.straitstimes.com/print/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_372112.html
RESILIENCE SURVEY
S’poreans more self-reliant [than believed]
By Sue-Ann Chia, ST, May 4, 2009
SINGAPORE residents are tougher and more self-reliant than is believed by many.
A survey by a think-tank has found that eight in 10 locals prefer to rely on themselves than on the Government in these bad times.
The finding surprised the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), which carried out the survey three months ago. Said IPS senior research fellow Gillian Koh: ‘I expected more people would want government help due to the public discourse in the last few years about the growing entitlement mentality among Singaporeans.’
The most self-reliant are the 30-somethings and, not surprisingly, well-off families earning more than $8,000 a month.
Overall, people can survive for 8.5 months, on average, should they lose their jobs, according to the survey which interviewed a sample of 817 Singaporeans and permanent residents.
However, those in their 20s and the lower-income making no more than $2,500 a month cannot last as long.
This indicates that most would need some form of help after 8.5 months, either from the Government or community agencies, said Dr Koh.
Most of those polled say they will count on their savings to see them through the tough times. But at least three in 10 will take what is described as a ‘survival job’ regardless of pay, before turning to friends and family for help.
The young and the well-off are more willing to accept these jobs. It can range from low-wage positions such as cleaners and labourers, to work deemed way below what people are qualified for. But there is a limit to how low they will go. They need a job that pays 58 per cent of their last-drawn salary to survive, meaning an average pay cut of 42 per cent.
Those who are poor and older, aged 50 and above, however, cannot take such deep cuts. The most is 34 per cent or 37 per cent respectively.
Read the full story in Monday’s edition of The Straits Times.
[Ed. Even ST employs such strategy, however I must explain that while I ask students to search for the “full story” on their own to encourage independent learning and a sense of ownership of the knowledge, ST might just be trying to boost the sale of the broadsheet. I’m not selling anything!
Ed. 19/5/9 Courtesy of NUS: http://newshub.nus.edu.sg/news/0905/PDF/RELIANT-st-4May-pA1&A3.pdf]
***
http://www.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20090505-139356.html
School eyes ‘Da Vinci’ minds with revamp
By Amelia Tan, ST, May 4, 2009
THE National University of Singapore (NUS) High School of Mathematics and Science wants to produce Singapore’s own Leonardo Da Vinci.
The legendary Italian known for his work as an artist, scientist and engineer is the inspiration for a curriculum revamp which will now train its students to think across disciplines.
Its principal, Dr Hang Kim Hoo, firmly believes that pigeon- holing his students into just one field of study each will not prepare them well for research and development, which is increasingly inter-disciplinary.
Until now, inter-disciplinary teaching and projects in the school’s six-year diploma programme have been ad hoc.
Under what has been named the Integrated Arts and Science Programme, knowledge of the arts and sciences – design and engineering, animation and robotics – will come together in students’ projects.
The school will put $4.5 million into developing a research complex on its site. It will be where students’ cross-disciplinary ideas can be taken further.
A workshop will also be built to allow students to develop their ideas into products that can perhaps be introduced to the market.
In the complex to be ready in November, one wing will be for video-conferencing, so students can discuss their projects with their mentors and research partners here and overseas.
Two other wings will house laboratories linked to facilitate collaboration between students researching, for example, life sciences and applied technology, such as clean-energy technology.
The universities are also picking up on the trend in inter-disciplinary teaching and research.
From 2011, students in NUS’ engineering programme will be taught the fundamentals of science, engineering, design and management; the fourth university, which opens its doors that year, will also be inter-disciplinary in its leaning.
NUS High students like Tan Zhong Ming will thus have a head start in the field.
The Year 6 student, who is working on modifying the structure of DNA and from this, to produce anti-cancer drugs, said combining engineering, biology and chemistry has made him used to inter-disciplinary research.
‘I plan to continue my project in university and hope to come up with conclusive findings in a few years.’
Finding Israel in 1508…
This old map that Shi Ting showed in class was bad for my old eyes and I was trying hard to find Cyprus and the area around the coast to locate Israel but I couldn’t! (It’s the projector’s fault actually: too pixellated on screen.)
Here’s another map:
The Pink Lots Redux
This is purely coincidental, but the discussions in class about the pink lots’ existence raised interesting questions that are relevant to the AWARE saga. There are too many articles to be posted here, but I’ll introduce some which I think are more thought-provoking in this post.
Fundamentally the question that reins in any such discussion is: Will we go too far to ensure ‘equality’? Mathematically, is Equality = XX = XY now, or is Equality = XX > XY now?
“Long-time member and new exco lock horns” in the Straits Times Apr 24, 2009: One “old guard” was not informed of the press conference and she challenged the new leadership’s claim that AWARE is “promoting homosexuality” and that AWARE has no place for men. “Because we are inclusive,” Chew the “old guard” said, to which the new exco retorted, “This is a women’s organisation.”
“Govt should ensure Aware stays secular” in ST Forum Apr 24, 2009 by Ravi Govindan: “…concerned that Aware was moving towards being an organisation of exclusion…Aware serves a vital national purpose because it has pursued its aim of gender equality, regardless of race, religion or sexual preference, in a transparent, all-embracing way…Because of its generosity of spirit and service to all, Aware has been a force for national good. My concern is whether the new leadership will continue this spirit of inclusiveness. Already, sexual minorities among the women have been forewarned that the new Aware agenda will exclude their voice. While I am a conservative Asian family man, and firmly believe in the heterosexual definition of a married couple as the nucleus of a Singaporean family, I am, like Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, realistic enough to appreciate the importance of accommodating non-heterosexual citizens in an all-inclusive Singapore…Part of the secular strength of Aware previously was that it comprised leaders from multi-religious backgrounds – Muslims, Catholics, Hindus and Buddhists. The new leaders are largely mono-religious and appear to hold singularly exclusive views about religion, social and family behaviour and sexual mores.”
“Way power was seized is criticised: Founders say those who disagree with Aware’s issues should form own group” in ST Apr 25, 2009: “…’these women joined Aware in the few months before the AGM and then voted their representatives into the executive committee – without giving any indication that they were acting together. They continued with this stance until Thursday when they told the truth…We cannot have people acting like moral vigilantes running around and taking over established organisations.’…the new group had been guided by senior lawyer Thio Su Mien…revealed on Thursday that she had been disturbed by what she felt was Aware’s preoccupation with promoting lesbianism and had encouraged women to join and take over Aware. She called herself the ‘feminist mentor’.”
‘Too diversified or too focused? Which is it?’ in ST Apr 25, 2009: “AWARE founder member Margaret Thomas wants the new executive committee of Aware to make up their minds. President Josie Lau…had said in a TV interview that the old Aware had diversified too much and needed to consolidate. ‘Now suddenly it’s been too focused on one issue? So what is it?’…the new team said Aware had become too focused on just one issue – promoting lesbianism and homosexuality…’Aware’s founding principle has been inclusiveness and because it has been inclusive we cannot condemn, deny or exclude any woman because of her sexual orientation or because she’s been abused by her husband or because she’s a single mother.'”
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