Myanmar Government Imposes Curfews

What Does This Mean?

First of all, I am sure that anyone would have heard of the recent riots and chaos in Myanmar. It started with the increase in fuel prices by 100% overnight. To add to this, the hard-line military rulers are enjoying wealth when most of the country's population is in poverty. The people there are simply fed up with military rule so now they want democracy instead of communism like most other countries. Basically, now monks and some people are taking part in anti-government protests because they have lost faith in the government.

This Affects Everyone Here

It is obvious that this affects everyone. This tarnishes the image of South-East Asia and people might even be afraid to come into the whole region even though the riots and protests are only in Myanmar and not in any other country like Singapore. As you might have guessed, this will cause a decrease in our earnings from the tourism industry causing the economy to go down.

However, inarguably the worst affected country is undoubtedly none other than China. China needs to polish its international image before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Now if all this chaos in Myanmar does not come to a stop, very few people will come to the Olympics. This is because China is Myanmar's top economic and diplomatic supporter. This might explain why China first adopted a policy of non-interference at first towards Myanmar's woes and now seems to be very concerned with the issues.

What is Being Done?

I am particularly disappointed with ASEAN's stand on the issue here. I do understand that their policy is non-interference. However, to simply put it, they are just saying,"We are deeply troubled" "We are deeply concerned over Myanmar's political instability- after that they do not do anything to conuter the actual problem. They are merely stating the obvious.

I really do not understand what function ASEAN is supposed to serve- I have never seen them trying to help one another counter problems such as water shortage in Singapore to political instability in Myanmar. Is ASEAN just a 'club' to imitate the UN?

Is this Right Or Wrong?

First of all, this really shouldn't be happening. The people shouldn't be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of their people. In this case, Myanmar's government has taken advantage of their people's 'flexibilty' or rather tolerance. in fact, I consider Myanmar's ruling party to be totalitarian. I mean imagine them enjoying wealth like mad when their own country suffers and when they run out of money to splurge on-they simply increase the price by 100%. Conditions are so bad that one is considered wealthy if he/she can afford to take the bus.

Moreover, the government is only making things worse by using violence to to counter the protests. They should realise that the country even though it is opening up to new changes and such, it still remains largely conservative and so people there remain deeply attached to Buddhism.

Conclusion

All in all, I think that Myanmar is a literally a time bomb waiting to explode. It can be comparable to France in a way, There were a lot of small French Revolutions before the actual big revolution took place where they executed the aristocrats. This revoltuion is just one of the small ones. In the future, there will be even more turmoil in the country. However, as the saying goes -Great Revolutions Are Written In Blood Not Ink--> one of the rare cases where the sword is mightier than the pen...

Links for Term 3 Responses

Link for 5th Article
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/09/25/myanmar.protest.ap/index.html

Link for 6th Article
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/25/climate.summit.ap/index.html

China's inflation at government warning level

This means that the prices in China are sky rocketing. The prices are currently rising at about 2.5-3% per month. At this rate, people will find it hard to even purchase clothes. This will cause a rise in interest rate for bank loans.

This affects You, Me And the World

How could the inflation in the world's fourth-largest economy not affect us? Firstly, since Singapore has a lot of trade relations with China and because of this inflation, the cost of living for manufacturers in China will increase too. As a chain effect of this, they will be forced to increase the price of goods they produce. Singapore exports a lot of these goods to its own country. Therefore, the price of the goods from China that are being sold here. The rich here will not really fell the pinch but the poor undoubtedly and to top it off there is a upcoming GST hike too. In midst of all this, Singaporeans really need to tighten their belt.

But however, not all of the effects caused by this inflation are bad. When the price of manufacturing goods in China increases, the difference between Singapore and China's competitiveness will narrow down. This because, lets say for example, it costs 5$ to make a product in China, in Singapore it costs 7$ to manufacture the same product. Due to the inflation, the cost of making the product in China will maybe increase to about 6$ and so on. As this continues, manufacturers in Singapore will get more business. As a result of this, more factories will be created, resulting a increase in the number of jobs. This in turn will obviously lower the unemployment rate which means the less Singaporeans will have no jobs.

However, this might not be true as a major change might happen in world economy and besides i am but merely a student. Therefore, what i say may not necessarily come true.

Rice bids to defuse talk of new Cold War

First of all, I must say this article reminded me of the Cold War which had many negative impacts with the world. This article is about US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During this meeting, Putin apparently talked about a new Cold War. This was because of US plans to place elements of a missile defence shield in the Czech Republic and Poland. Apparently, Putin thought that these missile interceptors were targeted against Russia.. However, Rice said that it was not against Russia but against possible emerging threats such as Iran.

This means that a little misunderstanding such as this can even lead to cataclysmic consequences like Cold War II. This matters because it affects the whole world. This is actually quite similar to the cause of World War I. Do you know that World War I actually started just because one royal person was assassinated. Think about it, millions of lives lost just because to avenge one person. We must realize that such cases can happen if issues like this continue to happen.

From Putin’s point of view, it might seem that he was not at fault for causing the misunderstanding and he might only think it is a way of clarifying his doubts on whether the missile interceptors ,which are placed by the USA in Czech Republic, are targeted against Russia.

From Rice’s point of view, she will most probably feel offended as she prefers to not to be reminded of the Cold War. She probably feels that she is being provoked by Putin to start a new Cold War.

Therefore, we must acknowledge all this and try to be as sensitive as possible to one another.

I think that the author of this article is trying to tell us that wars are never over. We are in a constant risk every single day. It is trying to tell us that wars can happen any time even over small things.

Of course, I would not know how true this statement is since I am not in an important position myself.

Overall, I think that we all need to be more sensitive to one another, taking care not to hurt the others’. This may prevent clashes in the furure.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/276134/1/.html

This is the link for my 4th response.(Societal issues)

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/276160/1/.html

This is my URL for my 3rd response.(Political)

SOCIAL

(I have done the 2nd response in realtion to this article-http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/261192/1/.html)

Word count starts from next sentence.

It is expected that percentage of the elderly who are over 60 who make up only 6.8% of the population now, will double to make up about 16% of the population in 2020 which is just in 13 years. By 2050, they will accumulate for 56.7% or more than half the population! This means that when we walk along the street , we will be seeing more elderly than young people. This means that there will not be enough young people to protect Singapore. It also means that there will be too much job vacancies. Last year, it was said that there must a minimum of 60 000 babies to protect Singapore's economy in the future, but there were only 22 000 babies born. This means that there is a need for 38 000 more people in the future to work for Singapore and this will probably be foreign talent. But even if there is foreign talent, Singapore's currency might leave Singapore as the foreign workers will most probably send back most of their salary to their own countries instead of spending it in Singapore and this can be a hindrance to ecnomic growth of Singapore.

This matters to the teens of now as we need to take care of our parents in 2020. We cannot just dump them in some old folks' home. We need to show them love and concern in return for what they have done for us.

We must think from the elderlys' point of view. Right now, the newspapers are always talking about elderly explosion, ageing explosion.etc. This might make the elderly think that they are a hindrance to the developement of the society. This might cause them to feel unwanted and they would prefer to live alone. In fact, there was an article on more elderly wanting to live alone rather than with their own family.

The author of this article probably felt that we need to prepare for the rapid increase in the elderly population. He was probably trying to make us feel aware of the situation and the nned to act according to it.

I might be generalizing that the reason for more elederly living alone nowadays is beacause they are feeling unwanted. They may just feel more comfortable that way. Overall, I think we need to prepare ourrsleves in accordance to the situation.

ENVIRONMENTAL

(I have done a response in relation to this article-http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm)

Word Count starts from next sentence onwards.

The above article tells us how the condition of global warming is getting worse and how its having a slow but destructive impact on us. According to IPCC(The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
said that temeperatures would increase by 1.8-4C and that sea levels would rise by 28-43cm by the end of the century.

ALL this is because of human activity, but what are we humans actually doing about it? All I can see is just political talks being held and after that nothing is being done. In fact I think environmental conservation should be classified under national security, because Nature provides us resources and without resources, what is there to defend? We are affected by it every single day and we are causing it too. With global warming , there will be flooding throughout the entire world by the end of the century. This matters because we are the future generation! If they do not stop or at least slow down the rate of global warming, we are the ones who will be affected the most. This means that if this continues, we probably have to concentrate more on environmental conservation rather than trying to settle down! This matters to me and everyone in this world because when we harm this planet we harm ourselves too not some alien. Some people just don't seem to take the situation seriously.

Of course, from the capitalist's point of view what i have said so far might sound like crap, but isnt what the capitalists have earned so far is more than what they need. Why do they need to murder trees for their own greed in order to expand their businesses! As Gandhi said, "There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed." Thus we should try our best to follow this example and try to be as conservative as possible.

The author of this article is trying to tell us that we have been creating a fire for warmth and the fire is getting too hot and it is burning ourselves. He is trying to make us feel that we are guilty of the worst crime as possible. I think that most others would agree to my points except for lumberjacks.

Being a student, I have a limited knowledge about globalisation and expansion and so on. This might have caused my views to be one-sided to a little extent. But, i do know that we indeed need to stop global warming at once! Lets us help to conserve the planet. Good planets like Earth are hard to find.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm