Singapore is in recession, and it's quite worrisome. I really don't want people around me being depressed. Jobs may be lost, and the domestic workers (Filipinas were interviewed) are worried they might be sent home. Sounds like doomsday but it is always fear that makes matters worse. I'll try to be brave. My former pastor used to say that God takes care of his children no matter what the economy is. His churchgoers have seen blessing pour into their lives regardless of the past crises that have happened in Singapore. I want to be a testament.
Below is a news clip that help explains what really happens to money when stock markets crash, for the newbies mainly, it's basic.
It reminds me not to be too greedy, and that if I have money to invest, I am reminded to diversify my portfolio and not put everything in the stock market.
****
All that money you've lost _ where did it go?
By Eric Carvin,Associated Press Writer AP - Sunday, October 12
NEW YORK - Trillions in stock market value _ gone. Trillions in retirement savings _ gone. A huge chunk of the money you paid for your house, the money you're saving for college, the money your boss needs to make payroll _ gone, gone, gone.
Whether you're a stock broker or Joe Six-pack, if you have a 401(k), a mutual fund or a college savings plan, tumbling stock markets and sagging home prices mean you've lost a whole lot of the money that was right there on your account statements just a few months ago.
But if you no longer have that money, who does? The fat cats on Wall Street? Some oil baron in Saudi Arabia? The government of China?
Or is it just _ gone?
If you're looking to track down your missing money _ figure out who has it now, maybe ask to have it back _ you might be disappointed to learn that is was never really money in the first place.
Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, puts it bluntly: The notion that you lose a pile of money whenever the stock market tanks is a "fallacy." He says the price of a stock has never been the same thing as money _ it's simply the "best guess" of what the stock is worth.
"It's in people's minds," Shiller explains. "We're just recording a measure of what people think the stock market is worth. What the people who are willing to trade today _ who are very, very few people _ are actually trading at. So we're just extrapolating that and thinking, well, maybe that's what everyone thinks it's worth."
Shiller uses the example of an appraiser who values a house at $350,000, a week after saying it was worth $400,000.
"In a sense, $50,000 just disappeared when he said that," he said. "But it's all in the mind."
Though something, of course, is disappearing as markets and real estate values tumble. Even if a share of stock you own isn't a wad of bills in your wallet, even if the value of your home isn't something you can redeem at will, surely you can lose potential money _ that is, the money that would be yours to spend if you sold your house or emptied out your mutual funds right now.
And if you're a few months away from retirement, or hoping to sell your house and buy a smaller one to help pay for your kid's college tuition, this "potential money" is something you're counting on to get by. For people who need cash and need it now, this is as real as money gets, whether or not it meets the technical definition of the word.
Still, you run into trouble when you think of that potential money as being the same thing as the cash in your purse or your checking account.
"That's a big mistake," says Dale Jorgenson, an economics professor at Harvard.
There's a key distinction here: While the money in your pocket is unlikely to just vanish into thin air, the money you could have had, if only you'd sold your house or drained your stock-heavy mutual funds a year ago, most certainly can.
"You can't enjoy the benefits of your 401(k) if it's disappeared," Jorgenson explains. "If you had it all in financial stocks and they've all gone down by 80 percent _ sorry! That is a permanent loss because those folks aren't coming back. We're gonna have a huge shrinkage in the financial sector."
There was a time when nobody had to wonder what happened to the money they used to have. Until paper money was developed in China around the ninth century, money was something solid that had actual value _ like a gold coin that was worth whatever that amount of gold was worth, according to Douglas Mudd, curator of the American Numismatic Association's Money Museum in Denver.
Back then, if the money you once had was suddenly gone, there was a simple reason _ you spent it, someone stole it, you dropped it in a field somewhere, or maybe a tornado or some other disaster struck wherever you last put it down.
But these days, a lot of things that have monetary value can't be held in your hand.
If you choose, you can pour most of your money into stocks and track their value in real time on a computer screen, confident that you'll get good money for them when you decide to sell. And you won't be alone _ staring at millions of computer screens are other investors who share your confidence that the value of their portfolios will hold up.
But that collective confidence, Jorgenson says, is gone. And when confidence is drained out of a financial system, a lot of investors will decide to sell at any price, and a big chunk of that money you thought your investments were worth simply goes away.
If you once thought your investment portfolio was as good as a suitcase full of twenties, you might suddenly suspect that it's not.
In the process, of course, you're losing wealth. But does that mean someone else must be gaining it? Does the world have some fixed amount of wealth that shifts between people, nations and institutions with the ebb and flow of the economy?
Jorgenson says no _ the amount of wealth in the world "simply decreases in a situation like this." And he cautions against assuming that your investment losses mean a gain for someone else _ like wealthy stock speculators who try to make money by betting that the market will drop.
"Those folks in general have been losing their shirts at a prodigious rate," he said. "They took a big risk and now they're suffering from the consequences."
"Of course, they had a great life, as long as it lasted."
Monday, October 13, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Because this blog mimics a cafe, and because I love coffee
From New York Times 5 August 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/health/05brod.html?no_interstitial#
Sorting Out Coffee’s Contradictions
By JANE E. BRODY
When Howard D. Schultz in 1985 founded the company that would become the wildly successful Starbucks chain, no financial adviser had to tell him that coffee was America’s leading beverage and caffeine its most widely used drug. The millions of customers who flock to Starbucks to order a double espresso, latte or coffee grande attest daily to his assessment of American passions.
Although the company might have overestimated consumer willingness to spend up to $4 for a cup of coffee — it recently announced that it would close hundreds of underperforming stores — scores of imitators that now sell coffee, tea and other products laced with caffeine reflect a society determined to run hard on as little sleep as possible.
But as with any product used to excess, consumers often wonder about the health consequences. And researchers readily oblige. Hardly a month goes by without a report that hails coffee, tea or caffeine as healthful or damns them as potential killers.
Can all these often contradictory reports be right? Yes. Coffee and tea, after all, are complex mixtures of chemicals, several of which may independently affect health.
Caffeine Myths
Through the years, the public has been buffeted by much misguided information about caffeine and its most common source, coffee. In March the Center for Science in the Public Interest published a comprehensive appraisal of scientific reports in its Nutrition Action Healthletter. Its findings and those of other research reports follow.
Hydration. It was long thought that caffeinated beverages were diuretics, but studies reviewed last year found that people who consumed drinks with up to 550 milligrams of caffeine produced no more urine than when drinking fluids free of caffeine. Above 575 milligrams, the drug was a diuretic.
So even a Starbucks grande, with 330 milligrams of caffeine, will not send you to a bathroom any sooner than if you drank 16 ounces of pure water. Drinks containing usual doses of caffeine are hydrating and, like water, contribute to the body’s daily water needs.
Heart disease. Heart patients, especially those with high blood pressure, are often told to avoid caffeine, a known stimulant. But an analysis of 10 studies of more than 400,000 people found no increase in heart disease among daily coffee drinkers, whether their coffee came with caffeine or not.
“Contrary to common belief,” concluded cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, there is “little evidence that coffee and/or caffeine in typical dosages increases the risk” of heart attack, sudden death or abnormal heart rhythms.
In fact, among 27,000 women followed for 15 years in the Iowa Women’s Health Study, those who drank one to three cups a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent, although this benefit diminished as the quantity of coffee rose.
Hypertension. Caffeine induces a small, temporary rise in blood pressure. But in a study of 155,000 nurses, women who drank coffee with or without caffeine for a decade were no more likely to develop hypertension than noncoffee drinkers. However, a higher risk of hypertension was found from drinking colas. A Johns Hopkins study that followed more than 1,000 men for 33 years found that coffee drinking played little overall role in the development of hypertension.
Cancer. Panic swept this coffee-dependent nation in 1981 when a Harvard study tied the drink to a higher risk of pancreatic cancer. Coffee consumption temporarily plummeted, and the researchers later concluded that perhaps smoking, not coffee, was the culprit.
In an international review of 66 studies last year, scientists found coffee drinking had little if any effect on the risk of developing pancreatic or kidney cancer. In fact, another review suggested that compared with people who do not drink coffee, those who do have half the risk of developing liver cancer.
And a study of 59,000 women in Sweden found no connection between coffee, tea or caffeine consumption and breast cancer.
Bone loss. Though some observational studies have linked caffeinated beverages to bone loss and fractures, human physiological studies have found only a slight reduction in calcium absorption and no effect on calcium excretion, suggesting the observations may reflect a diminished intake of milk-based beverages among coffee and tea drinkers.
Dr. Robert Heaney of Creighton University says that caffeine’s negative effect on calcium can be offset by as little as one or two tablespoons of milk. He advised that coffee and tea drinkers who consume the currently recommended amount of calcium need not worry about caffeine’s effect on their bones.
Weight loss. Here’s a bummer. Although caffeine speeds up metabolism, with 100 milligrams burning an extra 75 to 100 calories a day, no long-term benefit to weight control has been demonstrated. In fact, in a study of more than 58,000 health professionals followed for 12 years, both men and women who increased their caffeine consumption gained more weight than those who didn’t.
Health Benefits
Probably the most important effects of caffeine are its ability to enhance mood and mental and physical performance. At consumption levels up to 200 milligrams (the amount in about 16 ounces of ordinary brewed coffee), consumers report an improved sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability, Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reported, although higher amounts sometimes cause anxiety and stomach upset.
Millions of sleep-deprived Americans depend on caffeine to help them make it through their day and drive safely. The drug improves alertness and reaction time. In the sleep-deprived, it improves memory and the ability to perform complex tasks.
For the active, caffeine enhances endurance in aerobic activities and performance in anaerobic ones, perhaps because it blunts the perception of pain and aids the ability to burn fat for fuel instead of its carbohydrates.
Recent disease-related findings can only add to coffee’s popularity. A review of 13 studies found that people who drank caffeinated coffee, but not decaf, had a 30 percent lower risk of Parkinson’s disease.
Another review found that compared with noncoffee drinkers, people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, had a 28 percent lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. This benefit probably comes from coffee’s antioxidants and chlorogenic acid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/health/05brod.html?no_interstitial#
Sorting Out Coffee’s Contradictions
By JANE E. BRODY
When Howard D. Schultz in 1985 founded the company that would become the wildly successful Starbucks chain, no financial adviser had to tell him that coffee was America’s leading beverage and caffeine its most widely used drug. The millions of customers who flock to Starbucks to order a double espresso, latte or coffee grande attest daily to his assessment of American passions.
Although the company might have overestimated consumer willingness to spend up to $4 for a cup of coffee — it recently announced that it would close hundreds of underperforming stores — scores of imitators that now sell coffee, tea and other products laced with caffeine reflect a society determined to run hard on as little sleep as possible.
But as with any product used to excess, consumers often wonder about the health consequences. And researchers readily oblige. Hardly a month goes by without a report that hails coffee, tea or caffeine as healthful or damns them as potential killers.
Can all these often contradictory reports be right? Yes. Coffee and tea, after all, are complex mixtures of chemicals, several of which may independently affect health.
Caffeine Myths
Through the years, the public has been buffeted by much misguided information about caffeine and its most common source, coffee. In March the Center for Science in the Public Interest published a comprehensive appraisal of scientific reports in its Nutrition Action Healthletter. Its findings and those of other research reports follow.
Hydration. It was long thought that caffeinated beverages were diuretics, but studies reviewed last year found that people who consumed drinks with up to 550 milligrams of caffeine produced no more urine than when drinking fluids free of caffeine. Above 575 milligrams, the drug was a diuretic.
So even a Starbucks grande, with 330 milligrams of caffeine, will not send you to a bathroom any sooner than if you drank 16 ounces of pure water. Drinks containing usual doses of caffeine are hydrating and, like water, contribute to the body’s daily water needs.
Heart disease. Heart patients, especially those with high blood pressure, are often told to avoid caffeine, a known stimulant. But an analysis of 10 studies of more than 400,000 people found no increase in heart disease among daily coffee drinkers, whether their coffee came with caffeine or not.
“Contrary to common belief,” concluded cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, there is “little evidence that coffee and/or caffeine in typical dosages increases the risk” of heart attack, sudden death or abnormal heart rhythms.
In fact, among 27,000 women followed for 15 years in the Iowa Women’s Health Study, those who drank one to three cups a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent, although this benefit diminished as the quantity of coffee rose.
Hypertension. Caffeine induces a small, temporary rise in blood pressure. But in a study of 155,000 nurses, women who drank coffee with or without caffeine for a decade were no more likely to develop hypertension than noncoffee drinkers. However, a higher risk of hypertension was found from drinking colas. A Johns Hopkins study that followed more than 1,000 men for 33 years found that coffee drinking played little overall role in the development of hypertension.
Cancer. Panic swept this coffee-dependent nation in 1981 when a Harvard study tied the drink to a higher risk of pancreatic cancer. Coffee consumption temporarily plummeted, and the researchers later concluded that perhaps smoking, not coffee, was the culprit.
In an international review of 66 studies last year, scientists found coffee drinking had little if any effect on the risk of developing pancreatic or kidney cancer. In fact, another review suggested that compared with people who do not drink coffee, those who do have half the risk of developing liver cancer.
And a study of 59,000 women in Sweden found no connection between coffee, tea or caffeine consumption and breast cancer.
Bone loss. Though some observational studies have linked caffeinated beverages to bone loss and fractures, human physiological studies have found only a slight reduction in calcium absorption and no effect on calcium excretion, suggesting the observations may reflect a diminished intake of milk-based beverages among coffee and tea drinkers.
Dr. Robert Heaney of Creighton University says that caffeine’s negative effect on calcium can be offset by as little as one or two tablespoons of milk. He advised that coffee and tea drinkers who consume the currently recommended amount of calcium need not worry about caffeine’s effect on their bones.
Weight loss. Here’s a bummer. Although caffeine speeds up metabolism, with 100 milligrams burning an extra 75 to 100 calories a day, no long-term benefit to weight control has been demonstrated. In fact, in a study of more than 58,000 health professionals followed for 12 years, both men and women who increased their caffeine consumption gained more weight than those who didn’t.
Health Benefits
Probably the most important effects of caffeine are its ability to enhance mood and mental and physical performance. At consumption levels up to 200 milligrams (the amount in about 16 ounces of ordinary brewed coffee), consumers report an improved sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability, Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reported, although higher amounts sometimes cause anxiety and stomach upset.
Millions of sleep-deprived Americans depend on caffeine to help them make it through their day and drive safely. The drug improves alertness and reaction time. In the sleep-deprived, it improves memory and the ability to perform complex tasks.
For the active, caffeine enhances endurance in aerobic activities and performance in anaerobic ones, perhaps because it blunts the perception of pain and aids the ability to burn fat for fuel instead of its carbohydrates.
Recent disease-related findings can only add to coffee’s popularity. A review of 13 studies found that people who drank caffeinated coffee, but not decaf, had a 30 percent lower risk of Parkinson’s disease.
Another review found that compared with noncoffee drinkers, people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, had a 28 percent lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. This benefit probably comes from coffee’s antioxidants and chlorogenic acid.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Last hurrah for the month of April
It's the last day of April and I feel like I'm going to miss the month. This year's has been a different kind due to La Nina-caused showers. It made the air cooler and the usually fierce equatorial sun during this time of the year bearable.
I remember being in Bangkok early in April last year and the intense heat I had to conquer just to maximize my visit. It was a special time in my life and it's funny how easily it was already a year ago.
I'm looking forward to May, my favorite month of the year in my childhood. Light rains start falling in the Philippines come May, and flowers start to bloom, and everybody gets a relief from the torrid March-April heat. May is also when the May flower parades of flores de Mayo happen. Most unoccupied little to teen-age girls look forward to joining this parade where you get made-up and dressed-up in special gowns.
Santacruzan, the bigger event, is normally prefaced by the flores de Mayo.
I remember being in Bangkok early in April last year and the intense heat I had to conquer just to maximize my visit. It was a special time in my life and it's funny how easily it was already a year ago.
I'm looking forward to May, my favorite month of the year in my childhood. Light rains start falling in the Philippines come May, and flowers start to bloom, and everybody gets a relief from the torrid March-April heat. May is also when the May flower parades of flores de Mayo happen. Most unoccupied little to teen-age girls look forward to joining this parade where you get made-up and dressed-up in special gowns.
Santacruzan, the bigger event, is normally prefaced by the flores de Mayo.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Grand pliè in second position
As I was clearing my wallet of all-important documents (pieces of paper with phone numbers, grocery and bank receipts), I chanced upon my scribbling on a little piece of scratch paper detailing where I should go to get my ballet gears. The information was from a staff of the Singapore Dance Theatre (SDT) who I inquired upon from months back.
A sense of gratitude washed over me as I realized how I have moved on from that point when I was just planning my move. Indeed, things happen in my seemingly boring life. I am now taking my Beginners’ Ballet Course with SDT and have actually gone to that store that I scribbled to get my first pair of ballet shoes.
I’m well on my way to my third lesson this coming Friday and I’m glad I did not quit after the trying first class (also considered the trial class) which rendered me immobile the day after. The second class seemed easier than the first, or maybe I just got better at the steps too. And according to my teacher, I do an amazing grand pliè in second position, even better than she does due to her short Achilles. Nothing could have made my after-office Friday night better. The call-out for my other mistakes did not matter anymore after hearing what she said. My perfect grand pliè in second position was a laurel in my crown that would never go away.
Ballet movements, like in Pilates, rely heavily on the stomach muscles. I have mentioned that I don’t have them strong and I feel truly excited about attending a Pilates class and deciding to attend a ballet class simultaneously. The combination is probably the therapy that my back has needed from long way back.
Ballet has interested me since I joined a jazz dance performance group. It was hard for me to catch-up with long-time dancers with dance class background and they made me feel like I needed to know the basics to be a better dancer. I noticed how much ballet movements are borrowed by jazz and how ‘finding one’s center’ seems very important in these dances. I was also often called out upon about looking down on the floor while I’m doing my floor exercises; and this made me realize the importance of maintaining the proper posture while doing the dance. Hence, I bore it mind that ballet is good in helping people with their balance and their posture. So far, my classes have proven such to be true.
So for people who are looking for means with which they can improve their posture and balance and who do not mind the rigors of dancing with discipline, I would say ballet is for you.
A sense of gratitude washed over me as I realized how I have moved on from that point when I was just planning my move. Indeed, things happen in my seemingly boring life. I am now taking my Beginners’ Ballet Course with SDT and have actually gone to that store that I scribbled to get my first pair of ballet shoes.
I’m well on my way to my third lesson this coming Friday and I’m glad I did not quit after the trying first class (also considered the trial class) which rendered me immobile the day after. The second class seemed easier than the first, or maybe I just got better at the steps too. And according to my teacher, I do an amazing grand pliè in second position, even better than she does due to her short Achilles. Nothing could have made my after-office Friday night better. The call-out for my other mistakes did not matter anymore after hearing what she said. My perfect grand pliè in second position was a laurel in my crown that would never go away.
Ballet movements, like in Pilates, rely heavily on the stomach muscles. I have mentioned that I don’t have them strong and I feel truly excited about attending a Pilates class and deciding to attend a ballet class simultaneously. The combination is probably the therapy that my back has needed from long way back.
Ballet has interested me since I joined a jazz dance performance group. It was hard for me to catch-up with long-time dancers with dance class background and they made me feel like I needed to know the basics to be a better dancer. I noticed how much ballet movements are borrowed by jazz and how ‘finding one’s center’ seems very important in these dances. I was also often called out upon about looking down on the floor while I’m doing my floor exercises; and this made me realize the importance of maintaining the proper posture while doing the dance. Hence, I bore it mind that ballet is good in helping people with their balance and their posture. So far, my classes have proven such to be true.
So for people who are looking for means with which they can improve their posture and balance and who do not mind the rigors of dancing with discipline, I would say ballet is for you.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Parallels between the Philippines and Thailand
Old article but I kept it because I started feeling a connection to Thailand (beyond Bangkok being a place to shop) only after the 2006 coup. Will discuss more in the future.
From: Asia Times Online
A Thai pointer for the Philippines
By Roby Alampay
BANGKOK - Ordinary Thais have been posing for pictures beside tanks and offering flowers to smiling soldiers, a strong signal that Thailand's bloodless military coup on Tuesday has been warmly received by the country's urban-based upper and middle classes.
Their new military leaders have assured the country that power will be restored to a civilian government within two weeks of the coup that deposed caretaker premier Thaksin Shinawatra. Under a timetable laid out by the coup leaders, new general elections should be held by October 2007, perhaps in time for a new democratically elected government to ratify a new constitution.
Before and beyond all that, however, Thais have also begun a process of soul-searching for their democracy. Underneath the celebratory mood that has embraced the military in Bangkok, there are questions and anxiety over what exactly they are thanking their generals for.
Interestingly, it is not only Thais who are keen to learn from their reflections. Filipinos, who are not known to stay in touch with Southeast Asian politics as much as they are deeply aware of US foreign policy, have uncharacteristically been following the developments in Thailand like genuinely concerned - or at least curious - neighbors.
On one level, "Martial law in Thailand" was a striking headline and a convenient news peg for Philippine reflection on September 21, the same day Filipinos observed the 34th anniversary of the imposition of military rule under the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship. Beyond the date, however, the Philippines is watching Thailand because of the uncanny parallels in the travails of Southeast Asia's minority democratic states.
In particular, Filipinos see in the Thai saga much of what they had contended with under former president Joseph Estrada and the incumbent who replaced him, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Arroyo's ascension to the presidency in 2001 after a "soft" military coup - backed by the middle class but resented by the majority poor who had elected Estrada - raised painful questions for Philippine democracy, and bruised the very notion of "people power" in the country that gave birth to the term.
Since then, questions over her government's legitimacy, charges that she and her family are corrupt, and the perception validated by Supreme Court reprimands that she had been flouting the constitution to weaken all opposition to her government have left Filipinos divided over Arroyo's full six-year term.
Like Thaksin, however, Arroyo actually won that term in open elections. Her party's majority control of Congress, in fact, has defeated all attempts to impeach her. Now she wants to amend the constitution and shift the Philippines to a parliamentary form of government, raising even more hackles because under current laws she is not eligible to run for re-election as president but conceivably could as prime minister.
After the coup in Thailand, many Filipino politicians are wondering aloud about the possibilities should the parallels be allowed to continue. It is clear that Thaksin's ouster is being welcomed by the powerful middle class, and perhaps even by investors, and the understanding that the coup had the blessings of Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej has calmed the rest of Thai society - including, most notably, the poor and rural communities from which Thaksin derived his political base.
Abusing democracy
Thailand's Bangkok-based voters came to loathe Thaksin after five years in power because of widespread perceptions that his administration was unusually corrupt and greedy, and because his dominant Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party clearly had designs on installing a de facto one-party system in the kingdom. The poor, on the other hand, embraced Thaksin's populist policies that, among other things, gave them universal health care and debt relief, though without fully explaining how his government would pay for all these gifts down the road.
With this as a backdrop, a consensus had built that Thaksin was driving a wedge between rich and poor so as to entrench himself in power. He was forced by massive Bangkok-based anti-government demonstrations to declare snap elections this April. After massive irregularities, those poll results, which his party won with a diminished majority, were annulled and new elections were scheduled for November. The conventional wisdom until the coup was that Thaksin's TRT was bound to lose votes, but also that it would retain its parliamentary majority.
In other words, after last year's and this year's Thai "people power" street protests, the nullification of an election result and the dissolution and revamping of the country's Election Commission, Thaksin seemed destined to emerge again as democratically elected prime minister. But Thai society would have been further divided by a victory for the status quo.
Hence the coup that many in Thailand insist has provided a way out of the mess. But there is now also a clear ambivalence - as Filipinos felt in 2001 - over the fact that it took the military to break a political impasse. When it takes the army to move a stalled democracy, in which direction is society really headed?
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political-science professor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, acknowledges that Thai democracy has taken a blow: "With the revocation of the Thai constitution, this is a 15-year reversal."
But democracy, he told a capacity crowd at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Bangkok the day after the coup, "is not one size fits all". He urged the Western world for "a more nuanced definition. I don't condone the coup, but it must be taken in a broader perspective."
That perspective includes the premise that Thai democracy is not merely imperfect; like that of the Philippines, it is deeply flawed. Both countries had emerged from decades of military rule with progressive constitutions, committing themselves to democracy and all its trappings: independent courts, press freedom, institutionalized checks and balances - everything to free their people as well as to impress the wider world, Western democracies in particular.
And yet Filipinos and Thais over the past six years could only concede that, among other things, the checks and balances weren't working. Elections weren't free of money and fair for all. The constitution is shot full of loopholes that elected politicians gleefully exploit. Corruption is getting worse, not better.
Thitinan says the problems feed into a vicious cycle of constitutional change, elections, corruption, public discontent, military intervention, and then back to constitutional change again. Through it all and at every stage, he said, "a sense of entitlement" fuels the cycle and corrupts every intervening player, be it the military, the opposition, the media, or even civil society. To break the cycle, he offered that this sense of entitlement must be defeated and that "we must not rely too much on constitutional change".
Back in the Philippines, oppositionists have seized on the Thai coup to rebut Arroyo's insistence that a shift to a parliamentary government will bring about stability. Clearly, they say, it is all messier than that. As outgoing Thai senator Kraisak Choonhavan poignantly put it: "Outsiders do not understand what we have to go through to fight an elected government."
It is a painful conclusion to reach: that the democracy you fought so hard to regain has been abused to the point that it is no longer recognizably different from what it ostensibly replaced. But when that conclusion is perceived to be unassailable, Thais ask, what choice is there to be had? It is the same question Filipinos have been asking for years.
Roby Alampay is a Filipino journalist currently based in Bangkok as executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance. The article reflects his personal thoughts and commentary.
(Copyright 2006 Roby Alampay.)
From: Asia Times Online
A Thai pointer for the Philippines
By Roby Alampay
BANGKOK - Ordinary Thais have been posing for pictures beside tanks and offering flowers to smiling soldiers, a strong signal that Thailand's bloodless military coup on Tuesday has been warmly received by the country's urban-based upper and middle classes.
Their new military leaders have assured the country that power will be restored to a civilian government within two weeks of the coup that deposed caretaker premier Thaksin Shinawatra. Under a timetable laid out by the coup leaders, new general elections should be held by October 2007, perhaps in time for a new democratically elected government to ratify a new constitution.
Before and beyond all that, however, Thais have also begun a process of soul-searching for their democracy. Underneath the celebratory mood that has embraced the military in Bangkok, there are questions and anxiety over what exactly they are thanking their generals for.
Interestingly, it is not only Thais who are keen to learn from their reflections. Filipinos, who are not known to stay in touch with Southeast Asian politics as much as they are deeply aware of US foreign policy, have uncharacteristically been following the developments in Thailand like genuinely concerned - or at least curious - neighbors.
On one level, "Martial law in Thailand" was a striking headline and a convenient news peg for Philippine reflection on September 21, the same day Filipinos observed the 34th anniversary of the imposition of military rule under the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship. Beyond the date, however, the Philippines is watching Thailand because of the uncanny parallels in the travails of Southeast Asia's minority democratic states.
In particular, Filipinos see in the Thai saga much of what they had contended with under former president Joseph Estrada and the incumbent who replaced him, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Arroyo's ascension to the presidency in 2001 after a "soft" military coup - backed by the middle class but resented by the majority poor who had elected Estrada - raised painful questions for Philippine democracy, and bruised the very notion of "people power" in the country that gave birth to the term.
Since then, questions over her government's legitimacy, charges that she and her family are corrupt, and the perception validated by Supreme Court reprimands that she had been flouting the constitution to weaken all opposition to her government have left Filipinos divided over Arroyo's full six-year term.
Like Thaksin, however, Arroyo actually won that term in open elections. Her party's majority control of Congress, in fact, has defeated all attempts to impeach her. Now she wants to amend the constitution and shift the Philippines to a parliamentary form of government, raising even more hackles because under current laws she is not eligible to run for re-election as president but conceivably could as prime minister.
After the coup in Thailand, many Filipino politicians are wondering aloud about the possibilities should the parallels be allowed to continue. It is clear that Thaksin's ouster is being welcomed by the powerful middle class, and perhaps even by investors, and the understanding that the coup had the blessings of Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej has calmed the rest of Thai society - including, most notably, the poor and rural communities from which Thaksin derived his political base.
Abusing democracy
Thailand's Bangkok-based voters came to loathe Thaksin after five years in power because of widespread perceptions that his administration was unusually corrupt and greedy, and because his dominant Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party clearly had designs on installing a de facto one-party system in the kingdom. The poor, on the other hand, embraced Thaksin's populist policies that, among other things, gave them universal health care and debt relief, though without fully explaining how his government would pay for all these gifts down the road.
With this as a backdrop, a consensus had built that Thaksin was driving a wedge between rich and poor so as to entrench himself in power. He was forced by massive Bangkok-based anti-government demonstrations to declare snap elections this April. After massive irregularities, those poll results, which his party won with a diminished majority, were annulled and new elections were scheduled for November. The conventional wisdom until the coup was that Thaksin's TRT was bound to lose votes, but also that it would retain its parliamentary majority.
In other words, after last year's and this year's Thai "people power" street protests, the nullification of an election result and the dissolution and revamping of the country's Election Commission, Thaksin seemed destined to emerge again as democratically elected prime minister. But Thai society would have been further divided by a victory for the status quo.
Hence the coup that many in Thailand insist has provided a way out of the mess. But there is now also a clear ambivalence - as Filipinos felt in 2001 - over the fact that it took the military to break a political impasse. When it takes the army to move a stalled democracy, in which direction is society really headed?
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political-science professor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, acknowledges that Thai democracy has taken a blow: "With the revocation of the Thai constitution, this is a 15-year reversal."
But democracy, he told a capacity crowd at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Bangkok the day after the coup, "is not one size fits all". He urged the Western world for "a more nuanced definition. I don't condone the coup, but it must be taken in a broader perspective."
That perspective includes the premise that Thai democracy is not merely imperfect; like that of the Philippines, it is deeply flawed. Both countries had emerged from decades of military rule with progressive constitutions, committing themselves to democracy and all its trappings: independent courts, press freedom, institutionalized checks and balances - everything to free their people as well as to impress the wider world, Western democracies in particular.
And yet Filipinos and Thais over the past six years could only concede that, among other things, the checks and balances weren't working. Elections weren't free of money and fair for all. The constitution is shot full of loopholes that elected politicians gleefully exploit. Corruption is getting worse, not better.
Thitinan says the problems feed into a vicious cycle of constitutional change, elections, corruption, public discontent, military intervention, and then back to constitutional change again. Through it all and at every stage, he said, "a sense of entitlement" fuels the cycle and corrupts every intervening player, be it the military, the opposition, the media, or even civil society. To break the cycle, he offered that this sense of entitlement must be defeated and that "we must not rely too much on constitutional change".
Back in the Philippines, oppositionists have seized on the Thai coup to rebut Arroyo's insistence that a shift to a parliamentary government will bring about stability. Clearly, they say, it is all messier than that. As outgoing Thai senator Kraisak Choonhavan poignantly put it: "Outsiders do not understand what we have to go through to fight an elected government."
It is a painful conclusion to reach: that the democracy you fought so hard to regain has been abused to the point that it is no longer recognizably different from what it ostensibly replaced. But when that conclusion is perceived to be unassailable, Thais ask, what choice is there to be had? It is the same question Filipinos have been asking for years.
Roby Alampay is a Filipino journalist currently based in Bangkok as executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance. The article reflects his personal thoughts and commentary.
(Copyright 2006 Roby Alampay.)
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Abs of steel
Mine is not.
I resorted to taking Pilates classes to keep fit and I was very much satisfied with my experience in my first class.
Pilates makes you sweat out without you having to move around so much which is good for the joints. The whole regimen makes you carry your body relying solely on your muscles. Tough but very satisfying once you are able to carry out the routine.
Highly recommended for everyone. Now, Pilates is sharing the top spot in my best exercises list with jazz dance. Try it.
I resorted to taking Pilates classes to keep fit and I was very much satisfied with my experience in my first class.
Pilates makes you sweat out without you having to move around so much which is good for the joints. The whole regimen makes you carry your body relying solely on your muscles. Tough but very satisfying once you are able to carry out the routine.
Highly recommended for everyone. Now, Pilates is sharing the top spot in my best exercises list with jazz dance. Try it.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Believe in dreams, they still come true
This morning I was talking to my seatmate about how I long to travel to Europe and how I don’t have the money to do such. If only, I said, someone would come up to me and hand me millions of dollars and tell me to use it to travel to Europe and more.
My seatmate was quite cynical. She thought I would have to give something in return for the money, like dirty favors.
I said that wasn’t my idea. The money should be given to me just because; out of something that I won’t need to know of. Jokes, if anything was needed in return, were the only thing I could give. To give happiness through my good jokes.
And then, a few minutes ago, I went to the Yahoo! Website and witnessed the news from Good Morning America about this certain couple who met a stranger in a restaurant who gave them a blank check. They were told to write any amount of money they would like. They didn’t think it was serious but went along writing $100,000 on it and then validated the check the following day anyway. It turned out that there was indeed money backing the check and that they had it for themselves. The only condition they had to fulfill was to use the money for acquiring a house, and to name their next baby after their benefactor.
I’m not sure if it was quite their dream to have a stranger come up to them to give them money for no particular reason, nevertheless, I saw my dream come true to them and I’m quite pleased to know that my idea wasn’t at all impossible. It can and it indeed happened to other people. Now if that benefactor can only come to me.
Incidentally, I just happened to think about listening to the Beatles’ Across the Universe this afternoon.
Jai Guru Deva Om (some say would mean Victory to God Divine or salutations to the guru)
Indeed. Amen.
My seatmate was quite cynical. She thought I would have to give something in return for the money, like dirty favors.
I said that wasn’t my idea. The money should be given to me just because; out of something that I won’t need to know of. Jokes, if anything was needed in return, were the only thing I could give. To give happiness through my good jokes.
And then, a few minutes ago, I went to the Yahoo! Website and witnessed the news from Good Morning America about this certain couple who met a stranger in a restaurant who gave them a blank check. They were told to write any amount of money they would like. They didn’t think it was serious but went along writing $100,000 on it and then validated the check the following day anyway. It turned out that there was indeed money backing the check and that they had it for themselves. The only condition they had to fulfill was to use the money for acquiring a house, and to name their next baby after their benefactor.
I’m not sure if it was quite their dream to have a stranger come up to them to give them money for no particular reason, nevertheless, I saw my dream come true to them and I’m quite pleased to know that my idea wasn’t at all impossible. It can and it indeed happened to other people. Now if that benefactor can only come to me.
Incidentally, I just happened to think about listening to the Beatles’ Across the Universe this afternoon.
Jai Guru Deva Om (some say would mean Victory to God Divine or salutations to the guru)
Indeed. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)