UN Security Council unanimously adopts Syria aid resolution |
- UN Security Council unanimously adopts Syria aid resolution
- Britain says would support new Ukrainian government
- Is there legitimate textual borrowing? — Setiano Sugiharto
- Istanbul police fire tear gas on protest over Internet curbs
- Salsa star Blades, Venezuela president spar over unrest comments
- A Gramscian take on Thai politics — Daniel Mattes (New Mandala)
| UN Security Council unanimously adopts Syria aid resolution Posted: 22 Feb 2014 04:52 PM PST
Russia, with support from China, has blocked three previous resolutions aimed at pressuring the Damascus regime since the crisis began in March 2011, with an estimated 250,000 people across Syria awaiting help. But Moscow and Beijing, two of the five permanent Security Council members, did not do so this time, sending a strong message to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The resolution was drafted by Australia, Jordan and Luxembourg and had the backing of Britain, France and the United States, the other permanent members. However, some diplomats doubt the effectiveness of the resolution in the absence of automatic sanctions to force Damascus to let aid convoys have access to the hardest-hit areas. — AFP  |
| Britain says would support new Ukrainian government Posted: 22 Feb 2014 04:49 PM PST
Foreign Secretary William Hague said he was in close touch with European Union partners over what he called the "extraordinary developments" in Ukraine. "Events in the last 24 hours show the will of Ukrainians to move towards a different future, and ensure that the voices of those who have protested courageously over several months are heard," Hague said in a statement. "We will work closely with our EU partners in support of a new government in Ukraine, as and when that is formed. "In the meantime it is important that Ukraine's political leaders respond to events calmly and with determination to harness the united efforts of all Ukrainians to work together for a successful future." He said the release of jailed pro-Western opposition icon Yulia Tymoshenko was welcome.
In a tweet, Hague said he had agreed with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier to push for a "vital" International Monetary Fund financial package for debt-laden Ukraine. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "One of the things they talked about was the economic situation and putting together a financial package which will help to stabilise the situation in Ukraine, to enable the Ukraine to receive long-term support from the IMF." Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych refused to step down Saturday and denounced a "coup" by protesters as the emboldened opposition took control of parliament and parts of Kiev in another dramatic turn in the crisis. Yanukovych's regime appeared close to collapse as protesters took control of his offices and lawmakers voted to free former premier Tymoshenko immediately. — AFP |
| Is there legitimate textual borrowing? — Setiano Sugiharto Posted: 22 Feb 2014 04:47 PM PST
A noted economist from the prestigious state university, Anggito Abimanyu, now director general for the haj and minor haj at the Religious Affairs Ministry, has been accused of doing a copy-paste job without proper acknowledgement in his recent opinion piece published in the country's largest daily, Kompas. Anggito's sentences and paragraphs in the piece were alleged to bear close resemblance to those written by other authors for the same newspaper. In a statement appearing in The Jakarta Post (Feb. 18), Anggito said he had erroneously referred to some articles in a folder on his personal computer. Even if his testimony is true, this is still a case of plagiarism due to sheer neglect. It is interesting to observe here that such a case of plagiarism is less likely to occur among professional writers or highly experienced scholars like Anggito. Instead, plagiarism of this type is most common among novice writers or scholars and inexperienced student writers. It often takes the form of so-called patch writing — copying a source text with slight modifications in both structural and lexical patterns. While referencing or textual borrowing is very common in the academic world, the rules governing how linguistic elements or ideas belonging to other writers can be borrowed and then reproduced remain fuzzy. For one thing, it is often difficult to define with precision what constitutes a plagiaristic act, as textual borrowing practices vary from one culture to another. For instance, in a culture where submission to authoritative voices is highly encouraged, verbatim imitation of texts is not considered taboo and is seen as something that is not supposed to be avoided. In fact, exact copying is encouraged in order to show respect to the ones who have the authority of knowledge. In this respect, the perception of plagiarism emanating from the Western perspective is incompatible with practices of textual borrowing from other cultural vantage points. The imposition of such a one-sided perspective can often do a disservice to a writer hailing from another cultural tradition. Another point is the notion that originality never exists. To what extent, for example, could the article that was deliberately copied by Anggito be considered a purely original product of its authors? It is important to understand here that the act of communicating through written language is tantamount to the act of knowledge making. And the process of making knowledge never takes place in a social vacuum, but it is socially bounded. The ideas we generate both orally and in written language can never be devoid of the accumulation of experience from our social encounters with other people. This suggests that there is no such thing as the notion of originality. With this in mind, it seems fair to say that we all are in fact "plagiarists", with a varying degree of the ability in manipulating language. That is, we can never construct knowledge, and hence generate ideas, free from daily social encounters. We owe a great deal to our collaborations with others in the process of making knowledge through a written medium. Thus, the texts that we create are not the product of our individual knowledge, but rather the overt manifestation of our collaborative knowledge and shared biases and subjectivities with other people. In the end, we can say that what distinguishes "expert plagiarists" from "novice plagiarists" lies in the former's linguistic maturity in shaping the ideas as such so as to appear original and in manipulating linguistic elements that can help them build up these ideas and mask them from the appearance of a mere imitation of other's ideas. As for the charge of plagiarism against Anggito, it is unfortunate that he couldn't play elegantly with words, shaping and manipulating them adroitly so as to create an "original" text of his own. He has in fact fallen victim to his ignorance of the standard citation conventions and can therefore be subsumed under the category of "novice plagiarists". — thejakartapost.com * Setiano Sugiharto is an associate professor at Atma Jaya Catholic University. He is also chief editor of the Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching. ** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online. |
| Istanbul police fire tear gas on protest over Internet curbs Posted: 22 Feb 2014 04:45 PM PST
Police took action to push protesters away from the city's Taksim Square, a focal rally point, an AFP reporter said. Protesters responded by hurling fireworks at police, who detained dozens of people, according to media reports. "Government, resign!" the demonstrators chanted. "Do not touch my Internet!" "Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance," they shouted, echoing a chant often heard during the huge anti-government protests that swept the country in June. The controversial law came into effect last Wednesday after it was signed by Turkish President Abdullah Gul despite repeated calls for a veto. It gives the telecoms authority the power to order a webpage blocked if the content is deemed to infringe privacy or is offensive. The new curbs have sparked alarm at home and abroad, with critics saying they are an attempt to stifle dissent and stop evidence of high-level corruption being seen online. Earlier Saturday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan again denied accusations of online censorship, to a crowd of several thousand supporters in the city of Sivas. "We are not against the Internet, we are against the 'immoral' items on the Internet," Erdogan said at a rally marking the kick-start of his party's local election campaign. "We have just taken steps to prevent our children from being poisoned," he said. The legislation came as Erdogan deals with a wide-ranging graft scandal that erupted in mid-December, implicating his inner circle. The embattled premier has accused US-exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whose supporters hold key positions in the police and the judiciary, of instigating the probe ahead of local polls on March 30. His government has taken a series of retaliatory measures, including a mass purge of police and prosecutors and legislation reforming the judiciary. But these measures, coupled with a heavy-handed police crackdown on the June protests, have severely dented Turkey's image as a model of democracy and stability in a volatile region. — AFP |
| Salsa star Blades, Venezuela president spar over unrest comments Posted: 22 Feb 2014 04:43 PM PST
Blades, 65, wrote on his website on Tuesday that President Nicolas Maduro's administration and the opposition were "serving their own agendas" and failing to rein in more than a week of violence between security forces and protesters that has killed at least six people. The president faces calls to resign from opponents who blame him for the unrest, as well as long-standing problems such as high inflation, crime, and product shortages. Maduro, the successor of the late Hugo Chavez, said in a national speech on Wednesday that Blades had fallen for foreign propaganda against his government. "I love him ... but this is an international lobbying campaign to bring artists every day saying something against the revolution, to create the conditions for a (foreign) intervention," said Maduro, who then invited the "Amor y Control" singer to Venezuela. Blades has yet to take up the offer, but responded to Maduro's accusations on Thursday, saying: "I am not, consciously or otherwise, part of any CIA (US Central Intelligence Agency) plot nor any 'international lobby' aimed at creating bad publicity for any government." He said the world should try to move beyond using political labels to disparage foes. "If I criticise someone from the left, then I'm from the CIA. If I criticise someone from the right, I'm a communist. When I criticise the military, I'm 'subversive,'" he wrote. Blades, a former tourism minister and one-time presidential candidate in Panama, is well-known for the social messages in his song lyrics, such as a swipe at US foreign policy in his hit "Tiburon" ("Shark"). His music can often be heard around Venezuela, especially in poor neighbourhoods where the government draws most support. International celebrities are no stranger to Venezuelan politics. During Chavez's 14-year rule on a platform to put the poor first and end decades of rule by a corrupt elite, he drew high-profile support from Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn, filmmaker Oliver Stone and Argentine football star Diego Maradona. Some of celebrities have transferred their support to Maduro, who calls himself Chavez's "son." Other musicians have weighed in on Venezuela's political debate in recent days. Singer Madonna posted a photo of Maduro on the social media network Instagram, writing "Fascism is alive and thriving in Venezuela. Apparently Maduro is not familiar with the phrase 'Human Rights'!" While few celebrities have openly supported Maduro during the current crisis, he enjoys the backing of some local personalities such as TV soap opera stars and singers. Local classical music conductor Gustavo Dudamel has come under fire from Maduro's critics for going ahead with a series of concerts during the unrest, though Dudamel has not signalled support for either side. ― Reuters |
| A Gramscian take on Thai politics — Daniel Mattes (New Mandala) Posted: 22 Feb 2014 04:39 PM PST
The more recent military action that removed elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from power in 2006 occurred along a polarized divide between the urban and the rural, between business and agriculture, and between the bourgeoisie and the poor. The film's threatening spirit guardian represents this rural working poor, who simultaneously form a foundation of Thai identity but stoke fear among urban elites through their electoral power. Although 2006 saw the successful removal of Thaksin, the resumption of new street protests in recent months demonstrates the anxieties over rural power that still exist in Thailand. Key elements within a "deep state" of military, royal and business elites have unsuccessfully offset the interests of rural peasants, even as they have utilized and managed support from civil society movements opposed to government corruption. To shift the polarization in Thai society and politics, greater understanding of the historical experiences of the Thai subaltern — the rural and working poor — can bridge the divide. Although the Shinawatra-associated parties of Pheu Thai [PTP] and previously Thai Rak Thai [TRT] won four elections between 2001 and 2011, the deeper powers of the Thai state have not necessarily shifted with the changes in government. Rather, as McCargo has suggested in his work on the Thai network monarchy, the entrenched military, royalist and business elements have continued to operate the state at a deeper level than any superficial electoral shift. Yet in the face of PTP's continued electoral mandates for programs of healthcare provision and rural development loans, this deep state may no longer feel so empowered. Through studies of bourgeois hegemony in his Prison Notebooks, the Italian communist leader, Antonio Gramsci, noted society's role when a state lost control over politics. As he noted, "When the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed…[as] a powerful system of fortresses and earthenworks." Thaksin's mutation into a populist force outside the Bangkok establishment encouraged support among those that the leading Democrat Party had long ignored, including the geographically marginalized North and Northeast as well as the socioeconomically marginalized rural poor and migrant workers. It was assumed Thaksin held ulterior motives, but corruption and cronyism were not new features of Thai democracy; what unnerved the urban elite to a greater extent was his ability to consolidate such wide support from the voting public, for this had the capacity to threaten future policymaking and their deeper interests. This elite struggle resulted in and revealed the real forces within civil society taking part in street movements and fighting over sociopolitical hegemony: the urban bourgeoisie and the rural poor. As the dominant bloc of political elites lost control over the government, bourgeois elites now fear losing hegemony over the rural and working poor. Recent events in Bangkok have amplified the anti-rural noise, referring to potential PTP voters as either ignorant or susceptible to bribes. Thongchai Winichakul has noted the discrepancy in criticizing vote-buying among rural populations but ignoring similar strategies of localized spending within the urban context. The cynical discourse surrounding development in rural areas does not exist concerning commonly used tax breaks or transit improvements in Bangkok. Andrew Walker has also argued that urban elites wrongly presume that money dispensed during elections will directly determine voting outcomes, an assumption that indicates not only urban bias but also urban ignorance of the realities and rational choices of rural populations. Herein lies the paradox at the crux of the divide: the deep state of military, royalist and urban business interests view populist efforts as a threat to their wider support, but what truly threatens their grasp on power is their own mischaracterisation of that wider public as threatening. Instead, these elements should view the rural populations as a foundational spirit of their power. The king once achieved his prominence and earned his wide appeal through years of concerted public engagement with rural farmers, for example. However, the monarchy and its networks have presently come to fear the rural population's intractable power and related support for the Shinawatras. There is a distinct possibility — even probability — that Thaksin capitalised on the subaltern of rural farmers and urban poor in a clever attempt to assuage populist sentiment without true action. Recent protests among Northern farmers still awaiting their promised subsidies reinforce this notion. However, the opposition's emphasis of this claim only aims to manipulate the subaltern for purposes of its own. As such, Thai political and civil society regularly engage in debates that reinforce the status quo and protect the hegemony of the dominant bloc of the ruling class and the state. The selective removal of Thaksin Shinawatra as a singular example of corrupt politics denotes not only the level of unease among elites in response to his continued support among the rural population and the working poor, but also the continued entrenchment of an elite class on either side of the political divide. The monarchy's Privy Council, the military and the courts – the structural tools of the deep state — only began to pursue Thaksin's removal from office after his resounding 2005 re-election, after ignoring his and others' corruption as a banal normalcy within Thai politics. Thongchai Winichakul labels the events of 2006 "a royalist coup," with the military and the courts as accomplices and with the support of an electoral minority but crucial element called "the people's sector," made up of activists, intellectuals, media outlets, and the business elite. This sector, weighted towards the attitudes and interests of the urban bourgeoisie, has failed to appreciate those of rural citizens. The lengthy movements of 2006 and 2008, the violence of 2010 and the renewal of action in recent months indicate the deep intractability of the divide that continues to separate the country. The invention of "the people's sector" has resurfaced in the past few months, as protestors have rallied against elections and called for the instatement of a "people's council." The current protest leader, Suthep Thaugsuban, speaks of moral opposition to Thaksin's corruption and his sister Yingluck's leadership failings, even as he minimizes his own alleged involvement as the deputy Prime Minister who ordered the deadly military crackdown that killed 93 red-shirt supporters of Thaksin in 2010. Such a selective memory extrapolates beyond Suthep's personal evasion: his circle of elite and urban-based support has consistently justified the previous acts of violence perpetrated on the social movements that first caused the state to tremble (to use Gramsci's phrasing). What truly needs to change in Thailand is a shift in civil society; street protests evoke the vestiges of civil action, but they merely actualise the political gamesmanship on both sides of a purely political debate. Understood as such, a Gramscian framework is more illuminating with regards to ongoing events in Thailand than the conventional analysis of democratization, which focuses too much on political power and policy. The opposition is correct that Thailand needs more than new elections, but Suthep and other yellow-shirt elites have ideologically manipulated the discontent of their supporters for their own political entrenchment. The series of trembles to the Thai state over the past eight years have revealed the cracked earthenworks of division and misunderstanding that lay between the key interests of society. A Gramscian framework provides greater agency to the subaltern: "If yesterday it [the subaltern element] was not responsible, because 'resisting' a will external to itself, now it feels itself to be responsible because it is no longer resisting but an agent, necessarily active and taking the initiative." For subaltern elements to entrench their own sense of agency, they must resist the hegemony within their own ranks — red or yellow. The alternative Gramscian framework has suggested they can accomplish this through direct emphasis on their own cultural strengths, ideological dominance, and incumbent moral superiority. Modern Thailand faces the task of reconciling an increasingly polarized populace, divided by political ideology as much as geographic and industrial background. Yet the battle is taking place and must continue to take place not within political society but within civil society. Until urban elites interpret the incentives and interests of the rural poor not as a threat but instead as a foundational spirit, the hegemonic Thai system will continue to move forward blindly, as with open eyes that cannot see. — asiapacific.anu.edu.au * Daniel Mattes is a graduate student at the London School of Economics and Political Science. ** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online.
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