Hong Kong’s uprising might end like Moscow’s — Leonid Bershidsky |
- Hong Kong’s uprising might end like Moscow’s — Leonid Bershidsky
- Florida man convicted after death of unarmed black teenager over loud music
- World Bank bonuses raise eyebrows
- Islamic State group fighters advance closer to Syria’s Ain al-Arab
- Financial market storm brewing as 2014 winds down —Mike Dolan
- Corporal punishment survey: Spanking fine with most Americans
| Hong Kong’s uprising might end like Moscow’s — Leonid Bershidsky Posted: 01 Oct 2014 05:51 PM PDT OCTOBER 2 — It's hard not to notice the similarities between Hong Kong's "umbrella revolution" and the recent rebellions in Kiev and Moscow. The crucial question is whether the Chinese protesters will topple their leadership like the Ukrainians did, or gradually crumble under government pressure like the Russians. I would bet on the latter outcome. Like Russian President Vladimir Putin, supporters of Chinese leader Xi Jinping see signs of a US conspiracy in the familiar attributes of the Hong Kong protests: The use of ribbons, the "mobile democracy classroom" in Causeway Bay, the self-organization, the voluntary cleanups, the rallying cries on social networks, the idealism and young faces of the pro-democracy protesters all echo the demonstrations in Moscow and Kiev. Pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po recently accused Hong Kong student leader Joshua Wong of being on the US government's payroll. Russian state television has portrayed the Hong Kong protests as US attempts to destabilize China. Yury Tavrovsky, a pro-Kremlin sinologist, urged the Chinese authorities to "squeeze out the boil:" "I don't think it will be possible to somehow persuade the protesters, because the Americans are behind them, I'm sure of that." The problem with the US conspiracy theory is that it's impossible to buy if, like me, you experienced the Moscow and Kiev demonstrations first hand. The leaders were weak and non-essential. The protests would have gone on without them. If not through the leaders, how could any puppeteer exert influence? People took to the streets because they felt cheated, and in every case the deception was real. In Moscow, Putin's party blatantly stole a parliamentary election. In Kiev, the president reneged on his promise to sign a trade pact that would have put Ukraine on a path toward European integration. In Hong Kong, a plan to vet candidates for the city's chief executive nullified Beijing's promise of universal suffrage. The US neither perpetrated the deceptions nor opened people's eyes to them. People aren't as dumb as authoritarian leaders think. The creation of symbols, organization against common ills and the desire to keep protest camps clean are instinctive and universal. They require no more conspiracy or outside influence than a swarm of bees does to organize a new hive. The government reactions have been no less instinctive, following what political scientist Christian Davenport has called the "Law of Coercive Responsiveness." Only the degree of repression has varied. In Moscow in 2011 and 2012, the authorities tread carefully, detaining and quickly releasing only the most visible activists. The peaceful, mostly middle-class demonstrators freely posted their "revolutionary" photos on Facebook (I did, too). When a rally on May 6, 2012 turned a bit violent, Putin's repressive machine sprang into action, accusing 28 people of resisting police and sentencing them to considerable prison terms (most have since been amnestied). Putin did nothing that could have radicalized the protesters. He waited until the demonstrations turned repetitive and most people stopped coming, then gradually tightened the screws, creating today's smothering regime in a matter of months. In Kiev, President Viktor Yanukovych started down the same path, but the cruel beating of several hundred students by riot police re-energized the protests and led to an escalation of violence. Two months after the rallies started, angry men on the barricades were wielding shovel handles and Molotov cocktails, not umbrellas.
Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying and his bosses in Beijing can still play the Putin game and refrain from the use of force. Chances are that the protesters will disperse. Like the Muscovites, the demonstrators are a well-educated, middle-class group who have little support in the rest of the country and lack the desperation to risk their lives. Alternatively, the authorities can unleash more tear gas or bring in the Chinese military. That could lead to a violent, Kiev-style scenario, but the ending would be different. Unlike Yanukovych, now hiding in Russia, the Chinese leadership has the resources to put down the Hong Kong protests even if the city's entire 7 million population joins them. This leaves the protesters with an unpleasant choice: Either go home and watch Beijing tighten control just like Putin did in 2012, or fight like Ukrainians and lose a bloody battle. Something tells me they will choose the first, safer option. — Bloomberg * To contact the writer of this article: Leonid Bershidsky at [email protected]. ** This is the personal opinion of the columnist.  |
| Florida man convicted after death of unarmed black teenager over loud music Posted: 01 Oct 2014 05:50 PM PDT M Michael Dunn, a 47-year-old white man, was found guilty of attempted second-degree murder last February, but a racially mixed jury was deadlocked on the more serious first degree murder count he was convicted of yesterday. Jordan Davis, 17, was shot three times after an altercation in a gas station parking lot in November 2012 over what Dunn described as loud "thug music." In testimony Dunn said that he approached the teens, who were in a sports utility vehicle, and asked them to turn down the music but the teens refused. Dunn said he feared for his life when one of the teenagers started to get out of the car and approached him. Dunn pulled a pistol out of his glove box and opened fire. The software engineer testified that he kept firing as the car drove away, saying he was afraid that he or his fiancee — who had rushed out of the gas station shop when she heard the shots — might get hit by returning fire. Police found no evidence of a gun in the teens' vehicle, and the three surviving teenagers testified that they never threatened Dunn. Prosecutor Erin Wolfson said Dunn was shooting to harm, and supported the conviction. "He wasn't shooting at the tires. He wasn't shooting at the windows. He was shooting to kill, aiming at Jordan Davis," she said in her closing arguments Tuesday. The case recalled the killing of 17-year-old black teen Trayvon Martin by a white Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Florida in 2012, a case that sparked outrage over racial profiling and lax US gun laws. The United States has been rocked by several racially-tinged shooting incidents in recent years. In August, unarmed black teen Michael Brown, 18, was shot by a white police officer, sparking days of sometimes-violent protests in the St. Louis suburb and igniting a national debate on race relations. — AFP |
| World Bank bonuses raise eyebrows Posted: 01 Oct 2014 05:44 PM PDT
"We question the timing of such payments given the sacrifices the rest of us are being asked to make," the Bank's staff association said in an internal memo obtained yesterday by AFP. A person close to the institution said that at least four senior officials based at the World Bank's headquarters in Washington have received the bonus, called a "scarce skills premium," for fiscal year 2014. A key figure involved in the bank restructuring, chief financial officer Bertrand Badre, received a US$94,000 (RM307,000) bonus for fiscal year 2014, in addition to his net annual salary of about US$380,000, bank spokesman David Theis confirmed yesterday. The World Bank did not reveal the identities of other bonus beneficiaries. Badre was not immediately available to comment. "The World Bank needs to attract and retain senior management of high caliber, and on rare occasions we extend a 'scarce skills premium' for highly technical or key managerial positions," Theis said. According to the spokesman, Badre, a French national who left his job as cfo of French bank Societe Generale to join the World Bank as finance managing director and CFO in March 2013, "has deep management experience in some of the largest financial institutions in Europe." Under his leadership, "we have been able to nearly double our financial firepower. This increased financial flexibility will allow us to help meet some of the great and pressing needs in the developing world." Critical moment The revelation of the bonuses comes at a critical moment for the World Bank, which is facing lending competition from the BRICS major emerging-market economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—and the private sector. Under the leadership of World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, the development lender has undertaken a vast restructuring and reform program aimed at boosting resources to increase its lending capacity, as it strives to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030. As part of the overhaul, the bank intends to slash US$400 million in spending over the next three years, on a total US$5 billion budget. Some expenditures have already been reduced but job cuts remain an option, feeding uncertainty among the 10,000 employees of the 188-nation bank, celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. "At a time of employment insecurity, staff downsizing, and belt-tightening, we are mystified as to how president Kim and his senior management could be so blind to the optics of providing these kinds of bonuses." The bonus uproar has spilled outside the walls of the bank, which is organising its annual meetings with the International Monetary Fund next week, into the civil sector. "This information is very surprising when it is known that the bank is in the process of cutting US$400 million from its budget," said Nicolas Mombrial, head of the anti-poverty nonprofit organisation Oxfam, in Washington. "The bonuses to senior bank staff, and the reported disquiet among staff, re-emphasize civil society concerns about the efficacy of president Jim Kim's strategy and the re-structuring that followed," said the Bretton Woods project, an NGO, in an email to AFP. In a sign of the growing staff worries, an anonymous flyer circulated at the headquarters on Tuesday, calling on employees to strike today to protest the lack of information about staffing changes in the pipeline. Among the questions it cited were: "Do you know the criteria, process and timeline for the strategic staffing?" and "Do you know whether the change is driven by improving bank effectiveness or saving the 'US$400 million'"? "If you don't have answers to any of these questions, pls (sic) shut down your computers and step out of your office" from 10.30am to 10.45am local time, the flyer said. Contacted by AFP, the World Bank declined to comment on the situation. — AFP |
| Islamic State group fighters advance closer to Syria’s Ain al-Arab Posted: 01 Oct 2014 05:43 PM PDT
"The IS have advanced southeast of Kobane and on the western front, from which the Kurdish Popular Defence Committees (YPG) have now retreated," said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman, using the Kurdish name Kobane to refer to the town. "There are real fears that the IS may be able to advance into the town of Kobane itself very soon," Abdel Rahman warned. The advances came hours after US-led forces carried out at least five strikes against IS positions south and southeast of the town, which the jihadists have been battling to take for more than two weeks, the Observatory said. At least eight jihadists were killed in a strike on an IS tank east of the town yesterday, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria for its reports. "Kurdish fighters on the front lines saw the bodies literally being thrown into the air" by the force of the blast, said Abdel Rahman. Despite the air strikes, the jihadists continued to shell the town on the Turkish border from positions as little as three kilometres (two miles) away. "The fighting in the past 24 hours has been the fiercest since the IS began its offensive" a fortnight ago, said Abdel Rahman. "There are real fears for the Kurds' capacity to resist, as the IS are using tanks and other heavy weaponry in their attack," he added. Abdel Rahman said the vastly outgunned Kurdish fighters were forced by the jihadists' advance to retreat from the fight on the western outskirts of Kobane, in order to defend the edges of the town itself. Kurdish security forces inside Kobane "are preparing themselves for street battles" that would break out should the jihadists break the local fighters' last remaining line of defence, said Abdel Rahman. Hundreds of poorly equipped Kurdish fighters are facing thousands of jihadists armed with tanks, heavy artillery and 220mm multiple rocket launchers. Local Kurdish leader Anwar Muslim acknowledged the balance of forces favoured the jihadists. "IS have brought in the weapons they seized from Mosul (Iraq's second city) and Tabqa airbase (in Syria's Raqa province)," he said. IS seized large stocks of heavy weaponry from fleeing Iraqi troops when they captured Mosul in June. They took more when they overran the Syrian army garrison at Tabqa in late August. Kurdish leaders have appealed to the US-led coalition battling IS to provide air support to the town's defenders. "We are trying to push them (the jihadists) back with the help of the coalition's strikes. They are our common enemy," said Muslim. The Observatory had earlier reported that at least 10 people had been executed by the group on Tuesday, including a civilian and three Kurdish female fighters, who were beheaded. A Kurdish male fighter was beheaded along with the women, and another five fighters were also executed in a separate incident in the area, the Observatory said. The jihadist offensive has sparked an exodus of at least 160,000 mainly Kurdish refugees into Turkey. "There are still thousands of civilians inside the town," said the Observatory's Abdel Rahman. Ain al-Arab would be a key prize for IS, giving it unbroken control of a long stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border. — AFP |
| Financial market storm brewing as 2014 winds down —Mike Dolan Posted: 01 Oct 2014 05:40 PM PDT LONDON, Oct 2 — After a year in which world markets have sailed effortlessly through wars, invasions and geopolitical ferment, a storm of their own making may well be brewing. Investors have mostly held their nerve as headlines lurched from a new 'Cold War' in eastern Europe to conflict and Western intervention in the Middle East, the threatened breakup of the United Kingdom and secessionist risks in Europe. More prosaic 'shocks' — a weather-related first-quarter slump in the United States, grinding deflationary angst in Europe and China's spluttering, unnerving slowdown — have largely been shrugged off too. With the exception of commodities, the swollen sea of liquidity pumped out by central banks has once again buoyed all boats. Ultra-safe US and German governmentbonds compete favourably with riskier Wall St, Shanghai or frontier stocks for best performing asset of the year so far. And even as the US Federal Reserve halts its bond buying later this month and the Bank of England talks of higher interest rates, the market narrative has been that the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan will keep the global pool full by turning up their cash taps as the others stop and drain. But even if that proves correct in time, there is anxiety that the coming months may uncover rocks just under the surface. The first problem is that the complete reversal of a monetary regime currently comprised of an expanding Fed balance sheet and a contracting ECB equivalent — however appropriate policywise — can only come about with a seismic shift in the world's main exchange rate. That's already underway as we head into the fourth quarter, with euro/dollar near two-year lows and the dollar's broad index rocketing to four-year highs — depressing oil, commodities and many emerging markets and boosting cross-border financial volatility across the planet. And for many of the biggest trading firms, this move is just beginning. Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Morgan Stanley reckon the euro/dollar rate could fall a further 20 per cent, to parity, even if the baton is passed smoothly between the central banks. BNP's head equity strategist Gerry Fowler reckons there's a chance of a considerable monetary hiccup before the year is out. "The market is currently complacent enough to be surprised by a lull in liquidity in the coming months," he warned clients.
Fowler's argument is that while the Fed turns off the taps this month, significant net new liquidity from the ECB, BoJ or even the People's Bank of China may not materialise until 2015. "The tailwind of new money is likely to be dramatically lower for a few months." Combine this with a surge in supply of private sector securities this year — including Chinese internet firm Alibaba's record US$25 billion (RM81.8 billion) new equity sale last month, or talk that Anheuser-Busch Inbev may finance a possible US$122 billion bid for rival brewer SABMiller with loans and bonds — and you have a recipe for repricing of already historically expensive assets. Data compiled by Thomson Reuters shows worldwide equity capital market deals — from flotations to rights issues — totalled US$678.1 billion in the first nine months of 2014, a quarter more than the same period last year and the highest since 2007. European deals hit their highest since 1980. Initial public offerings stole the limelight, almost doubling from last year to hit US$176.1 billion worldwide. Total global bond issuance was up 2 per cent to US$4.4 trillion in the first nine months, with corporate bond sales up 6 per cent to US$2.5 trillion and new emerging market debt already more than in the whole of 2013 at US$456 billion. At the very least investors fear volatility is on the rise if a Fed retreat from quantitative easing is not quickly matched by the other central banks. And these gyrations by themselves could hasten a pullback from riskier assets, including pricey equity, junk bonds, emerging markets and even government bonds. Only European equities, which could get a badly-needed earnings lift from a weaker euro, might dodge the bullet — but even these markets may well see US funds retreating. If investors are surprised by financial storm, it won't be because they weren't warned. Financial watchdogs have been waving a red flag about overstretched markets for the past year and stressed concerns again this month. "There are increased signs of complacency in financial markets, in part reflecting search for yield amidst exceptionally accommodative monetary policies," Bank of England governor Mark Carney said last week, citing conclusions of the G20's Financial Stability Board which he chairs. "Volatility has become compressed and asset valuations stretched across a growing number of markets, increasing the risk of a sharp reversal." — Reuters * This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Corporal punishment survey: Spanking fine with most Americans Posted: 01 Oct 2014 05:37 PM PDT
The findings help explain where Americans stand on corporal punishment after the indictment on child abuse charges of Adrian Peterson, a top NFL running back, in a case that sparked a contentious public debate over what is acceptable. The 29-year-old Minnesota Viking allegedly left bruises and wounds on his four-year-old son while disciplining him with the whippy end of a tree branch, called a switch, an act that Peterson has publicly admitted to. The online survey of 3,637 adults found that about 68 per cent approved of spanking at home, and that figure varied little between race and income groups. But there were regional differences. About eight in 10 respondents from the Southwest, which included Peterson's home state of Texas, said corporal punishment should be allowed at home, while just over half of New England respondents held that view. A majority of respondents, about 60 per cent, said corporal punishment was acceptable if it doesn't leave a physical mark, about the same number who said it should be allowed if it doesn't involve an implement such as a belt, cane or paddle. "I don't care what age the child is or what they did, you don't use anything but your hand. I'm sorry, but that just goes above and beyond as far as I am concerned," said respondent Esther Negrin, 78, of Las Vegas, Nevada. Negrin said a "swat on the behind" was a very rare occurrence while she was raising her three children. Majority punished as children The survey supports the belief that corporal punishment is employed less these days in the United States than decades ago. Three in four respondents said they had received corporal punishment as a child, more whites than minorities, and whites with children at home were slightly more likely to say they had carried out corporal punishment than were minorities. More older respondents reported receiving corporal punishment than did younger adults. After his Sept 12 indictment, Peterson, a 2012 NFL most valuable player, said he disciplined his son the way he was as a child and caused an injury he never intended or thought would happen. Poll respondent Joyce Ray, 72, said she used the technique of "time out" a lot while raising 10 children. "I don't believe in people beating on their children or starving them or things like that as punishment," said Ray, a retired seamstress from Junction City, Oregon. "But I do believe that a swat across the fanny is not going to hurt them any and maybe will teach them a lesson," she added. The Peterson case is one of five recent domestic violence incidents involving NFL players that have raised questions about the league's handling of disciplinary cases. It is the only one involving a child. About 12 per cent of respondents strongly disagreed with corporal punishment being allowed at home. Poll respondent Donald Barton, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, said he strongly opposes corporal punishment including spanking for children in part because it sends the message that physical force is acceptable. "Timeouts are good because they make the kids concentrate on what they did, rather than pain," said Barton, 61, who lives in Detroit, Michigan. The pediatrics academy has said physical discipline of children has been linked to a range of mental health problems and can make children more aggressive. The poll was conducted from Sept. 19 through Sept. 30 as the NFL struggled with questions over initial light punishment for Peterson and former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice. Peterson was reactivated to play after he sat out one game following the indictment, but on Sept. 17 the Vikings reversed course and suspended him indefinitely as criticism mounted from fans and sponsors. He is scheduled to appear in court on Oct 8. The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this survey, the credibility interval was 1.8 percentage points for the 3,637 adults surveyed online on whether corporal punishment is OK if it is spanking only. — Reuters |
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Malay Mail Online | All To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
