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By Elmy Lung

All the talks of water shortages and foreseeable conflicts, but where does that leave us with dealing with the situation?

For a start, people must acknowledge the water is a finite resource that, without proper and careful management, it will run out. The first step is to make small adjustments in our daily habits that can save water- discard power showers and spend less time in it; save water from baths to flush toilets; make sure taps are tightly closed to avoid dripping… there are many ways in which this can be done and it only requires a little more attention paid to the topic.

What’s hard is actually ensuring that this mentality of saving water is not just empty talk. The Singapore government, with their launch of NEWater back in 2000 (although the plans were drawn out in as early as the 1970s, an idea they referenced from the U.S.) has made good progress throughout the years. Now, up to 86% Singaporeans are prepared to drink water, shedding the mentality that it was once waste water or simply what we flush down the loo. The same initiative must also studied.

Just a day ago, an article on CNN‘s website said that it is not hard to desalinate water.In fact, the U.S. National Research Council
is trying to initiate more research done on the area so that it will help meet the nation’s water needs by adopting the method. The report is sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Of course, the study is to find ways to lower the cost and help evaluate the environmental and ecological impacts from desalination. There is a severe lack of research done in this area which is also one of the main reasons that hinder the further development of this technology. The article also mentioned that at the moment, it is mostly big businesses that are putting money into research in this.

But for countries that may not have the resources to carry out large scale scientific research or build expensive infrastructure for desalination plants (if that is later proven to be the way forward), they may also look into water- saving ways of irrigation. At the moment, irrigation is one area that utilizes most water in many countries. A lot of the time, such amount isn’t even used properly. The reliance of sprinklers working to water plants induce great water loss. The introduction of drip irrigation, where water is slowly fed directly on the soil to reach the roots prove to be a more efficient way to farm. The cost of this is also very affordable.

So far, there is much action from the business world- all with an objective to open up their businesses for more profit. Government action is often limited and people’s awareness is appalling. But does that mean there is nothing that we can do?

I hope that my posts throughout the weeks have given readers a better picture of how water is a global issue, and to also highlight the media coverage is often scarce. I hope that it will also allow us to reflect on some of our actions and to make a change for the better.

Kitty XIE Rui (10)

In previous U.S presidential race, candidates mainly expressed their political programme or introduce themselves through traditional media. While in 2008, all candidates have largely utilized the new media to approach voters. Through the internet, the candidates are leaving the old-way street into a modern interactive playground with the public. In this essay, I intend to explore this phenomenon from diverse perspective.

Firstly, let us have a look at several new methods of information transfer which are adopted in 2008 U.S presidential election.

The candidates’ home pages
All candidates manage to extend their reach to new groups of supporters and donors through their home pages. For example, Mrs. Clinton has considerable success in generating internet cash since almost running out of money earlier 2008 when many of her tradition high-value donors had given the legal maximum of $2,300 to the primary campaign. Raising money on the Internet is regarded as the most inexpensive method, compared to convention methods such as events, telemarketing and direct mail campaigns.

The candidates’ blog
In 2004 U.S. presidential election, only one candidate Howard Dean set up his own election blog. That much-publicized online method helped Howard Dean attract much young voters. While in 2008, nearly all candidates set up their election blogs and the public can put comments on the article or video of those blogs. In addition, some candidates create a section for links to private blogs related to them, John McCain 2008 for example.

The portal with interactive function
A great number of famous portals set up on-line interactive sections for 2008 U.S. presidential election, which aim to provide a place for people who are interested in the same candidate or similar topic to exchange their opinions.
The most popular video sharing website YouTube has set up a channel “You choose ‘08” for U.S. presidential election. It is regarded as an outlet for advertising their candidacies by candidates. Moreover, voters can view candidate statements and make video supporting (or opposing) presidential candidates. Some commentators even criticize the presidential candidate’s YouTube video by making their own video. They think YouTube is a medium to get their voice heard.

Actually, new media plays an important role in 2008 U.S. presidential election. It has overtaken the traditional media to become the dominant method to issue the news, run the campaign, communicate with the public and attract votes.

Nowadays, candidates’ websites are the major source of information on election news. For example, 2 to 3 pieces of news are issued on Hillary’s election website every day.

Moreover, those election websites have set up the News & Media channel to issue their own press release or reproduce the related news from mainstream media. It is believed that reprinting the news from mainstream media is helpful to attract young voters because the youth regard the internet as their first choice to get information rather than traditional print, radio and television media. Most articles are neutral and objective though they are selected by editors and favorable to candidate.

Finally, in order to approach an increasing number of Hispanic Americans, Hillary and Obama both create the Spanish version of their election websites. The multiple choices of language give the website an advantage over the tradition media.

　

By Emily Tsang The image of starving children has become symbol of Somalia which was once one of the most flourishing African nations.  But today, even emergency food that around 4 million homeless and jobless people are living on, required army escorted to carry them for distribution.  To the frustration of emergency relief organization like Unicef, there are lorries and lorries of emergency food currently piling up in storage for being immobilized while some people in the refugee camp are starving to death.  What obstruct to the transportation are gangs of teenage gunners who are robbing and seizing all food for the consumption of their own clan without understanding why they should do it.

It seems that the country is trying to kill itself, and such madness is totally incomprehensible to outsider.    The former president of Human Right Group, the Africa Watch, expressed that super power rivalry should have much responsibility on what is happening in Somalia right now.

In an CBS interview, she explains how General Barre, a ruthless and brutal dictator, come into power with Soviet backing.  He declared Somalia a socialist state and reinforced the clan system which he believed was good for his rulings.  He seeded mistrust among clans and divided the nations to have all clans loyal only to him.  Under his “dynasty”, thousands of opponents were brutally killed.  But still,  he gained U.S support for strategic reason, since, a former US general explained that, it was valuable for U.S to have back up asset in Africa against Soviet if they needed at that time. 

Once the cold war ended, both the Soviet Union and U.S saw no interest in Somalia and left the land without plan.  Many places declared separation and civil wars started all over the place again under the weakened transitional government.   The Africa Watch explained that, although Somalis bear the responsibility on support dictators such as Barre settled the country to the road of chaotic,  they would have get rid of him much easier and quicker if he had not received economic and military support from both Soviet Union and US government.  In the end, Somalia became the ultimate victims under the superpower rivalry. 

By Tia Tian Chi

It has been more than one month after the Tibetan unrest erupted at the “roof of the world” since the mid-March. With the two sets of propaganda machines, different kinds of news, stories, and analysis were produced and spread all over the world. Some of the basic facts become clear to most people simply with a little effort to read both sides: peaceful protests led by Tibetan monks began on March 10th; violence used by Tibetans against other ethnic Chinese broke out between 14th and 18th; buildings and vehicles burned, while people were injured, killed, or arrested.

But is what has happened simply caused by Tibetans calling for their independence, or was it ethnic tensions between Tibetans, Han Chinese, and Hui Muslim, or was it the “Dalai Lama Clique” that plotted and incited riot William Engdahl provided some behind-the-scenes information in his article “Why Washington Plays Roulette with China”, which is surely controversy but deserved much attention, since mainstream media tends to neglect these kind of news.

He pointed out right in the beginning that “Washington has obviously decided on an ultra-high risk geopolitical game with Beijing by fanning the flames of violence in Tibet just at this sensitive time in their relation and on the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.” He continued that “it’s part of an escalating strategy of destabilization of China which has been initiated by the Bush Administration over the past months, and which includes the attempt to ignite an anti-China Saffron Revolution in the neighboring Myanmar region, bring US-led NATO troops into Darfur where China’s oil companies are developing potentially huge oil reserves.”

What Engdahl said might sounds dramatic and implausible, but he doesn’t neglect evidences to back up the facts. The Dalai Lama fled out of Tibet with help from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1959 and “according to declassified US intelligence documents released in the late 1990s, ‘for much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama.” The actors behind all the Tibet actions “tied to the US State Department, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the CIA’s Freedom House through its chairman, Bette Bao Lord and her role in the International Committee for Tibet, as well as the Trace Foundation financed by the wealth of Georage Soros through his daughter, Andrea Soros Colombel.”

The NED is a significant player here. The NED was founded under the Reagan administration in the early 1980’s, with the suggestion made by the director of the CIA at that time. It “was designed to pose as an independent NGO, one step removed from the CIA and Government agencies so as to be les conspicuous, presumably.” However, as its first president, Allen Weinstein commented on the Washington Post, “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

With the helps, financially and diplomatically, of the NED, many pro-Dalai Lama Tibet independence organizations have kept running. For example, the International Campaign for Tibet was founded in Washington in 1988. “Since at least 1994 the ICT has been receiving funds from the NED. The ICT awarded their annual Light of Truth award in 2005 to Carl Gershman, founded of the NED.” Another US-based organization is Students for a Free Tibet, “founded in 1994 in New York City as a project of US Tibet Committee and the ICT. Other NED-financed entities includes the Tibet Times newspaper, the Tibet Multimedia center for “information dissemination that addresses the struggle for human rights and democracy in Tibet”, and the Tibetan Centre for Human rights and Democracy.

How much of William Engdahl’s research is reliable and trustworthy? It’s hard to tell. At least he provided alternative information other than that which is disseminated through the mainstream propaganda. In the end, it’s all up to the reader whom to believe.

by Rachael

As read from headlines today, the UK and the US retailers are limiting consumers’ purchase of food namely rice, wheat, oil and etc. Even during WWII, Americans were only placed limits of purchase of fossil fuels or light bulbs, but not food. Food rationing does not only happen in developing countries but also developed nations, like what Elmy said yesterday.

An interesting webpage loaded into my browser While I was following related news today. It was tracing some kind of historical background of crop yields and prices in the US back in the last century.

William Tracy, head of the Agronomy Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that “we non-farmers who like to eat must encourage farmers to grow products for the market, and cash-crop farmers need a reason to assume the risk and expense of farming”.

On the webpage, it illustrated that Tracy did a look up at historical data on 16 US crops of different genes and found that “almost all showed no yield increase” starting 1860, “and then they started going up in the 1930s.” He added, “[T]his was a social phenomenon. In the 1930s, under the New Deal, the government basically said ‘We need to support farmers, make sure they get paid for what they grow.’”

He added more of his discovery that “The government created price supports, and as soon as farmers realized they could start making money by growing food, crop productivity skyrocketed. The farmers have to get a fair return for what they do, and if they don’t, there is not much sense in buying more nitrogen or irrigation systems.”

Food supplies are more elastic due to demand than I have ever thought.

By Jojo (10)

According to The Associate Press updated poll result, Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are running tight.

Barack Obama, 48 % vs. Hillary Rodham Clinton, 47 %

A few weeks ago, Clinton was leading 49% to 46%, which means Obama improved 2% while Clinton fell 2%.

The next major test for Obama and Clinton will come in primaries in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6.  Clinton hopes to keep her victory in Pennsylvania, while Obama has an advantage in North Carolina. Therefore, Indiana in particular is shaping up as a crucial battleground state in the fight for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

North Carolina is expected heavy turn out by African-American voters. So Obama will have a bigger chance to win. But the in Indiana, some Democrats who may be questioning whether Obama would be the strongest Democrat in November against the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain.

Some political analyst says Hillary Clinton has an uphill climb to the Democratic nomination, with her convincing win in Pennsylvania.

And refer to The New York Times, Change, which is the campaign slogan of Obama, may not carry quite the same political magic in Indiana as it has elsewhere.

Americans in Indiana hold onto a lot of traditional values, some people told the media that they want it like it used to be. They are worried about their life will be changed.

Refer to New York Times, “many of the two dozen voters interviewed in this central Indiana manufacturing city of 46,000 expressed queasiness over the notions of change that both Democratic candidates have proudly pledged elsewhere. Though residents bemoaned economic conditions that have taken away thousands of factory jobs and given the state the 11th-highest rate of foreclosures, they also said they worried about doing things – anything – very differently.”

And analysts say the recent vote in Pennsylvania clearly shows that Obama has yet to prove that he can appeal to white working class voters, which can be important swing votes in the general election in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Clinton supporters say Obama’s difficulty in winning working class or so-called blue-collar voters could doom Democratic prospects in the November election.

And what makes it more uncertain is:  21% of the respondents in Indiana remain undecided of who they’ll vote – a high number of undecided voters for an election less than two weeks away.

By Emily Tsang

One of the biggest headache in handling Somalia has been the endless civil wars between clans to rival for power. Very often, as many as 12 different clans have their warlords come to power and represent their own clan to fight for the limited resources in their country.   Clans have been the largest political units among Somalia.  The number and size of clans within a clan-family varied; the average clan in the twentieth century numbered about 100,000 people. Clans controlled a given territory, essentially defined by the circuit of nomadic migration but having unspecified boundaries, so that the territories of neighboring clans tended to overlap.

The west find it painstaking to negotiate with Somalis since there are too many clans and warlords, and they will be immediately replaced by another clan-man if one warlord loses power. Some scholars have express the need to destroy such kind of clan system before any peace talk can be taking place.

To the ordinary Somalis people, such kind of clanmanship has been part of their tradition and is a necessity to their own survival.  The clan system provides everyone a form of identity while the nation as a whole could not.  It is important in uniting people and giving them hope.  When an unstable country fails to provide the sense of security to its ordinary people, the people naturally turn to the group of people they are connected by blood and by nature for protection.  It just feel safer for them to know there is always a group of people that they can turn to, where they can find their own identity and unit to defend themselves and their families.  It has always been the way most African tribes have been running before the west sets foot to the continent, and it is the way it is running after they are gone. 

There is nothing wrong with the way it was running, until the clans and warlords are equipping themselves with much destructive weapons such as AK47, artilleries, RPG, and anti-tank flyers to replace knives and archives in old days.  With killing weapons as such, even children can easily and horribly turned into killing machines in the name of protecting their own clans.   Clans rivals nowadays, unlike the good old times, have become unimaginably bloody and deadly.

Such kind of bloody and inhumanity power struggles,  are , of course, being perceived as the biggest obstacle in imposing democratic system in Somalis politics.   But it is unable to reach any progress in trying to downplay the importance of clanmanship when the general public feels hostile and uneasy to outside support.  The transitional government the west is backing received little recognition. A large among of Somalis still seems to be clinging onto different warlords of their own clans.

It is hard to be optimistic when the clan system still deeply attached to the mind of Somalis.  But after all, the people separated by clans do have hope of being a one ethnic community.  For one, their sense of security can be build by sharing the same piece of land if the people feel that they are backed and protected by a representative government who care about their benefit.  It is perhaps, the most appealing solution for a fragmented Somalia to build up a deep seed of sensing on a Somalis nationhood.  

By Tia Tian Chi

Ever since the chaos of the Tibetan unrest in mid-march, there has been a growing voice outside of China criticizing the East Asian country and its torch relay prior to the Beijing Olympics due to the ongoing issues of Tibetan independence. Many have pointed the finger at the Chinese organizers of the torch run for creating a path that would clearly face potential protesters, but no one had predicted a tidal wave of this scale to rise up against the Chinese government.

It is easy to blame the Chinese government for organizing the potentially chaotic path; it is even easier for China to give in to all the foreseeable problems. However, the Chinese government allowing the torch run to continue despite the inevitable protests is a sign that the world is a different place than it was during the days of the Cold War. This year’s torch relay is a significant symbol of the direction in which the world is going, one where we confront our differences.

Many have already known that the torch run is merely a creation of the German Nazi government for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, as Gwynne Dyer pointed out in his op-ed in South China Morning Post: “… the revived Games got along without an international relay race just fine for 40 years before the Berlin Olympics – but if there was one thing the Nazis did well, it was propaganda.” Some would say as it is such an inherently ‘fascist’ creation and must be cancelled. However, the torch relay is not only about its history, but also about its symbolism. It’s a symbol of the true spirit behind the modern and overly-commercialized Olympic Games, and it is meant to be an apolitical showcase for athletic talent on a global scale. The pride that every torch runner has had as being a part of this global community, contributing to the total distance, and finally lighting of the Olympic flame, represents a potential uniting of the world behind one purpose.

The East and the West have always been at odds with each other over the history. But in a time of increasing globalization and interconnected livelihood, each person must do their part to understand one another and encourage such understandings through an open discussion. It’s not often cited that the Olympics is a product of Western creation, which have begun in the days of Ancient Greece, the birthplace of Western philosophy, literature, and politic. It’s also obvious to see that the large majority of summer and winter Olympics have taken place within the Western world. Despite this bias, however, China, the largest country in East Asia, has been graciously given this gift to display the coming together of East and West, which gives the opportunity of discussions and, thus, further understanding between the two.

The world has clearly come a long way from the bad old days of the Cold War, during which the Olympic Games to be held in Moscow were fully boycotted by 62 countries (led by the USSR’s rival, the United States), which killed countless athletes’ hopes and dreams. Now, the governments are hesitant to do that and would rather just declare an individual boycott, which is a much more civil way of raising discourse on the issue. But this discourse must continue in an inclusive manner. The Chinese voices should not be shut out from Western media and Western voices should not be censored by Chinese media.

The torch relay is one of the most significant components of the Olympic Games and is a symbol that’s necessary for a global effort towards partnership. The symbolic nature of the torch relay is an important aspect of how we see ourselves and each other in this global community. This is why we must continue running the torch, as the editorial in Sydney Morning Herald states: “The Games – and the protests – must go on.”

Kitty XIE Rui (9)

2008 U.S. presidential election is shaping up to be the first $3 billion presidential race in U.S. history, The Fortune said in 2007.

At that time, campaign-finance veterans predicted that the top-tier primary candidates would need to raise $100 million. Now, it seems the prediction is literally accomplished.

Regularly, the two Democratic presidential candidates generate more than $1 million a day through small donations on the internet. Hillary Clinton even raised around $0.5 million in one hour after Pennsylvania primary ended.

According to the latest figures, Obama has raised more than $40 million via a donor base of more than one million individuals in March while Hillary Clinton raised half of that. Besides, McCain collected $15 million for his campaign in the same period.

By Jojo  (9)

The U.S. Presidential contender Hillary Clinton vowed to “obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel, and presumably with nuclear weapons. A global repercussion has arisen.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran” Mrs. Clinton said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on April 22nd.

I’d like to share the video with everyone, here you can watch it on Youtube.

The full transcript of the Iran part:

CHRIS CUOMO: You said if Iran were to strike Israel, there would be ‘massive retaliation.” Scary words. Does ‘massive retaliation” mean you’d go into Iran? You would bomb Iran? Is that what that’s supposed to suggest?

CLINTON: Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be? And I want the Iranians to know that if I am president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that. Because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society. Because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that. Because that, perhaps, will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic.

Also, there are some response on Arab news, which says: This is the foreign politics of the madhouse. It demonstrates the same doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush’s foreign relations. It offers only violence where there should be negotiations and war where there could be peace. At a stroke, Clinton demonstrated to everyone in this region that if she were the next occupant of the White House, Iraq-like death and destruction would be the order of the day.

Even though Hillary had won Pennsylvania, which she defined as the way lead to White House, still many people are very concerned with her foreign policy on Iran and the Middle East. The whole world is worried that she is even tougher than John McCain on the war to Iran. Some UK media call Hillary’s saying awful response on Iran.

Her rival Barack Obama didn’t talk that much on Iran, but had give a speech before saying that he would call for a “diplomatic surge” that will include talks with Iran.

“We should be talking to them (Iran)as well,” said senator Barack Obama

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