ADMM-Plus: A mouthful but useful

Oct 18, 2010

ITS abbreviation is a mouthful, but the ADMM-Plus meeting got off to a fine start last week. Amid rising tensions in the region, defence ministers from the 10 Asean member-states, along with their counterparts from the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Korea, gathered in Hanoi for the Asean Defence Ministers' Meeting Plus Eight.

At first glance, a new dialogue platform in Asia focusing on security seems a tad unnecessary, considering that the regional diplomatic calendar is already packed with an 'alphabet soup' of forums, as some analysts have quipped. For security alone, there is the Asean Regional Forum and the Shangri-La Dialogue. But the former is fronted by Foreign Ministers, while the latter has never been able to draw Defence Ministers from all participating countries.

The ADMM-Plus thus fills a void, formalising as it does a gathering of defence chiefs. More importantly, as host Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung put it, the inaugural ADMM-Plus 'takes place against the backdrop of a regional and international situation that has seen rapid and complicated developments'.

He would have been referring, among other things, to: the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan; a collision of ships in the East China Sea last month that plunged relations between China and Japan to a five-year low; China's growing naval muscle, which has alarmed many Asean nations, some of whom are contesting Beijing's claim of sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea; and deteriorating relations between the US and China. The opportunities for dialogue that ADMM-Plus offered - particularly between China and its Asian neighbours as well as the US - was timely. Beijing was able to impress on others that its military was not a threat.

The friendly gestures started even before the summit, with Beijing releasing a Vietnamese fisherman and trawler it had detained near disputed islands in the South China Sea. The conciliation continued with the meeting between US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and his Chinese counterpart Liang Guanglie, ending the freeze on military contacts between the two countries.

It was a welcome change from the atmosphere of July's ARF, when tough words were exchanged between the Americans and Chinese. The inaugural ADMM-Plus has set a healthy precedent for its next summit in Brunei in 2013, establishing itself as a forum where mistrust is eased and tempers soothed. It will be a forum to watch in the years ahead.

Woman jailed two weeks for making false molest report

Posted: 14 October 2010 1450 hrs

SINGAPORE: A woman was sentenced to two weeks' jail for giving false information to the authorities.

Afraid that she would be scolded for returning home late one night, Siti Nur Baizura Aman lied to her fiancée that she was molested by three men near Griffiths Primary School at Tampines Street 22.

This prompted her fiancée to make a police report at around 1:30am on October 3 last year.Siti told the same lie about two hours later to an officer who was on duty that morning at Bedok North Neighbourhood Police Centre.

She maintained that she was molested by three men when another officer interviewed her two days later and claimed that she was molested by three Malay men who were wearing red t-shirts.

When the authorities on October 16 showed her photographs of possible suspects who may have committed the crime, Siti finger-pointed one man claiming that he was one of the trio who had molested her.

Police also viewed close-circuit television footages taken from all possible public buses that had passed by the area where the supposed crime had taken place but could not find anybody who fit Siti's description.

The plump, bespectacled woman only admitted that she had told lies after she was interviewed on October 21.

For giving false information to the authorities, the plump, bespectacled woman was sentenced on Thursday to two weeks' jail.

[Alright! Alright! You don't have to mention she's plump and bespectacled TWICE! Was that what tipped the police off that she was lying? The fact that they have no suspects and no ex-cons who have a fetish for plump bespectacled women? Or that she was too plump to be molested?]

Siti could have been jailed up to year and fined a maximum of $5,000. - CNA/fa

Uncertainty still clouds debate on climate change

Oct 11, 2010

By Michael Richardson, For The Straits Times

THE United Nations climate talks that ended in Tianjin, China, last Saturday reported modest progress, but this was overshadowed by continuing deadlock between China and the United States, the world's two biggest greenhouse gas polluters. The next major meeting on climate change, which begins in Mexico on Nov 29, may not result in an international accord either.

Economic policymakers and company executives want greater clarity from scientists about the future implications of the rise in temperature near the surface of land and sea.

Some aspects of climate change are well established. Measurements show that the average temperature has increased by about 0.8 deg C since 1850. In the same period, concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere have risen sharply.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group of international scientists and officials advising the United Nations and member states on global warming and its likely effects, concluded in 2007 that most of the temperature increase since the mid-20th century was 'very likely' due to higher global warming gas concentrations from human activity, mainly burning fossil fuels and clearing forests for agriculture.

The IPCC estimated that if current energy-intensive economic growth continued, the temperature would be between 2.5 deg C and 4.7 deg C higher by 2100, compared with pre-industrial levels. It predicted a series of mainly adverse consequences as the world became hotter.

While there is no retreat among mainstream climate scientists from the major IPCC findings, there is a new emphasis on the uncertainties involved.

This is partly due to recent criticism of the IPCC. Mistakes in its 2007 Nobel Prize-winning report have been highlighted, following the leak of e-mail from some scientists associated with its work suggesting manipulation to create greater certainty than warranted by the evidence.

In August, a critical review by the council representing many national academies of science noted that the IPCC's 2007 report tended to 'emphasise the negative impacts of climate change', many of which were 'not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly'.

Since its work in the 1980s, the IPCC has had to strike a balance between conveying complexity and having clarity in conclusions.

Climate science has advanced markedly since, thanks to improved measurements, especially from satellites and ice cores that contain climate history stretching back at least 800,000 years. Increased computer power helps simulate past climate and project future changes.

Yet the more scientists learn about the climate and how it behaves, the more surprises and uncertainties they discover. In a paper published last week, researchers reached the counter-intuitive conclusion that the Sun may warm the Earth more during waning solar cycles and that this could help to explain recent cold winters in Europe and North America even as the average global temperature increased.

This does not undermine the case for man-made global warming. Some sceptics argue that solar activity is heating the Earth. The average amount of radiation from the Sun has risen slightly in the past 150 years. But climate scientists say the increase is only about one-tenth of the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions.

As Dr Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, wrote in January, although 'our knowledge of certain factors (responsible for climate change) does increase, so does our understanding of factors we previously did not account for or even recognise'.

Among these is the role of clouds. Solar radiation and clouds strongly influence short-term weather and longer-term climate. Low, thick clouds reflect the Sun's rays back into space, causing cooling. High clouds, especially thin cirrus, trap outgoing infrared radiation, producing the greenhouse effect.

Yet science cannot work out whether temperature rise will alter cloud formation in a way that amplifies or moderates warming, and by how much.

There are also gaps in knowledge about the behaviour of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, ocean circulation, and the way carbon dioxide and organic carbon move between the atmosphere, land and sea.

The next IPCC report is due in 2013. By then, some uncertainties may start to be resolved. But as the Royal Society's short guide to the science of climate change published recently notes: 'Others are unlikely ever to be significantly reduced', while it was possible that 'hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding'.

This will not be welcome news for those who want clarity from climate science. But like many important decisions, policy choices about climate change must continue to be made on the basis of incomplete information.

The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

The price of the Peace Prize

Oct 11, 2010

Nobel has little impact on world affairs, but offers respectability to causes, protection to recipients

By Jonathan Eyal, Europe Correspondent

THE award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was greeted by the familiar collection of jarring noises.

The Chinese government duly condemned the award as an 'obscenity'. Predictably, Western governments welcomed the award. Commentators argued that the award will either promote human rights in China or, just as persuasively, precisely the opposite will happen.

But all available evidence suggests this peace prize, like others, will have scant impact on world events.

The supreme irony, of course, is that Alfred Nobel, the Swedish businessman who established the prize together with separate prizes for chemistry, physics, economics, medicine and literature, was hardly a man of peace. He earned his fortune after inventing dynamite - a powerful explosive - and ballistite, a smokeless gun powder. He was a major player in Europe's arms races, earning the nickname 'merchant of death'. Nobel's products helped kill millions of Europeans.

Nor is there any evidence Nobel himself anguished about world peace. His only demand was that Peace laureates should have 'done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses'.

For many years, the awarding committee - appointed by the Norwegian Parliament - stuck closely to this brief.

Some of the recipients sank without a trace, like novelist and pacifist Bertha von Suttner - briefly Nobel's mistress - who argued for disarmament, but died just as Europe's armies were preparing for World War I. British writer Norman Angell argued in 1910 that the globalisation of trade made future wars 'unthinkable' - but got the prize anyway even after his theory was exposed as nonsense.

Nevertheless, during a period of virulent nationalism, when pacifists were dismissed as misfits, the Nobel Prize advanced the idea that dialogue between nations could be just as noble as dying for one's country.

But after World War II, the Nobel committee began to stretch the meaning of its mandate by rewarding not only people who accomplished important deeds, but also those who merely promised to do so. The classic example is United States President Barack Obama, named last year's recipient two months after his election. As he admitted, his track record on promoting peace was precisely nil.

The Nobel Peace Prize committee has been notable in its omissions of awards. Mohandas Gandhi, the spiritual leader of non-violent resistance, never got the prize. Neither did Eleanor Roosevelt, a noted promoter of women's rights.

British prime minister Winston Churchill, hailed in 1945 as Europe's saviour, did not get the Peace Prize, but was bizarrely awarded - probably in recompense - the Nobel Prize for literature.

Nobel myth would have it that the prizes change history. But usually, it is history which buries the prizes.

In the 1920s, the Nobel committee repeatedly honoured politicians who worked for reconciliation between France and Germany; a decade later, the two countries tore Europe apart. US national security adviser Henry Kissinger and his North Vietnamese counterpart were honoured in 1973 for a peace agreement that proved a prelude to further war.

The Dalai Lama is, of course, still in exile. The Palestinians and Israelis are still fighting, decades after their leaders shared the prize. North and South Korea are still on war footing, despite the award for 'peace and reconciliation' to South Korean president Kim Dae Jung in 2000.

What the Nobel Peace Prize does offer is respectability for a cause, and personal protection for its recipient. The Soviet Union had to release physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov from jail after he got the prize. The Iranians harassed lawyer and activist Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman laureate, but were careful not to harm her. While Ms Aung San Suu Kyi remains under arrest, the Myanmar government knows she cannot be touched.

China faces the same challenge. The political cost of keeping Liu in jail will mount rapidly; sooner rather than later, he will have to be freed, and the only question is whether he should be sent into exile or kept inside the country under strict vigilance.

The Chinese can also learn from this episode. No country welcomes an award to one of its internal critics. But drawing attention to such an individual once it becomes clear he is a potential prize candidate is about the most foolish thing to do. Yet, that was what China did.

Only a year ago, many other Chinese dissidents dismissed Liu as insignificant. But he was propelled to the top of the dissidents' list once he was sentenced to an unprecedented 11 years in jail last December.

The Chinese compounded their error by lobbying Nobel committee members against awarding the prize to Liu, emboldening the judges to do the opposite. Beijing's current threats against Norway are also counter-productive, for they reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of how Nobel Prizes are decided.

As Professor Kishore Mahbubani of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy remarked, it would have helped if, together with honouring dissidents, the Nobel committee also considered awarding its prize to someone like Deng Xiaoping, the former Chinese leader who lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. That would have persuaded the Chinese that honouring Liu is not a patronising or hostile act against their country. But the prize committee works in its own mysterious and largely secret ways.

Still, when the furore dies down, Beijing will realise that, although newsworthy, the prize is just another award like the Oscars, flawed and ephemeral.

Whether Mr Liu goes on to become the martyr of China's opposition depends almost entirely on how he is handled by the Chinese government.

And whether China's political system ultimately changes is a matter to be decided by the Chinese, rather than a committee of middle-aged Europeans in Norway.

jonathan.eyal@gmail.com

Jaundice, autism co-related?

Oct 11, 2010

CHICAGO - AUTISM is more common in children who had jaundice at birth, a big Danish study found, but researchers cautioned they don't know how the two conditions might be related and that new parents shouldn't be alarmed.

Mild jaundice is fairly common and generally harmless. Severe, untreated jaundice is known to cause brain damage, but it's also rare and hasn't been proven to cause autism. It's possible that children genetically predisposed to autism might also be more vulnerable than others to jaundice.

But if autism and jaundice are related, the study doesn't answer whether one of the ailments might have caused the other, said Rikke Damkjaer Maimburg, the lead author and a researcher at Denmark's Aarhus University.

Mr Maimburg and colleagues examined medical data on all 733,826 children born in Denmark between 1994 and 2004. The results were prepared for release online Monday in Pediatrics.

More than 35,000 newborns had jaundice, while autism was eventually diagnosed in 577 children. Among autistic children, almost 9 per cent had jaundice as newborns, compared with 3 per cent of other children.

Previous studies on a possible autism-jaundice link have produced conflicting results. -- AP

No joke, US satirists are turning serious

Oct 3, 2010

By Tracy Quek , US Correspondent

Washington - They make a living poking fun at the absurdities of American politics, lampooning politicians of all stripes and skewering the news media.

But recently, two of cable television's sharpest satirists and most visible political comedians have viewers wondering if they are suddenly turning serious.

Comedy Central's top liberal wits Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are leading a pair of rallies in Washington on Oct 30, three days before the mid-term legislative elections. The event is expected to draw hordes of the duo's young, left-leaning fans.

Separately last month , Mr Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, testified in front of Congress on the politically sensitive immigration reform issue and spoke up for illegal immigrants working on United States farms.

Their engagements have spawned reams of analysis on whether the comics, in between delivering punchlines, are also wading into the realm of political activism. Commentators are also debating the larger issue of whether in this age of the 24-hour news cycle the distinction between entertainment and politics has all but disappeared.

'Comedians are driving the political debate this year,' columnist and author John Avlon wrote in political news website The Daily Beast. 'Consider it a sign of the times - laughter and satire is the only sane response to the sickening spin cycle we're subjected to on a daily basis.'

Experts The Sunday Times spoke too agreed, noting that humour is what makes the edgy comedians so influential in an environment currently dominated by polarised and angry rhetoric.

But their appeal 'is not only because they tell jokes. They also make very sharp, serious political points and observations', said Mr Jason Easley, founder and chief editor of news and commentary website politicususa.com.

Mr Stewart and Mr Colbert spare neither Democrat nor Republican, left-leaning nor conservative news networks when it comes to getting a laugh, and 'are able through their satirical comedy to hold politicians and the media accountable for things they say and do. They are watchdogs in a way', Mr Easley added.

The comics have a huge following among the 20-something and 30-something crowd, who increasingly tune in to them for their daily dose of news and current affairs. Tellingly, Mr Stewart was named the 'most trusted man in news' by a Time magazine online poll last year.

Both comedians have disclaimed any interest in participating in electoral politics. But the timing, message and potentially huge turnout of loyal fans to their rallies imbue the event with political significance.

The purpose of his 'Rally to Restore Sanity', Mr Stewart has said, is to provide a civil alternative to a vocal minority - the 15 per cent or 20 per cent of Americans - who have dominated the national political discourse with their extreme views and rhetoric.

'We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive and terrible for your throat,' the rally site - www.rallytorestoresanity.com - reads.

Many see the event as a satirical response to the conservative Tea Party movement, and a riposte to a rally organised by right-wing TV host Glenn Beck last month in the US capital.

Just as the Tea Party movement and Mr Beck's 'Restoring Honour' rally drew a huge conservative crowd, Mr Stewart and Mr Colbert's event is expected to attract thousands of young, liberal viewers.

This fan base is the crucial demographic President Barack Obama and Democrats hope will come out to vote during the mid-term elections and help prevent a Republican takeover in Congress.

Some Democratic strategists fret that the comedians' rallies will distract from the real campaigning just days before the mid-term polls. But others argue that it is just the jolt that will re-energise jaded Democratic voters at the last minute.

Mr Obama seems to think it would do no harm. Last week, he lauded Mr Stewart's rally, saying it was important that the voices of ordinary Americans, who expect common sense and courtesy in their daily lives, be heard.

Mr Stewart and Mr Colbert are just continuing in a long tradition of American entertainers using their celebrity to attract attention to causes or issues they believe in strongly, said Professor Michael Freedman of George Washington University's school of media and public affairs.

But are the Comedy Central stars and others like them making the jump from entertainment to serious politics?

'They do only if allowed to in other people's minds,' said Prof Freedman. 'But if we have what should be civilised, serious discussions about issues on news shows turn into comedy shows, then why should anyone mind if a comedy show raises important, serious issues?'

It appears Mr Stewart's and Mr Colbert's fans do not mind at all.

According to the event's Facebook page, at the end of last week more than 180,000 people had signed up to 'Restore Sanity'' in the nation's capital.

tracyq@sph.com.sg

China a different type of superpower

Oct 7, 2010

By Joschka Fischer

GIVEN its rapid and successful development, there can be no doubt that China will become one of the dominant global powers of the 21st century. Indeed, despite the massive problems that the country is confronting, it could even emerge as the global power.

But it would be a mistake to assume that the re-emergence of so-called 'XXL powers' such as China and India will simply bring a continuation of Western traditions. We will have to deal with a different type of superpower.

Ever since the European powers set sail at the end of the 15th century to conquer the world, historiography and international politics have become accustomed to a certain pattern: Military, economic and technological power is translated into the exercise of influence over other countries, conquest and even global dominance and empire.

This was particularly true in the 20th century, when, in the wake of two world wars, the United States and the Soviet Union replaced the European world powers on the global stage. The Cold War and the period of US global dominance after 1989 followed this pattern as well.

But China's rise to global power, I believe, will not, owing to its massive population of 1.2 billion people, which threatens to overstretch the structures of any kind of government system and its decision makers. This is all the more true in times of rapid fundamental change, as is occurring in China now.

The permanent danger of overstretching the country's internal political structures is unlikely to permit any imperial foreign policy role. Insofar as this is true, the US would not be replaced as the dominant power unless and until it abdicates that role. This may sound simple, but it will have far-reaching consequences for the coming century's international order.

The vital interests guiding Chinese policy are internal modernisation, the ruling regime's political stability and survival, and the country's unity (which includes Taiwan). These interests are unlikely to change for a long time.

As a result, China will become a largely inward-looking superpower, which - precisely for that reason - will pursue its foreign policy interests in a completely unsentimental manner. Militarily, China will focus primarily on its regional supremacy, because the country's unity depends on it. Otherwise, the transformation of China's economy and society will be all-important because the regime's stability depends on it.

For the Chinese leadership, this means that a growth rate of about 10 per cent per year will be essential for a long time. Otherwise, the rapid and fundamental transformation of the country from a largely agrarian to an ultra-modern industrialised society could not proceed without destabilising the system.

This focus on internal growth will have massive political consequences, both domestically and in foreign policy terms. Domestically, China will be the first country that, due to its sheer size and required GDP growth, is forced to pursue a 'green' economy. Otherwise, China would quickly reach its 'limits to growth', with disastrous ecological and, as a result, political consequences.

As China will be the most important market of the future, it will be decisive in determining not only what we produce and consume, but also how. Consider the transition from the traditional automobile to electric transport. Despite European illusions to the contrary, this will be decided in China, not in the West. All that will be decided by the West's globally dominant auto industry is whether it will adapt and have a chance to survive or go the way of other old Western
industries: to the developing world.

In foreign policy terms, China will attempt to protect its domestic transformation by securing resources and access to foreign markets. Sooner or later, though, China's government will come to realise that America's role as a global regulator is indispensable to China's vital foreign policy interests, because China is unable to assume that role, other global players are not available, and the only alternative to the US is the breakdown of order.

This US-Chinese tandem will run far from smoothly, and will do little but ameliorate crises and periods of serious economic and political confrontation, like that which is currently looming over the bilateral trade imbalance. Strategically, however, China and the US will have to rely on each other for a long time. This co-dependency will, at some point, also take shape politically, probably to the chagrin of all other international players, particularly the Europeans.

Europe could change the course of this development only if it presented itself as a serious player and stood up for its interests on the global stage. The 'G-2' of China and the US would probably be happy about that. But Europe is too weak and too divided to be effective globally, with its leaders unwilling to pursue a common policy based on their countries' own strategic interests.

The writer was Germany's Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor from 1998 until 2005.