For more about me, please read this.
Woohoo!
KUALA LUMPUR, August 1 (Bernama) — Netherlands-based professional football club AFC Ajax has expressed its willingness to extend its expertise in developing youth football to Malaysia. [AFC Ajax Plans Youth Development Programme In Malaysia. Bernama. August 1 2007]
There is no moral in the killing of civilians.
The Taliban however has no issue with that:
KABUL, Afghanistan, Tuesday, July 31 — The Taliban have shot and killed a second South Korean hostage, the governor of Ghazni Province confirmed Tuesday morning.
[…]
The Taliban seized 23 South Koreans from a bus as they travelled through the province on the Kabul-Kandahar highway on July 19. [Afghan Police Find Body of 2nd Korean. NYT. July 31 2007]
Taliban supporters must be jumping up and down, celebrating murder in the name of Islam. Little do the Taliban realizes that by murdering those South Koreans, they make new enemies instead of garnering sympathy. Worse, the inhumane act only tarnishes the image of Islam, forcing the innocent others that rather not to be associated with neo-kharijism (I personally more inclined to use the term Islamofascist because that is what they are, an Islamist and a fascist) to face hostile generalization in an already difficult world.
In a times of conflict, misery is expected but killing civilians on purpose is more than immoral. But what do the Taliban and its supporters care?
According to Wikipedia, oxygen was officially discovered on August 1 1774. I wonder what humanity was breathing before that day…
Oxygen was first described by MichaÅ‚ SÄ™dziwój, a Polish alchemist and philosopher in the late 16th century. SÄ™dziwój thought of the gas given off by warm niter (saltpeter) as “the elixir of life”.
Oxygen was more quantitatively discovered by the Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele some time before 1773, but the discovery was not published until after the independent discovery by Joseph Priestley on August 1, 1774, who called the gas dephlogisticated air (see phlogiston theory). Priestley published discoveries in 1775 and Scheele in 1777; consequently Priestley is usually given the credit. Both Scheele and Priestley produced oxygen by heating mercuric oxide.
Scheele called the gas ‘fire air’ because it was the only known supporter of combustion. It was later called ‘vital air’ because it was and is vital for the existence of animal life.
The gas was named by Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, after Priestley’s publication in 1775, from Greek roots meaning “acid-former”. As noted, the name reflects the then-common incorrect belief that all acids contain oxygen. This is also the origin of the Japanese name of oxygen “sanso” (san=acid, so=element). [Oxygen. Wikipedia. August 1 2007]
Possibly pot.
My CEO wants me to have a Blackberry. There goes my personal life.
Surin Pitsuwan will be the new secretary-general of ASEAN.
The foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have endorsed former Thai foreign minister, Surin Pitsuwan, as the new ASEAN secretary general.
Mr Surin will succeed Singapore’s Ong Keng Yong who will end his five-year term at the end of this year.
He will be the first ASEAN secretary general to serve under the ASEAN charter, a legal instrument proposed to be ready in November and aiming to transform ASEAN into a rules-based association. [ASEAN endorses new secretary general. Radio Australia. July 31 2007.
While I am pro-ASEAN, perhaps especially so after witnessing the frustrating Doha Round, I am unsure how the new secretary-general would affect me as an ASEAN citizen.
This is even more so when I read that the Singaporean Foreign Minister, George Yeo said the ASEAN Charter is expected to be signed later during the ASEAN Summit planned in November this year in Singapore.
SINGAPORE : Foreign Minister George Yeo has said he is optimistic that the final ASEAN Charter will be signed when the group meets in Singapore later this year. [ASEAN Charter likely to be signed at Singapore meeting: George Yeo. S. Ramesh. Channel NewsAsia. July 31]
When the idea of a charter for ASEAN was mooted, I was expecting what many Europeans had gone through: referenda. Alas, far from it, ASEAN processes are so far detached from the governed.
If ASEAN desperately wants to be relevant to its people, if ASEAN member states want to create a truly organic ASEAN identity, participation of its citizens in ASEAN is essential. When the citizens themselves are disfranchised from something as important as the formulation of a constitution, it is hard to see how the regional grouping would be relevant to its citizens.
I do not think too many of us, the citizens of ASEAN, think of ourselves as citizens of ASEAN. The best way for ASEAN to change that is to include its citizens into its processes. Referenda to the people of ASEAN to approve the Charter is a golden opportunity to set alight the common people interest in ASEAN.
ASEAN must stop pretending that those bureaucrats that are deliberating on matters relating to the Charter are representing the citizens of ASEAN. After all, Southeast Asia is a region with little real democratic tradition.
The ASEAN Charter must source its legitimacy only through the citizens of ASEAN, not from the bureaucrats. Unless that is done, ASEAN risks irrelevancy at home while it develops a reputation of a coffee shop internationally. The ASEAN Charter should be a milestone for a new democratic and modern Southeast Asia, not a projection of an old autocratic or paternalistic region instead.