An explosion along with a mushroom cloud has been reported in the news. Things are unclear for the moment but I pray it has nothing to do with North Korea’s current nuclear aspiration.
I found about it while I was browsing Wikipedia and it happened two days ago according to Associated Press.
p/s – Report by Reuters, US Says N.Korea Blast Unlikely to Have Been Nuclear.
I have a feeling that the Malaysian government does not give a damn for the environment. The last time, it was the incinerator in Broga. Despite opposition from the locals and various environmental organizations, the project went through. Now, it concerns the Tioman Island, probably one of the famous diving scuba sites in the world with a beautiful coral reef system.
Here is the situation. The government plans to build a new marina somewhere off the island for the sake of tourism. In their mind probably, they would be able to boost tourism by providing the relevant infrastructure; in this case, a marina. They have argued that the marina will help develop Tioman further and at the same time, help the locals to move up the social ladder.
This is my opinion. People from all over the world come to the island mainly to enjoy the reef system and the tropical weather. Part of the attraction will no doubt be devastated during the planned construction of the marina and thus, what good is a marina to tourism when the marina itself will threaten the main reason behind Tioman’s tourism industry?
Tioman does not need a marina. What Tioman needs is to be left alone from a certain type of policymakers.
I, as you would probably guess, disagree with the project. The marina construction comes at the expense of the system. I think it is utterly stupid to destroy the main attraction of the island in order to build a marina. Years ago, similar things happened at Tioman. The government built an airport on a reclaimed land off Tioman and in the process, damaged part of the ecosystem. In my opinion, an alternative to an airport is the usage of floatplane, or seaplane. However, there is no use crying over split milk.
Conversely, the construction of the marina has not even started and any damage to the coral reef system can be avoided by preventing this project.
The Malaysian Department of the Environment (DOE) has recorded its opposition towards the marina project but from what I have read, the DOE has no power comparable to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prevent this. To prove this, three barges associated with the project contractor have already reached Tioman even though the DOE has yet to approve the contractor’s environmental management plan.
At the same time, I am never going to trust the DOE again. Even the fast eroding EPA earns more respect from any green’s eye. What good is the DOE when the report environmental impact assessment (EIA) is approved even while the environment is at a terrible loss? How could such body, supposedly to take care of the environment, gave a green light even as the coral reef system is being threatened unnecessarily?
The same thing happened to Broga. The EIA allowed the construction of the incinerator despite the knowledge that the incinerator site is in a proven water catchments area.
Perhaps the libertarian’s common belief is entirely true; one cannot trust the government.
I am not sure what I am going to do other than rant. It seems hopeless. It seems, I have more power in the US than in my home country. Nevertheless, I have just joined Environmental Justice, a campus wide environmental group. Through this organization, I hope I could somehow forward the trouble in Tioman.
p/s – This coming Monday, Nader, yes, Ralph Nader is coming to Michigan. I will be skipping class to attend that.
Singapore has just received its third Prime Minister, a sign that the region, Southeast Asia is moving into a new period. Roughly a year ago, Malaysia installed its fifth Prime Minister and Indonesia, from the look of it, should have a new President no later than this year’s end. I perceived this development as something positive as the region moves into the right direction.
Despite the change, a few things trouble me. In Malaysia, the currently Deputy Prime Minister is a son of a former Malaysian Prime Minister. In Indonesia, the current President is the daughter of Indonesia’s first President; in Singapore, the new Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong is the son of Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew. Of course, in the United States, the current President is a son of a former President but the US obviously is not even an Asian country.
Nevertheless, Singapore’s new man has promised for a more open society. The tiny city state is one of the most developed areas in the world but politically-wise, it is almost a dictatorship, a beneficial one unlike in some places. Democracy is limited and its Parliament is very much comprised of just one party, which sadly, very much resembles the current composition of Malaysiaan lower house, the Dewan Rakyat. With this, the fight for a liberal society will certainly go through a long and winding road.
For the moment at least, Singapore is not a role model for Malaysian struggle for greater rights and freedom. Malaysian media probably has greater freedom than its Singaporean counterpart. Malaysia is ranked 104th in a 2003 report by Reporters Without Borders in term of press freedom. Singapore is placed at 144th. When it concerns gay rights, Singapore is probably ranked way higher than Malaysia given the fact that recently, a gay parade was held there.
However, if the liberalization of Singaporean society is successful (note the word is liberalization, not liberation though I do not doubt some people in Malaysia would love to see the liberation of Singapore from the Singaporeans), I believe it would have a wonderful effect on Malaysia. What better than having a model right at your doorstep?
Then again, with Lee Kuan Yew still in power, believing in an open Singaporean society is a little bit far fetched.
p/s – two hurricanes will hit Florida within this week and the next. And for August and the summer in general, it feels like November. It is climate change I tell you! (I’m kidding though I do feel the weather is a little bit crazy for the past few years.)
pp/s – Zinedine Zidane has retired from the footballing world. There go one more star. I will miss his flair. Hail to the football great.
ppp/s – It is $45 per barrel and going up still.
p^4/s – Damn! I love the sunflower in my new icon! 
Last Sunday, I attended a party (okay, okay it was lunch) along with a few field hockey people somewhere in the town of Ann Arbor. The food was enjoyable; we had tandoori chickens with some spiced rice and an ice cream cake. This coming Friday, there will be a party for the field hockey people again and then, another party (or lunch) on Saturday a week later. I think the field hockey club is starting on a tradition (from now on, I will refer field hockey as hockey. Ice hockey is irrelevent as much as calling football as soccer). A yum yum tradition!
The lunch started to get interesting when the conversion started. The conversion at first was about the game that we played on the previous day. It was a good game under a fantastic weather. The sun was bright, the sky was cloudless and blue, neither too hot nor too cold. It was heaven. We even had two MSU people playing with us.
Then, we talked about hockey still. It should not be a surprise that we talked a lot about hockey. It was a sort of hockey lunch in any case. This time, it is about the Olympics in Greece. There was one Australian there and he said it is going to be Australia. But the Netherlands shares the same group with the Kookaburras. So does India. So, it is too early for me to have that Australian confidence.
For me, the most disappointing part of the Olympics hockey is the Malaysian team absence. It is simply too bad Malaysia lost to England earlier during the qualifying round. Malaysia should have beaten the English but pity that this is going to be Malaysia’s first Olympics game without a hockey team in a long time. I wonder whether Malaysian hockey quality has gone down (Malaysia was ranked 10th in the world barely four years ago) or we just got unlucky.
The topic then shifted to India, Bangladesh and the Brahmaputra River. The conversation started off with the current flood crisis in Bangladesh where more than 2000 people have died. A person asked a question about the high casualties number. Somebody explained that Bangladesh is merely a quarter of Michigan Lower Peninsula’s size but has more than 125 million people in it. Therefore, if something happened, many would be involved.
After I got home, I did some research on that just to know more. By comparison, Michigan is about 250 000 km² with only 10 million people and Malaysia has a land area of almost 330 000 km² with only 25 million people. The contrast in density is drastic; Michigan 40 people/km², Malaysia 70 people/km². Bangladesh has a staggering 926 people/km²!
I did not make up the data, unlike the New York Post. All hail to Wikipedia, in my opinion the best online encyclopedia in the world. Give Wikipedia a visit and howl me at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Earth.
The person that asked the question earlier was not satisfied with the answer and pressed on for a better answer. He asked, if the river floods every time, why do people go there at all?
A depressing answer was given. The people of Bangladesh are poor. They have nowhere to go but the river. The delta is rich with alluvial, an extremely fertile type of soil. Their only hope of survival is the river delta. There is no other economic activity but agriculture.
Another question was fired, why don’t they migrate?
That is easy to answer. There is a cost to migration and poor people cannot afford expensive cost. Worse, nobody wants to accept too many Bangladeshis. In fact, nobody wants too many immigrants.
The last question, given the context of the discussion, strengthened my belief in globalization though I am not saying I agree with globalization with its current form. My notion of globalization is the free flow of capital and labor. The free flow of labor is possible for people from the first world and probably from the developing countries too. However, this is not entirely true for the Bangladeshis and the people from third world in general.
If only free flow of labor were possible for all of us regardless of countries, I believe poverty would be less of a problem, less of a crisis. I of course do think some restriction on labor is a must for the sake of the environment and sustainability.
I am thankful that I am not from the Brahmaputra delta. At the same time, I feel sorry for the people of the delta. It is heartbreaking to see people being stuck in such vicious poverty cycle. On the chessboard, it would have been an impasse.
I need to sleep well,
but sleep is a waste of time,
so I will sleep late.
I want to sleep late,
but I will wake up late,
damned be dilemmas.
Damned be my eyes,
why cannot it be closed now?
I want to sleep well.
Still open I see,
and I see everything,
I need not see it.
Close I beg you please,
to see sunlight ere I sleep,
is too much to bare.
p/s – the recycling culture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Funny how the recycling culture opposition asserts that recycling is a waste of money. Pittsburgh city council on the other hand has this to say:
Costa said failing to recycle costs the city money. It’s paid $11 a ton for glass, cans and plastics and $30 a ton for newspaper, Costa said. Statewide, the average cost to take municipal trash to a landfill is about $57 per ton, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Regardless of that, people who think recycling is wasteful usually forget about the main drive behind recycling: it is about reducing waste, not about making money.
And efficiency includes not merely greenbacks but also includes the utility of having a cleaner environment (unless you like an environment comparable to the dumpyard, maybe a cleaner environment is an griffin good for you) to name one. or the utility of having more trees to name two.
pp/s – BusinessWeek is running an issue on global warming. It is long but nothing is new except the part where the article claims the business sector is ahead of the Bush administration in term of policy and technology concerning global warming.