Letter to Prime Minister Abe

លិខិតផ្ញើទៅនាយករដ្ឋមន្រ្តីលោក Abe ស្តីពីធ្វើឱ្យសិទិ្ធមនុស្ស ជាមូលដ្ឋានសំខាន់សម្រាប់ កិច្ចប្រជុំកំពូលជប៉ុន-អាស៊ាន 

 Letter to Prime Minister Abe on Making Human Rights a Cornerstone of the Japan-ASEAN Summit December 12, 2013

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

Cabinet Secretariat, Government of Japan
1-6-1 Nagata-cho, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100-8968, Japan   Fax: +81-3-3592-0179

Re: Making Human Rights a Cornerstone of the Japan-ASEAN Summit

Kanae Doi, HRW
Japan Director

Dear Prime Minister Abe,

We write in regard to the Japan-ASEAN summit scheduled for December 13 to 15, 2013. We sincerely urge you to make human rights and democracy a cornerstone of your discussions with the ASEAN leaders, and make prominent reference to specific rights concerns in your public appearances at the summit. 

On January 28, 2013, you made an important and welcome policy announcement that the Japanese government will pursue an international “diplomacy based on the fundamental values of freedom, democracy, basic human rights, and the rule of law.” Needless to say, protection and promotion of human rights are a central element of international law and raising concerns about other governments’ failure to protect human rights is a legitimate area of international diplomacy. The Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally agrees with this position in its official policies. But in practice, Japanese diplomats at Embassies throughout ASEAN commonly tell Human Rights Watch that they avoid raising human rights issues in their interactions with host governments because they think that doing so constitutes interference into domestic affairs of another country. As a major Asian power that is also the biggest aid donor to many ASEAN countries, Japan is in a unique position to encourage its aid recipients to significantly improve their compliance with international human rights and humanitarian law.

Brad Adams, HRW
 Asia Director

In the past, Japan’s approach to human rights has largely been to engage in quiet diplomacy and avoid public criticism of abusive governments. We believe that Japan’s efforts would be more effective if Japan combines private diplomacy on human rights concerns with speaking forthrightly about rights in public.

We sincerely expect the vision you expressed in your January speech will transform Japan's tradition oflargely “behind closed doors”diplomacy into a more strategic policy of engagement and public criticism. The upcoming summit meetings are an excellent opportunity to put your vision into practice by making human rights and democracy apriority of the meetings. In this regard, we sincerely request your attention to the concerns we have about human rights in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Burma, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Brunei Darussalam.

Laos
Prominent Lao civil society leader Sombath Somphone, a Magsaysay award winner, was abducted on December15, 2012 in Vientiane, the Lao capital. Closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage obtained by his family showed Sombath was last seen with local police at the ThaDeua police post before being taken away by unknown persons in a pickup truck. TheLao authorities have responsibility to account for Sombath’s enforced disappearance, but they refused to conduct a thorough investigation into his abduction, rejected all offers of external assistance, including professional analysis of the original CCTV footage showing the abduction, and have not put forward any credible explanation for his disappearance.

The BROTHERS KARAMAZOV -- Book III: The Sensualists, (chapter 7) The Controversy

Christian Classics Ethereal Library

Read the CLASSICS -- free downloading of complete books for your library!

Other great pieces of literature at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library: 

The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, my two all-time favorite novels

"Since its publication, it has been acclaimed all over the world by intellectuals as one of the supreme achievements in literature."

- Wikipedia

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 The Complete Book online

BUT Balaam's ass had suddenly spoken. The subject was a strange one. Grigory had gone in the morning to make purchases, and had heard from the shopkeeper Lukyanov the story of a Russian soldier which had appeared in the newspaper of that day. This soldier had been taken prisoner in some remote part of Asia, and was threatened with an immediate agonising death if he did not renounce Christianity and follow Islam. He refused to deny his faith, and was tortured, flayed alive, and died, praising and glorifying Christ. Grigory had related the story at table. Fyodor Pavlovitch always liked, over the dessert after dinner, to laugh and talk, if only with Grigory. This afternoon he was in a particularly good-humoured and expansive mood. Sipping his brandy and listening to the story, he observed that they ought to make a saint of a soldier like that, and to take his skin to some monastery. "That would make the people flock, and bring the money in." 

Grigory frowned, seeing that Fyodor Pavlovitch was by no means touched, but, as usual, was beginning to scoff. At that moment Smerdyakov, who was standing by the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often waited at table towards the end of dinner, and since Ivan's arrival in our town he had done so every day.

"What are you grinning at?" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch, catching the smile instantly, and knowing that it referred to Grigory. 

"Well, my opinion is," Smerdyakov began suddenly and unexpectedly in a loud voice, "that if that laudable soldier's exploit was so very great there would have been, to my thinking, no sin in it if he had on such an emergency renounced, so to speak, the name of Christ and his own christening, to save by that same his life, for good deeds, by which, in the course of years to expiate his cowardice." 

"How could it not be a sin? You're talking nonsense. For that you'll go straight to hell and be roasted there like mutton," put in Fyodor Pavlovitch. 

Prime Minister-elect Sam Rainsy: FEARS OF VIETNAM ARE A "PATRIOTIC CONCERN"

"OPINION" in The Cambodia Daily, October 28, 2013

FEARS OF VIETNAM ARE A "PATRIOTIC CONCERN"

In "CNRP’s Protest Culminates in 25,000-Strong Street March" (October 26-27) you wrote, «Mr. Rainsy then returned to his old bugbear, pillorying the Vietnamese — or "Yuon" — despite promising before the election he would refrain from stoking racial nationalist sentiment.»

My words were quoted out of their context since you didn’t mention any testimonies from those speakers, among the thousands of demonstrators at Freedom Park, who took the floor before I delivered my closing speech.

Two women from the Cham or Khmer-Islam minority from Kratie province’s Snuol district, came up to the stage to complain about Vietnamese companies confiscating their lands and those belonging to other villagers in the same district. Countless similar complaints can be heard from farmers from other provinces all over the country (Prey Lang forest in Kampong Thom province, Boeng Ket rubber plantation in Kampong Cham province, etc.)

One of the most notorious Vietnamese companies involved in land confiscation with the complicity of the Hun Sen government, bears the threatening name of Tan Bien or “New Frontier”, suggesting a borderline well inside Cambodia’s territory.

Actually, I am not pillorying the Vietnamese — there is no historically and linguistically authentic Khmer word, apart from “Yuon”, to designate people from Vietnam — more than the Palestinians are pillorying Israeli/Jewish settlers who confiscate their lands in occupied Palestine.

All Cambodians remember the sad fate of Kampuchea Krom or Southern Cambodia, a former Cambodian territory made up of 21 Khmer provinces, which was annexed by Vietnam in the last century with the complicity of the French colonialists following decades of massive immigration. Eventually Vietnamese largely outnumbered Cambodians and the new demographical balance, as a fait accompli, was the justification for the annexion by Vietnam.

Bangladesh bans rallies fearing violence

Police confront striking garment workers in Narayanganj on September 26, 2013

AFP News – Oct 19,2013

Bangladesh police Saturday banned all rallies in the capital Dhaka, fearing violence after the opposition called for "armed" protests to force elections under a caretaker government.

The ban comes after an official from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) urged supporters to stage non-stop protests starting October 25 armed with machetes and knives.

All rallies, demonstrations and mass gatherings have been banned as a result of the opposition's protest call, which could "lead to (the) deterioration of law and order and security" in the capital, said Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) chief Benazir Ahmed.

Police have imposed the ban indefinitely, DMP deputy chief Monirul Islam told reporters.

The BNP and its Islamists allies have set the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina an October 24 deadline to agree to their demand to hold upcoming parliamentary elections under a neutral caretaker government.

Rights groups lament Security Council seats for Chad, Saudi Arabia

[ This post has nothing to do with my ethnic background ]

Saudi women are unable to vote, drive or travel without the permission of a male relative, among the kingdom's harsh restrictions on women that have drawn international rebuke as human rights abuses. Saudi Arabia was one of five U.N. member states elected Thursday to two-year terms on the influential Security Council, drawing criticism from rights advocates also concerned about the selection of Chad and Nigeria. (Hassan Ammar / Associated Press / October 9, 2013)

By Carol J. WilliamsOctober 17, 2013, 5:34 p.m.

Getting unanimous U.N. Security Council agreement to act against rogue nations and rights abusers may have become even more difficult Thursday with the election of Chad and Saudi Arabia to seats on the influential 15-member panel, human rights advocates said.

Chad made the United Nation's "list of shame" again this year over allegations of conscription and deployment of child soldiers, and Saudi Arabia is a recurring target of criticism by rights champions for denying women the right to vote, drive or travel without permission of male relatives.

All five of the open Security Council regional seats were uncontested, leaving the 193-nation organization no choice but to rubber-stamp the sole contenders. Although the Security Council is the United Nation's only real tool for enforcing global order and encouraging adherence to its values, its internal divisions of late -- primarily over what to do about the 2 1/2-year-old civil war in Syria -- may have discouraged member states from seeking to join the conflicted panel.

Malaysia: Only Muslims can use 'Allah'

This story has nothing to do with me, just for your info...

Photo caption: A Muslim woman holds a banner reading "Allah" during a protest outside the Court of Appeal in Putrajaya, outside Kuala Lumpur on Monday. (AP photo)

Bangkok Post, 14 Oct 2013
  
KUALA LUMPUR - A Malaysian appeals court ruled Monday that only Muslims can use the word “Allah” to refer to God, upholding a government ban on the word being used in a Catholic publication.

The ruling reverses an earlier lower court decision.

"Our common finding that the use of Allah is not an integral part of the Christian faith, so we find no justification for why they insist on using the name or word in their publication," said Justice Mohamed Apandi who read a summary of the more than 100-page ruling.

He said the three-member appellate court panel also noted that allowing non-Muslims to use the word would cause confusion and could jeopardize public safety.

"The welfare of an individual or group, must yield to the interest of society at large," he said.

Annou Xavier, one of the lawyers for the Catholic Church, said he would discuss with his client whether they would appeal in the Federal Court.

The controversy started in 2008 when the government prohibited Catholic publication The Herald from using the word “Allah”, and the church filed a court case questioning the order.

On Dec 31, 2009, the Kuala Lumpur High Court lifted the prohibition, noting that the church had a constitutional right to use the word in its publication on the ground that religions other than Islam can be practiced in peace and harmony.

The High Court decision triggered protests from Muslim groups.

Some landmark of French diplomacy

January 16, 2011

France Seen Wary of Interfering in Tunisia Crisis

By STEVEN ERLANGER The New York Times

PARIS — France, slow to express support for the Tunisian demonstrators who overthrew its longtime ally, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, is moving to try to pick up the pieces in a country where Paris has deep economic, personal and historical ties. 

France has misread Tunisia for years, not just in recent weeks, said Jacques Lanxade, a retired admiral, former military chief of staff and former ambassador to Tunis in the late 1990s. 

“Since 2000, people saw the Tunisian regime closing itself into a semidictatorship, but we did not react,” he said. “We continued public support of this regime because of economic interests, because we thought Ben Ali had a role in fighting Islamists.” 

But France did not understand how deeply the economic crisis was changing things, and ignored restrictions on the press, Mr. Lanxade said, adding, “We didn’t take account of Tunisian public opinion and thought Ben Ali would re-establish his position.” 

Malala Marches Toward the Nobel Peace Prize

A Pakistani Taliban spokesman quickly rejoined with a threat, telling AFP “We will target her again and attack whenever we have the chance.” It’s a threat that Malala easily shrugs off. “I don’t know why, but hearing I was being targeted did not worry me,” she wrote about earlier Taliban threats against her and her family in her recently-released autobiography, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. “It seemed to me that everyone knows they will die one day. So I should do whatever I want to do.”  In an appearance Tuesday on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, after he offered to adopt her, Malala recounted an early conversation she had with herself when she first heard of Taliban threats to her life, when she was 12. First, she said, she thought she would hit any Taliban attacker with her shoe—a comment that drew hearty chuckles. She added: “I said to myself, if you hit a Talib with your shoe, there will be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with that much cruelty and harshness. You must fight others, but through peace and through dialogue and through education.” Then, she said to herself, “I will tell him how important education is and that I even want education for [his] children as well.” Even Stewart choked up.

Malala Marches Toward the Nobel Peace Prize

TIME Magazine | 9 Oct. 2013

Robin Utrecht / Xinhua / Zuma Press

Malala Yousafzai speaks after winning this year's International Children's Peace Prize at The Hague, on Sept. 6, 2013.

This Friday, the Nobel committee announces the 2013 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. As far as global opinion is concerned, the award is a 16-year-old Pakistani girl’s to lose.

Long before she became a global symbol of children’s education, Malala Yousufzai was one girl squirming under the thumb of the Pakistani Taliban, whose draconian interpretation of Islamic law saw girls’ schools closed in her hometown of Mingora in early 2009. In a frank and witty blog published on the BBC Urdu  website under a pseudonym, Malala, then 11-years-old, chafed at the new regulations that limited her freedom, stopped her from learning and kept her from seeing her friends. The pseudonym, of course, was meant to protect her identity, but it was not long before her private persona—the outspoken daughter of a prominent school administrator—meshed with her public one, and she took her demand that a girls’ right to education be recognized across Pakistan to a national audience, appearing several times on TV talk shows and eventually in an international documentary. “I wanted to speak up for my rights,” she told the BBC on Monday, when reminiscing about her early activism. “And also I didn’t want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children. I didn’t want to see my life in that way.”

Khmer Buddhism is disgraced and Endangered by Tep Vong

Tep Vong shows his friendship with his Vietnamese counterpart

Tep Vong and former Vietnamese President

Tep Vong visited a Vietnamese Temple

By ខែ្មរវឌ្ឍនកម្ម

Theravada Buddhism is one of the three denominations of Buddhism--Mahayana, Hinayana or Theravada, and Lamaism--has survived and prospered for centuries in only a few countries in the world: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. Separately, Theravada Buddhism in Cambodia has prospered and practised by Khmer since the Angkor Era until today. But it has been endangered when The Khmer Rouge Regime had completely eradicated all religions during their rule followed by strictly controlled and interfered by the Vietnamese backed regime until today. Khmer Buddhism today has lost value and dignity, for this institution has been directly controlled by the ruling party (CPP), installing Tep Vong, an ignorance monk, as the Great Supreme Patriarch of the Khmer Buddhism for which he has absolutely not qualified or deserved based on his religious adept and merit.

Theoretically, the Communists have not endorsed or valued any kind of religions, for it is against their political ideologies; nonetheless, most Communist regimes in the world have not eliminated the religions but severely restricted and discouraged people to adhere them. The Russian Revolution under Starlin's rule and the Chinese Cultural Revolution introduced by Mao Se Tong had almost wiped out the religions from their countries before reviving by the new reform governments. Similarly, the Pol Pot Regime had persecuted and eliminated all forms of religion, especially Buddhism in which more than 95 percent of the people have adhered over centuries. After the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, the Communist Vietnamese while were persecuting their own religions at home, saw the revival of the religions from Pol Pot's eradication in Cambodia, namely Buddhism and Islam would provide them more political gain in their new land. Vietnam brought in a set up group of Khmer Buddhist monks and Khmer Islams to work along with the new Communist puppet regime in Cambodia including the current so-called  Great Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia, Tep Vong-- an unscrupulous and uneducated monk-- to propagandize for the new Communist regime as a savior of Khmer lives and Buddhism.

In fact, Buddhism under the new Communist regime was not prosperous but sternly restricted and neglected under a supervision of Tep Vong. The number of Buddhist monks were restricted to less than ten in each temple (Wat), and only the older people (at least 50 years old or older) were allowed to ordain. And in some places, the monks were ordered to grow vegetables and rice to support themselves. There were no formal Buddhist teaching schools allowed, and some Wat and parts of their vicinities were used as the Vietnamese military bases especially in Battambang and the other provinces along the Thai borders. Furthermore, Buddhist monks were ordered to preach politics as Buddhist sermon, narrating about killings, persecution, and starvation during the Pol Pot Regime, and  the salvation from the Vietnamese Volunteer troops. Of course, the new Communist regime did not eradicated the religions as Pol Pot had done, but they let them slowly perished. Without teaching schools and new young ordained monks, the Buddhism would gradually decease. This is how the Communists have treated Buddhism.

Fed Up with Hun Sen Viet-Controlled Regime!!!

Fed Up with Hun Sen Viet-Controlled Regime!!!
ឆ្អែតចិត្តនឹងរបបយួនគ្រប់គ្រង របស់អា ហ៊ុនសែន!!!

Take a look and a listen...
(Thanks to Anonymous)

CPP's dancing with CNRP?

(Thanks to vattna bou!)

Along with CNRP, Khmer Islam wants CHANGE !!!
(Thanks to Anonymous)

Bun Thoeun wrote :

...To resolve this evil Vietnam’s problem, the CNRP should clearly inform the international community about Vietnam’s total dominance over Cambodia and force Vietnam to comply with all the agreements or treaties it had signed. For instance, the 1991 Paris peace accord.

Cambodia’s problem has always been so complex because Vietnam has taken extreme measures sharply against Khmer people’s wills to forge Cambodia to become a part of Vietnam. And naturally, Khmer people have to fiercely resist Vietnam’s ambition. Vietnam was/ is/ and always will be largely the cause of Cambodia’s problems.

Why I Believe in only Sam Rainsy as Prime Minister: EDUCATION (by Ms. Theary C. Seng)

Why I believe in only CNRP Sam Rainsy

(or, his equally formidable, brilliant wife CNRP Saumura Tioulong)

as Prime Minister of Cambodia

A Living Essay / Reflection by Theary C. Seng

(in installments)

Background info on this topic already addressed by Ms. Seng:

To Lead is To Serve

(Phnom Penh Post, July 20o8)

(or, here or go to Ms. Seng's Facebook accounts, if your ISP censors KI-Media)

Sam Rainsy's Curriculum Vitae

It has been said that Cambodia's problems of the past and present can be summed up in the weaknesses of its leaders.  It has been and is currently said that we Khmers deserve the leaders we have.

Rather than react defensively, meditate on whatever degree of truth is in these statements and do something about it.

This leads me to why I believe only in CNRP president Sam Rainsy (or, his equally formidable, brilliant wife CNRP Saumura Tioulong) as the Prime Minister of Cambodia.

I.  EDUCATION

First, the reason is one of education.  Education provides "the basic mental ingredients" to lead.  Individuals who lack quality education tend to have an intellectual deficit, lacking the "mental equipment to govern".

What David Brooks writes of the radical political Islam is also true of many Cambodian politicians and leaders, in that "once in office, they are always going to centralize power and undermine democracy that elevated them."  Oftentimes, the intellectual DNA is missing in Cambodian leaders, certainly true of the current ruling regime, the CPP.

Here's the basic outline in terms of names and degrees for Sam Rainsy:

• Primary school in Phnom Penh, Paris and London.

• High school in Phnom Penh (Lycée Descartes and Lycée Sisowath) and Paris (Lycée Janson de Sailly).

• University degrees in:

Business Administration (Master of Business Administration from INSEAD Fontainebleau - France) - 1980.

Accounting (Diplôme d'Etudes Comptables Supérieures issued by the French Ministry of Education) - 1979.

Economics (Maîtrise + Diplôme d'Etudes Supérieures de Sciences Economiques de la Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Economiques de Paris) - 1973.

Political Science (Diplôme de l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, or simply, "Sciences Po") - 1971

Qualifiers (Education)

Before I unpack what Sam Rainsy's educational degrees mean, let's try to understand what a Cambodian degree means to the current population.

Simply, education is the obtainment of a certificate or degree; it is the accumulating of meaningless degrees and it matters not that they come through bribery, or given by institutions that go by names such as "Build Bright University" (no, not at all a weird translation from the Khmer, as the name stands alone in English as there is no Khmer name), or that they are bogus honorary awards from non-accredited foreign institutions.

Education-less awards of North Korean generals; mentality not very different from current culture of Cambodia.

Here, we have not even touched on the process and quality of the time spent in the classroom where most materials have been translated from the English and oftentimes with out-dated information.  The best university has English as its language of instruction, but the English proficiency of the students are questionable.

Let me say, that on the one hand, we all know personally or about the idiot savant who is intellectually brilliant but a complete imbecile in normal life.

Or, we know personally or about the professional student who collects degrees but cannot apply his book knowledge to real-life, practical living.  (Think the professor who was conned by the non-existing internet swimsuit model that landed him in jail in a foreign country.)

On the other hand, we also know personally or about the person who never completed high school but is truly, educationally brilliant (because he took the time to FOCUS and READ and LEARN, making every life's experience his classroom, intentionally, systematically) from his position as an executive of international companies or a prolific writer of international fame.

Sam Rainsy's Formal Education

With these exceptions in mind, having HIGHER EDUCATION OF TRUSTWORTHY QUALITY is unquestionably, extremely important for a nation's leader, particularly in this globalized world of July 2013 of deep complexity and interconnectedness.

As already alluded to, education is more holistic than just classroom learning, but classroom learning is fundamental.  Sam Rainsy was born into a family where life learning and formal education were knitted into the very fabric of family life with a father who was deputy Prime Minister and a mother who became the first woman to graduate from high school and passed her baccalaureat.

He grew up speaking 3 languages fluently, as necessitated by his elementary days in Phnom Penh, London and Paris.

He attended the best and only high schools in Phnom Penh of that era -- Lycee Sisowath and Lycee Descartes -- and one of the most prestigious lycees in Paris (Wikipedia) at Lycee Janson de Sailly.

Reading -- in 3 languages -- from the mandatory, rigorous school work to earlier on developing a habit for leisure reading -- accompanied his life at an early age and formed the foundation of his holistic, nuanced understanding and knowledge of Cambodia and the world.  He was comfortable with ideas, interacting with others trained at the same level of rigor and excellence -- as well as exposed with real-life challenges and dramas as he moved about the world with his family within the orbit of Cambodian politics and European upbringing during the turbulent post-colonial period of the 20th century.

Sam Rainsy went to the extremely elite Sciences Po, with the status of grand établissement, which allows its admissions process to be highly selective, and has traditionally educated France's political and diplomatic elite; it is generally thought of to be one of the world's most reputable and prestigious schools of the social sciences (Wikipedia).

From there, he obtained his Masters in Economics from the prestigious Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Economiques de Paris, his Accounting degree from the Ministry of Education and another Masters in Business Administration from the uber elite business school INSEAD, which consistently ranks in the top 5 among the business schools in the world.

 Seen and heard on Ms. Theary C. Seng's BLOG

UPDATED: Why I Believe in Only CNRP Sam Rainsy for Prime Minister -- by Ms. Theary C. Seng

Why I believe in only CNRP Sam Rainsy

(or, his equally formidable, brilliant wife CNRP Saumura Tioulong)

as Prime Minister of Cambodia

A Living Essay / Reflection by Theary C. Seng

(in installments)

Background info on this topic already addressed by Ms. Seng:

To Lead is To Serve 
(Phnom Penh Post, July 20o8)

(or, here or go to Ms. Seng's Facebook accounts, if your ISP censors KI-Media)

Sam Rainsy's Curriculum Vitae

It has been said that Cambodia's problems of the past and present can be summed up in the weaknesses of its leaders.  It has been and is currently said that we Khmers deserve the leaders we have.

Rather than react defensively, meditate on whatever degree of truth is in these statements and do something about it.

This leads me to why I believe only in CNRP president Sam Rainsy (or, his equally formidable, brilliant wife CNRP Saumura Tioulong) as the Prime Minister of Cambodia.

EDUCATION

First, the reason is one of education.  Education provides the basic mental ingredients to lead.  Individuals who lack quality education tend to have an intellectual deficit, lacking the "mental equipment to govern".

What David Brooks writes of the radical political Islam is also true of many Cambodian politicians and leaders, in that "once in office, they are always going to centralize power and undermine democracy that elevated them."  Oftentimes, the intellectual DNA is missing in Cambodian leaders, certainly true of the current ruling regime, the CPP.

Here's the basic outline in terms of names and degrees for Sam Rainsy:

• Primary school in Phnom Penh, Paris and London.

• High school in Phnom Penh (Lycée Descartes and Lycée Sisowath) and Paris (Lycée Janson de Sailly).

• University degrees in:

Business Administration (Master of Business Administration from INSEAD Fontainebleau - France) - 1980.

Accounting (Diplôme d'Etudes Comptables Supérieures issued by the French Ministry of Education) - 1979.

Economics (Maîtrise + Diplôme d'Etudes Supérieures de Sciences Economiques de la Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Economiques de Paris) - 1973.

Political Science (Diplôme de l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris) - 1971

Before I unpack what Sam Rainsy's educational degrees mean, let's try to understand what a Cambodian degree means to the current population.

Simply, education is the obtainment of a certificate or degree; it is the accumulating of meaningless degrees and it matters not that they come through bribery, or given by institutions that go by names such as "Build Bright University" (no, not at all a weird translation from the Khmer, as the name stands alone in English as there is no Khmer name), or that they are bogus honorary awards from non-accredited foreign institutions.

Here, we have not even touched on the process and quality of the time spent in the classroom where most materials have been translated from the English and oftentimes with out-dated information.  The best university has English as its language of instruction, but the English proficiency of the students are questionable.

Let me say that, on the one hand, we all know personally or about the idiot savant who is intellectually brilliant but a complete imbecile in normal life.  Or, we know personally or about the professional student who collect degrees but cannot apply his book knowledge to real-life, practical living.  (Think the professor who was conned by the non-existing swimsuit model that landed him in jail in a foreign country.)  

On the other hand, we also know personally or about the person who never completed high school but is truly, educationally brilliant (because s/he took the time to FOCUS and READ and LEARN, making every life's experience his/her classroom, intentionally, systematically).

With these exceptions in mind, having HIGHER EDUCATION OF TRUSTWORTHY QUALITY is unquestionably extremely important for a nation's leader, particularly in this globalized world of July 2013 of deep complexity and interconnectedness.

 A Living Essay... Stay tuned for its continuation...

Seen and heard on Ms. Theary C. Seng's BLOG

Defending the Coup

Defending the Coup

By DAVID BROOKS | The New York Times | 4 July 2013

The debate on Egypt has been between those who emphasize process and those who emphasize substance. 

Enlarge This Image

Those who emphasize process have said that the government of President Mohamed Morsi was freely elected and that its democratic support has been confirmed over and over. The most important thing, they say, is to protect the fragile democratic institutions and to oppose those who would destroy them through armed coup. 

Democracy, the argument goes, will eventually calm extremism. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood may come into office with radical beliefs, but then they have to fix potholes and worry about credit ratings and popular opinion. Governing will make them more moderate. 

Those who emphasize substance, on the other hand, argue that members of the Muslim Brotherhood are defined by certain beliefs. They reject pluralism, secular democracy and, to some degree, modernity. When you elect fanatics, they continue, you have not advanced democracy. You have empowered people who are going to wind up subverting democracy. The important thing is to get people like that out of power, even if it takes a coup. The goal is to weaken political Islam, by nearly any means. 

World events of the past few months have vindicated those who take the substance side of the argument. It has become clear — in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Gaza and elsewhere — that radical Islamists are incapable of running a modern government. Many have absolutist, apocalyptic mind-sets. They have a strange fascination with a culture of death. “Dying for the sake of God is more sublime than anything,” declared one speaker at a pro-Morsi rally in Cairo on Tuesday. 

As Adam Garfinkle, the editor of The American Interest, put it in an essay recently, for this sort of person “there is no need for causality, since that would imply a diminution of God’s power.” This sort of person “does not accept the existence of an objective fact separate from how he feels about it.” 

Islamists might be determined enough to run effective opposition movements and committed enough to provide street-level social services. But they lack the mental equipment to govern. Once in office, they are always going to centralize power and undermine the democracy that elevated them. 

Nathan Brown made that point about the Muslim Brotherhood recently in The New Republic: “The tight-knit organization built for resilience under authoritarianism made for an inward-looking, even paranoid movement when it tried to refashion itself as a governing party.” 

Once elected, the Brotherhood subverted judicial review, cracked down on civil society, arrested opposition activists, perverted the constitution-writing process, concentrated power and made democratic deliberations impossible. [sounds like the CPP commies]

It’s no use lamenting Morsi’s bungling because incompetence is built into the intellectual DNA of radical Islam. We’ve seen that in Algeria, Iran, Palestine and Egypt: real-world, practical ineptitude that leads to the implosion of the governing apparatus. 

The substance people are right. Promoting elections is generally a good thing even when they produce victories for democratic forces we disagree with. But elections are not a good thing when they lead to the elevation of people whose substantive beliefs fall outside the democratic orbit. It’s necessary to investigate the core of a party’s beliefs, not just accept anybody who happens to emerge from a democratic process. 

This week’s military coup may merely bring Egypt back to where it was: a bloated and dysfunctional superstate controlled by a self-serving military elite. But at least radical Islam, the main threat to global peace, has been partially discredited and removed from office. 

The Obama administration has not handled this situation particularly well. It has shown undue deference to a self-negating democratic process. The American ambassador to Cairo, Anne Patterson, has done what ambassadors tend to do: She tried to build relationships with whoever is in power. This created the appearance that she is subservient to the Brotherhood. It alienated the Egyptian masses. It meant that the United States looked unprepared for and hostile to the popular movement that has now arisen. 

In reality, the U.S. has no ability to influence political events in Egypt in any important way. The only real leverage point is at the level of ideas. Right now, as Walter Russell Mead of Bard College put it, there are large populations across the Middle East who feel intense rage and comprehensive dissatisfaction with the status quo but who have no practical idea how to make things better. The modern thinkers who might be able to tell them have been put in jail or forced into exile. The most important thing outsiders can do is promote those people and defend those people, decade after decade. 

It’s not that Egypt doesn’t have a recipe for a democratic transition. It seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients. 

Obama to Suspend Trade Privileges With Bangladesh

The New York Times | 28 June 2013

Munir Uz Zaman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A woman mourning a relative, believed to have died in the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh. More than 1,100 people died.

The Obama administration on Thursday announced plans to suspend trade privileges for Bangladesh over concerns about safety problems and labor rights violations in the country’s garment industry. 

Enlarge This Image

Wong Maye-E/Associated PressNew denim jeans in the rubble from the Rana factory.

The administration has come under intense pressure to suspend the privileges in recent months — first after a factory fire there killed 112 workers last November and then after an eight-story factory building collapsed in April, killing 1,129 workers. 

Trade experts said the administration’s decision would be a substantial blow to Bangladesh’s reputation and was likely to ratchet up pressure on its government to move more quickly to improve factory safety and end what Washington sees as widespread violations of workers’ rights. Administration officials said they have offered Bangladesh a road map for steps it needed to take to have trade privileges restored. 

In a letter to Congress on Thursday, President Obama said he was suspending the privileges, effective in 60 days, because Bangladesh was “not taking steps to afford internationally recognized worker rights to workers in that country.”