What have I learnt today? Blogging about books, media, words, Singapore and the world today. The blog that was Blowin' in the Wind.
You never know who will be the first to give you the news in this world of social media.
The first report on President Barack Obama’s meeting with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong came not from the White House or the Singapore government or Singapore media.
And it wasn’t the Singapore media or a major broadcaster or wire service that first reported Singapore had voted in favour of a global arms trade treaty.
Here is the text of Obama’s inaugural address:Continue Reading
Bill Clinton gave the best speech at the Democratic national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. A policy wonk who can speak the language of the common people, his speech was meaty, substantive, folksy, forthright, driving a “rhetorical truck”, as someone said, through the opening left by Mitt Romney when he asked at the Republican national convention in Tampa, Florida, last week if Americans were better off today than four years ago. Clinton’s answer was a resounding “yes” .
“Though employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend and even housing prices are picking up a bit, too many people don’t feel it,” he said, adding: “President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No President – not me or any of my predecessors could have repaired all the damage in just four years. But conditions are improving and if you’ll renew the President’s contract you will feel it.”
Clinton in a class by himself – nobody can match him.
However, Barack Obama can always be counted on to give a good speech. The opening was homey, intimate:
Michelle, I love you. The other night, I think the entire country saw just how lucky I am. Malia and Sasha, you make me so proud…but don’t get any ideas, you’re still going to class tomorrow. And Joe Biden, thank you for being the best Vice President I could ever hope for.
The next few pars were not all that great compared with his signature “hope and change” stump speeches of four years ago. But he riffed on hope towards the end – and his performance then was masterly. There was even an echo of John F Kennedy in this paragraph – and from here on he was eloquent in his heart-felt eulogy to America and his fellow Americans.Continue Reading
Singapore is, by common consent, one of the most open economies in the world. Yet, more than 80 per cent of the Singaporeans live in public housing, the buses and trains are run by two government-linked companies, the mainstream media really state media – the television stations owned outright by a state investment firm, the print monopoly traditionally headed by former government ministers or officials – and many of the top local companies are also linked to the government.
And this economic model has worked very well for Singapore.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Joseph Stiglitz says in his book, Freefall:
Government has played an especially large role in the highly successful economies of East Asia… Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, and a host of other countries followed and adapted Japan's (government-led growth) strategy and saw per capita incomes increase eightfold in a quarter century.
Either the Star newspaper in Malaysia doesn't follow the news or it's weak in geography.
It reported yesterday:
(Malaysian PM) Najib is among more than 40 world leaders attending the summit but only one of two Asian leaders granted a face-to-face meeting with Obama. The other leader is Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Oops, it goofed.
President Obama also met the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani the previous day.
Didn't the Malaysian newspaper know that or did it forget India and Pakistan are in Asia too?
Maybe it thinks Asia ends somewhere near Johor Baru.
What we do know is that Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong met the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday.
And here he is shaking hands with President Obama before the nuclear security summit in Washington.
Both look so imposing. They are so tall they can look each other in the eye. Maybe there was no need for a tete-a-tete.
David Adelman, the incoming American ambassador to Singapore, studied journalism at the University of Georgia, where he managed the student-run radio station, before getting a law degree from Emory University.
So, obviously, the 45-year-old former George state senator — who threw his support behind Obama even before Obama announced his candidacy, and who is younger than most of Singapore's ministers — knows a thing or two about journalism.
But that doesn't mean he won't be a good diplomat. Consider Strobe Talbott, the former Time correspondent who served as Ambassador-at-Large under fellow Rhodes scholar President Bill Clinton and is now president of the Brookings Institution.
Adelman, a father of three who with his wife Caroline is learning Mandarin before coming to Singapore for the first time, wants to forge even closer relations between the two countries.
Yes, he caused a flap when Senator Jim Webb asked him whether he intended to engage Singapore on the issues of democracy and press freedom.
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has written a new Twelve Days Of Christmas for Radio Times. It's all about current affairs, touching on Afghanistan, the drought in sub-Saharan Africa, the financial crisis, the election of Barack Obama, the British MPs' expenses scandal, and the Copenhagen climate summit. This is how the poem goes:
1
ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS,
a buzzard on a branch.
In Afghanistan,
no partridge, pear tree;
but my true love sent to me
a card from home.
I sat alone,
crouched in yellow dust,
and traced the grins of my kids
with my thumb.
Somewhere down the line,
for another father, husband,
brother, son, a bullet
with his name on.
Subscribe to this site's RSS feed.
