The Star
Friday September 16, 2011
Full text of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's Malaysia Day message.
My beloved Malaysians,
1. Praise be to God, with His permission and kindness, we are able to observe the 48th anniversary of the formation of Malaysia as an independent, sovereign, democratic, peaceful and prosperous nation.
2. The story of Malaysia is colourful indeed. We have evolved from a low-income agricultural country at birth into a moderately high-income modern industrialised nation today, as a result of systematic planning and sustainable implementation. Although our success has been monumental and most significant, it does not give us any reason to stop trying, feel satisfied and comfortable or take it easy.
3. For the continued survival and prosperity of the people in the highly competitive world of today, let us redouble our efforts to improve the national competitiveness through creativity and innovation and by stretching our resources in creating new wealth based on independent entrepreneurship. It may not be able to realise all these objectives without national unity, peace, stability and harmony.
My beloved Malaysians,
4. Reflecting on history, when the country achieved independence 54 years ago and became Malaysia six years thence with Sabah and Sarawak, many local people and foreign observers questioned whether a new nation, with half the population living below the poverty line, having a demographic diversity of unusual complexity, separated by the South China Sea and threatened with a communist uprising, could remain intact as a nation state, let alone be successful.
5. Evidently, Malaysia's achievements thus far, garnered through trial and error, were destined to be full of challenges. Looking at history, like a miracle in the early age of a newly independent nation, the challenges became all the more acute with the early adoption of a system and philosophy of national administration based on parliamentary democracy, constitutional monarchy and a federation when the acculturation process had yet to mature.
6. Prior to independence, the people of the 13 states which came together to form Malaysia never had the opportunity to choose a ruling government or even the pattern of its administration. Their existence was merely as citizens of colonial states accorded limited political privileges at the discretion of the administrators. Certainly, this is not a genuine political right arising from the citizenship of an independent and sovereign state.
7. Before independence, the people were given limited opportunity to choose their representatives, first in the municipal elections of 1952 and then in the election of some members of the federal legislative council in 1955. It was only after 1959, following independence, that the people began to be given the full right and responsibility to elect all members of the Dewan Rakyat and state legislative assemblies with the absolute discretion in determining the party that would form the government.
My beloved Malaysians,
8. Of course, we should be thankful because, from time to time, we were able to overcome every internal and external impediment which threatened democracy and personal freedom, such as the communist uprising, confrontation against the formation of Malaysia, racial riots, economic recession, religious extremism or racial chauvinism through prudent, democratic action based on the principles of supremacy of the constitution and rule of law.
9. It should also be remembered that during that period it never at all occurred to the government to switch the existing system of parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy to any anti-democratic system, no matter how tough the challenges faced. As recorded in the chronology of the country, owing to the May 13 tragedy, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, acting on the advice of the Prime Minister then in accordance with Article 150 of the Federal Constitution, declared an emergency.
10. One of the effects arising from the declaration of the 1969 emergency was that the uncompleted election process in Sabah and Sarawak was suspended. The subsequent development was that the Dewan Rakyat elections were carried out within a period of approximately 20 months later and the system of Parliamentary Democracy was revived when the country was stable again.
11. Nevertheless, the late Tun Abdul Razak, as the Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister then, who was entrusted to head the National Operations Council or MAGERAN, with absolute executive and legislative powers, never had the intention to retain the power longer than necessary.
12. It was abundantly clear that the late Tun together with his colleagues then were fully aware that the limitless extraordinary powers that they held could not be made a habitude for the sake of our beloved country's future. Instead, they appreciated that the absolute power was merely a trust to curb and prevent any tragedy and chaos.
My beloved Malaysians,
13. In fact, as a country that practices parliamentary democracy, the power to determine which political party would form the government, whether at the federal or state level, lies absolutely and without exception in the hands of the people. After more than 50 years of independence and almost five decades of Malaysia's formation, we find that the experience, maturity and wisdom of the people in the country in choosing a government that could ensure that the future they aspired for could not be denied by anyone else.
14. In fact, I have often pointed out that the era where the government knew everything and owned a monopoly on wisdom has long gone. The revolution in the fields of information technology, development in communication and sophistication in transportation had opened up competition as well as a wide and dynamic comparison in the ideas market.
15. Currently, public access to all levels of education is expanding in line with the corpus of knowledge that they possess. At the same time, sustainable economic growth, the reduction in the poverty rate and the social engineering initiatives and their effectiveness, have succeeded in raising the standard of living and created a significant middle class. Now, the preference and requirements of Malaysians have undergone massive changes compared to four or five decades ago.
16. Moving further ahead, administering a nation that emerged from the independence driven by the wishes of the people, the government is now committed towards upholding the system of Parliamentary Democracy, Constitutional Monarchy, rule of law, the federation philosophy and principles of checks and balances between the three branches of the government.
My beloved Malaysians,
17. As many of you know, except for the emergency resulting from the (Indonesian) Confrontation of 1964 which has been implicitly revoked, all proclamations of emergency before this are still in force. Hence, realising the changing realities, taking the pulse of the nation and feeling the restlessness of the people aspiring for a more open Malaysia with a dynamic democracy where the views, ideas and concerns of the masses are given greater attention so that our system would be comparable to the other democracies of the world that are based on the philosophy "of the people, by the people, and for the people", the government will present a motion, under Clause 3 Article 150 of the Federal Constitution, to the two houses of Parliament for the three proclamations of emergency to cease being in force. It is time for Malaysia to forge ahead with a new paradigm based on new hope and not be constrained by nostalgia for the past.
18. In our nation building, while facing extraordinary circumstances threatening the security of the country and the well-being of the people, sometimes measures outside the norms of democracy had been called for. For example, preventive detention. Prudence in handling terrorism calls for preventive measures to protect innocent lives and property. This is a universally accepted truth.
19. From an Islamic perspective, this (preventive principle) is contained in the Syariah law aimed at protecting religion, lives, minds, ancestry and dignity, and property. The discipline of Syariah methodology deals at length with the need to prevent evil. One principle states that the ruler was entrusted to make a decision for the good of the many.
20. This is not anything strange, unusual or isolated. Advanced democratic nations like the United States and United Kingdom had formulated special legislation to handle terrorism after the September 11 tragedy.
21. The checks and balances that must exist in a modern democracy are between national security and personal freedom. Finding the right balance is the duty and responsibility of a government whose highest objective is the wellbeing of the people.
22. For example, the freedom of expression guaranteed in the Federal Constitution does not mean a right to slander and stoke the fires of hate. The government is also responsible, to take another example, of preventing anyone in a packed stadium raising a false alarm of a bomb. An out-of-control freedom like this will cause panic leading to injury and loss of lives.
My beloved Malaysians,
23. I promised in the maiden speech I made when I took over as the country's Prime Minister on April 3, 2009, that the Internal Security Act (ISA) 1960 will be reviewed comprehensively. As such, I would like to announce on this historic night that the Internal Security Act (ISA) 1960 will be abolished.
24. As a means of preventing subversive activities, organised terrorism and crime to maintain peace and public order, two new pieces of legislation will be formulated under Article 149 of the Federal Constitution. Basically, these laws will be aimed at maintaining peace and wellbeing.
25. Above all, the government will ensure that the rights of those involved will be safeguarded. Legislation formulated will take into consideration fundamental rights and freedom based on the Federal Constitution. The new laws will provide for a substantially shorter duration of police custody and further detention can only be made with a court order, except laws pertaining to terrorism which will remain under the jurisdiction of the minister.
26. On the other hand, the government also gives its commitment that no individual will be arrested merely on the point of political ideology. In general, the power to extend the detention period will shift from the executive to judiciary, except for the laws pertaining to terrorism.
27. In this context, besides abolishing the Internal Security Act (ISA) 1960, the government will also abolish the Banishment Act 1959 and review several other laws to ensure that they meet current requirements. Hence, we will not hesitate to amend or abolish laws that are no longer relevant.
28. The comprehensive review will involve the Restricted Residence Act 1933 and the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 where the annual renewal principle will be abolished and replaced with the issuance of a licence until and unless revoked. The government will also review Section 27 of the Police Act 1967 by taking into consideration the provision under Article 10 of the Federal Constitution on freedom of assembly, but with a principle that is strongly against street demonstration. Nevertheless, the approval to assemble will be given in accordance with methods that will be outlined later and after taking into consideration international norms.
My beloved Malaysians,
29. As a country, Malaysia and its citizens are at a crossroads. The choice we make today will determine the fate and the future facade of Malaysia, the motherland which we will pass on to our children and the generations to come. The question is, can we rise beyond, and challenge, conventional wisdom that we as plural Malaysians, with varying economic status and political ideologies, can come to a consensus to not to bow and give in to the ember of hatred and suspicions, which will surely drag us to the valley of disgrace. On the other hand, come and let us power a future that is filled with hope and dignity.
30. Let us have faith, that it is a strength and not a weakness to put our trust in the wisdoms of Malaysians in determining our future. If we take this as a mistake, what then is the meaning of our achievement today, what is the use of planning the country's development in a structured way since merdeka, what is the use of spending most of the country's resources each year to give access to quality education to the people, to free the people from the clasp of poverty, to build physical infrastructure and world-class information communication technology?
31. The answer is clear, that is, the measures which I have just announced are a precursor to an orderly and prudent political transformation. This is an important and necessary complement to the initiatives in the economic field and public delivery which the government has formulated and implemented since more than two years back in the effort to move towards becoming a modern and progressive nation.
32. What is certain is that time is not too early neither it is too late; this is the most opportune time for us to make and implement these major changes. We are absolutely aware that, although some my think it is risky, we are doing this for our survival after 50 years of independence, after nearly five decades of Malaysia's nationhood. We are indeed galloping forth towards our destination to become a full-fledged developed nation.
My beloved Malaysians,
33. Finally, I would like to stress in no uncertain term that Malaysia which we dream of and one that we are currently building, is Malaysia which practices functional and inclusive democracy, where peace and public order are safeguarded in line with the supremacy of the Constitution, the rule of law and respect for basic human rights and individual rights. For Malaysia, let's do our best and leave the rest to God.
16 September 2011
13 September 2011
Tropical Island Paradise superyacht
This superyacht - dubbed the ‘Tropical island Paradise’ – has been designed by British boat builders Yacht Island Design.
The 90m Tropical Island Paradise design has a theme that is centred around a secluded island paradise, with elements inspired by the islands of the Caribbean.
The main exterior deck is a private beach “cove” with a voluminous ocean view swimming pool located forward that is fed by a stream emanating from a cascading waterfall on the volcano further aft.
The main deck is a secluded beach ‘cove’ of cabanas surrounding a massive ocean view swimming pool.
Behind these cabanas there is a bar area, communal seating area and an area for al fresco dining.
Inside the huge, towering volcano is a cinema, library, games room, gym, spa and VIP suites – including an owners pad spread over two decks.
The exterior of yacht was designed to give the impression of waves breaking around a volcanic island, whilst maintaining the look of a contemporary yacht design.
The lavish yacht can accommodate up to 10 guests – and can travel along at a top speed of 15 knots.
The 90m Tropical Island Paradise design has a theme that is centred around a secluded island paradise, with elements inspired by the islands of the Caribbean.
Behind these cabanas there is a bar area, communal seating area and an area for al fresco dining.
The exterior of yacht was designed to give the impression of waves breaking around a volcanic island, whilst maintaining the look of a contemporary yacht design.
Superyacht Adastra a 42.5m Power Trimaran
This one-off trimaran designed by John Shuttleworth is being built for Hong Kong clients Anto and Elaine Marden with interstellar voyages in mind.
A forward facing door through the saloon window gives easy access to a large sunbed on the foredeck.
The garage door has been designed to fold out and create a large dive platform. Extra space has been created below deck by slightly flaring the central hull just above the waterline.
Adastra offers comfortable accommodation for nine guests and up to six crew members.
The Superstructure is carbon fibre with Nomex honeycomb core, the hull is Glass/Kevlar foam sandwich and the interior is light weight oak cabinetry using honeycomb panels.
Most Expensive Yacht Charter
When it comes to the world’s most expensive yacht charters, it’s hard to top Camper & Nicholsons‘ superyacht Moonlight II (ex Alysia).
At $900,000 per week she costs more for seven days at sea than most yachts pull down for a whole month.
At 85.3 metres she also ranks as one of the world’s largest charter yachts, with a steel hull and superstructure with aluminum deckhouses.
Access is easy via passarelle or the wide teak swimming platform. Once on board life unfolds over five spectacular decks.
Thirty-six guests are looked after by thirty-four crew and there is room to entertain at the most lavish level.
Situated on the Upper Deck, the master suite measures over 122 square metres. The bedroom itself has 180° panoramic windows with a door to a private deck.
An enormous Californian king-sized bed faces a 42″ retractable plasma television with Creston control console.
Male and female dressing rooms, twin Jacuzzi bath, private study and a twin stateroom complete this remarkable suite.
And, just to ensure you feel entirely at peace, your bodyguard can be comfortably housed in the adjacent twin cabin.
The VIP suite is situated on the Bridge Deck and includes a separate television lounge and study with a double sofa bed.
Another plasma television screen faces the large super king-size bed. A spacious Michelangelo marble bathroom has separate shower, Jacuzzi bath and WC areas.
Alysia’s additional guest suites include eight super king-size doubles and seven twin staterooms, including one equipped for special needs.
They are furnished to the highest standards with limed oak paneling, limestone architraves, silk embroidered counterpanes, sofas, a writing desk, titling LCD screen television with DVD and large marble bathrooms.
You and your guests can use the elevator to explore the five guest decks aboard, which include a sundeck that provides privacy, intimacy and spectacular views over your domain.
At one end, the heli-pad converts into a circular sunbathing terrace, at the other, is a Jacuzzi surrounded by sun beds.
Other amenities offered onboard include a movie theater, temperature-controlled 500-bottle wine cellar, saloon with grand piano, hair and beauty salon, gym,children’s play room and a business center.
With a range of over 7,000 nautical miles, she’s capable of crossing the Atlantic, navigating the Panama Canal and reaching the west coast of the U.S. and Mexico.
At 85.3 metres she also ranks as one of the world’s largest charter yachts, with a steel hull and superstructure with aluminum deckhouses.
Thirty-six guests are looked after by thirty-four crew and there is room to entertain at the most lavish level.
An enormous Californian king-sized bed faces a 42″ retractable plasma television with Creston control console.
And, just to ensure you feel entirely at peace, your bodyguard can be comfortably housed in the adjacent twin cabin.
Another plasma television screen faces the large super king-size bed. A spacious Michelangelo marble bathroom has separate shower, Jacuzzi bath and WC areas.
11 September 2011
HARD TRUTHS
By Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad
10th February 2011
1. A new book on Lee Kuan Yew has appeared with the title "Lee Kuan Yew - Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going." It is a collection of 16 interviews with Lee Kuan Yew by Singapore journalists.
2. What is the hard truth which will keep Singapore going? It is, according to Lee Kuan Yew the vulnerability of Singapore. Without saying so in so many words, Lee Kuan Yew believes that the island's neighbours would war against it if it has no military capacity to defend itself. The United Nations would not help Singapore in the event of such an attack.
3. Even America would not defend Singapore despite the Security Framework Agreement. America went to the aid of Kuwait because of oil, but Singapore's problem is water.
4. Kuan Yew blamed me for stopping sand supply from Malaysia. I was quoted as saying, "Even at their present size they are trouble, you let them grow some more they will be more trouble." Rhetorically he then asked the journalist present, "We've got friendly neighbours? Grow up."
5. I may have said that, though I cannot remember. But is that an indication that we intend to invade Singapore?
6. Singapore had been taking large quantities of sand from the sea-bed east of Johore and also in the Strait of Malacca. As a result the coast has been eroded in places. Taking one billion cubic meters more of sand in these seas would cause serious erosion.
7. In addition the fish-breeding ground will be destroyed and this will affect Malaysian fishermen.
8. As to the trouble caused by Singapore; in the 22 years of my premiership I was not able to resolve any of the problems with Singapore. These are the Central Provident Fund, the railway land, the operation of the Malayan Railway in Singapore and the water price. Additionally the reclamation in the Tebrau Strait was affecting the deep water shipping lane for ships to and from Pasir Gudang Port. The only problem solved was the unilateral decision of Malaysia to give up the naval base in Woodlands after Singapore kept raising the lease payments. Malaysia did not ask for even a single cent as compensation for the facilities it has installed at the base.
9. As for Singapore's military planes flying over Malaysian air space, Malaysia had the right to disallow such flights for many reasons. Singapore would certainly not like to have Malaysian military planes flying over Singapore.
10. When we wanted to build a bridge to replace the congested causeway Singapore was not forthcoming.
11. All this while Malaysia had been supplying raw water at 3 sen per thousand gallons. Even to Melaka, Johore is paid 30 cent per thousand gallons. Negotiations to raised the price of water failed repeatedly. The first agreement will end this year. We will continue to supply raw water at 3 sen per thousand gallons until 2061 under the second agreement.
12. Yes, we buy treated water at a subsidised price of 50 cent per thousand gallons. We are willing to forego the supply and treat our water ourselves.
13. It was Malaysia which suggested that both countries submit claims to Pulau Batu Puteh to the international court. The court decided that the rock belongs to Singapore even though it is nearer Malaysia. But two other rocks further from Malaysia but nearer Singapore were awarded to Malaysia.
14. Malaysia's willingness to go to the International Court is hardly in keeping with a country which harbours the intention to invade Singapore.
15. Kuan Yew cried when Singapore left Malaysia. We thought that it was the separation which had saddened him. But now he tells us that it was because "I left behind tens of thousands of people who had joined our rallies". Kuan Yew might remember that despite the huge crowds attending the PAP rallies, the party won only one seat.
16. The PAP supporters immediately formed the DAP to fight the cause promoted by the PAP after the separation. The DAP is alive and well today in Malaysia. In fact it now rules Penang state.
17. But the rump UMNO left in Singapore could not survive in the hostile atmosphere created by the PAP Government. For that matter no other political party has been allowed to function properly in Singapore.
18. Kuan Yew claims all these opposition people are duds and must not be allowed to rule Singapore or even to be in the opposition. This is a frank admission that he determines who should represent the people of Singapore, not the people themselves as in a democracy. If there is any more proof needed that Singapore is a totalitarian state, this admission by Kuan Yew confirms it.
19. Now Kuan Yew is urging Muslims not to hold to the teachings of Islam too strictly. Most Muslims are in breach in their practice of Islam. But it is not for others to tell the Muslims that they should renege on their practice of Islam to facilitate integration in Singapore. In Malaysia we try to live with our differences. Our integration is not perfect because we are sensitive to the sensitivities of our people. We do not ask people to forsake their religious practices so we can integrate.
20. Malaysia has no intention to attack Singapore even if it is militarily weak. Even in my time there was no such intention. In fact we wanted to continue to supply Singapore with water, but at a fair price. I don't think my successors harbour any intention to do harm to Singapore. These are the hard truths. Competition in trade and shipping does not mean war, or a threat of war.
21. But one thing is certain: if Singapore treats Malaysia and Indonesia as its enemies then you must expect them to prepare for their defence. Even if it may not lead to war there will be tension and there will be an arms race. And much money will be wasted.
22. It would be far better if Mr Lee, the Minister Mentor of Singapore stop thinking about being vulnerable and that its neighbours harbour the intention to invade it. As with Pulau Batu Puteh, Sipadan and Ligitan our preference is for negotiation, arbitration or an international court's decision.
23. Remember Malaysia gave up Singapore peacefully. We did not try to use force to keep Singapore or to suppress its people.
10th February 2011
1. A new book on Lee Kuan Yew has appeared with the title "Lee Kuan Yew - Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going." It is a collection of 16 interviews with Lee Kuan Yew by Singapore journalists.
2. What is the hard truth which will keep Singapore going? It is, according to Lee Kuan Yew the vulnerability of Singapore. Without saying so in so many words, Lee Kuan Yew believes that the island's neighbours would war against it if it has no military capacity to defend itself. The United Nations would not help Singapore in the event of such an attack.
3. Even America would not defend Singapore despite the Security Framework Agreement. America went to the aid of Kuwait because of oil, but Singapore's problem is water.
4. Kuan Yew blamed me for stopping sand supply from Malaysia. I was quoted as saying, "Even at their present size they are trouble, you let them grow some more they will be more trouble." Rhetorically he then asked the journalist present, "We've got friendly neighbours? Grow up."
5. I may have said that, though I cannot remember. But is that an indication that we intend to invade Singapore?
6. Singapore had been taking large quantities of sand from the sea-bed east of Johore and also in the Strait of Malacca. As a result the coast has been eroded in places. Taking one billion cubic meters more of sand in these seas would cause serious erosion.
7. In addition the fish-breeding ground will be destroyed and this will affect Malaysian fishermen.
8. As to the trouble caused by Singapore; in the 22 years of my premiership I was not able to resolve any of the problems with Singapore. These are the Central Provident Fund, the railway land, the operation of the Malayan Railway in Singapore and the water price. Additionally the reclamation in the Tebrau Strait was affecting the deep water shipping lane for ships to and from Pasir Gudang Port. The only problem solved was the unilateral decision of Malaysia to give up the naval base in Woodlands after Singapore kept raising the lease payments. Malaysia did not ask for even a single cent as compensation for the facilities it has installed at the base.
9. As for Singapore's military planes flying over Malaysian air space, Malaysia had the right to disallow such flights for many reasons. Singapore would certainly not like to have Malaysian military planes flying over Singapore.
10. When we wanted to build a bridge to replace the congested causeway Singapore was not forthcoming.
11. All this while Malaysia had been supplying raw water at 3 sen per thousand gallons. Even to Melaka, Johore is paid 30 cent per thousand gallons. Negotiations to raised the price of water failed repeatedly. The first agreement will end this year. We will continue to supply raw water at 3 sen per thousand gallons until 2061 under the second agreement.
12. Yes, we buy treated water at a subsidised price of 50 cent per thousand gallons. We are willing to forego the supply and treat our water ourselves.
13. It was Malaysia which suggested that both countries submit claims to Pulau Batu Puteh to the international court. The court decided that the rock belongs to Singapore even though it is nearer Malaysia. But two other rocks further from Malaysia but nearer Singapore were awarded to Malaysia.
14. Malaysia's willingness to go to the International Court is hardly in keeping with a country which harbours the intention to invade Singapore.
15. Kuan Yew cried when Singapore left Malaysia. We thought that it was the separation which had saddened him. But now he tells us that it was because "I left behind tens of thousands of people who had joined our rallies". Kuan Yew might remember that despite the huge crowds attending the PAP rallies, the party won only one seat.
16. The PAP supporters immediately formed the DAP to fight the cause promoted by the PAP after the separation. The DAP is alive and well today in Malaysia. In fact it now rules Penang state.
17. But the rump UMNO left in Singapore could not survive in the hostile atmosphere created by the PAP Government. For that matter no other political party has been allowed to function properly in Singapore.
18. Kuan Yew claims all these opposition people are duds and must not be allowed to rule Singapore or even to be in the opposition. This is a frank admission that he determines who should represent the people of Singapore, not the people themselves as in a democracy. If there is any more proof needed that Singapore is a totalitarian state, this admission by Kuan Yew confirms it.
19. Now Kuan Yew is urging Muslims not to hold to the teachings of Islam too strictly. Most Muslims are in breach in their practice of Islam. But it is not for others to tell the Muslims that they should renege on their practice of Islam to facilitate integration in Singapore. In Malaysia we try to live with our differences. Our integration is not perfect because we are sensitive to the sensitivities of our people. We do not ask people to forsake their religious practices so we can integrate.
20. Malaysia has no intention to attack Singapore even if it is militarily weak. Even in my time there was no such intention. In fact we wanted to continue to supply Singapore with water, but at a fair price. I don't think my successors harbour any intention to do harm to Singapore. These are the hard truths. Competition in trade and shipping does not mean war, or a threat of war.
21. But one thing is certain: if Singapore treats Malaysia and Indonesia as its enemies then you must expect them to prepare for their defence. Even if it may not lead to war there will be tension and there will be an arms race. And much money will be wasted.
22. It would be far better if Mr Lee, the Minister Mentor of Singapore stop thinking about being vulnerable and that its neighbours harbour the intention to invade it. As with Pulau Batu Puteh, Sipadan and Ligitan our preference is for negotiation, arbitration or an international court's decision.
23. Remember Malaysia gave up Singapore peacefully. We did not try to use force to keep Singapore or to suppress its people.
Original Post : Chedet
ONE TRILLION
Written by chedet (Tun Dr Mahathir Mohd)
5th August 2011
1. Obama, according to their own news reports, is trying to raise the ceiling for borrowing by the US Government.
2. The US Government is in debt to the tune of US$14 trillion. He wants to borrow more in order to repay the loans. If he cannot repay he will be in default. When a country fails to repay loans, it will be declared bankrupt just like anyone else.
3. What is one trillion dollars? We write it down as one billion with three additional zeros after it. Thus 1,000,000,000,000. It is not such a big figure. You add three zeros or three nothings and the figure increases by 1,000 times. But if we write down one billion as 1,000,000,000 one thousand times, we will have a better idea of what one trillion means. We would be horrified at the size of one trillion if we write the figure 1, one trillion times, which really is what one trillion means.
4. We now talk about these huge sums of money without really appreciating the real amount. Even in Malaysia we talk of billionaires now, not millionaires who are dime a dozen. We are losing our sense of proportion.
5. Just consider $14 trillion in Rupiahs or even in Yen. The figure would spill over the edge of a million sheets of A4-sized paper.
6. Malaysia is one of the countries which lent money to the US. When we buy US bonds we are in fact lending money to the US. Now the US dollar has depreciated from 3.8 Ringgit to one US Dollar to 3 Ringgit per US Dollar. We have lost 80 Malaysian sen for each dollar we lent to the US, if we redeem our bonds. Incidentally we will not be allowed to redeem all our bonds as the US has no money.
7. However, if we keep gold we would be rolling in wealth. Gold was fixed at US$35 per ounce by Bretton Woods in 1943. Now it is US$1,400 per ounce. Even at the depreciated US Dollar of 3 Ringgit we would have 4,200 Ringgit worth of gold for every ounce. Even if we had bought gold say 10 years ago we would have made a pile.
8. A US report says that the US war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan has cost the US more than US$3 trillion. This is being financed by the loans given by other countries through buying US bonds.
9. The US shows no signs of cutting back on military expenditure. Billions of Dollars are spent on researching, developing and producing more efficient means of killing people. Some 60 military bases are maintained all over the world.
10. By all accounts the US is a debtor nation which will never be able to settle its US$14 trillion debt. In other words the US is a poor debtor country, unable to discharge its loans. And it will remain a poor debtor country unless it is willing to cut back massively on its expenditure, particularly its military budget. When one is poor one lives like a poor men.
11. I remember reciting Humpty Dumpty when I was a child. That is the US today. And not all the Nobel laureates in finance, economics and accounting can put it back together once it falls.
12. Far better to admit you are poor and behave like a poor man than to wear flashy suits and throw your weight around. People will soon learn what you really are.
5th August 2011
1. Obama, according to their own news reports, is trying to raise the ceiling for borrowing by the US Government.
2. The US Government is in debt to the tune of US$14 trillion. He wants to borrow more in order to repay the loans. If he cannot repay he will be in default. When a country fails to repay loans, it will be declared bankrupt just like anyone else.
3. What is one trillion dollars? We write it down as one billion with three additional zeros after it. Thus 1,000,000,000,000. It is not such a big figure. You add three zeros or three nothings and the figure increases by 1,000 times. But if we write down one billion as 1,000,000,000 one thousand times, we will have a better idea of what one trillion means. We would be horrified at the size of one trillion if we write the figure 1, one trillion times, which really is what one trillion means.
4. We now talk about these huge sums of money without really appreciating the real amount. Even in Malaysia we talk of billionaires now, not millionaires who are dime a dozen. We are losing our sense of proportion.
5. Just consider $14 trillion in Rupiahs or even in Yen. The figure would spill over the edge of a million sheets of A4-sized paper.
6. Malaysia is one of the countries which lent money to the US. When we buy US bonds we are in fact lending money to the US. Now the US dollar has depreciated from 3.8 Ringgit to one US Dollar to 3 Ringgit per US Dollar. We have lost 80 Malaysian sen for each dollar we lent to the US, if we redeem our bonds. Incidentally we will not be allowed to redeem all our bonds as the US has no money.
7. However, if we keep gold we would be rolling in wealth. Gold was fixed at US$35 per ounce by Bretton Woods in 1943. Now it is US$1,400 per ounce. Even at the depreciated US Dollar of 3 Ringgit we would have 4,200 Ringgit worth of gold for every ounce. Even if we had bought gold say 10 years ago we would have made a pile.
8. A US report says that the US war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan has cost the US more than US$3 trillion. This is being financed by the loans given by other countries through buying US bonds.
9. The US shows no signs of cutting back on military expenditure. Billions of Dollars are spent on researching, developing and producing more efficient means of killing people. Some 60 military bases are maintained all over the world.
10. By all accounts the US is a debtor nation which will never be able to settle its US$14 trillion debt. In other words the US is a poor debtor country, unable to discharge its loans. And it will remain a poor debtor country unless it is willing to cut back massively on its expenditure, particularly its military budget. When one is poor one lives like a poor men.
11. I remember reciting Humpty Dumpty when I was a child. That is the US today. And not all the Nobel laureates in finance, economics and accounting can put it back together once it falls.
12. Far better to admit you are poor and behave like a poor man than to wear flashy suits and throw your weight around. People will soon learn what you really are.
Original post : chedet
05 September 2011
Political Icons
Few political figures in recent memory have the charisma or enduring appeal. Some Famous Old Folk world leaders whose legacies have stood the test of time
Mohandas Gandhi
Out of the Indian independence movement arose a figure few will ever forget: Mohandas 'Mahatma' Gandhi. While working as a lawyer in South Africa, he pioneered the concept of satyagraha, or, civil disobedience in response to tyranny, helping Indians there campaign for civil rights. His peaceful acts of protest abroad and his anti-poverty campaigns at home helped him become the spiritual heart of the Indian independence struggle. Working with Jawaharlal Nehru, the nation's future prime minister, Gandhi led the country in peaceful protest against foreign domination, exemplified by the 1930 Salt March in protest to a British salt tax. His rise paved the way for India's independence in 1947. Though the country was later divided (and Gandhi himself assassinated), his role in the bloodless revolution earned him the title "Father of India" and paved the way for other social movements, including America's struggle for civil rights.
Alexander the Great
The world knows no more precocious or proud a conqueror than Alexander the Great. According to legend — and legends are legion about this fellow — the young Macedonian prince carried the blood of the Olympian god Zeus in his veins and overcame a bullying father and cloying mother to lead a triumphant army across the Bosporus to the near ends of the earth. He defeated the mighty Persian Empire, ever the scourge of the Greeks, razed its once mighty capital of Persepolis to the ground and tried to stitch together an incredible cosmopolitan empire from the Indus to the Hellespont — all while he was in his 20s. He died from an arrow wound at the tender age of 32, still harboring dreams of finding greater shores and nations to bring under his yoke. His imperial project proved too great for his followers, who soon set about warring with each other soon after Alexander's death.
Mao Zedong
As the leader of the People's Republic of China for the better part of 25 years, Mao Zedong is one of the most influential figures in history and was named by TIME as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. Building on Marxism and Leninism, Mao put his own spin on Communist political theory in what is now known as Maoism. But his legacy remains a complicated one. In China, where his portrait still hangs in Tiananmen Square, he is regarded as a revolutionary mastermind whose ideas provided the foundation for advancements that helped the nation grow from an agrarian society into a world power. But much of China's current success came with great hardship. Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are blamed for the deaths of tens of millions, largely due to famine.
Winston Churchill
It's difficult to imagine 20th century Britain without Sir Winston Churchill. Through two world wars and beyond, he played a pivotal role in the nation's foreign affairs, first as the lord of the admirality at the start of World War I and then as prime minister during World War II. But while he, along with the other Allied leaders, helped save Britain from Axis conquest, he also ruled as the once-mighty British Empire completed its retreat from the world stage. The scorn and outright racism he felt for many of Britain's former colonial subjects are a facet of his past historians have only recently started to acknowledge.
In 1939, on the day Britain declared war on Germany, he again became head of the British navy. But it was soon clear that only Churchill could unite the country in the face of Nazi aggression, and he eventually replaced the acquiescent Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Churchill's stirring oratory and ever-present confidence (just think of his regular flashing of the V for victory sign) galvanized the British people and carried them through five years of European conflict. But he was a wartime leader, not a true politician, and lost his job in July 1945. Churchill remained a force throughout the 1950s, though, regaining his position as prime minister in 1951 and warning of the growing strength of the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain.
Genghis Khan
Few figures in world history inspire the awe — and terror — that Genghis, or Chengiz, Khan does. Through canny politicking and force of will, the 13th century Mongol warlord banded together a confederation of nomadic tribes in his remote homeland of endless steppe. Then he unleashed his horde upon the rest of the world, his rapid horse archers serving as a kind of medieval-era blitzkrieg. His own campaigns focused mostly on parts of China and Central Asia, but his descendants would go on to create a vast empire that spanned from the fringes of Siberia into the river valleys of Eastern Europe.
Genghis is largely remembered as the brutal, devastating marauder he once was, but that doesn't mean he's not loved. Mongolia has embraced their most famous potentate and images of Genghis Khan adorn myriad buildings and products, not least a popular brand of vodka. An hour's drive outside the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, an over-12-storey steel statue of the horse-lord looms over the horizon, brooding over the empty steppe.
Nelson Mandela
Over his 27 years in jail, Nelson Mandela became the symbol of an entire people's struggle against injustice. And as his time behind bars grew so did the anti-apartheid movement he helped spur on. Mandela began his journey in 1944 when he joined the African National Congress (ANC) and became part of the resistance movement against the largely white, ethnic Afrikaner National Party's policies of segregation. His actions resulted in arrest and imprisonment, the majority of which was served at the infamous Robben Island prison. Upon his release in 1990, Mandela became head of the ANC and worked hand-in-hand with then-president F.W. de Klerk to end the country's long-held policies of racial segregation and apartheid. They were awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their work. In 1994, he won the nation's first multiracial elections, becoming South Africa's first black president. Though he has since retired from politics, Mandela continues to embody the struggle for peace, reconciliation and social justice worldwide.
Abraham Lincoln
Stories about Abraham Lincoln have attained the status of myth: he was born in a log cabin, he was a legendary debater, he freed the slaves, he saved the Union. The 16th U.S. president did come along at precisely the right moment for a nation wounded by its great flaw — slavery. Lincoln laid out his vision for the United States when he proclaimed during his 1858 U.S. Senate campaign that a "house divided cannot stand." When he was elected president in 1860, becoming the first Republican elected to the executive branch, Lincoln realized that in order to save the Constitution he had to save the Union, even if it led to bloodshed. (More than 600,000 soldiers were killed during the Civil War.)
His 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the Union's successful prosecution of the war meant that Lincoln was practically an iconic figure even before his assassination just days after the conflict's end in 1865. He became even more iconic in the scores of years since. Prior to the Gettysburg Address, a man spoke, delivering a lengthy two-hour speech. Then Lincoln emerged to give his moving address, which lasted a mere two minutes. The other man and his speech are largely forgotten to history. The Gettysburg Address is for the ages.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler is possibly the most reviled man in the history of human existence, a universal symbol for evil. Yet his presence pervades our culture in film, in an endless stream of World War II literature and historical texts, and even in our own political rhetoric. Hitler's fervent nationalism — which eventually led to the most horrific displays of inhumanity ever witnessed — initially stirred a tired and hungry German people who fell in line with his National Socialism party following their devastating loss of territory and prestige in World War I. Once firmly in power, the Third Reich quickly suppressed all political opponents and oppressed anyone who was not from the German fatherland. Hitler's terror swept through Europe as Germany gobbled up European neighbors and joined forces with other fascist and militaristic regimes in Italy and Japan. But once Hitler's forces were finally defeated by the Allies in World War II, Germany quickly moved to conceal its terrible history. While there have been recent moves in Germany to confront its tragic past, the reign of the Third Reich remains a naturally fraught subject.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara
He set out to do more than just upend the world's economic system — he wanted to change what it means to be a human being. Ernesto Guevara's hombre nuevo, new man, was endowed with the ability to permanently prioritize the "other" over the "self." The embrace of the nickname "Che" fit perfectly into his everyman philosophy; the interjection, which has no English equivalent, comes from Guevara's homeland of Argentina and is used as a salutatory title with no consideration for rank or gender.
The portrait of a rugged, beret-wearing Guevara hangs on the walls of both Latin American kitchens, U.S. college dorm rooms and over Havana's Revolutionary Square because Che was the embodiment of a man true to his word who never backs down. That Guevara would by all modern definitions be judged a war criminal only serves to amplify his icon. As he joined Fidel Castro's march through Cuba in the 1950's, Guevara never wavered on the principle that you were either for the revolution or you weren't. It was Guevara who orchestrated extrajudicial killings on the mere suspicion of disloyalty. Che could only become the familiar mugshot on t-shirts if he was willing to pay the ultimate price. After Guevara was captured fomenting revolution in Bolivia in 1967, he said, "Go ahead and kill me, I am just a man."
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan once said the 11th commandment was "thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." But if that were to be an amendment to the American political covenant, then the very first commandment would have to be, "thou shalt not speak ill of Ronald Reagan." That the Gipper holds a special place in America's political universe has been made plain with rhetoric from across the aisle. In just one debate in the 2008 Republican primaries, which took place 20 years after Reagan left office, the candidates evoked his name 53 times. The Reagan-love became so pronounced it prompted his daughter, Patti Davis, never a great fan of her father's political platform, to publicly scold the candidates, "You're no Ronald Reagan." And during that same primary season Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama noted that his role model for political leadership was in fact Reagan, because he "changed the trajectory of America in a way... that Bill Clinton did not."
Reagan's status as a political King Midas is all the more impressive when considering that on his trademark issue — shrinking government — he actually came up short. According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), federal spending grew 22 percent under Reagan. But Reagan's genius lay in his understanding that stage presence can go a long way in helping to cement an agenda in the permanent national culture. As he promoted his worldview of the individual patriot fighting against the constraints of big government, Reagan presented himself as the horse-riding, cowboy-hat wearing frontiersman. That robust image was certainly reinforced by a host of biographical anecdotes; as a lifeguard, Reagan once saved 77 people from drowning.
Cleopatra
The Egyptian Queen Cleopatra is remembered for the luxuries of her fabled kingdom, her dazzling beauty and, above all, her death. Immortalized by Shakespeare, her alleged suicide was the stuff of romantic legend — despairing after the defeat in battle of her lover, Marc Antony, she succumbed to the venomous bite of an asp rather than be taken captive by the victorious Roman Octavian, nephew of Julius Caesar, another one of her many paramours. Over the centuries, Cleopatra has become synonymous with seduction, her feminine wiles aligned alongside an image of the East as decadent, debauched and ready to be taken.
Recent scholarship, though, has done much to bring the real Cleopatra into the light, showing how the ancient monarch was a shrewd politico bent on defending the land her family's dynasty had governed for some two centuries, while expanding her influence into the Roman world. Scholars still puzzle over the true extent of beauty and debate her racial origins — some say she was more African, others point to the decidedly Greek character of dynastic line. Most recently, Egypt's archaeologist in chief, the controversial, flamboyant Zawi Hawass, unveiled an extensive mission to unveil her and Antony's supposed tomb, a find that could shed more light on the tragic couple's last moments. But, thus far, the search has gone cold and the legendary queen remains still ensconced in myth.
Franklin Roosevelt
The reverence for which America reserved for Franklin Roosevelt over the course of his presidency would simply be impossible to replicate in the America of 2011. During the 12 years of his presidency, FDR was credited with not just personally saving the global economy, but also facing down the worst thug the world has ever known. As such, he was spoken of as either a family member or as a handyman neighbor who could swing by to solve problems on demand. Roosevelt's standing as a national guardian of sorts was strengthened by his famous fireside chats, during which Roosevelt referred to his countrymen as "friends." In those chats Roosevelt also chose to deliberately speak in a slow cadence to create a sense of calm in spite of the chaos he discussed.
Aware of his unique hold on the nation, Roosevelt couldn't resist the temptation to try and maximize his political capital. While he was rebuffed on his plan to pack the Supreme Court with New Deal sympathizers, he was swiftly reelected to unprecedented third and fourth terms, the latter of which when he was plainly not physically up to the job. Indeed, Roosevelt was the beneficiary of an organic grassroots cult of personality not unlike the one autocrats often aim to force upon their unwitting subjects. Photos of Roosevelt were plastered throughout American homes and public spaces including barber shops. The press even respected his disability, and only photographed him from the waist up. When Roosevelt was clearly dying in office in 1945, the idea his vice president might actually take over was so inconceivable that Harry Truman wasn't even briefed on the plan to develop the atomic bomb until after he took office.
Dalai Lama
To countless Tibetans, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader and a head of state in absentia. But to people around the world, Tenzin Gyatso is not only the greatest and most public advocate for Tibetan rights and the virtues of Tibetan Buddhism, but for interfaith tolerance and peace as well. For decades — and from exile since 1959 — he has worked to resolve tensions between Tibet and the People's Republic of China. And like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. before him, the Dalai Lama done so in a manner defined by nonviolence and tolerance. In 1989, he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
The Dalai Lama's humility has endeared him to presidents and religious leaders of several countries, affording him the opportunity to raise awareness and drum up support for Tibet on a global scale. His 1998 book, The Art of Happiness, sold more than 1.5 million copies in the U.S. and made him a New York Times bestselling author for nearly two years. Yet little the 14th Dalai Lama can do seems to endear him to the authorities in Beijing, who have rebuffed his overtures, label him a "wolf in monk's robes," and seem intent on waiting for the iconic figure to die. For all the global compassion and sympathy the Dalai Lama has won, his lasting legacy may be one of sad, crestfallen failure.
Queen Victoria
Great Britain expanded in nearly every way during Queen Victoria's 64 years and seven months on the throne. It is her name with which we now associate the country's 19th century cultural, social, economic, political, scientific, industrial, technological, military and colonial dominance. During the Victorian Era, the United Kingdom saw its power and influence spread to the far reaches of the Earth, including to its colonial-crown jewel, India (which gave the queen an additional title — the Empress of India). Though her power faded as Britain increasingly shifted power to elected officials, the Queen's influence in society remained high. Today she is remembered most as the embodiment of an era of strict standards, rigid morals and prudishness.
Benito Mussolini
Thirsting for power and dreaming of empire, a young Benito Mussolini left his socialist roots to become one of the key figures in the creation of fascism. After the Italian government collapsed in 1922, he became the nation's youngest prime minister and worked to established fascism as the majority party, thus beginning his reign as Il Duce, or "the leader." In the beginning, Mussolini gathered widespread popular support for his efforts to restore order and introduce public works improvements. But what began as a promising reign was derailed when he aligned himself with Germany during World War II. He was forced from his seat only to be rescued from prison by the Nazis and put in charge of Hitler's puppet-government in Northern Italy. When Germany's defenses collapsed in 1945, Mussolini was captured and executed by Italian partisans as he tried to escape to Austria. Despite Mussolini's obvious crimes, he is not universally hated like his compatriot, Hitler. In fact, his granddaughter, Alessandra, once served as an Italian parliamentarian.
Akbar the Great
If ever a leader merited a tautology, it was the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great (literally, "Great the Great"). Under Akbar, a fragile collection of fiefs around Delhi grew into the great Mughal Empire, a diverse and sprawling kingdom across northern India. While Christians staggered haltingly toward achieving what we now know as the Renaissance, Akbar presided over a flourishing of the arts, sponsoring artisans, poets, engineers and philosophers. He was a canny warlord whose conquests gave rise to one of the early modern world's wealthiest states. Moreover, while a Muslim, Akbar was spiritually curious and hosted religious scholars from Hindu gurus to Jesuits at his vast, diverse court. At his capital city of Fatehpur Sikri, which he built according to astronomical coordinates, he championed a melding of Hinduism and Islam known as the din-i-ilahi or the "divine faith." While the creed no longer lingers, the ethos of pluralism and tolerance that defined Akbar's age underlies the values of the modern republic of India.
Lenin
After peasant uprisings toppled Tsar Nicolas II, Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from exile in 1917 to stage the greatest coup of the 20th century. Inspired by the writings of Marx and Engels and a desire to be at the "vanguard of the proletariat," Lenin spearheaded the Bolshevik Revolution, ousting the Provisional Government that had replaced the monarchy to establish what would eventually become the Soviet Union — the progenitor of modern day Communist states. By the end of his rule, Lenin had become the ruthless leader he'd once detested, ignoring starving, impoverished workers and crushing any political opposition. In 1921, faced with the same kind of peasant revolt that brought him to power, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, ending requisitioning and allowing workers to sell their grain in an open market. Lenin didn't seek to just remake Russia, however, but spread his communist transformation to all the far corners of the earth. And while he never saw those dreams come to fruition in his lifetime, Lenin's political theories were evoked by generations of rebels and guerrillas. For decades, Marxist-Leninist rebellions shook the world while Lenin's embalmed corpse lay in repose in the Red Square.
Margaret Thatcher
A woman with high standards and a short temper, Margaret Thatcher was not known as Britain's Iron Lady for nothing. After working as both a chemist and a barrister and having two children, Thatcher saw her long-held political ambitions realized in 1959 when she became a Member of Parliament in the Conservative Party. Twenty years later, she found herself Prime Minister. Serving from 1979 to 1990, she was Europe's first female Prime Minister and the only British Prime Minister to serve three consecutive terms. During her 11 years in the position, she worked — against a fair amount of resistance — to turn Britain into a more entrepreneurial free-market economy. Thatcher advocated for the privatization of state industries, pressed for lower taxes, faced trade unions head-on and reduced social expenditures across the board. Along with Ronald Reagan, her conservative partner across the Atlantic, she is also credited with helping to hasten the demise of the Soviet Union.
Simón Bolívar
South of the Río Grande, he's known simply as El Libertador — "The Liberator." Streets are so commonly emblazoned with that title, statues of Simón Bolívar on horse are so widely on display in Latin America for the simple reason Bolívar directly led the independence movements of five South American countries. One of them, Bolivia, even named itself after him. The narrative of an unstinting soldier — Bolívar was ejected from Venezuela four times — freeing the oppressed has proved politically irresistible to all subsequent Latin leaders seeking to couch their leadership as a defense of the masses.
Hugo Chávez isn't the first head of state to exploit Bolívar's life story, but the Venezuelan president has taken the strategy to new heights. Chávez has coined his platform as the "21st Century Bolivarian Revolution," in which today's Spanish Empire is the U.S.-led global capitalist order. And when Chávez appears on his weekly-televised program, Aló, Presidente, a huge portrait of Bolívar often appears in the background. Chávez has even dug up Bolívar's remains to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death. Bolívar's last days were also the subject of Gabriel García Márquez's book, The General in his Labyrinth. In his day, Bolívar was said to be honored by being thought of as "The George Washington of South America," save one gripe he had with the American Revolution — the protection it provided for slavery.
Qin Shi Huang
Qin Shi Huang was just a young 13-year-old when he became King of the Qin state. But his rule would mark the first time China unified her warring states, in 221 B.C., with Qin as the nation's first Emperor. Beyond joining territory to create a common nation, Qin instituted standardized structure to much of Chinese society at the time, including measuring and monetary units, laws and written script, which would remain a part of Chinese society years after his death. Qin also imposed legalism on his citizens, a totalitarian philosophy that suited his sometimes brutal leadership style perfectly. Some of China's most significant cultural landmarks, among them the Great Wall, Terracotta Army museum, and Qin's own mausoleum began during his rule. He is hailed as the iconic unifier of a nation and culture. But his reign was responsible for one of China's greatest cultural tragedies, too. To keep history on his side, Qin set fire to all books not related to medicine, agriculture, certain sciences and the story of his own dynasty, and burned scholars alive for owning forbidden texts.
Kim Il-Sung
Kim Il-Sung, the father of communist North Korea, began his political life by fleeing Japanese rule of his homeland. After some Soviet training and membership in a local communist party, Kim returned to Korea during World War II and established a communist government in 1948. For the next half-decade, Kim ruled North Korea with a brutal iron fist. While promising great wealth for his country, Kim suppressed his people and fashioned a militaristic society. In 1950, he instigated the Korean War following an attempt to reunify the peninsula. (He was rebuffed by U.S. and UN forces.) After the war, the state-run economy, based on Kim's philosophy of "self-reliance," grew fairly rapidly but stagnated in the 1990s. When Kim Il-Sung died in 1994, his son Kim Jong-Il naturally succeeded him, continuing many of his father's heavy-handed policies. Today, the country is now desperately poor and heavily reliant on aid from China. While Kim Il-Sung's presence is still widely felt some two decades after his death, he is also still seen. Some say that the presumptive heir to lead North Korea, Kim Jong-un, looks eerily like his grandfather.
Charles de Gaulle
The father of modern France was a relatively unknown general when he became the face of French resistance against Nazi Germany during World War II. In his now historic Appeal of June 18, de Gaulle decried his country's proposed armistice with Germany and delivered a passionate plea for continued opposition against the Nazi Army in a 1940 radio address broadcast by the BBC. Nearly two decades later, de Gaulle saw his country through another period of conflict, the Algerian War, when he defied some of his most loyal supporters and helped Algeria gain independence. A fervent nationalist, De Gaulle was the architect of a new constitution that bolstered executive power and founded France's Fifth Republic, for which he became the first president in 1959. As leader of his country, he revalued the nation's currency with the introduction of a new Franc, expanded industry and gave women the right to vote. De Gaulle staunchly advocated an independent French arms arsenal, twice blocked Britain's entry into the European Common Market, removed French forces from NATO and condemned America's war with Vietnam, a move that set the tone for the frosty Franco-U.S. relations still present today. Ultimately, his name became synonymous with a uniquely French political system whose legacy is being both preserved and grappled with by current President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Louis XIV
Hailed by Napoleon as "the only King of France worthy of the name," Louis XIV sat on the French throne for more than 72 years, the longest known reign of any such Europe royal. He is best remembered as the Sun King, a name that symbolizes his famously absolutist style of governance. For more than half a century, he guided the French state to the height of its influence in the early 18th century. He fought 3 wars and pioneered a kind of "soft power," seeing French proliferate as the language of sophisticates, the nobility and diplomacy across Europe. His patronage of the arts brought to light luminaries like Moliere — and his absolutist rule spurred angry political philosophers like Montesquieu. The most famous quote attributed to him is probably apocryphal: L'etat, c'est moi, I am the State. Nevertheless, it fits.
Haile Selassie
King of Kings, Conquering Lion of Judah, Elect of God. All were used to describe Haile Selassie, who ruled as Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 and is venerated still as the Divine incarnate by adherents of the Rastafari faith. That he was ultimately deposed by a military discontented with his regime should not eclipse his contribution to African solidarity. Selassie gave Ethiopia its first constitution and convened the earliest meeting of the Organization of African Unity.
But he is perhaps most widely remembered for the speech he gave before the League of Nations in 1933 as the legions of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini stormed his ill-equipped nation. The League did little to prevent Ethiopia's defeat, but Selassie's appeal, uttered movingly in his native Amharic, would serve as a pillar in the struggles against colonialism and Fascism. With a firm internationalist bent, the last Ethiopian monarch eventually saw his country become a charter member of the United Nations. A TIME "Man of the Year" who claimed descendance from the biblical King Solomon, he ushered the continent he had unified into a distinctly African modernity.
King Richard the Lionheart & Saladin
In tales like those of Robin Hood, King Richard the Lionheart is remembered charitably as a benevolent erstwhile monarch, lost to the Crusades in the Orient while his dastardly brother Prince John steals from the poor of England to give to the rich. Richard's return in the stories, though, always marks some proud English nationalist turning of the tide. In truth, Richard probably didn't care much for England at all, spoke mostly French, and spent the bulk of his adult life pursuing wealth and plunder with various armies abroad. The popular myth about his piety and love of England is ironically a product of his complete absence from what was a damp, musty isle at the edge of the world.
Instead, Richard found himself in the forefront of the Third Crusade of 1189 to retake Jerusalem, a city that had fallen two years before to an accomplished Muslim general named Salah ad-Din, or, as he would be remembered by European chroniclers, Saladin. For a brief time, Saladin, an ethnic Kurd, ruled over much of the Levant, Mesopotamia, the holy cities of Arabia and Egypt — lands whose wealth and civilization would have bewildered Richard and many of gold-seeking Crusaders. In short, the Third Crusade failed in seizing Jerusalem, though Richard's forces did score a small victory against Saladin at Arsuf in 1191. Sources from the time paint the rapport between Richard I and Saladin in high chivalric times, noting how Saladin dispatched his doctors to Richard when he heard the English was ill and two horses when Richard's one proved lame. Saladin is remembered in Europe still as this noble, chivalrous general from the east. But, as more recent historians argue, both he and Richard were brutal warriors, with little need or time for the pleasantries that have gone on to burnish their legend for centuries.
Out of the Indian independence movement arose a figure few will ever forget: Mohandas 'Mahatma' Gandhi. While working as a lawyer in South Africa, he pioneered the concept of satyagraha, or, civil disobedience in response to tyranny, helping Indians there campaign for civil rights. His peaceful acts of protest abroad and his anti-poverty campaigns at home helped him become the spiritual heart of the Indian independence struggle. Working with Jawaharlal Nehru, the nation's future prime minister, Gandhi led the country in peaceful protest against foreign domination, exemplified by the 1930 Salt March in protest to a British salt tax. His rise paved the way for India's independence in 1947. Though the country was later divided (and Gandhi himself assassinated), his role in the bloodless revolution earned him the title "Father of India" and paved the way for other social movements, including America's struggle for civil rights.
The world knows no more precocious or proud a conqueror than Alexander the Great. According to legend — and legends are legion about this fellow — the young Macedonian prince carried the blood of the Olympian god Zeus in his veins and overcame a bullying father and cloying mother to lead a triumphant army across the Bosporus to the near ends of the earth. He defeated the mighty Persian Empire, ever the scourge of the Greeks, razed its once mighty capital of Persepolis to the ground and tried to stitch together an incredible cosmopolitan empire from the Indus to the Hellespont — all while he was in his 20s. He died from an arrow wound at the tender age of 32, still harboring dreams of finding greater shores and nations to bring under his yoke. His imperial project proved too great for his followers, who soon set about warring with each other soon after Alexander's death.
As the leader of the People's Republic of China for the better part of 25 years, Mao Zedong is one of the most influential figures in history and was named by TIME as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. Building on Marxism and Leninism, Mao put his own spin on Communist political theory in what is now known as Maoism. But his legacy remains a complicated one. In China, where his portrait still hangs in Tiananmen Square, he is regarded as a revolutionary mastermind whose ideas provided the foundation for advancements that helped the nation grow from an agrarian society into a world power. But much of China's current success came with great hardship. Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are blamed for the deaths of tens of millions, largely due to famine.
It's difficult to imagine 20th century Britain without Sir Winston Churchill. Through two world wars and beyond, he played a pivotal role in the nation's foreign affairs, first as the lord of the admirality at the start of World War I and then as prime minister during World War II. But while he, along with the other Allied leaders, helped save Britain from Axis conquest, he also ruled as the once-mighty British Empire completed its retreat from the world stage. The scorn and outright racism he felt for many of Britain's former colonial subjects are a facet of his past historians have only recently started to acknowledge.
In 1939, on the day Britain declared war on Germany, he again became head of the British navy. But it was soon clear that only Churchill could unite the country in the face of Nazi aggression, and he eventually replaced the acquiescent Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Churchill's stirring oratory and ever-present confidence (just think of his regular flashing of the V for victory sign) galvanized the British people and carried them through five years of European conflict. But he was a wartime leader, not a true politician, and lost his job in July 1945. Churchill remained a force throughout the 1950s, though, regaining his position as prime minister in 1951 and warning of the growing strength of the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain.
Few figures in world history inspire the awe — and terror — that Genghis, or Chengiz, Khan does. Through canny politicking and force of will, the 13th century Mongol warlord banded together a confederation of nomadic tribes in his remote homeland of endless steppe. Then he unleashed his horde upon the rest of the world, his rapid horse archers serving as a kind of medieval-era blitzkrieg. His own campaigns focused mostly on parts of China and Central Asia, but his descendants would go on to create a vast empire that spanned from the fringes of Siberia into the river valleys of Eastern Europe.
Genghis is largely remembered as the brutal, devastating marauder he once was, but that doesn't mean he's not loved. Mongolia has embraced their most famous potentate and images of Genghis Khan adorn myriad buildings and products, not least a popular brand of vodka. An hour's drive outside the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, an over-12-storey steel statue of the horse-lord looms over the horizon, brooding over the empty steppe.
Over his 27 years in jail, Nelson Mandela became the symbol of an entire people's struggle against injustice. And as his time behind bars grew so did the anti-apartheid movement he helped spur on. Mandela began his journey in 1944 when he joined the African National Congress (ANC) and became part of the resistance movement against the largely white, ethnic Afrikaner National Party's policies of segregation. His actions resulted in arrest and imprisonment, the majority of which was served at the infamous Robben Island prison. Upon his release in 1990, Mandela became head of the ANC and worked hand-in-hand with then-president F.W. de Klerk to end the country's long-held policies of racial segregation and apartheid. They were awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their work. In 1994, he won the nation's first multiracial elections, becoming South Africa's first black president. Though he has since retired from politics, Mandela continues to embody the struggle for peace, reconciliation and social justice worldwide.
Stories about Abraham Lincoln have attained the status of myth: he was born in a log cabin, he was a legendary debater, he freed the slaves, he saved the Union. The 16th U.S. president did come along at precisely the right moment for a nation wounded by its great flaw — slavery. Lincoln laid out his vision for the United States when he proclaimed during his 1858 U.S. Senate campaign that a "house divided cannot stand." When he was elected president in 1860, becoming the first Republican elected to the executive branch, Lincoln realized that in order to save the Constitution he had to save the Union, even if it led to bloodshed. (More than 600,000 soldiers were killed during the Civil War.)
His 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the Union's successful prosecution of the war meant that Lincoln was practically an iconic figure even before his assassination just days after the conflict's end in 1865. He became even more iconic in the scores of years since. Prior to the Gettysburg Address, a man spoke, delivering a lengthy two-hour speech. Then Lincoln emerged to give his moving address, which lasted a mere two minutes. The other man and his speech are largely forgotten to history. The Gettysburg Address is for the ages.
Adolf Hitler is possibly the most reviled man in the history of human existence, a universal symbol for evil. Yet his presence pervades our culture in film, in an endless stream of World War II literature and historical texts, and even in our own political rhetoric. Hitler's fervent nationalism — which eventually led to the most horrific displays of inhumanity ever witnessed — initially stirred a tired and hungry German people who fell in line with his National Socialism party following their devastating loss of territory and prestige in World War I. Once firmly in power, the Third Reich quickly suppressed all political opponents and oppressed anyone who was not from the German fatherland. Hitler's terror swept through Europe as Germany gobbled up European neighbors and joined forces with other fascist and militaristic regimes in Italy and Japan. But once Hitler's forces were finally defeated by the Allies in World War II, Germany quickly moved to conceal its terrible history. While there have been recent moves in Germany to confront its tragic past, the reign of the Third Reich remains a naturally fraught subject.
He set out to do more than just upend the world's economic system — he wanted to change what it means to be a human being. Ernesto Guevara's hombre nuevo, new man, was endowed with the ability to permanently prioritize the "other" over the "self." The embrace of the nickname "Che" fit perfectly into his everyman philosophy; the interjection, which has no English equivalent, comes from Guevara's homeland of Argentina and is used as a salutatory title with no consideration for rank or gender.
The portrait of a rugged, beret-wearing Guevara hangs on the walls of both Latin American kitchens, U.S. college dorm rooms and over Havana's Revolutionary Square because Che was the embodiment of a man true to his word who never backs down. That Guevara would by all modern definitions be judged a war criminal only serves to amplify his icon. As he joined Fidel Castro's march through Cuba in the 1950's, Guevara never wavered on the principle that you were either for the revolution or you weren't. It was Guevara who orchestrated extrajudicial killings on the mere suspicion of disloyalty. Che could only become the familiar mugshot on t-shirts if he was willing to pay the ultimate price. After Guevara was captured fomenting revolution in Bolivia in 1967, he said, "Go ahead and kill me, I am just a man."
Ronald Reagan once said the 11th commandment was "thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." But if that were to be an amendment to the American political covenant, then the very first commandment would have to be, "thou shalt not speak ill of Ronald Reagan." That the Gipper holds a special place in America's political universe has been made plain with rhetoric from across the aisle. In just one debate in the 2008 Republican primaries, which took place 20 years after Reagan left office, the candidates evoked his name 53 times. The Reagan-love became so pronounced it prompted his daughter, Patti Davis, never a great fan of her father's political platform, to publicly scold the candidates, "You're no Ronald Reagan." And during that same primary season Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama noted that his role model for political leadership was in fact Reagan, because he "changed the trajectory of America in a way... that Bill Clinton did not."
Reagan's status as a political King Midas is all the more impressive when considering that on his trademark issue — shrinking government — he actually came up short. According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), federal spending grew 22 percent under Reagan. But Reagan's genius lay in his understanding that stage presence can go a long way in helping to cement an agenda in the permanent national culture. As he promoted his worldview of the individual patriot fighting against the constraints of big government, Reagan presented himself as the horse-riding, cowboy-hat wearing frontiersman. That robust image was certainly reinforced by a host of biographical anecdotes; as a lifeguard, Reagan once saved 77 people from drowning.
The Egyptian Queen Cleopatra is remembered for the luxuries of her fabled kingdom, her dazzling beauty and, above all, her death. Immortalized by Shakespeare, her alleged suicide was the stuff of romantic legend — despairing after the defeat in battle of her lover, Marc Antony, she succumbed to the venomous bite of an asp rather than be taken captive by the victorious Roman Octavian, nephew of Julius Caesar, another one of her many paramours. Over the centuries, Cleopatra has become synonymous with seduction, her feminine wiles aligned alongside an image of the East as decadent, debauched and ready to be taken.
Recent scholarship, though, has done much to bring the real Cleopatra into the light, showing how the ancient monarch was a shrewd politico bent on defending the land her family's dynasty had governed for some two centuries, while expanding her influence into the Roman world. Scholars still puzzle over the true extent of beauty and debate her racial origins — some say she was more African, others point to the decidedly Greek character of dynastic line. Most recently, Egypt's archaeologist in chief, the controversial, flamboyant Zawi Hawass, unveiled an extensive mission to unveil her and Antony's supposed tomb, a find that could shed more light on the tragic couple's last moments. But, thus far, the search has gone cold and the legendary queen remains still ensconced in myth.
The reverence for which America reserved for Franklin Roosevelt over the course of his presidency would simply be impossible to replicate in the America of 2011. During the 12 years of his presidency, FDR was credited with not just personally saving the global economy, but also facing down the worst thug the world has ever known. As such, he was spoken of as either a family member or as a handyman neighbor who could swing by to solve problems on demand. Roosevelt's standing as a national guardian of sorts was strengthened by his famous fireside chats, during which Roosevelt referred to his countrymen as "friends." In those chats Roosevelt also chose to deliberately speak in a slow cadence to create a sense of calm in spite of the chaos he discussed.
Aware of his unique hold on the nation, Roosevelt couldn't resist the temptation to try and maximize his political capital. While he was rebuffed on his plan to pack the Supreme Court with New Deal sympathizers, he was swiftly reelected to unprecedented third and fourth terms, the latter of which when he was plainly not physically up to the job. Indeed, Roosevelt was the beneficiary of an organic grassroots cult of personality not unlike the one autocrats often aim to force upon their unwitting subjects. Photos of Roosevelt were plastered throughout American homes and public spaces including barber shops. The press even respected his disability, and only photographed him from the waist up. When Roosevelt was clearly dying in office in 1945, the idea his vice president might actually take over was so inconceivable that Harry Truman wasn't even briefed on the plan to develop the atomic bomb until after he took office.
To countless Tibetans, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader and a head of state in absentia. But to people around the world, Tenzin Gyatso is not only the greatest and most public advocate for Tibetan rights and the virtues of Tibetan Buddhism, but for interfaith tolerance and peace as well. For decades — and from exile since 1959 — he has worked to resolve tensions between Tibet and the People's Republic of China. And like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. before him, the Dalai Lama done so in a manner defined by nonviolence and tolerance. In 1989, he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
The Dalai Lama's humility has endeared him to presidents and religious leaders of several countries, affording him the opportunity to raise awareness and drum up support for Tibet on a global scale. His 1998 book, The Art of Happiness, sold more than 1.5 million copies in the U.S. and made him a New York Times bestselling author for nearly two years. Yet little the 14th Dalai Lama can do seems to endear him to the authorities in Beijing, who have rebuffed his overtures, label him a "wolf in monk's robes," and seem intent on waiting for the iconic figure to die. For all the global compassion and sympathy the Dalai Lama has won, his lasting legacy may be one of sad, crestfallen failure.
Great Britain expanded in nearly every way during Queen Victoria's 64 years and seven months on the throne. It is her name with which we now associate the country's 19th century cultural, social, economic, political, scientific, industrial, technological, military and colonial dominance. During the Victorian Era, the United Kingdom saw its power and influence spread to the far reaches of the Earth, including to its colonial-crown jewel, India (which gave the queen an additional title — the Empress of India). Though her power faded as Britain increasingly shifted power to elected officials, the Queen's influence in society remained high. Today she is remembered most as the embodiment of an era of strict standards, rigid morals and prudishness.
Thirsting for power and dreaming of empire, a young Benito Mussolini left his socialist roots to become one of the key figures in the creation of fascism. After the Italian government collapsed in 1922, he became the nation's youngest prime minister and worked to established fascism as the majority party, thus beginning his reign as Il Duce, or "the leader." In the beginning, Mussolini gathered widespread popular support for his efforts to restore order and introduce public works improvements. But what began as a promising reign was derailed when he aligned himself with Germany during World War II. He was forced from his seat only to be rescued from prison by the Nazis and put in charge of Hitler's puppet-government in Northern Italy. When Germany's defenses collapsed in 1945, Mussolini was captured and executed by Italian partisans as he tried to escape to Austria. Despite Mussolini's obvious crimes, he is not universally hated like his compatriot, Hitler. In fact, his granddaughter, Alessandra, once served as an Italian parliamentarian.
If ever a leader merited a tautology, it was the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great (literally, "Great the Great"). Under Akbar, a fragile collection of fiefs around Delhi grew into the great Mughal Empire, a diverse and sprawling kingdom across northern India. While Christians staggered haltingly toward achieving what we now know as the Renaissance, Akbar presided over a flourishing of the arts, sponsoring artisans, poets, engineers and philosophers. He was a canny warlord whose conquests gave rise to one of the early modern world's wealthiest states. Moreover, while a Muslim, Akbar was spiritually curious and hosted religious scholars from Hindu gurus to Jesuits at his vast, diverse court. At his capital city of Fatehpur Sikri, which he built according to astronomical coordinates, he championed a melding of Hinduism and Islam known as the din-i-ilahi or the "divine faith." While the creed no longer lingers, the ethos of pluralism and tolerance that defined Akbar's age underlies the values of the modern republic of India.
After peasant uprisings toppled Tsar Nicolas II, Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from exile in 1917 to stage the greatest coup of the 20th century. Inspired by the writings of Marx and Engels and a desire to be at the "vanguard of the proletariat," Lenin spearheaded the Bolshevik Revolution, ousting the Provisional Government that had replaced the monarchy to establish what would eventually become the Soviet Union — the progenitor of modern day Communist states. By the end of his rule, Lenin had become the ruthless leader he'd once detested, ignoring starving, impoverished workers and crushing any political opposition. In 1921, faced with the same kind of peasant revolt that brought him to power, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, ending requisitioning and allowing workers to sell their grain in an open market. Lenin didn't seek to just remake Russia, however, but spread his communist transformation to all the far corners of the earth. And while he never saw those dreams come to fruition in his lifetime, Lenin's political theories were evoked by generations of rebels and guerrillas. For decades, Marxist-Leninist rebellions shook the world while Lenin's embalmed corpse lay in repose in the Red Square.
A woman with high standards and a short temper, Margaret Thatcher was not known as Britain's Iron Lady for nothing. After working as both a chemist and a barrister and having two children, Thatcher saw her long-held political ambitions realized in 1959 when she became a Member of Parliament in the Conservative Party. Twenty years later, she found herself Prime Minister. Serving from 1979 to 1990, she was Europe's first female Prime Minister and the only British Prime Minister to serve three consecutive terms. During her 11 years in the position, she worked — against a fair amount of resistance — to turn Britain into a more entrepreneurial free-market economy. Thatcher advocated for the privatization of state industries, pressed for lower taxes, faced trade unions head-on and reduced social expenditures across the board. Along with Ronald Reagan, her conservative partner across the Atlantic, she is also credited with helping to hasten the demise of the Soviet Union.
South of the Río Grande, he's known simply as El Libertador — "The Liberator." Streets are so commonly emblazoned with that title, statues of Simón Bolívar on horse are so widely on display in Latin America for the simple reason Bolívar directly led the independence movements of five South American countries. One of them, Bolivia, even named itself after him. The narrative of an unstinting soldier — Bolívar was ejected from Venezuela four times — freeing the oppressed has proved politically irresistible to all subsequent Latin leaders seeking to couch their leadership as a defense of the masses.
Hugo Chávez isn't the first head of state to exploit Bolívar's life story, but the Venezuelan president has taken the strategy to new heights. Chávez has coined his platform as the "21st Century Bolivarian Revolution," in which today's Spanish Empire is the U.S.-led global capitalist order. And when Chávez appears on his weekly-televised program, Aló, Presidente, a huge portrait of Bolívar often appears in the background. Chávez has even dug up Bolívar's remains to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death. Bolívar's last days were also the subject of Gabriel García Márquez's book, The General in his Labyrinth. In his day, Bolívar was said to be honored by being thought of as "The George Washington of South America," save one gripe he had with the American Revolution — the protection it provided for slavery.
Qin Shi Huang was just a young 13-year-old when he became King of the Qin state. But his rule would mark the first time China unified her warring states, in 221 B.C., with Qin as the nation's first Emperor. Beyond joining territory to create a common nation, Qin instituted standardized structure to much of Chinese society at the time, including measuring and monetary units, laws and written script, which would remain a part of Chinese society years after his death. Qin also imposed legalism on his citizens, a totalitarian philosophy that suited his sometimes brutal leadership style perfectly. Some of China's most significant cultural landmarks, among them the Great Wall, Terracotta Army museum, and Qin's own mausoleum began during his rule. He is hailed as the iconic unifier of a nation and culture. But his reign was responsible for one of China's greatest cultural tragedies, too. To keep history on his side, Qin set fire to all books not related to medicine, agriculture, certain sciences and the story of his own dynasty, and burned scholars alive for owning forbidden texts.
Kim Il-Sung, the father of communist North Korea, began his political life by fleeing Japanese rule of his homeland. After some Soviet training and membership in a local communist party, Kim returned to Korea during World War II and established a communist government in 1948. For the next half-decade, Kim ruled North Korea with a brutal iron fist. While promising great wealth for his country, Kim suppressed his people and fashioned a militaristic society. In 1950, he instigated the Korean War following an attempt to reunify the peninsula. (He was rebuffed by U.S. and UN forces.) After the war, the state-run economy, based on Kim's philosophy of "self-reliance," grew fairly rapidly but stagnated in the 1990s. When Kim Il-Sung died in 1994, his son Kim Jong-Il naturally succeeded him, continuing many of his father's heavy-handed policies. Today, the country is now desperately poor and heavily reliant on aid from China. While Kim Il-Sung's presence is still widely felt some two decades after his death, he is also still seen. Some say that the presumptive heir to lead North Korea, Kim Jong-un, looks eerily like his grandfather.
The father of modern France was a relatively unknown general when he became the face of French resistance against Nazi Germany during World War II. In his now historic Appeal of June 18, de Gaulle decried his country's proposed armistice with Germany and delivered a passionate plea for continued opposition against the Nazi Army in a 1940 radio address broadcast by the BBC. Nearly two decades later, de Gaulle saw his country through another period of conflict, the Algerian War, when he defied some of his most loyal supporters and helped Algeria gain independence. A fervent nationalist, De Gaulle was the architect of a new constitution that bolstered executive power and founded France's Fifth Republic, for which he became the first president in 1959. As leader of his country, he revalued the nation's currency with the introduction of a new Franc, expanded industry and gave women the right to vote. De Gaulle staunchly advocated an independent French arms arsenal, twice blocked Britain's entry into the European Common Market, removed French forces from NATO and condemned America's war with Vietnam, a move that set the tone for the frosty Franco-U.S. relations still present today. Ultimately, his name became synonymous with a uniquely French political system whose legacy is being both preserved and grappled with by current President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Hailed by Napoleon as "the only King of France worthy of the name," Louis XIV sat on the French throne for more than 72 years, the longest known reign of any such Europe royal. He is best remembered as the Sun King, a name that symbolizes his famously absolutist style of governance. For more than half a century, he guided the French state to the height of its influence in the early 18th century. He fought 3 wars and pioneered a kind of "soft power," seeing French proliferate as the language of sophisticates, the nobility and diplomacy across Europe. His patronage of the arts brought to light luminaries like Moliere — and his absolutist rule spurred angry political philosophers like Montesquieu. The most famous quote attributed to him is probably apocryphal: L'etat, c'est moi, I am the State. Nevertheless, it fits.
King of Kings, Conquering Lion of Judah, Elect of God. All were used to describe Haile Selassie, who ruled as Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 and is venerated still as the Divine incarnate by adherents of the Rastafari faith. That he was ultimately deposed by a military discontented with his regime should not eclipse his contribution to African solidarity. Selassie gave Ethiopia its first constitution and convened the earliest meeting of the Organization of African Unity.
But he is perhaps most widely remembered for the speech he gave before the League of Nations in 1933 as the legions of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini stormed his ill-equipped nation. The League did little to prevent Ethiopia's defeat, but Selassie's appeal, uttered movingly in his native Amharic, would serve as a pillar in the struggles against colonialism and Fascism. With a firm internationalist bent, the last Ethiopian monarch eventually saw his country become a charter member of the United Nations. A TIME "Man of the Year" who claimed descendance from the biblical King Solomon, he ushered the continent he had unified into a distinctly African modernity.
In tales like those of Robin Hood, King Richard the Lionheart is remembered charitably as a benevolent erstwhile monarch, lost to the Crusades in the Orient while his dastardly brother Prince John steals from the poor of England to give to the rich. Richard's return in the stories, though, always marks some proud English nationalist turning of the tide. In truth, Richard probably didn't care much for England at all, spoke mostly French, and spent the bulk of his adult life pursuing wealth and plunder with various armies abroad. The popular myth about his piety and love of England is ironically a product of his complete absence from what was a damp, musty isle at the edge of the world.
Instead, Richard found himself in the forefront of the Third Crusade of 1189 to retake Jerusalem, a city that had fallen two years before to an accomplished Muslim general named Salah ad-Din, or, as he would be remembered by European chroniclers, Saladin. For a brief time, Saladin, an ethnic Kurd, ruled over much of the Levant, Mesopotamia, the holy cities of Arabia and Egypt — lands whose wealth and civilization would have bewildered Richard and many of gold-seeking Crusaders. In short, the Third Crusade failed in seizing Jerusalem, though Richard's forces did score a small victory against Saladin at Arsuf in 1191. Sources from the time paint the rapport between Richard I and Saladin in high chivalric times, noting how Saladin dispatched his doctors to Richard when he heard the English was ill and two horses when Richard's one proved lame. Saladin is remembered in Europe still as this noble, chivalrous general from the east. But, as more recent historians argue, both he and Richard were brutal warriors, with little need or time for the pleasantries that have gone on to burnish their legend for centuries.
04 September 2011
New Species
A team led by Conservation International descended into the forests of Colombia to look for species of frogs not seen in decades and feared extinct. Some of the lost critters remain lost, but some new ones turned up, among them the beaked toad. Roughly the color of the dead leaves among which it lives, it is one of the only toad species that skips the tadpole stage and emerges from the egg as a fully formed toadlet. Its tiny, 2 cm (0.8 in.) size helps it hide from predators, but its most distinctive feature is its hooked snout. The expedition's lead scientist — in a singularly unscientific aside — compared the toad to "the nefarious villain Mr. Burns, from the Simpsons television series."
Say this for spiders: they know how to hoard food — particularly the newly discovered Darwin's bark spider, discovered in Madagascar. The most prodigious web-spinner of any known arachnid, the bark spider produces silk thought to be 100% tougher than any studied before. Good silk means good webs, and scientists found one example that stretched 25 m (82 ft.) across a Madagascar river. At least 30 insects were found trapped in the threads, meaning leisurely dining for the spider — and more food arriving all the time.
One of 200 new species discovered in Papua New Guinea, the tree ant makes its home about 1.8 mi. (2.9 km) above sea level. Conditions can be tough at such nosebleed altitudes, and the ants are thus adapted to both hot and dry and cold and wet conditions. The trick is a slow metabolism that allows them to make the most out of anything they eat and a tripwire jaw that helps them catch the most prey possible. The ant's mandibles are kept open a full 180 degrees and snap shut at the slightest brush against their touch sensitive hairs. Pity the soft-bodied insect that wanders across its path.
The New Guinea expedition discovered up to 30 new katydid species, including a green-skinned, pink-eyed beauty that copped most of the magazine glamour shots. But the no-nonsense Mossula was the one that most impressed the scientists. Equipped with unusually large and spiny hind legs, the Mossula makes the most of its natural weaponry. When threatened, it holds its legs straight up and jabs the spines at a potential enemy. The scientists — who look none too friendly from the katydid's perspective — discovered first-hand that this hurts.
Little frogs can make a lot of noise, as Malaysian and German scientists in Borneo discovered when they went searching for the critters making the rasping sounds that usually begin as the sun goes down. Tracking the calls to pitcher plants, the researchers laid out a white cloth and tapped the leaves to see if anything emerged. Out jumped copper-colored frogs about 10 mm (0.39 in.) long, the smallest adult frogs ever seen. How small? Put one on the edge of a penny and it has to make at least one big hop to reach Lincoln's head.
An awful lot of frogs could have avoided dissection if they'd been more like the members of the Centrolenidae family, a collection of frog species with transparent skin. A particularly adorable Centrolenidae specimen was discovered in Ecuador last year, so transparent that its beating heart is clearly visible. The new frog may be only one of about 150 glass frog species across South and Central America, but it's surely the cutest.
Odds are, you wouldn't describe a woolly rat — or any rat, for that matter — as "insanely spectacular." But you're not Steve Backshall, one of the leaders of an expedition that ventured into the Bosavi crater in Papua New Guinea late one evening in 2010. He and his team stumbled across a new species of rat, which, unlike skittish urban rats, showed no fear at all. "It was quite happy just munching on tubers in front of us," Backshall says. The rat's rounded snout gives it a less weasely look than the typical city variety, but don't go all cuddly yet. "It was about the size of a cat," Backshall says. "Quite a good-sized cat, actually. A cat that's been feeding extremely well." The good news is that the rat seems content in its crater, so the subways are probably safe — for now.
If it were a tiny bit less ugly it would be, well, just ugly. But the tube-nosed fruit bat, also hailing from Papua New Guinea, achieves the rare feat of being ugly-cute. Internet critter-lovers have been calling it Yoda, which is a fair enough comparison, except that Yoda doesn't fly through forests, pooping seeds from its fruit-based diet and helping new plants disperse and grow — or at least not in the first six films. Until he does, the fruit bat wins the award for being both cute and environmentally very useful.
There is almost nothing good to say about this critter, spotted in French Guiana a decade ago but announced formally only this year. It's from 1 to 3 in. long — which is too much spider for most people — and is covered in characteristic tarantula hair. It also has a taste for birds, which unsettlingly reverses the natural birds-eat-bugs order of things. The new tarantula does, however, come in bluetooth — which is to say is has cobalt blue teeth, and they're true beauties. O.K., so that's one nice thing you can say about it — but really, that's all.
Not every cool, newly discovered species is still out there eating, breeding and raising young. Case in point: the fossil of a giant penguin that lived 36 million years ago in what is now Peru. With samples of both feathers and flippers preserved with the bones the remains offered researchers rare clues to the color and plumage of the earliest penguins. Their conclusions: the extinct birds were nowhere near the fancy dressers their modern-day descendants are, coming mostly in a standard reddish-brown or gray. But what the penguin ancestors lacked in style they made up in size, standing twice the height of today's pipsqueak Emperor penguin.
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